Martyn Vallery

“Two Friends” is a short short story by Guy de Maupassant. I read it in Selected Short Stories, and I’m intending to read all the stories in the book. You can read the story for free from The University of Adelaide Library.

It tells of two old friends who used to fish together, and when they meet up while Paris is being besieged, they decide to risk fishing.Again. They sneak up to the river to a place where they think they cannot be seen and are very successful with their fishing, until they are caught by the Germans and accused of spying…

It was short, and simple, and sad. Many of Maupassant’s stories are set during the Franco-Prussian war and are heavily influenced by it.

“Jacked” by Michael Cunningham is a retelling of the Jack and the Beanstalk story. It is from A Wild Swan and Other Tales by Michael Cunningham, and is available for free from the 4th Estate short story page.

This is an unusual short story because it doesn’t follow your typical short story form, except that it does, but in an unusual way (or unusual in my experience). He presents the story by ridiculing the characters. Jack is an idiot. His mother is an idiot for sending him to sell their last cow. The giant’s wife seems to want Jack to steal the gold, and the giant seems to be going along with his wife’s lies.

I liked this, because it was refreshingly different, and has shown me that a story does not have to stick to a rigid form, as many teachers of short story seem to demand.

First published in 1972 in New Dimensions II, “Nobody’s Home”, by Joanna Russ is very different to most short stories I have read. For a start it doesn’t have a normal short story structure, as far as I can tell. It needs a second reading, I think.

The story is about a group of people, living in a hedonistic, privileged time, when travel is near instantaneous and the whole world is their stomping ground. They seem to be naked most of the time. The population is very small, and they adopt the attitudes of superior beings, like the upper classes of the nineteenth century, and this clearly comes across when a “stupid” person gatecrashes a party.

Russ was an author that I was turned away from, and this is my first encounter with her writing. She was not well-liked back in the day, perhaps for being an outspoken woman at a time when science fiction was male dominated, perhaps for being an angry and honest writer… I don’t know. This story has intrigued me, though, and I may, if I have time, look at her work more closely. (The problem with reading all these short stories is that it is opening up a whole world of reading for me, and there simply isn’t time to indulge in it all).

“Lock Up Your Chickens and Daughters—H’ard and Andy Are Come to Town!” by Michael Swanwick & Gregory Frost is an Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine Readers’ Awards Finalist in the novelette category. It runs to about ten thousand words and was originally published in Asimov’s April-May 2015 issue. Currently, this story and most of the other finalists are available to read for free on the Readers’ Awards Finalists page at Asimov’s.

An amusing story, hilarious in places, about a couple of con artists with supernatural powers and the effect they have on a young woman and a small town in the mid west in general. The town is suffering a drought and these two claim to be able to end it.

I thoroughly enjoyed this one, and it didn’t seem like a novelette. The story and the characters pulled me through the story and it was over in no time and I was left wanting more. This has to be the ultimate aim of the best short stories — there is no point in writing a story that is so dense and impenetrable, or just plain boring, that readers have to force themselves from one word to the next. This was a real page-turner for me.

I am finding that, in general, I am preferring the contemporary short stories more than the older ones. That is probably a good thing.

“The Worm That Flies”, by Brian W. Aldiss, first published in the anthology The Farthest Reaches in 1968, is an odd one. I couldn’t get into it at all, but I pushed on to the end. I read it in the nice collection The Legend Book of Science Fiction, edited by Gardner Dozois and published in 1991.

It is, as far as I can tell, about an immortal ape who collects stones and is constructing a pattern with them that has taken millions of years, and then he is told that the universe is ending (?) or he isn’t immortal any more (?).

I lost concentration too many times, and even lost consciousness once while reading this, so I may not have understood it fully. I have never been able to get into the writing of Brian Aldiss. I gave up on Hothouse (The Long Afternoon of Earth in the US) before the end, and although I read the entire first volume of the Helliconia series, Helliconia Spring, I never felt interested enough to read the rest of the trilogy.

I am sure I must be missing out. Perhaps I am just too dumb to get what he is saying. I am a simple soul, and don’t like to have to think too hard to enjoy a work of fiction. I read non-fiction for that.

Aldiss is one of the greats and I as one of my friends is a stalwart Aldiss fan and is always trying to convince me to read more of him, and particularly to try Hothouse again, but life is too short.

So what did I learn about writing short stories from reading this particular story? Well, that anything goes, and it doesn’t have to mean anything or make much sense, perhaps particularly if you are already established and a big name in the genre. Sour grapes?

“Defiance” by Susan Kaye Quinn is set in a dystopian future where some of humanity has ascended, leaving the legacy humans to survive. It is a tie-in to her Singularity young adult series. I read it in the collection The Future Chronicles – Special Edition. Until February 29, 2016, you can get The Future Chronicles – Special Edition, or any one of a selection of free books, by signing up to Discover Sci-Fi.

Although this seemed like a part of a much longer story, it was worth reading and has piqued my interest to read the series. I felt right from the start that this was an interesting world and was strong enough to build a book series upon. It makes me think that writing short stories is a valid way to test out ideas which could later be expanded into a novel.

Samuel R. Delany’s “Driftglass” was first published in the June 1967 edition of If, but I read it in The Legend Book of Science Fiction, edited by Gardner Dozois and published in 1991. I am ashamed to say that I have never read anything by Delany before but I will be catching up on his fiction very soon because I enjoyed his style and the story very much.

This is a highly imaginative story about a near future world in which thousands of young people are surgically altered to be able to survive on land and in the sea for long periods. They work at laying cables, among other things.

The author takes his time to tell the story and yet it is never boring or slow because the prose is well-written and interesting. I liked his parenthetical remarks, which serve to draw attention to the details, but without taking you out of the story or interrupting the flow. Nicely done.

Guy de Maupassant, arguably one of the fathers of the modern short story, wrote over three hundred short stories. “Rust” is one of his more amusing stories. I found it in Selected Short Stories, and I’m working steadily through the entire selection. You can read it for free from The University of Adelaide Library.

It tells of a hunter, who lives for hunting and nothing else. His friends think he needs a wife, and they find him one. As he had “got out of the habit of… of… of… love” he goes off to Paris for a few weeks to make sure everything still works.

I liked this. As with many of Maupassant’s stories, it is well-structured and straightforward. No messing. Just gets on with the story.

“#DontTell” by Peter Cawdron is copyright 2014 and was first published in The Telepath Chronicles. I read it in the collection The Future Chronicles – Special Edition. Until February 29, 2016, you can get The Future Chronicles – Special Edition, or any one of a selection of free books, by signing up to Discover Sci-Fi.

This is a great story about a reporter interviewing a telepath in the run-up to a new law, the Telepathy Act, being debated by Congress that will require telepaths to register or be imprisoned. It explores the oppression of minorities by introducing a new minority that is considered a threat by the majority.

I liked this a lot. It isn’t perfect, but I don’t believe that any story or novel can be perfect. It wasn’t too long, the story was well-paced. The two main characters were well-developed and it wasn’t long after being introduced to them that I began to care about them and sympathise with them. The world-building, though slight, was thorough yet underplayed.

If I was giving ratings, I would give this one five out of five.