Red: Several Marvelous, Sensational, Absurd, Visionary, Peculiar, Unthinkable, Wicked and Totally Untrue Stories
1 journaler for this copy...
I quite liked this. You all know my penchant for short fiction, so I'll mention that this is another anthology of short fiction that I'm reviewing here.
The idea behind this collection is in the description on the rear cover: "Driving home one night, Red editor Kris Goldsmith spotted a bright, red scarf lying alone by the side of the road. She lives beyond the middle of nowhere in rural Pennsylvania and wondered just how that scarf got there. She also wondered what reasons some of the writers she'd been working with at Boxfire Press could dream up, so she handed out a challenge: write a short story that tells us where an out of place red scarf came from and why it's somewhere it probably shouldn't be."
The five stories vary, and four of them step into spec-fic (and, I was stoked to find, one included a gay narrator). They all have that one thing in common: the red scarf, but from there the imaginations of the authors took different routes, and the journey was enjoyable. In a way, it reminded me of a smaller-scale Machine of Death: A Collection of Stories About People Who Know How They Will Die, another collection of short fiction (albeit a much larger one) with a single shared theme: every story includes the machine that accurately predicts death with a blood test.
Red's five stories include superheroes, Twilight Zone-esque disappearances, deeply disturbing revenge, literally poisonous knowledge, and a crashing plane that ends differently than you'd ever have considered. I liked all the stories (though the last one, by J. Allen Scott, was my favourite).
Definitely worth the read.
The idea behind this collection is in the description on the rear cover: "Driving home one night, Red editor Kris Goldsmith spotted a bright, red scarf lying alone by the side of the road. She lives beyond the middle of nowhere in rural Pennsylvania and wondered just how that scarf got there. She also wondered what reasons some of the writers she'd been working with at Boxfire Press could dream up, so she handed out a challenge: write a short story that tells us where an out of place red scarf came from and why it's somewhere it probably shouldn't be."
The five stories vary, and four of them step into spec-fic (and, I was stoked to find, one included a gay narrator). They all have that one thing in common: the red scarf, but from there the imaginations of the authors took different routes, and the journey was enjoyable. In a way, it reminded me of a smaller-scale Machine of Death: A Collection of Stories About People Who Know How They Will Die, another collection of short fiction (albeit a much larger one) with a single shared theme: every story includes the machine that accurately predicts death with a blood test.
Red's five stories include superheroes, Twilight Zone-esque disappearances, deeply disturbing revenge, literally poisonous knowledge, and a crashing plane that ends differently than you'd ever have considered. I liked all the stories (though the last one, by J. Allen Scott, was my favourite).
Definitely worth the read.
Journal Entry 2 by N8an at Tim Horton's - Merivale in Ottawa, Ontario Canada on Tuesday, September 9, 2014
Released 9 yrs ago (9/9/2014 UTC) at Tim Horton's - Merivale in Ottawa, Ontario Canada
WILD RELEASE NOTES:
Near the waste/recycling area. As always, I try to set my books free once I'm done with them... and hopefully make some room for some new ones in the house!
I'm incurable.
I'm incurable.