The Man Who Could Not Forget is a short story, free from Smashwords. It is about, well, the title tells you that much. The main character is unable to forget anything in his life, from the smallest detail to the most subtle emotion, and has to regulate his life so as not to fill up his brain prematurely. The ramifications of this “ability” are beautifully played out, and not without interesting and unexpected twists and turns. A perfectly crafted story, highly recommended.

Michael Graeme has several other books available, also for free, from Feedbooks, including this quite interesting story, The Man Who Talked to Machines

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The Price of Being … With Sunita

If only I were capable of giving a fine book the review it richly deserves, I would be doing that right now for ‘The Price of Being .. With Sunita’ by Michael Graeme (on Wattpad from the link above). Like many of Michael’s books, this story is classifiable as sci-fi/fantasy but is also literature in the classic sense. Michael is right there in my mind with the great patient chroniclers of human behavior, a Thackery or Zola for our time.

The novel begins with a very ordinary and even uncomfortable situation – a middle aged man is shyly ogling a beautiful woman. She, we soon discover, is far more than that. She is a being with powers, but far from simply serving as a metaphor or an archetypal goddess, Sunita is a complicated creature whose abilities raise difficult moral issues, the permutations and ramifications of which Michael carefully and thoroughly explores.

If you could do good for others, merely by wishing it, what would be the consequences? In a fabulous turn of wish fulfillment, Sunita is also noticing our poor, bland middle-aged dude, Derek. She believes he also has powers, and wants to train him in the ways. Derek is happy to follow along, he’s a puppy with a heart of gold and as they journey together in ways beyond mere mortals, they come across a series of obstacles, all of which are very much rooted in the present – terrorism, the surveillance state, racial profiling, and the lust of evil men, while at the same time encountering the limits of charity and good will.

Nothing is as easy at it seems, not even for those with magical powers. There is always a cost, a price to be paid, and sometimes the price can be ‘being’ itself.

Michael tells a great story and he writes with style, grace and patience. I was fortunate enough to be able to read the story as he was writing it, serially, eagerly anticipating the next chapter. It is now complete, and I believe he brought it off well. Highly recommended.