Category Archives: Friday Fiction

I have an inordinate fondness for short stories. Actually, I like to think that most of our popular novelists have done some of their best work in short-story form. Unfortunately, that doesn’t sell as well as the full-length novel, so … Continue reading →

I’m behind in my Friday Fiction posts, due to Boomershoot and other things. So you get a twofer this week. The recently-departed Robert B. Parker will be sorely missed. He got lazy in his habits in his later years, but … Continue reading →

One of my favorites. Authors who change their writing style to suit the atmosphere of the story are rare; rarer still are those who make it work. Robert Louis Stevenson did so here. (A more extensive example is the Dying … Continue reading →

Forgot to post this one last week. I’ve got more than a few favorite works by Fritz Leiber; unfortunately most of them seem not to be in etext format just yet. The Night of the Long Knives is. Enjoy. It’s … Continue reading →

Jacques Futrelle perished (heroically) on the Titanic. Thus, some had thought there to be only a few tales of Professor S.F.X. Van Dusen, The Thinking Machine. Happily, more have been rediscovered and collected in this book. The Problem of Cell … Continue reading →

You get two this week, as I missed last week due to Kaya’s misadventures. It occurred to me from the comments to Leiningen vs. The Ants that perhaps some of you folks haven’t yet read The Most Dangerous Game. One … Continue reading →

John Buchan is one of my favorite authors. Here he steps into the otherworldly, a bit off his usual track. The accompanying poem is oddly apropos.

or, a brace of .45s against an Elder God doesn’t work as well as an advocate of the .45 as the be-all-and-end-all-of-personal-weapons might think. Actually, I’m just being snarky; you’ll like how the character with the .45s uses them in … Continue reading →

If you haven’t read Leiningen versus the Ants, you really need to do so before you leave this earth. A classic for all the right reasons.