I managed two short fiction submissions this morning. One was to an anthology with a deadline and the other was to a literary magazine that I’ve never submitted to before. One submission was e-mail, the other postal. Both stories were very short: 950 and 1300 words respectively. One has a 1-word title, the other a 2-word title. One has barely ever been submitted before, the other has more frequent flier miles than I do. I love ‘em both.
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I am:Olaf Stapledon Standing outside the science fiction “field”, he wrote fictional explorations of the futures of whole species and galaxies. |
I have no idea who that is.
The temperature is actually approaching seasonal around here. It’s down to 68° and promise to drop down to the forties overnight, with weekend highs in the fifties and sixties.
I’ve never heard of him either.
Congrats on the submissions! I’m always especially in awe of people who can tell a complete story in less than 1500 words!
Word limits. Not my friend.
68 degrees. As it happens, that’s the current temperature here in my living room, with the fireplace roaring.
– C.
g’luck on the subs.
I think Olaf looks like Cliff Robertson. ;-{> Sounds like he wrote like Heinlein.
Cheers,
StevensSon
Cliff Robertson — that’s who I was trying to think of! I knew he looked vaguely familiar.
I like writing really short stories. Every sentence, every word counts. The longer of the two stories was originally written for a contest where the tale had to be exactly 1000 words long. Not 999, not 1001. Getting it into the ballpark was a bit of a challenge, but once I was there, it was a matter of trading off. Every place I wanted to add a word meant I had to find somewhere else to delete one. Fun, fun, fun!
I love Olaf Stapledon! Close to twenty years ago I picked up an omnibus containing his “Last and First Men” (originally pub. 1932) and “Star Maker.” LFM is an incredible romp and feat of imagination–a two-billion year exploration of the evolution of humanity into an interstellar species, and a philosophical antecedent to Arthur C. Clarke’s Space Odyssey novels and Childhood’s End. There are Lovecraftian echoes of the time beyond time eons of alien consciousness, only with the arrow of time pointing forward instead of looking back. The vast epochs are framed within a human context, where what it means to be human is repeatedly redefined as levels of evolution and self-recreation lead to a god like transcendence. Definitely worth checking out. I found Amazon had the same version of the book I picked up all those years ago, even with the same alien-coral cover art, albeit a much later reprint. Here’s a link with some more background:
http://www.amazon.com/Last-First-Men-Star-Maker/dp/0486219623
I thoroughly enjoy reading yours posts, and have been following your writing since the old Stephen King message boards.
Best, R.J. Crowther Jr.
Thanks for the background. The “quiz” is a little bit skewed in that the initial premise is that I am some sort of science fiction writer, which I don’t profess to be at all! Fun seeing what’s coming up for different people, though.
Glad you’re enjoying my posts. I never know who’s reading, if anyone.