#fiction

girlofthesea@diasporasocial.net

#literature #science #fiction #horror #film #art
MONDAY AFTERNOON MOVIE
The War of The Worlds. 1953. Gene Barry
Science Fiction. This is the story that was broadcast in 1938 over the radio as a show by Orson Wells, but listeners thought it was real, and panicked.
Written by H.G.Wells.
I love Internet Archives.
https://archive.org/details/sci-fi-horror/04+-+The+War+of+the+Worlds+1953.mp4

prplcdclnw@diasp.eu

Some ebooks I've read since I moved up to Linux Mint 21

  • Red Team Blues, by Cory Doctorow
  • The Lady with the Gun Asks the Questions, by Kerry Greenwood
  • The Every, by Dave Eggers
  • Kaiju Preservation Society, by John Scalzi
  • All Systems Red, by Martha Wells
  • Artificial Condition, by Martha Wells
  • Rogue Protocol, by Martha Wells
  • Exit Strategy, by Martha Wells
  • Obsolescence, by Martha Wells
  • Compulsory, by Martha Wells
  • Home, Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory, by Martha Wells
  • Network Effect, by Martha Wells
  • Fugitive Telemetry, by Martha Wells
  • The Spare Man, by Mary Robinette Kowal
  • The Power, by Naomi Alderman
  • The Lost Cause, by Cory Doctorow
  • The Three Body Problem, by Cixin Liu
  • The Bezzle, by Cory Doctorow
  • Lock In, by John Scalzi
  • Tracers in the Dark, by Andy Greenberg

I have only listed stories I can recommend. They are listed in the order that I read them.

I'm still reading Tracers. I can also recommend his Sand Worm. These are non-fiction.

All the others in the list are fiction.

All the Wells stories listed here are part of The Murderbot Diaries.

The Greenwood book is part of her Phryne Fisher series. I have read all 22 Phryne Fisher novels. Great fun.

The Every is a sequel to The Circle. Don't bother with the movie of The Circle. It has a radically different ending that ruins it.

I can also recommend all the Lady Astronaut stories of Kowal.

Cory is probably my favorite writer these days, if I have one. I certainly read a lot of what he writes.

A few of these are part of series that I haven't finished yet.

I'll probably read System Collapse (Murderbot) next, followed by Head On (sequel to Lock In).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_of_Earth%27s_Past (the Three Body series)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phryne_Fisher
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circle_(Eggers_novel)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Murderbot_Diaries
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Scalzi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Greenberg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Robinette_Kowal

#andy-greenberg #kerry-greenwood #mary-robinette-kowal #martha-wells #cory-doctorow #john-scalzi #fiction #novels #novel #ebook #ebooks

kennychaffin@diasp.org

(I received and devoured her chapbook of the same name a couple of days ago. Love Love Love what she has done!)

The Potential of Radio and Rain
by Myna Chang

June 21, 1984
Deaf Smith County, Texas

I.

Moonshot Rodriguez used to mash up lightning bugs and smear them on his front teeth. His grandpa had named him, and told him the graveyard was haunted with the light of special lives. Moonshot believed him. He wanted to shine.

II.

On her 17th birthday, Gracie Lynn Johnson stole her stepdad’s truck: freedom in the form of a twelve-year-old stepside Chevy, red, stick shift, with an empty gun rack and an AM radio. Pulse thundering, she stepped on the gas.

III.

It was one of those close, rare summer nights when radio waves bounced from the WLS studio in Chicago across the continent and the mesquite and the grit, through layers of atmosphere miraculously windless and damp with possibility, alighting the Caprock like a secret love. Gracie Lynn adjusted the knob. John Cougar cut through the static, singing about Jack & Diane, bass setting the brittle speakers to a tremble.

Moonshot was parked outside the Church of Christ, in the gray Pontiac that once belonged to his grandpa. He crumpled a beer can, waiting.

Gracie Lynn rolled up in a swirl of caliche dust. “Shut up and get in,” she said.

Moonshot didn’t have to be told twice. He grabbed a couple of cold ones out of his cooler.

“Graveyard night,” he said.

They passed the hardware store and the diner, and then Gracie Lynn shifted into third, leaving town behind. Two minutes later, they topped Coyote Ridge and turned on the dirt track that led to the cemetery. The air tasted like sage and, maybe, rain. Lightning bug flickers lit the polished tombstones ahead, and it was magic, that quick sparkle of life under a starshine sky.

“This is almost good enough,” Gracie Lynn breathed.

A lightning bug fluttered through the open window, its glow fading. Moonshot cupped it in his hand and steered it back into the charged night and the AM waves.

