365 tomorrows

We would like to thank all of you for spending your valuable time with us throughout the year, and wish you all the very best of the holiday season and good health and prosperity in the New Year!

Best,
The Staff and Writers of 365tomorrows

Paul Di Filippo had this to say about Cory Doctorow in a December 22nd review of Makers

In science fiction, however, the pool of hip, youthful, happening, fresh-eyed, keen-witted, media-savvy, broad-shouldered, accomplished, extroverted and talented writers, blending both revolution and tradition in just the right proportions, is noticeably shallow at the moment. There’s Neal Stephenson, but he’s rather too distant and hermetic, with a low profile and unfathomable, mutating goals. So these days, when pundits and fans alarmed over the prospect of SF’s demise want to point to a knight in shining prose who can defeat all the dragons besetting the genre and guide it to the Shining City on the Hill, they invariably point to Cory Doctorow.

Cory’s our kind of people. Read the whole article here…

Cybrosis is a podcast novel written and narrated by P.C. Haring with the voice talents of some of the biggest names in the podcasting community including Philippa Ballantine, Christiana Ellis, Podcasting’s Rich Sigfrit, Mur Lafferty, Chris Lester, Chuck Tomasi, and Heather Welliver. This full length podcast novel hacks your RSS feeds on 01/01/10

The fantastic cover art for this podcast novel is the amazing work of J.R. Blackwell, and Jared Axelrod.

Check out Cybrosis

It’s December, and we’re closing in on the end of another calendar year, and fast approaching the holidays.

December for many is a time of giving, and so we at 365tomorrows are giving you another staff writer to enjoy year round, starting with today’s story The Quiegman’s Take a Holiday.

Help us welcome Roi R. Czechvala, who many will recognize both from his presence in the forums here as well as his well received feature in October. Drop the forums and say hello.

GUD Magazine
Current Issue
ISSUE 4 :: SPRING 2009

GUD (pronounced “good”) is Greatest Uncommon Denominator, an award-winning print/pdf magazine with two hundred pages of literary and genre fiction, poetry, art, and articles. GUD IS TIMELESS. GUD is modern in business, method, and execution, but timeless in message. GUD is published twice a year, for your reading pleasure.

Issue 4 begins with the end of the world and moves on from there. From the unromantically magical take on Ragnarøk in the lead story “Unbound” to the curious history of squid in “A Man of Kiri Maru”, this issue is steeped in mythos, making use of the old familiar tales and some new ones, mixing cosmologies from around the world–and from other worlds as well.

But the focus, be it of prose, poetry, or art, is always on the human–on the clashes between imagination and reality, on choices and redemption, on what the Other can tell us about ourselves. And like any GUD magazine, this one’s eclectic; browse around between the covers and you’re sure to come upon some things you’ll like, whether you’re a genre junkie or a generalist. We hope you’ll find some beauty, something uncommon, and that, for just a moment, the angle of the light will seem a little bit different.

Purchase GUD

November has arrived, for many of us this brings an extra hour of well needed sleep. After a great feature with Roi R. Czechvala in October, we’re ready to showcase another great writer here on 365tomorrows for the month of November.

This month, for your reading enjoyment, we feature the work of William Tracy, known in the forums as Afishionado.

William has had a number of stories on the front page over the past few years, and we’re sure you’ll enjoy his featured work this month.

Enjoy the stories, and don’t forget to drop by the forums to leave some feedback.

Wil Wheaton : Just a Geek

Wil Wheaton’s second book, as read by the author. Wil Wheaton has never been one to take the conventional path to success. Despite early stardom through his childhood role in the motion picture “Stand By Me”, and growing up on television as Wesley Crusher on “Star Trek: The Next Generation”, Wil left Hollywood in pursuit of happiness, purpose, and a viable means of paying the bills. In the oddest of places, Topeka, Kansas, Wil discovered that despite his claims to fame, he was at heart Just a Geek.

