If short stories can sometimes be a difficult medium, because the compressed space they must be worked in often leaves the reader unsatisfied with the way characters and narrative are developed, this collection of very short works from John Scalzi enjoys a different track record: the humorous nature of these stories lends itself quite easily to brevity and they feel more like well-developed jokes than anything else, or like some of the witty posts with which the author delights his blog’s readers.
So here you will find, for example, a mock interview with a very peeved Pluto, whose demotion from the status of planet still burns deeply, despite the abysmal cold in the fringes of our Solar System: the annoyed ex-planet takes this opportunity to vent some of its displeasure toward some old and new adversaries, the scientific community at large and – quite inexplicably – Phil Collins. Just to give you an idea of the tone of these stories, here is a quote directly from the ex-planet:
[…] people start calling me and telling me I’m the newest planet. And I remember saying, I don’t know if I want that responsibility. And they said, well, you can’t not be a planet now, Walt Disney’s already named a character after you. That’s really what made a planet. Not the astronomers, but that cartoon dog.
Or we can read the advertisement for a very special travel agency that can send its customers into alternate universes, offering various possible scenarios about a certain event: the example used is the death of Adolf Hitler, and despite the far-from-palatable subject, Mr. Scalzi manages to make you laugh out loud with his vision of alternate futures. My favorite is the one where the time-frame alteration keeps sending the city of Vienna back and back into the past, transforming it into a battleground for competing armies, until
[…] when the time traveling pro-Magyar forces show up, they are slaughtered by everyone else which is tired of all this time-traveling crap, thereby ending the causality loop.
Or again we are treated to a collection of hilariously crazy tweets the author posted to ease his boredom during a long flight, imagining the assault on the plane’s wing operated by a gremlin bent on plunging the vehicle down to earth. If you don’t think this could be funny (especially in the case of people who are not comfortable with flight), reading this brief piece will make you change your mind.
Each story is prefaced by a few words about its inception and history, and all of them are accompanied by little drawings that complement the story to perfection. If you want to spend a couple of light-hearted hours in the company of a favorite author, or if you want to discover John Scalzi’s peculiar brand of humor, this is the perfect place to start.
My Rating:
Well, I don’t usually go in for short stories but you’ve intrigued me with this collection. Plus look at the cover! Definitely interested in this.
Lynn 😀
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It’s light fun, just perfect for a relaxing afternoon 🙂
I hope you enjoy it!
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This sounds hilarious XD I think I’ll plan to read a novel or two of his before I try his shorter work, but I’m so glad you reviewed this because otherwise I might never have looked twice!
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I can’t wait to know what you think of his longer works: there’s always a vein of humor in Scalzi’s writing, even when he’s dealing with serious subjects, and that’s one of the things I enjoy most.
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Ooh, that’s so exciting to hear!! All of my favorite authors can make me laugh; it’s almost a necessity. I’m so pumped to get The Collapsing Empire…
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I’m sure you will love Kiva Lagos, then: she will bring a few amused laughs on, indeed!
😀
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*glances impatiently at calendar* March 21st can’t come quickly enough!
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I saw from another review about his “Twitter stories”. While I love Scalzi, some of these sound a bit too “experimental” for my tastes, especially for one who is already a bit on the fence about shorts and anthologies. I do have a copy of this somewhere though, maybe I’ll be tempted one of these days to try it out 🙂
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These stories are not much different from some of his most delightfully outrageous blog posts, so you might approach them as such and tell yourself they are NOT short stories… (((evil grin))) 🙂
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I like short stories in small doses but a whole anthology by one author? Not sure I could do. I tried with Gaiman once and think I still have half of it to read.
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This is a very short book, so I don’t think you will be in any danger from boredom or annoyance: it’s good for a few laughs between more “serious” books. 🙂
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I’m not sure these brief stories will work for me or not. But I will say it’s much harder to write something very short that works for readers, so if these made you laugh, sounds like Scalzi did his job:-)
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He did indeed! It might be my bias speaking, I’m aware of that, but if you’re in need of some light fun, this book might be the right place to find it… 🙂
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Omg that sounds hilarious, I have a copy of it and now I am looking forward to it a lot, I actually prefer my short stories to be very short so it sounds perfect 😀
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And Scalzi’s humor is the perfect topping for this delightful collection! I can’t wait to hear what you think about this book 🙂
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Yet another reason to read more Scalzi ASAP! I still can’t quite believe that Lock In is the only one of his books that I’ve read…whoops. Any author who can pull of short stories AND novels is one that I need to be reading on the regular. 🙂
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Well, the good side of having waited until now is that you have a LOT of books to choose from: this is one of the cases in which an embarrassment of riches is not a problem, not at all! 😀
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