Aaron's Story Recommendation of the Week :: Night of the Living POTUS by Adam-Troy Castro

The story recommendation for the week is "Night of the Living POTUS" by Adam-Troy Castro, a short story first published on-line in the Winter 2008 issue of Helix.

"Night of the Living POTUS" is the perfect story for this week of Inauguration Day. It is a very funny yet thought-provoking account of a newly-elected president's first night in the White House. He is confronted by apparitions of his predecessors, who take rather a more hostile attitude toward the new occupant than one might expect.

Unfortunately, for now you will have to take my word for it that "Night of the Living POTUS" is a terrific story. Helix has ceased operations and wiped its archives, which is a shame, since it was one of the most reliable places to find good fiction on-line, notwithstanding its senior editor occasionally making an ass of himself. The mostly-defunct Helix site still has links to some of the stories published there, and others are available at Transcriptase, but for now you won't find "Night of the Living POTUS" either place. Let us hope that the author elects to post the story at his own site.

Adam-Troy Castro has been writing successful short fiction for years, garnering two Hugo nominations and five Nebula nominations. Last year saw the appearance of Emissaries from the Dead, his first full-length original novel (he has previously written media tie-in books). It is a murder mystery set far in the future in a somewhat horrific artificial ecosystem. The sequel, The Third Claw of God, is due out next month, and both novels look well worth checking out.