Author Topic: EP372: Flash Collection  (Read 15972 times)

Fenrix

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Reply #25 on: December 13, 2012, 02:14:35 PM
Health Tips For Traveller

Reading between the lines, it would appear that the Pooquar want to infect the Earthers with life forms that will spread the Pooquar to other worlds. This travel brochure is actually bait to lure incubators for alien larvae.

I heard this one over on Toasted Cake earlier this year, and congrats to the author on another sale. The second listen let me search for the clues about the dark goings on in this world. There are dissidents who need to be avoided and will try to inject chest bursters under your skin. But the tingling caused by the prickings of the good Pooquar is full of goodness and happy (and not little alien babies at all). They want you to get a nice thick layer of fat under the skin to better feed their young. Any random bleeding is from sadness, not from this feeding process. Delightfully awful.

If any of y'all who enjoy flash fiction aren't listening to Toasted Cake, go fix that and add it to your feed. Tina's planning to extend this experiment at least through the end of next year. That's at least 100 stories poured into your ear.

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Reply #26 on: December 14, 2012, 08:09:11 AM
I will jump on the praise bandwagon for Health Tips for Traveler. And while I did think the broken English was hilarious, the best part of the story for me was the nefarious plot by the aliens to infect their human guests. I particularly liked the reference to alien dissenters ('talkers of stupid"), who are apparently opposed to this plan. Though, my favourite line was definitely a physical humour joke ... "means of non-conscious, both pharmacological and percussive are on offer..." I love the concept of someone being offered a "percussive" method for (literally) being knocked out. :)

Echoes of the Bouncing Ball was pleasant but forgettable.

I wasn't a big fan of Tornado on Fire. Like Unblinking, I too didn't get the joke. And I wasn't particularly impressed by the obviously false tall tale. But, after reading what has been said about it in the forums, I think this one is growing on me.



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Reply #27 on: December 14, 2012, 03:07:47 PM
And I wasn't particularly impressed by the obviously false tall tale.

The fact that it was obviously false didn't bother me.  A tall tale that is NOT obviously false is not a tall tale at all.  That's why it's "tall".  :)



Fenrix

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Reply #28 on: December 14, 2012, 07:36:53 PM
And I wasn't particularly impressed by the obviously false tall tale.

The fact that it was obviously false didn't bother me.  A tall tale that is NOT obviously false is not a tall tale at all.  That's why it's "tall".  :)

Depends on how you define a tall tale, I think. Your position covers Pecos Bill and Paul Bunyan. However, Ambrose Bierce's "Oil of Dog" is a tall tale, but if you have a cynical view of people, it's not obviously false.

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Reply #29 on: December 17, 2012, 02:48:29 AM
I definitely liked all three- the last one was clever in my opinion, especially since it is revealed that he's applying for social security at the end. Got a little chuckle out of me.

Health Tips was amazing, too, as aforementioned. Wow!

**END TRANSMISSION**


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Reply #30 on: December 17, 2012, 02:58:08 PM
Depends on how you define a tall tale, I think. Your position covers Pecos Bill and Paul Bunyan. However, Ambrose Bierce's "Oil of Dog" is a tall tale, but if you have a cynical view of people, it's not obviously false.

I don't consider "Oil of Dog" a tall tale at all.  If it's not obviously false, it's not a tall tale.  Dictionary.com says a tall tale is "An exaggerated, unreliable story".  If it's not unreliable, then it's just a tale, not a tall tale.



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Reply #31 on: December 17, 2012, 04:30:49 PM
After seeing the references to it here, I went and read "Oil of Dog."  I'm not sure exactly how I would describe that story, but it definitely isn't a tall tale.  Many of Bierce's stories ooze misanthropy, but "Oil of Dog" is exceptionally nasty even for Bierce.



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Reply #32 on: December 17, 2012, 06:42:50 PM
I'd agree that "Oil Of Dog" isn't a tall tale (and that it's a particularly nasty piece of work) - to me, it's not just obvious falsity and exaggeration, but also an ongoing "upping the ante" of exaggeration as the story progresses that makes something a tall tale.  Think Rudolf Erich Raspe's "The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen" or Commander McBragg (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4roxM8hUMk).



