The Last Mountain Gorilla and other shorts

Short stories are amazing things.  An author gets a story told, a point made, or drives an image home in just a few pages, sometimes only one. Short stories vary in type and style, from those that tell the traditional story of setup, climax, resolution, to those whose sole purpose is to make you feel or think. I remember being disappointed and actually stopping my subscription to Science Fact and Fiction (commonly known as SF&F) when they began to publish what I termed psychological stories.  These stories were based solely on some obscure message about a person's thinking or feeling without a resolution of any sort. I missed the old conflict/resolution plots. However, sometimes, if they are written well and they hit home, 'psychological' stories can be exceptionally good. The best stories are either very strong conflict/resolution or psychological/resolution. We like to have some resolution. Then again, once in a great while you find books that have no solid resolution but are ultimately satisfying. If the image or emotion the story sets out to display hits home, the reader can sigh with satisfaction as well. Today's choice had me sighing all week.


The Last Mountain Gorilla
by Gary Ponzo
File Size: 126 KB
Print Length: 29 pages
Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services

About the book:
There are three short stories in this little gem and well worth the money (less than a cup of coffee!).  The first is about a photographer trying to get a picture of a mountain gorilla during a civil war.  The second is about the

Science fiction or not?: 2030 by Albert Brooks

2030: The Real Story of What Happens to America

by Albert Brooks

St Martin's Press, NY,  May 2011

ISBN 978-0-312-58372-9

Available at Amazon 

It's science fiction, and it deals with the future, but it's not the far future.  For most of us it's our future, and we'll be living through it, and it's a perfect storm of all of our tendencies to put off until tomorrow what we could work on today rising up to bite us.

Albert Brooks (the writer, actor and director) has come up with an all too realistic vision of the America that's sitting out there only 18 years away.  The back cover tells us "its sooner than you think...it isn't what you imagine...it's already started, but you can't feel it yet...it's what happens to America."  And it's chilling.