Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | My Advice to the Civilized | 1990 | John Barnes | Buy |
| 2 | Upon Their Backs, to Bite ’em | 2000 | John Barnes | Buy |
My Advice to the Civilized and Upon Their Backs, to Bite ’em represent two of Barnes’s individual shorter works catalogued separately from his main collections. My Advice to the Civilized appeared in 1990 during the same period Barnes was writing the early Century Next Door novels, and reflects his interest at the time in satirical and political science fiction.
Upon Their Backs, to Bite ’em was published in 2000, a period when Barnes was also releasing the later Giraut novels and his standalone Finity. Short pieces from this period often engage with the themes running through his novel-length work, making them useful companions to the longer fiction for readers who want to follow his development as a writer.
These two pieces are the smallest category in Barnes’s published output and are primarily of interest to completists or to readers who encounter them through the anthologies in which they originally appeared.