The nice folk, the web elf I suspect, at Neil Gaiman’s website have posted all sorts of stuff to do with his story “How to Talk to Girls at Parties.” You can read the story, or download a recording of Neil reading it. There are also links to the other Hugo nominees for Best Short Story. You should read them all.

I have a real soft spot for “How to Talk to Girls at Parties”. Neil kindly and generously wrote it for my book The Starry Rift. When it first appeared in my email inbox I was struck by all of the things that make a good Neil Gaiman story a good Neil Gaiman story: his writing voice, the smoothness and confidence of the telling, the deft skill of it all. I was also struck by how dark it was. However, time and circumstance meant that it didn’t end up in The Starry Rift. Instead, in sterling fashion, it filled the role of original story in his excellent collection Fragile Things (which came out last year), and was reprinted in my The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume 1. Neil kindly wrote a replacement story for The Starry Rift, “Orange”, which you’ll have to wait till next February to read, and “How to Talk to Girls at Parties” is on the Hugo ballot, which fills me with all kinds of pleasure. If I could vote for it, I would. And, who knows, maybe I’ll get to bring you another Neil story in some other book some time in the future. If I do, I know it’ll be a delight.