Pulp Cover

[anogete]

I love science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories. And I've spent most of my life (beginning at the age of seven or eight) reading them. Very few things unnerve me or give me that uncomfortable feeling of unease or fear. A few H.P. Lovecraft stories can do this, and they are usually the ones not intended to be so fearsome. I suppose, for me, it all centers upon the mood of a piece--the eeriness of it. I can watch every horror movie ever made without flinching, but the little things--the things that are slightly off kilter--make me nervous and jittery.

Last night, I went to bed an hour early and took Gene Wolfe's Starwater Strains, a collection of his short stories, with me. I managed to whiz through a couple stories before coming across one called "Pulp Cover." It was the final one I read last night simply because it made me so ill at ease I had to put the book down. Perhaps it was just me, though.

If you're so inclined, you can read it for free online right over here. I've linked directly to that story, which happens to be less than ten pages long, but the entire collection is available for your (free) online reading pleasure. And if you're curious as to the title of the story, he is, indeed, referencing those pulp magazine covers of the Amazing Stories variety.

Comments

[dressagegrrrl.livejournal.com]

Wow! What a great, but chilling story!

Gene Wolfe is so talented as a writer. He used such clean, terse phrases in that short. It's amazing how he painted such tension in right from the getgo. O_O

[anogete.livejournal.com]

I adore his stuff, and this collection of short stories were light enough to be gulped down in a little more than a day. Most of this novels take me quite a bit longer simply because of the density.

[mist72.livejournal.com]

I am definitly going to go check that out! Those are the kind of stories I like :)

[fishchick.livejournal.com]

Wow. That *was* creepy. I'll have to check the rest of his stuff out.

Have you ever read anything by Jeff Noon? I had to read his book of short stories, Pixel Juice, for a sci-fi/fantasy literature class I took as an undergrad. (I checked out some of his other stuff later and didn't like it so much.) Anyway, his stories are really nothing like this one, except a few of them had that same "wrongness" that really made them unsettling.

[anogete.livejournal.com]

I've never even heard of Jeff Noon, but you can bet I'm going to check out that book you mentioned. I've been in a short story mood lately, so I'm sure it will hit the spot.