By Jean Asselin While I never intended “Don’t do ‘X’ in the fiction you submit” to become a continuing series, recent submissions point me once again in that direction. Let ‘X’ be: “Your main character just had the adventure of their life but in the process has to shuffle off this mortal coil.” Or: [...]
This report is a continuation of the work done in Worldcon Membership Demographics, 1939-1960 (Walling, 2016) and in Worldcon Membership Demographics, 1961-1980 (Walling, 2018) and aims to see if any of the trends previously observed continue in subsequent Worldcons and provide some hard data on the membership of the Worldcons of that period.
Every facet of his existence was meant to be some form of punishment, overt or subtle, straightforward or ironic. It was the only way he'd been allowed to live.
Allport, F. W., Edwards, C. K., & Ghallegar, S. M. (2003). Origins and evolution of avian humanoid worship: A meta-analysis. Journal of Cultural Psychology, 51, 439-468.
I try to turn my head -- the only part of my body that is merely restrained rather than actually strapped down tight -- to look my neighbor in the eye, but the juddering of the transporter in the outer atmosphere stops me. "How did they get you?" he repeats, shouting over the hollow thud of the craft surfing the mesosphere.
Miquel stood on the steps of Saint Sebastian’s pushing vials of ‘god’. He held a baggie up in front of his two customers, Bible Boys from one of the havens on the surrounding hills. They had pulled up in a red sports sedan that probably belonged to one of their daddies.
Ask any schoolchild who the first victim of the Besynian Revolution was and they'll say Cube Atticus. Because that's what the history books tell us; that's what Cube Atticus' grave marker says: First to Fall for Freedom. And it's true in the sense that all sophistry is true. As with all stories, it depends on who's doing the telling.
aim the ears; angle the orbitals | toward the deep field | for echoes
By the fifteenth month of the drought | the lake no longer hid her secrets