Featured Stories

Victory Over Japan

Victory Over Japan: Short story by Ellen GilchristToday we are featuring the trilogy of “Rhoda” stories from Ellen Gilchrist’s short story collection Victory Over Japan. In the titular first story, set in the final days of World War 2, Rhoda is a willful third-grader living in fear of when her disciplinarian father returns home from the war. In the second story, Music, she is a rebellious fourteen-year-old, obsessed with beauty and romance and constantly at war with her father. In the final story, The Lower Garden District Free Gravity Mule Blight or Rhoda, a Fable, she is a lost thirty-four-year-old at a crossroads.

Continue ReadingVictory Over Japan

The Crooked Man

The Crooked Man: Short story by Charles BeaumontSet 500 years in the future, this story by Charles Beaumont envisions a dystopian world where homosexuality is the norm, heterosexuality is not only frowned upon but illegal, and children are tube-born and machine-nursed. Although the male protagonist is strongly attracted to a young woman, both struggle to deal with physical contact due to their social conditioning. As they cannot show affection in public, she disguises herself and they meet in a sleazy “men only” bar. In the end, she gets what she came for and his concerns are resolved. Themes include oppression, prejudice, sexual orientation, depravity.

Continue ReadingThe Crooked Man

The Serial Garden

The Serial Garden: Short story by Joan AikenJoan Aiken’s Serial Garden is part of a collection of old-style children’s stories about the Armitage family, who seem to think it completely normal as impossible events take place around them. In the story, a picture on a cereal packet leads a young boy to a magical garden that has been inhabited for fifty years by a haughty princess pining for her lost lover. The boy almost manages to reunite the couple, but his mother accidentally dashes his plan at the last minute. Fortunately, the princess now has a dog to keep her company for the next fifty years!

Continue ReadingThe Serial Garden

In the Penal Colony

In the Penal Colony: Novelette by Franz KafkaThis Franz Kafka story is a study on what can happen when you put a psychopath in charge of a process (or country) in which they have unfettered power and can make decisions over life and death with impunity. The story deals with some heavy themes: justice, due process, capital punishment, torture, sadistic voyeurism, and the difficulty of institutional change (even if for the good!). Central to all this is the “machine”, which seems to know that its time has come and chooses to self-destruct along with the only person left who cares about it.

Continue ReadingIn the Penal Colony

The Flying Machine

The Flying Machine: Short story by Ray BradburyIn this story by Ray Bradbury, a Chinese Emperor learns that one of his subjects has invented a “flying machine”. Thinking that the invention could be used against him if the “technology” fell into the wrong hands, he has the man executed, the kite destroyed, and the whole episode hushed up. Written shortly after the end of World War II, by which time the Soviets had already replicated America’s atomic bomb, the story could be considered a parable warning of the risk of developing weapons of mass destruction. Themes include the potential danger of technology, fear of progress, shortsightedness, selfishness/control.

Continue ReadingThe Flying Machine

The End of the World

The End of the World: Short story by Dino BuzzatiThis story by Dino Buzzati is a satire of false piety. The fist of God appears in the sky, signaling the end of the world. Two friars, happy to have been proven right, laugh and make fun of the panicking crowds. The rich buy up the services of most available confessors, while charlatans pretending to be priests do house-calls to hear confessions from those who can afford it. A young priest cornered by a crowd mechanically takes confession after confession, before damning them all to hell for cheating him of his own salvation. Themes include piety, Armageddon, fear, greed, hypocrisy.

Continue ReadingThe End of the World

The Garden of Forking Paths

The Garden of Forking Paths: Short story by Jorge BorgesThe themes of this story from Jorge Borges are order vs. disorder, time, and sacrifice. An ancient Chinese scholar gave up everything to write a book and create a labyrinth. No one could understand the book or find the labyrinth until a modern day sinologist solved the mystery. The book is the labyrinth; it argues that time is not linear, but a starting point for an infinite number of paths. A descendant of the scholar murders the sinologist. This has nothing to do with the book, but rather a cause he doesn’t believe in.

Continue ReadingThe Garden of Forking Paths

Silent Snow, Secret Snow

Silent Snow, Secret Snow: Short story by Conrad AikenConrad Aiken’s Silent Snow, Secret Snow is a psychological horror fantasy. It begins with a twelve-year-old boy (Paul) imagining overnight snowfalls. This leads to a growing fascination with snow, the thought of which provides relief from the mundane routine of his daily life, the ugliness of the world around him, parent-child conflicts, and awakening sexuality. As the imagined snowfalls increase, Paul begins to lose touch with reality. In the disturbing climax, his boy’s “snow voices” come alive and he completely withdraws into himself as they tell him a story. Major themes: mental illness, concealment, detachment and alienation.

Continue ReadingSilent Snow, Secret Snow