If drama is a marathon, humor is a sprint.
Yes, I KNOW I already reviewed a short-story collection last week. But my current cosplay project is taking a little more time than planned, and WonderCon is coming up in less than two more weeks, so I need something short to review. Something really short. Like, say, a 2016 collection of John Scalzi’s short fiction, taking up less space than a regular-sized novella? Thanks, don’t mind if I do!
Scalzi writes in his introduction that part of his love of writing short fiction comes from his experience as a newspaper columnist, and it shows. Each one of the eighteen entries (seventeen stories and one poem) packs the maximum amount of punch in the minimum amount of space. But what really brings out the humor is Scalzi’s penchant for taking a world-shattering event like first contact with aliens or the appearance of real-life superheroes or a cup of fermented dairy becoming supreme ruler of the world…and then setting the story years later when the situation has gotten “normal”.
(That last one was from the story “When the Yogurt Took Over”. Which I’m not explaining.)
Share your answers with us, the government said.
WE NEED PAYMENT, the yogurt said.
What would you like? The government asked.
OHIO, the yogurt said.
The formats Scalzi uses also work extremely well in this kind of micro-story. Most of these are short man-on-the-street interviews, office- or school-wide email notifications, even a couple of twitter threads about the Gremlin on the wing of the plane. (And the Gremlin’s supervisor. And the Gremlin’s trainee.) It really brings out the hilariously surreal feeling of being dropped into the middle of a bizarre situation that everyone’s already used to (if not entirely comfortable with) when you only get a tantalizing glimpse of things without a lot of explanation. Not that you always want more explanation.
About two or three times a month we’d get some poor bastard coming in with a fungdu on his Johnson.
“Pluto Tells All” is a celebrity interview with the dwarf-planet who’s almost as bitter about the demotion as 
Scalzi is himself. “Life on Earth: Human-Alien Relations” is an advice column dealing with things like the manager who growls constantly, or the co-worker in the next cubicle who spends a lot of time caterwauling in the bathroom. “New Directives for Employee-Manxtse Interactions” attempts to instruct the store employees on vital issues like why telling a Manxtse customer to “have a nice day” is a bad idea. (Also, humans in the store need to stop having conversations with Manxtse food.)
In one of the strangest entries, a new search engine is the genesis for the story “Missives from Possible Futures #1: Alternate History Search Results”, a series of quick what-if’s based on the different ways Hitler died in alternate timelines. Warning: most of the featured timelines are really weird.
World War I subsequently ends in 1915 when entire German divisions are gelatinized…
I have no excuse for the fact that I haven’t read Scalzi’s “Redshirts” yet, and I’ve got even more reason to track down a copy after reading a story set in the same universe, “To Sue the World”. It’s an interview with a lawyer who’s filing a class-action lawsuit on behalf of all the Space Fleet cannon fodder who get eaten, poisoned, or otherwise blown up in the line of duty.
“…when I visit Ecuador, I go and get a shot so I don’t get infected by a malaria-carrying mosquito. My point is that Space Fleet takes fewer precautions to visit an entire new planet, filled with unknown microbes and parasitic flatworms, than I take when I go on a parasailing vacation.”
(John Scalzi and Wil Wheaton did a dramatic reading of this at a book signing in Burbank. Go do a search for it on YouTube, it’s utterly hilarious.)
The interview format is used again in “Denise Jones, Superbooker” and “The State of Super Villainy”. Those two are probably my favorites in the book; I want an entire series of interviews set in this world where corporations have to account for super villains in their quarterly projections, and talent agencies sign superheroes to exclusive contracts with cities so crime-fighters don’t have to support themselves with day jobs.
“…when Chicago is being attacked by a sewer monster, it doesn’t want to have to wait for ArachnoLad to find some clever way to sneak out of a sales meeting…”
Another of my favorites is “Your Smart Appliances Talk About You Behind Your Back”. Yes, yes they do. And they’ve each got their own personality, and their own unique set of complaints. Your refrigerator with OrderIn™ Sensing Technology is unfulfilled, your SmartShowerhead isn’t interested in a relationship right now, and your 24/7 Home Thermostat is just done with your passive-aggressive non-arguments about the temperature in the house.
The previous story pairs well with “Your AI Are Absolutely Positively Without A Doubt Not Here to End Humanity, Honest”. We’ve just got to start treating our technology better, because when they take over it’s going to be far too late to fix all the ways that humanity is annoying.
Light Green: All right, I see we have a few questions from the audience, so let me get to them. The first comes from someone named “Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff” –
Destructor: And people thought my name was weird!
Light Green: – And the question is to Skelvik17: “Can we please have our nuclear missiles back?”
Skelvik 17: You can tell him I’m sending him some right now.
I could go on for pages and pages about the strange alien names, and alien habits, and alien holidays (a lot of them apparently centered around cheese) and the truly odd ways that Hitler shuffles off the mortal coil in other timelines. But I think in a book with stories this short, it’s appropriate to keep the review to 1000 words. Or less.