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C4 antho - Chamber Four

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Introduction<br />

___________<br />

This <strong>antho</strong>logy took shape over the course of many discussions<br />

about the short fiction being published online. With<br />

an ever-expanding world of fiction on the Internet, we<br />

wanted an easy way to find the best stories. If only someone<br />

would compile the many great short stories appearing for<br />

free online, and make them available in a number of ebook<br />

formats so that we could read them wherever and however<br />

we wanted, on any device. As we kept talking, it became obvious<br />

that this was a job for <strong>Chamber</strong> <strong>Four</strong>.<br />

In this collection, you’ll find traditional, Carver-esque<br />

stories alongside magical realist tales of teleportation. A<br />

chronicle of the social awakening of young mothers in a New<br />

York apartment building appears beside an existential horror<br />

story about a new bed. These stories take place in America,<br />

in Ukraine, in Africa, on a sheep ranch, in a nudist colony,<br />

and inside a poet's head as an extended daydream about Liz<br />

Phair. Some are traditional in form and some are dazzlingly<br />

experimental, some are long pieces that slowly pull you in<br />

and some are single-page punches to the solar plexus.<br />

Some of these authors you’ve heard of, read about, and<br />

discussed with your friends; others you’ll be discovering for<br />

the first time and can be sure to see again. We found these<br />

stories in magazines with long histories and on sites that belong<br />

to the post-millennium eruption. There is no factor that<br />

unifies the pieces collected here beyond their availability online<br />

and that hard-to-define but unmistakable hallmark of<br />

quality. The stories we selected are as diverse as the Internet,

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