The Short Story Thread

[VALIS13]

Beginning a series of reviews of the stories in the collection The People Trap by Robert Sheckley.

I am assuming your following posts are the precis' of the stories contained within this tome? They are intriguing summaries, I'll have to check this out.

 

[J-Sun]

Finished Padgett (Kuttner)'s Tomorrow and Tomorrow and The Fairy Chessmen and wrote this semi-coherent review of it. The stories are fairly complicated and hard to talk about sensibly. Long story, short: "Tomorrow and Tomorrow" is a pretty good crazy paranoia story about total peace stasis but is severely flawed and The Fairy Chessmen is a good crazy paranoia story about total war and is less flawed. They're probably pretty expensive to acquire and not worth breaking the bank over but worth getting if you comfortably can.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Star Science Fiction Stories No. 3 edited by Frederik Pohl (1954)

That's the cover on my copy, a 1972 reprint with the title shortened a bit. The Star series was one of the first (maybe the first) series of original SF anthologies.

"It's Such a Beautiful Day" by Isaac Asimov. In a future with easy teleportation, a schoolboy discovers the eccentric joy of going outside. A simple fable which reads almost as if it were written with Bradbury looking over the Good Doctor's shoulder.

"The Strawberry Window" by Ray Bradbury. On the other hand, this is pure Bradbury, without a touch of Asimov. It takes place on the Bradbury version of Mars and deals with the pang of nostalgia for things left behind on Earth.

"The Deep Range" by Arthur C. Clarke. A cowboy guards his cattle from an unusually large and deadly wolf with the help of his loyal dogs. No, wait, that must be the wrong story. This one is about an undersea rancher who guards his whales from an unusually large and deadly shark with the help of his loyal dolphins. Sarcasm aside, it's clear from the last line that the author is quite deliberately writing an Underwater Western, and it's effective as such.

"Alien" by Lester del Rey. A couple of guys are trapped on a tiny island with an alien. It's an OK tale of trust and survival, but it could have been two American GIs and a Japanese soldier in WWII.

"Foster, You're Dead" by Philip K. Dick. A bitter satire on Civil Defense and Big Business set in a future where schoolkids spend their days learning survival techniques and consumers are pressured to buy the latest models of bomb shelters.

"Whatever Happened to Corporal Cuckoo?" by Gerald Kersh (reprint from the author's 1953 collection The Brighton Monster and Other Stories). The only story not original to this anthology depicts the narrator (Kersh himself) encountering an immortal soldier. Not a completely orginal theme, but unusally believable and vivid. (Hint: It would really suck to be an immortal soldier.)

"Dance of the Dead" by Richard Matheson. Written in a jazzy, super-fast style, this is a grotesque horror story set after a limited Third World War about a naive young woman and the terrifying form of entertainment her more decadent friends reveal to her. Later adapted into an episode of Masters of Horror.

"Any More at Home Like You?" by Chad Oliver. A very human alien (he even smokes cigarettes!) crashes on Earth and has to deal with the various governments interested in him. Notable mainly for the alien's unexpected purpose for his visit.

"The Devil on Salvation Bluff" by Jack Vance. The orderly colonists of a wildly chaotic planet try to deal with their environment, and with their fellow colonists who have "gone native" and live a disorderly lifestyle. A sly satire on conformity.

"Guinevere for Everybody" by Jack Williamson. In a future where factories are completely run by computers, one electronic brain decides to manufacture subservient clones of a beauty contest winner, but with a hidden flaw. Another satiric tale, with a bittersweet touch.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction July/August 2012

Cover art by Ed Valigursky, not for any story in the issue.

Besides the usual book reviews, movie review, science column, and the always fascinating "Curiosities" column (a discussion of an obscure work):

"Wearaway and Flambeau" by Matthews Hughes. This is the kind of slapstick spoof of medieval fantasy that turns me off. A thief gets caught by a wizard, gets spells placed on him that have an unexpected side effect, hijinks ensue. It's the type of comic fantasy where the magic has no logic at all, and anything can happen.

"Harmut's World" by Albert E. Cowdrey. And this is the kind of slapstick spoof of modern fantasy that turns me off. Two paranormal investigators (who seem about as capable as Abbott and Costello) get mixed up with a Mafia don who has had a Transylvania castle transported to an American ski resort, but it's haunted by a 17th century magician and his minions. This is the kind of comedy where you have a brand of beer named "Belch."

