REVIEW: Zombie Apocalypse - Stephen Jones

• Year first released:  2010
• ISBN of the edition I read:  9780762440016
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Running Press Book Publishers
• My rating (out of 5):  2.5

To be clear, I definitely picked up Zombie Apocalypse as a guilty pleasure. No expectations to speak of - just some zombie fun. The first hundred or so pages had me a bit fooled, though, into thinking this could actually be better than I had suspected.

Turns out I got a little ahead of myself by thinking this, of course - but who's surprised?

Apocalypse is, technically, a book of short stories, all by different authors. However, the creator, Stephen Jones, did a surprisingly good job of making the stories connect. They all - or most of them, at least - work together to tell different angles of, essentially, the same story: a government project in London ignores the proper protocol and digs up a centuries-old graveyard, unleashing an evolved version of the Black Plague...

etc. etc. etc.

Most of the stories aren't expressed as straightforward narratives - instead we have government memorandums, research notes, email and Tweet exchanges, diary notes, etc. - a great presentation for this sort of overarching plot.

The first several stories interlace like puzzle pieces, setting the book off on a great, disturbing note. Settings are repeated, characters reappear, the unfolding is elaborate and precise.

If the entire book had kept up this momentum, it actually could have been one of the better zombie books about there.* It doesn't take long for Apocalypse to lose its way, though. Starting somewhere around the first Tweet-exchange story ("Tweets of the Dead" by Jay Russell), the focus of the book gets more shifty and less defined. (In fact, specifically, "Tweets of the Dead" is one of the least interesting and least well-written of the collection.) From there, the stories get to be more hit-and-miss.

There are several missed opportunities here and there throughout - many of the stories seem to allude to larger things to come...which don't (at least not in any sort of meaningful, worthwhile way).

I briefly mentioned the overall story - London, graveyard, plague, blah blah blah - but, unfortunately, this actually only describes the first three quarters of the book. Up to that point, it's entirely centered around the events of London. And then, inexplicably, we have a story in Australia ("Wasting Matilda"). Why? - because...well, it's hard to say. Perhaps Robert Hood didn't get the memo that the stories were supposed to connect? Not really sure.

In fact, from this point on, the stories erratically and disjointedly jump around the world, only finally returning to England for the final, anticlimactic, terrible final story/speech.

The first half of the book is actually generally fun and worthwhile - if you're comfortable setting it aside before things derail. Majorly derail. The graphic design of the book alone makes it worth spending at least a bit of time with, and at least the first few stories are genuinely interesting for the genre. I only wish Jones hadn't let the latter half of the book slip through the cracks so badly.



*Actually, I guess, this is still one of the best zombie books out there - but that says more about other zombie books on the market than it says about this one.

REVIEW: Stories of Your Life and Other Stories - Ted Chieng

• Year first released:  2016
• ISBN of the edition I read:  9781101972120
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• My rating (out of 5):  technically, 3.5625 (you'll see why in a moment...)

You might remember from my blog on types of short story collections that Stories of Your Life is the example I gave for a collection of unrelated short stories.

It's actually rather difficult to give a fair rating to a collection of unrelated short stories. The stories are all so different. In this case, they're all sci-fi-ish, but that's really the only connection between them. No frame story, no recurring characters or themes, etc. How do you rate that overall? It wasn't so hard with The Stories of Ibis, because, even though that was a series of short stories as well, there was a gravity to that book which tied everything together. No such gravity exists in Stories of Your Life (which isn't a bad thing, of course: this is simply a different type of short story collection, one which doesn't call for such a gravity).

In fact, it's been a few weeks now since I've read Stories of Your Life, and I've tried more than once to sit down and attempt to write a review for you. I just couldn’t figure out the right way to do it, though. 

Now I decided I'll just start by saying that. 

The only things I can really say about the collection as a whole is that Ted Chieng is incredibly imaginative. His stories are highly unique and generally well-written. And, of the two stories that had unique settings (rather than, say, everyday modern cities), I quite enjoyed those settings.

