It’s Fantasy Friday again, and you know what that means: It’s time to blog. For a beer! (Or hot chocolate, whatev.) This week we’re doing an open post. That means you, our dear readers, have free reign in the comments to talk about whatever genre topic is on your minds. Or you can throw up a slice of your latest WiP, be it a poem, a story, or that novel you’ve been working on. (We know a bunch of you are working on novels.)
At 11:59PM PST today we’ll close comments. If there are at least 10 participants we’ll choose the person whose contribution entertained, moved, or amused us most and award them $10. Have at!
I don’t think any parts of my novel are yet ready for public consumption. It’s been a slow process getting into the right (write) mindset after so long writing short pieces. But since I haven’t had much luck getting my short pieces published, I figure it’s better to focus on something that might give me the chance to write full time.
That being said, here’s a snippet of one of my abandoned short stories (the rest is being posted on my blog):
“Just sit right still, my boy, and wait.” Moody then closed his eyes and began to hum softly. Rob could almost feel the vibrations run along his spine. The man in black suddenly raised up his arms, palms faced out and Rob thought he could see the world darken, as if under a shadow. Moody spread his arms and the floor around Rob took on strange designs and patterns–veins of shadow snaked around the spot where he sat and formed a wide circle, at least his own height in diameter. As the circle completed itself, Rob felt the temperature in the air around him drop several degrees.
“Is it getting cold in here?” he asked, but Moody didn’t answer. Finally, the man in black opened his eyes. He tossed Rob the stone. “Try again,” was all he said.
Rob resumed his meditation, Moody paced around the circle.
I am stone… stone… stone…
I am pressure… pressure… pressure… Rob cried out as sharp pain seared through his palms. He looked down at the shattered remains of the stone. Again, he found himself about to speak, to question. “You did it, my boy, you did it.” Moody interjected. “You have power now, real power. And that is just the beginning.”
“But I still don’t understand,” Rob said, his voice unsteady after the shock of this experience, “what does the circle do?”
“Questions, questions! The circle, the power within it, thins! It makes reality malleable again. And not just for shattering rocks, either. I’ll show you.” Moody stepped closer. “Throw up those pieces of rock in the air.” Without comment, Rob did as he was told and stared slack-jawed as the pieces fell, unhurried toward the ground. Not floating, precisely, but as if they were settling in water.
ARE GOOD TIME TRAVEL MOVIES REALLY SO HARD?
I see that Warner Brothers mangled (er, I mean made) Bradbury’s classic story “A Sound of Thunder” into B-grade movie. Given the source material, there was a chance the movie would actually be good. But alas, I hear it is, at best, so so.
I haven’t the heart to actually watch, because unfortunately, too many time travel movies I’ve seen lately have sucked T-Rex doo-doo.
THE CLASSIC REMADE — BADLY
I recently watched again the 2002 remake of The Time Machine. And as much as I would love to have the time machine prop from that film as the centerpiece in my living room, I remember now why it’s been years since I watched this film.
[ALERT! INITIATE TIME MACHINE SPOILER] One thing in particular really ruined the movie, and made the hero seem like a whiny wimp to me. And that is that he goes back one time to try and save his true love. One time. And when that doesn’t work out, he spends the rest of the film on a quest to the future to discover why he can’t change the past.
Newsflash, bozo, you did change the past.
Instead of his love being killed by a mugger, she is killed by a man’s steam car. The mugger is free to commit more crimes on an entirely different couple. The man who owned the steam car has been changed forever, and probably arrested for manslaughter. And maybe, if you tried again, and tried a little harder, you could actually save your love on the third try. Why not give it a go, what the heck. She’s only the true love you broke the laws of time for. Surely she’s worth a whopping TWO tries?
[TERMINATE TIME MACHINE SPOILER]
PREMONITION OF SUCKINESS
A more recent example of stupid time travel movies is Premonition.
It sucked. And here’s the spoiler-free reason why:
She doesn’t actually try to change anything (except possibly at the end). So what’s the point of making a movie like this, a predictable and average marriage drama with the “twist” of the days shown out of order, if she doesn’t actually do anything different or special with her foreknowledge?
As soon as she realized she was jumping back and forth in time, the next time she jumped backwards she should have done everything she could to change future events.