"The Fullness of Time" by Kate Wilhelm. This novella deals with the mysterious family of a super-rich inventor and their secret method of never failing to know what will make them wealthy. The speculative content shows up pretty quick (and the title is a hint) and overall this is a competently written mystery/suspense story. As far as I can tell, this is the most recent work published by Wilhelm, now in her eighties, in her nearly sixty-year career.

"The Woman Who Fooled Death Five Times: A Hwarhath Folk Tale" by Eleanor Arnason. The title tells all, in this allegorical alien fairy tale of the rather stupid Death (who was formed from the dung of the creator Goddess) and the selfish woman who keeps fooling him.

"A Natural History of Autumn" by Jeffrey Ford. Nice title, and starts off as a character study with lots of local color in modern Japan, but soon turns into a violent horror story with rather implausible revelations about the characters.

"Wizard" by Michaele Jordan. Extremely generic title for an off-beat story of a fourteen-year-old girl who becomes fascinated by a modern sorcerer, and winds up living as his servant in a room without doors.

"Real Faces" by Ken Liu. Takes place in a future where people applying for jobs are interviewed while wearing high-tech masks which conceal their sex, race, and so on. An interesting examination of discrimination and related themes.

"The Afflicted" by Matthew Johnson. In the near future lots of old folks wind up with an illness that turns them into insane killers. It's really just a violent zombie story, of which the world has more than enough.

"Jack Shade in the Forest of Souls" by Rachel Pollack. If that sounds like the start of a series, go to the head of the class. This story interweaves the tragic origin story of the title character, a sort of supernatural troubleshooter, with his current adventure in the land of the dead. There's one element of the story stolen directly from the old TV show Have Gun, Will Travel.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction May/June 2013

Cover art by Kristen Kest for "Wormwood Is Also a Star," although the connection is tenuous, as I'll mention later.

The usual editorial, book reviews, movie reviews, "Curiosities," and one of their competitions. This one asks the readers to describe a science fiction classic as if it were "chick lit."

The fiction:

"Grizzled Veterans of Many and Much" by Robert Reed. Like the title, I found this story interesting but confusing. It's narrated by the grandson of a business tycoon who is one of the first to have gizmos inserted into his brain that give him super-intelligence, a subjective lifetime of many years, but a very short objective lifetime. The story jumps ahead some years to show a world in which the population is greatly decreased because people who can afford it would rather live many subjective years as a super-genius instead of a normal lifetime. We are shown lots of high tech stuff that results from the enormous acceleration in science. There are also some folks who go back to the soil in a low-tech protest against the treatment. The actual plot of the story involves various family members (the narrator has a brief affair with his young step-grandmother) and a confusing kidnapping-that-isn't-really-a-kidnapping which somehow allows lots of poorer folks to get the brain treatment as well. It held my interest, but this is one of those rare stories that seemed much shorter than it should have been.

"By the Light of the Electronic Moon" by Angelica Gorodischer (translated from the Argentinian author's 1979 collection, I assume from Spanish, by Amalia Gladhart.) A fellow listens to another fellow tell him a story about business deals on a planet ruled by a group of one thousand women, and how he had sex with one while she was hooked up to her sexual virtual reality machine. This story has an unusual mood which I can only call "Science Fiction Realism" in parallel with "Magic Realism." The mundane setting of the narration, not at all futuristic, contrasts with the setting of the story-within-the-story, which is set in a universe where hopping from one strange planet to another on business deals is not at all uncommon.

"Changes" by Rand B. Lee. Set after some kind of reality-bending event changed the world into a mishmosh of different times, places, and dimensions, this story shows a member of a Goddess-worshipping religious group setting out on a rather vague mission, encountering a bunch of telepathic, wildly mutated dogs, and using the undescribed thing that inhabits his body in some way to cut himself and use his blood to work wonders. Did I mention that zones of zero gravity show up? Or that the Goddess herself makes an appearance? This is a story where anything can happen and usually does. More of a mess than anything else.

