Luke Smitherd, The Man on Table Ten

Luke Smitherd's novella The Man on Table Ten poses an interesting question: What would you do to ensure your survival if the fate of the world depended on it? Smitherd's story is told from the perspective of an old man who has had to answer just that question. The man who sits at table ten in the restaurant that serves as this story's setting tells his tale to a waitress, fully expecting that she won't believe him. And that's really it: The story is mostly his narrative, with a bit of drama thrown in at the very end, and then the novella ends abruptly. On my Kindle, the ending seemed even more abrupt, because it ended when I was only 50% through the file, so I'd expected a lot more. (The remaining 50% was an author's note and a book preview.) So, overall, the story is fine, and it's built on a neat idea, but I think more could have been done with it.