~

Myna Chang writes flash and short stories. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in X‑R-A‑Y Lit Mag, Reflex Fiction, FlashFlood, Atlas & Alice, Writers Resist, and Daily Science Fiction. Anthologies featuring her stories include the Grace & Gravity collection Furious Gravity IX; and the forthcoming This is What America Looks Like anthology by Washington Writers’ Publishing House. Read more at MynaChang.com or on Twitter at @MynaChang.

https://newworldwriting.net/myna-chang-the-potential-of-radio-and-rain/

https://mynachang.com/

#flash #poem #poetry #fiction #micro

brainwavelost@nerdpol.ch

The problem, however, is that the proponents of #Russophobia operate in a fact-free environment, where ideological hatred has replaced informed judgment, where actual knowledge about #Russia has been supplanted with fantasy-laced #fiction. They fear Tucker Carlson’s interview with Vladimir #Putin because, through this interview, ideas, #narratives, and #facts that have been ignored or suppressed by the political and media elites will be set forth in unfiltered fashion for the American public to consider free of the influence of those who seek to manipulate the population through narrative manipulation.

source

libramoon@diaspora.glasswings.com

Caela’s Story 18 #fiction #serial #somethingsacred #caela

Harmonic Academy’s philosophy of encouraging a variety of learning styles and peaceful self-expression was a positive nurturing environment for children who might feel pressured by social stigmatization of any kind in their neighborhood lives. With gorgeous rolling grounds, just far enough north of the hub of the city to be out of the way, it was a wonderful world of play in which to grow. The witchfolk children knew not to shine, not to stand out, to get along enticing no comment. They knew which teachers they could trust to help them with academic or personal concerns.

Out in the harsh eastern drylands, no one wanted to build their futures. Land more dust than loam, weeds more yellow bristly rough to the touch, creatures less shy, more mean, stinging angrily at whatever may disturb hard fought for and unforgiving territory. Sira had never been beyond the city to the east. She had been given warning images in her catechisms against careless disclosures. They might not exile someone like Sira if she should be fount out. They well might imprison her in horrible conditions, a much more viscerally palpable threat. It was in the harsh glaring sun of the unproductive east land that prisoners, pariahs from city justice, were sent for penitence.

All societies need prisons, don’t they? Time-out holes to hold the dangerous, or repositories for the politically and socially incorrect are hallmarks of civilization. Aren’t they? Well, not in a community in which a wrongdoer is immediately hit hard with the emotional toll wrought; not where the governing structure is more libertarian than democratic and disputes are honored by settling them through well-argued compromise. It is easier, of course, to settle disputes and prevent the welling up of criminal intentions within small enough social confines so that all parties are mutually well known. Once factions set up against factions, arguments intractably settled into place, disputes become institutionalized, and so do the losers.

Sira’s favorite teacher, Merin, was secretly a historian among her people. He was also a learned historian of their colony planet and of the home world, Earth. He was generally a favorite among the teachers and students for his easy friendly, yet passionately fierce manner, the way he made what might seem difficult concepts so immediate and real, the way he readily listened and deeply appreciated what was said to him. His intense mental thirst had led him to acquire a broad range of knowledge which it was his great joy and privilege to share. That Sira’s best friend, Reag, was Merin’s son only added to her estimation of them both.

libramoon@diaspora.glasswings.com

opening view #fiction

Monk Hill stands smiling in the morning sun. Early Spring, well-tracked snow still covers frozen ground.
Coffee-stained observations through my kitchen window.
Tom moved me here to heal, to figure out who I need to be and how. I don’t think he was so much scared as awed by my profound collapse
into frenzied inertia. He had helped to organize this place, this art-based enclave, to enjoy as occasional recreational refuge as well as
to give free range to special friends that he might be blessed in their blooming. He seems quiet and controlled, a useful cover for his
beauty obsessed soul. So fortunate that he has all that inherited wealth to indulge with. I mean that sincerely. So many highborn brats
indulge in nasty, even cruel, habits because they can. Or then there are those obsessed with out-earning daddy or expanding their
empire no matter the cost to collateral lives. See, I can record a logical progression of thought, sitting calmly, drinking coffee for the
luxurious warmth, smiling at the hill, the valley, the stone and brick buildings, the tracks in crusty snow, maybe a human or critter
intent on their own projects. This is comfort. This is breathing deeply, stretching gently, opening slowly toward the warmth of
activity, to explore in search of empowering questions.
Sounds like Eat Yer Pudding is open below. Guess I’ll take this party public, check out the scene over breakfast bread pudding.

vtel57@diasp.org

English Wikipedia Article of the Day

W. Somerset Maugham - Wikipedia

Sadly, my first and only experience with the man was Of Human Bondage, which I would have preferred someone prying up my fingernails than having to actually finish reading that book.

But hey... that's just my very subjective viewpoint. Many of you may love the man and his art. I may be of a different opinion if my first connection with him were one of his other stories.

#Fiction #Reading #Authors #Somerset_Maugham #Biography #Wikipedia

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