Science Fiction Microstory Contest discussion
TENTH YEAR ANNIVERSARY of the SCIENCE FICTION MICROSTORY CONTEST (Comments only)
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I'm gonna try. Worried that the theme may be beyond me. It's a good challenge though.
Mod
Ah, the personification of a sharpened pencil as a metaphor for the possibilities hidden in the universe! Wild that Thaddeus put up this theme (personification [not necessarily a human personification] of a concept) right as I was some large fraction l(f) of the way through re-rereading Logicomix! Too sooper-cool! Okay, folks, whereof we can in fact speak, thereof let's not be silent. ;)
Well I posted... something.I wrote half a dozen quick thematic treatments that went nowhere, and all I could come up with is a short comedic scene.
I liked it but I think you are overwhelmed by the nature of the challenge. Personifying the Universe doesn't have to LITERALLY mean the entirety of the Universe. You could opt to think differently about how the Universe responds to us. We are used to shaman, priests, holy men and women defining the Universe for us.
What if some aspect of the Universe defined itself, instead of using a specialized shaman, it chose to use an ordinary mortal to communicate with?
I think you are in the spirit of the thing. Give it some more time...
Fair enough.I tried a few things: fantasy, slipstream, hard SF (with computational environment standing in for the actual aspect of the universe) etc. None of them came together so far.
I'll keep at it.
Mine is up. I based it on some personal experiences. Really......
Mine's up. I'm doing a massive update of everything I've written so haven't had a chance to read the other entries this month yet. I will soon. This month I decided to make the Multiverse Theory my target. Seems to fit this month's theme. String Theorists love the multiverse idea. That every decision that has multiple outcomes can create new universes I personally regard as preposterous. and the wrong QM interpretation.
Mod
That's a corker of a story, Justin. Love the imagery.
Jeremy wrote: "That's a corker of a story, Justin. Love the imagery."Thanks Jeremy! Much appreciated!!
I agree with Jeremy, Justin--a fine story indeed.
J.F., now I'm really afraid of the wind - not that blowing down two trees on my property wasn't bad enough (just missing my garage building). Now I have to worry it's coming to get me! Nicely done!
Justin wrote: "J.F., now I'm really afraid of the wind - not that blowing down two trees on my property wasn't bad enough (just missing my garage building). Now I have to worry it's coming to get me! Nicely done!"You're safe if you keep away from crowds, Justin, which is good advice generally.
The time that would've gone into doing a story for this group this month has gone, with indeed the wind and many hours, into struggling with the issues or hassles, whether bloc or detail, of simply shifting to a 5-G compatible phone to make my cellular/wifi/net carrier happy wealthy and evermore competitive. I thought the issue was my prole-like lack of computer tech, but apparently that was only the mid-stretch, between the mis-pre-installed sim card sent me, the aphone "chat" drones who apparently must waste hours of client time in chopped-off-halfway and half the time wrong explanations, and now the zillion details of the (allegedly final steps through the maze) the "SmartSwitch" downloads and set-ups that a very expert young woman acquaintance is helping me through, step after step. And at every one of the--so far 30 hours, I"d guess--of this "simple phone switch" trek, it turns out the instructions presume a piece of equipment, a specific version of some software, a newer model, or etc. without which one must go far back to some earlier pre-divergence point to start from again. It is frightening to think that some of you here work in areas forcing you to such processes day after day---or that . . . well, Metropolis remains a wonderful film indeed.
Paula wrote: "The time that would've gone into doing a story for this group this month has gone, with indeed the wind and many hours, into struggling with the issues or hassles, whether bloc or detail, of simply..."Paula, sounds like you have the same issue I had upgrading from an SIII to an S10. I figured out something with SmartSwitch that I don't think is common knowledge: you can use it with the older model (old OS that can't be upgraded) but you have to set up the newer one to start reading before you start the older one writing. Then everything gets copied. This is something I learned trying to write to a standard cassette player from my TRS-80, in the late '70s, because I refused to spend the extra $20 for the special TI cassette player. I swear there is nothing genuinely new in computer science; just the same old problems over and over again.
Mod
Simple question: when Carl Sagan’s Contact comes true, in one fashion or another, how many languages will our alien friends use to define the operational logic of the machine, front-end instruments used to control it, the storage structure of its database, or even the design of its mechanical components? Why not one?
WRITE(“Hello Universe!”)
Good stories all I’ll read through over long weekend. I had thought to do a story on Money as having consciousness. With trend of programmable money where would that go? Would we end up with AI Money that has a mind of its own? But I could not quite get plot line.
Talk about a "smart contract", Jeremy. ;)
Mod
How it really works by Justin Sewall
The Wind Telephone by J.F. Williams
Votes need from myself, Tom, Marianne and Greg.
Sorry--the phone so-called upgrades (i.e., forced change to 5G phone,s with inadequate supports or instructions) have taken up the time I would have spent on doing a story and/or reading carefully (so as to vote on) others' stories, this month. Good luck, folks, some good stories this month, inc. JF's and Justin's indeed.
This month's challenge is being presented by October's winner, Thaddeus Howze.
Writing prompt: The Unconsidered Country
Personify some aspect of the Universe. Science, folklore, animism, mysticism, Gnosticism, cosmology, all attempt to raise (or lower) our awareness to include the Universe or parts of it as aware of us as we are of them.
But what if they were more aware than we thought? Previous tales of myth personified lightning and thunder as gods, magical forces as Djinn, and the hereafter as various Heavens or Hells as the perspective permitted.
What if the Universe or some part, we have thought, non-sentient, not only had personality, but was self-aware?
What if those hidden aspects of the Universe appeared to the right persons or people, and deigned to speak to us.
All we needed was the right language, algorithm, technology, magic, social structure, pentagram, or ritual to make the connection...
• Did you trap lightning in a jar and teach it to do math?
• Can you talk to buildings or does your house talk to YOU?
• Do you suspect your neighbor is the Grim Reaper? Is all of his talk of his garden actually about flowers?
• Do fleas have a secret life? Do they discuss their lineage in the stories of cats they ride like great ships crossing the city?
• Are you a friend to the Darkness Between Worlds? Is everything we have learned about it wrong?
• Do you have an intimate relationship with your local forest? Does it ask you to intercede on its behalf or bemoan the inevitable passing of humanity?
• Can you speak with insects? What do they talk about when we aren't spraying RAID on them. How do they feel about that, anyway?
• Can you hear stars singing? What are their songs about?
• Can you commune with the vibrations of matter? What does the 5% of the Universe's mass (baryonic matter) think about the rest of it's more invisible and significantly more numerous cousins (non-baryonic matter)?
Tell us a tale of a self-aware aspect of the Universe, a personification of a concept like Infinity, Eternity, Death, Oblivion, Destruction, or of a smaller aspect of self-awareness such as stars, or forests, trees or whales, or perhaps at the microscopic or sub-atomic such as viruses or the very stuff of reality itself, the very virtual particles which spring into and out of existence without warning, all around us.
The genre isn't as important as the relationship between the players in your story. Can the personification be represented by a person? You bet. But, it doesn't have to be.
I want to get the feeling of something otherworldly, a new perspective, a visit to the Unconsidered Country...
The story is up to you.