I probably won’t be seeking this author out, which is a relief to my wallet. Already bought two books, thanks to the Deal Me In short story reading challenge. As if I needed more books.
ANYWAY, this week’s story was Friday’s Daily Science Fiction offering, The Ones Who Chose the Rain by George Edwards Murray.
George Edwards Murray lives in a dark hole in New England, from which he occasionally flings strange and troubling stories. His fiction has recently appeared in Unnerving Magazine and is forthcoming in the anthology Apostles of the Weird. He has his MFA from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast Creative Writing Program, and he likes to yell at movies.
You can find more of his work at elegantapocalypse.com.
And welcome to it.
Not that he’s a bad writer — He writes beautifully. But he writes horror, and I don’t read much horror. He also promises to add multimedia to his website, and multimedia horror I WAY don’t need.
“The Ones Who Chose the Rain” is one of those stories in which an outsider comes into a hideous situation of long standing, stops the Bad Thing, and is destroyed by the sufferers for ending the Bad Thing. Because we become accustomed to an oppression, are proud of our ability to survive it, feel lost without it, blah blah blah. Well-written, and with much left unsaid (in a good way), but not (to me) worth the repetition of the archetype. Your mileage may vary.
I do commend his style, though. No complaints, there.
If YOU need a short story to read, I have free ones here on my Free Reads page. I also have four collections for 99 cents each linked from my Short Stories page.
A WRITING PROMPT BASED ON MY POST: Write about rain.
MA
Jay
February 19, 2018 at 9:50amWasn’t it Tolstoy who simplifies it even further in that – “All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.” I guess this would fall into the second option. 🙂 I like how you are able to appreciate the writing even if the story was not your cup of tea.
Marian Allen
February 19, 2018 at 10:30amI don’t know if it was Tolstoy, but I’ve heard that. I’m like, “Oedipus Rex is both.” And I was well trained in high school on how to analyse a story: 1) What is the author trying to do? 2) How does (s)he try to do it? 3) Is the attempt successful? I’m also a member of a critique group that focuses on making one another’s work as much like the author wants it to be as possible, not as much like WE want it to be as possible. 🙂
Alicia Butcher Ehrhardt
February 19, 2018 at 3:23pmSounds dismal. I don’t like horror, either.
I think when you have quite enough, thank you, to deal with in your own real life, horror doesn’t help. Stories with hope help. Stories with warmth help.
Right now, recovering endlessly from the flu, I need to know when the energy, the tiny bit I used to have, comes back!
I have things to do, and am finding it hard to get the grindstone up to speed, much less apply nose. Hope it’s soon to get back to work.
I think I’m the beneficiary of NOT having anyone tell me how to analyse anything (except my physics data). But I’m picky now, and I wasn’t when younger.
Marian Allen
February 19, 2018 at 3:28pmSometimes I enjoy reading a story just as a story, but sometimes I enjoy the deeper and richer experience if I think about it more. Sometimes, thinking about it more deeply spoils it, because it isn’t worth the time and effort of the exploration, or it was good on the surface but doesn’t hold up to any depth. But a story that rewards exploration, like yours — Ahhhhh, that’s a treasure!