Two books on my mind this TWOsday

The Little Prince ~ written and illustrated by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1943, translated by Richard Howard, translation 2000, fairy tale, 100 pages

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry first published The Little Prince in 1943, only a year before his Lockheed P-38 vanished over the Mediterranean during a reconnaissance mission.  More than a half century later, this fable of love and loneliness has lost none of its power.  The narrator is a downed pilot in the Sahara Desert, frantically trying to repair his wrecked plane.  One day, his efforts are interrupted by the apparition of a little prince, who asks him to draw a sheep.  "In the face of an overpowering mystery, you don't dare disobey," the narrator recalls.  "Absurd as it seemed, a thousand miles from all inhabited regions and in danger of death, I took a scrap of paper and a pen out of my pocket."  And so begins their dialogue, which stretches the narrator's imagination in all sorts of surprising, childlike directions.  I wanted to re-read this book and was surprised to find that my library did not have a copy.  So I ordered it.  When it arrived, I had just finished a book, so I started this one the day I got it.

Other Dimensions: Ten Stories of Science Fiction~ edited by Robert Silverberg, 1973, SF stories, ix + 178 pages

1. "—And He Built a Crooked House" ~ by Robert A. Heinlein
2. "Narrow Valley" ~ by R.A. Lafferty
3. "Wall of Darkness" ~ by Arthur C. Clarke
4. "The Destiny of Milton Gomrath" ~ by Alexei Panshin
5. "Stanley Toothbrush" ~ by Terry Carr
6. "Inside" ~ by Carol Carr
7. "The Captured Cross-Section" ~ by Miles John Breuer
8. "Mugwump 4" ~ by Robert Silverberg
9. "The Worlds of If" ~ by Stanley G. Weinbaum
10. "Disappearing Act" ~ by Alfred Bester

In this anthology of ten science fiction stories reprinted from genre magazines, Silverberg seems to have been trying to select a group of stories as far apart from each other in theme and style as he could.