Dead Men Don’t Cry by Nancy Fulda: Review

What you’re lookin’ for. You won’t find it here…Folk find lots of stuff in this place, but never what they came looking for.

These days novels get all the attention, but there is a wealth of fantastic stories that can be found if you explore short fiction. It’s with that thought that I pick up books like this. Dead Men Don’t Cry is a collection of short fiction by Hugo and Nebula nominated author Nancy Fulda. Nancy has also won the Jim Baen Memorial Short Story contest. With a record like that, I reasoned one of her short story collections had to be good, and I was not disappointed.

Dead Men Don’t Cry contains eleven stories that ask questions I never even thought to think about. What do you do if you’re a billionaire living on the moon and just must have French pastries? You hire a ship to bring them to you from France every day (Pastry Run). How do clones feel about being clones? What about the person they were cloned from? (Blue Ink) How do you deal with a dead mother who just won’t leave you alone? (Ghost Chimes). My personal favorite Monument, deals with humanity making a tremendous decision, one that they will likely never know if it was a good one or a bad one.

Each of the stories in this anthology are unique and each one drew me in with its own special way of telling. Nancy Fulda has a powerful voice and successfully emerges the reader in nearly a dozen worlds, be they on earth, in space, through time, or in another dimension. I heartily recommend this book to anyone who enjoys science fiction. If you haven’t tried out the short form, this is a great place to start. If you have, you won’t be disappointed in this book.