"The Woman in the Moon" by Albert E. Cowdrey. Comedy about a professor who tells his son-in-law how he plagiarized the work which got him his tenured position from a woman who went to the Moon. Despite the setting a couple of centuries or so in the future, there's no speculative content of any importance; the woman might as well have gone off to some obscure corner of the world. This is the kind of silly comedy where the narrator is named "Threefoot" and there's a city in Alaska called "Nyuknyuk."

"Wormwood Is Also a Star" by Andy Stewart. Takes place in Ukraine in 1992, but in a world where the Chernobyl disaster created a sort of force field around a small area where radiation does not enter, and where six orphan children survived and gained telepathic powers. The story deals with the reporter who broke the story to the world, the teenage telepathic orphan with whom she's having an affair (all the others have committed suicide), the woman's husband, trying to arrange to have Ukraine sell off its nuclear weapons, the woman's father, who opposes such a sale, and the mysterious death of the woman's sister several years ago. (The misleading cover art seems to depict something which is only in the woman's mind. She imagines her sister -- whose dead body was found in a pond -- as a rusalka, a sort of ghost/river mermaid, which seems to be what is depicted on the cover.) It's a dark story, full of dirty politics and murder. I don't think the present tense narration adds anything.

"Directions for Crossing Troll Bridge" by Alexandra Duncan. One-page thing which is exactly what the title suggests; five numbered hints on how to get past the troll. It may be an allegory for a woman leaving an abusive man.

"The Bluehole" by Dale Bailey. The adult narrator looks back at the death of his best friend in 1982. It's pretty clear right from the start that the kid is going to killed by a monster living in the local lake. In fact, the monster only appears, very briefly, hardly seen at all, right at the end of the story. This is really a tale of nostalgic grief, as the narrator looks back on the friend who he worshiped. (Despite the fact that this story is less violent, less sexual, and contains less profanity than other stories in the issue, it's the only one which carries this warning: "Parents and teachers might want to vet this story before sharing it with younger readers." I can only assume that this is because there is a very, very slight suggestion of homoerotic attraction on the narrator's part. At one point, at a moment of strong emotional bonding between the two boys, he kisses his friend lightly. Is this really a matter for concern in 2013?)

"The Mood Room" by Paul Di Filippo. The narrator relates an anecdote about the invention of a virtual reality gizmo, and how the two people who came up with it went inside it for sex and what happened to them. Kind of a pointless shaggy dog story, littered with all kinds of futuristic jargon.

"Doing Emily" by Joe Haldeman. In a future where professors of English take on the personalities of great writers through a virtual reality gizmo (third one in the issue, I believe), the narrator decides to "do" Emily Dickinson, with unexpected results. A solid, if minor, story from a dependable author.

"Systems of Romance" by Ted White. A musician who is one of the very few rich and famous people who can afford a life-extention treatment has a love affair with a brilliant young woman who uses her math skills to collaborate on music with him. It's really about her resentment of his long life. I give this one an "eh." It may be worthy of note that the author had not been seen in this magazine since 1969.

"Canticle of the Beasts" by Bruce McAllister. Set in the year 1461, this seems to be a single incident in the long, difficult odyssey of three kids -- one a child Pope, one who can look into the future, and one who can detect both good and evil magic through his skin -- as they journey through Italy on a quest to make use of Holy Water at Lake Como to somehow defeat the "Drinkers of Blood" (the word "vampire" is never used) who have plagued the world since the birth of Christ. This particular tale shows how supernatural aid saves them from the monsters, as well as the very human soldiers who are after the Pope for political reasons. A very Catholic story.

 

[J-Sun]

Interesting review. F&SF is so frustrating for me because it often has a story or two that might be interesting stuck in a magazine that doesn't really sound like it'd suit and, based on the few I've read, that's about right.

Just out of curiosity, do you post these here, as opposed to Reviews, because they're not current or some other reason or you just prefer to put them here?

"The Bluehole" by Dale Bailey. The adult narrator looks back at the death of his best friend in 1982. It's pretty clear right from the start that the kid is going to killed by a monster living in the local lake. In fact, the monster only appears, very briefly, hardly seen at all, right at the end of the story. This is really a tale of nostalgic grief, as the narrator looks back on the friend who he worshiped. (Despite the fact that this story is less violent, less sexual, and contains less profanity than other stories in the issue, it's the only one which carries this warning: "Parents and teachers might want to vet this story before sharing it with younger readers." I can only assume that this is because there is a very, very slight suggestion of homoerotic attraction on the narrator's part. At one point, at a moment of strong emotional bonding between the two boys, he kisses his friend lightly. Is this really a matter for concern in 2013?)

