A magazine use to be your passport to a variety of wondrous worlds. Magazines like "Weird Tales" "Black Mask" and "Amazing Stories" were anthologies that featured stories of adventure, horror, science fiction, crime and fantasy. Intricately plotted short fiction use to be a well respected and fun form of literature. Michael Chabon is looking to revitalize the plotted short story with the anthology McSweeny's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales.

Chabon served as editor and contributor to Thrilling Tales, which is a collection of genre stories. Chabon assembled an all-star team of 19 authors to submit eerie and wondrous tales.

Some authors like Chabon, Nick Hornby and Dave Eggers are not writers of genre fiction and wanted to give it a try., while other contributors to Thrilling Tales were well known genre authors like Stephen King, Harlan Elliso, and Neil Gaiman

Pulp magazines also had illustrations accompanying each short story. The illustrations were usually of an important or action packed scene from the story.

Renowned comic book artist Howard Chaykin provides some dynamic and fun artwork for Thrilling Tales. Chaykin's artwork perfectly captures the tone of each story and makes you want to jump into each tale. His coolest piece is of a highway patrolman recoiling in horror from an approaching horde of zombie cavalrymen.

The stories in Thrilling Tales vary in quality from entertaining to amazing. Michael Chabon's story "The Martian Agent: A Planetary Romance" is the best story from the non-genre authors. "The Martian Agent" is set in alternate world where in the year 1876 the British Empire still controls American soil. Battles are fought with fantastic gadgets and intrigue lurks everywhere.

Nick Hornby's story "Otherwise Pandemonium" is an entertaining story about a 15-year-old who has a VCR that allows him to fast forward network TV into the future and see the end of the world.

Dave Eggers's story "Up the Mountain Coming Down Slowly" is a weird and eerie tale about a group of people trying to conquer a mountainThe genre authors of Thrilling Tales have some of the best pieces in the book. "Closing Time" by Neil Gaiman is a brief but creepy ghost story. Michael Crichton's "Blood Doesn't Come Out" is a cool and haunting noir tale about a private detective's vengeance. Detroit native,Elmore Leonard wrote a fun crime story with an interesting title, "How Carlos Webster Changed His Name to Carl and Became a Famous Oklahoma Lawman."

Stephen King's story "The Tale of Gray Dick" will be of particular interest to his fans. It features a new adventure of Roland, the Gunslinger, the hero of King's Dark Tower series. It's a fun story that fuses the western and fantasy genres into an interesting combination.

McSweeny's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales is a collection of diverse, imaginative and wondrous short stories. It's fun to see non-genre authors do something different, and genre authors show off some of their best work. Another volume of Thrilling Tales is in the works. I eagerly await the next volume of Thrilling Tales and my chance to visit new exotic worlds of danger, daring, and devious deeds.

	my artist - my title

Unknown - 16 years, 4 months, 9 days ago

Two Blind Pilots

Two blind pilots both are wearing dark glasses, one is using a guide dog, and the other is tapping his way along the aisle with a cane.

Nervous laughter spreads through the cabin, but the men enter the cockpit, the door closes, and the engines start up. The passengers begin glancing nervously around, searching for some sign that this is just a little practical joke. None is forthcoming.

The plane moves faster and faster down the runway and the people sitting in the window seats realize they're headed straight for the water at the edge of the airport. As it begins to look as though the plane will plough in to the water, panicked screams fill the cabin. At that moment, the plane lifts smoothly into the air. The passengers relax and laugh a little sheepishly, and soon all retreat into t heir magazines, secure in the knowledge that the pl ane is in good hands.

In the cockpit, one of the blind pilots turns to the other and says,"ya know, Bob, one of these days, they're gonna scream too late and we're all gonna die."
Unknown - 16 years, 4 months, 11 days ago

I told the eighty-something-year-old man to "Have a nice day", and he told me to "Have a nice life."

Unknown - 16 years, 4 months, 11 days ago