Author: Michael Hartford

As World War II comes to a close, a young man who has been interred in a Japanese prison camp is given a macabre mission, which he embraces in a disturbing fashion….

An apparently poorly matched couple come to realize, through their fumbling efforts and some strange friendships, where their difficulties lie. This is an interesting character study – Maria and Dan are a…

A device that lets people communicate across alternate timelines causes people to consider the nature of free will and the relationship between one’s actions and one’s character. Chiang takes a relatively abstract…

A boy has his first serious encounter with desire, betrayal, and bigotry with his uncle’s enticing friend. This reads a bit differently today, I suspect, than it did in the late ’70s…

The correspondence between a writer and a man who has asked him to sell off the more salacious books in his library discloses a disturbing predilection. This is a quietly disturbing little…

A pianist falls in love with his page turner, who undergoes a strange transformation before her death. This is a sweet, if odd, little story; I enjoyed its playfulness, especially in its…