[ALERT! INITIATE PREMONITION SPOILER – THOUGH ITS HARD TO SPOIL A CRAPTACULAR MOVIE LIKE THIS]
I have one word for you, lady – Mapquest! Take a few minutes and look up an alternate route for your husband! Seriously.
There a hundred things she could have changed, such as not seeking out the doctor she knows will later commit her, or even scheduling the funeral for a different day.
But the absolute worse? The one that had me shouting “Oh my GAWD!” and ready to throw something at the screen?
PUT THE FRACKIN STICKERS ON THE WINDOW! Geez!
“I’m a good mother!” she cries after her daughter crashes through a window and gets her face all cut up. The husband is all mangry about the fact that she didn’t put stickers on the window as they’d discussed so that the girls could see the window and NOT run into it.
Then she goes back in time to before that event, on Sunday, and does she put the stickers on? Does she save her daughter that pain and scarring? Or even just tell her daughter “Don’t run through the window when I ask you to get the laundry later”? NO!
Instead she goes running off seeking answers on her time jumping from … a priest, who inexplicably just whips out the big ole book about precognitive occurrences — you know, every church has one — and reads it to her??? WTF?
And I don’t want to hear crap about the immutable flow of time, theories on the inability to change future events, blah blah blah. Because, if she had tried and failed, well, that would be something now, wouldn’t it? I’m all for her trying to change the future but then events conspiring to put the timeline back in order and things proceeding as they were intended to anyway. That would be cool. That would be interesting. That would give her even greater reason for frustration and tension, as she fights against time itself and is thwarted. Will she succeed? We just don’t know.
But, again, SHE DIDN’T EVEN TRY!
And no, attempting to stop the accident at the end doesn’t count, because we don’t know she didn’t do so in the first place. And besides, that is a really, really lame “twist” ending when you see it coming from the start.
[TERMINATE PREMONITION SPOILER. AND IF POSSIBLE, THE GENIUSES WHO BRING US SUCH CRAPPY TIME TRAVEL FILMS]
GOOD TIME-TRAVEL MOVIES? (AS OPPOSED TO GOOD-TIME TRAVEL MOVIES)
I mean, this is how much I hated Premonition – I actually enjoyed The Butterfly Effect by comparison. Seriously, an Ashton Kutcher film was frickin’ genius when compared to Premonition – that can’t be good.
At least The Butterfly Effect attempted to be clever about its back and forth time jumping, setting up his later jumps early in the movie. Unlike in both Time Machine and Premonition, he tries multiple times to change things, and we get to see how each small change in the past leads to largely different futures.
Heck, even Timecop with Jean-Claude Van Damme is better than the new Time Machine or Premonition. And dude, so is Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, for that matter.
As for other time travel films:
Back to the Future was whacky fun-ness, if light on the science.
Twelve Monkeys is a great movie that used time travel well, but could have been equally great using some gimmick other than time travel.
Donnie Darko (theatrical version, not the director’s confuso-cut), one of my fave movies that has, among other things, a fairly satisfying use of time travel.
Michael Chrichton’s Timeline was okay, but lacked most of the science facts and science fictions that make the book great.
Somewhere in Time is a quiet little gem, but more a romance or drama than a “time travel” movie in my mind.
Both the 1960’s version of Time Machine, and the movie Time after Time, were enjoyable, especially compared to the 2002 Time Machine movie.
Millenium and The Final Countdown were so-so, Timerider is cheesy goodness, and Time Bandits is comic genius but could hardly be considered science fiction.
Groundhog Day and Run Lola Run are brilliant, but fall only loosely under the umbrella of time travel.
Star Trek IV and Star Trek First Contact were among the better Star Trek films (take that as you choose). And yes, SG-1 Season 8’s “Moebius” episodes were cool. But man did they blow “1969” – I mean, what the heck was up with that music?
What about you? Any favorite time travel movies? Or television shows? (Greatest time travel show of all time – Dr. Who, Quantum Leap, or Voyagers? ) Or thoughts on the ones listed above? Or ideas for great time travel movies?
How about worse time travel movies (A Knight in Camelot with Whoopi Goldberg anyone?). Or general pet peeves about time travel movies (like superheroes that turn back time by flying around the earth really, really fast)?
