THE LAST QUESTION: ARE WE THERE YET?

Paul Lehr. 'Nuff said.

Gonna repost this one cuz it leads with one of my personal all-time favoritest short stories (ergo the entire list must be just fine, oder?) and cuz it puts one of Paul Lehr's glorious hallucinatory extravaganzas front and center.

But just what might that short story be you ask? Oh, just Isaac Asimov's shiveringly delightful The Last Question, which manages to bring a parable-like, anecdotal poignancy to a (literally) out-of-time cosmic scale. I've gone said it before, gone say it again: Non coerceri maximo, contineri minimo, divinum est.

Anyway, the only other story out of the list that I've read is Escape from Spiderhead by the posterchild of every literate American yuppie's pretentious post-DFW mind George Saunders and, while it may not be entirely to my taste, I'll grant that it isn't too shabby in terms of writing.

Since I've been trying to streamline my interests lately -- and, yes, I've resorted to quickie iPhone quizes for some language maintenance -- figure it's as good a time as any to brush up on some shorts stories. And if they're mind-bending as all-get-out, so much the better.