Month: November 2015

My story “Elements of a Successful Exit Broadcast” reviewed

Posted on by Stewart

I’ve spotted a couple of reviews out there on the Interwebs for my story “Elements of a Successful Exit Broadcast” in the November issue of Fantastic Stories of the Imagination. I know you’re not supposed to read the things, but I’m a glutton for self-abnegation and never could resist.

Charles Payseur of Quick Sip Reviews has some kind things to say about the story.

There is a great sense something terrible has happened, and that in some ways it takes being in such a situation to give advice on it. That this list is both a manual for others and its own successful exit broadcast. That it follows its own advice, though it slips a bit, as anyone would. That it keeps the pain just under the surface, slipping only momentarily up to show in the quiver of a lip, the hesitation in a word. It’s a gripping story, a very, very short story, and a fine read.

I’ll drink to that! Or I would, if I drank.

Alas and alack, David Wesley Hill of Tangent Online was less than impressed, and reads the story as being about someone who is “concerned about looking good while dying horribly”—not quite what I had in mind with this story, although I suppose it’s a fairly accurate surface level summary.

David does make a good point about this being an implausible set of instructions, but such is the nature of the piece’s second-person conceit. Somewhat more baffling to me is that he spends the rest of the review talking about the authentic smell of burning and/or rancid meat. As he says, “Details count, particularly in a story of 200 words.” And sure, I’ll agree with that. And sure maybe I should have deleted “rancid.” (I will admit that it’s mostly there for rhythm.) All the same, this aspect of David’s review still seems a little over the top to me.

Ah well. You can’t please everybody, right? I think that’s especially true for such a short piece as this one.

“Elements of a Successful Exit Broadcast” is odd, short, and free to read at Fantastic Stories of the Imagination

Posted on by Stewart

I like flash fiction. I also like space ships (albeit ones without puppies involved).

So it pleases me to combine the two in my latest publication, “Elements of a Successful Exit Broadcast,” which is now live in Fantastic Stories of the Imagination‘s November/December issue.

It’s super short–about 200 words total–and has some pretty spiffy art to go with it. Go give it a read if you have a spare moment or two. And enjoy!

My Dicksian story “Fugue in a Minor Key” free to read at Galaxy’s Edge

Posted on by Stewart

What would you do if everything you thought was real was ripped away, and you were young again? And what would you do if everything you thought you real was what you wanted back again?

These are the two core questions asked in my story “Fugue in a Minor Key,” which is in the November issue of Galaxy’s Edge.

The story puts us in the head of Katja Maczyk, a young university student who has to answer both when two lab technicians tell her that her husband, her daughter, and her career as an internationally-renowned pianist was all part of a simulation. Katja struggles to cope with what she’s told is reality, and with the help of a newly-budding romance with one of the lab techs starts to think she might just be able to do so. That’s when the hallucinations start up . . .

I call the story “Dicksian” because I was very consciously trying for an overall plot that wouldn’t have been amiss in the works of Phillip K. Dick. I’ve always enjoyed the way his stories played with reality, and found the results fascinating.

Here’s a short excerpt of my story which gets across the feel of the thing:

What they do is sit me in a folding chair in a white-walled room with a single fluorescent bulb on the ceiling. Two techs in white (one short and female, one skinny and male) sit there and tell me this is real, that I was never a world-famous concert pianist, never married and never mourned my husband, and never never never had a daughter.

As such, the skinny one says, it is impossible for her to be in any danger.

Is she in danger? I ask.

Ma’am—

But I don’t let him finish. If she’s all right, I say, I’d like to see her.

Ma’am, the skinny one repeats. You can’t see her. She isn’t real.

Are you the police?

No, the short one says. We’ve been through this before.

We are experimental psychologists, the skinny one says, and you have spent the past eight minutes immersed in a holistic simulation designed to test the human mind’s response to stress.

I know dialogue without quotation marks is a big stumbling block for a lot of people, but in this case I would argue that it plays a big role in adding to the actual feel of the story and its what-is-real core. In the snippet above, for example, “We’ve been through this before.” could be either something the psychologist says, OR something from the viewpoint character.

Anyway, I’m really pleased overall with how the story turned out, and am glad it found a good home.

Go give the rest a read! It’s free until January, and after that available only in the print edition.