My faves are 12 Monkeys, Bill and Ted’s Excellent adventure, Star Trek IV, and Terminators I and II. I really dug on the original Time Machine, staring the guy who played Wilbur Post on Mr. Ed of all things!
There was also a cool movie where H.G. Wells unwittingly releases Jack the Ripper into 1983 Manhattan via his time machine. Oh noesss!
I also liked that Hugh Jackman movie where he comes FORWARD in time and the guy keeps falling down the elevator shaft because Hugh Jackman invented the elevator! WTF? I guess they’d have STAIRS there if the guy that invented the elevator shaft had come to the present to chase after Meg Ryan. Still nasty that Liev Shreiber basically banged his great-great grandmother in that one.
There are of course the Back to the Future movies too, which depending on the mood I’m in, er rock? Looking at those movies, I think they actually made a time machine to keep going back to 1985 to get Michael J. Fox. Friggin’ guy just kept looking like he was in his late teens! “How old are ya now Mike?” *In creaky, pre-pubescent voice* “37, Ivan.”
Hell, if they made a fourth movie today, Fox would still be 19, he might break a hip falling off his skateboard, but he’d still look 19.
Open thread, eh? Sweeeeeeet.
First off, my husband is a thief.
You know those insidious types who grime up the bottom of every single sock they wear, so that the soles are a nasty grey-brown even after they get sent through the wash a few dozen times? That’s him. And the sick bastard likes to steal socks that are obviously too small for him, force them onto his size 11 monkey feet, corrupt them with filth, and then stuff them back in my drawer.
And why does he steal my socks, you wonder? Because his are always “too dirty.”
(Fumes.)
Well, at least I won’t have to deal with sock-snatching for the six weeks I’m at Odyssey. Instead, I’ll have to deal with my crotchety Celeron piece of shit computer. Which, by the way, has locked up on me three times today, the latest during yet another Microsoft automatic update that I can’t seem to shut off because Windows Vista likes to see my manuscripts flash into nonexistence when I jump up to snatch a 30-second tea break.
(Fumes.)
I’m down to one cup of tea a day, btw. I used to be slurping down sixteen, plus coffee, so I’m doing good. (I’ve also been in an utterly foul, piss-poor mood ever since the day I decided to cut back two weeks ago. What a great way to start Odyssey, eh??) And guess what? One week after I went off caffiene, I got a sore throat that is still with me. The best way to ease a sore throat is to drink warm liquids. The best way to get your infusion of warm liquids is to drink coffee or tea. So here I am in my living-room, drinking steeped fucking strawberries because I have no decaffienated tea because decaf is for sissy la-la fools that can’t take the hard stuff.
(Fumes.)
Good thing Jeanne gave me a single room for the workshop. I think that if I had been forced to share my living space with a fellow student for six weeks, I would have ended up babbling incoherently long-distance to my mother about socks, Celerons, and caffiene. At least this way, I can reserve that time to babble about other stuff, like how the hell I’m going to come up with six <6500 word stories, especially considering my last 6 stories were 8500+ and ‘editing down’ only resulted in an average of an extra 300 words in each case.
(Fumes.)
In fact, I’ve got a contest on my site right now for readers of my five different book series(es?) to help me dredge up new material to write about, because I’m having a serious brain fart when it comes to short story ideas to write. I think it’s ironic that I go a year and a half pumping out short stories every few days and then suddenly, almost down to the very DAY I make the commitment with Odyssey, my short-story writing output grinds to a halt.
Cold feet? Hopefully not. Jeanne Cavelos, the director, told me that Odyssey wasn’t going to be all fun and games like I made it sound in one of my over-exuberant emails to her. I promptly wrote back to her and told her to bring it on.
(Nervous whimper.)
I guess there’s an upside to all this: At least if Jeanne uses the workshop to repeatedly stomp on my fat head, she won’t have the time to steal my socks and hijack my computer to download shit I never wanted.
-Sara King
“Ten miles long, two miles wide—ants, nothing but ants!” (“Leiningen Versus the Ants” by Carl Stephenson)
So, we had no water pressure after a while this morning. Not a good way to start the day well after it’s already gotten started. I got my flathead screwdriver and a pair of pliers and took off the cover to the cut-off switch at the pump, and, lo and behold, ants were crawling all in it–the wires, the leads, everywhere.