Are any other children killed in the other stories? Usually an actual child death, even if not too graphic, is considered a problem, so that could be it. But it could be what you suggest.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Interesting review. F&SF is so frustrating for me because it often has a story or two that might be interesting stuck in a magazine that doesn't really sound like it'd suit and, based on the few I've read, that's about right.

Every genre magazine has its flavor, to be sure, and will not be to everyone's taste. F&SF will always be closest to my heart, although I am not blind to its faults. (A taste for really lousy comedy, for example.)

Just out of curiosity, do you post these here, as opposed to Reviews, because they're not current or some other reason or you just prefer to put them here?

Maybe a little of each reason, along with the fact that sometimes I am interrupted and I can only review one or two or a few stories instead of an entire book or magazine.

Are any other children killed in the other stories? Usually an actual child death, even if not too graphic, is considered a problem, so that could be it. But it could be what you suggest.

Well, in "Wormwood Is Also a Star" there is the off-stage suicide of a handful of children, and at least one is as young as ten. The three young folks in "Canticle of the Beasts" are threatened by very scary monsters, but are saved, so I suppose that's like a reassuring fairy tale. In "The Bluehole" the kids are teenagers, not little kids -- old enough to sneak off for cigarettes, booze, pot, but young enough that they have to sneak into R-rated movies -- so the warning label on that story still puzzles me. (F&SF isn't a magazine for anybody not yet in her teens, anyway.)

 

[Randy M.]

From IN A LONELY PLACE by Karl Edward Wagner

“In the Pines”: The Randalls rent a cabin in the woods, hoping a vacation away will help them mend their marriage. But there’s a painting of a woman at the cabin and something about it speaks to Gerry’s bitterness, and not about rest and recovery and especially not about reconciliation. I've heard this is a re-imagining of Oliver Onions' "The Beckoning Fair One" and that seems reasonably close.

“Where the Summer Ends”: Grand Avenue is no longer grand, winos wandering all over and kudzu taking over the empty lots and even the lots that aren’t empty; what might hide under vine and leaf? What might kill and flay one of the winos?

"Sticks": Leverett, an artist and connoisseur of the macabre, finds more and more stick constructions in the woods he's wandering until he stumbles over an old, crumbling house around which the lattices are dense and unsettling. The eeriness of the location seeps into his artwork. Years later he goes looking for the area again, and what he finds this time is even more disturbing.

“The Fourth Seal”: Dr. Metzger’s research proceeds with great success. But he is not the first to conduct such studies, not the first to find answers, and those who keep the answers may exact a toll.

"The River of Night's Dreaming": A young woman who calls herself Cassilda escapes her ward and stumbles into an abandoned city. Chased by something she can't identify, she finds shelter and safety with Mrs. Castaigne and her maid, Camilla. Except it's not quite a haven, and Cassilda is not quite helpless. This taps into Robert W. Chambers' The King in Yellow.


These are fine stories, especially that last and "Sticks." Even the one I like least, "In the Pines" is a good story. In his intro. Peter Straub says Wagner is the closest of that generation -- which would include Straub and King -- to the old pulp writers of the 1930s and 1940s, and I think I agree with that. These have been republished in the collection, Where the Summer Ends.


Randy M.

 

[Randy M.]

From IN A LONELY PLACE by Karl Edward Wagner:

".220 Swift": "I have been walking up and down in the earth." (From memory; I don't have the book with me.) Brandon is not who he says he is. Professor Kenlow is not after what he says he is. Together they explore a cave in the North Carolina hills and the apparent mine tunnels that radiate off the cave, very short, very narrow tunnels, apparently dug for the pre- Colonial Spanish soldiers but not by the Spanish soldiers. This taps into Machen, maybe specifically "The Novel of the Black Seal," and "The White People," but often sounds more like Wagner's good friend Manly Wade Wellman.

