Brain Mints
I have beside me a library book titled 100 Creepy Little Creature Stories, which is precisely what it is. It’s one of a set. Another volume offers witch stories, another ghost stories. I have not checked whether others exist, but I certainly will.
The stories are quite short; each volume is under six hundred pages, and they’re great fun to read. Genre fiction is a natural venue for the short-short story. Unlike the deep examinations of the human condition that go into high literature, genre fiction revolves around the neat idea. What if some guy lived his life in non-consecutive days, waking only once a month for three thousand years? What if we developed effective teleportation devices, but they were only economical at distances under a hundred yards, or on masses smaller than a kilogram? Why do vampires consume only blood?
Ideas like this deserve toying. A precious few prove a rich enough vein to produce material for long discussions, masters’ theses, novels, or dozens (thousands!) of stories, but the vast majority are only worth a few minutes’ contemplation. That’s okay. As long as quickies like this are only presented as quickies, and not milked to death like Dune and its many sequels, they can provide just as much interest and mental exercise as a bigger idea. I still think as often of Niven’s irreverent “Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex” (speculation on problems that Superman's abilities must cause his sex life) as often as I do of Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (an exhaustive treatment of self-reference in mathematics, art, music, Zen, and its ontological and epistemological implications). Both are personal favorites. And because quickies are so short, you can explore three neat ideas while waiting for the bus. Don’t like one? Wait five minutes, and you get another. Breath mints for the brain.