Friday, October 31, 2014

Fetch

And here is the last installment of micro fiction. I'd like to introduce you to a hellhound called Scraps...

Fetch

The dog found him where he lay curled up into a ball behind the dumpster, bruised and battered by his latest encounter with Bruce the Moose, the kid that made his life a living hell. Max was weird, forever lost in a book or a world of his own making. None of the other kids liked him. He’d made peace with that fact a long time ago. He just couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t just leave him alone.

He felt a wet tongue lapping at the blood on his hand where a broken bottle had sliced his palm. Cringing he looked up and stared transfixed into two glowing red eyes. A huge dog, the biggest he’d ever seen, looked down at him. It wagged its tail and proceeded to cover his face in slobber.

Scraps, that’s what he named it, followed him everywhere. It was odd how people never seemed to notice Scraps. They just detoured around them, giving Max strange looks and shaking their heads whenever he chatted to his constant companion.

They were playing in the woods when Bruce found them. “Whaddya doing weirdo?” he snarled as he shoved Max to the ground. Scraps howled and came crashing through the undergrowth. Bruce turned, his face went ashen and with a scream he fled into the trees.

“Go fetch, boy!” Scraps looked at him and bounded into the woods. He heard distant screams and a few minutes later Scraps returned depositing a bloody bone at his feet.

"Good job boy!"


Thursday, October 30, 2014

The Whispering Silence

 As a special Halloween treat (or trick depending on how terrible you think my writing is) I'm going to share my micro fiction entries to Apex Magazine's Steal the Spotlight contest. The story ideas just wormed their way into my head and they didn't want to go away until I scribbled them down. I'm not an aspiring writer so I sincerely suspect they were meant for someone far more capable.

The Whispering Silence

The demon always came for him in the silences, those moments in-between thought. Night. Day. It made no difference. It was always there whispering offers of temptation - the world was his, theirs, for the taking. A simple yes would be all it took.

Even his dreams provided no solace, only visions of fire and flame. The world turned to ash at his touch. A multitude of voices howled from the flames, demanding to be allowed in. The only voice of dissent his own as he screamed, “No, no, NO!” until he woke in tears, gasping for breath. Night after night, it was always the same.

The whispers grew louder, more insistent and angry by the day. How much longer could his resolve manage to bar the way?

***

He stumbled upon the kitten in an alley as he wandered the streets in search of noise, people - anything to keep the whispers at bay. It was a pitiful mewling thing covered in dirt; clinging to life by a thread. It shivered in his hands, nuzzling at a finger that could provide no sustenance.

The demon stirred. Drawn by the life he held in his hands. How little it would take to snuff it out. A mere thought. It would be so easy to let go. To give in.

Unbidden a spark flickered between his fingers. The corners of his mouth curled up into a smile. Such a simple answer.

A spark, a flame. An inferno.
Agony. Ecstasy. Freedom...


If the writing didn't send you screaming for the hills, I'll introduce you to Scraps tomorrow...

Friday, October 24, 2014

Guest Post: The Pop Prophet - Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke (Credit: Wikipedia)
Fame rode the shoulder of Arthur C. Clarke. As a science-fiction writer, he was touted as one of the genre’s “Big Three” alongside Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. He is remembered, not only for his literary prowess, but also for his remarkable ability to anticipate the future technologies.

In 1962, Clarke published Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry Into the Limits of the Possible, an anthology of his many ideas of space travel and human communication. He thus formulated his first law of prediction: “When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.”

In 1994, the BBC News Network caught up with Clarke and asked him for his thoughts on the future. “Trying to predict the future is a discouraging, hazardous occupation,” warned Clarke, and then he refused his own advice.

The Tablet Computer
When Apple sued Samsung for the release of its iPad doppelganger, the Samsung Galaxy 10.1, Samsung turned to Arthur C. Clarke’s magnum opus for help: 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was constructed as both a screenplay for the Stanley Kubrick film and a novel unto itself in 1968. In that film, an astronaut watches the news on a thin black tablet called a “Newspad.” Samsung’s claim: Clarke invented the iPad design before Steve Jobs had even entered high school.

Bioengineering & Terraforming
In Profiles of the Future, Arthur C. Clarke put together a timeline of scientific advancement by decade from 1970 to 2100. He successfully predicted a global library in 2000 – ever hear of “the cloud”? – wireless energy transfer in 2010, and human bioengineering in 2020. His later predictions involved terraforming, planet colonization and climate control. Eerily, In 2013, the NASA Rover “Curiosity” detected samples of “abundant, easily accessible” water in the red rocky wastes of Mars, and people began chattering about a new earth.

The Geostationary Satellite
In his article Extra-terrestrial Relays, Clarke proposed that if a satellite slingshoted from the earth on the back of a rocket reaches 26,200 miles above the surface of the earth, it will rotate around the earth at the same speed as earth itself. Although Clarke did not invent the idea, he did popularize the notion and propose it as the basis of high-frequency telecommunication. Now, the geosynchronous orbit is formally called a “Clarke orbit.”

Internet & Wireless Communications
Like many science fiction writers of his day, Clarke foresaw the Internet. There will come a time, he said, when a man will have “all the information he needs for his everyday life: his bank statements, his theater reservations [on a computer] .. We'll live out in the country or wherever we please and still carry on complete interactions with other human beings as well as computers.” Remember: Clarke had first proposed this idea in a paper published in 1945 — 12 years before the launch of Sputnik, and about 15 years before the Telstar program (Howard Hughes collaboration with NASA) which itself set the stage for Arpanet and HughesNet Internet. Clarke didn’t merely anticipate the technology — he may have even expedited its development.

A Few Duds
Not all of Clarke’s forecasts came true. A few, like cryogenic suspension and asteroid deflections, are in their infancy. Others, like bio-engineered chimpanzee slaves and an earth-to-moon space elevator, may have missed the mark entirely.

Forever Hopeful
In his book 3001: The Final Odyssey, Clarke put a new spin on immortality. By transferring personality and memory into a digital database, he argued, the body could rot while the mind remained intact forever. Although immortality still evades humans, perhaps the gigabytes of videos, pictures, status updates and online blogs are all an elementary attempt to stay death’s hand?

More about the author:
Brandon Engel is a Chicago-based blogger and pulp literature enthusiast.
Follow him on Twitter: @BrandonEngel2

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Opening Lines: Life, The Universe and Everything

Some novels have the ability to draw you in from the start. A single line or paragraph can grab your attention in such a way that the novel just demands to be read. Opening Lines is a feature where I'll share some of the best opening lines that hooked me.

I just love the humour in the Hitchhiker's Guide series by Douglas Adams. It has the ability to draw you in completely and want to see what new adventures await poor Arthur Dent.

***
The regular early morning yell of horror was the sound of Arthur Dent waking up and suddenly remembering where he was.

It wasn’t just that the cave was cold, it wasn’t just that it was damp and smelly. It was that the cave was in the middle of Islington and there wasn’t a bus due for two million years.

Time is the worst place, so to speak, to get lost in, as Arthur Dent could testify, having been lost in both time and space a good deal. At least being lost in space kept you busy.


Life, the Universe and Everything
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In consequence of a number of stunning catastrophes, Arthur Dent is surprised to find himself living in a hideously miserable cave on prehistoric Earth. However, just as he thinks that things cannot get possibly worse, they suddenly do. He discovers that the Galaxy is not only mind-boggingly big and bewildering but also that most of the things that happen in it are staggeringly unfair. VOLUME THREE IN THE TRILOGY OF FIVE.