Paula’s Comments (group member since Oct 28, 2015)

Paula’s comments from the Science Fiction Microstory Contest group.

C., thank you again. While searching for the story, I found a few from earlier contests that I now think I'd wrongly discarded! Meanwhile, maybe we should all be looking out for space detritus, skulls or otherwise, and especially black-painted pointy-tipped remnants of the current fence-to-nowhere. C. wrote: "I love a good happy ending. Paula. You should share that story again, or at least an excerpt. The mental image of a huge skull flying through space trailing shreds of detritus left me aghast, like ..."

Thank you, Jot, for going ahead anyhow and *finding* this story for me. I'm so glad. Much appreciated!
Paula wrote: "Jot, I'll check my old manuscript files for "dem bones" first--though if it's here under a different title, yikes!--but you've done enough work on all this! Let me check further before you go doing..."

Jot, I'll check my old manuscript files for "dem bones" first--though if it's here under a different title, yikes!--but you've done enough work on all this! Let me check further before you go doing more. And--thank you. And you too, C.!
Reason I'm wondering re this story and some others is I'm thinking to do a selection of my own science/speculative fiction tales for a short book.

Wow . . . I vaguely remember I liked it; shall have to *go back into my earlier folders* as it seems to have vanished. Maybe we could do a story, rather Borges-like, on searching for a missing story--a recursive meta-tale, in cascading levels. Okay, "Dem Bones" then. Thank you, C.
C. wrote: "Thanks for all the correlation, Jot.

Paula, your story was titled "Dem Bones."

The mental image of your amazing tale still haunts me. : )

-C"

In fact--wow, Jot! What an enormous amount of work! And also, think of what great good you have done for authors, and for science fiction, in creating and running and keeping going this contest/discussion/de facto anthology! Terrific and important.

Thanks for doing all that work, Jot.
Karl, good point. I do wonder, thought, if the winning percentages, or even the number of wins, can have so much meaning as we might wish, with the number of writers, and also the particular writers involved, having varied so much from year to year.
C.--while we're tracking stories, do you possibly remember which of the contests my "bones" story was in--the one you liked so much--as I seem to have zapped my copy of it and hope to track it down through the contest archives, if they exist. Thanks!

Good story, Jack. And, like your new (forthcoming?) book, Purple-Hearted Man, it makes fine use of interesting and nonstandard language and storytelling.

Tom, your story made me so happy! Seriously--it's just good to see.

Andy--good to read one of your stories again. As usual, one can trust in their solid realisms and subtleties. In particular, "the Democrats took Florida by 586 votes after Nixon/ Agnew lost their appeal to the Warren Court (6-3)"; the discussion with McNamara, otoh, was a bit too frighteningly reminiscent of Ellsberg's accounts of meetings with McNamara (in The Doomsday Machine).
Excellent story.

Justin--elegantly, uh, executed!
Seriously, very nice.
Although, on a more serious note, I'm not sure how envy and the like could, in actuality, lead to such war, even though that view gets thrown around by some politicians a lot. It's the weak point in an otherwise tight, elegant plotting.

Okay, guys, I just put one up. Raw copy, mostly--but just after I got your message, Jot, I got an idea for one.
So . . .

Family Matters, Spring 2019
Copyright © 2019 by Paula Friedman

“Oh you people--! And after all, she is your mother!” But I stopped myself, curled my fists in the pockets of my denim skirt and looked away from Danny and Denise (to whom what point would there be in saying “You too, Denny, she’s your mother-in-law, have a heart!”), and walked back down the long, two-windowed hallway to my kitchen. Still, “Chicken legs or three-bean stew?” I called out over my shoulder, remembering as always how Uncle Danny loved Grandma’s chicken when I was a little girl. Those days, of course, he loved Grandma too. He'd've taken her in, then, if she'd got too old for a family camp.

I don’t know if it was Aunt Denise’s stuck-up disdain for Grandma’s little one-room house and (awful, to be truthful) cooking and fourth-hand clothes, or whether his own grown-up distaste for Grandma’s unending tales of “the time we marched across the bridge in Selma” and “my Freedom-Riding days” and “next time I'm in Leningrad to meet the work-groups' leaders at the art collectives Hall” and “when I first warned readers of my Times blog that we'd never regain status as a first- or second-power nation” and “How in '72 we watched the last election and saw, on our television, John F. step down after his second term, and the fifteen shots rang out and new prez Bobby, rising to take his oath of office, fell, and then six Congressmen were killed—“ and all the rest. Sure, once out of Grandma’s rooms, I imagine, it must’ve been delight to Uncle Dan to step out into his own private Camp Tent and a present-centered, simpler, forward-looking world.

