Recently I came across a bunch of Ben Shapiro eBooks, and I’ve particularly enjoyed reading through his weekly essays published as Evil in America (2017) and A Moral Universe Torn Apart (2018). When I saw this collection of short stories, I was stoked. I mean, come on, I love short stories!

But then I read the stories. Shapiro’s three short stories are so bad, I honestly had to ask Chat GPT if this were in fact some other Ben Shapiro posing as the Daily Wire pundit. But no, these are in fact early forays into fiction by the real Ben Shapiro—and I think the whole world will join me in thanking the Lord that his fiction career never took off, leaving him free to pursue other things like defending Conservatism and making fun of Tik-Tok videos.

While each of the following three stories holds a nugget of fictional possibility, they all lack editing both for content and basic type. It almost feels like he published three college writing assignments but without waiting for them to be graded.

With a little editing and a great deal of revision, these stories might someday hold some water, but as it, they’re terrible, holey, and laughable. I’ve recorded here my initial thoughts as I read each story in turn.

1. “What’s Fair?”

This firs story is a back-country tale I didn’t expect from California-born, ever-political Shapiro. While it feels like it could be 1940s farmland, I was a bit surprised to find that it’s actually set in the 1990s. I appeased this off-putting feel by picturing these characters as folks attending my dad’s small, farm-community church in Minnesota, which helped. The story is roughly written, and there are some fairly large gaps in both logic and flow. I think this first story requires some editing, but overall, it’s an intriguing plot with the kind of twisted ending I enjoy.

2. “From the Pit”

This one again requires some serious editing to be even remotely exciting or believable as a sci-fi thriller. Mostly, it shouldn’t take a page and a half before we get the idea that the main character is minuscule and that the “mites” he’s fighting are actual dust-mites, not some the pejorative his characters use for the aliens they might be battling on some distant planet. Just saying “mites” gave nothing away to me, because humans don’t get killed by mites.

Once I understood the context, it still took my mind a bit to understand the actual setting and story—and that’s not great. As I finally got into the story, though, I admit that it felt intense. It reminded me of Isaac Asimov’s The Incredible Journey, though on a smaller, more terrifying scale. This one should actually be longer, and with editing and expansion, it could really be worth reading.

I don’t think that will happen, though, because there’s one major logical flaw that Shapiro will never overcome: if the technology exists to shrink humans down to fight mites, why the heck do they become the same size as or even smaller than the mites, putting their own lives are in peril? Why not shirk down so the mites are the size of chihuahuas or rats? It makes no sense, so this story is DOA, unless he can come up with a logical explanation. Aliens might just be his ticket.

3. “Utopia”

This was another interesting idea for a story but one that’s stunted by its serious lack of editing. “Today” is both Tuesday and Thursday in the first pages, a flaw that any half-decent editor or neighbor-kid next door would have caught. As you read further, the red sun rises, and yet the main character exists through an unexpected door in the glass dome of his civilization and into the darkness. It made no sense and was impossible to take seriously.

Conclusion

The fact that this book got published at all is sad. That it could be FIXED and republished in the future with more imaginative takes, better writing, and lack of errors is possible but unlikely.

I’m going to keep reading, watching, and listening to Ben Shapiro. But if he ever hints at “an upcoming novel” or “another collection of short stories,” I’ll be running the other direction.

©2025 E.T.

Read More from Ben Shapiro:

• What’s Fair? (2015)
• A Moral Universe Torn Apart (2016)
• Evil in America (2017)