There’s a rumour that someone on the internet is making Wil’s work available for free. If you’re that guy/girl and you’re reading this, stop snacking with his meal ticket. The book’s not new, and the audio book’s not new, but the stealing is, and that’s not cool.

If you’re at all interested in what Wil has to say – follow the link to Wil Wheaton’s Blog where you can buy it and know that Wil’s actually getting the money. He’s self published this thing, and if you’re not paying him for it, he’s not getting paid. Worse than that – if you’re paying someone else for it, they’re stealing out of Wil’s pocket.

Don’t do it. Buy a copy from Wil. After all, he’s Wil Freakin Wheaton.

October has arrived, and it’s high time we featured another writer here on 365tomorrows.

This month, for your reading enjoyment, we feature the work of Roi R. Czechvala, known in the forums as 1stSarge. Roi’s been a fixture on 365 for some time, and has seen a number of stories on the front page already. A career military man with a dry sense of humour and just enough of a cynical nature to be endearing, I think you’ll enjoy his work as much as we do.

Enjoy the stories, and don’t forget to drop by the forums to leave some feedback.

Jake Freivald at Flash Fiction Online has written a good review of the book –  Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction edited by Tara L. Masih.

Give the review a look – you might find the book is of interest.

Strange Horizons (www.strangehorizons.com) is a weekly web-based magazine of and about speculative fiction. The term “speculative fiction” refers to what is more commonly known as “sci-fi,” but which properly embraces science fiction, fantasy, magic realism, slipstream, and a host of sub-genres. The magazine was founded in September 2000, and as [they] said then:

“[Speculative fiction is] important to the world. These stories make us think. They critique society. They offer alternatives. They give us a vision of the future—and warn us of the potential dangers therein. They help us understand our past. They are full of beauty, and terror, and delight.”

Strange Horizons publishes short fiction, poetry, reviews and articles of interest to the speculative fiction community each week on Monday.

As Strange Horizons, like 365tomorrows, is staffed entirely by volunteers, and as unlike 365tomorrows, Strange Horizons is a professional paying market, they need to run fund raising drives from time to time in order to keep the coffers full and the gears oiled and turning.

They’re hoping to raise $7,000 in the month of August, and if you can spare a few dollars, we’d like it if you helped them out.

A link to their fund raising page can be found here:
http://www.strangehorizons.com/fund_drives/2009/main.shtml

You’ll be supporting the future, and that’s a good thing.

It seems like only yesterday that I was reading Outer Space Romance, the first story posted on what was then the brand new 365tomorrows site. That was August 1st, 2005 – four full years and nearly 1,500 stories ago.

August first of 2009 brought us Pixelator, and the first story of this, our fifth year of bringing a new, short piece of Science Fiction to the web every single day.

There have been some changes, and we’ve had a few more staff writers fade into the background while other pursuits are keeping them busy, but their words are immortized in the archives, and there are new talents emerging that may soon step up and take their places on the front lines.

Speaking of the archives, we’ve added some more useful search capabilities to the site, allowing you to easily review all of the stories of any given month going back to that very first story. As well the search has been enhanced to provide type ahead feedback to guide you towards that elusive tale you’re trying to track down. The site archives can be browsed here, and if you’ve got some time on your hands, there are almost 1,500 stories there waiting for you.

On the submissions front, we’ve been inundated with an increasing number of submissions from an ever expanding group of writers. We’re trying our best to keep up, and are adding some new eyes to the review process in order to respond to stories in a timely fashion. We do appreciate your patience as we struggle to keep up with all of your collective creative talents.

We’ll continue to make incremental improvements where we can, and we’ll send out updates as we make changes, or add features.

From all of us, thank you for helping make this a continuing success.

Best,
:The staff and writers of 365tomorrows.

Most of you are familiar with 365tomorrows from the SciFi stories published to the front page every day, but there’s a community lurking just beneath the surface too. Check out The Forums, register and jump in to talk about the stories and chat with the authors.