Fried ants between the connections doesn’t make the water pump happy. Nor my wife. Or me or the kids, because, hey, it ain’t Arrakis we’re talkin’ ‘bout here, but we are in a heat wave in southeast Georgia, thank you kindly.
First things first. Had to kill the ants. Teach them that, when engaged with me, I win. So I sprayed the affected area with Raid Ant and Roach spray. This worked well. Killed them . . . dead. Then I had to hunker down like the north wind and blow, blow, blow. Such effort on my part knocked a few dead ants loose; most of them were mired in whatever passes for rigor mortis in the ant kingdom along with the insecticide gunked up in the cut-off switch’s inner workings. I thought, “Hey, I’ll go ahead and take the screwdriver and touch the leads and get this puppy priming and pumping again.”
Note that I consider myself a fairly intelligent human being. Not necessarily smarter than your average bear, but dayum close. You might note, too, how nowhere in this anecdote’s narrative flow have I mentioned such things as, oh, shutting off the power at the circuit breaker in the house. Or right at the pump. Nope. Hadn’t happened.
Because it never happened. Period.
As soon as a handful of fried ants got out of the way, we had spark. We had connection.
We had a one-foot-diameter Raid Ant and Roach spray ball of flame from the fumes hovering around the cut-off switch box.
Fortunately, I wasn’t standing over it when this happened. Why, you might ask?
Because I consider myself a fairly intelligent human being.
I did take one of those canned dusters, you know, the type that sprays out AIR that’s really COLD and stuff and good at getting rid of pesky dead clumps of ants in a water pump’s cut-off switch box. Oh, it works well for dusting keyboards: the main purpose in our consumership of aforementioned product.
As I’m doing this (and, no, contents were NOT frakkin’ flammable–checked this time, thanks much), I had what James Joyce would’ve appreciated for one of his characters, say in Dubliners. Perhaps, dare I say, even Ulysses.
The Self-Avowed Geek had an epiphany: “Hey, I could’ve used the canned AIR duster-thing the whole damned time!”
But, then, I wouldn’t have had pyrotechnics at 9:00 a.m.
Nor would I have had such a cheeky LJ/Blog for a Beer post.
Believe you me, had I singed hair or eyebrows, you would NOT be reading anything remotely connected to the restoration of water at my humble abode.
So, there.
Oooh, oooh!!!
I just realized I could post story snippets, so I’m gonna do that, too. The following is the first couple pages of the story that just took semifinalist in Writers of the Future.
The Auldhund
By Sara King
Wulmaer squeezed between broken shards of multicolored glass intending to climb down the tower wall, but once he had sunk his talons into the sill, his weakened limbs betrayed him and he tumbled from the tower window in an exhausted stupor.
Only the biting winter wind whipping against his exposed skin dragged Wulmaer back from the brink of unconsciousness before he hit the ground. He bit down a moan as he flared his aching wings to stop the fall. The billowing membranes caught the air hard and his long-neglected muscles strained as his fall turned into a crippled glide into the night.
Wulmaer alighted awkwardly on the high wall surrounding the Spyre, scrambling to stay upright on the icy stone. With the motion, the length of broken chain dangling from his right wrist clattered against the mortar before he could snatch it up, and Wulmaer froze, terrified.
When he did not hear the heavy footfalls of other Auldhunds come to investigate, he wrapped the chain around his wrist and gripped it tight. He glanced behind him.
His former home–so beautiful the last time he had seen it–now appeared stark and soulless in the frigid light of the winter moon. Freshly-fallen snow still clung to the intricate latticework crawling between the Spyre’s silent towers. The stained-glass windows were black and silent.
Shuddering, Wulmaer turned back to the city before him. It sprawled like a sleeping giant, with a few tiny eyes flickering here and there as bakers began their nightly routine. He scanned the snow-padded streets for other Auldhunds, but saw none.
Taking a deep breath, he launched himself into the air once more, but the muscles and membranes in his wings had remained damp and unused for too long. He could only glide downward, unable to summon the strength to stay aloft. He hit the packed snow hard and stumbled, his chest heaving from the exhaustion.
Too long, he thought, straining to right himself. How many months had the Spyre kept him underground before moving him to the tower to endure Auld Donnel Vethyle’s final humiliation? How many years? His wings were shriveled, sticklike protrusions from his back, the great muscles in his chest and ribs withered away to gruel-fed bone.
