Tales for the Long Rains.
“Words and stories are cheap now. We type them into our handy computers, do some cutting and pasting and run a spell-check, and, pow, a story. They do not have the importance of the stories that were only told in the dark of a winter’s moon; or the stories that were handwritten, word by copperplate word, on a table in the corner of the parlor; or the tales that were passed down orally through a thousand years.
But stories should not be cheap; they should cost the writer something, and the reader something else. Ideally, you read something of mine and it changes you, if only by making you view something in a new way. Of course it has changed me; I had to tell the truth to tell the story - whatever the truth is.
“Myths” is about that. I wrote it for a comic book called Andrew Vachss’s Underground, which collected comic and text short stories set in a near-future world. I loved the world, not least because it allowed me to think of a way for stories to be important again.”
-Kij Johnson; Tales for the Long Rains.
But stories should not be cheap; they should cost the writer something, and the reader something else. Ideally, you read something of mine and it changes you, if only by making you view something in a new way. Of course it has changed me; I had to tell the truth to tell the story - whatever the truth is.
“Myths” is about that. I wrote it for a comic book called Andrew Vachss’s Underground, which collected comic and text short stories set in a near-future world. I loved the world, not least because it allowed me to think of a way for stories to be important again.”
-Kij Johnson; Tales for the Long Rains.