Category Archives: Short Fiction

Joe Haldeman’s “The Hemingway Hoax” + 3

Posted on Sunday 14 August 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

“The Hemingway Hoax,” by Joe Haldeman, first published in April 1990, is the third story in the big Gardner Dozois anthology being perused by the Facebook reading group I’m following. (See previous Sundays’ posts.)

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Walter Jon Williams: “Surfacing” + 2

Posted on Saturday 6 August 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

This week’s story being consider by the Facebook Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Fiction group, for its reading of the big Gardner Dozois book shown here, is the second story in that book, a 1988 novella by Walter Jon … Continue reading →

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Reading Clubs and Robert Silverberg’s “Sailing to Byzantium”

Posted on Friday 29 July 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

I’ve never belonged to any kind of reading club, or ‘book club’ in the sense of a group of people meeting every couple weeks to discuss a book they’ve all read. (A recent example in pop culture is the movie … Continue reading →

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Winter Comes to Water As Well As Land: Gene Wolfe’s “The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories”

Posted on Tuesday 14 March 2017 by Mark R. Kelly

Gene Wolfe, “The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories” (1970) (~15 pp) Winter comes to water as well as land, though there are no leaves to fall. The waves that were a bright, hard blue yesterday under a fading … Continue reading →

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The Lottery and Jim and Mary G

Posted on Sunday 9 August 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

I reread Shirley Jackson famous/infamous short story “The Lottery” this morning (you can find the full text here) and was struck by this passage, about 2/3 the way through: “They do say,” Mr. Adams said to Old Man Warner, who … Continue reading →

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Passages by Benford

Posted on Friday 16 January 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

I’ve been belatedly catching up on 2014 short fiction in the past two or three weeks, moreso than I’ve done in the past two or three years; not enough to in time contribute substantially to the Locus Recommended Reading List, … Continue reading →

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