My first review!

HorrorScope did a review of Issue 20 of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine (ASIM), the issue containing Beans and Marbles. It may ‘just’ be an Australian review weblog, but it’s still the first time any reviewer mentions one of my stories by name, not to mention my own name, and favorably at that.

“The rest of the stories are strange inclusions – in that they are void of the humour that Andromeda promotes. […] they offer some of the richest and most fulfilling storytelling in the issue. These stories include Dirk Flinthart’s Monochrome for Two, Lydia Fazio Theys’ Elena’s Seclusion and Floris M. Kleijne’s Beans and Marbles.

[…]

Beans and Marbles rounds out the collection and tells the story of how far one person will go to get their morning coffee. One of the few true sci-fi tales in the collection it is also the only story set in space. The story’s strength lies in its building sense of paranoia and tension. The story is slow off the mark, mirroring the dull routines of its protagonists but kicks into gear about half way through. The ending is truly chilling.”

The only downside to this review is that I am now utterly confused about Beans‘s funniness. In the 2004 WotF workshop, Tim Powers provided the seed for the story: a handful of coffee beans. It started out as a quirky idea about an astronaut brewing espresso in a very unlikely location. In the 24 hours I had to write it, it grew into what I thought was a creepy paranoid thriller. But when my fellow participants read it, they thought it was funny, and intentionally so. That made me decide to send it to ASIM; they specialize in funny SF, and editor Stu bought it on the strength of its quirkiness. And now this reviewer is back to ‘paranoid thriller’!

So just because I can, I’m adding a poll to this post. Is Beans and Marbles a funny story?