Ciaphas Cain, collected short stories
3.0 Stars
6-25-2025

Closer to what the series should have been. The ideal of this form is the first half of story #14, where Ciaphas's friend has an extra ticket to a show. This is because the friend was intending to ask his crush to the show, but she had been found to be implanted with a Tyranid control tumor as part of the Hive Mind's infiltration campaign, and so she had to be incinerated in the planet wide purge of Tyrannid influence. That's rough buddy. Ciphas doesn't really want to go to the show, but he does anyway to help his friend feel better. I feel like there's a ton of unexplored humor to be had here, of standard human situations and stories juxtaposed with the insanity of a universe that has magpied every single action movie/space-opera trope into it. Also a fan of the brief detective stories, which are each like 20 pages long and have you, the reader, figure out the mystery within a sentence or two of when the characters do. This is ideal for a mystery; don't have a narratively aware reader figure things out 20% of the way through the story, and then the characters only catch up at the 80% mark.

Also, the stories are shorter and faster paced and sharped, which is always a good thing. They're still not quote as clever as you'd need to earn a coveted 4 star rating, but they do at least have the occasional chuckle, snort, or gasp.