The Metrognome & Other Stories by Alan Dean Foster
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
The short story is flexible. You don't
have to keep a plot aloft for long, so you can float some pretty thin
ideas and see if they survive. Yet their brevity means that every
word counts. That is, unless you're selling material to a sci-fi
magazine, and you've got to stretch that idea over four thousand
words... or maybe they pay by the word, and since you know some
sneering editor is going to chop it down anyway, why not linger on
your description of your gnome's beard and suspenders, and let him
ramble awhile in his tough New Yorker dialect?
I suspect Alan Dean Foster may be a
write-to-contract kind of guy. His Hollywood novelization credits are
impressive to say the least - Star Wars (both A New Hope and
Force Awakens), Star
Trek (countless), Alien (one thru four), Terminator, etc. etc. - so I
have no doubt he is a master of his craft, but these stories read
flabby. I always imagined that any story published has survived the
author's own vicious cull, and sits atop a pile of rejected ideas and
aborted drafts. Now, I fear that in some cases, pretty much anything
that's done may make the cut.
Impact-20 by William F. Nolan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Impact-20, on the other hand, is
exactly what I would hope for from a sci-fi short story collection.
Nolan puts on all sorts of different and entertaining voices,
exploring fearlessly and in every direction, and the stories jump
from horror to mystery to space to suburban mania. Above all, the
stories are only as long as the plot demands - when there is an
interesting concept to explore, Nolan explores it, but he never lets
an idea get stale on the page. (The only thing I skipped was Ray
Bradbury's introduction.) The writing is fresh, funny, and often
absurd. Good stuff.
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