Sunday, January 01, 2012

2012: The Year in Shorts

Several years ago the folks at SF Signal started a program of reading one short work a day, for the year. They abandoned it after a few years, but I've tried to keep going with it, with varying success. By including audio shorts, which I did a few years ago, I exceeded the goal wildly (and proved that I drive just too dang much). Some years I can make the goal, some years not, more often than not it is because I'm not doing the bookkeeping throughout the year and lose track.

Hopefully, that will change, as discussed here.

Number of short works read: 448 (as of December 31, 2012) (ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED).

J.J. Abrams and Others: Star Trek: Countdown 01. Star Trek: Countdown 02. Star Trek: Countdown 03. Star Trek: Countdown 04. Star Trek: Movie Adaption 01 (5 stories, completed).

Saladin Ahmed: Where Virtue Lives (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 015) (1 story, completed). Iron Eyes and the Watered Down World (1 story, completed). Engraved on the Eye (10 stories, collection completed).

Charlie Jane Anders: Six Months, Three Days (1 story, completed).

Neal Asher: Snow in the Desert (1 story, completed). The Gabble (3 stories, continuing to read).

Richard Auffrey: Tipsy Sensei 01: Yurine's Pot; Tipsey Sensei 02: The Ghost of a Ninja; Tipsey Sensei 03: The Fox and the Katana (3 stories, completed).

Gregory Benford: Grace Immaculate (1 story, completed).

David Brin: Gorilla, My Dreams (1 story, completed).

S.C. Butler: More Than Once Upon a Time (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 015).

Robert W. Chambers: The Repairer of Reputations; The Yellow Sign (2 stories, completed).

Arthur C. Clarke: The Best of Arthur C. Clarke, Volume 01: History Lesson (29 entries, collection completed) (omnibus review here).

James S.A. Corey: The Butcher of Anderson Station: A Story of the Expanse (1 story, completed).

Paul Cornell: The Copenhagen Interpretation (1 story, completed).

F. Marion Crawford: The Upper Berth (1 story, completed).

Samuel R. Delany: The Jewel-Hinged Jaw: Notes on the Language of Science Fiction. Read: Prefaces and Acknowledgments. Ethical Aesthetics, An Introduction (Matthew Cheney) (two entries, continuing to read). 1984: Selected Letters (58 entries, collection completed).

Charles Dickens: The Signal-Man (1 story, completed).

Paul Di Filippo: A Princess of the Linear Jungle (1 story, completed). Waves and Smart Magma (A Funny Sci-Fi Story) (1 story, completed). Return to the Twentieth Century (An Amazing Novelette) (1 story, completed). Wikiworld (One Absolute Knock-Out Story) (1 story, completed).

Diverse Handes: The Paris Review Issue 197. Interview with Samuel R. Delany. Interview with William Gibson (2 entries, magazine completed as I found the rest pretty "meh").

Cory Doctorow: Clockwork Fagin (1 story, completed).

Gardner Dozois & Jonathan Strahan (editors): The New Space Opera. Read: Introduction (Gardner Dozois & Jonathan Strahan). Saving Tiamaat (Gwyneth Jones). Verthandi's Ring (Ian McDonald) (three entries, continuing to read).

Arthur Conan Doyle and Leslie S. Klinger (editor and annotator): The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, Volume 01. Read: Preface (Klinger). Introduction (Le Carre). The World of Sherlock Holmes (Klinger). A Scandal in Bohemia. The Red-Headed League. A Case of Identity (six entries, continuing to read).

Harlan Ellison: Harlan 101: Encountering Ellison. Read: A Brief Encounter Before the Real One (Neil Gaiman) "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman. Grail. All the Sounds of Fear. The Man Who Was Heavily Into Revenge. Sensible City. Hindsight: 480 Seconds. How Interesting: A Tiny Man. The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore. Jefty Is Five. Strange Wine. Shatterday. Basilisk. On the Slab. Broken Glass. Shoppe Keeper. At the Mouse Circus. Prince Myshkin, and Hold the Relish. Paladin of the Lost Hour. The Deathbird. Snake in the Crypt. I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. Mouthless in Gaza: A Literary Memoir. Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes. The Whore With a Heart of Iron Pyrite. Pet: A Story in Progress. Toiling in the Dreamtime. First, There Was the Title. Tell-Tale Tics and Tremors. How Did We Get Into This Mess? With the Eyes of a Demon (thirty-two entries, collection completed).

Nancy Fulda: Movement: A Short Story About Autism in the Future (1 story, completed).

William Gibson: Distrust that Particular Flavor (26 entries, collection completed). Re-read for review: Introduction: African Thumb Piano (one entry, continuing to re-read).

Carolyn Ives Gilman: The Ice Owl (1 story, completed).

Charlotte Perkins Gilman: The Yellow Wallpaper (1 story, completed).

Mira Grant: Countdown (1 story, completed).

Homer Hickman: Paco: The Cat Who Meowed in Space (1 story, completed).

William Hope Hodgson: The House on the Borderland and Other Mysterious Places (The Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson, Volume 02): The Thing Invisible; The Gateway of the Monster; The House Among the Laurels; The Whistling Room; The Searcher of the End House; The Horse of the Invisible; The Haunted "Jarvee"; The Find; The Hog (9 stories, continuing to read).

Dave Hutchinson: Sugar Engines (1 story, completed).

W.W. Jacobs: The Monkey's Paw (1 story, completed).

Kij Johnson: The Man Who Bridged the Mists (1 story, completed).

