Meet Professor Alfred Jules Ayer, a famous philosopher noted for his atheism, his disdain of all things metaphysical, and his reverence for logic in “The Candidate.” After suffering a heart attack, he finds himself in the Greek Underworld. He never expected an afterlife, and the fabled abode is nothing like the fable, which never mentioned a salmon with human arms and legs—or a flying saucer … captained by lizard man.
In “Harold,” you’ll meet a homunculus who is certain he is one of a kind, a freak of nature. Imagine his surprise when he discovers an island populated by thousands of his kind. There he finds adventure, love, and danger. He must face thugs his size, sinister large people, a dangerous house cat, and a plethora of perplexing situations.
Irresolute poets find that their plush postmortem refuge is anything but when it soon becomes a type of Hell in “Between Life and Oblivion.”
Discover the true story of Helen, the famous face that launched a thousand ships, in the tale “A More Likely Odyssey.”
Within these pages, you’ll be taken on journeys beyond imagining. You’ll meet characters and explore familiar worlds through different eyes. Look beyond the hedge…
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The Candidate and Other Stories by Samuel R. George is wholly unique and eye opening. From the opening pages as an atheist Professor joins a bizarre afterlife in The Candidate; one which he never could have imagined, to A Matter of Perception, these stories reveal the inquisitive nature of the author and his over the top imagination. This collection challenges your thinking as the author poses a lot of unanswered questions, infuses the book with philosophers, a speculative take on the concept of time, a bit of history that is re-imagined, anthropomorphic creatures and more. Entertaining, challenging, and totally different, the writing grabs your attention, makes you think, and readjust whatever preconceived ideas you may have about several topics, mostly death. Highly recommend for a unique and creative read.
Samuel R. George shows his humor and creativeness in The Candidate and Other Stories. This book is a compile of short stories with unique plots. Fanny and her Reluctant Ghosts was probably my favorite story, though he uses Emily and Alison in another story. These girls are resourceful and often find trouble. My next favorite was Harold, who is a pygmy in a class of his own, he thought. He had dreamed for hundreds of years to find a girlfriend just like him. Just when he finds her someone kidnaps her for gold. He must find her before her deranged twin kills her off.
When you read The Candidate and Other Stories, by Samuel R. George, you will finish with a smile and in awe of the imagination this author adds to his stories. It is hard to say which is best as they all are original and clever. This is a short read which will delight any fantasy fan. The cover of the book grabbed my attention and I am glad it did.
This book took me to a world beyond my imagination as an atheist Professor discovers a strange afterlife when he finds himself in a Greek Underworld in ‘The Candidate.’ The book gives you an escape from reality. You will certainly find this book interesting if you are an anthology admirer. The writer draws the plot, mood and characters in a creepy, thought-provoking and imaginative way. The way creatures out of this world interact with a sense of danger got my hair standing straight.
Stories following the first two are quite thought-provoking and I found myself pausing to ponder on the events. The book makes you feel that death is just a passage to the next world rather than a painful event as you will be mesmerized by what you will find in the spirit world. The intimidating tales are unusual in an exciting way as the book provides an original plot of events like no other out there.
The Candidate and other stories is a strange blend of short stories, but one that is captivating and refreshingly original as well. If the ultimate aim of art is to stimulate thinking even though some of the text may be a little confusing then Samuel George has accomplished that here. I wasn’t always sure of the trajectory of each of the stories, but none of them failed to suck me in with enough intrigue and mystery. Perhaps not for your bog-standard mainstream reader, but for others looking for something a little deeper then I’d recommend giving The Candidate a go.
I love a good collection of short stories, and The Candidate by Samuel R George is a great collection of short stories. So imaginative and creative, each story transports you to another realm and takes you on a wild and fantastical journey. I probably enjoyed Fanny and her Reluctant Ghosts the most. It was almost an updated version of the books I used to read when I was younger about girls who are always finding adventure and mischief, there is just a touch of fantasy and darkness thrown in there. Each story has its own unique plot that will draw you in and engross you, as the writing is so engaging and gripping. A great book for a summer holiday.
This is one really strange book of weird fiction. From Lilliput to Ancient Greece, Lord Byron to Charon, the author reimagines classic tales as if they were written possibly through 21st century eyes. I’d put it own and swear I was done, but something kept drawing me back.
