Tag: microfiction

What the Time Traveller Said When She Appeared on Her Own Doorstep (“Last Words” Series)

Posted on by Stewart

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?!

What the Time Traveller Said When She Appeared on Her Own Doorstep Half-Drowned and Bleeding from Three Stab Wounds, Six Gunshot Wounds, with Her Clothing on Fire

by Stewart C Baker

“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.

Last Words of the Immortal (“Last Words” Series) + some shameless plugs

Posted on by Stewart

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!

Last Words of the Immortal

by Stewart C Baker

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:
No Shit, There I Was: An Anthology of Improbable Tales edited by AlexAcks
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…)

Words Spoken by Illusionist and Outlaw Mary-Jane García Just After the Hangman Pulled the Lever on the Gallows (“Last Words” series)

Posted on by Stewart

No time, alas, for clever commentary this week!

Just a grisly little tale—or a magical one, depending on your point of view. (But then, isn’t all illusion and stage magic about point of view?)

Words Spoken by Illusionist and Outlaw Mary-Jane García Just After the Hangman Pulled the Lever on the Gallows

by Stewart C Baker

Now you see me, now—

Just as a reminder, you can still win a copy of Writers of the Future, volume 32, by guessing which of the four 1st-place stories is mine. Head on over to the comments of this post to leave your guess!

I’ll be away from home at the Writers of the Future workshop until April 14th or so, but there should still be a “Last Words” post going up next Monday, since I usually set them up in advance.

Unwritten Fragment of Basho’s Second Death Poem (“Last Words” Series)

Posted on by Stewart

Not much in the way of commentary this week, since (1) I think the genesis of this one should be fairly obvious and (2) do you really want to see me talk about haiku for 500 words?

Unwritten Fragment of Basho’s Second Death Poem, Pulled Half-Finished from His Mind and Brought Forward in Time to the Twenty-Third Century at the Moment of His Last Breath

by Stewart C Baker

No more journeying
I rest—

I said no commentary, but I guess you really have to know what Basho’s last recorded poem was for this to make sense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matsuo_Bash%C5%8D#Last_years

On a semi-related note, I’m pondering writing a short story (and/or a piece of interactive fiction!) about a sort of magicianly warrior group who uses spoken haiku sort of like spells to create literal changes in the fabric of reality.

It sounds weird, and probably would be, but it also makes an odd kind of sense. Haiku’s all about juxtaposition. And the idea of a haiku “cutting” to create worlds is sort-of almost canonical! As I explored in a previous story.

On an unrelated note, don’t forget to guess which title in Writers of the Future is mine! You could win a signed copy of this year’s anthology.

Song of a Whale, Translated into Human Speech by Dr Hananakajima’s Machine at the Moment of its Harpooning (“Last Words” series)

Posted on by Stewart

Since August, I’ve been trying out Tempest Bradford’s challenge of limiting my pleasure reading to things not written by cisgendered straight white males.

My reading habits skew female in any case, and I have favourite authors like Jorge Luis Borges and Ted Chiang, so this isn’t much of a stretch for me. But it has led to me reading some excellent novels I probably wouldn’t have picked up otherwise, like Karen Lord’s The Best of All Possible Worlds and Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis trilogy (which I wish I had read long ago because it is astounding).

Anyway, while I might post more about that experience at a later date, I mention it today because this week’s “Last Words” post is inspired by Somtow Sucharitkul/S.P. Somtow‘s Starship and Haiku. Which I’m surprised I never found earlier because come on. Haiku! I write those.

Song of a Whale, Translated into Human Speech by Dr Hananakajima’s Machine at the Moment of Its Harpooning

by Stewart C Baker

Painsharping… Swimdeep…

As for Starship and Haiku, it was an interesting read, if a bit dated. Never mind that, in the book, WWIII destroyed most of humanity in the early 2000s. I felt like parts of it ran afoul of the Asian as Alien trope (oddly, considering its author is Thai) in ways that probably would not be considered okay today and in ways I couldn’t quite figure out was intentional subversion or something to be taken at face value.

