Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

Well, as of today, Short Fiction Month 2003 is over. It was a lot of fun, and I just may devote an entire month to short fiction again in 2004, even as I plan to not allow my short-fiction reading to completely atrophy like I've done in more recent times. Short fiction is the literary equivalent, I think, of dim sum: small morsels, to be sure, but no less artfully crafted than the larger works (and, in some cases, more artfully done), and nourishing both on their own and when taken together.

I read 60 stories in all, by 43 different authors. I was awestruck by a handful of them, enjoyed most of them, was a bit baffled by a small handful, and I actually disliked only one (P.C. Doherty's "The Serpent's Tooth"). Fifty-nine for sixty is a pretty good average, especially since I basically selected stories at random. I did not go into Short Fiction Month with any specific stories in mind, with the exceptions of Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu" and Poe's "The Murders of the Rue Morgue"; I did, however, plan on reading specific authors: Wodehouse, Poe, Thurber, and Roald Dahl are the big ones there.

So, today I'm back to reading novels. I'm going to start Gene Wolfe's Latro in the Mist (which I'll be reviewing for GMR), and something else that I'll pick later. Probably a big-scale space opera, which is rapidly becoming my favorite SF sub-genre. (As if you couldn't tell, what with all of my Star Wars blathering lately!)

Here, in alphabetical order by author, is a listing of the stories I read during Short Fiction Month.

Asher, Neal: "Snow in the Desert"

Bisson, Terry: "Bears Discover Fire"

Borges, Jorge Luis: "The Rose of Paracelsus"

Bradbury, Ray: "The Million Year Picnic"

Chabon, Michael: "The God of Dark Laughter", "In the Black Mill"

Clarke, Arthur C.: "Reunion", "The Secret"

Dahl, Roald: "The Butler"; "A Dip In the Pool"; "Genesis and Catastrophe"; "The Hitchhiker"; "The Landlady"

Davidson, Avram: "The Golem"

De Lint, Charles: "In the House of My Enemy", "The Stone Drum"

Doherty, P.C.: "The Serpent’s Tooth"

Duncan, Andy: "The Chief Designer"

Engstrom, Elizabeth: "Riding the Black Horse"

Friesner, Esther M.: "Blunderbore"

Gaiman, Neil: "Bay Wolf"; "Nicholas Was…"; "Snow, Glass, Apples"

Goldstein, Lisa: "The Fantasma of Q-------"

Heinlein, Robert A.: "The Farthest Place"

Holland Rogers, Bruce: "Alephestra"

Hopkins, Brian A.: "North"

Kessel, John: "Every Angel Is Terrifying"

King, Stephen: "Everything's Eventual", "L.T.'s Theory of Pets", "1408"

Kress, Nancy: "Patent Infringement"

Lafferty, R.A.: "The Configuration of the North Shore"

Libling, Michael: "Timothy Gobel's Bug Jar"

Lovecraft, H.P.: "The Call of Cthulu", "The Outsider"

Masterton, Graham: "Pig's Dinner"

Matheson, Richard: "The Funeral"; "The Near Departed"

McHugh, Maureen F.: "Interview: On Any Given Day"

Monteleone, Thomas F.: "It's In the Bag"

Moorcock, Michael: "Lost Sorceress of the Silent Citadel"

Norton, Andre: "Mousetrap"

Oates, Joyce Carol: "The Sky-Blue Ball"

Poe, Edgar Allan: "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", "The Cask of Amontillado", "The Masque of the Red Death"

Sheckley, Robert: "Shoes"

Sheffield, Charles: "The Diamond Drill"

Smith, Michael Marshall: "A Place to Stay"

Swann, Thomas Burnett: "The Manor of Roses"

Thurber, James: "The Macbeth Murder Mystery"; "You Could Look It Up"

Traviss, Karen: "The Man Who Did Nothing"

Vernon, Steve: "Catcall"

Wellman, Manly Wade: "Walk Like a Mountain"

Wodehouse, P. G.: "The Purity of the Turf", "The Reverent Wooing of Archibald"

Wolfe, Gene: "A Cabin on the Coast"

Yumiko, Kurahashi: "The House of the Black Cat"