August 4th, 2009
Over at Ficly.com they’re hosting a cyberpunk short story competition, deadline is August 23rd 2009.
Console cowboys. Holograms. Street samurai. Armored battlesuits. All-powerful corporate conglomerates. High-tech drugs. Flesh shops. Jacking into cyberspace to escape the frail confines of ‘the meat.’
The deal at Ficly is that submitted fiction must be limited to 1024 characters, which is the equivalent of 7.3 maxed out tweets. I was unable to find any sufficient term for fiction of that span, but the people of Ficly have dubbed them “Ficlets”.
*struggling to get mind out of gutter*
As to what the elements of a cyberpunk story are, I could go on for Megabytes. But the competition guidelines (somewhat implicitly) state that “the old cyberpunk motto of ‘high tech and low life,’” should suffice.
So wipe off your greasy hands and put away the snacks, because now is the time to write.
2 Comments | In: Cyberpunk | tags: competition, Cyberpunk, short story, writing. | #
January 29th, 2009
io9 just directed my attention to this blog post on Tom Ellard’s blog by “former astronaut” Vincent T Grant. In this post, Vincent goes through four kinds of science fiction and how to write in these particular genres. He does so in a humorous and “no BS” way.
The sub-genres are: Traditional Science Fiction, New Wave, Alternative Realities and Dystopian Worlds.
It’s a quick but worth your time read, mostly because of its humorous qualities (that is: don’t expect to be enlightened and finally become the Philip K. Dick v2.0 you always wanted to be).
Although Charlie Jane Anders‘ (from io9) favorite part is on New Wave, I think my tastes are more to his advice on Dystopian Worlds:
“So there was a line up at the local DMV the other day and when I finally got to the end they say that at 90 years old I shouldn’t be driving anyway. And no they don’t care if I had flown three shuttle missions I was too old. Well what if the whole world was like the DMV and if you were too old you couldn’t get a license?”
While his post is really good, I’m not sure he exists. I tried Googling Vincent T Grant and found nothing on him, maybe he doesn’t exist? Maybe he’s a robot? According to a comment from Belabras to io9’s article, “There is not now, nor has there ever been, a Vincent T Grant that was an astronaut”.
2 Comments | In: science fiction, writing | tags: sci-fi, science fiction, scifi, writing. | #
January 7th, 2009
I’ve just finished editing my newest short story; Bringing Home the Bacon. It’s my first non-ironic, non-sarcastic horror story. It’s not that I used to dislike the genre, it’s just that I never really felt that the horror I wrote was good enough to be completely serious.
But then I started this short story and I had a good feeling about it. I guess the only judge will be time. But trust me, as far as horror goes, this is the best I’ve written.
The story is about a guy named Robert DeSapio who’s working at a firm that analyzes sales data to determine the strength of a brand. He’s looking forward to his coming promotion, but when he finally gets it, it turns out he was better off before.
Bringing Home the Bacon can be downloaded as PDF here.
No Comments | In: My Writing | tags: horror, short story, writing. | #