Allusions to Mishima—not to mention the haiku, which included fun riffs on stories from Basho biographies—on suggest that Somtow is pretty well-read in Japanese culture, anyway, which was nice. But there were times when the text seemed to unironically describe Japanese people as “inscrutable” and that’s kind of…? And the Japanese are literally descended from whales (spoiler) which means that characters in the novel (Japanese and otherwise) are constantly talking about how they are literally alien compared to everyone else on Earth. Which uh…

Anyway. It has whales. And whalesong.

And it made me feel strange when I finished reading, which is a good indication that it succeeded as a SF novel on some level even if I found the racial aspects of it problematic and its depiction of Japanese culture a bit too early-Shōwa to ring true in describing a Japan set in 2023.

Benefit of living in the future, I guess.

Bonus!

For a more recent story about a Japanese girl and dolphins (close enough to whales, right?), check out Henry Lien’s excellent “Bilingual”, which is free to read on his website.

Another Bonus!

Although this is a huge tone mismatch with this story. The name Hananakajima has been shamelessly lifted from the wonderfully bizarre Sexy Commando Gaiden: Sugoi yo!! Masaru-san, the first episode of which the bravest among you can watch in regrettably low quality here.

Pi Day Guest Post by Aaron Moskalik: The Last Words of the Platonic Form Circle While Trying to Compute Its Own Diameter (“Last Words” series)

Posted on by Stewart

And hooray, another guest post!

Today’s “Last Words” post is written for us by the mathtastic Aaron Moskalik in celebration of Pi day. (This makes Aaron the second person to remind me that Pi day exists, after my wife mentioned it to me the other day. I am a failure as a nerd!)

Without further ado, then:

The Last Words of the Platonic Form Circle While Trying to Compute Its Own Diameter

by Aaron Moskalik

Now, rounding Pi to three…

Math jokes! Math jokes are the best jokes.

You can see more math-related magicianry on display in “Division by Zero,” a comparatively long (100 word) story by Aaron over at Specklit, or in any of the Eric the Circle cartoons created by Mandle Brat, which is Aaron’s pseudonym on that site. (This pi-themed strip is a good one.)

Guest Post by Matt Dovey: The Last Words of Henry McIntyre, Gentlemen, Scholar, and Dinosaur from a Misogynistic Time (“Last Words” series)

Posted on by Stewart

Today we have a special treat: a guest post in my “Last Words” series!

Author, friend, Englishman, and fellow Writers of the Future volume 32 winner Matt Dovey sent this my way back in January with permission to publish it when I needed a weekend off. This is much appreciated this weekend, as not only was it my eldest child’s 6th birthday, but I have been in back/neck pain for most of the past week due to an unfortunate incident with a herd of transmogrified bovines, a feather duster, six gallons of dayglo purple ink, and one surprisingly small cucumber.

Uh. Where was I?

Right!

I was just about to present to you all…

The Last Words of Henry McIntyre, Gentlemen, Scholar, and Dinosaur from a Misogynistic Time, upon Underestimating His Wife Mildred’s Capacity to Operate Her Own Invention and Blundering in Where He Wasn’t Needed, Actually

by Matt Dovey

No, Mildred, pull this first—

Very English, what ho?

The first of the month just happened to mark Matt’s first fiction publication (Woohoo!) so if this tickled your Guernsey, then head on over to this month’s issue of Flash Fiction Online, where you can read “This is the Sound of the End of the World,” a lovely piece of space opera filled with lies, propaganda, and a heck of a chorus.

Also featured is Shannon Peavey’s “Millepora”, a tale of transformation and coral, as well as two other fine stories.

n.b. No Guernseys, cucumbers, or other living beings were tickled or otherwise maltreated in the making of this blog post.

Word-Analogues Transmitted by Interdimensional Entity SquolGkmly-99rb After Being Warned Its Portal Would Close on its Neck-Analogue (“Last Words” series)

Posted on by Stewart

HEY so look it’s Monday! It’s… Monday… afternoon?

