Reading – David Kubicek

May 21, 2023

12 Must-Read Science Fiction Short Stories

by David Kubicek

This is by no means a definitive list of the best science fiction short stories ever written, mainly because I haven’t read every science fiction story ever written, and I’m sure there are many, many of them that would be on this list, but I haven’t read them yet, so they’re not on this list. Also, I’m defining “short story” as anything that can be read in one sitting if one desires, so some of these “short” stories are pushing 15,000 to 20,000 words.

I’ve selected these stories because I first read them years ago, and they stuck with me. In my mind, staying power makes a story classic. Some of them I’ve read several times over the years, others just a couple of times or only once, but they all left an impression on me. The stories are not in any particular order, except for “The Cold Equations” and “Flowers for Algernon”, which are my favorite all-time science fiction shorts, in that order.

There are a couple of omissions that I should acknowledge. One is that there are no Robert A. Heinlein stories on my list. Heinlein was a decent storyteller, but a terrible writer, and it’s extremely unlikely that you’ll ever see him on one of my lists.

The other omission, which I regret, is that there are no women writers on this list. But that can’t be helped; it was the nature of the genre at the time I was beginning my SF journey. In those days there were few women writers in the genre, and of the ones who were writing, none of their stories that I read stood out for me. There is a time travel story, written by Barbara Bartholomew and published in Analog Science Fact/Science Fiction in the mid- or late 1970s, which I’d love to put on this list; however, I can’t remember its title, and I’ve been unable to find it through an online search. It’s a pity because I really liked that story.

Also, the links are for convenience to help you locate the stories. They are not affiliate links–I don’t get paid if you click on them. In fact, you don’t have to buy the books to read the stories as long as there is a library near you. I regret that used bookstores and libraries may be the only source of some of these stories because they appear to be out of print; however, I could not in good conscience exclude them for that reason. Fortunately, a few of these stories were collected in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. I, which is available in print and digital.

1. The Cold Equations, by Tom Godwin: This is a difficult story to describe without giving away too much information. It is about the interaction of a teenage stowaway and the pilot of an Emergency Cargo Ship delivering medicine to a group of researchers. The ship has enough fuel to take one person to its destination, but not two. The story revolves around the pilot’s efforts to save the stowaway’s life–she stowed away to see her brother, who is one of the researchers–rather than order her into the airlock and ejecting her into space as regulations require. You can find this story in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. I.

2. Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes: This novelette is about Charlie Gordon, a mentally retarded young man who becomes a genius after undergoing an experimental operation. The problem is that the improvement is only temporary. Keyes expanded this story into a novel, which goes into more detail, but the novelette is short and sweet. You can find this story in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. I.

3. The Star, by Arthur C. Clarke: This is perhaps Clarke’s most famous story. It was pretty controversial when it was originally published in the mid-1950s. Many critics called it blasphemous. Rejected by all of the major SF magazines, “The Star” finally found a home at a new, low-paying magazine. But Clarke had the last laugh. “The Star” won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1955.

4. It’s a Good Life, by Jerome Bixby: This story is about a young boy who holds a town hostage because he has the ability to do things with his mind–control the weather, make a rat eat itself, and do things to people who do or think things that he doesn’t like. It was chillingly adapted for the Twilight Zone in the early 1960’s. The novelette is just as chilling but offers a little more depth than the adaptation. Loss of depth is a common problem when stories are adapted to film. You can find this story in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. I.

5. What’s it Like Out There?, by Edmond Hamilton: Hamilton is a vastly underrated writer, partly because he wrote lots of space opera novels during the pulp era to make enough money to keep the lights on, but he has written many imaginative and thought-provoking stories like this one. He wrote “What’s it Like Out There” in the early 1930s but couldn’t sell it because the editors thought it was too bleak. Twenty years later the revised story, although still bleak, finally made it into print. It contrasts the public’s romanticized idea about space travel with the harsh realty experienced by a crewman recently returned from Mars.

6. The Pedestrian, by Ray Bradbury: This short little gem is about the consequences of taking a walk in the evening in a future world where everyone stays home and watches TV, and going out at night is considered aberrant behavior. This story is included in Bradbury’s collection The Golden Apples of the Sun.

