Comments on: kilochars

By: Ficly Story « Prince of Pithy’s Weblog

Ficly Story « Prince of Pithy’s Weblog — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 13:59:36 +0000

[...] Over a week ago I saw this entry over on Bad Astronomy, which is the first time I heard of Ficly. This is a site where you can publish stories of less [...]

By: Ficly Story « oneoveralpha’s

Ficly Story « oneoveralpha’s — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 13:57:46 +0000

[...] Over a week ago I saw this entry over on Bad Astronomy, which is the first time I heard of Ficly. This is a site where you can publish stories of less [...]

By: Ficly Stories - Bad Astronomy and Universe Today Forum

Ficly Stories - Bad Astronomy and Universe Today Forum — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 04:38:00 +0000

[...] Stories If you’ve followed the BA’s lead in making an account on Ficly, or already had one, here’s a thread to post and discuss your stories. Ficly is a site for [...]

By: NancyKz

NancyKz — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 11:39:57 +0000

Discovered you through the featured story on ficly and decided to check out your blog. Texas and Arizona have me hooked. Looking forward to reading more of your stuff, both here and on ficly – which I also discovered through Wil Wheaton’s tweet.

By: Paul M.

Paul M. — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 07:15:45 +0000

Cool story.

As I write this you are featured on the front page of ficly… you’re famous on the internet!

By: Quiet Desperation

Quiet Desperation — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 20:41:13 +0000

My favorite ultra short story, of sorts, is in “Sirens Of Titan” by Kurt Vonnegut. A peripheral character claims that, in the year 10 Million, the collective history of humanity has become so cumbersome that the first million years is simply dumped/erased/burned and replaced by the phrase, “Following the death of Christ, there was a period of readjustment that lasted for approximately one million years.”

By: Stone Age Scientist

Stone Age Scientist — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 18:10:25 +0000

Space Pocket would be at home in The Twilight Zone, or even Tales of the Unexpected. The latter if Phil's dreamlike paranoia turns out to be actual horror at being kidnapped by "stewardess" aliens, who are about to conduct "sexperiments" on him. And of course, Deep would also serve as a nice sequel to this, whereupon Phil descends into coma after a "grueling" sexperience. In another dreamlike sequence, he blames his inadequacies (idiot) upon himself. And at the end of the black hole, he wakes up in a sunlit room, on Earth, with his wife staring lovingly at him. All's well that ends well.

By: Pieter Kok

Pieter Kok — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 17:50:24 +0000

That’s a very nice story. Halfway through I thought it was the mind of God who, after he set the universe in motion, had overlooked a flaw in the design… However, that works only for a non-omnipotent, non-omniscient God, so your ending is much more satisfying!

By: Stone Age Scientist

Stone Age Scientist — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 17:46:23 +0000

Hmmm, I believe it is the element of game which makes this fun and stimulating.

By: Gary Ansorge

Gary Ansorge — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 15:00:12 +0000

Phil : My brudder, the Rocket Scientist, had for several decades been intent upon writing the Great American Novel. While enrolled in a writing course with some famous writer, he was advised to take up writing poetry. Why? Because poetry is rife with metaphor, analogy,simile, etc and it’s best when verbiage is used most sparingly.

Since undertaking that endeavor, his poetry has been published internationally, even in Britain and you know what sticklers those Brits are about THEIR mother tongue,,,almost as bad as the PArisians.

One of the finest poets I ever knew was an electrical engineer/physicist. His attention to detail and use of metaphor was amazing.

GAry 7

By: maidden

maidden — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:11:38 +0000

You should participate in NaNoWriMo[nanowrimo.org]. I’ve tried twice and failed to reach the 50K words goal, but maybe this year…

By: Torbjörn Larsson, OM

Torbjörn Larsson, OM — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:09:10 +0000

Good one, I LOLEd (LOL, for Eternity).