Fenrix

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Reply #33 on: December 18, 2012, 01:53:40 PM
After seeing the references to it here, I went and read "Oil of Dog."  I'm not sure exactly how I would describe that story, but it definitely isn't a tall tale.  Many of Bierce's stories ooze misanthropy, but "Oil of Dog" is exceptionally nasty even for Bierce.

I would suggest you also go over and check out PseudoPod 200 and let Ben read it to you.

Some editor thinks it qualifies more as a tall tale than horror or war. The complete works anthology I have has only those three divisions, and Oil of Dog is in the Tall Tale portion. I'll have to read the foreword on the Tall Tale section and see how they defend their position.

If we accept the wikipedia definition as mostly true, this is the first line of their entry "A tall tale is a story with unbelievable elements, related as if it were true and factual." Using this definition both the final story of this collection as well as Oil of Dog are tall tales.
« Last Edit: December 18, 2012, 01:59:02 PM by Fenrix »

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Reply #34 on: December 18, 2012, 02:33:27 PM
If we accept the wikipedia definition as mostly true, this is the first line of their entry "A tall tale is a story with unbelievable elements, related as if it were true and factual." Using this definition both the final story of this collection as well as Oil of Dog are tall tales.

By that definition, pretty much anything on Escape Pod or Podcastle are tall tales.  That definition's too broad, more along the lines of "speculative fiction" rather than "tall tale"

but also an ongoing "upping the ante" of exaggeration as the story progresses that makes something a tall tale.  Think Rudolf Erich Raspe's "The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen" or Commander McBragg (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4roxM8hUMk).

That makes sense--I hadn't thought of that, but it meshes well with my feeling of a tall tale, which is the kind of tale best suited to telling at a pub with drinks freely flowing.

My favorite example of tall tales is the Big Fish book, which is basically a series of tall tales.  Though in that case the first chapters are more exaggerated than the later, probably because the the beginning of story is a history of a father's life as told to his son in the form of tall tales, so the earlier chapters can be more fantastical since the boy had not been born yet.



chornbe

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Reply #35 on: December 19, 2012, 06:40:19 PM
EP372: Flash Collection

Read by Mur Lafferty

----

Health Tips for Traveler by David W. Goldman


Loved it for the first few minutes. As a motorcyclist who owns and works primarily on Japanese motorcycles, the familiarity of the poor translations was amusing, funny, charming. After a while it got pretty trite and droll, and the story was lost to me in the constantly awkward prose.

Rather than the entire story, snippets of the translation would have made this story much better.

$.02

More Union Dues, please!

http://thepacepodcast.com


Fenrix

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Reply #36 on: December 21, 2012, 02:28:38 PM
If we accept the wikipedia definition as mostly true, this is the first line of their entry "A tall tale is a story with unbelievable elements, related as if it were true and factual." Using this definition both the final story of this collection as well as Oil of Dog are tall tales.

By that definition, pretty much anything on Escape Pod or Podcastle are tall tales.  That definition's too broad, more along the lines of "speculative fiction" rather than "tall tale"

but also an ongoing "upping the ante" of exaggeration as the story progresses that makes something a tall tale.  Think Rudolf Erich Raspe's "The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen" or Commander McBragg (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4roxM8hUMk).

That makes sense--I hadn't thought of that, but it meshes well with my feeling of a tall tale, which is the kind of tale best suited to telling at a pub with drinks freely flowing.

My favorite example of tall tales is the Big Fish book, which is basically a series of tall tales.  Though in that case the first chapters are more exaggerated than the later, probably because the the beginning of story is a history of a father's life as told to his son in the form of tall tales, so the earlier chapters can be more fantastical since the boy had not been born yet.

