I first read about “The Only Harmless Great Thing” as a Big Idea on John Scalzi’s blog. It instantly intrigued me but the past year has been very hard on me and left me in a fragile state so I was reluctant to read anything that I would find disturbing. Still, I kept seeing references to it and realized that I needed the beauty and magic that the story promised. “The Only Harmless Great Thing” is a novella that tells the story of an alternate […]
Is it possible to outthink yourself?
When I was reading Dark Matter, I said to a friend who was worried that I was bored (long story, irrelevant to this review), “no way, because I love my book right now! It’s got car chases, and alternate universes, and multiplicity, and science, and action, and adventure!” I’m not kidding, I had a total blast reading this book, and couldn’t wait to get back to it every time I had to put it down. It’s not life-altering literary fiction. But they can’t all be. […]
Lots more Whacks
Lizzie Borden took an ax… Those of us familiar with Lizzie’s story (or just with the rhyme) believe we know what happened next. Cherie Priest, though, looked at the variety of facts available, asked herself the writer’s favorite question (“What if…?”), and came up with an almost entirely different story. Though father and (step-) mother still take their whacks.