Tottering, Wulmaer’s feet clutched awkwardly at the frozen ground, the four toes cramped and tight, unused to the strain. Steadying himself, he began a graceless flapping hobble as he moved through the city’s abandoned streets, praying he could make it over the outer wall before his guards realized he was gone…
…and that his former Auld lay in a pool of his own blood, struggling to mend his shredded bowels before he lost consciousness.
Just need to get across the river, Wulmaer thought, fixing the edge of the great Idorion forest in his mind. An Auldhund could get lost in the vast expanse of spruce, birch, and cottonwood trees. Even this close to the capital, his pursuers would never find him.
Wulmaer struggled under the moonlight, keeping to the back alleys, traveling under icy eaves and awnings, hiding his movements from above.
Behind him, the sound of dogs rose in chorus as his hunters began their search. Wulmaer struggled against despair and kept going.
As the moon reached its zenith, Wulmaer was still only a quarter of the way through the city. His feet felt like fire embodied, and his wings had long ago lost their ability to flare, now hanging limp and useless from his back, the delicate tips trailing in the dirt.
Wulmaer was digging his talons into the frigid, weather-worn planks of a tavern wall, using them to drag himself forward despite the agony in his feet, when an amused voice stopped him in his tracks.
“I’m surprised you made it this far, considering how much my kinsman screamed when you gutted him.”
…
If you want to keep reading, email me at kingnovel@gmail.com and I’ll send you the rest
Random thoughts on open mic night:
If someone fumes and vents enough, might they be used to power a small neighborhood? Would scientists from Woods Hole discover tiny tube worms growing around their mouths or other venting orifices?
Is unhappiness the source of dark energy driving the universe apart?
What if email spam transmogrified into the real thing where each email in your inbox produced a slice of Hormel Potted Meat in your mail box? How would stamps stay on?
Can real spam be dried out and used in place of adobe bricks to build a house? Would the Three Little Pigs live in such an abode? Would such a village work as camouflage against the big bad wolf.
If art offended no one, would it be art?
What if people posted about being offended by stories? If such a post was, in itself, offensive, would the cascade of counter posts create a whirlpool of such magnificent time-suck that all rational thought would be expunged by post #3?
Were termites allowed on Noah’s Ark?
If the Phoenix strikes oil instead of ice when digging on Mars, how soon will it take for George to declare a War of the Worlds?
If the above questions are merely rhetorical, would spelling count?
Just a thought: why is email spam called spam? Why not fruitcake? No one I know has received a can of unwanted Spam, but fruitcake, now there’s another matter…
Here’s a page from one of the stories I’m working on. Enjoy!
Lucian deAngelis placed his hands on the wooden breasts of the mermaid, thumbs positioned over her rosy nipples, and pushed. The nipples sank into the wall with a sea scented sigh, but he was too distracted to let it send a shiver down his spine. Instead, he took a step back and picked at the scab on the ball of his thumb, waiting for admission.
Everyone in the know knew that behind the brick façade of the Templeton Building there were mermaids, and not just painted on the walls in greens and blues, nor just sculpted out of marble, either. If one could get upstairs past the ogre bouncers and navigate through the mirrored maze to the mermaid-themed night club on the first floor, then slip through the Unseelie masses unnoticed, one might come to the third stall door in the women’s bathroom, and from there, if one answered the question correctly, one might descend the tight spiral staircase where a toilet should be to an ornate door with a mermaid carved into it. Through that door, one would come to a tiled pool, and from the edge of that pool, bare feet dangling in the warm water, one might listen to the club’s three namesakes discussing politics or reviewing the latest movies in their mesmerizing voices. It wouldn’t really matter what they said. There were stories of them enchanting their visitors by reading the phonebook aloud.
Having made his thumb bleed, Lucian stuck it in his mouth and ran his fingers through his black hair, still unused to its spiky shortness. The clear marble embedded in the navel of the mermaid stared at him, but he did his best to ignore both it and the closeness of the knotted oak panelling walls. Out of habit, he glanced at his wrist, remembering even as he did so that he’d traded his watch to a goblin a week ago in return for his life. Not mugging, but bartering, that was what the leather-clad goblin had said, its chipped flint blade razor sharp against his throat. In his head, Lucian hoped his life, even among the Fey, was worth more than a twenty dollar watch, but tonight he wasn’t so sure.