Link up in the Science Fiction forum and discus other people’s sci-fi (books, movies, TV, comics, etc) and share news that reminds us how close to tomorrow we actually are. Visit The Pod where we all go to relax. If a story from the front page inspires a continuation or spin off, post it to The Day After Tomorrow. Finally, for stories submitted to 365 that aren’t accepted, a recent addition is Building a Better Tomorrow where you can go to find revision help for rejected tomorrows.

Follow 365tomorrows on twitter to get links to the day’s stories as they are published. twitter.com/365tomorrows

“Why was that old fellow such a marvelous propaganda technician? Because he had so many insane, excruciating things to get excited about. You’ve got to be hurt and upset; otherwise you can’t think of the really good, penetrating X-rayish phrases… No, it won’t do. We need some other kind of madness and violence. But what? What? Where can one find it?”
- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

January 1st brings us the start of a New Year. May we have many an insane, excruciating thing to be excited about in the coming year, and perhaps an equal measure of marvel and joy.

Take good care of you and yours, and all the very best for the coming Tomorrows and beyond.
:The Staff and Writers of 365tomorrows

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

Whether we call it Remembrance Day, Poppy Day, Armistice Day or Veterans Day, I can’t help but reflect on this day that we get to spend our time looking to possible tomorrows because of the sacrifices made by those who gave up their own.

Thank you.

Playing for Keeps by Mur Lafferty is for sale today on Amazon.

You may remember Mur Lafferty as an author we featured in May of last year on 365, and the cover art for the Podiobook versions of Playing for Keeps was done by our own JR.Blackwell and one of our founding members, Jared Axelrod, as well as JC Hutchins and Natalie Metzger.

Mur’s got great story telling ability, and you can show some support and get a great book at the same time by dropping by Amazon and picking up a copy.

Happy August First!

Today marks the start of the fourth year of 365. We hit a lot of milestones in the last twelve months, including our 1000th story, which was reported on boingboing.

Whether you’re a new reader or you’ve been here since the beginning, we’re glad to have you around. Thanks for a great three years, and we hope you enjoy the fourth!

We’d like to wish all of our American readers a Happy Independence Day, from all of us at 365tomorrows. Patricia Stewart, one of our American writers has the front page today for the Fourth of July holiday in the United States.

We’d like to wish all of our Canadian readers a Happy Canada Day, from all of us at 365tomorrows. Duncan Shields, one of our Canadian writers has the front page today, and in a few days time, Patricia Stewart, one of our American writers will have the front page for the Fourth of July holiday in the United States.

Let’s say that you’re surfing the majestic tubes that make up our internet when you stumble onto a nifty flash fiction website.  What a fascinating idea, you think!  New short stories, every morning!

Now, lets say that after a bit of poking around, you decide to start at the very first story and move on from there.  A fine task for an afternoon, right?

Wrong.

A fine task for a weekend, right?

Wrong.

You’d better put on a few pots of coffee, because if you spend five minutes reading each story posted here, you’ll have a fine task for three and a half days.

Today, 365tomorrows turns 1000 stories old.

Would you like to bake us a cake?  If so, you’ll need about two pounds of birthday candles!  Would you like to print the stories into one book and keep it on your nightstand?  It’ll be almost as thick as three copies of Moby Dick!  Would you like to mail me an American quarter for every story written?  You’d better have a lot of postage handy, because that package would weigh thirteen pounds!

That’s about as much math as my liberal arts major brain can handle in one night.

Whether you’ve been a fan since the beginning or you’ve only recently found the site, we’re grateful for your support and we hope you stick around for many years to come.

-Kathy

As a follow up to the contest we ran a few months ago on deviantART looking for 7 top notch Flash Fiction pieces to feature here on 365tomorrows, this is our second ‘week of deviantART’ where we feature the Runners Up. We had a fantastic response from the writing community there, with 40 entries coming through in the short time they had to prepare. After reviewing all the entries, 7 were selected as winners, and each story was published here in March, and will also be featured in upcoming episodes of the podcast, Voices of Tomorrow.