One story in particular did keep my interest and that was “A More Likely Odyssey” focused on the greed and twisted nature of Helen. “The Odyssey of Homer” is my favorite book and I have read many versions of it from “The Odyssey:A Modern Sequel” by Nikos Kazantzakias to “Cold Mountain” by Charles Frazier to “Graffiti Palace” by AG Lombardo and others including “Circe”by Madeline Miller and “Ithaca” by Patrick Dillon. However this author pulls no punches and takes no prisoners in his sex,drugs,and rock and role reversal version that left me….feeling fairly weird.
Overall, most of this book was a real downer for me, leaving me uncomfortable. However strange it is to actually be Samuel R. George, the man can write; just not anything I may choose to read.
This is a quirky and interesting collection of stories all with a fantasy or paranormal twist. As with most anthologies, I enjoyed some more than others.
The Candidate
Alfred, after a heart attack and then choking to death, finds himself in the Greek Underworld where he finds himself in a number of trippy situations. This one went over my head because I have the feeling that knowing the philosophies of David Hume and Alfred Ayer would have made a marked difference to my reading experience. I enjoyed the imagery and weird transitions but I think I may have missed the point.
Harold
Harold needs to make money for an exclusive investment and reckons the quickest way to do that is to put himself on show. People would pay to see a man only 12 inches tall. Maria arrives at his home offering him an alternative: to show him a world he’d long hoped existed but was afraid to dream of. A place where there were more homunculi and he wouldn’t be the only one. He’s whisked off to where he not only encounters his own kind but also finds himself in love, in danger and on an adventure. I enjoyed the concept and the plot but I didn’t feel any connection with any of the characters which meant I was less engaged with the story. It almost feels as if too much information was squished into a short story.
A More Likely Odyssey
This is quite an enjoyable reimagining of Helen of Troy as told by Odysseus to Nausicaa and Demodocus. Odysseus awakes on the island of Scheria, half-starved and battered from his shipwreck, where Nausicaa, daughter of King Alcinous and Queen Arete, finds him and gets him cleaned up. Nausicaa and Demodocus ask him his story before they’re willing to present him to her parents. What follows is divergent from Odyssey and I’m not sure if Helen is being maligned or honoured as a cunning pirate/businesswoman. Either way, it was an entertaining read.
Between life and oblivion
This is a really short story where Lord Byron is essentially in a waiting room between life and oblivion. Various poets pass through the room. I’m sure I missed the point on this one too.
A matter of perception (in three parts)
I didn’t understand this on my first read through because there were too many names and times zone for the story to solidify in my mind. On the second read through everything became clear in what ended up being an entertaining and pleasant story time travel. It opens with Ellen who considers herself an old maid, never having found someone to love. At around 40 she meets James Griswold and marries him. Her happiness is short-lived when he dies in a freak accident. She retreats to her family’s property “The Magic Dress Shop” where time stands still for her. Forty years later she leaves the shop, leaving her great nieces there with strict instructions not to touch anything, to see her dying twin sister. When she returns the girls, Emily and Alison, have had fun trying on shoes, hats and coats with time and body swapping effects.
Fanny and her reluctant ghosts
This is the second part of the previous story and features the return of Alison and Emily. Alison crawls through a doorway in the courtyard of “The Magic Dress Shop” to find herself outside her school just as she gets run over by a ghost school bus. In her classroom nobody can see or hear her but her phone still takes pictures. Suddenly a frontier woman dressed in fringed buckskin with a rifle and two revolvers appears in the classroom.
Loaded for Bear
In part three, Emily and Alison are playing with a skipping rope in the courtyard when suddenly they find they’ve swapped bodies. Convincing Aunt Ellen is surprisingly difficult so they resort to showing her what happened. I enjoyed the concept and execution of this story in all its wackiness.
Journey to Absentia
Set in rural Kansas in the late 1800s, what follows for the rest of the anthology is a series of short slices of life with and oddness to them until they start connecting. Old Doc is at the centre of each story even though he’s not necessarily featured in them. They tell of his collected friends, both human and animal, and some of his adventures encountered. Their antics are entertaining, fantastical and also with some pathos. There are about 11 segments to this story.
This short story collection by Samuel R George is quite a unique blend and certainly must have been quite challenging to write. In fact in the hands of a less-skilled author it could have been quite disastrous as the subject matter is so thought-provoking and complex. A philosophical and even existential blend weave through the narrative which I found to be utterly compelling and hard to put down. I look forward to future offerings from the author with eager anticipation, and I really hope it is in novel form to see how he tackles a larger tome.