The opening of a short story I am currently working on.
TRAILER PARK MESSIAH
By
Edward Brock
When Christ returned, no one knew it because they had been looking for his coming in the clouds. They were looking for white horses, rains of fire and listening for the blaring of trumpets. Many had been anticipating finding cars suddenly empty as its occupants were “raptured” from the earth. Only a Hollywood-style return would do.
No one thought to look in the Samantha Road trailer park of a small West Virginia town where sits a battered, worn and peeling mobile home. The doors hang on single hinge. The window panes hide behind layers of mud, rust and bird droppings. The roof, once a bright, blinding sheet of tin has turned a rusty brown from too many rainfalls. Wrapped around the base of the mobile home is a green and brown blanket of grass. Long neglected, it hides snakes and the bones of dead rats.
Perhaps, sometime in the distant past, it may have been inviting, but now anyone who happened upon it avoided it out of disgust. Surely no one actually lived here, some thought. But had any of them bothered to stop, to check, to inspect the interior, they would see how wrong their assumptions were, but might have fled anyway.
The trailer contained only one occupant and its sparse decorations only enhanced the loneliness inside. The single bedroom was empty, except for the remnant of a torn and tattered brown carpet that left several inches of bare floor peeking around its edges. The hallway was equally bare, save for a single strip of hard plastic runner stretching from the living room to the small bathroom, where only a bare curling patch of vinyl lay. Once a toilet and sink were part of the bathroom, now only two water-damaged holes could be seen, each looking down onto a wet, moldy spot of ground. If you looked closely you might see something moving in the muck.
When He had taken up residence here, no one could say. The few neighbors who called this trailer park home seemed unconcerned or unaware of His existence. When approached about their neighbor in lot #7, most simply replied, “Who?”
He kept to himself, no one saw him venture from the home for food or milk or even toilet paper. He had a 27-inch Sony Trinitron sitting on 2 milk carts and spent his days watching CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and various cable news programs. He didn’t bother with sitcoms, reality shows or even cartoons, although he would occasionally let the TV sit on Boomerang for several moments before flipping to the next news program. Were you to listen you might hear him chuckle during Huckleberry Hound.
His furnishings were sparse, consisting of a worn pale green couch, a mattress (with no box-springs) that sat quietly and unused in the small bedroom. Had anyone looked inside, they would surely have assumed that no one resided at #7 Samantha Road, at least not on a regular basis.
No car or vehicle of any kind sat outside. The mail box was always empty. And when his neighbors passed by on their way into or back from town, none bothered to even glance in his direction. As far as anyone knew, He was just another tired old man secluding himself from the world. And he certainly must be poor white trash. Why else would he live in a trailer park?
I knocked on #7’s door on a cool, September morning; a Thursday to be precise.
“Come in,” Christ said.
Edward,
I hope there’s more to that story, because I’d definitely read it. Pay money, even.
benburgis.livejournal.com
(friends-locked entry)
April 7th, 2008
I don’t do a lot of lists or memes on here, but I’ve been tagged by both tinatsu and eclexys, so I suppose I’ll play. With no further ado, here are “Five Weird Things About Me.”
(1) I grew up on a farm. This might not sound very weird, except that it was a Jewish socialist chicken-farming cooperative in upstate New York. Yes, you read that right.
It was founded in the 40s as an “American kibbutz” by a bunch of Buber-influenced ultra-left-wing Zionists too radical to move to Israel until it stopped “opressing the Arab people.” I have no idea how it survived as late as 1974, but it did. I was 14 when the co-op board finally voted to sell the place, and I’ll tell you, finding out we could finally move to the city was like getting let out of prison early for good behavior.
I celebrated the news with my cousin Aaron, two fifths of Jack Daniels and my first-ever carton of Marlboro Reds. I passed out in the barn, and when I stumbled back to the main house the next morning stinking of chicken shit, tobacco and vomit, I was grounded for a month.
(2) Yeah, I was 14, yeah, that means that now I’m 48 and yes, I know that I look more like 28. Is it cheating to list my age as a separate point? After all, most of the time being old doesn’t feel “weird” so much as “depressing.”