That said, here's just a quick rating and glimpse of each individual story:

• Tower of Babylon - 3.5. Very cool premise, and the setting was positively outstanding. The ending was just a bit too vague to really drive the point home, unfortunately. (I had to read the last page about three times before I fully grasped the point/what was going on.)
• Understand - 2. Definitely the least interesting and inventive of the collection. It's basically Chieng's version of the 2011 Bradley Cooper movie Limitless (which isn't really a good thing - although, to be fair, Understand first appeared 20 years before Limitless).
• Division by Zero - 3. The way the pieces of the plot weaved in and out of each other was an interesting approach (and, personally, I love when authors use complicated mathematics in stories), but ultimately it felt a bit too unfocused to really be great.
• Story of Your Life - 4. This is the short story that the 2016 Amy Adams movie The Arrival is based on. Loved the ideas, and the word play was great. It didn't really prompt much of an emotional investment in the characters, though, which made it feel just a little bit more hollow than I would have liked.
• Seventy-Two Letters - 4. Steampunk meets Kaballah? - yes, please. I loved the premise and the setting. Overall a great idea, but it felt unnecessarily long.
• The Evolution of Human Science - 3. Actually a short essay (a very short essay) rather than a story. Though it was expounded decently, it didn’t cover any ground that was altogether that new.
• Hell is the Absence of God - 4.5. Definitely my favorite of the collection. It had a terrific theme and resolve, and touched a couple personal chords in me. (I'd consider explaining what those are, but they'd involve spoilers.)
• Liking What You See - 4.5. The most unique story of the collection in its tone, structure, and theme. The entire story reads like a documentary of a controversial - but clever - new technology, with various people and companies from all sides debating it. I appreciated how realistic the entire thing was - I could absolutely see this being a real documentary.

How can I give you an overall review of this? If I come up with the average score of everything, it comes out to 3.5625 – so there's that, I guess. But of course a review is much, much more than just a number. 

I could say something like, "Read all the stories that I rated X or higher," but that doesn't feel right either. On the one hand, I'd say that you'd be missing the least if you skipped Understand, but I also don't think it's reasonable to say, "If you only read one story out of this collection, it should be Absence!"  Partly, I'm suspicious that Absence is my favorite from the book precisely because I felt a personal connection to it, for my own reasons and experiences. And very likely you won't feel that connection. Also, I certainly wouldn't say that Absence is the most representative of the collection as a whole. Therefore, even though it's my favorite, it's not necessarily the one that I'd feel the most comfortable driving you towards, at the cost of the others. (If you're wondering, I'd say that Story of Your Life is, appropriately, probably the most representative of the book overall.)

At any rate, I enjoyed my time with Stories of Your Life, and could, in fact, see myself coming back to it down the road - even if I only pick out certain stories next time around. There are lots of great ideas in here that are worth spending time with. I'll certainly be happy to check out more of Chieng's work in the future.

REVIEW: The Stories of Ibis - Hiroshi Yamamoto

• Year first released:  2006 (Japan), 2010 (US)
• ISBN of the edition I read:  9781421534404
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Haikasoru
• My rating (out of 5): 4

When Ray Bradbury decided to pool a bunch of his already-published short stories together to give us a compilation, he picked 20-something of his stories that take place on Mars, gave them just a hint of an overarching story, and called it The Martian Chronicles. The problem with Chronicles is that it felt like exactly what it is: a bunch of disparate, older stories which Bradbury tried to tie together in a cohesive way. The stories are all good. The binding of them – the new frame story – was a mess, and didn't actually bring the pieces together in a meaningful way. 

The Stories of Ibis follows a similar structure: seven stories total, five of which were already published (two written newly for this book), with a narrative thread in between each that ties them all together.

Unlike The Martian Chronicles, though, Ibis comes together brilliantly. Reading through each of the stories, we can easily believe that each of them belongs in this collection, and that each of them actually holds weight in the frame story. Yamamoto accomplishes this through a deceptively simple means: rather that trying to pretend that each of the short stories is a literal, historical story for this universe, they are pieces of fiction which one character - an android named Ibis - tells to a human wanderer. Then, in between each telling, Ibis and the wanderer discuss the stories - their themes, their implications, how they would work (or not work) in their current reality. 

