While full-length novels are fantastic, especially Heinlein and the classics, SF short stories are sometimes the way to go. You can find new authors that way, without having to commit to a potentially awful book.
One that hasn't really ever completely left my mind since I read it sometime in the past year is World Without End, by F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre. Even that story on its own makes it worth buying the collection The Mammoth Book of the End of the World. (Try to find it in a local independent book store if you can!) Although it sounds like he was a strange and unstable man in life, I will be looking up some of his other works.
But then today I came across In Fading Suns and Dying Moons by John Varley. That one is definitely getting another reading or seven. Another end of the world story, with a more sudden and defined end than the aforementioned story. Which in turn, makes me think of the absolutely brilliant The Nine Billion Names of God, by Arthur C. Clarke.
What is it about these kinds of stories that can draw one in so thoroughly, even a not-very-often morbid person? How do some people manage to draw you into their imagination in such a way that it sticks, possibly forever?
And how sad is it that at least in Ontario, fewer children seem to be reading for pleasure? Books were my world when I was little. When I needed them, books were there as an escape, as a journey, as an enhancement. As any freaking thing I wanted. Even now, it's nice to curl up on the couch with a warm drink and a new (or old) book.
P.S. Yes, in fact I did discover an online version of The Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction today!
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