"Beyond Any Measure": Lisette is an art student in London who shares a flat with Danielle. Since moving to London she has been plagued with a particularly frightening dream, so Danielle introduces her to Dr. Magnus, whose specialty is somewhat obscure, but whose interest in the occult and particularly in past lives becomes apparent soon. Danielle has also sketched Lisette and the charcoal sketch sells to the mysterious Beth Granderson (think that's right). This is probably as original a take on vampirism as I've come across. A terrifically well-paced, well-thought out and well-written novella that alludes slightly to M. R. James and, maybe unless I'm reading in, to "Carmilla" by J. Sheridan Le Fanu.

On the whole, a terrific story collection.


Randy M.

 

[J-Sun]

I posted a review elsewhere but just thought I'd mention my favorite stuff from the 31st Dozois annual.

• "The Other Gun", Neal Asher (y'know: it's Asher - story includes prador)
• "Zero for Conduct", Greg Egan (Afghanian chemist student in Iran)
• "Rock of Ages", Jay Lake (aged superspy against terrorists' asteroid)
• "Pathways", Nancy Kress (uneducated woman's medical fight against a fatal genetic disease)
• "A Map of Mercury", Alastair Reynolds (future art with cyborgs and ex-human robots)
• "One", Nancy Kress (neurological glitch leads to transformation of main character)
• "Gray Wings", Karl Bunker (nanotech'ed human flyers exemplifying haves and havenots)
• "Finders", Melissa Scott (exciting space salvage operation with unusual social structures)
• "The Queen of Night's Aria", Ian McDonald (dumb idea, exuberantly executed, of 50s-style Mars)
• "The Irish Astronaut", Val Nolan (nicely written, albeit basically mainstream, story)
• "The Plague", Ken Liu (short-short nanotech-run-amok story with quite a barb in the tail)

If you get the annual, look for 'em! If you don't, but come across them elsewhere, I highly recommend them.

 

[J-Sun]

Every genre magazine has its flavor, to be sure, and will not be to everyone's taste. F&SF will always be closest to my heart, although I am not blind to its faults. (A taste for really lousy comedy, for example.)

Wow, I'm sorry. I forgot to reply to you but meant to. I was just going to say that I agree - different strokes and I don't think there's a magazine that doesn't have faults even for its fans.

Well, in "Wormwood Is Also a Star" there is the off-stage suicide of a handful of children, and at least one is as young as ten. The three young folks in "Canticle of the Beasts" are threatened by very scary monsters, but are saved, so I suppose that's like a reassuring fairy tale. In "The Bluehole" the kids are teenagers, not little kids -- old enough to sneak off for cigarettes, booze, pot, but young enough that they have to sneak into R-rated movies -- so the warning label on that story still puzzles me. (F&SF isn't a magazine for anybody not yet in her teens, anyway.)

Yeah, I remember now you mentioning the suicides but it had somehow left my head when I first posted. So I guess that can't be it and it is puzzling. I guess that's about all it could be - some weird orientation thing. But it's hard to fault them for being cautious given the low circulation (can't afford to lose much more) and that certain wingnuts will attack them at the drop of a hat like the people basically calling Asimov's a porn mag awhile back.

 

[Patrick Mahon]

I posted a review elsewhere but just thought I'd mention my favorite stuff from the 31st Dozois annual.

• "The Other Gun", Neal Asher (y'know: it's Asher - story includes prador)
• "Zero for Conduct", Greg Egan (Afghanian chemist student in Iran)
• "Rock of Ages", Jay Lake (aged superspy against terrorists' asteroid)
• "Pathways", Nancy Kress (uneducated woman's medical fight against a fatal genetic disease)
• "A Map of Mercury", Alastair Reynolds (future art with cyborgs and ex-human robots)
• "One", Nancy Kress (neurological glitch leads to transformation of main character)
• "Gray Wings", Karl Bunker (nanotech'ed human flyers exemplifying haves and havenots)
• "Finders", Melissa Scott (exciting space salvage operation with unusual social structures)
• "The Queen of Night's Aria", Ian McDonald (dumb idea, exuberantly executed, of 50s-style Mars)
• "The Irish Astronaut", Val Nolan (nicely written, albeit basically mainstream, story)
• "The Plague", Ken Liu (short-short nanotech-run-amok story with quite a barb in the tail)

If you get the annual, look for 'em! If you don't, but come across them elsewhere, I highly recommend them.