For the next 7 days we’re featuring the 7 stories that nearly won, and as such are each too good not to share with you here.

We hope you’ll enjoy reading all of them as much as we have.

It was recently asked of me to describe to an audience of writers what flash fiction was. When I read my first piece of flash, I couldn’t begin to answer that question, and now after writing almost nothing but flash for the past two years it’s still hard for me to define. I find that while I’ve developed a set of skills to create flash, I can only really define it by the process by which I create it. I start with a complete and fully formed short story, and then ruthlessly carve away most of it. I consider the editing rule I was given when I started down this path; ‘Cut all of what you don’t need and half of what you do.’ What remains is the essence of that whole story, with all it’s structure and key elements intact, but devoid of anything that doesn’t absolutely have to be there. That which remains, is flash. Looking for something more substantial in the way of a definition, I asked the person who’d given me that editing advice, Kathy Kachelries. It was Kathy who conceived of 365tomorrows, a web site singularly focused on short science and speculative flash fiction, and she had this to say:

“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.
Not all short prose is flash fiction. Unlike the vignette or the prose poem, flash fiction adheres to the same conventions as a short story or novel. As demonstrated above, flash fiction gives readers a protagonist and a central conflict, and directs them to a resolution. Due to the constraints of the form, some elements can be implied rather than expressly stated, but a story that begins in media res still holds the shape of its unwritten beginning.

This is the acid test of art. Imagine a beautifully eloquent story, and imagine a vat of hydrochloric acid. The hiss, the sound of destruction as everything you wrote is submerged. The disintegration, chemical reactions and bubbles as air returns to air. What remains, when everything superfluous has burned away? Flash fiction. The fewer words used, the greater the impact of each one.

Flash fiction is not the future of literature, nor is it the past, though it carries elements of both. As writers, we have learned to make things beautiful, to shield them in enclaves of eloquence, but in its barest form art is guerilla warfare. In this modern, digitized world the gap between readers and those who can’t allow time for such a luxury continues to grow. Someone who believes they cannot read for pleasure will not pick up a full length novel, no matter how highly their favorite newspaper recommends it. Most likely, they can’t even find a moment to stop at a bookstore between meetings. What they can do, however, is click on a link offered by a friend, coworker, or website. This is why flash fiction, one of the most ancient forms of prose, has found new life in the digital era.

Length requirements for flash fiction vary widely, and none are universally accepted. James Thomas, in his introduction to Flash Fiction: 72 Very Short Stories (the first published anthology of its kind) defines flash fiction as under 750 words, though other compilations and literary journals vary in their requirements. Some people draw a distinction between flash fiction and sudden fiction, which can be up to five pages in length according to Robert Shapard, an editor of Sudden Fiction: American Short Stories. The best definition of flash fiction might be a reappropriation of Edgar Allen Poe’s definition of the short story, set forth in his 1846 essay The Philosophy of Composition. Poe believed that all literary works, with the exception of the novel, should be read in one sitting. In Poe’s time, a sitting could consist of a half hour or more, but now most of us find our sittings confined to coffee breaks, the time between bus stops, and other moments stolen from the sprinting pace of daily life. The needs of readers are changing, and if writers don’t adapt to those needs, we risk losing thousands, even millions of potential audience members.

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.

A busy reader may resist a lengthy story and return to their budgets and spreadsheets, but at 600 words or less, flash fiction requires less time than a trip to the water cooler. The writing has been acid-scorched and only the essential remains: without the inconvenience of length, the reader will follow a story to the final paragraph.

