The Listeners, when I read it in the magazine a long time ago, was just a story, which is the first part of this whole novel-length thing. He should have left it alone, but no, he had to go and make a novel out of a good story. Then Carl Sagan came along, took the thesis and wrote a better novel (Contact), but not as good a story as "Robert MacDonald," the first part of this novel. James Gunn was still alive in 2008; maybe he still is. But Carl isn't, at least not here.
Arecibo is in Puerto Rico, not Peru. I get those P countries mixed up.
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I brought in some flowers that the wind was whipping around. The rain was a blessing, although the storms had tragic consequences elsewhere.
2 comments:
Some stories run out of wonder if they're handled too much. And there aren't many short stories that scale up to novels very well!
Jed
Turns out that Gunn wrote a short story that was turned into a TV Series called "The Immortal." It was only on for 1 season, back in 1970, but I remember it.
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