Is it cheating for Yamamoto to have approached it this way? Maybe. But it absolutely works. 

Each of the seven short stories – as well as the overarching thread – deals extensively with the theme of Artificial Intelligence: What is it really? Is it even worthwhile? Will we ever be able to create it? If so, will it be our undoing?

Yes, the topic of AI is one of the most oft-tread grounds in sci-fi. Despite this, Yamamoto’s humanistic approach and broad-reaching empathy give us a fresh perspective on the matter, with a plethora of insights - sometimes wonderful, sometimes tragic - along the way. 

Of course, as with any short story collection, some of the stories hold up better than others.

• The first story in the collection, The Universe In My Hands, is an intriguing beginning to Ibis' nights of storytelling, with a fun, meta- setup. 
• In its pure form, Black Hole Diver is probably my favorite of the collection, considering its beautiful imagery and philosophical depth. 
• The Day Shion Came (one of the two new stories) unfolds the most slowly, but about halfway through we realize that it's one of the most important pieces of the collection. 
• And, as might be expected, the final story, AI's Story (the other of the two new stories), displays the heaviest implications of the collection, tying all the pieces together in a moving, meaningful - and surprisingly optimistic - way.

Though I'm not often a fan of sci-fi, Ibis hit all the right notes for me. It is sci-fi in its most ideal form: here are stories with a purpose that wrestle with ideas beyond mere alien invasions and laser swords. Yamamoto has given me much to think about - more so than most other books I've read recently. 

Types of Short Story Collections

(One note, before this whole thing gets started: this post is focused on collections of short stories by just one author. I’m not going to be discussing the “Year’s Best Horror Short Stories” or “The Best American Short Stories of 2017” or anything of the sort here – just single-author collections.)

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read an article written by an author – or, at least, an interview with an author – who says that their preferred medium of writing is actually the short story (as opposed to the novel). From the publisher’s standpoint, though, short story collections simply don’t sell as well, and so they’re wary of publishing too many of them. It’s an unfortunate discrepancy, which is basically our (consumers’) fault. *Big sigh.*

But, luckily, many short story collections still see the light of day. Yay! (Sometimes yay, at least.)

We can generally sparse these single-author collections into one of four main categories (and with one sub-category, to boot):

• Unrelated – As this sounds like, this is a collection of short stories that don’t have any relation to each other. They might all be in the same genre, but even if so, that’s the extent of their similarities. A recent example is Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang.
• In-Universe – These stories all take place within one literary universe, and may or may not feature any of the same characters, settings, etc. A popular example is The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling.
• Single Protagonist – This is a sub-category of In-Universe, the difference being that all of these stories feature the same main character in a variety of scenarios. A fantastic example of this is Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino, which all feature the character Qfwfq in a series of unrelated misadventures.
• Thematic – In a thematic short story collection, the stories are connected by literary themes, rather than by plot, characters, or even literary universe. My personal favorite such collection is Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges, all the stories of which somehow relate to the idea of – you guessed it – labyrinths (whether physical, psychological, mythological, etc.).
• Frame Story – This is a collection of short stories which also have an overarching frame story that ties (or at least attempts to tie) them together. Perhaps the most common example of this is The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. Often for these collections, the author will combine various stories s/he’s written over the years and try to link them all together into a single narrative. (By the way, you may have already thought of it, but: this is how most television shows are structured.)

Of course there’s no way to definitively say that one type of collection is better than another. They all have their strengths and weaknesses; there are many popular examples of each type.

That said, personally, I’m most likely to pick up a Thematic collection or a Frame Story collection, but that’s mostly because I like feeling as though there’s some sort of motive to the collection, rather than just being a collection of whatever stories the author just so happened to write recently.

What about you, friends? 

What types of short story collections do you enjoy reading? 

Any specific collections you like to recommend?