“there’s a Cheers story in it” set me up to expect lighter stuff but these are pretty damned serious stories. I particularly liked “Exit Zero”, “Can Only Houses Be Haunted”, “The Ecstasy of Sam Malone”, “Flowers and Their Meanings”, and “Viola in Midwinter”, which is nearly half the stuff here.
Gravely finished reading Strange Monsters of the Recent Past
Read along with Hubert Dreyfus’s “Philosophy 6” Berkeley lectures (archive.org/details/ucberkeley_webcast_itunesu_461120619) from 2007, which helped motivate me. Before I started, I wasn’t sure I would continue through and finish the comedy. Having read this Inferno, I’m pretty sure I will.
Fun page turner alt-history of an American dropped into a world without the west. Almost YA, and much of it’s time, and I’m unsure how it would survive critical analysis today, but I liked it.
My third Waldrop collection, and as a completionist confonting a best-of, I ended up skipping a few stories I’ve already read in “Howard Who?” and “Going Home Again.” Still a must for Waldrop readers. I particularly enjoyed “Night of the Cooters” and “Flying Saucer Rock and Roll.”