7. There Will Come Soft Rains, by Ray Bradbury: This story about a “smart house” that has continued serving its occupants long after the occupants, and the rest of the world, have perished in an atomic war can be found in Bradbury’s Mars story collection/novel The Martian Chronicles.

8. The Little Black Bag, by C.M. Kornbluth: This story concerns a 25th-Century medical bag that is accidentally sent back in time to the mid-20th Century. By the 25th-Century, morons make up the majority of the population, and the few remaining smart people are their keepers. So the medical instruments must be simple so the moron doctors can use them–you just set the dials to diagnose and treat an illness. When the bag is accidently sent back in time, it falls into the hands of disgraced Dr. Full, who has been a wino for the past 20 years, ever since he lost his license to practice. Dr. Full wants to use the bag to do good, but his partner has dollar signs in her eyes. This story was also dramatized by Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, substantially rewritten, but both the prose and the film versions are worth checking out. You can find this story in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. I.

9. Microscopic God, by Theodore Sturgeon: A story about an eccentric inventor and recluse named Kidder–the owner and sole inhabitant on an island off the Atlantic coast–who creates a race of microscopic people who mirror human beings but have shorter lives and evolve faster than humans. This rapid evolution gives them the ability to invent technology much more quickly than full sized humans–this ability comes in handy when an evil banker attempts to use one of Kidder’s inventions (or, rather, the microscopic people’s invention) to conquer the world. I loved this story when I first read it in high school, and it has held up well over the years. You can find it in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. I.

10. Allamagoosa, by Eric Frank Russell: This humorous story knocked me out of my chair the first time I read it. Apparently, it appealed to a lot of science fiction fans, who gave it a Hugo Award in 1955. It seems to be quite scarce now, but you may be able to find a copy of it in one of the early Hugo Award Winners books at the library or a used bookstore. It is also in the sadly out-of-print collection The Best of Eric Frank Russell. The story centers around what turns out to be a typo and the hilarity that ensues when the spaceship Captain, preparing his ship for an inspection by an Admiral, tries to cover up the fact that he has no idea what an Offog is. But the thing that really makes this story great is that it centers around the nuts and bolts and the bureaucracy of operating a spaceship, which one doesn’t often see in SF stories.

11. Dear Devil, by Eric Frank Russel: This novelette is about how a Martian poet named Fander, stranded on Earth long after an atomic war did unfortunate things to the planet, helps the Terran civilization start to rebuild itself. It can be found in the sadly out-of-print collections The Best of Eric Frank Russel and Creatures From Beyond, edited by Terry Carr. Put this on your list when searching for used books online or at your local used bookstore.

12. The Bicentennial Man, by Isaac Asimov: This story, about a robot’s quest to be legally declared a human being was made into a film starring Robin Williams. You can find it in The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories–unfortunately out of print—in a library or used bookstore or possibly in another collection of Asimov stories.

For information about David Kubicek’s books click here.

June 4, 2022February 23, 2023

Ten Must-Read Science Fiction Novels

by David Kubicek

It seems like everyone and his brother are doing “best” lists of novels, so I decided to get in on the act. Here is my list of ten must-read science fiction novels. I haven’t read every science fiction novel that has ever been written, but of the ones I have read, these are my favorites. Perhaps someday I’ll do my list of the next ten and later the ten after that until I, this blog, or time itself come to an end, whichever comes first.

All of these books are currently in print, and I have linked to Amazon out of convenience; however, I don’t get paid when you click through, so whether you find these books at another bookseller, a used bookstore, or a library, I don’t care. Just find them and read them.

Here are my picks for the top 10 in the approximate order I would rank them:

1) Rite of Passage (1968), by Alexei Panshin

Although there may be some wiggle room as to the order of these novels, Rite of Passage is definitely first. First published in 1968, Rite of Passage, is a coming-of-age story, but it is not a young adult novel. More than a century after Earth has been destroyed, humanity is scattered through the galaxy. Many people live on asteroid-sized ships, and many others are descended from colonists who were seeded on planets. Most ship people look down on the colonists and vice versa. Because space is limited on the ships, every person who turns 14 must be dropped on one of the planets in a ritual called Trial. If they can survive for a month, they are picked up and return to the ships as adults. The story follows Mia Havero from the age of 12 to 14 as she, along with others in her group, prepares for and then experiences Trial. This novel won the Science Fiction Writers of America Nebula award and nearly won the Hugo award (it lost by a few votes to John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar). This was also Alexei Panshin’s first novel, expanded from a novelette called “Down to the Worlds of Men” which was published in a science fiction magazine in 1963 and later adapted (and expanded) to become part three of the novel. It is first on my list because of the depth of its characterizations and its message–what my science fiction teacher in college called the “deeper, inner, secret meaning”. The first time I read the novel, it hooked me in the first page and a half; that had never happened with another novel before, and it hasn’t happened since.

