Short story: Crimes Against Science Fiction

I want to give a shout out to Suzanne Vincent and the editing crew over at Flash Fiction Online, who gave this story one of the kindest and most encouraging rejection letters I've ever received. This was really my first stab at flash fiction, and as such its rather derivative -- I was channeling a bit of Douglas Adams when I threw this together -- with a weak ending. I had fun with it, but it's time to put this little experiment out to pasture. Thus, Crimes Against Science Fiction is trunked here for your enjoyment.

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When Tommy stumbled half-awake out of his apartment this morning, he didn't expect that the future would be waiting outside to kill him. Or that the future would be so fat.

"Stand fast, and prepare to answer for your crimes!" the one of the left shouted, pointing an exotic firearm at Tommy. The assailant was dressed in a flamboyantly colorful excuse for a military uniform, though the garment was clearly intended for someone far thinner than the rotund, pimply-faced gent breathing heavily in Tommy's parking space.

The one on the right interrupted. "Wait, we have to explain his crimes to him first. He isn't guilty of them yet." This one was slightly taller, and rail thin, except for the almost comically out-of-place beer belly swelling beneath the belt of his…er…outfit. He was wearing some bizarre hybrid of 17th century samurai armor and 21st century leather fetish gear while carrying a wildly impractical, oversized sword.

Saints of Jupiter

Here's another abandoned story that will require a completely unrecognizable rewrite to make useful. Bear in mind, I'm mostly posting this to satisfy the TechTalk guys, who humbled me before their vast and geeky radio audience for not updating with sufficient frequency. Here you go, guys. Leftovers.

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My name is Della. I was once a warship of the 3rd Jovian Armada, and I am the last of my kind. I was born to see the invisible hand of Jupiter, a magnetosphere so grand it reaches all the way to Saturn, and casts auroras the size of continents. My first memory is drinking in the wild plasma torus swimming in Io's orbit, and suckling at the sulfur dioxide fired into space from its impossible volcanoes. I made my venom from such things, adding hydrogen and anger to brew acid stings that dissolved my enemies.

Short Story: The Revelation of Guido

Yet another of the many short stories I wrote a while back and have decided to trunk, since it's not really worth shopping anymore. My writer's group really dug this one, despite the rather obvious (and profane) tropes and language tricks I pulled out. Enjoy.

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The dumpster just sat there, as it had for the last several minutes. Guido ‘The Wrench’ Morelli stared at it intently, brow furrowed in concentration. After a long moment, he let out a frustrated grunt.

“It’s not moving,” Tommy ‘The Gun’ Galvino said behind him, conspicuously picking nonexistent lint from his thousand-dollar silk tie.

“No kidding.”

“You gotta do the finger thing,” Tommy insisted, rolling his shoulders to straighten the jacket on his pinstriped suit.

“I’m not doing the finger thing.”

“It works when you do the finger thing.”

“One time," Guido snapped. "One time it worked when I did the finger thing.”

“You got a better idea?”

Short story: Victory or Death

Here's a story I'm going to "trunk" as Tobias Buckell would say. I've shopped it to a few magazines and gotten the kiss-off, and while it's got some good ideas that I'll probably recycle, I don't think the next version is going to look much like this one. It's time to move on. Enjoy it--and viciously critique it--with my compliments.

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Esma awoke to a med-bot injecting her with a max-level stimulant. Before she could respond, her stomach twisted into an agonizing cramp, and Esma found herself vomiting up the last remnants of a meal she finished some 50 light-years ago.