(3) When I was a little kid, my mother would never let me have any of the toys I wanted, like G.I. Joe, on account of her pacifist principles. That meant that I ended up mostly playing with my sister’s old Barbie dolls. I know how that sounds, but I’ll defend whatever’s left of my masculinity by adding that the game I always played with them was “nuclear holocaust.” I would imagine that they were making their way across the irradiated landscape fighting mutants and raiding abandoned stores for guns and food.
(4) You might think that with an imagination that twisted, I was already well on my way to my current interests as a horror writer. I wasn’t. In fact, I didn’t even read my first horror story until about twenty years ago.
What I was really into was optimistic, problem-solving hard SF. One day a couple of weeks before my Bar Mitzvah, I spent the whole morning outside the barn reading an issue of “Analog.” I was so engrossed in the stories that I refused to get up and do my chores. Mom got so mad that she ended up tearing the thing to shreds. Many years later, I met Stanley Schmidt at a con. I presented him with the taped-up old magazine and told him the story. He laughed, and said he was just sorry it was before he took over as editor.
(5) When I was 27, I met at a guy at a loft party who claimed to be a vampire. That itself wasn’t weird. Remember, this was New York in the 80s and Anne Rice was huge. Every idiot in black clothes claimed to be a vampire, and half of them wore those stupid plastic fangs.
This was during one of those subway workers’ strikes, so even though he was obviously a jerk, when he offered me a ride home after the party, I took it. I was too drunk to notice at first when he veered off into an alley. I didn’t start screaming until he took off his plastic fangs to reveal the real ones underneath.
Later, as I lay slumped in the passenger seat, on the verge of death, he bit his tongue hard enough to make himself bleed. Then he kissed me, letting his own salty blood drip down my throat.
If I’d read some Anne Rice myself, I might have known what that meant. I found out the next morning when I tried to go outside, into the sun.
I am currently studying Biology for my SAT II. I have not studied until tonight and my parents have just left to visit my cousin who contracted a bacterial infection. Because I go to a high-level school, and am in the middle of my finals, I have not had time to study yet, and I do not expect to do well as I have had my mind preoccupied lately and subsequently forgotten material. I am trying to contain my worries however, as I have read sevral chapters of my textbook already and am planning to retake the test in October, but my character nontheless stresses over these minor details and hungers for the 5 slow days where I can throw off these chains and be liberated into the chill of summer. In the present moment, however, I am hounded by the pressures of Biology, Chinese and Math, and the straining of the relationship between my mother and I does nothing to alleviate the matter. It was in these last moments of dire stress, when I plan to study a bit more, take a run and take my second shower, that I relaized that writing would crack down the constraints of anxiety and defeat procrasination. I immediately decided that tonight, there is one proper thing to muse about, one thing that I have started to ponder lately, and that is the question of the quality and relevance of genre fiction against contemporary fiction.
In this modern world, I have recently learned that many writers, critics and literary figures alike have derided the value of genre fiction. This information did not really strike a tone in my self, but as time progressed I have come to more fully realize the foolishness of this assumption. The answer to this question was suddnely revealed to me only a few minutes ago, as I was taken on a quick trip through my past. I now realize that this attitude towards genre fiction has been lurking in the shadows, but I was simply never able to see it. During my middle school years, my English class was required to read books and then report on them to my various teachers (it was a significant portion of our grades). I had always had a love of reading, so the process had no qualms from me, but my classmates never agreed. One time, while reporting on a fantasy book, my teacher smiled and asked me: “why does it seem you children are so attracted to fantasy books? It seems silly.” I reacted sheepishly, my shyness and surburbian obeidiance keeping me from boldly reputing her claim, instead answering that I supposed it was the fantastic, otherworldy elements that attracted them. It is now clear that she thought fantasy books were childish, something I now totally disagree with.
