Robert Silverberg’s Son of Man was just not doing it for me. It is a good read, what I read so far, but my mood has changed since I started reading it and I am ready for something else. I am almost ready to switch back to some non-ficiton and I’ve got a good science book on deck for that. But I needed a real buzz, something with a kick that I know I’d enjoy. So I turned, as always in these situations, to Isaac Asimov.
I have read most of Asimov’s fiction and even more of his nonfiction, but by no means everything. After all, the man wrote 500+ books and I have only about 200 of them. While I have read most of his short story collections, there are still a few that I have not read, so I decided to tackle one of those: The Winds of Change and Other Stories. Years ago when I used to get into reading ruts, I’d pick up either Foundation or one of Asimov’s collections of F&SF science essays and it would always do the trick for me. Here’s hoping that it will work for me now, too.
There is another reason I’m doing this. Asimov was very good at writing short stories that really were short: under 5,000 words. Lately, the stories I have been writing have been longer and I am trying to write a few shorter ones. Too often my sense of scope and detail get the best of me and the story gets away from me so in reading this collection, I am also trying to see how it is one goes about building a truly “short” story.
It should be a relatively quick read. I’ll get started as soon as I take a shower.
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