Ramblings of a web developer and sometimes writer
What did I just read (see it online)? A story about a middle-age man who goes a bit crazy with the alcohol with an old friend. He wakes to find out he’s vomited a puke baby. Amid the crazy plot device, lies a great depiction of a mid-life American male, with all his regrets, responsibilities, relationships, and, of course, vomit-induced babies.
David Gilbert
The New Yorker, July 22nd, 2013
July 16, 2013
The story of Duquet who begins a lumber trade in the 1700s Americas and New France. He builds a rather impressive swath of land that has someone poaching the lumber. He catches them and comes at odds with his a new enemy, one that will lead the plot through the rest of the story.
Annie Proulx
The New Yorker, June 10th, 2013
June 20, 2013
The story of a man, who over time, feels like he’s being overlooked. Until at the end, he completely disappears. It’s a unique story with a lot of great imagery.
Dale Bailey
Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine Jan 1, 2013
February 21st, 2013
A dentist divorces his wife to be with his receptionist. The wife takes it poorly, to his surprise, and places a curse on him. The rest of the story is the unraveling of his relationship with his second wife.
Paul Theroux
The New Yorker, February 25th, 2013
February 19th, 2013
The story is about an aging man who experienced alien visits several years prior. He claims to have been visited by a particular alien named Bob Solomon several times. Bob cleared up problems with his lumbago and other ailments using his healing light.
When we catch up with the narrator, he’s being visited by a pushy young girl from an alien encounter magazine, who’s been following up with old timers who once claimed they were visited.
The author does a fantastic job with keeping the narrator true to his identity as someone who experienced a sighting. Several things happen through the course of the story that help pull us into the reality of this person’s experience. Several times we’re left wondering if it was real at all, but in the end the biggest shock of all comes.
The characterization was excellent, especially for a sci-fi story. But, really, there wasn’t much sci-fi in the tale. It was really the human condition, curiosity, experience, perception, ambition, and grace. I enjoyed it.
Andy Duncan
Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine September 1, 2012 Issue
October 7th, 2012