Category: flash fiction

Flash Fiction: “Love and Relativity” at Nature Physics today

Posted on by Stewart

Okay… 5 days ago. (insert joke about relativity here)

Interestingly, as Colin Sullivan points out in his intro, both of the flash fiction stories I’ve sold to Nature deal with multiple universes in some way or another.

While my previous story was a humorous take on evil twins and quantum disambiguators, though, this one is a more serious tale about experimental space travel and the potential disasters thereof. But it’s also about the importance of not letting those disasters stop further experimentation. And the even bigger importance of family–however you define it.

On another note, the story is partly inspired by the photo of sari-wearing female employees of ISRO, as I mention in my Future Conditional guest post about the story. Consider this little tale my small way of saying that I think that photo and everything it represents is awesome.

Anyway, hope you enjoy the story!

“Love and Relativity” at Nature Physics

(Oh, and I guess I should mention that it’s supremely nerdy, in that it’s written in the style of an annotated bibliography… Nobody’s perfect, right?)

Original Fiction, “Concerning your Recent Creation of Sentient Horse-things on the Next Planet Over,” at Flash Fiction Online

Posted on by Stewart

It’s story release day again! This one is egregiously silly, and details just about what you’d expect.

It’s flash, so I’ll not waste your time summarizing it. Head on over to Flash Fiction Online to read “Concerning your Recent Creation of Sentient Horse-things on the Next Planet Over” right now!

(This is my second time appearing in FFO, and my first since I’ve started reading slush there. Since all submissions are anonymous, slush readers can still submit—we just aren’t allowed to vote on our own work at all. I’ve had several rejections since I started slushing before this sale broke through.)

I’ll be appearing in the Lane of Unusual Traders

Posted on by Stewart

Or at least a story I wrote will.

This was my first time writing for a shared world story, and it was quite a bit of fun. My story, “A Solitary Stair,” is about a free-standing staircase with a possibly mystical past.

The Lane itself is a project being put together by Tiny Owl Workshop, an Australian small press which likes to do unusual things. (They once published stories on throw pillows, for instance.) You can read more about the lane, including a few already-published stories, here: http://thelaneofunusualtraders.com/stage-1/

If you’d like to join me in the lane, a submission window for short stories of 1500-3000 words is open until May 31st. I’ll be hoping to submit something myself, as well!

Original Fiction: “Some Salient Details About Your Former Lives” at Plasma Frequency

Posted on by Stewart

I somehow didn’t spot this one when it came out, but I have a piece of flash fiction up in January/February’s Plasma Frequency Magazine.

The story, “Some Salient Details About Your Former Lives,” is very loosely inspired by Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and the character of Agrajag, that hapless multi-mortal being whom Arthur Dent inadvertently kills thousands of times.

Of course, my story isn’t much like Hitchhiker’s Guide. It’s more of a fantasy than anything, and while it does deal with a similar set-up, it shakes things down in a very different way.

Go give it a read over at Plasma Frequency and let me know what you think!

Some Salient Details About your Former Lives, by Stewart C Baker

Five reprints now available on Quarter Reads

Posted on by Stewart

Do you like stories? Do you like quarters? Do you like reading? Do you like reprints? Do you like five?! (Fnord)

Wait, wait, wait. Where was I going with this…?

Ah, right. I have five new reprints (does that even make sense?) available over on Quarter Reads as of right now. Here are links to each, and where they first appeared:

If any of those sound like they’d be up your alley, go give them a browse!

Original Fiction: “How to Configure your Quantum Disambiguator” at Nature

Posted on by Stewart

My flash fiction piece, “How to Configure your Quantum Disambiguator” is online now at Nature magazines’s “Futures” section.

It’s a short story (about a page and a half long), and is about evil twins, giant bananas, parallel universes, shiny red buttons, quantum superposition, and implausible help desk hours.

Intrigued? Confused? You don’t even?

Go read the rest at Nature “Futures”: How to Configure your Quantum Disambiguator

As an added bonus(?), you can also see my notes on the story at the Future Conditional blog.

Original Fiction: “Little More than Shadows” at Daily Science Fiction

Posted on by Stewart

A weird little flash story of mine is available today at Daily Science Fiction.

Broadly speaking, it’s about dreams. Also paranoia, insanity, resignation, love, and a vaguely-defined beast which is eating the world.

You know, the usual stuff.

Intrigued? Perplexed? Read on at: http://dailysciencefiction.com/fantasy/parapsychology/stewart-c-baker/little-more-than-shadows

I’d also like to point out that DSF uses a rating system for their fiction—so if you like what you read, please leave a rating!

Sale! “Configuring your Quantum Disambiguator” to Nature’s Futures.

Posted on by Stewart

Very happy to announce that I’ve sold a story to Nature magazine’s “Futures” feature.

Nature, for those not familiar, is one of the leading scholarly science journals. More importantly for me, they also have a column that publishes sci-fi flash fiction. This is my first sale to them out of four submissions. The story is written in the form of an instruction manual, and balances absurdist humour with SFnal trope-based jokes and is generally quite weird. (There’s also a nod to Ren & Stimpy for the eagle-eyed.)

Huzzah!

Original Fiction: “They Come in Waves” at Freeze Frame Fiction

Posted on by Stewart

In lieu of posting a new piece of fiction or a reprint here this week, I’d like to direct your attention to the newly-launched Freeze Frame Fiction, which just went live today.

As you may have been able to tell, I have a story in this new ‘zine! I like to joke that it’s a story about lesbian zombie romance, but stripped of hyperbole a better description might be that it’s about relationships, regret, and still zombies.

Here’s a teaser:

No breath any more.

Cold steel at the edge of the darkness, and voices.

He pushes, and with a screeching buckle there is light and scent and terror like a drug in the air.

The salty copper taste of flesh and blood.

#

Jorah sits up shivering with cold and perspiration, sure that in the moment just before her dream turned to morning she had heard a distant booming thunder like the white caps of waves falling in on themselves.

She collapses her tent, packs and shoulders her bag, and hurries on down the trail. Remembering the dream, she takes another photo and sends it to Ella.

I am here, Jorah imagines it saying. I am here, I am coming, I am sorry. Do not forget me. Love.

So if you like flash fiction, go check out my story and the rest of the pieces in the first issue of Freeze Frame Fiction!

If you’d like to sign up to receive updates to this blog by e-mail, you can check the little floating “Follow” box on the right-hand side, near the bottom of the screen. If you’re more of an RSS person, there’s also a link to the RSS in the side bar.

Reprint: Captain Invincible

Posted on by Stewart

Captain Invicible

by Stewart C Baker

Captain Invincible’s downfall was he read too much.

Never saw the son-of-a-bitch without a book in his hands. Trash lit, usually—not even worthy of the name ‘Popcorn’.

Problem was, the Captain got a little too into them. I remember our last crisis, when The Tippler was threatening the water supply of the whole goddamn tri-state area.

All Captain I. wanted to do was finish The Torrid Stallion. He devoured it as I flew us to the Tippler’s HQ, gushed about it as we landed, kept trying to sneak glances during the firefights.

I’ll never be able to wipe those last minutes out of my mind—the Captain’s eyes watering up, his skin-tight suit torn from the gunfire, his final words an explosion of gore as he passed me the paperback: “Does Mary . . . forgive him at the end?”

May heaven forgive me for leaving him there without an answer.

This story first appeared in the January 2011 edition of Antipodean SF.


 

If you’d like to sign up to receive updates to this blog by e-mail, you can check the little floating “Follow” box on the right-hand side, near the bottom of the screen. If you’re more of an RSS person, there’s also a link to the RSS in the side bar.