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Mark and Gerry's Sci-Fi Reviews continue
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Sex and Violence
short stories by Aaron Blaylock Hendren
Review by Mark
Ray Bradbury, the famous science fiction writer, wrote that he enjoyed writing short stories much more than novels. Short stories would just happen; suddenly and feverishly. Often he would write his short stories from beginning to end in less than a day. Novel writing was much more laborious - publishers would bribe Bradbury by publishing his short stories in order to get him to write his novels. Sex and Violence is Aaron Hendren's first compendium of short stories following his debut novel Something in the Water. In his forward, Hendren explains that his choice of title is merely commercial, similar to a rock band naming itself
'Bare Naked Ladies'. But Hendren's stories are sudden and feverish like Bradbury describes, and perhaps the title is appropriate for a less prosaic purpose than Hendren suggests.
As a group the eleven short stories that make up Sex and Violence are a very good effort ranging mostly from science fiction to horror. Each story could only be a short since they have very limited scope with a central idea more than a central character. Since they are short and intense, each reader will see different elements in the collection to focus on. Hendren provides in an introduction a short preamble on each story and a personal perspective. My favorites were not entirely matching the author's, but then author's rarely write reviews since their view tends to be more personal and less broad. The stories I found most memorable were "The Little Doll" a mating between Chucky and Misery, "The Spider Experiment" - a real creep fest- definitely has a certain Hannibal Lector violence infecting it, "Hell, New Mexico", melds a "Lost Boys" world with a Neil Stephenson fetish for pizza deliverymen and "Grandpa's Coronet" that has a "Back to the Future" element in it but also has some rather shady physics.
You will have to excuse my comparison of Hendren's short stories to movies, but there are only so many human situations, and the comparisons merely give you an hint of what the stories taste like. These stories definitely don't taste like chicken - each one is original and a product of a fertile sci-fi imagination.
Hendren has an easy going, smart- alecky writing style that allows you to quickly get into the story without any difficult wading that some authors inflict on readers. Sex and Violence is new and probably not available in your local public library. It is available from Writer Club Press or outlets like Amazon.com.
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