I have my days about "Human Subjects" by Ray Vukcevich. It's supposed to be a bout a man who is the test animal for aliens. See every alien has a test human and every human has an alien watching over him or her. Except that's not what the story is really about and what the story is really about is rather mundane and boring. It's "Will he still love me tomorrow nonsense" at its heart. Well-written nonsense but still nonsense.

"Monster" by Gene Wolfe can count in as a grower. It didn't hit me all at once but it sort of grew and grew in the back of me head. It's got a nice nestled little place back here with all my other haunting and twisted memories of stories. Guy has a Siamese head attached to him. Guy falls in love and Siamese is a pain. Go figure. What happens next enters spoiler country so forgive me for the lack of detail. Another strong piece.

Then there's the Harlan Ellison piece. Two hundred words. It's a game Amazing Stories wants to play with some of the authors. With a picture give out a story in one thousand words. Ellison naturally bucked it and gave two one hundred word segments with Gaiman supporting him writing eight hundred. It's not worth the effort. The blurb next to Ellison's name mentions his lawsuit against Internet pirates. He won you know. Whoopity doo da. Temptation begged me to type out his two hundred do nothing story. Begged me I tell you begged me because I swear to Hell and the gods that it wasn't worth paying for. Neil Gaiman does an introduction for the piece jesting that it's a long lost Harlan Ellison classic. Started out at 2,000,000 words but Harley just kept trimmin' and a trimmin' until eventually we got down to two hundred. Gaiman's introduction is more entertaining then the piece itself. I was going to write "actually" after is up there but why dilute the truth so? Of course it's more entertaining then the two hundred worded whatever they hell it is that Ellison typed in. The hundred-word story after a picture routine is supposed to be an ongoing feature with the new version of Amazing Stories and I can only hope that there is a series of protest letters deriding this aberration of art.