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A while back I tried to get a conversation started on a forum I participate in about favorite novels and short stories. You can find that thread here
Not many have responded - at least not yet - but the owner of the forum did, and lead me to go off and acquire a book to get the short story he recommended. In that book I also found another story that I'd heard of, so here I am going to compare those two stories and a third - my choice for favorite short story.
Doug recommended this one. In it, the hero acquires an electro-mechanical tiger, it changes his life, and, well, if I told you anything more, I'd be writing a spoiler review. That's problem number one for me. This story is very simplistic. That's not always a drawback, but it's harder for me to get deeply involved in something this simple. For something like this to work - in my opinion - it needs to have a very clear point and perspective. I didn't find those here. At least, not to my satisfaction
Problem number two is the surrounding environment in this story. We have very little to go on regarding the hero, his motivations, the origins of the tiger, etc. Is this taking place now? In the future? Sure, I can invent things in my head to fill those gaps, but such inventions don't seem to go with the theme of the story.
And lastly I didn't buy the time frame over which the story takes place. Again, to say more would be problematic, but the flow of time here just didn't work that well for me.
I'd call this an OK short story. If I was grading it as a writing exercise I'd give it a B or a C+, depending on the anticipated skill level of the author. That's not to say I am qualified to give such grades - I'm not - but it seems that Automatic Tiger could have been a truly great story.
This was a pleasant surprise, found in the same book that gave me Automatic Tiger. Here we have some of the early writing of Roger Zelazny, and it just works. His hero - Gallinger - is bigger than life - as usual - but not in a physical way this time. The setting is Mars, and there are Martians still living - and dying - there. Gallinger is documenting their language and culture. He's a poet, a skill the Martians relate to.
Zelazny's main characters come alive for me. Gallinger is both flippant and serious. He's talented and childish in ways I actually believe. And the story itself is fascinating. There are so many things that would be difficult to handle when two intelligent races meet, even if those races are this similar.
This one is a classic in the genre, and highly recommended. Zelazny's writing sparkles.
Penance is still my favorite, though, as I said in my original post in Doug's forum. Here we see Donaldson do in a short form what he does so well in his novels: character development. We learn the awful history of Scriven - the main character and a vampyre. We also learn a bit about his lord - Duke Obal - and explore the concepts of loyalty, ethics, and trust.
Donaldson hammers pretty forcefully on the Catholic church here, even though the entire setting is fictional. (When the enemy is a cardinal, well, it's pretty obvious.) But the center of the story is how much Duke Obal and Scriven wind up trusting and depending upon each other.
This is a character driven story, through and through. It presented (to me, anyway) a new take on vampires, and caused me to deeply ponder the idea of loyalty in my own life. Could I trust anyone as much as these characters wind up trusting each other? (The answer is yes, but the number of people on the list is exceptionally short.)
For my money, this is still the best short story I've ever read. Whatever you may think of Donaldson's other works, this is definitely worth reading.
For the record:
Whether you agree with me or not, I hope you go out and read a few great stories yourself!
Copyright (c) 2007 by Jeffry R. Powell