Six Word Stories

Wired magazine just published a collection of six word stories written by contemporary science fiction and horror writers. There are some heavy weights in here.

Here's a couple:

Visiting team, home run. Silent crowd.
Hobbit, with no scarf, follows wizard. (OK, that's cheating)
Mountain bike, no control, a cliff.
I see you! Sorry wrong person.
Are these your children? Want them?

Shuttle liftoff pictures taken from outer space

These are the cooolest pictures I have seen in a while

Drawing lessons online

I am just full of information today. I took a gander at a couple of lessons here and they look legitimate. Take a gander at them and let me know what you think.

Stephen King Podcast

I haven't had a chance to hear this because I am at work but the Times has a podcast/interview with Stephen King. I can't remember if any of you guys like his writing but I am sure at least one person in our group has read a Stephen King book. I've read a couple. You can hear the podcast here.

Flash Fiction Contest

I've heard about this form of fiction recently and saw that a book store had a contest. The winners are posted here. I only read the first couple because the library is gettting ready to close. Give the winner a shot, it's really good.

Michael Swanwick

Any of you guys ever read any Michael Swanwick? He wrote a book that just blew me a way a few years ago called "The Iron Dragon's Daughter" that is an amazing urban fantasy. Here here comments on it:

"Q: Is The Iron Dragon's Daughter a Marxist fairy tale?

Well, it's certainly not a fairy tale – I was trying to deal with some serious matters in as straightforward and truthful a manner as I could. But as Kafka demonstrated, sometimes that involves turning a man into vermin or putting a sword in the hand of the Statue of Liberty. You could say that it's Marxist in the sense that I don't pretend that class differences don't exist. But it's not really informed by leftist sensibilities at all. It's more like a world in which everything has been turned inside out so that the essential mysteries of human consciousness are more obvious.

Q: What was the atmosphere you wanted to convey in the book?

I wanted to write a high fantasy but I'm allergic to horses, a mediocre archer, a worse fencer, and I was thirty-two when I first set foot in a castle. So my experiences left me woefully unqualified to go toe-to-toe with J.R.R. Tolkien or E.R. Eddison. But all that Medievalia is just settings and furniture, really, for the serious work those writers were doing. I replaced that stuff with factories and strip joints and mega-malls – places I know and understand – and this in turn made the world more convincing to me.

There's a kind of a bleak, lonesome beauty to a sunset seen from a factory parking lot. That's the kind of feeling I was going for – that the world is magical even if it's the one we're most familiar with. You can be incredibly unhappy and still feel that, still feel privileged to be alive."

Meeting This Week

I already sent out an email but I'll post it here also that we are having our monthly meeting this week, Thursday October 19th at 6 pm. I hope everyone can bring something to share.

Added physics software bonus

I double dare you not to play with this for half an hour.

Have any of you read anything by Chuck Palahniuk? If so, what did you think? If not, allow me to recommend EVERYTHING HE HAS EVER WRITTEN. Except possibly Haunted, because that's just creepy. Not that all of his writing isn't creepy, but. Basically this post is an excuse to foist my current obsession onto all of you. (He's the guy who wrote Fight Club, to give you some perspective.)

I would post things that I have written, but everything I'm writing lately is either essays for class or bandslash. And I really, really doubt any of you want to read either of those.

National Book awards

I didn't even know they had an award for Young People's Literature. They do and here's the list that came out in the last day or so. Have any of you young people read any of these books? I am in the middle of reading "The Looming Tower" which is one of the nominees for nonfiction. It's a book about the rise of al-Qaeda.

M.T. Anderson, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The
Pox Party (Candlewick Press)
Martine Leavitt, Keturah and Lord Death (Front Street Books/Boyds Mills Press)
Patricia McCormick, Sold (Hyperion Books for Children)
Nancy Werlin, The Rules of Survival (Dial/Penguin)
Gene Luen Yang, American Born Chinese (First Second/Holtzbrinck)

In response to Ed's desperate pleas, I shall post something. (Hey, all of us are in middle and high school, and you're living the luxurious life, remember that, Ed.) Hrrrm...because I have no good material right now, I'm going to use my Language Arts assignments!

First writing assignment: In summer...

In summer...I always visit my extended family in Missouri. Sometimes for a week, sometimes more. Each year, I grow more mature, so each trip is a definite eye-opener. I find ways to get along with my brother during the fourteen hour long car trip. I enjoy the mountains and other views, and gain more knowledge of wordly things; example, how to work a vending machine or just how long it takes to drive through Tennessee.

When we arrive at my aunt's house, I let the nostalgia sweep over me, as I am glad to be out of the cramped car. However, at my aunt's, not everything is perfect. An example of this was when I learned her cat, my favorite animal, had been put to sleep. Another painful time was when I visited my grandfather in his nursing home.

I savor quiet moments reading on a bed that's not my own, but I'm always ecstatic to visit my scarcely seen family. Each year, I learn a bit more about them all because I'm let in on more secrets since I'm getting older and because I'm I listen more attentively.

SIMILES AND METAPHORS
(feel free to steal one or two if you ever need one and are not feeling creative)

-My spoon was a catapult for the peas I flung at my sister.
-Our dog is a fierce warrior guarding its castle, our house.
-The hundred dollar bill was the door to my sucess.
-The embarrassing photo was a gag, not allowing Tom to tell anyone Jim's secret.

-The bird was chipper as a young child.
-The pillow was like a door to dreamland, enticing its owner to sleep.
-My puppy is like a kind smile, always cheering me up. (I do not actually have a puppy)
-Her long hair looked and felt as though it were silk.
-The clouds were like a cold, grey blanket over the sky.
-The car zoomed down the road like an odd sort of monster, emitting puffs of awful black breath.
-Grass that has grown tall will sway like waves in the sea when wind blows.
-The rain drops were like bullets as they shot from the clouds up above.

I will be posting more frequently once I start actually writing and editing all my beginning-of-the-school-year ideas. You know, the ones you come up with and elaborate on during the middle of math class...

Posting

Hey guys, any chance we can get a couple of you to post what you read to the group last time? I heard a couple of things I'd like to be able to read and digest.

Soft tissue from a t-rex

I don't want to turn this into a science blog but I found this story via David Brin's blog. It seems a dinosaur bone has supplied us with some soft tissue. Story and photographs here.

A new blog

I know at least one of you has expressed an interest in librarianship. Here is a blog by the staff of The Library Journal.

Another attempt to ban Harry Potter

This time it's a mother in Georgia.