From the editor Ernest Jerome Hopkins:

"To a Westerner no explanation should be needed for the fact that Ambrose Bierce wrote twenty-three "tall tales," since this was the one form of literature that the pioneers had brought across the plains, and it probably had its origin in the frontier farm country long before that. The essence of a "tall tale" was high exaggeration presented in a deadpan manner as truthful fact; it was a hoax aimed seriously, and the moment he betrayed that belief, as by a harmless question, the works blew up. ... And the suckers indeed fell for hoaxes--solemn Eastern critics regarded these stories as out of taste and were shocked, especially, at "oil of Dog" ... In the West these critics and psychologists would have had to buy the drinks."

I'm an engineer, and thus no expert on literature, but prior to Manifest Destiny how much fantastic fiction was presented as truthful fact? As I understand it, much early fiction had to be fully grounded in the real world, otherwise it was not literature. When did this format start where the real world is used with elements that stretch the boundaries, as in a tall tale? My understanding is that the format of the "tall tale" is America's only major contribution to literature forms.

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Reply #37 on: December 21, 2012, 11:50:01 PM
Baron Munchausen certainly predated this...



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Reply #38 on: January 03, 2013, 02:37:02 PM
I'm an engineer, and thus no expert on literature, but prior to Manifest Destiny how much fantastic fiction was presented as truthful fact? As I understand it, much early fiction had to be fully grounded in the real world, otherwise it was not literature. When did this format start where the real world is used with elements that stretch the boundaries, as in a tall tale? My understanding is that the format of the "tall tale" is America's only major contribution to literature forms.


True enough, much fiction in the past had to have a grounding point in real life--some way the story could've gotten to where it got.

But I'd still say that a "tall tale" is distinct from "fiction grounded in reality".  When I think "tall tale" I think ridiculous and obvious exaggerations and fabrications--lassoing a tornado kind of stuff. 



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Reply #39 on: January 04, 2013, 02:32:55 AM
Quote
As I understand it, much early fiction had to be fully grounded in the real world, otherwise it was not literature.

I don't think this is at all true - "literature" is a pretty late invention (in that conception at least) - I mean, "Midsummer's Night's Dream" wasn't literature because it had fairies and such?  It doesn't make sense.  The 19th century was the dueling ground of Naturalism/Realism and Romanticism/Imagination - nobody won and readers everywhere profited.  Things like definitions by which "literature" are judged are constantly shifting, depending when and where you stick the pin, and the further back you go, the muddier it gets until there is no formal concept of literature, just good reads whose value everyone argued over anyway (and whether fiction and tale telling were affronts to the traditional, printed religious text of name-your-geographical-locale religion in the first place).

Did Poe invent the mystery with August Dupin or was it Hoffmann's "Madame De Scuderi"?  Make your choices, place your bets - me, I've got two great stories to read!   



Fenrix

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Reply #40 on: January 07, 2013, 03:36:22 PM
Maybe this delineation between "literature" and things that would fall into speculative fiction is more of a problem with academics. Academic classes that focus on speculative fiction are subject to ridicule, both from the general public and from academic peers. However, I don't need to justify the statement here that there's a lot of great writing and value in speculative fiction. When I was matriculating at a technical school, there was a single science fiction class offered by the English department once a year, and it would fill during the first 30 minutes of registration. All the English classes I took were the equivalent of Charlie Brown in the Great Pumpkin where he declares "I got a rock."

This makes me wonder several things. How long until the social stigma of being geeky is gone (or greatly diminished) and academic rigor can be applied to speculative fiction? Along with this, why don't more schools push this and provide the classes that people want to take? May as well give students something enriching that they will enjoy, as that class is going to set them back several mortgage payments.

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Reply #41 on: February 05, 2013, 05:57:56 PM
Maybe this delineation between "literature" and things that would fall into speculative fiction is more of a problem with academics. Academic classes that focus on speculative fiction are subject to ridicule, both from the general public and from academic peers. However, I don't need to justify the statement here that there's a lot of great writing and value in speculative fiction. When I was matriculating at a technical school, there was a single science fiction class offered by the English department once a year, and it would fill during the first 30 minutes of registration. All the English classes I took were the equivalent of Charlie Brown in the Great Pumpkin where he declares "I got a rock."

This makes me wonder several things. How long until the social stigma of being geeky is gone (or greatly diminished) and academic rigor can be applied to speculative fiction? Along with this, why don't more schools push this and provide the classes that people want to take? May as well give students something enriching that they will enjoy, as that class is going to set them back several mortgage payments.

