On "Warnings Accompanying Your Inflatable Universe" by Justin Kahn (580 words) ***

I have tried to keep the online references merely to short stories--that is, stories in a traditional form insofar as they have a beginning, middle, and end, a climax, a conflict. I don't know if this qualifies as a story using those sort of priciples--it reads more like some of the humor one might find on Yankee Pot Roast or McSweeney's--but the idea here is so compelling that I bring it to the blog anyway. Café Irreal often seems to be focused more on ideas anyway--the pieces Irreal published aim to make you think, and they often make me do just that. Read the piece here at Café Irreal.

On "The Ledger Angel" by Bruce Holland Rogers (434 words) ***

Some stories simply explore really interesting ideas. Many of Jorge Luis Borges's stories are like this. We learn, for example, that there is a library full of every book that could ever be written but that the problem is that because it contains every combinations of symbols that could ever be, most of it is nonsense. What are we to make of such a library? Could it ever be of much use? How is the library our understanding of our own world? Rogers's "The Ledger Angel" works along the same principle. Should there be such a creature, we have little hope. This is karma times multitudes. Read the story here at Café Irreal. Then pass it on and on and on and on.

On "Blue Morning Dark" by Brock Adams (1255 words) ****

A great way to write something interesting, but also a very difficult way in terms of making the piece ultimately work, is to turn some saying into something literal. I say one is bound to create something interesting because such stories make us rethink our use of the term, how it arose, what we do with it. But such a story is difficult because so often it fails to become anything more than a curiosity. The characters become submerged to the idea, and the all-important ending simply drops off--"Yo, I'm done with this, where to now? Guess I'll go eat me some spaghetti." Adams's story isn't one to drop off. It gets more interesting as the literal becomes even more literal, and even more unexpected. And then, just when you think it might end up trying to reach too far, it pulls back with a zinger. Read the story here at Café Irreal.