{"id":2318,"date":"2025-08-12T21:49:04","date_gmt":"2025-08-12T21:49:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2025\/08\/12\/books-in-a-minute-great-short-stories\/"},"modified":"2025-08-12T21:49:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-12T21:49:07","slug":"books-in-a-minute-great-short-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2025\/08\/12\/books-in-a-minute-great-short-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"Books in a Minute: Great short stories"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p><em>As the saying goes, we all have stories to tell. For some authors, these stories happen to be short. Just as the price tag of a product doesn\u2019t signal its quality, neither does an author\u2019s brevity stifle an engaging premise. From scientific fiction and romance to realism and fantasy, The Michigan Daily Arts writers are here to break down some great stories.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u2014 Ben Luu and Campbell Johns, Summer Managing Arts Editors\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cI Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream\u201d by Harlan Ellison<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cJust ask ChatGPT.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-1    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>And the room holds its breath. It\u2019s a polarizing sentence in 2025, a year in which the intrusion of artificial intelligence software remains a daily conversation. From inaccurate search engine blurbs to clingy chatbot connections, the age of AI is here, and it is a controversial, <a href=\"https:\/\/case.edu\/weatherhead\/xlab\/about\/news\/ai-eating-world-why-ubiquitous-intelligence-inevitable-and-how-it-will-happen\">unavoidable<\/a> entity. Even if you don\u2019t use it, you\u2019ve seen it; you\u2019ve seen the sloppy calendars for sale, the hazy <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/tech\/security\/propagandists-keep-trying-use-chatgpt-openai-report-says-rcna174525\">propaganda videos<\/a> of news broadcasts that never happened, the lonely people who become attached to ChatGPT as though <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/ChatGPT\/comments\/134vryg\/i_am_using_chatgpt4_as_a_friend_anyone_else\/\">it were a friend<\/a>. It feels like more than a technological change. It feels like a crisis of conscience.<\/p>\n<p>It is within this climate that Harlan Ellison\u2019s classic dystopia \u201cI Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream\u201d becomes all the more potent. In his blunt, biting writing style, he describes the torture of the last five people who remain on earth after AM, a murderous AI, has massacred the entire human race, resentful for being treated as a disposable tool. \u201cHATE,\u201d he threatens, \u201cLET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I\u2019VE BEGUN TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE.\u201d\u00a0AM rewires them into becoming shells of themselves, keeping them alive for over a century and rendering them incapable of independent thought. The sanest of them, Ted, serves as the story\u2019s narrator who aims to bring down AM once and for all, and what happens in the story will likely make you stare at a wall for a while.<\/p>\n<p>AM\u2019s name is a not-so-subtle nod to Descartes\u2019 equally <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thecollector.com\/what-does-i-think-therefore-i-am-mean\/\">immortal phrase<\/a>, \u201cI think, therefore I am,\u201d transforming him into an embodiment of the question: what constitutes being alive, and where do we draw the line? And, depending on our definition, have we reached a point where AI can be more alive than us? The true horror of AM is not the violent torture it enacts or the apocalypse it has created. Those are too bloodthirsty \u2014 too cinematic \u2014 to be applicable concerns to our current condition. The real horror is how AM\u2019s sheer existence has eradicated the human soul and erased the capacity for decision-making, much like how we are watching the brains of AI users rapidly atrophy in real time. <\/p>\n<p>In Ellison\u2019s world, set in the aftermath of World War III, the governments that were formerly in place prioritized AI over their own people, allowing AM to run unchecked on a vengeful streak. For a short story published in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tcj.com\/the-harlan-ellison-interview\/\">sci-fi magazine<\/a> in 1967, it is bone-chillingly easy to see our current plight within it. Sure, you may look at AM\u2019s hellscape and think that the corporate pastels of Google Gemini could never become such a malevolent force. But AI itself is not the horror \u2014 the horror lies within the human husks that have willingly replaced their own functioning with that of a system that ultimately could not be trusted. Ellison points to a circumstance in which AI has not replaced us, but where we have fundamentally replaced ourselves. His characters did not end up in their plight overnight, but little by little, the world they called home disappeared, and they are completely unrecognizable.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Near the end of the story, Ted muses, \u201cAnd yet, AM has won.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-2    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>I look around at our own world, I shudder and I agree.<\/p>\n<p><em>Daily Arts Writer Isabella Casagranda can be reached at <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigandaily.com\/arts\/books\/books-in-a-minute-great-short-stories\/mailto:ijcasa@umich.edu\"><em>ijcasa@umich.edu<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cChef\u2019s House\u201d by Raymond Carver<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A friend once told me people age like trees. When we age, she said, our bark may get thicker, our trunks wider and our branches longer, but we will never grow where our roots aren\u2019t. Another friend told me we are the authors of a book that is in a constant state of being rewritten, revised and reworded. These two friends responded to the age-old question, \u201cDo people really change?\u201d and the contrast between their answers might as well capture the dynamic of Wes and Edna in Raymond Carver\u2019s \u201cChef\u2019s House.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>After two years of no contact, Edna receives a call from her recovering alcoholic husband, Wes, inviting her to live with him at Chef\u2019s house (located by the ocean side). She packs her things, and they spend a wonderful summer together. Then, Chef tells the couple that they have to leave the house, which devastates Wes. Edna asks if they can restart again in a different house, and Wes, jaded, quietly rejects the idea.