This week I read seven short shorts from Ackermanthology!: 65 Astonishing, Re-Discovered Sci-Fi Shorts. This was another book that my husband passed along to me, and I am glad he did.
Ackermanthology! consists of 65 very short stories compiled by Forrest J. Ackerman. It was published in 1997 and has introductory comments by Ackerman and John Landis.
After reading a few of the stories, I started doing some research online and eventually discovered that Jerry House at Jerry's House of Everything had covered this anthology just two weeks ago. How did I miss that post? And he has actually read all the stories in the book.
So I will refer you to Jerry's post that includes a list of all the stories and some more information about each of them.
Based on the seven stories I read, which were in the first section, titled "Aliens", I agree with Jerry's assessment of the stories. None of the stories are extra special or exciting, but I found most of them entertaining and fun, and I will read the rest of the stories over time.
At first I wasn't sure I would enjoy such short stories. Most of the stories in the section I read were 2 to 3 pages. But I did not mind the short length at all.
A couple of the stories in the "Aliens" section were about first contact situations, and two were about cats. The longest story, "Traders in Treasures", by C. P. Mason, was 6 pages long and totally over my head. I wasn't even tempted to reread it to try to understand it.
Another story, "Pressure Cruise", was written by a Russian, Andrei Gorbovskii, and was translated by Norbert F. Novotny in collaboration with Forrest J. Ackerman. That story was about visitors from another planet look for signs of intelligent life on Earth, undersea.
