1,764 Stories in One Book?

It seems impossible, or at least improbable, to cram 1,764 stories into one book, and yet B. A. Mullin (otherwise known as BAM) has done it in his 42 Stories Anthology. Technically, it’s 42 stories to the power of 2, which equals the whopping sum total.

It’s one of the most original anthology ideas I’ve seen in quite some time. All the stories are 42 words long, and there are 42 categories of fiction represented. If you flip through to page 256, you’ll find my contribution, winner of the Science Fiction Story of Excellence Award, “Lost Soda Bottle Finds Love Way Out in Space.”

It’s a fun book, so buy it and have some fun. The stories are surprising and inventive mini-fictions you’ll gobble up like candy. If you click on the picture of my story, I think you can read the whole thing in one bite.

For the curious-minded, in Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, 42 is the absurd, anticlimactic answer to the “Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything,” provided by the colossal supercomputer Deep Thought. This is what inspired BAM’s anthology, although it might tell you more about BAM than his book.

For fans of micro, flash, nano, short-shorts, etc., I also have a story in New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction, a book I highly recommend, published in 2018 by W. W. Norton & Company.

As always, feel free to leave me a comment.