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This story by David Adams, set in his Lacuna universe, is well titled. “Imperfect” is, unfortunately, far from perfect. I hesitate to say it is boring, because all I remember of it is all the proofreading errors — it reads like a first draft. This is a shame, because it detracts from an otherwise very good (so far) anthology (The Future Chronicles – Special Edition).

So I have learned that this is not the way I want to write short stories. It is all exposition, no action that I noticed, and frankly uninteresting (to me). Also, I have learned to make sure that my work is well proofread by me before I send the story off and not to expect an editor to do the work. I may be the only person who is distracted by poor editing and poor proofreading, but just in case I am not, it is best to send clean manuscripts for publishing.

Dodo claimed to be based on a specimen seen by van den Venne in Amsterdam. It is very similar to Roelant Savery's painting from the same year (1626).

Dodo claimed to be based on a specimen seen by van den Venne in Amsterdam. It is very similar to Roelant Savery’s painting from the same year (1626).

“The Ugly Chickens” by Howard Waldrop was first published in 1980 in Universe 10. I read it in The Legend Book of Science Fiction, edited by Gardner Dozois.

Wow! I loved this one. It was so unusual, and on the periphery of science fiction in my opinion. It is about the search for the last surviving dodo on a farm in America in the 1920s. The dodo was supposed to be extinct in the eighteenth century, and Waldrop writes a story of scientific research, with lots of background material (I have no idea how much of this background is real or made up, but it is entertaining and seems informative).

Waldrop stands out as a writer who has a simple idea and runs with it, however weird and zany the story becomes. And it works.

March Challenge

My new challenge is tough. It is designed to get me writing made-up stuff instead of writing in my journal. I have discovered through January and February that having a target of three thousand words a day forces me to write quickly because I can find so many other things to do, and I often leave it until late in the day. The easiest way to knock off three thousand words quickly is in my journal. I can type three thousand words in seventy minutes if I need to. So most of the writing is about me and my problems. There are germinating blog posts, ideas for stories, but nothing that can be published without a lot more work.

Over the last few months I have been writing daily, but apart from building a habit it hasn’t been of much use in terms of ending up with anything to publish. When I try to write fiction I write for about forty minutes, get stuck, feel sick and hungry, and abandon it for the day, having to make up the deficit with hastily written journalling. There is some finished stuff, but it is not enough.

Hence the new challenge to write fifty thousand words of made up stuff in the month of March. There are twenty-nine days left. A minimum of 1750 words a day will get me there if I write every single day. Journal words will not count, so all the words I write will be fiction, blog posts, articles, poems, or non-fiction. None of it will be journalling. I will aim to do two thousand words a day so that I can have a couple of days off or finish early or take it a bit easier at weekends.

Quality of words is not important. However, knowing me as I do, I will be polishing the prose as I go. The main purpose is to write a lot of made up stuff and to learn to do that as a daily habit.

I have previously given myself ridiculous targets to aim for, like one hundred and fifty thousand words in February, over five thousand words a day, but that didn’t last even a day, and the chances of achieving the goal diminished every hour, as the daily required word count went higher and higher. After about a week I abandoned it entirely. I realised I needed a much more realistic challenge. After all, I don’t have to stop at two thousand words if I feel like doing more.

The family has been warned, and I have a plan of action.

Wish me luck.

The Future Chronicles - Special Edition“Piece of Cake” by Patrice Fitzgerald was first published in The A.I. Chronicles in 2015. I read it in the collection The Future Chronicles – Special Edition.

Set in a world where food restrictions are in place and people have a weight range within which they have to stay. There are black market suppliers of cake and other fattening foods, and a speak-easy type of establishment. I have seen the idea before, but this was nicely done and nicely written. Just because the idea has been used before does not mean that it shouldn’t be explored more than once in different ways by different writers.

Analog February 1977“Particle Theory” by Edward Bryant was first published in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, February 1977. I read it in the collection The Legend Book of Science Fiction, edited by Gardner Dozois and published in 1991.

The story of the end of the universe, I think. And a man undergoing an experimental procedure to zap his prostate cancer with a pion beam.

It is a story that jumps about in time a bit, and I’m not sure I followed it very well or fully understood the ending. Perhaps a grounding in science would help? Anyway, I enjoyed it and there was much about the way it is written that will inform my writing. I enjoyed the conversational tone, but the physics was beyond me.

“The First Step” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch is an Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine Readers’ Awards Finalist in the short story category. It was originally published in Asimov’s August 2015 issue. Currently, this story and most of the other finalists are available to read for free on the Readers’ Awards Finalists page at Asimov’s.

I am a sucker for time travel stories and this tale of a scientist using his own invention to go back in time to see his son’s first steps was delightful and simple (and I like simple). Nicely told, nothing complicated or difficult to understand. This is the sort of fiction that I would be proud to have written.

“The New Mother” by Eugene Fischer is an Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine Readers’ Awards Finalist in the novella category. It runs to about ten thousand words and was originally published in Asimov’s April-May 2015 issue. Currently, this story and most of the other finalists are available to read for free on the Readers’ Awards Finalists page at Asimov’s.

It tells the story of Tess, a reporter putting together a story about a new disease that is becoming prevalent, that causes virgin births in infected women. The babies are genetically identical, and are therefore all girls.

The story is written in the form of the investigation of the story, interspersed with extracts from Tess’s article, and it works very well. I didn’t like it at first but it grew on me and by the end I was fully invested and wanted more.

Selected Short Stories by Guy de Maupassant“The Jewels”, also knows as “The False Gems” is one of Maupassant’s better known stories. I read it in Selected Short Stories, but it can be read for free at The University of Adelaide Library.

It tells of a man, Monsieur Lantin, a lowly clerk, who marries a virtuous and lovely woman who turns out to love entertainments and fake jewels. Lantin is head over heals in love with her but he does not enjoy the theatre, so he suggests she goes with a lady friend instead. Every day she seems to come back with more fake jewels. Lantin cannot understand why a woman with so much beauty and grace, “the rarest jewels”, needs to adorn herself with gaudy baubles.

She dies, he is devastated, becomes very poor and decides to sell one piece of the jewellery. It is worth thousands, much to his surprise. He becomes a rich man, and soon overcomes his sadness at the death of his wife.

It isn’t made explicit how she came by the jewels, but it is suggested by the snickering of the staff in the jeweller’s shop that she was a prostitute, or was having an affair, and that everyone knew about it except him.

It is a story about deceit, about things not being what they seem. A good story. Simple (how I like them) and entertaining (how I like them).

“The Barrow” by Ursula K. Le Guin was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1976. I read it in the collection The Legend Book of Science Fiction, edited by Gardner Dozois and published in 1991.

I found this a little confusing to read. It was unclear who was speaking at times and there seemed to be too many characters for such a short short story. But it came together in the end. It is another one of those stories that confuses at the beginning, then makes sense at the end, so you have to go back and read the beginning again to fill in the gaps in your understanding. At least, that is how it was for me.

Final Stage cover“Her Smoke Rose Up Forever”, by James Tiptree, Jr, first published in Final Stage: The Ultimate Science Fiction Anthology, 1975, is brilliantly funny and one of the best short stories I have ever read. An excellent one to start with. I read it in the nice collection The Legend Book of Science Fiction, edited by Gardner Dozois and published in 1991 (where it says it is copyright 1984, but the anthology was published in 1975 — misprint?).

This was an excellent short story from an excellent writer. It was tough to get my head around what was going on but it was well worth the effort and some of the imagery will stay with me for years, I imagine. This is one to read again and again.