Announcing the Winners of the 2024 O. Henry Prize for Short Fiction
https://lithub.com/announcing-the-winners-of-the-2024-o-henry-prize-for-short-fiction/
#fiction
Broken Men On the Outskirts of Town
“Trebuchet,” flash fiction by Avitus B. Carle
https://electricliterature.com/trebuchet-by-avitus-carle/?mc_cid=44a6c790d8
#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
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
I know it’s mostly due to my growing up in Oklahoma, a Brown Dirt Boy, but I love this little chapbook from Myna Chang!
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/95121430-the-potential-of-radio-and-rain
https://newworldwriting.net/myna-chang-the-potential-of-radio-and-rain/
Characters Who Kill the Gods
In the Middle Of the Wee Hours Of the AM I was Watching This...
#Writing #Media #Fiction #Gods #Godslaying #Tropes #TaleFactory
(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/
Disbelief by Ashley Hutson
https://jellyfishreview.wordpress.com/2016/05/31/disbelief-by-ashley-hutson/
SFWA Names Susan Cooper the 40th Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master
Cooper is best known for the brilliant Dark is Rising sequence
https://reactormag.com/sfwa-names-susan-cooper-the-40th-damon-knight-memorial-grand-master/
The Physics of Fiction: How Art and Science Inspire Each Other
https://lithub.com/the-physics-of-fiction-how-art-and-science-inspire-each-other/
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.
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.
Are “ #Aliens” Just #Future #Humans? Ft. #MikeMasters
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y26iMB0r-f8
the piece about #time #travel starts at: 29:50.
#RV
#fact
#fiction
To save #Earth from an #alien probe, Admiral James T. Kirk and his fugitive crew go back in time to San Francisco in 1986 to retrieve the only beings who can communicate with it: humpback whales.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/sjjaXkXmwAno/
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.
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
*provided by Wikipedia.org Daily Article mailing list.
'Vraiment', un faux journal publié ce 23 janvier, pour décoder le monde tel qu’il est vu par l’extrême droite
#politique #presse #belgique #vraiment #faux-journal #extrême-droite #cal #centre-d-action-laïque #fiction #solidarité #femmes #chômeurs #contraception #avortement #réchauffement-climatique #étrangers #élections
Caela’s Story 16 #fiction #serial #somethingsacred #caela
https://caelastory.blogspot.com/2009/08/something-sacred-caelas-story.html
You are always going back into the forest. It helped to form you, as did your father’s seed, your mother’s womb and milk. What forms us, becomes us, we must explore, if only in dreams or strange obsessions, or unnatural silence.
Caela and Larik are quite a pair. Old and young, female and male, hyper-sensitive and numb to sensitivity, working out who they need to become in the cabin once a happy home to Caela, Singer and Felicity (with Maea and friends of the moment in tow). It naturally fell out that they be together. The boy who could not bond, could not fathom what was common to those around him, was bonded to Caela. She alone made sense to him. She had always been a part of who he was. Caela too felt a strong and special connection to this child. She also felt a need to find a way to heal him of the affliction resulting from a wound she also needed to heal within herself. Larik’s mother, Maea, meanwhile, was having difficulties and unpleasant awakenings of her own.
“He acts like I got pregnant on my own. Now it’s all my situation to deal with. As if he had no part in it at all.” Maea is speaking bitterly of Larik’s father, Larn, whom she clearly still adores. He has shown considerably less interest in her since it started to become evident that she would be more of a drain than an energizing inspiration. It’s not that he didn’t care for her; but there are many for whom he feels great fondness. All are subservient to his brightly shining visions, his grand plans and their imperatives. It is not that he is any different from the man she has known him to be, loved him for being, all along. Yet she feels bitterly disillusioned. She has lost her anchoring, her way, her understanding of and belief in who she had thought herself to be. She no longer feels part of the House community. For awhile she tries staying with her parents, spending much of her time with Caela and Larik, attempting to be a family. It is clear that Larik greatly prefers Caela, is shy and confused around Maea. Mirra and Doren have become set in routines to which Maea feels an outsider. She feels their love; but Maea feels awkward when she needs to find a respite of serenity in which to reconnect to herself, discover where her next steps need to lead.
Maea’s grandmother Maris’s place had been left behind, not too far from Jase’s outpost, as building moved further outward. The house is surrounded by plenty of land for their grazing animals, crops for fiber, feed and food for the household (supplemented by trade). It was a large house, built onto over the years to accommodate people and projects. Maris and here older daughters, Arla and Cali, still kept up their busy textile workshop. Cali’s longtime lover, Lilia, does her part as well, including her magnificently intricate and lovely embroidery to their bag of tricks. Lev, who has been living with Maris for decades now, assists with his carpentry, building equipment and furniture for the household and as part of their stock for trade. Always plenty of work for another pair of hands, and Maris informally takes in whoever wants to stay for as long as it all works out for them all. There is plenty of room in which to enjoy solitude, and plenty of companionship, easy-going or intense, depending on what one seeks. Caela comes around frequently with Larik. He likes the more private simple chores as he learns them, working with the animals and plants, away from the main farmlands of the community. His family knows not to pressure him, not to overwhelm him with expectations he has no ability to comprehend. Maea is getting better at dropping her own expectations for how life is meant to be.
Less enthusiastically involved with Larn, though still sympathetic to his vision, Felicity and Teren now live in their cabin near the House with little Solia. Solia, beautiful entertaining, entrancing, cuddly imp, is their perfect muse. They are developing their own project, based on their combined talents. Felicity’s knowledge of healing and Teren’s experience with creative expression have given them ideas about exploring the realm of possible expressive therapies. Working with others who are excited about possibilities of working out personal issues, improving health and attitudes, getting more intimately in touch with their inner muses, they are figuring out together how their theories can best be turned to practice.
A life expands into other lives, energies combining and recombining, creating human ecosystems. Like trees, each living through its own cycles within the cycles of the forest, we create our stories, our lore, our social networks.