Even though I just saw a physically more interesting analog, about a quantum fluctuation that lasted a universe. The last two punch lines are eternal classics.

[That is also a very good back story to the main one.]

I’ve seen The Very Short Stories before. Wonder how Hemingway hit on the 6 word format, but it’s perfect. Always liked Moore’s the best. (“Machine. Unexpectedly, I’d invented a time”)

Let’s see, what can one do with 6 words?

“The ninja vanished as a ”

you can’t write a pre-pre-…prequel without a prequel

So it’s prequels all the way down? That explains the immortality thingie in the first place.

By: Ken

Ken — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 12:57:33 +0000

Phil!

That story was *great*!

It sounds to me like it would be perfect for the Drabblecast.

http://web.mac.com/normsherman/Site/Podcast/Podcast.html

Norm does an awsome job of reading and producing short stories, and this sounds like it would slot right in.

By: Adrian Morgan

Adrian Morgan — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 12:27:24 +0000

As I said in a comment on the story (posted under the name “Zerrakhi”), I had an idea for how it might have all started, specifically where the power to become immortal might originally come from, but not for what happens in between.

Because you can’t write a pre-pre-…prequel without a prequel, I wrote it up as a separate story instead. It’s story number 3907 and I hope you can make something of it.

Do I need to apologise for the fact that it’s unashamedly silly? Of course not. That’s what “unashamedly” means.

By: Shrike

Shrike — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 11:59:18 +0000

Thanks for the link! Nice story too.

I have had this brewing on my mind for a long time.

I’d really appreaciate comments.

http://ficly.com/stories/3908

By: Big Al

Big Al — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 11:17:23 +0000

Phil, Phil, what have you done? I could have gotten along just fine without knowing about ficly.com. Now I’ll surely get fired. Damn your eyes.

By: TEO

TEO — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 06:14:42 +0000

I really liked the story. It made me wonder. Who is this guy at the end of the universe? I know who or what I think it is, thats why I didn’t like the sequel. It made the guy (?) to human which I don’t think was Phils intention from the start.

By: Fordi

Fordi — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 04:38:25 +0000

Sweet heads-up on the site. I’ll be participating – the story so far looks to have the potential for a VERY entertaining round-robin.

By: FenrirKar

FenrirKar — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 03:58:04 +0000

Heh, and to think, I just finished reading the final chapter in ‘Death From the Skies’ not 30 minutes ago! A neat little way to wrap up one of the most interesting books I’ve read in a while.

By: Blake Stacey

Blake Stacey — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 03:43:37 +0000

Would you be interested in writing the screenplay for Asteroids: The Movie?

By: shane

shane — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 03:28:17 +0000

@Peter B
Ah yes Canberra. Perfect place for spec fic. I don’t think there is a more fantasy prone area of Australia.

By: Miss Cellania

Miss Cellania — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 02:50:46 +0000

I haven’t read the short story yet, but I will. I wrote some horror stories when I was a kid -very bad horror tales. I wanted to be a writer from a very early age. I didn’t give up the idea for years, even after I realized I had no talent, and that I didn’t even like to read fiction. Ooops, forty years later, and I am finally, as if by accident, writing for a living.

By: Greg in Austin

Greg in Austin — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 02:43:51 +0000

You wrote a book?

By: John B. Sandlin

John B. Sandlin — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 02:30:48 +0000

OK, you talked me into it (that and the next story). I signed up to ficly. I even posted a Bio and a first story.

My God, what have you done to me!

By the way, your 1k story really is a fun read.

(click my name above for my ficly link, likely the only time I’ll use that here).

By: Peter B

Peter B — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 02:12:56 +0000

Phil

Great story!

Perhaps this would be a good time to invite you to become a member of the Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild. Okay, it’s intended for Canberrans, but we have a fairly flexible definition of Canberra…!

We’ve published eight anthologies of short stories, though I don’t think any of the stories we’ve published is as short as “Deep”.