Short-a-Day: Ernst Weiss's "The Rat Ship"
Originally published in A Public Space, No. 5, 2007. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 63.[Part of a longer novel, Georg Letham (1931); translated from the German by Joel Rotenburg.]Unique situations make for good stories: even if all else fails, the sheer novelty is often enough to keep the reader turning, just to see what happens next. Although the setting of Weiss's story seems familiar -- an ice-locked ship…