As an admirer of anthologies, I predicted this book to be an interesting and amusing read with its stories’ titles such as “The Candidate” and “Harold” and “A More Likely Odyssey” to name a few. Boy, I was completely shocked when the characters and the moods and the plots themselves turned out to be thought provoking, creepy, and out of this world (pun intended). You see, with “Candidate”, Professor Alfred Jules Ayer who was always a non-believer of anything having to do with a deity, came to encounter the Greek mythological underworld of Hades where he is treated with cruelty by ferryman Charon when it was discovered Ayer did not have the fare for his ferry, then he came face to face with a salmon with the arms of a man and a lizard man straight out of a science fiction novel. In “Harold”, a miniature sized man-being called a homunculus who is the size of a ken doll is all cocky and satisfied that he is the only blond of his race only to find out that there are others similar to him in the world and that he had to battle all sorts of creatures and characters in the process. The other stories that followed those two tales, all seemed to have a “thought” in them that made me pause one night and pondered on it for a while. It is the notion that this book’s stories seem to make one’s murder or death seem ideal and less painful and more of a dreamy and “delicious” state of passage into the other side. When I finished this book, I came away from it with that fantasy with the idea of: “Do not be afraid of your death. You’re going to be amazed and infatuated with what is waiting for you once your spirit leaves your body. There is another story in here where all these just-departed souls were witnessing portals before them, inviting them to heaven. Then there is a story in here (I think it was the first one) where it ends with a character pointing a gun at the narrator and saying to him something like: you’ll make a great co-worker or something and then the gun goes off. This character only existed in the afterlife and the narrator could see him/it.
I think this book is definitely unusual and thought-provoking as well as intimidating with its elements. I think the stories are creepy but in a strangely exciting way. Maybe it’s because it is very original and a first of its kind for me. The “Odyssey” story was downright disgusting though because there is cannibalism in it. I think reader discretion is advised for this book. At first I had a feeling of remorse for it but then I read in another article I found online that stated that such elements and storylines are nothing new in the literary world that they are “usuals” of horror and metaphysical novels. I laughed at that and realized to myself that I had been reading a lot of YA novels in my life that yes I seldom read adult fiction that dealt with “metaphysical.” So my word of advice to you who’s reading this humble review: “If you are adventurous in spirit, then this book is worth exploring. If you are a fan of science fiction, horror, and the macabre, this one’s up your alley.
A spectrum of immensely entertaining stories
Louisiana author Samuel R. George earned his degree form Colorado University, Boulder and now writes short stories and novels published in both book format and chapbooks and magazine and review publications.
The themes of these stories are both varied and unusual, the unifying link being the author’s impeccable prose and ability to entertain the reader with bizarre takes on time, history, parody, strange creatures and credible characters leading the reader into situations and concepts that defy reason.
The opening story, The Candidate, featuring a philosopher visiting the denied after life sets a fine tone; from the opening lines: ‘Cavorting, eating, drinking; so devotedly and systematically did I carouse, the overall feeling was one of rhythm. However, I was dancing with death. I bopped. I boogied. I tap danced my way right into an ambulance which brought me to University College Hospital in London. I remained there for several days and felt better. But apparently hell-bent, I waltzed with annihilation once again. Too headstrong to eat the hospital food, I went instead for fare smuggled in by my co-conspirators. A slice of smoked salmon, lodging in my throat, took me from mere pneumonia to cardiac arrest.’ It is that admixture of well-crafted prose and strange concepts that makes this collection sing.
The other included stories are Harold (a homunculus with perception problems), A More Likely Odyssey (Helen of Troy’s legend refigured), Between Life and Oblivion (revisiting famous poets), A Matter of Perception, Fanny and Her Reluctant Ghosts, Loaded for bear, and Journey to Absentia – a perfectly superb and lengthy story divided into sections with subtitles that offer insights to the impact of the tale – How Doc Acquired a Chimpanzee Named Lincoln, One Last Request, Smith and Jones aka Jones and Smith, Romulus, Kanthaka and Lincoln, Exodus, The Awakening of Doctor Smother, Romulus is Sent Home, The Death of William Hawkins, How the Peyote Kid Got His Name, What Happened to the Bandito Juan Garcia When He Crossed Paths with Old Doc in Matamoros, How Old Doc Met the Illustrious Comte de Saint-Germain, What Befell Ruth Marie When She and Doc Became Hopelessly Captured by Juan Garcia and His Gang, Lincoln and the Peyote Kid Get Trapped in the Cave, and The Boy Was Not What He Seemed.
Reading this collection of short stories is not only immensely entertaining: the stories also shed light on concepts and legends that challenge the reader to think!