365 tomorrows

365 tomorrows is a collaborative project designed to present readers with a new piece of short speculative ‘flash’ fiction each day. Using the broad palette of science fiction, our vision of the future creates a diverse pool of stories with something for everyone to enjoy.

The stories of 365 Tomorrows are currently written by; Kathy Kachelries, Steve Smith, J.R. Blackwell, Duncan Shields, Sam Clough and Patricia Stewart; and are also selected from submissions.

The 365 Tomorrows alumni include Jared Axelrod, J.Loseth, and B. York.

The forums are kept in order by Mike Herbaugh aka Freeman, and if you haven’t spent any time in there, please join us, there’s a great sense of community and always something interesting to talk about.

The 365 Tomorrows was conceptualized by Kathy Kachelries and launched August 1, 2005. Site developed by Steve Smith of Align Software Inc., with design by Steve VanRooy, and including 3D modeling work by Moebius

An exerpt from ‘What is Flash Fiction?’, by Kathy Kachelries

“The most concise and widely-cited example of flash fiction is the story Ernest Hemingway penned, allegedly to settle a bar bet: “For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.” Despite the limitations of its length, this story, framed as an advertisement, satisfies all of the requirements of a short story: protagonist, conflict, and resolution. A reader imagines the person who wrote the ad: a parent torn apart by the loss of a stillborn or miscarried child. The reader senses the conflict: an incomprehensible feeling of loss, made all the more poignant by the fact that it is not directly addressed. Even the resolution is contained within that six-word masterpiece. By framing it as an advertisement, Hemingway allows us to see the protagonist’s coping mechanism: an attempt to distance him or herself from the loss by selling the only physical evidence that such a loss exists.

Flash fiction is fiction with its teeth bared and its claws extended, lithe and muscular with no extra fat. It pounces in the first paragraph, and if those claws aren’t embedded in the reader by the start of the second, the story began a paragraph too soon. There is no margin for error. Every word must be essential, and if it isn’t essential, it must be eliminated.