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Best known as an author of horror and dark fantasy, John R. Little is a Canadian admired by other talented people like Gary A. Braunbeck, Isaac Asimov and Peter Straub. His novella, Miranda (2008, Bad Moon Books), has won a Black Quill Award and a Bram Stoker Award. Little has published in such prestigious magazines as Cavalier (1982), The Twilight Zone (1982) and Weird Tales (1991). Asimov, Terry Carr and Martin Greenberg included him in their 1984 anthology, 100 Great Short Short Stories.

Let’s talk about Miranda.

“This dazzling, melancholy, and thoroughly gripping book reminds me of why the now unjustly-forgotten Robert Nathan was such a satisfying writer. In Miranda, John R. Little uses crisp writing and a masterly sense of pace to structure a brilliant short novel with invention, courage and baffled love.” —Peter Straub

Gary Braunbeck, who introduces Miranda, considers Robert Nathan to be the originator of time-slip or slipstream fiction; Miranda is such a story. Nathan’s writing fell into the catchall genre that was then known as science fiction & fantasy. So, given the modern reader’s need for genre labeling, I’ll pose the following question…

Is John R. Little’s masterpiece science fiction, fantasy or horror?

Miranda is science fiction. Mr. Little not only gives us Michael Johnson, who lives his life in reverse (from the day he dies back to the day he was born), he also has that character define time in a way which allows us to understand how such a thing might be possible.

Miranda is also fantasy, for it presents us with a whole other realm of possibility. A world within a world; an alternate world.

But more than anything, I would define Miranda as a horror story. Page 14, the prologue, is the very definition of horror: it disturbs. I wish I could tell you more, but the book begins at the end and ends with the prologue. Can’t be a spoiler, can I?

The best I can offer is that in Miranda we meet a man who knows exactly how and when his life will end. This should give him some kind of advantage the rest of us don’t have. At the very least, you would expect Michael Johnson to savour every minute of his guaranteed-to-be-finite existence. Instead, Miranda lays open exactly what it means to be human. Michael experiences life the same way we do, but since everything is out of its usual context, his excitements and loves and losses are held up so clearly the vision cuts like a knife.

This is a brilliant work.

Clayton Bye
Horror Editor, The Deepening

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Tags: author John R. Little, black quill award, bram stoker award, horror, horror author, horror author review, horror editor clayton bye, Horror Fiction, horror novella, horror review by Clayton Bye, John R. Little