Authors Electric

Eric M. Knight and friend on MGM lot, 1942 They say now, that we humans coevolved with dogs over the past 30,000 or so years, rather than our prehistoric ancestors simply domesticating hapless wolves like sheep. Each changed the other. Though much remains vague, socioanthropologists theorize that certain Asian and European wolves chose us as handy sources of scraps. This suggests that humans were as messy then as they are now. Wolves who danced with humans morphed towards friendlier dogs in a symbiotic relationship that made humans more efficient apex hunters, which led to heartier nutrition supporting expanded tribal encampments. These, in turn, led to settlement, cultivation, agriculture and eventually to civilization in which dogs perform so many essential jobs beyond their central roles as family members and all around pals. My childhood experiences with Canis Lupus Familiaris leads me to speculate that a parallel process may apply in the uneven, ever unfolding evo...

I love short stories - bite-size confections, entire books distilled down into tiny, perfectly formed delicious delights ... looking along my shelves I suppose I shouldn't be so surprised to see just how many collections of short stories I have acquired over the years. Plenty of them are anthologies with multiple authors. I first came across this sort of collection while at school, where excerpts and short stories were gathered into text books which were read aloud during a lesson and then discussed. I couldn't bear listening to the stumbling, monotone reading of my classmates so used to stuff my fingers in my ears and race through several more stories while the current one was being murdered. They were good stories too, and I took note of the writers, and looked them up afterwards in the library - and in this way I was introduced to Jack London, Ray Bradbury, Saki and many other authors whose work I love, but might never otherwise have stumbled acros...