My original answer had been right, and it is true that people are attracted to fantasy and sci-fi due to the events and characters that could not appear in this world. But now I realize it is deeper than that. It is because fantasy readers can be realists, dreamers or both. I origianlly started writing this because my parents leaving to visit my cousin reminded me of him. From the times we were young we have always loved fantasy and discussed books, a relationship I have with almost no one else. In my town, I was well-liked, but no one liked to read. At my new school, where I was able to fit in several niches and meet new people, they either didn’t read, or read contemporary fiction or more likely, non-fiction. When I first heard that my cousin was sick, I only shrugged it off, not worried (if he dies I will probably regret writing that). It was not because I am a callous person, but due to the fact that my cousin is like a cockroach (in the best possible sense). He broke the double digits for how many times he’s been hospitalized well before he was a teenager, and I don’t think some bacteria can take him down (I was actually planning to start a betting pool for when he was going to be hospitalized next with my sisters). Reading fantasy has been a shared trait among the both of us, and now I realize that it has caused us in one sense to become hopeful optimists looking towards the future. This notion would certainly comply with the idea that fantasy allows people to dream, quite correct, but that is not the full extent of it. In a sense we are also stark realists. I run track, something I usually excel at, but I have no wild hopes that someday I will be as good as Tyson Gay. We know that some people we idolize we can never equal, and the worlds of fantasy allows us to check into worlds of extrodinaire and endless possibility. We see another approach to the world, and whether some might classify it as escape, others would see it as the ability to break out of our sometimes pessimistic realism and run often blindly into the future. Recently I have gained the aspirations to become a acclaimed, visionary writer and filmaker, and live to the age of 107 (so I can see the dawn of the year 2100). I realize now that this may not happen, that I might die at 58, that I might end up in business for all I know. But fantasy fuels these desires, gives them an optimistic perspective that refrains from the ridiculousness of some dreams. My cousin recently revealed that he thinks it would be very cool to become someone who writes stories for videogames. The fact that we both grew up reading fantasy and want to be writers of some sort is no coincidence. It has shown us that we can push the limitations of reality, but the fact that fiction requires an amount of believability endows the need of skill. Fantasy is the food that all modern young readers have grown on today, such as Harry Potter, and you will rarely find an eight year old clamoring over William Faulkner or Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. Modern fantasy takes many forms and serves many purposes. It instills the positive values much needed in this world, and make children read, something many have become concerned over these past years. There is versatility in fantasy, seen by the claasics from C.S. Lewis and J.R. Tolkien, and modern, serious fantasy such as works by China Mieville, who uses his writings to sometimes express his political and social beliefs. Fantasy can inspire, express and comment, a fact baltanlty ignored ny some today. Grab an Entertainment Weekly, go to the books section, and you will see that all of the genre fiction is condensed into one or two small boxes. The fact that many professionals degrade genre fiction is insulting. A kindred spirit can be found in Michael Chabon, who rallies for the value of genre fiction. By no means do I try to attack contemporary fiction, as I also read that. But they should not conflict, as both have innovative, original writers expressing theri creativity and perspective while instilling the works with a stunning plot and important message. Genre fiction such as fantasy gives readers the chance to be creators, to rebel, to express themselves and to dream while rooted in a realistic basis. People such as my cousin and I have been shaped by fantasy into unique molds; we have more depth that others and have our own aspirations and interests. This shows the true value of some genre fiction, and also shows that some, who pride themselves as great commentators but blatanlty condemn the merits of fantasy, are not as wise or imaginative as they think they are. And it is people like me, people raised on the ideals and dreams of fantasy, who have to get up early to take a test they don’t see any point in taking, who shiver in anticpation for the chill of summer, and the opprotunity to become engulfed in books, fiction and non-fiction, genre and contemporary, and further develop their hopes, dreams, knowledge and readiness to run into the future.
Be Nice
A very short story by Eric James Stone
“Mommy?” Katylyn asked.
“What is it, honey?”
“You said I should be nice to everybody.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
Katylyn frowned. “Even monsters?”
“Even monsters.”
“Even big green monsters?”
“Yes, even big green ones. Be nice to everybody.” The microwave beeped.
“Even big green evil monsters?”
Her mother sighed. “Mommy’s busy fixing dinner. Just be nice to everyone, OK?”
“OK.” Katylyn went to her room and took a running leap onto her bed. Lying on her tummy, she clutched the bedspread and peered under the bed.
Three red eyes glowed in the middle of a slimy green face.
Katylyn said, “Mommy says I should be nice to you.”
“Good.” Sharp teeth glittered. “Be nice and bring me someone to eat.”
I just want to point out that even though my post previous is timestamped at 1:01am, it was actually made at 11:01pm PST, so it was before the deadline.