Science Fiction Microstory Contest discussion
AUGUST 2019 - MICROSTORY CONTEST (COMMENTS ONLY)
date
newest »
newest »
First of all, thanks to Paula and Tom for their kind comments. They were much appreciated.What interests me about the stories this month was the wide range of approaches to the theme. For me, alternate histories is a kind of a genre apart from the ones we usually deal with here. There's an axis in a certain kind of speculative writing that runs from fantasy through hard SF depending on the role science plays in the story. It can be ignored or tinkered with, slightly or dramatically, but it's an embedded element of some sort in the story.
It seems to me that the analogous axis in alternate histories is, well, the amount of history in the story. The story can change a lot of the historical facts, whether in characters or occurrences, but it has to be tethered, either weakly or strongly, to some historical truth. Just as we can do a simple extrapolation of today's machine learning for robot societies of the future, we can go from, say, Kennedy not being assassinated or Lee winning at Gettysburg, and see how they play out, or look at much larger canvases like Germany winning WW2 with no particular single event determining the outcome. What was interesting to me this month was the wide spectrum of tethering, or conversely, speculation, in the stories. Some folks hewed closely to existing history, while others flew off into time travel (and beyond) to give strikingly different outcomes to Kennedy not being assassinated. All were genuinely part of alternatives, and they all did bring food for thought.
Andy wrote: "First of all, thanks to Paula and Tom for their kind comments. They were much appreciated.What interests me about the stories this month was the wide range of approaches to the theme. For me, alt..."
Thank you for that in depth and insightful analysis, Andy.
Mod
Thank you for doing the contest Jot. It's a lot of fun.
Jot,I'd suggest a very large first, second, and third-place cash prize each month. Fund this by using a detailed fusion engine design as next month's story theme, and then fund monthly prizes with the resulting product royalties. ; )
-C
Mod
Am eventually planning on producing a website for story contests under different topics. The voting process would be automated and the method would have to work well for 10 or a 100 participants.
No time right now, though. Story of my life :)
I know you were wracking your bra..."
Very well put, C. I agree, it was very gratifying to see so many people pitching in and making such an effort. Also great to see so many returning veterans.