One of the most enjoyable anthologies I read as a youth was One Hundred Great Science Fiction Short Short Stories. Edited in part by Isaac Asimov, the book consisted of what later became known as flash fiction. I prefer the older designation: short short stories. It's more descriptive and doesn't come off as a trendy buzzphrase. Don't even ask me about "twitterature". Please.
The short short story has one thing in common with novellas. They may appear to be easier than other lengths. Few writers can pull off a good story in a few pages. Setting up a convincing scenario and a character or two, making the reader believe in these devices in a very short period of time, and then banging out a resolution isn't easy. Many try it, few succeed.
There are masters of short short fiction. Fredric Brown comes most immediately to mind. To see how well it can be done, dig up a copy of his Nightmares and Geezenstacks collection. Richard Christian Matheson excels at it as well. Edgar Allen Poe and Shirley Jackson did groundbreaking work in the form.
SF magazines routinely filled out there pages with very short stories. Asimov, Clarke, and many others indulged in them. I like some of it, but there were times I thought a particular story might not have been published if it had been submitted by an unknown author.
Bill Pronzini, a lifetime favorite of mine, has always been proficient at the short short story. In fact, I don't know of anyone who has written so many, maintaining such consistent quality along the way.
Back in 1988 Pronzini published Small Felonies, a collection of brief pieces of fiction. Now, thirty-four years later, he has gifted his readers with a second volume.
Small Felonies 2 is a treasure chest of bite-sized short stories with a myriad of styles and approaches. There are mystery stories of course, horror, psychological suspense, and sometimes the just plain weird. His longtime collaborator Barry Malzberg co-wrote many of them.
Bill has always been a prolific writer, and these miniature opuses were originally published in sources like Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Charles Grant's Shadows anthologies, Tom Monteleone's Borderlands, Cemetery Dance, and even a little website called Horror Drive-In.
I do a lot of reading before work and on my lunch break. I don't like to bring my deluxe editions along with me, and I was reading the exquisite Lividian Publications edition of McCammon's The King of Shadows last week. I brought Small Felonies 2 to work. It was the perfect book to read in bits and pieces while in the middle of a long novel.
Small Felonies 2 is mostly stories from the latter half of Pronzini's illustrious career, and I think they are even better than the ones in the first volume. I enthusiastically recommend both of them.
Written by Mark Sieber
The short short story has one thing in common with novellas. They may appear to be easier than other lengths. Few writers can pull off a good story in a few pages. Setting up a convincing scenario and a character or two, making the reader believe in these devices in a very short period of time, and then banging out a resolution isn't easy. Many try it, few succeed.
There are masters of short short fiction. Fredric Brown comes most immediately to mind. To see how well it can be done, dig up a copy of his Nightmares and Geezenstacks collection. Richard Christian Matheson excels at it as well. Edgar Allen Poe and Shirley Jackson did groundbreaking work in the form.
SF magazines routinely filled out there pages with very short stories. Asimov, Clarke, and many others indulged in them. I like some of it, but there were times I thought a particular story might not have been published if it had been submitted by an unknown author.
Bill Pronzini, a lifetime favorite of mine, has always been proficient at the short short story. In fact, I don't know of anyone who has written so many, maintaining such consistent quality along the way.
Back in 1988 Pronzini published Small Felonies, a collection of brief pieces of fiction. Now, thirty-four years later, he has gifted his readers with a second volume.
Small Felonies 2 is a treasure chest of bite-sized short stories with a myriad of styles and approaches. There are mystery stories of course, horror, psychological suspense, and sometimes the just plain weird. His longtime collaborator Barry Malzberg co-wrote many of them.
Bill has always been a prolific writer, and these miniature opuses were originally published in sources like Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Charles Grant's Shadows anthologies, Tom Monteleone's Borderlands, Cemetery Dance, and even a little website called Horror Drive-In.
I do a lot of reading before work and on my lunch break. I don't like to bring my deluxe editions along with me, and I was reading the exquisite Lividian Publications edition of McCammon's The King of Shadows last week. I brought Small Felonies 2 to work. It was the perfect book to read in bits and pieces while in the middle of a long novel.
Small Felonies 2 is mostly stories from the latter half of Pronzini's illustrious career, and I think they are even better than the ones in the first volume. I enthusiastically recommend both of them.
Written by Mark Sieber
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