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Save Me Plz and Other Stories
Today David Barr Kirtley is best known as the host of the popular Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast, but before launching Geek's Guide to the Galaxy in 2010 (along with acclaimed science fiction editor John Joseph Adams), David was best known as a rising young star in the world of fantasy & science fiction, with short stories appearing regularly in magazines such as Realms of Fantasy and Weird Tales and in books such as New Voices in Science Fiction and The Best of the Year. This volume collects 20 of David's best stories, along with 13 illustrations and more than 40 pages of author's notes explaining how the stories came to be written and published.
A young man vanishes after becoming obsessed with a fantasy video game. A group of friends experiment with a mind-bending alien drug. An inventor from the future never takes off his invincible armor for fear of a lurking assassin. A college student comes to fear the blood-guzzling dragons ridden by his classmates. The Maltese Falcon challenges Sam Spade to solve an existential mystery. By turns humorous and horrifying, with affectionate nods to everything from zombie movies to Saturday morning cartoons, Save Me Plz and Other Stories is a love letter to the fantasy & science fiction genre written by one of its most passionate advocates. Perfect for fans of Geek's Guide to the Galaxy or anyone who loves a really weird story.
A young man vanishes after becoming obsessed with a fantasy video game. A group of friends experiment with a mind-bending alien drug. An inventor from the future never takes off his invincible armor for fear of a lurking assassin. A college student comes to fear the blood-guzzling dragons ridden by his classmates. The Maltese Falcon challenges Sam Spade to solve an existential mystery. By turns humorous and horrifying, with affectionate nods to everything from zombie movies to Saturday morning cartoons, Save Me Plz and Other Stories is a love letter to the fantasy & science fiction genre written by one of its most passionate advocates. Perfect for fans of Geek's Guide to the Galaxy or anyone who loves a really weird story.
362 pages, Paperback
First published February 8, 2022
9 people are currently reading
40 people want to read
About the author
David Barr Kirtley
46 books106 followersDavid Barr Kirtley is an American short story writer. His fiction appears in print magazines such as Realms of Fantasy and Weird Tales, in online magazines such as Lightspeed and Intergalactic Medicine Show, on podcasts such as Escape Pod and Pseudopod, and in anthologies such as Fantasy: The Best of the Year, New Voices in Science Fiction, and The Living Dead. He is also the host of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast on Wired.com (geeksguideshow.com).
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
May 1, 2022
“Save Me Plz and Other Stories” is a collection of short stories by David Barr Kirtley, who is probably best known for hosting the Geeks Guide to the Galaxy Podcast at Wired.com. Before becoming a podcast host, Mr. Kirtley wrote a variety of types of short fiction. These short stories were published online, in periodicals, and in anthologies.
“Save Me Plz and Other Stories” gathers all of these previously published works into a single collection. Mr. Kirtley adds an afterward to each story which describes his writing motivation, process, and the publishing history of the story. There’s also a nice introduction and an afterwards to to the overall collection. Overall, it’s a well thought out anthology.
There are sections for fantasy stories, science fictional stories, and finally horror stores. Some of these take inspiration from other works, like the Mars of Edgar Rice Burrows, others are unique. All of them are well constructed, and have previously been professionally published. Unfortunately, Mr. Kirtley has devoted himself to podcasting so there may not be more short stories forthcoming from him in the immediate future.
“Save Me Plz and Other Stories” gathers all of these previously published works into a single collection. Mr. Kirtley adds an afterward to each story which describes his writing motivation, process, and the publishing history of the story. There’s also a nice introduction and an afterwards to to the overall collection. Overall, it’s a well thought out anthology.
There are sections for fantasy stories, science fictional stories, and finally horror stores. Some of these take inspiration from other works, like the Mars of Edgar Rice Burrows, others are unique. All of them are well constructed, and have previously been professionally published. Unfortunately, Mr. Kirtley has devoted himself to podcasting so there may not be more short stories forthcoming from him in the immediate future.
April 5, 2022
A Original and entertaining sprint through Fantasy, Sci-fi and horror. Full of stories that I found myself thinking about for days after i read them.
Each story in this collection provides something original, be that the voice, premise or a twist on an established troupe. The book even manages to say something new and interesting about dragons.