I've been adding market listings to The Submissions Grinder for a while, and have been continually made sad by self-labeled literary markets that have guidelines that paraphrase to.  "We are amazing and we publish the most amazing writing on the planet, bar none.  No science fiction.  You have to pay to submit electronically (but you should cuz it'll save the planet).  We don't pay you with money, but we do pay you in prestige, maybe a subscription to our amazing magazine if you're lucky.  --sincerely, editors of Journal  That No One Reads"



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Reply #42 on: February 05, 2013, 09:35:41 PM
This makes me wonder several things. How long until the social stigma of being geeky is gone (or greatly diminished) and academic rigor can be applied to speculative fiction? Along with this, why don't more schools push this and provide the classes that people want to take? May as well give students something enriching that they will enjoy, as that class is going to set them back several mortgage payments.

I personally can't wait for this day. I give props to my 6th grade English teacher for having us read The Giver, and also enjoyed an entire class on dystopian literature from the Soviet Union and East Germany in college. (If you haven't read "We" by Yevgeny Zamyatin, I recommend it.) However, these two examples were few and far between in an education filled with Steinbeck, Shakespeare, and excerpts of Dickens novels.



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Reply #43 on: February 06, 2013, 02:41:17 PM
This makes me wonder several things. How long until the social stigma of being geeky is gone (or greatly diminished) and academic rigor can be applied to speculative fiction? Along with this, why don't more schools push this and provide the classes that people want to take? May as well give students something enriching that they will enjoy, as that class is going to set them back several mortgage payments.

I personally can't wait for this day. I give props to my 6th grade English teacher for having us read The Giver, and also enjoyed an entire class on dystopian literature from the Soviet Union and East Germany in college. (If you haven't read "We" by Yevgeny Zamyatin, I recommend it.) However, these two examples were few and far between in an education filled with Steinbeck, Shakespeare, and excerpts of Dickens novels.

We're already a long way there.  I rarely hear "geek" used an insult any more, and blockbuster SF movies have brought the genre to the mainstream audiences. 



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Reply #44 on: February 06, 2013, 08:23:29 PM
Likewise, I took a course on Science Fiction as Literature in college where we spent an enormous amount of time on "The Martian Chronicles" and "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" and went into a fair amount of depth.

Of course my college also hosted an academic conference on Tolkien and had an English professor who specialized in Lord Dunsany (I think).

Some authors already get a pretty good scholarly treatment, I'd say we are past that point, except for a large number of old relics in college Literature departments. But that's always been true in every field, at this point I think we're just waiting for a few of the old sticks-in-the-mud to die off. And in the mean time, legitimate academics can create academic journals about Poe and set up the "Center for Ray Bradbury Studies" and whatnot.  The disapproving old guys have lost their stranglehold on what counts as "Literature", give it a few more decades and they'll lose their majority as well.



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Reply #45 on: March 15, 2013, 06:43:18 PM
Not a huge flash fiction fan normally and this was a pretty mixed bag. Health Tips was kind of amusing, but the joke wore thin pretty quickly. Bouncing Ball felt like one of these middling Escape Pod episodes with a way too obvious message and kind of unoriginal Macguffin.
Tornadoes on fire, on the other hand, had some swagger and a punchline to match it. Thats what I always hope to get from this kind of excercises.



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Reply #46 on: April 11, 2013, 01:03:06 AM
Hmm, I'd not quite grasped that it was parasitic but I figured the bleeding was some sort of disease, but that makes mors sense for Health Tips.

Bouncing Ball just seemed a nice ending little short without much more to it, though I assumed that it was basically a dream and he would wake up in his original life too.

I have to give a miss to Tornadoes on Fire, I see the tall tale aspect, but it just seemed to not have any purpose at all to my mind.



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Reply #47 on: May 25, 2013, 09:33:25 AM
saw this image and was reminded of Tornados on Fire

I'd like to hear my options, so I could weigh them, what do you say?
Five pounds?  Six pounds? Seven pounds?