Regular readers of this blog as well as my personal blog may recall that I occasionally enjoy doing writing challenges such as the eight hour fiction challenge.
The story I want to announce today (which I actually should have announced two weeks ago, except that life got in the way) is the result of another writing challenges, namely the “Not Really SF Short Story Challenge” issued by writer E.P. Beaumont.
As anybody who has not been living under a rock this past month may have noticed, the SFF sphere is currently embroiled in a huge controversy due to some rightwing US fans and writers unable to cope with the fact that the genre is shifting away from their particular preferences.
One of the complaints raised is that SFF has been invaded by literary fiction and that awards and other accolades increasingly go to works that are “literary” rather than good old proper SF.
The “Not Really SF Short Story Challenge” is a response to these complaints and proposes a counter-invasion of literary fiction by SF. The idea behind the challenge is to write a perfectly mundane short story, the sort you might find in any literary fiction mag, but write it in the clunky style of Golden Age science fiction complete with “As you know, Bob…” dialogue and overexplanation of every single bit of technology the characters interact with, no matter how mundane.
I go a bit deeper into the actual writing process over at my personal blog. But for now, here is a completely mundane story (about a couple arguing at the breakfast table) written in the style of science fiction’s golden age.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present you:
The Four and a Half Minute Boiled Egg
Bertha and Alfred, married for twenty years, enjoy all a truly science fictional life in the twenty-first century. But in spite of all the technological marvels surrounding them, an argument at the breakfast table about egg boiling times escalates and threatens to end their marriage.
This parodistic piece is a mundane short story of 3500 words, written in the style of science fiction’s “golden age” of the 1940s and 1950s.
More information.
Length: 3500 words
List price: 0.99 USD, EUR or GBP
Buy it at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, Amazon France, Amazon Netherlands, Amazon Spain, Amazon Italy, Amazon Canada, Amazon Australia, Amazon Brazil, Amazon Japan, Amazon India, Amazon Mexico, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple iTunes, Scribd, Oyster, Smashwords, Inktera, txtr, Thalia, Weltbild, Hugendubel, Der Club, Libiro, Nook UK, DriveThruFiction, OmniLit/AllRomance e-books, Casa del Libro, Flipkart, e-Sentral, You Heart Books and XinXii.