And I was supposed to post a new entry in the “Last Words” series this morning?

OOOPS.

No wait, here it is! And it’s totally thematic and appropriate that it was late. In no way did I hurriedly write this entry in a few minutes of panic because I completely forgot about this thing until just now.

Not at all.

Word-Analogues Transmitted by Interdimensional Entity SquolGkmly-99rb After Being Warned Its Portal Would Close on its Neck-Analogue if it Did Not Retract its Head-Analogue from this Dimension, to Which it had Travelled to Eat Sushi

by Stewart C Baker

I still have plenty of—

Anyone want to guess what that last word-analogue would have been if I did not have a 5-word limit per story the Entity had not been so hilariously tragically cut short? Er, poor choice of words there, perhaps.

(Hint: it rhymes with “rhyme.”)

Influences and gags! Because it’s no fun if I don’t explain them:

[body part]-analogue – I used to play this game called Kingdom of Loathing. It’s pretty fun. (And also the reason I first started writing haiku, but don’t tell anybody or you’ll ruin my haiku cred.) More to the point, there are various creatures in it like the Comma Chameleon who do not have actual body parts in all situations. As such, when canned combat dialogue which mentions those body parts appears, these beasties are described as having (e.g.) a “mouth analogue” instead.

WTF? – What is even going on in this bizarre little story? Don’t ask me. But it might have something to do with Jonathan Rosenberg’s hilarious and bizarre webcomic Scenes from a Multiverse.

Sushi. Mmm… Sushi…

Message Intercepted by SETI Immediately Before Neutrino Detectors Worldwide Picked up the Triple Supernova of Gliese 667. (“Last Words” series)

Posted on by Stewart

Cixin Liu’s The Dark Forest, the sequel to Hugo-award-winning The Three Body Problem posits a field of studies called cosmic sociology which would explore the ways in which civilizations interact on a scale the size of the galaxy.

Spoiler alert: Not very nicely.

This week’s story plays with the same idea.

Message Intercepted by SETI Immediately Before Neutrino Detectors Worldwide Picked up the Triple Supernova of Gliese 667.

by Stewart C Baker

If anybody’s listening—Run!

Much as in Cixin Liu’s novels, this little storylet shows life in the universe to be a scary, tenuous affair. Hyper-advanced spacefaring societies lurk in the darkness between the stars, just waiting for newly technologized societies (like us, or the unfortunate Gliesians) to reveal themselves so they can destroy them and keep their own foothold in the galaxy secure.

Is that how things would actually turn out, if we ever were to be contacted by extra-terrestrial life?

I hope not.

And I don’t think so.

But I guess only time will tell… (Although the chances of meaningful contact at all is pretty slim, given the time scales and distances involved. As several hypothetical solutions to the Fermi Paradox argue.)

Words Found Scratched inside a Drawer of the Second Mate’s Desk Aboard the Generation Ship Ausir (Last Words Series)

Posted on by Stewart

It’s Monday again! So here’s another entry in the Last Words series.

I’m still in a science fictional mood, so back to space we go! But not quite as far into space as with last week’s “Reported Final Words of God-Empress Min-Jo.” This week, we’ll turn away from space opera for another trope: that of the generation ship.

Words Found Scratched inside a Drawer of the Second Mate’s Desk Aboard the Generation Ship Ausir upon its Discovery, Bereft of Crew and Citizens, Seventy Years after its Vanishing

by Stewart C Baker

Don’t trust the captain’s——

Aren’t generation ships fun?

Oh. Wait. *reads the story he just wrote*

Aren’t generation ships dangerous?

This is actually my second foray into writing about them, the first being a full-length story that was one of my earliest published at something like pro rates. If you have a bit longer to spare, you can listen to that one, “Behind the First Years,” for free at StarShipSofa. (And apparently you can’t read it for free anywhere any more, because COSMOS has taken all their old fiction down. Huh. Will have to submit it somewhere. You can buy a shiny hardcover anthology which features it though, if you like.)