Brad Watson’s short story collection Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives is something of a revelation for a publication released in 2010. The stories contained within could take place from the 1970s through the 2000s, though their relevance and enjoyment seems to be timeless.
That’s the point of stories, particularly short stories – they are supposed to endure with some kind of lesson or sense of purpose either bestowed upon or lost on the reader. Even if you miss the point, you’ll still be left with some small connected thread to your own experience, though you can’t quite figure out what.
That feeling of “kind of connectedness” is what makes this particular collection of short stories from Watson all the more intriguing. It’s particularly true because these are stories told of a time before the rise of the digital age, when the most technological thing in them is a landline telephone and the rest is all about humanity, nature or nurture, and finding our place in the world.
The inside dust jacket describes Watson’s writing as “an all-seeing, six-dimensional view of human hopes and inadequacies” which would at a minimum encompass what I read in Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives. This near omniscience is certainly present in the extremely short shorts that make up the whole of the Ordinary Monsters chapter.
In the last few years I’ve read more than a couple short story collections. For the record, while I do love the long-form novel, I have a soft spot in my well-read soul for a good collection of short stories that can cover so many arrays of humanity and still not scratch the entire surface.
Perhaps that’s the point of the short story. It’s not supposed to be all encompassing. It’s supposed to tell you this story and get out of its own way. It’s not doing anything more than it sets out to do. So maybe there will be more short stories consumed in my future. Perhaps I’ll even dust off the old pen and paper and try my hand at creating them again.
For now, just know that I do recommend Brad Watson’s Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives, from the first story to the last titular one.