Status Updates From The Secret History of Scien...

"The Hardened Criminals" by Jonathan Lethem - I'm mainlining Lethem lately mostly by accident.

This is in the running for the most disturbing story I've ever read: A prison story where the walls are literally made out of the inmates. Stomach turning, inventive (obv) and some pretty incredible plotting in such a short space. Think I'll have a good vomit-cry.

"Bricks only face one way."

"Interlocking Pieces" by Molly Gloss - A completely devastating typo in my copy sent me off looking for the books of "Molly Glass" for the last ten minutes.

A somber story about an upcoming brain transplant. Over far too soon.

"Descent of Man" by T.C Boyle - A big step down after a few moonshot stories but still solid. Very funny, exceedingly gross. Weak shades of Barthelme.

"Ladies and Gentleman, This Is Your Crisis" by Kate Wilhelm - Another story I'm blown away by. Skewers those "survival" reality TV shows years before they existed. Parasocial relationships with streamers and sports teams and the all-consuming black hole of cramming all the media you can into the weekends between shifts at your shit-ass job.

How many great SF stories are we neglecting because they don't READ like SF?

"Angouleme" by Thomas Disch - This is a 23~ page short story that compelled Sam Delany to write a 270 page essay analyzing the story as a piece of SF.

I must admit, I'm fascinated. The story is fantastic, like if Nabokov wrote A Clockwork Orange-- but the speculative element appears thin (even if takes place on August 2nd, 2024(!!)). But that's no doubt why it spearheads this anthology.

Disch was a master.

Rarely do I ever start a book the moment I acquire it but I find this maybe misleadingly named anthology fascinating.

Does Science Fiction have to behave a certain way? Must it be written in a specific style? Why do both aisles of the Genre-fic and Literature divide bristle when we call Gravity's Rainbow and The Handmaid's Tale Science Fiction?

I don't think these are insignificant questions.

Picking and choosing stories as I go. The Saunders one about lab animals on a clinical trial told as if it were lab report was pretty creepy. But, I've had a similar idea for years. C'mon, I've had that idea for years! ;)