Greg Ketter (editor): Shelf Life: Fantastic Stories Celebrating Bookstores. Read: Foreword (Greg Ketter); Introduction: Four Bookshops (Neil Gaiman) From the Cradle (Gene Wolfe) (3 stories, continuing to read).

Damon Knight: Orbit 4. Read: Windsong by Kate Wilhelm. Probable Cause by Charles L. Harness. Shattered Like a Glass Goblin by Harlan Ellison (three entries, continuing to read).

Mary Robinette Kowal: Kiss Me Twice (1 story, completed).

Mur Lafferty: The Argument Against Louis Pasteur (1 story, completed).

Joe Lansdale: Bubba Ho-Tep (1 story, completed).

Fritz Leiber: Selected Stories (edited by Jonathan Strahan and Charles N. Brown). Read: Introduction (Neil Gaiman). Smoke Ghost (two entries, continuing to read).

Ken Liu: The Paper Menagerie. The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary (2 stories, completed).

H.P. Lovecraft: The Alchemist; The Beast in the Cave; Memory; Ex Oblivione; Beyond the Wall of Sleep; Dagon; The White Ship; The Statement of Randolph Carter; The Doom That Came to Sarnath; The Cats of Ulthar (10 stories, continuing to read collections).

Arthur Machen: The Great God Pan (1 story, completed).

Linda Nagata: Hooks, Nets, and Time: A Science Fiction Short Story In the Tide (2 stories, completed).

Jeff Patterson: The Solstice Chronicles (19 entries, completed).

Mike Resnick: The Homecoming (1 story, completed).

Jamie Todd Rubin: In the Cloud (1 story, completed).

Chris Ryall and Amber Benson and Ashley Wood: Zombies vs. Robots: Mademoiselle Consuela and Her Army of One (1 story, completed).

Chris Ryall and Lincoln Crisler and Ashley Wood: Zombies vs. Robots: Kettletop's Revisionary Plot (1 story, completed).

Chris Ryall and Nancy Collins: Zombies vs. Robots: Angus: Zombie vs. Robot Fighter (1 story, completed).

Chris Ryall and Brea Grant and Ashley Wood: Zombies vs. Robots: Pammi Shaw—Creator of Gods and Also Blogger (1 story, completed).

Chris Ryall and Steve Rasnic Tam and Ashley Wood: Zombies vs. Robots: To Denver (With Hiram Battling Zombies) (1 story, completed).

Chris Ryall and Kaaron Warren: Zombies vs. Robots: The River of Memory (1 story, completed).

Chris Ryall and Don Webb and Ashley Wood: Zombies vs. Robots: The Wizards vs. the Bots (1 story, completed)

Geoff Ryman: What We Found (1 story, completed).

John Scalzi: The President's Brain is Missing. An Election. The Tale of the Wicked. The Shadow War of the Night Dragons; Book I: The Dead City (4 stories, all completed).

Clifford D. Simak: Over the River & Through the Woods. Read: Introduction (Poul Anderson). A Death in the House. The Big Front Yard. Good Night, Mr. James. Dusty Zebra. Neighbor. Over the River & Through the Woods. Construction Shack. The Grotto of the Dancing Deer (nine entries, collection completed).

Clark Ashton Smith: Stories read in conjunction with The Double Shadow Podcast. Combined listing here. (18 stories completed, continuing to read). Stories read outside the podcast: 4 stories completed, continuing to read.

Norman Spinrad: An Experiment in Autobiography (1 essay, completed).

Bruce Sterling: Gothic High-Tech (two stories, continuing to read).

Rachel Swirsky: Fields of Gold (1 story, completed).

Brad R. Torgersen: Ray of Light (1 story, completed).

Catherynne M. Valente: Silently and Very Fast (1 story, completed).

Jack Vance: The Dying Earth. Read: Turjan of Miir. Mazirian the Magician. T'sais (three entries, continuing to read).

Various: One hundred varied non-fiction articles that I've been printing off, clipping, etc., over the past year or so, all consumed during a four-day camping trip.

Gene Wolfe: The Very Best of Gene Wolfe (three entries, continuing to read).

E. Lily Yu: The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees. The Transfiguration of Maria Luisa Orgeta. The Lamp at the Turning (3 stories, all completed).

Periodicals

Locus Magazine: January; February; March; April; May; June; July; August; September; October; November; December (24 entries, all complete).

3 comments:

Jamie Todd Rubin said...

Looking through your list, I might suggest Virtual Unrealities: The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester which contains all of his classics, and my all-time favorite Bester story, "They Don't Make Like Like They Used To."

When Ellen Datlow was editing SCI FICTION, she would run a reprint in every issue. Occasionally she'd ask for suggestions and I suggested that Bester story. She contacted the estate and got permission to reprint it. It was so cool seeing it in the magazine.

Frederick Paul Kiesche III said...

I've got that one! (...and a couple of other Bester collections...) Maybe I'll dig it up and start on it after the Simak.

The Damon Knight Orbit series is one I need to buy a few more volumes in. I actually was inspired by you and your "Vacation in the Golden Age". This is something like a "Vacation in the New Wave" as I always connected Orbit with where I found various "New Wave" folks.

I picked up the Simak collection (I have read it previously) as yesterday was a depressing day for family events and Simak is sort of like a comfort food in SF for me.

The Year in Shorts will (hopefully) be heavily filled with all the eZines I've subscribed to: Apex, F&SF, Lightspeed, etc.!

Paul Weimer said...

Achievement unlocked!