Fiction, Poetry, and Games by Stewart C Baker
Writing about brexit? Me?
Naaaaah.
Are you lot still here?
(And this is my 100th post on this blog, apparently. Shiny.)
I am so tired.
Can you tell?
Let’s be friends!
Given the mass shooting in Orlando, I almost don’t want to post one of these at all.
Here’s a compromise: the last words (and many other words) of hate itself:
I was so afraid…
If you have some spare funds, please consider a donation to It Gets Better, Human Rights Campaign, or any other LGBTQ+ advocacy or support group you know of.
It has been so hot around here lately that my ears are starting to melt and drain out from my brain. (ETA: as proof of which, I set this to post ten days after the right day.)
No, wait, should that be the other way around?
Maybe it should. Maybe it shouldn’t. More importantly: what does it have to do with this week’s “Last Words” post?
Absolutely nothing. I just thought you should know.
[unintelligible mumbling]
It’s almost Towel Day, that special day which comes but once a year when fans of Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy come together (even if they don’t come together) to remember the author and his work.
I read a lot of Hitchhiker’s Guide as a teenager (the whole “trilogy” of five books at least ten times, I’m pretty sure) and doubt I’d have quite the same warped and strange sense of humour if I hadn’t.
So as a feeble form of thanks, here’s an early Towel Day present in the form of a five-word “Last Words” story. (That’s one word for every book in the trilogy!)
Free towels! Supplies are limited—
And since it is almost Towel Day, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the famous last words from the bowl of petunias in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy itself!
So here, in a similar style, they are:
Oh no. Not again.
If you’ve never read Adams’s work, there’s still time to rectify that! I recommend getting the whole trilogy at once in one of the lovely hardback editions that exist.
From last week’s unrelenting bleakness, let’s move on to something silly.
It was Oscar Wilde (or perhaps his goatee-wearing evil twin from one of the mirror dimensions) who penned the words “I never put off till tomorrow what I can possibly do the day after.” Words to live by, my friends! Words to live by.
I haven’t memorized that yet!
Words to live by indeed. He says, as he comes up with another piece of microfiction the night before his self-imposed deadline…
In contrast to some of my other “last words” posts, this one’s a bit dark, and has nary a bit of humour to offset said darkness.
So if you’ve any deceased loved ones that you miss deeply, maybe best skip this little story-let.
I’ve missed you so much.
We’ve all been there. Sitting at home, minding our own business, when someone knocks at the door and turns out to be a future version of yourself who’s dead or dying.
Er, wait. What?!
“You must never go to—!”
Let this be a lesson to us all: When you’re time travelling back to the past to warn yourself of your impending doom, don’t bother with full sentences in case you die before you finish them.
Immortality’s a funny thing.
There’s a long fictional tradition, as TV Tropes and Wikipedia make abundantly clear, of playing with the idea, inverting and subverting it. For instance, we have “complete immortality” (where you can’t be killed OR die) versus just the regular kind (where natural causes won’t off you, but injuries still can).
Tolkien’s elves, for instance, are regular immortal. So are most kinds of fictional vampire. Beasties like the Lernean Hydra dispatched by Hercules and his nephew Iolaus, on the other hand, are essentially unkillable and can only be inconvenienced to a greater or lesser degree by (e.g.) lighting them on fire, killing most of their mortal heads, and burying their immortal head under a huge boulder at the roadside because your name is Hercules and you’re an asshole like that.
Uh. Anyway.
I, too, like to play with the idea of immortality!
Finally…!
Which I guess I kind of spoiled with that introduction but OH WELL, ONWARDS.
To some shameless plugs!
Shameless plug number one is that a story co-written by fellow Writers of the Future winner Matt Dovey and myself is in the currently-Kickstarting anthology “No Shit, There I Was.” Our tale is a glorious one of peril, fantastical hilarity, a magical sword welded by a kick-ass heroine who doesn’t take crap from anybody (except when she has to), true love, a soul-sucking evil wizard, necromantic basement weasels, and baby oil. Uh, but not necessarily in that order.
PLUS I MEAN JUST LOOK AT THIS COVER:
IS IT NOT GLORIOUS? You know you want that on your bookshelf.
Head on over to the Kickstarter! If you order a copy, lemme know in the comments and I’ll legit write you a 5-word story on a topic of your choice, following the same rules I follow for these “Last Words” stories, and post it on my blog (if you want) for all to be jealous over.
Shameless plug number two is that you can pre-order the Writers of the Future anthology on Amazon or at your fine book retailer of choice. More details about the anthology and where to order it are available atWotF32.com. (We’re still hoping to get electronic sampler copies of the anthology, so stay tuned for that…)
I’ll be the first to admit this one is full of in-jokes. But I’m still recovering from Writers of the Future workshop week, and that’s all I have the energy for at the moment.
Ha! Your muscles are biologically—
I’ll be announcing the winner of the signed copy of Writers of the Future volume 32 later on this week. Just need to find a spare moment to sit down with the random number generator!