200 CCs - May 2016

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Volume 1 Issue #4 Editor-in-Chief Paul A. Hamilton Consulting Editor Nikki Hamilton Guest Editor Joyce Chong Copyright © 2016 ironSoap.com. All writing and photography is the property of their respective authors. Cover photographs by Paul A. Hamilton. 200 CCs is an anthology of microfiction, collected monthly. Inquire online for submission guidelines. http://200ccs.ironsoap.com/ Follow on Twitter @ironsoap. Images accompanying each story are provided via the Creative Commons license as follows: • pg 4: David Alliet — https://www.flickr.com/people/nowherenear/ (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) • pg 5: David Goehring — https://www.flickr.com/people/carbonnyc/ (CC BY 2.0) • pg 6: Ray Moore — http://raywmoore.blogspot.com/ (CC BY-NC 2.0) • pg 7: David Muir — https://www.flickr.com/people/daviddmuir/ (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) • pg 8: Marilyn Maciel — https://www.flickr.com/people/moomoo/ (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) Holly Schofield’s “Sixth Sense” originally appeared in AE: The Canadian Science Fiction Review, April 2014 To help show your support for 200 CCs, visit http://ironsoap.com/200-ccs/support/
the draw Since starting 200 CCs, I’ve received a steady stream of submissions. I love reading them, but after well over 200 of them (I kind of like the parallel there), it’s hard not to start noticing some patterns. Because I don’t restrict genre, I get a lot of literary work—set-in-reality, dealing-with-life-asthe-author-perceives-it kind of writing. I get lots of magical realism—mostly familiar settings with maybe one or two fantastical adjustments; plenty of science fiction—often future-set tales where most anything goes as long as it can be explained; and quite a bit of fantasy—past or present-set stories where strange things happen frequently without explanation or just “because magic.” And now and again I’ll get a horror story, or a poem, or the occasional memoir. I haven’t seen much historical fiction to date; or very many mysteries or thrillers—some of those may have more to do with the format than anything else. What I see only very rarely are the truly unclassifiable stories. The ones that leave you guessing, or scratching your head, or laughing at the sheer audacity of something that ignores every rule, takes the piss out of narrative structure, blatantly defies convention. These are mad gambles, really, and I think microfiction is a perfect opportunity to take these sorts of wild risks. Sometimes I imagine myself sending one of these surreal abuses of language to an editor and I have to supress a little shudder. It takes a lot of moxie to show that much disregard for the typical. Does the scarcity of these mean we’ve allowed the so-called rules to limit us too much? One of the patterns I notice in the submissions queue is a lot of similar themes and structures. “Guy has existential crisis, and then dies”; “Guy laments his lack of understanding of women, and then dies”; “Guy encounters a strange new bauble or power, and then dies.” Ignore the Signs 3 Not all unsubverted trope-heavy stories end with a tragically ironic or dully unearned character death, but there is a certain ho-hum grimness to a lot of failed short fiction. What I’m finding is that, while this is probably endemic in short fiction across the board, it feels very pervasive in the microfiction I see. If you’ll forgive the amateur diagnostics, I wonder if this isn’t a symptom of authors following too many of the rules writers are deluged with. We’re told to make the stakes high (what could be higher than mortality?) and to aim for characters that are relatable (who hasn’t questioned everything; who wouldn’t be curious if something changed the game?). But what if checking those boxes led to telling similar stories? Compressing these kinds of “by-thebook” tales removes a lot of the nuance that differentiates one story from another. What might (emphasis on the uncertainty) forgive a familiar tale at longer lengths—details, angles, subtlety—reduces a shorter version to roteness. So imagine chucking off those warnings. There are signs posted everywhere, most just grow accustomed to obeying them. In a real way, you have to look directly at them and give them consideration in order to consciously disregard them. And yeah, it feels dangerous because it is dangerous. By no means do all brazenly unconventional stories work. They are prone to spectacular failure. Then again, maybe it’s worth—if you’re going to fail anyway—failing magnificently as opposed to drably missing the mark. As readers, the best we can do is try to keep an open mind. Let stories that don’t fit our expectations percolate for a bit before judging. And ask if that strange tale is showing us something beyond our artificial borders. —Paul A. Hamilton
Page 1: Nikki Boss • Holly Schofield •
Page 5 and 6: Sixth Sense by Holly Schofield The
Page 7 and 8: Stranger Kissing by Jake Walters Th
Page 9 and 10: y Joyce Chong This month's stories

200 CCs - May 2016

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?