Bertil Falk writes about...

Bewildering Adventures

Hi Don,

I have spent a few days reading stories in Bewildering Stories (and I will read all of them when time permits), and I must say that I am awfully impressed. I may be wrong, but as far as I can understand, this project of yours is the most ambitious literary effort (irrespective of genre: mainstream, mystery, horror or whatever) that exists for the time being.

The structure of the site is very, very good. And your handling of my contributions, especially “Another Way Of Doing It,” shows that your personal capacity when it comes to editing is excellent.

Inspired by reading BwS, I made a deep-sea dive into the depths of my computer and came up with an English version of a novella. It was serialized 1969-1970 in Swedish in Jules Verne Magasinet. In 1999 it was reprinted together with three of my short stories in a collection published by Paradishuset (The Paradise House), a publisher who was situated in Lund, a university town.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to heap stories upon you, but here it is, “Requiem for an Android” (Själamässa för en konstgjord; literally: ‘Soul mass for an artificial being’. Attached also find the cover of the 1999 collection.

Glad you found my “Shakespearean story” a “delightful time-romp.”

Bertil

Copyright © 2007 by Bertil Falk

Thank you very much for the kind words, Bertil; good words go a long way. And thank you, too, for “Requiem for an Android.” I’m sure our readers and editors will take special interest in it in view of Bill Bowler’s series of android stories.

Your Shakespearean time-romp, as I like to call it, would surely have placed high in our Contest 2. I’m very fond of time-travel and alternate-history stories, and I think “What’s Done is Done” is a very funny satire on the time-travel subgenre itself. When it arrives, we will have been being waiting (a time-travel verb tense) with great anticipation!

Don