Some of the stories take pot shots at other properties in the genre, but they are done with a love and understanding of the original that makes them feel like an extension of the conversation, rather than a mean spirited joke.
The endings of the stories are particularly strong, you can tell the author spent time thinking about the right way for each one to end and the effort really pays off.
Recommend for anyone who loves intelligent sci-fi/fantasy but is tired of bloated novels that should be 200 pages shorter.
Each story in this collection provides something original, be that the voice, premise or a twist on an established troupe. The book even manages to say something new and interesting about dragons.
Some of the stories take pot shots at other properties in the genre, but they are done with a love and understanding of the original that makes them feel like an extension of the conversation, rather than a mean spirited joke.
The endings of the stories are particularly strong, you can tell the author spent time thinking about the right way for each one to end and the effort really pays off.
Recommend for anyone who loves intelligent sci-fi/fantasy but is tired of bloated novels that should be 200 pages shorter.
June 21, 2022
Quite the smorgasbord! The author’s notes after each story enrich the experience of each story as well as adding a nice personal touch.
July 23, 2022
Just about a year ago I started searching for podcasts. Having never listened to any podcasts before, I was hoping to find something science-fictional. A show that featured book reviews, author interviews, and so on. Something like the old Canadian TV series Prisoners of Gravity. Almost immediately I stumbled onto The Geek's Guide to the Galaxy, hosted by David Barr Kirtley and produced by John Joseph Adams. It's absurd how closely this show matched the criteria of what I was looking for. I've since listened to nearly every episode, in order. (As of today there are 521 episodes, and I'm up to 490- almost caught up).
One thing I have not done yet is sign up on Patreon to actually pay for all that. At the recommended rate of a dollar or two per episode I'd have to drop $500 or more, all at once. And I just can't do that. But when David announced late last year that he was publishing his first collection of short stories, I felt that here was something I could do to help support him and the show. I picked up a new print copy of Save Me Plz and Other stories, and banged through it in a few days.
Let me start by saying that Dave's writing style reminds me very much of Isaac Asimov. Now some may take that as damnation by faint praise, but I really love Asimov. Both Asimov and Kirtley have an unadorned writing style marked by simple, descriptive sentences and clear prose, mostly without ornamentation. The primary point of science fiction is to illustrate the Idea, and explore its primary and secondary effects and ramifications. While it is possible to do this, and at the same time create a dense, literary experience, it isn't necessary- often it gets in the way. Asimov deliberately eschewed layered alliteration and other literary trappings in favor of simple descriptive storytelling, and Kirtley it would appear has followed his example. Good for him!
This book reminds me particularly of The Early Asimov, or Eleven Years of Trying. Both books document the author's early education as a professional writer. Each story is followed by a page or two describing the story's origins, what the author was thinking at the time, and its publication history. They both talk about the help they received from other authors, editors, and so on. As such it gives a detailed picture of the life of a science fiction author. The similarities are striking, and I can't help but think that Dave must have done this deliberately. Perhaps he'll read this review and let me know, wink wink?
This isn't to say that I liked every story. Inasmuch as I'd like to give the collection five stars, it would be unreasonable to expect that I'd fawn over every word. I'll try briefly to cover the stories I didn't care for, before moving on to the rest of the collection.
The worst of the lot was They Go Bump, in which a group of expendable soldiers are sent on a mission to field test some experimental hardware. Humans are trapped like rats in tunnels below an alien world. Alien platforms patrol the skies overhead, any sign of movement at all gets nuked. The aliens can move freely because they're invisible. Now humans have developed invisibility cloaks, and to field test them, they've sent five slackers up to the surface to stumble around for a few days. This presents several problems for the soldiers. First, it's difficult to find your way across rough terrain when you can't see your hands or feet. This is nonsense, no one watches their feet while they're walking, especially not in rugged terrain. We depend on our sense of proprioception, the body's internal sense of location and motion. We look where we are going, not where we are standing. Another problem the soldiers encounter is they can't see each other. The ground is hard and stony, they leave no footprints to follow. They are left to follow each other's voices. This is presented as a major problem, but I could think of so many easy fixes that I simply could not take it seriously. Since the dawn of man soldiers have used cadence songs to keep in formation, this would be doubly helpful now. The point person could leave chalk marks on the rocks to help the followers to navigate. The high tech invisibility suits could have built in echo-locators. They could tie themselves together with invisible rope. Or their leaders could have come up with another plan to test the invisibility tech that was not so damnably stupid.