Thanks J-Sun - I'll be looking out for this when it comes out in its UK edition later this year. I always enjoy Dozois's annuals, but it sounds like this one will be particularly worth checking out.

 

[cyprus7]

Amazing value. I have this on the kindle now. Thanks!

 

[J-Sun]

Welcome, both. Post back with what you think after you've read it (or while you're reading it) if you want.

 

[Fried Egg]

I read "Teeth" in the "Dark Awakenings" collection by Matt Cardin and wanted to post about it here because it was superb. To my mind a quintessential and perfect "cosmic" horror story that was instantly engaging and economically written. It just does exactly what it needs to do.

It's probably not readily available but I would recommend it to anyone, particularly someone wanting just to sample something from the genre to see what it was all about. Lovecraft fans might also appreciate it for its thematic references and even a couple of direct quotes. Including this:

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of the infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.

Which if you think about it is one of the central tenets of "cosmic" horror and a theme well incorporated into this story as quantum physicists are on the verge of finding the long sought after Theory of everything.

 

[J-Sun]

It's probably not readily available but I would recommend it to anyone

Sounds cool but, unfortunately, it seems you're correct - it's only in that collection and a Cthulhu Mythos anthology.
_____

As far as my latest reading, I read Leigh Brackett's The Halfling and Other Stories (1973). If you're a casual Brackett fan or looking for somewhere to start, this is skippable, as the best story in it is also in the better The Best of Leigh Brackett (oddly, 1977 - you'd think THOS getting first dibs would have produced the best collection). That's "The Enchantress of Venus", which I've read twice now and still really have no idea what the title is about. It's got a variant title of "The City of the Lost Ones" which makes a lot more sense. It's one of the three original Stark stories and the only one set on Venus though it's not so much a Venus as a Not-Mars. A good long complicated novella of a creepy old decayed but powerful and evil family, ancient artifacts, strong silent types (and a couple of handicapped talkative ones), violence, and a sweet girl (who is more daughterly than a love interest, as the "love interest" is played by one of the evil pseudo-Olympians).

If you're more into Brackett, though, this is a collection well worth getting. All but two of the stories are 1949-52 from Startling, Thrilling Wonder, or Planet Stories. "The Citadel of Lost Ages" is an example of the popular subgenre that shares a piece with the Stark story in terms of the primitives or decadents searching for the high-tech redoubt of the Ones Who Came Before. The payoff is a bit thin for the length and the science is kinda crazy (but fun), but it's really cool. The stuff the protagonist goes through and the conflicts he and his love interest and her brother have and the whole idea of the protagonist (which I won't spoil) are well done. The title story (1943 Astonishing) deals with a space carnival in a hardboiled detective style. "The Dancing Girl of Ganymede" involves androids. "The Shadows" is a "re-exploring an alien world can be rough" story with a twist. "The Truants" is an "alien invasion which targets the children" story with a twist. Interesting more for extra-literary reasons are "All the Colors of the Rainbow" (1957 Venture) which uses green folks to explore race relations in a forward-thinking way. On the literary side, it is pretty dark and gripping and gets into the psychology of victim and perp pretty well. And "The Lake of the Gone Forever" deals with inherited legacies, concretized collective unconsciousnesses, and backwards societies oppressing the womenfolk and not taking kindly to spacemen giving them ideas.

 

[Extollager]

Did someone here at Chrons suggest McIntosh's "Hallucination Orbit" a while ago? It seems somebody recommended it. That was a good story.

 

[dask]

I recommended a McIntosh story which took place on Venus a while back but "Hallucination Orbit" doesn't sound like the title. The story I read was one of the best I've read in a long time and consider McIntosh, who I had never read before, an important SF discovery.

 

[Extollager]

I recommended a McIntosh story which took place on Venus a while back but "Hallucination Orbit" doesn't sound like the title. The story I read was one of the best I've read in a long time and consider McIntosh, who I had never read before, an important SF discovery.

No, "Hallucination Orbit" was out around Pluto. What was this Venus story?

 

[dask]

No, "Hallucination Orbit" was out around Pluto. What was this Venus story?

The story was "Venus Mission" from the July 1951 issue of PLANET STORIES.