2) The Martian Chronicles (1950), by Ray Bradbury

This is the story of Earth’s colonization of Mars, how the Earth people destroyed the existing Martian civilization, and how the Earth settlements quickly fell into decay after they were abandoned. It is an allegory for atrocities we have committed on one another on Earth. The Martian Chronicles is a collection of Bradbury’s Mars stories arranged in a way, and with specially written bridge passages, to give the collection its larger, more cohesive theme.

3) Fahrenheit 451 (1953), by Ray Bradbury

This book is often simplistically called a story about the horrors of burning books, destroying knowledge, etc. But it is more than that. Bradbury abhorred book burning so he used it as a structure to tell a story about the desensitization of society.

4) Kindred (1976), by Octavia E. Butler

A young black woman of the 1970s finds herself transported to a slave-owning Maryland farm in the early Nineteenth Century. She is “called” by her distant white ancestor whenever he is in trouble, starting when he is five years old. Although she is gone from the present for only a short time, her stays in the past stretch into months.

5) The Time Machine (1895), by H.G. Wells

I’m a fan of time travel stories, especially time travel stories to the distant future. H.G. Wells’ story about a future where humanity has devolved into two distinct species–the vicious Morlocks who feed off the gentle Eloi–is at the top of the list.

6) The Handmaid’s Tale(1985), by Margaret Atwood

Most dystopian stories are set in the distant future after the society has been screwed up. The Handmaid’s Tale captures the screwing. It is a near-future story that shows the society transition from a democratic to a totalitarian state seemingly overnight, and we see how June’s life and identity are stripped away by the new order. In the new order she is no longer June. She is Offred because she belongs to Fred, one of the new society’s head honchos. This story is very significant now because our society is going through the same changes, although not quite as quickly and decisively.

7) 1984 (1949), by George Orwell

People didn’t listen to Ray Bradbury. They didn’t listen to Rod Serling. They didn’t listen to Margaret Atwood. And they didn’t listen to George Orwell. 1984 is Orwell’s portrait of a fascist society (based on Stalin’s Russia) that disturbingly bears some resemblance to where our own society is headed. Winston, Orwell’s main character, works for the Ministry of Truth, which makes sure history is consistent by going back into all of the news stories and videos and making sure they support what the current version of the truth is. For instance, Winston knows he’s in for a long weekend when Big Brother declares that the society is not waging war against one enemy (which they had been at war with for years) but is actually at war with a different enemy and has been for years. Winston and his coworkers will have to work overtime to make sure previously printed or aired news coverage doesn’t contradict this “truth”. Does anyone remember alternative facts?

8) Flowers for Algernon (1966), by Daniel Keyes

Flowers for Algernon was a novelette first published in a science fiction magazine in 1958 and anthologized in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. I. Keyes later expanded it into a novel, which was made into a film, which won Cliff Robertson a best actor academy award. It follows Charlie Gordon, a young man with an I.Q. of 70 at the beginning of the story, who, after undergoing an experimental operation, becomes a genius.

9) The Time Traveler’s Wife (2003), by Audrey Niffenegger

This is a short respite from some of the terrible things that happen in other novels on this list. It is a love story between Clare Abshire and Henry DeTamble who has a genetic disorder that causes him to take sudden, uncontrolled journeys in time. One serious drawback is that he can’t take anything with him, so his first order of business on arriving in a new time period is to find clothes.

10) Parable of the Sower (1993), by Octavia E. Butler

This may not technically a post-apocalyptic novel, but things are pretty bad. Set 31 years in the author’s future (the story starts in 2024), Butler did a pretty good job of predicting where current trends in American society would lead, but the timeline is a little short–in 50 to 75 years, if we don’t get our act together, I can see our society reaching this state of decadence. There is something about Butler’s stories that makes for easy reading. I don’t know if it’s her style, the way she told a story, or her characters–it’s probably all three. I would say that it’s a pleasure to read her stories, but “pleasure” seems to be the wrong word here because she wrote (at least in the two books on this list) about some seriously awful things that people do to people.

For information about David Kubicek’s books click here.

September 24, 2021December 19, 2021

Celebrate Banned Books Week 2021

by David Kubicek

Recently I saw a meme on Facebook that said: “A good library has something in it to offend everyone.” That is why (I believe) Banned Books Week was started–to celebrate those books that have offended certain groups of people throughout the years. Celebrate Banned Books Week 2021, which runs from September 26 through October 2, by reading a banned or challenged book. If you don’t know of any, here’s the American Library Association’s (ALA) list of the most banned and challenge books from 2010 to 2019 [fun fact: The Holy Bible is on this list].

There are lots of great books on this list (Looking for Alaska) and some not so great, or even good, ones (Fifty Shades of Grey). But many of them are “must reads” because they shine a light on ugly periods of our past or present and encourage us or warn us to do better (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl, 1984, The Handmaid’s Tale). You may notice that some of the books in my montage above aren’t on the ALA’s list, but I assure you that all of them were banned or challenged at one time or another.

Being the decadent reprobate that I am, I’ve read many of the books that have at various times in our country’s history been challenged or banned. I even had my own brush, as an author, with a challenged book. Actually, I was the ghost writer (hired by the publisher), but it has been over 30 years so I doubt that the world will end if I reveal this secret now. The book was A Need To Kill, authored by Mark Pettit, who was a reporter for a local TV station and the only journalist (at least at that time) to have interviewed the serial child killer John Joubert (the subject of the book) in prison. The main problem with Mark’s manuscript was that he wrote it the same way he wrote news stories to be delivered in 30 seconds–just the facts. I added color and beefed up his original manuscript, even doing some of my own research (for instance, I researched the weather at the time of the murders so I could evoke the setting). Mark even gave me a shoutout in the introduction.

Some local group got upset and challenged A Need To Kill. I don’t know if that helped sales, but the first hardcover printing by Lincoln, Nebraska-based Media Publishing sold out in three days and Ballantine snapped up the paperback rights, publishing a mass market paperback edition later that year.

Challenging or banning books always creates interest and sells copies–something the book banners of the world never seem to understand. Someday I hope to have one of my own books, published under my own name, challenged or banned. For any of you writers out there, I hope you have the same luck.

But do celebrate Banned Books Week, which comes around every year in the last week of September, and celebrate the authors. You know you must have touched a nerve when certain people want to prevent others from reading what you have written.

For more information about David Kubicek’s books click here.

February 29, 2020September 25, 2021

Be a Reader First, Then a Writer

What will the future of reading look like?

Self-described writers who don’t have time to read are just fooling themselves. You must first be a Reader before you can be a writer.

First, we need to understand the difference between a Reader and One Who Reads

I saw a statistic years ago that the average person reads one book per year (and the number of readers is still shrinking). These folks don’t make time to read every day. They read when they have time, usually a book that caught their interest, but they aren’t driven to read–they can take it or leave it, and in some cases it may take them a year to get through one book.

Readers, with a capital R, are on a mission. They make time to read every day. They always have books in their queue, so when they finish one, another is ready to go. You see them reading while they sit in waiting rooms, while they sit in their cars waiting to pick up their kids from school, and while they wait in lines at stores.

Readers know they will never be able to read all of the good books that have been published, and they know that many more good books are being published every year–and this idea frustrates them if they dwell on it.

Readers read. Period. If they didn’t have books, they would read condiment labels (like Burgess Meredith’s character in the Twilight Zone episode, “Time Enough At Last”).

I’ve also encountered people who describe themselves as writers but claim that they don’t have time to read. The bottom line is: in order to write something that anyone will want to read, you must first be a Reader, capital R.

Writing teachers may point the way, but reading will propel your journey. It will teach you the basic themes, it will teach you how to use the language to create emotion, it will teach you how to use technique, and it will teach you how to cut and revise–to write uncluttered prose and, as Elmore Leonard put it, “to leave out the parts that people skip.”

There are only 36 dramatic situations, and everything that has ever been written fits into one (or more) of them–if you’re not widely read, you most likely will write stories that have been told before in the same way that they have been written before. Writing is more than just telling a story. It is putting a new spin on an old idea–all writers do it. Self-described writers who don’t read can’t put new spins on old ideas because they don’t know what the old ideas are.

But there is one kind of writing nonreaders can do. They can have a fair amount of success writing labels for condiment bottles.

For more information about David Kubicek’s books click here.

December 22, 2019December 19, 2021

Voices From the Plains, Vol. III

by David Kubicek

Voices From The Plains, Volume 3, the Nebraska Writers Guild’s annual anthology of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry–an annual publication from the Nebraska Writers Guild–was released earlier this month. The list price for the ebook is $3.99, the list price for the paperback is $16.99, and both versions are now available from Amazon. Voices from the Plains, Volume III, features 48 authors–one of them with work under his/her real name and under a pen name.

There are:

Thirty-four poems
Three essays
Twenty-two short stories [including my own Twilight Zone-esque story, “The Last Bus”]
One nonfiction book excerpt
Five novel excerpts

All but two of the authors currently live in Nebraska.

One of the oldest continuous writers organizations in the United States, the Nebraska Writers Guild was founded in 1925 and counts Mari Sandoz, Bess Streeter Aldrich, John G. Neihardt, and Willa Cather among its first members.

For more information about David Kubicek’s books click here.

November 2, 2019September 25, 2021

New Flash Fiction Horror Story: “Unblinking Eyes”

by David Kubicek

Just in time for Halloween (sort of), my latest horror story, “Unblinking Eyes,” is online in the Nov. 1 issue of Theme of Absence, along with my author interview. It would be best if you didn’t read this story after midnight when you are alone in the house and the wind howls like a lost soul around the eaves and bony fingers of barren tree branches knock against windows and the creaking you hear in the basement and attic might be the house settling…or on the other hand…

Enjoy the story!

For more information about David Kubicek’s books click here.

October 6, 2019October 4, 2023

Horror Stories for Halloween

by David Kubicek

This is my list of classic and modern horror stories for Halloween to get you into the mood for the creepiest time of the year.

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. When I was a kid, I wished I had been born on Halloween and was a tiny bit jealous of my cousin, Linda, who actually was born on October 31.

I’m a traditionalist about the trappings of All Hallows Eve. No misunderstood vampires or witches with hearts of gold for me. Give me a rotting corpse, rats scurrying through subterranean tunnels, or a vampire planning to snack on a priest and his entire congregation, and I’m happy.

You’ll find all of these creatures of the night–the decaying corpse, the scurrying rats, and the midnight snacking vampire–in the stories on this list of classic and modern horror tales. I first posted it several years ago on a previous blog but have tweaked it over the years, adding some stories and links and making sure the links already in place still work.

One of the latest additions is my own story, “What’s Wrong with Being a Nurse?”. Since this list’s beginning, I have followed an unwritten rule against shameless self-promotion, but I finally broke down and included “Nurse” because of comments I’ve gotten from readers.

It is almost an impossible task to make a list of good horror stories because there are legions of them, and there are many authors who aren’t on this list and probably should be. But in the interests of keeping the list manageable, I will only note a few of my favorites–although if I continue tweaking it and posting it every Halloween season for the next 20 years, the list may grow to a ponderous size.

The stories are listed in approximately the order in which they were published, ranging from “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” in 1820 to “What’s Wrong with Being a Nurse?” in 2011. NOTE: I don’t receive any compensation when you click on a link (I do, however, receive a royalty if you buy The Moaning Rocks, which contains “What’s Wrong with Being a Nurse?” because it is my collection and is currently in print). The links merely suggest where you can find the story if you’re of a mind to.

“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” by Washington Irving

This is a well-crafted story by one of the first masters of the American short story. With his richly-detailed descriptions of the settings, the people, and the food, Irving transports the reader into his tale of Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman.

“The Tell-tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe

I first encountered this short gem in class when I was in elementary school. Poe, like Irving, also did much to develop the style of the American short story. He wrote many other stories that are worth a read, but “The Tell Tale Heart” is one of my favorites. Also check out “The Cask of Amontillado”, another tale which I encountered in elementary school.

“The Monkey’s Paw” by W.W. Jacobs

This is my all-time favorite horror story, probably because it doesn’t show, but rather implies, and the implications are chilling. I also read this one (or my teacher read it to the class; I can’t remember which) when I was in elementary school. Teaching horror stories in elementary school seems to have been a trend when I was young.

“The Rats in the Walls,” “Pickman’s Model,” “Cool Air,” etc. by H.P. Lovecraft

I have never been a huge Lovecraft fan because, even though he wrote in the 1920s and 30s, his style was reminiscent of authors writing a century earlier. Also, he struggled with dialogue, so there isn’t much of it in his stories, which can slow the pace. That said, his imagination has generated many stories which have kept generations of readers awake at night. The inside of Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s mind must have been a scary place indeed. “Pickman’s Model” has been dramatized on Cabinet of Curiosities, Guillermo del Toro’s eight-part Night Gallery-like anthology series that started streaming on Netflix on October 25, 2022. This series gives new meaning to the phrase “Netflix and chill.”

“The Graveyard Rats” by Henry Kuttner

This is another one of my favorites. When Jeff Mason and I edited our anthology of original horror stories, October Dreams: a Harvest of Horror, we wanted to publish a classic story, and we chose this one because it had been out of print for years. Now OD has been out of print for years (although you can still pick up used copies on Amazon and other used book outlets), but fortunately this story is online in its entirety. The Graveyard Rats has also been dramatized on Guillermo del Toro’s eight-part Night Gallery-like anthology series that started streaming on Netflix on October 25, 2022.

“Interim”, “The Lake”, “The Emissary” and others by Ray Bradbury

Interim was my first choice for our OD classic horror story. Originally published in Bradbury’s first collection, Dark Carnival, it had been out of print for years. But while we were preparing our anthology, it was reprinted in a collection of stories from Weird Tales magazine, so we went with our second choice, “The Graveyard Rats.” Also, “The Lake,” “The Emissary” and the other stories in Bradbury’s collection The October Country are eerie journeys into the unknown.

“The Girl With The Hungry Eyes” by Fritz Leiber

I saw the Rod Serling’s Night Gallery segment based on this story before I read the original. I highly recommend it, both the story and the Night Gallery adaptation.

“The Children of the Corn”, “Survivor Type” and many others by Stephen King

Stephen King has filled several volumes with many excellent short stories. “Children of the Corn” is from his first collection, Night Shift. “Survivor Type”–about a man, stranded on a deserted island with no food, who eats himself–is from King’s collection, Skeleton Crew.

“Beat Well” by Steve Vernon

This gruesome little gem (only about 175 words), which had appeared in a magazine a short time before Jeff and I published it in October Dreams, can be read on the author’s blog.

“Sun Tea” by Robert E. Rodden II

Published for the first time in OD and out of print for years, the author has recently released this 12,000-word novelette in digital and paperback. Bob Rodden was strongly influenced by Stephen King and Ray Bradbury and those influences show in this story. “Sun Tea” is about a subtle invasion and is strong on ghastly horror with a few surprises.

“What’s Wrong With Being A Nurse?” by David Kubicek

I decided to include this story on this list because of the reactions it has gotten. It was my wife Cheryl’s favorite, and my niece Jennifer told me that it’s a “very disturbing story,” which is what I was going for–it is a horror story, after all. It is about a little girl who wants to be a human sacrifice. You can find it in my collection The Moaning Rocks and Other Stories.

Humorous Horror Stories for Halloween

It’s a very rare thing to find a humorous horror story, but there are a few around. Here are two of my favorites:

“A Case of the Stubborns” by Robert Bloch opens with the ominous line: “The morning after he died, Grandpa came downstairs to breakfast.” For the rest of the story, the grandson tries in various ways to convince Grandpa that he is, in fact, dead and should go upstairs and lie down like any self-respecting corpse. The thing that finally convinces the old gentleman is simple yet unique. Although this is a light-hearted story, the element of horror is not ignored as Grandpa decays throughout the narrative with certain body parts failing off of him at inconvenient times. Bloch was also the author of Psycho, which was the basis for Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1960 film. This story is included in Bloch’s collection Such Stuff as Screams are Made Of .

“Aqua Sancta” by Edward Bryant is a short little gem about a priest and his congregation who have been imprisoned by a vampire for a midnight snack. The story ends with the priest’s unique solution to the problem. It can be found in 100 Vicious Little Vampire Stories.

IMAGE: The Grim Reaper, by Joleene Naylor, cover from the first edition of my collection, The Moaning Rocks and Other Stories.

For more information about David Kubicek’s books click here.

September 24, 2019December 19, 2021

Celebrate Banned Books Week 2019

by David Kubicek

Read a challenged or banned book to celebrate Banned Books Week 2019, which runs from September 22 through September 28.

If you haven’t chosen a banned book–or several–to celebrate, here are some lists of banned and challenged books. There are plenty to choose from.

I have opted not to choose a book to read from the lists this year because I’m in the process of reading Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments, her sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale (published 33 years later!).

Being the decadent reprobate that I am, I’ve read many of the books on the BB lists already, some of them two or three times or more, and although The Testaments was just released last week, I’m sure it soon will be, like its predecessor, challenged and/or banned–if it hasn’t achieved that status already (censors can act swiftly when they detect the scent of something they might not like).

For more information about David Kubicek’s books click here.

August 26, 2019December 19, 2021

Ray Bradbury, the Salvation Army, and I

by David Kubicek

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”–Ray Bradbury

Forgive me for the tardiness of this tribute to visionary writer Ray Bradbury. I had intended to post it on the 99th anniversary of his birth (Thursday, August 22), but my internet chose that day to have a spaz attack.

The Great Experiences

Ray Bradbury said there are three great experiences; the first is birth, the second is life, and the third is death. After a career spanning more than 70 years, he embarked on the third of those adventures on June 5, 2012, at the age of 91. For a while, on the 99th anniversary of his birth, Ray Bradbury was the top trending topic on Twitter, which means that lots and lots of people where tweeting about him–a rare thing for even a living writer.

Although Bradbury is most famous for his science fiction and fantasy, he also wrote horror, mystery/crime and mainstream stories, not to mention poetry, stage plays, teleplays and screenplays.

My Writing Mentor

Bradbury was my first writing mentor. I was an amateur astronomer during my high school years and devoured every book on astronomy at the local library. One day my mother gave me a paperback book she’d picked up in the 25-cent bin at the Salvation Army store. Since it involved space, she thought I might be interested, but she warned me that it was fiction.

That book was The Martian Chronicles, and I could not put it down. By the time I had finished reading it, I was determined to be a writer and write cool stories like Bradbury. My first step was to haunt the bookstores, the libraries and the paperback racks in drugstores until I had found and read every Bradbury book in print.

My Study of Ray Bradbury

A few years later, at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), I wanted to write a thesis about the influences of Bradbury’s early life on his writing. When searching for an advisor, I discovered something that amazed me–not everyone was a Bradbury fan, and the first few professors I approached turned me down.

The professor who finally agreed to supervise my work, Robert Bergstrom, had never read Bradbury before he agreed to take on the project, and our association continued long after the thesis was finished. Bob was a Beta Reader of my own fiction–including my novel In Human Form–for many years after I graduated.

The thesis took longer to write than I’d planned (about two years), and it was twice as long as it needed to be–I was required to write 40 pages but ended up with 80 because I had so much to say. In fact, years later, the editor of CliffsNotes mistook it for a Master’s thesis, so my credit on the CliffsNotes I wrote for Willa Cather’s My Antonia reads: David Kubicek, M.A., University of Nebraska.

Contacting My Mentor

I never met Bradbury, but in the few letters we exchanged, I found that he lived up to his reputation as a generous champion of budding writers . I was relieved–it can be a serious downer if one learns that one’s hero is a d*ck. We first made contact when I sent him a copy of my thesis. In the accompanying letter, I mentioned the dearth of information about him when I was doing my research.

Within a week I got a package from Bradbury. I was a little suspicious at first. I listened to it to see if it was ticking (I had said one or two things in my critique of his work that a writer might not be overjoyed to hear, but in my defense, I had tried to be objective). But it wasn’t a bomb–it was a copy of galleys for a book about Bradbury’s work that was scheduled for publication.

Curiously, my thesis–Ray Bradbury: Space Age Visionary–is listed on Amazon as “out of print–limited availability,” although it was, technically, never in print to begin with since only six photocopies had been distributed. My guess is that Amazon’s spider, while scrambling over the web, crawled up on the Special Collections cyber-pile at UNL’s Love Library, which had one of the six copies in circulation.

Bradbury’s Advice for Living

When I was researching my thesis, I came across this Bradbury quote in Writer’s Digest:

“I absolutely demand of you and everyone I know that they be widely read in every damn field there is; in every religion and every art form and don’t tell me you haven’t got time…! Stuff yourself with serious subjects, with comic strips and motion pictures and radio and music; with symphonies, with rock, with everything!”

Years later I realized that I had unconsciously followed his advice. I developed a great curiosity about many subjects, did lots of reading, listened to lots of different types of music, watched lots of movies, had lots of life experiences, etc. Every writer needs curiosity to properly explore the things he or she writes about, and I highly recommend that everyone–especially aspiring writers–follow Bradbury’s advice.

For more about this amazing man, read The Bradbury Chronicles by Sam Weller, Ray Bradbury’s authorized biographer. I wish this book had been available when I was writing my thesis. Weller’s book is a great read and provides a wealth of information about a writer who has touched our imaginations and our culture. Every Bradbury fan should have this book in his or her collection. NOTE: The hardcover edition was published several years before Bradbury’s death, but Weller has added a final chapter to the Kindle edition covering the author’s last years.

For more information about David Kubicek’s books click here.

July 13, 2019September 25, 2021

The eBook Revolution: The Future of Reading Will Be Digital

by David Kubicek

Will We Still Have Paper Books in the Year 2119?

I believe that an eBook revolution is coming, that the future of reading will be digital. Citizens of that world 100 years from now will know what a paper book is. Convenience and cost for publishers and readers will eventually make digital books rule and physical books obsolete, relics to be found only in antique shops.

But all modern books by then will be digital–that is, if books haven’t morphed into some totally alien form of communication that we can’t possibly envision today [science fiction writers in the 1950s and ’60s completely missed the digital revolution].

This isn’t a popular idea. When I suggested it in a blog post several years ago, I got some comments from readers who proclaimed that physical books would never disappear. Just this week the issue was the subject of a Twitter thread where the initiating writer didn’t believe that digital would ever replace paper.

There is a saying that only two things in life are certain: death and taxes. I would add a third thing: change. As technology evolves, so does society.

Cost and Convenience Drive Change

Here are two examples.

Cost: In the early Twentieth Century no one thought motorcars would ever amount to more than playthings for the wealthy because of their cost. Then Henry Ford adapted the assembly line to auto production, which reduced the cost to a point where the working class could afford automobiles. Convenience: You can go farther and faster in a car than in a stage coach, and you don’t have to change to a fresh car every 20 miles.

Convenience: The general store where the clerk would collect the items on your list evolved into the self-service grocery store which evolved into the big box one-stop store where you can buy groceries, shoes, clothing, linens, household appliances, get your hair styled, do the banking, get an eye exam and even have your car serviced while you shop.

Why I Believe Digital Books Will Replace Paper

Convenience: You can carry around an entire library of digital books in a thin device the size of a trade paperback book.

Convenience: Digital books will not wear out–their bindings won’t crack, and their pages won’t get yellow and brittle with age.

Cost: Publishers won’t have to spend money on paper, printing, warehousing and shipping.

Cost and Convenience: Publishers will be able to keep titles with modest sales in circulation longer because no longer will they take up valuable warehouse space–this will be a boon to both authors and publishers–and they won’t have to compete for shelf space in bookstores (which likely will have gone exclusively to a digital book model).

The eBook Revolution

The Kindle reader was released in 2007, and within 10 years e-books made up 17% of the market, while paperbacks accounted for 34.3% and hardcovers for 35.7%. When you look at the chart showing book sales over the past decade it may seem as if the e-book market is shrinking, but Brady Dale explains why it may only appear that way.

The bottom line is, I believe convenience and cost for publishers and readers will eventually make digital books king and physical books obsolete, and the reading experience 100 years from now will be quite different than it is today.

What do you think?

For more information about David Kubicek’s books click here.