There were a couple stories that were little more than Saturday morning cartoon fan-fic, Cats in Victory and Transformations. These cartoons were, at best, half-hour toy commercials, and while Dave tries to look past that, he doesn't look very far. It wouldn't be any different if he had written his own episodes of The Flintstones and The Jetsons, then sold them to magazines. Even if I remembered Thundercats and Transformers fondly, I don't think these stories added anything to the genre.
With that out of the way, I'm happy to report that I enjoyed the rest of the stories quite a lot more. The Second Rat was especially good, an examination of the consequences of time travel that I don't think I've seen before. The stakes were high for the protagonist, as well at the millions of lives he affected every time he reset the timeline. I also really liked Seeds For Brains, Family Tree, Save Me Plz, Veil of Ignorance, and Three Deaths.
At the end of the collection Dave places three horror stories. They are kept separate because some people don't like horror and might want to skip them. I'm not a big horror fan myself, so I didn't know what I would think of them. It turns out these are the three finest stories in the collection. The Disciple is a tale of Lovecraftian horror, and the other two, The Skull Faced-Boy and The Skull-Faced City are zombie stories. Here Dave really shines. His prose evokes a real sense of dread, and his descriptions are chillingly evocative. The choices his characters must make, and the consequences they face have real weight, more so than in some of the other stories.
I know that Geek's Guide to the Galaxy is more than a full time job for Dave. But I hope that he can find time to practice the craft of writing more in the future. Many of the stories in this collection have the feel of a young writer experimenting, and growing. It'll be fun to see what he grows into. I can't help but think there are some amazing stories waiting to come out of him.
One thing I have not done yet is sign up on Patreon to actually pay for all that. At the recommended rate of a dollar or two per episode I'd have to drop $500 or more, all at once. And I just can't do that. But when David announced late last year that he was publishing his first collection of short stories, I felt that here was something I could do to help support him and the show. I picked up a new print copy of Save Me Plz and Other stories, and banged through it in a few days.
Let me start by saying that Dave's writing style reminds me very much of Isaac Asimov. Now some may take that as damnation by faint praise, but I really love Asimov. Both Asimov and Kirtley have an unadorned writing style marked by simple, descriptive sentences and clear prose, mostly without ornamentation. The primary point of science fiction is to illustrate the Idea, and explore its primary and secondary effects and ramifications. While it is possible to do this, and at the same time create a dense, literary experience, it isn't necessary- often it gets in the way. Asimov deliberately eschewed layered alliteration and other literary trappings in favor of simple descriptive storytelling, and Kirtley it would appear has followed his example. Good for him!
This book reminds me particularly of The Early Asimov, or Eleven Years of Trying. Both books document the author's early education as a professional writer. Each story is followed by a page or two describing the story's origins, what the author was thinking at the time, and its publication history. They both talk about the help they received from other authors, editors, and so on. As such it gives a detailed picture of the life of a science fiction author. The similarities are striking, and I can't help but think that Dave must have done this deliberately. Perhaps he'll read this review and let me know, wink wink?
This isn't to say that I liked every story. Inasmuch as I'd like to give the collection five stars, it would be unreasonable to expect that I'd fawn over every word. I'll try briefly to cover the stories I didn't care for, before moving on to the rest of the collection.
