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<blockquote data-quote="Wofano Wotanto" data-source="post: 9286515" data-attributes="member: 7044704">Well, Leiber's S&amp;S stories are perfect for that, with the exception of Swords of Lankhmar nothing in the whole series is longer than a novella - and even that one is kind of a fix-up novel with the latter part of it stitched onto a novella the was printed by itself earlier.Novels, or phones?&nbsp; <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I'm doing one last re-read of the back half of James White's Sector General series, which I'd been putting off after enjoying the first part during the lockdown.&nbsp; As expected from reading the series originally as they were released, I enjoyed the early short stories much more than the later novels.&nbsp; I'll probably get through them all, but I might take some breaks in doing so.Thankfully for my memories of White, I stumbled on a copy of his Futures Past anthology, which I'd read most of before but never in one volume.&nbsp; As with Sector General I think he's best at short fiction, and while these are a bit variable like most anthologies, most are well above average and some are real gems.&nbsp; The single Sector General short &quot;Starbird&quot; is a solid quick read, even if the medical mystery is solved almost by accident.&nbsp; &quot;Outrider&quot; is one of those vaguely-implausible but entertaining mid-Fifties &quot;accident in space&quot;stories with a troubled protagonist saving a commercial spacecraft and facing down his own demons at the same time, reminding me of some of Heinlein's juvenile fiction, Eric Frank Russell's &quot;Jay Score&quot; or even &quot;Fast Trip&quot; in this same book.&nbsp; My favorite of the lot was &quot;False Alarm&quot; (technically a loosely connected follow-on to &quot;Assisted Passage&quot; but either could be read without the other and both are in this volume), which is a tiny bit slow to get into at first but has a heck of a fine twist ending that also reinforces White's generally upbeat beliefs in a future where all the species of the galaxy look out for one another, even the ones who haven't gotten out and about in it yet.&nbsp; White explores that theme (and the specific twist here from other angles) in many of his stories, and of course in Sector General itself.&nbsp; It's one of the things that makes me really enjoy him as an author, no matter how utopian it may be.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Wofano Wotanto, post: 9286515, member: 7044704"] Well, Leiber's S&S stories are perfect for that, with the exception of Swords of Lankhmar nothing in the whole series is longer than a novella - and even that one is kind of a fix-up novel with the latter part of it stitched onto a novella the was printed by itself earlier. Novels, or phones? :) I'm doing one last re-read of the back half of James White's Sector General series, which I'd been putting off after enjoying the first part during the lockdown. As expected from reading the series originally as they were released, I enjoyed the early short stories much more than the later novels. I'll probably get through them all, but I might take some breaks in doing so. Thankfully for my memories of White, I stumbled on a copy of his Futures Past anthology, which I'd read most of before but never in one volume. As with Sector General I think he's best at short fiction, and while these are a bit variable like most anthologies, most are well above average and some are real gems. The single Sector General short "Starbird" is a solid quick read, even if the medical mystery is solved almost by accident. "Outrider" is one of those vaguely-implausible but entertaining mid-Fifties "accident in space"stories with a troubled protagonist saving a commercial spacecraft and facing down his own demons at the same time, reminding me of some of Heinlein's juvenile fiction, Eric Frank Russell's "Jay Score" or even "Fast Trip" in this same book. My favorite of the lot was "False Alarm" (technically a loosely connected follow-on to "Assisted Passage" but either could be read without the other and both are in this volume), which is a tiny bit slow to get into at first but has a heck of a fine twist ending that also reinforces White's generally upbeat beliefs in a future where all the species of the galaxy look out for one another, even the ones who haven't gotten out and about in it yet. White explores that theme (and the specific twist here from other angles) in many of his stories, and of course in Sector General itself. It's one of the things that makes me really enjoy him as an author, no matter how utopian it may be. [/QUOTE]

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