Although a vignette would have offered a thought-provoking snapshot, a reader hungers more than a thought exercise. For longer than written language has existed, the human psyche has ached for narrative. Storytellers were once considered indispensable members of society. The art hasn’t changed. The need hasn’t changed. Why have we allowed ourselves to become a luxury? The answer is simple: we’ve been satisfied to have an audience, regardless of whether or not that audience needs us. For the last decade, we’ve been preaching to the choir.

Fiction is both needed and desired in our modern society, though the people who need it the most don’t have the time to flip through a handful of novels per month. With flash fiction, we can fit a story into that small, stolen moment. As the creator of the flash fiction site 365tomorrows.com, I’ve received dozens of emails from people thankful to have something to read on their PDAs in the quiet moments before meetings begin. I’ve communicated with waitresses who print out our stories to flip through in the lulls before their first tables arrive. I’ve spoken with tow truck drivers, emergency room interns, and dozens of other people who consider themselves too busy to undertake a novel, and the message is universal: people want to read. Our job, as artists and storytellers, is to make reading as accessible as possible.”

If Kathy had been left alone with those words a little longer, she may have edited them down to ‘protagonist, conflict, resolution. 600 words.’ I might edit it further to one. ‘Essential.’

Over the years we’ve had a number of members of the popular art site deviantART who have had their stories published here. For fun, over the past month we’ve been running a contest on deviantART looking for 7 top notch Flash Fiction pieces to feature here on 365tomorrows, a kind of ‘week of deviantART’. We had a fantastic response from the writing community there, with 40 entries coming through in the short time they had to prepare. After reviewing all the entries, 7 were selected as winners, and each story is being published here this week from Sunday to Saturday. These stories will also be featured in upcoming episodes of the podcast, Voices of Tomorrow.

There were 7 additional stories that were too good not to share with you, so we’ll be featuring the 7 runners up during the first week of April.

We hope you’ll enjoy reading all of them as much as we have.

Many of you browse 365tomorrows via the RSS feed, and may not realize that there’s an active forum community on 365 that you can participate in. We’ve recently overhauled the engine that drives the forums, bolting in state of the art functionality and sharpening the edges of the design. We encourage you to drop by and maybe even get involved.

Duncan Shields’ story, Finnegan Sue is up in audio format on the Voices of Tomorrow Podcast, recorded by our own Sam Clough. Give it a listen, and then browse through the back catalogue of recordings on our Podcast site.

It’s a New Year now, as 2007 slips away into our remembered yesterdays, and 2008 becomes both our now and our foreseeable tomorrows.

Happy New Year from all of us at 365tomorrows, and may the New Year be everything you want it to be, and a few things you’ve even not dreamed of yet.

It’s October, and the start of a new month is making me reflective. The first feature of our third year at 365tomorrows has been a great success, both for us, for you as our readers, and for Todd Keisling, author of the novel A Life Transparent.

If you’ve found Todd’s stories engaging, drop by the forums and let us know, or visit Todd on his own website – ToddKeisling.com, and pick up a copy of his book, A Life Transparent.

Let the new month begin.

Mega Flare , by Patricia Stewart is now up on the Voices of Tomorrow Podcast, the official podcast of 365tomorrows.
Mega Flare was written by Patricia Stewart, and read and produced by JR Blackwell.

Hey Rube , by Steve Smith is now up on the Voices of Tomorrow Podcast, the official podcast of 365tomorrows.
Hey Rube was written, read and produced by Steve Smith.

Listen to it Here.

Sam Spade , by TJMoore is now up on the Voices of Tomorrow Podcast, the official podcast of 365tomorrows.
Sam Spade was written by TJMoore, and read by Steve Smith.

Listen to it Here.

The third year of 365tomorrows is now under way, and with it comes new featured writers. For the month of September we’re proud to present the writing of Todd Keisling, author of the novel A Life Transparent.

Todd’s work is fantastic, and we’re very pleased that he’s written eight new stories for us to share with you over the course of the month. We’re sure you’ll enjoy them as much as we do, but drop by the forums and let us know what you think.