I love reading drabbles. One good reason is that they’re short. So, in reading a collection of drabbles, you can stop anywhere without missing a beat, so to speak.
What is a drabble in case you’re asking? It’s a work of fiction in only 100 words, no more, no less, excluding the title. It was started by science fiction writers from England and has now spread to other genres such as poetry, fiction, fantasy, mystery and so on. The purpose of the drabble is brevity, testing the author’s ability to express interesting and meaningful ideas in a confined space.
The concept is said to have originated in UK science fiction fandom in the 1980s; the 100-word format was established by the Birmingham University SF Society, taking a term from Monty Python’s 1971 Big Red Book. In the book, “Drabble” was described as a word game where the first participant to write a novel was the winner.
So, without further ado, here are a couple of books with drabbles that certainly won’t bore you.
World’s Dark Drabbles – one of the writers in this book wrote about his craft:
“Humans are far worse than anything that goes bump in the night and I try to explore that. Although he believes the fight between good and evil is within all of us, people can, and have done some pretty messed up things that monsters can’t hold a flame to.” -Grant Hinton
Need I say more? Check the book out.
Martian: The Magazine of Science Fiction Drabbles is a collection of drabbles from the magazine. It features some of the best sci-fi authors in the world. Sometimes I think these writers write their stories in a dark room with only candles as their light. Of course it doesn’t matter how they write but what they write.
This book is not about Martians. That’s just the title, although a few entries have Mars as a backdrop. Personally I consider our planet scarier than the fiction in books (just as Grant Hinton does).
Kidding aside, pick up these eBooks and escape the real world for a few moments of wonderment.
