Introduction

When Jonathan asked me to do this, I thought I was going to struggle, to be honest. I’ve never really considered myself a committed reader of short stories. I read a lot of longform fiction and not a lot of the shorter stuff.

Or so I thought. But a quick visit to the bookshelves at home changed that view, because it turns out I have a lot of pretty strong impressions created by short stories I’ve read – visual impressions, mostly, that have stuck inside my lizard brain like Rush song lyrics from when I was 13 years old.

So I’ve picked those stories which have left me with the strongest visual memories, which has meant recalling recent joys like Elizabeth McCracken, Henry James and Elizabeth Taylor, but it’s also rather joyously led me to stuff which I haven’t read for perhaps four decades, trying to find that story with that thing, you know, that thing I used to dream about.

And yes, this has also meant reliving those years when, alongside Rush albums, I was devouring SF, fantasy and horror with all the enthusiasm of a fan unencumbered by what other people thought.

So this, like my memory bank, is very much a mixed bag. It’s sort of in publication order. I tried listing the stories in the order in which I read them, but found the filing system unreliable.