The worst of the lot was They Go Bump, in which a group of expendable soldiers are sent on a mission to field test some experimental hardware. Humans are trapped like rats in tunnels below an alien world. Alien platforms patrol the skies overhead, any sign of movement at all gets nuked. The aliens can move freely because they're invisible. Now humans have developed invisibility cloaks, and to field test them, they've sent five slackers up to the surface to stumble around for a few days. This presents several problems for the soldiers. First, it's difficult to find your way across rough terrain when you can't see your hands or feet. This is nonsense, no one watches their feet while they're walking, especially not in rugged terrain. We depend on our sense of proprioception, the body's internal sense of location and motion. We look where we are going, not where we are standing. Another problem the soldiers encounter is they can't see each other. The ground is hard and stony, they leave no footprints to follow. They are left to follow each other's voices. This is presented as a major problem, but I could think of so many easy fixes that I simply could not take it seriously. Since the dawn of man soldiers have used cadence songs to keep in formation, this would be doubly helpful now. The point person could leave chalk marks on the rocks to help the followers to navigate. The high tech invisibility suits could have built in echo-locators. They could tie themselves together with invisible rope. Or their leaders could have come up with another plan to test the invisibility tech that was not so damnably stupid.
There were a couple stories that were little more than Saturday morning cartoon fan-fic, Cats in Victory and Transformations. These cartoons were, at best, half-hour toy commercials, and while Dave tries to look past that, he doesn't look very far. It wouldn't be any different if he had written his own episodes of The Flintstones and The Jetsons, then sold them to magazines. Even if I remembered Thundercats and Transformers fondly, I don't think these stories added anything to the genre.
With that out of the way, I'm happy to report that I enjoyed the rest of the stories quite a lot more. The Second Rat was especially good, an examination of the consequences of time travel that I don't think I've seen before. The stakes were high for the protagonist, as well at the millions of lives he affected every time he reset the timeline. I also really liked Seeds For Brains, Family Tree, Save Me Plz, Veil of Ignorance, and Three Deaths.
At the end of the collection Dave places three horror stories. They are kept separate because some people don't like horror and might want to skip them. I'm not a big horror fan myself, so I didn't know what I would think of them. It turns out these are the three finest stories in the collection. The Disciple is a tale of Lovecraftian horror, and the other two, The Skull Faced-Boy and The Skull-Faced City are zombie stories. Here Dave really shines. His prose evokes a real sense of dread, and his descriptions are chillingly evocative. The choices his characters must make, and the consequences they face have real weight, more so than in some of the other stories.
I know that Geek's Guide to the Galaxy is more than a full time job for Dave. But I hope that he can find time to practice the craft of writing more in the future. Many of the stories in this collection have the feel of a young writer experimenting, and growing. It'll be fun to see what he grows into. I can't help but think there are some amazing stories waiting to come out of him.
October 22, 2022
If you are a fan of Geeks Guide to the Galaxy, this is a MUST read. If you aren't and read this, definitely check out the podcast. Loved the stories. Science fiction, horror and fantasy.
November 19, 2022
I’ve been a longtime listener of David Barr Kirtley’s Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast but had never read any of his fiction. I really enjoyed this collection.
He writes in a breadth of styles and subgenres, putting unique twists on classic tropes with engaging and well-developed characters. Recommended for anyone with even a passing interest in genre fiction (the collection is divided into Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror).
Favorites include “Veil of Ignorance” and “They Go Bump,” my tastes leaning more toward SF than Fantasy, but there isn’t a bad story in here.
He writes in a breadth of styles and subgenres, putting unique twists on classic tropes with engaging and well-developed characters. Recommended for anyone with even a passing interest in genre fiction (the collection is divided into Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror).
Favorites include “Veil of Ignorance” and “They Go Bump,” my tastes leaning more toward SF than Fantasy, but there isn’t a bad story in here.
April 21, 2022
Though the stories in this book are short they pack a punch. Fantasy isn't my favourite so separating the stories by genre was really convenient, I did enjoy all the stories, particularly 'the second rat' and 'they go bump'.
July 26, 2023
I really enjoyed these short stories! Great narrative flow, minimalist prose that doesn't get in the way of the story, and original premises.
January 29, 2025
Thank you so much for The Geek’s Guide To The Galaxy podcast. I particularly enjoyed the SciFi stories and the personal notes at the end of each individual story.
June 5, 2024
It's always a little different when the zombies aren't just brain-dead robots. And this one adds the extra element of having differing levels of zombies. Leaders and followers. Interesting concept and a good read. I enjoyed this one.
May 8, 2017
Interesting idea here. Tells the story of a zombie finding its way home and its father protecting it.
June 21, 2021
Short and effective story of comeuppance. The author should develop it into something bigger to prolong the enjoyment.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews