Miniatures: The Very Short Fiction of John Scalzi

Miniatures: The Very Short Fiction of John Scalzi by John Scalzi

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"Old Man's War" is John Scalzi's masterpiece. I will always admire him for that book. I devoured the rest of that series. To those moved by my praise that "Old Man's War" deserves: Scalzi's writing gradually devolves there after. Slowly at first. His writing was always good enough. He may have lost interest in the series after the first few books?

Today we are reviewing his, "Miniatures: The Very Short Fiction of John Scalzi". I'm not impressed. Not initially.

When doing mindless chores and listening to the conclusion of "The Count of Monte Cristo", I set up this Scalzi's "Miniatures" book should Monte Cristo conclude before my chores were complete.


Newsflash: Multitasking is a myth. I can prove it convincingly, but we're reviewing a book just now. My "multitasking" point is that I didn't do Alexandre Dumas justice listening to his masterpiece while doing chores. I "missed" too much. I now crave re-reading it to savor that Classical Masterpiece as it should be savored.

We arrive at "Miniatures", my post-Monte Cristo audiobook by John Scalzi. The "noise" wasn't making sense. I thought someone might have changed a back room TV to MSNBC. I was hearing nonsense but it seemed true. The "sounding true" shocked me back to reality. You might laugh, but trust you can't multitask, then your attention returns to the "sound" (from the chore) and it is just plain "craziness". I thought it might be about some Portland Oregon insanity.

Re-Focusing my attention, I inferred it was funny. I realized my confusion regarding the insanity we're sold as news these days. I adjusted the audiobook back to the beginning, so I could appreciate "true fiction". The Scalzi story I had heard was about "the weirdest experience you've had with an alien." (pet? I think). You can appreciate that in my I brief distraction I imagined it was a real story regarding Portland OR.

Mr. Scalzi shares some autobiographical info. I appreciate that he once had deadlines with mandatory short word counts. Something I could relate to. Hardest work I've done is to "write short". In the freelance days of the early internet I could write a "How To" article in 275 words-- but publishers said no more than 50 words; 65 words…don't submit again. I challenge folks to take your 300 word bare bones article and cut 250 words.

A shared background of writing short--I appreciated Scalzi's short pieces; from a technical viewpoint and as an excellent writer. The longest story in this collection is 2000 words. All of them were like little Superbowl ad length entertainment nibblets to me.

I know I tossed John under the bus earlier but truth is, "by John Scalzi" always gets my attention. I appreciate good writers. Good writers, treat their readers well. Now if we could train internet writers to be concise and accurate!

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