Bewildering Stories welcomes...

Russell Bradbury-Carlin

Russell lives in the western part of Massachusetts and has published prose fiction and poetry.

Does “Tree Soup” overstep Bewildering Stories’ guideline about stories that end “but it was all a dream” or the equivalent? Perhaps, but we won’t quibble: the main character, Chris, lives in a kind of dream forest with the ghost of his grandfather. Basically, Chris has to decide whether he wants to continue his isolated existence or follow a mysterious woman through a “portal” to an unknown outside world.

Chris’s parents are frequently referred to, but their conspicuous and unexplained absence is likely to raise questions in readers’ minds, such as whether “Tree Soup” is a “keyed” story that refers to real people and whether the forest setting is an allegorical representatyion of a real situation.

Russell Bradbury-Carlin’s bio sketch can be found here.

Welcome to Bewildering Stories, Russell. We hope to hear from you again soon and often!