Preamble: This week's story, Gitchy Manitou's Bang, is such a peculiar specimen that I'd rather save my preamble for past the post. That is to say instead of saying things about the story up front I'm going to tuck them in back behind.
After the end of the story when everything goes all italicky again you'll know the fiction is over and the post-post preamble has begun. Or resumed. Whatever. Clear?
(The words of the story are arranged sequentially beneath the fold.)
Preamble: This week I'd like to present Potato, a science-fiction short story on the subject of deprivation and coping, and what happens when sanity requires a paperweight.
(The entire story survives beneath the fold.)
Preamble: Are any of you German? I'll be in Stuttgart next week for the film festival. If you're also in Stuttgart and would like to have a cuppa tea or hoist a pint together, drop me a line. Otherwise I don't know a soul in the city.
Meanwhile, this week I'd like to present Surrogate, a science-fiction short story on the subject of relative risk, and what becomes commodified in a world where any experience can be bought.
(The entire story is born, lives, and dies beneath the fold.)
Preamble: I'm happy to announce ebook editions of my recent serial, Mons, freshly edited and available now under the title We Walked to Space. Use the coupon code SA75K at Smashwords and your ebook is free! (Offer expires 1 April 2013. Discount applicable to all formats except Kindle, which is available exclusively via Amazon for $3.)
Remember, every download helps make my titles more visible to potential new readers so every byte counts.
This week's free slice of fiction is a self-contained short story about a man living in a container. It contains brief scenes of nothing objectionable, so very reactionary readers are warned they will have to make stuff up if they want to be indignant.
(The story begins and ends beneath the fold.)
Preamble: Dear readers, the post below represents the completion of the current serial, Mons, which will shortly be available as an electronic Kindle edition under the title We Walked to Space; the $3 book will be offered for free as a temporary promotion I will announce here, so that regular readers of this blog can get their hands on a copy gratis.
The Smashwords edition of We Walked to Space for all non-Kindle ebook platforms will follow after ninety days or so, with a 100% discount coupon available to loyal readers.
(The story concludes beneath the fold.)
Preamble: Before we start, as a matter of housekeeping I'd like to remind you fine readers that in service to all the appropriate buzzwords there are multiple vectors of accessing content here at Cheeseburger Brown, including but not limited to following me on Twitter, befriending me on Facebook, and fanning, liking, or otherwise verbing Cheeseburger Brown's official page on Facebook. You can type up either scornful or congratulatory emails and send them to me at this address. There's even an old timey RSS feed.
Now, it's been a long grey winter of starting up new companies and finding creative new ways to pay the mortgage for your this narrator, but the days are already getting longer and any time now somebody will send me a cheque instead of a bill in the mail. I can just feel it. And you know what money means: more time for this narrator to relax and spin yarns. So cross your fingers for me.
Meanwhile, the current serial comes to a head below.
(The story unfolds beneath the fold.)
If you have any interest in what it's like being a fabulously not-well-to-do science-fiction author basking in the light of obscurity, read on. Otherwise wait for me to tweet something about Olympus Mons again because it probably means fiction has resumed.
And now, my so-called life:
Preamble: When science-fiction authors such as myself aren't bathing in caviar and turning away desperate offers for oral sex from supermodels we're being ferried around in limousines to attend important science-fiction events, like book clubs and the testing of new space technologies and/or particle weapons systems.
Sometimes I go to events like these, especially if they are hosted in one of those very advanced major cities you see in movies but probably haven't heard of because they're in Canada, like New Yorkshire or Huffer Bay. (And you know what they say -- what happens in Huffer Bay stays in Huffer Bay.)
Recently I was a high-paying guest at the world famous science-fiction authorial institute in downtown Eskimopolis. It's a wondrous place.
In the museum wing they have housed a single authentic sideburn of Isaac Asimov in a glass case. I tried to take a picture with my phone and a security guard wrenched my arm behind my back. I reminded him that he was obliged by the three laws to obey orders given to him by a human being but he wouldn't listen. My wife was so embarrassed.
They also had some very educational science-fiction author seminars, like chrono-neutrino-gravitastic technobabble workshops and hands-on how-to sessions on wearing important-looking sweaters for book jacket photographs.
We passed a small table set up in a disused corridor where three strange, sober people with papery voices lectured on the importance of the adverb grimly. "Grimly has been a staple of the genre since the days of scientifiction," said one of them in a somber, serious tone. "But today's uppity editors want to turn their backs on decades of heritage, eschewing the usage as hackneyed."
"Are you telling me there are editors, living and working today, with the balls-out temerity to eschew hackneyed usages? That's an outrage, that is. What is this genre -- the Ritz?"
I gave their proud society five dollars, which they accepted with grave dignity.
When I got home I found out that Footprints magazine won't be printing any more of my stories. Or anything else either, actually. It turns out full-colour glossy magazines made of paper with a purely local focus are expensive propositions to prop up when readers can just get fresher content from the Internet for free anyway. Why pay for a magazine? So at least that's a deadline I won't have to worry about anymore. I was always a day late with my submissions, but from now on I won't be. That's progress.
RIP, Footprints magazine. Meanwhile, let's get on with the next installment of the current serial...
(The story unfolds beneath the fold.)
or
(for Kindle format) and Smashwords (for every other format).
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