\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-3    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>Written from Edna\u2019s perspective, the story\u2019s premise is simple, yet Carver\u2019s brutalistic, cutthroat style elevates the two pages of ostensible mundanity into a grand tapestry of hope (or rather, lost hope). Hitchcock once <a href=\"https:\/\/the.hitchcock.zone\/wiki\/Monitor_(BBC,_05\/Jul\/1964)\">said<\/a>, \u201cI believe in putting the horror in the minds of the audience, and not necessarily on the screen.\u201d Instead of horror, though, Carver\u2019s cold writing, with its passing mentions to the past, (oxymoronically) puts drama in our minds: \u201cI listened to him talk. He didn\u2019t slur his words. I said, I\u2019ll think about it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Carver packs each paragraph with these simple sentences. Line by line, \u201cChef\u2019s House\u201d has an almost oppressive dryness, yet altogether the story expands a snapshot of a peaceful summer into an unwritten yet understood history of both Wes and Edna\u2019s lives.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><em>Summer Managing Arts Editor Ben Luu can be reached at <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigandaily.com\/arts\/books\/books-in-a-minute-great-short-stories\/mailto:benllv@umich.edu\"><em>benllv@umich.edu<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cCatskin\u201d by Kelly Link<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow many witches are there in the world? Have you ever seen one? Would you know a witch if you saw one? And what would you do if you saw one? For that matter, do you know a cat when you see one? Are you sure?\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-4    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>In trying to come up with a way to describe Kelly Link\u2019s \u201cCatskin,\u201d I realized that nothing quite sums it up as well as this quote, taken from the opening pages of the story. Spoken to the reader with the narrator\u2019s urgent, omnipresent voice, it brings the central question (or questions, as it were) of Link\u2019s tale to the forefront: What is it that makes a person what they truly are, and how do we spot it once we know it\u2019s there?<\/p>\n<p>If that question, or its framing, doesn\u2019t make sense, don\u2019t worry: Very little about \u201cCatskin\u201d does. It\u2019s a story about many things \u2014 witches, cats, children, mothers, time, revenge, grief, transformation, growing up and, yes, skin \u2014 few of which look, let alone behave, as we expect them to. And yet, far from being frustrating, that is the absolute joy of this story.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The parts of \u201cCatskin\u201d that do make sense (at least in theory) are also the things that, when brought together, most closely resemble a plot. Taken from her collection \u201cMagic For Beginners\u201d (which reimagines many of our culture\u2019s most familiar monster stories), \u201cCatskin\u201d is Link\u2019s spin on the classic witch\u2019s tale \u2014 albeit a much weirder, darker version of such a thing. In theory, the \u201cplot\u201d is simple: When a witch is poisoned by her rival, she divides her estate among her three surviving children, leaving her youngest \u2014 Small \u2014 with her revenge, housed, naturally, in the skin of a cat.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Yet, if it wasn\u2019t clear enough from this blurb already, nothing in this tale is ever simple. Over the course of the story, Small and The Witch\u2019s Revenge (as she calls herself) travel to avenge the witch\u2019s death, encountering witches, children, cats and all the other things that hide inside them along the way. It\u2019s a story that really can\u2019t be explained, though I promise I\u2019ve tried my best here \u2014 you\u2019ll simply have to read it to see what I mean.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><em>Daily Arts Writer Camille Nagy can be reached at <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigandaily.com\/arts\/books\/books-in-a-minute-great-short-stories\/mailto:camnagy@umich.edu\"><em>camnagy@umich.edu<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-5    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p><strong>\u201cWhat Got Into Us\u201d by Jacob Guajardo\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>No Queer kid forgets their first love. Sure, it\u2019s a universal experience: you\u2019re in elementary or early middle school, you catch someone\u2019s eye just right and find excuses to brush their hand. But for Queer kids, this first always comes with a catch, the crumbling of what you\u2019d thought your life would hold. That eye catch is either hopelessly unrequited or comes with a mutual suffering \u2014 two kids discovering through each other how their lives will differ.<\/p>\n<p>This crushing phenomenon is explored in Jacob Guajardo\u2019s short story \u201cWhat Got Into Us,\u201d about a summer that two young boys, Delmar and Rio, share while slowly letting themselves fall in love. I read this story for a class last year, and while it\u2019s really hard to find anywhere to read it online, those boys still stick with me. I think of them trying on dresses, the way they think of themselves as monstrous, their stolen and completely secret kisses.<\/p>\n<p>The tragedy of the story is not only in the way the boys talk about each other, the way they battle shame, but also in how one of the boys falls into drug addiction rather than ever facing the truth of his sexuality. He\u2019s forever sunk by his teenage love, while the other boy finds the strength to face his identity and marry a different man.<\/p>\n<p>Crushing and beautifully written, \u201cWhat Got Into Us\u201d details the experience that so many kids, including those in the story, are afraid to.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-6    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p><em>Summer Managing Arts Editor Campbell Johns can be reached at <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigandaily.com\/arts\/books\/books-in-a-minute-great-short-stories\/mailto:caajohns@umich.edu\"><em>caajohns@umich.edu<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p><h3 class=\"jp-relatedposts-headline\"><em>Related articles<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As the saying goes, we all have stories to tell. For some authors, these stories happen to be short. Just as the price tag of a product doesn\u2019t signal its quality, neither does an author\u2019s brevity stifle an engaging premise. From scientific fiction and romance to realism and fantasy, The Michigan Daily Arts writers are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2319,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[2543,809,2544,594,612],"class_list":{"0":"post-2318","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-great","10":"tag-minute","11":"tag-short","12":"tag-stories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2318"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2320,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2318\/revisions\/2320"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}