Ryan Boudinot has done many things to showcase the prestige and excellence of Seattle literature, but writing The Octopus Rises was not one of those things. The Octopus Rises is a collection of merely competent, semi-humorous Twilight Zone–like short stories. Like that TV show, almost every story is fueled by a Premise. A big “What if…” For instance, “The End of Bert and Ernie” asks readers to imagine “What if… Bert and Ernie were a gay couple?” Another story, “Chopsticks,” asks “What if… cats were actually on drugs?” Another story, “Bleeding Man and Wounded Deer,” asks “What if… someone was just a regular guy who worked a boring office job, but was constantly bleeding from stab wounds, all while embodying the old trope of a flawed hunter pursuing a woman?” Sure, most stories have a Premise, but many of Boudinot’s premises are clichéd or sound like “an idea for a story”…
