Andreas Matern’s Weblog

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Arthur C. Clarke, a visionary science fiction writer who won worldwide acclaim with more than 100 books on space, science and the future, died Wednesday in his adopted home of Sri Lanka, an aide said. He was 90.

Goodbye, sir.  Know that your works live on.  AP press release is here. 

Life is just one big banana. Science fiction allows us all to peel open the reality and discover the yellow truth inside.

Edit: Neil Gaiman has some great links on his blog, including a short story that I never read.

A post from here which I’m including in its entirety so I can think about doing it myself.

The first issue of Colored Chalk’s zine is nearly complete (edited by Caleb “thirstygerbil” Ross), in its final edits now and looking pretty damn sweet.

As luck would have it, the theme chosen for issue 2 was mine, so I get to play editor this time around. In the interest of getting this zine on a regular bi-monthly schedule, we’re getting a head start on calling for submissions for this issue. The window is open from now until the end of April. The zine will be published the last day of May.

Fittingly this theme is about keeping things going after they’ve been started.

Submissions are now open for Issue 2!

Theme for Issue 2: Cockroaches Ate the Ending.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote:
Quote:

Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

This theme is all about momentum. From its first sentence, your story should be moving and nothing should stop it from reaching its conclusion — not even the truncation of its last few paragraphs.

If you have to explain how your story ends, you’re using too many words. Focus on building the tension, not on how you want to release it. You should engage the audience in ways that they are cautiously certain of what will happen next, and then stop. Let that inertia carry them the rest of the way.

For an example of how one might interpret this theme, enjoy this classic video by RadioHead:

General Submission Guidelines are here.

Email your submissions to jase@bucketweb.com. Stories may be in any style or genre, up to 1500 words. Acceptable formats are TXT, RTF, Microsoft Word DOC, PDF, and Open Office ODT.

Please put “Cockroaches Ate the Ending” somewhere in the subject line of your email so that I can spot it amidst the spam messages I get.

Thank you in advance for your submissions!
__________________________

From Detached, available here:

“All the matter in the universe acts like a magnet. You aren’t just drawn to the Earth, the Earth is drawn to you. The effect is proportional to your mass, so it seems like only the planets and stars have gravity, but every animal and vegetable and mineral has this effect.

In other words, everything sucks.”

Colored Chalk dot com