B. Morris Allen's Blog, page 7
June 24, 2019
Beginnings 085 – Revelation
Life isn’t so much about what you gain as what you lose. Enthusiasm, vigor, optimism, ideals fall by the wayside, replaced by poorer, flimsier, more practical substitutes. Life isn’t so much about what you find as what you choose to leave behind.
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“Revelation”
About the story: What if natural selection were a little more voluntary?
June 23, 2019
Beginnings 084 – Gods in Reduced Circumstances
They were out of bread. They were out of bread. Naturally. Who would have fetched it? Apollo, who sat in the parlor, misquoting Homer? Epimetheus, who celebrated his freedom from Pandora by relinquishing all material goods, except those that weren’t his? Cerberus, whom the Furies had left ‘just for an hour, and please take him for a walk if he gets antsy’, and who lay snoring on the hearth, one head each in the laps of Aphrodite, Hermes, and Eurydice?
Prometheus looked around the little kitc...
June 22, 2019
Beginnings 083 – Letters to Larry About Guns
Dear Larry,
I got in!
I’m a certified police recruit now, so watch yourself. Remember, I know all about your troubled past; I was in it.
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“Letters to Larry About Guns”
Disarm anthology
Published 30-Apr-2017
About the story: An outspoken epistolary story about gun control.
June 21, 2019
Beginnings 082 – A Conversion of Crows
It moved forward in a crawl, jagged angles flowing over soil and stone alike, dawn shaping shadow and sun into beaks and talons that moved relentless toward her boot and over it. With a touch of her finger, the fern curled in on itself, withdrawing crags and fangs into a soft ribbon of green and grey whose silhouette curled round her foot like a friendly snake.
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“A Conversion of Crows”
Metaphorosis
Published 01-Sep-2017
About the story: Searching for magic in a secondary world remarkably l...
June 20, 2019
Beginnings 081 – Outburst
Earthlight sends jags of shadow crawling across the floor of the viewing bay, intangible reminders of the blowout that took #7 Arc, sent its occupants out into the dark. Killed my friends. Killed my parents. Killed my brother. They were at an Earthview, back when it was still a sick curiosity. No one comes here now, not in the year since the accident.
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“Outburst”
Cast of Wonders
Published 29-May-2017
About the story: When all that’s left of humanity is a small orbital – and it’s breaking u...
June 19, 2019
Beginnings 080 – Blue is the Color
It started with a routine flyby. Come within 1,000 km, scan and film, on to the next. In the rare case where there was something valuable enough to justify a Stellar Federation override of the pending commercial claim, we’d land, verify the data, plant a flag. Nothing to it, and the only exciting part of the job. As designated explorer, I usually had nothing to do. Well, chief cook and bottle-washer, but with these new food-syns, it’s all just button-pushing.
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“Blue is the Color”
About the...
June 18, 2019
Beginnings 079 – Chambers of the Heart
Despair and Ecstasy are the simplest. Ecstasy is the small and cozy room of a cottage that looks out on a broad meadow in the forest. In the spring, elk come to posture and to mate, and the wildflowers bloom on every side. In the fall, mist dances in silver swirls framed by gold and bronze and copper trees. It is always spring or fall.
Despair is a vast, dark hall of low ceilings and small windows. In winter, snowdrifts sometimes cover the windows so that they are only squares of gray agains...
June 17, 2019
Beginnings 078 – Susurrus
The wind whispers to her. In its hot, harsh voice, it whispers soft, cool lies. Oh, how it lies. Above the hiss of sand, the murmur of dunes, the wind lies about Shade, and Green, and, most of all, Water.
She can smell it sometimes, the fresh clean scent of water, of trees, sometimes even flowers. Once, there was the sharp tang of citrus. But about her now is only desert, an endless landscape of smooth, shifting sand, of dunes that grow and move and change, but always stay the same. A landsc...
June 16, 2019
Beginnings 077 – Wyrm und Drang
Sure, I can breathe fire. It’s surprising how seldom that comes in handy when you have to change into a two ton dragon to do it. Melt a couple of your were-kin’s barbecues and you don’t get invited back much. It makes for a lot of awkward questions in the neighbourhood, and crackpot journalists hanging around looking for monsters.
The were-pups get all the attention, of course, and they complain a lot, but they bring it on themselves, really, with all that baying they do when the moon is ful...
June 15, 2019
Beginnings 076 – Marshal Law, Ch. 11
Hanging is a terrible way to kill a man. When you hang a man, he jerks and sways and kicks like a dancing puppet. He fouls himself, but his manhood swells like he wants a woman. On all sides, there’s a crowd watching, jeering, crying. It takes a long time to die and most of the crowd leave before the end. There’s no dignity in a hanging. It’s a lousy way to kill a man. It’s not a great way to die, either.
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“Marshal Law, Ch. 11”
NIAD 5
Published 17-Oct-2015
About the story: Novel in a Day i...
