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

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

Jack wrote: "Justin wrote: "Hey everyone! I just submitted my audiobook version of Cerulean Rising, Part I: Beginnings. It's taken me awhile to get it all narrated and edited, but now it's with Amazon/ACX quali..."

Looking forward to reading your next novel, Jack! And they make great presents for sf-liking friends and relatives, btw!

Thanks, Jot.
Yes, hoping everyone's having a very good Thanksgiving. And are working really hard and fast on this month's stories, of course.

Wonderfully fine tone/voice to your story, G.C. I've not time today to read it yet, but it's sure looking good.

LOL, Tom. They probably did some speed-of-light-breaking on the outward course!
Justin, NICE work!!!

Elegant, Thaddeus--I loved it.
Nice one, C.!

Terrific stries, Tom and Justin both!
Tom, I agree with Justin's comment--really terrifying story. As it should be, of course.
Justin, yes a very nice piece, in three distinct parts with a nice recurrence of the first vocabulary/theme/meter in the third part. I think if you cut a few words out, here and there, in the earlier two parts, you can fill out the third part so its concluding thrusts are clearer--just my opinion, of course.

I don't see "Manna" in TFIS vol 1; maybe it was later?
I do find "Arctic Freeze," though, which was terrific. So many good stories in these volumes--there must be many indeed in the sequence of sf microstories over these several years now!
Kalifer wrote: "Paula, I'm not sure but I think it was Manna a story about some ancient Jewish tablets with a design for a machine to make manna when it actually was a con job to get an American egocentric polymat..."

Cash, Kalifer. And for editing, not proofreading, lol.
By the way, which was your story that won the first sf microstories contest? Must have been excellent but it's been awhile.

So here's a probe of a sort rather alien--to me, anyhow. Let me ask (probe) you--Goodreads is, for the next few days, doing its "Goodreads Choice Awards," in which Goodreads readers/authors/ /members vote for their favorite 2018-published book. As some of you know, my fiction (genre: historical fiction) novel The Change Chronicles: A Novel of the Sixties Antiwar Movement is a 2018-published book, published by Lillicat Publishers (the publisher of TFIS volumes 1 to 4, in fact). I would be truly delighted should any of you vote for The Change Chronicles! Note: since it was not an "officially nominated" book for this award, you have to write-in the title to vote for it (you do write-in's by scrolling all the way down past the "official nominees" and then filling in the title in the "write-in vote" form and clicking the "vote" button. I think you may have to write [or cut-and-paste] the whole thing, The Change Chronicles: A Novel of the Sixties Antiwar Movement, to do this.) THANK YOU very much to any of you who may consider doing this--very much appreciated.
And now back to probing aliens. Whether or no they are probing us too.

Well, of course we shall, then, Kalifer! Necessarily.
(Yes, Plato quote intended.)

This was a fine story, Kalifer.
As for your November theme--ya sure it's science *fiction*? (Yes, lol--so far, anyhow.)

I'm not going to have time this month to read everything through a second time and vote, but I do want to say how much I liked Greg's story, and Jot's and C.'s and others', this month. Nice work with an interesting theme.

Kalifer, I had noticed that hint; perhaps it would suffice that the description (however brief) of the growth/pop-up at the end simply more resemble more what a fungi growth (even big ones) might seem likely to look like--?

Kalifer, nicely formed, imaginative story--grabs the reader, and great last line. Maybe a bit of foreshadowing/hint re the last line--NOT much, though, since still needs to come as complete surprise!--just enough so we have even a tiniest hint re what (very very general) sort of thing's growing in the cup etc.--but again, only the tiniest beginnings of a hint.

Oh---Kim Stanley Robinson. I was thinkirth-glng of his use, by no means the same as yours, of the ideas of terraforming, gone-native settlers vs. Earth-type-globalizers, etc.

Beautifully done suspense and pacing and wonderfully written, Tom--and delightfully apt. And a nice riff on KSR's concept, I presume quite intentionally--nice.

A super story, Chris. Congratulations to you! This was a fine read for all of us.

Thank you both, Tom and C. Very much appreciated!

Town written and past
Copyright © 2018 by Paula Friedman. All rights reserved.

It was going to be a story, but of course it could not be done. It could not be done because, already, it had been done.

Yet she wished she might write this tale. It had come and she had read it in a town, about the town’s and her own younger years, those years’ triumphant cresting of bright, brave ideals. Indeed, the tale now seemed to stand out, sharp, fresh, from the smoke and heat and world sensed lost on the days’-long drive into the town and back. It stood out from those courteous voices, eyes slightly shifted away, as the young here would first take their seats and prepare to applaud (and of course they did applaud) as she’d prepare to read.

“You are old, father William”—no one quoted that, for they were too sophisticated for the prejudice of ageism; and they not only applauded but listened, for she read of times now legend to them. A tale now of the past.

There was also a tale of this week. A week of smoke and the fires burning forests everywhere between lost cities in the West, smoke and dust, ash, where, before, blue-green lakes reflected dark high-altitude skies in clearest air, or waves’ foam crashed white on gold rocky shores to mist inland amid cool damp green forests. This summer, all parts not ashes long had faded fast in the thick smoke haze. This week, forgetting briefly the smoke-tan skies, she led and read, each night, the town’s own memories of its brighter time, those clearer days of love and hope for a green and caring world.

In the surprisingly over-filled halls, each night they applauded, for hers was a tale of The Struggle (now, “the Day”). They applauded; they kept her water glass well filled. And asked questions she must answer, how and why and what-must-we-now-do? Each night, one, at least, would extend an arm to “help you, if you like,” down a podium’s stairs.

Afterward—after the applause, the young ones coming up to her, pages open for an autograph, ears open to her words—they’d walk away in pairs or small groups, shirts open perhaps, neckscarves blowing loosely in the breeze though their clothing was, generally, more utilitarian than—she would find herself thinking—“back in our Day.” Yet how much more knowledge of the world they now had! Surely from the Internet, she thought, “yet also we taught them well to look behind the veil, regard how the system works so as to change it!”

Oh yes, much good had grown up from those hopes, from the Day—though the smoky heat across 600 miles and more was evidence much else had failed or awaited the doing. She turned, stumbling a bit, at the foot of the podium stairs, wishing to share this thought with a youngster—that bright girl with gold hair, or the black-haired Mexican math kid, or . . . , but of course they were walking out alongside young friends from the audience, their own concerns long askew from hers.

Or rather, from what had been hers. Because, feet swollen in the heat, she could no longer walk long miles in demos, and the language had grown different while the years went by, years lived aware yet now—as if she approached from a smoke-hazed road onto a bright-starred strand beside the sea—gave way to an awakening into a new world full of both harshness and bright hopes sprung of long sleep.

Of course this story could not be written. It had already been done, and far better, even as wind and ash—and finally waters—rose, the town slipping to its unknown future.

[620 words]

Clever, Karl. Nor sure it's a "story" but I like it! Nice work.