And after all, he and Denise had jobs, if nothing special—he, as an assistant accountant to the third administrative deputy of Taiwan-Congo Oil’s West California Exploration’s unit, Denny as a data entry lady (one of the few white females) at Ho Viet, Ltd. Maybe he thinks it’s all Grandma’s fault that he or Denny hasn’t risen higher. Yet how could they?

After all, it was forty-some years ago that “Orange-Aide" took office, the fourth of the "opportune actors" who, after the shifty-nixty lawer’s years in office, were consecutively designated President for twelve-year term after twelve-year term. Even by then, the major factories, the A.I. innovative institutes, all the breakthrough work in medicine, in carbon-sequestering, in radioactive-ruins-salvage, in every leading tech or resource field, was long gone to the leading nations—Viet Nam, the Indian Republic, Kenya, Cuba, Brasil—of our green world. What hope for serious, important work in our backwards country? Our "s---hole nation" where a lady in pants gets laughed at, a man in a skirt gets summarily shot, and children drink their Supermilk "or else"?

They surely know it well, Denny and Danny both. No reason to blame Grandma. Sure, if she and her fellow “peace marchers,” “Movement people,” and their ilk had “kept on keepin’ on”—oh what terms they used, in their romantic silliness!—and hadn't melded all their energies into the “new society” bureaucracy the worshipful JFK folks built up through those four (albeit temporarily fruitful) years, they might have built a counter-force, a culturally pioneering, peace-demanding wave, that could have interposed itself against the so-called “America’s Right!” that swung into place (and office) behind its figurehead tricky/shifty lawyer after the assassinations of ‘72.

But they didn’t, Grandma’s people. And, since the tricky-designate’s unopposed decision “to utilize our mega-gigantic tactical nuclear might” against what folks then called “commies,” this country has been, as my Tomas put it last week to Jeff (he’s our youngest), “no country for young men.”

Or for young women, either, as I silently whispered to June, our teenage STEM prodigy (were she a boy in a non-sacrifice-zone- nation, she’d have a postgrad fellowship by now).

And certainly not for old folks. No way could I get Grandma taken off the “spare organs resource Old Ones” list, even though I—and Tomas (after I seduced him into agreeing)—really tried. And besides, if she lived on, which camp could take her in?

[6540 words]

I'm sure you've found the important issues, Jot---'cause those are always the ones the author finds on going back to edit his/her work--imo.

Powerful, very well written, and serious story, Jot, (although here and there an image could be clearer). Imo, the best you've done.

Nice, Jon--cool!

Great theme, Jon. All I can think of, though, is one set in Texas where a homeless Stephen King, struggling seldom-published author, is sleeping one afternoon on 11/22/63 on the grass in a Dallas park when. . . .

Does not seem slow, actually. And if the instructor thinks you're doing so well, she probably knows! Onward!Justin wrote: "That's great to hear Paula. I'm sure you're getting a good response at those readings too. Thanks for asking about my audiobooks! There is one out now for part one of my Cerulean Rising series (if ..."

Thanks, Justin. Yes, I did a reading out of town two weeks ago from The Change Chronicles: A novel of the Sixties antiwar movement, and I'll be reading from it in mid-July in the Seattle library; am trying to schedule a few East Coast readings, but the finances for the travel aren't great, lol. Thanks for your interest! I'm curious, too, how your audiobooks are progressing. Justin wrote: "Thanks Paula, I sincerely appreciate it! I hope your book readings and promotion are going well!"

continuing with some (too) short critiques--
---Justin, that was a great surprise ending, following a well-constructed civilization. And you had indeed adequately foreshadowed the end, too; well done.
---Jeremy--yeah, silicon, right! Had me laughing, albeit sadly.
---Chris, that is one of the most frightening science fiction tales I've read in a long time. Terrific work.
---Greg and Kalifer--both very original and sharp stories on the Drumpfy theme we're having, all of us, to deal with these days.
okay--again, more later, perhaps. Too many editing gigs to do right now, lol.

Well, a few short critiques tonight. Not sure how many I can do this month.
Tom--your Camelot story reminded me of the final Babylon 5 episode--the segment harkening back to Chronicle for Leibowitz. I mean, when your Morgaine and Merlin don't know how long they can keep up the low-tech/time hoax. Lovely tale!
C. Lloyd--so Tad's the A.I. kid from hell, for sure. I really like this story, and especially the rather gentle "father-son" interactions, and your take on the very real A.I.--humans theme. Nice work.
Jot--fascinating conception of societal/world change.
Okay, more comments/critiques later. . .