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[jackofallgeeks]

So this guy, Warren Ellis, is having a 'Fast Fiction Friday' on some blog site he calls 'Die Puny Humans,' or something. At the encouragement of Kirt (xiombarg), I decided to put in one of my pieces. Quite a few of the older pieces I had were 150 words or less, far fewwer than the 200-word limit Warren imposed, but the later ones that I was really pleased with were rather far beyond the mark. When I stumbled onto A World of Darkness, I couldn't make myself pass it up. I still think it's my favorite piece out of my Anthology. But at just-over 400 words, it needed to be trimmed. I don't think it'll actually make it in, but Kirt helped me trim it, and here's what I sent out for F3, including my little biography:

---

Work, damn you!

With a whirr, Samson leaped over another gap between crowded buildings, landing hard. The hydraulics were failing.

He scanned for signatures before running over the roof. The mission had gone horribly wrong; his squadmates were already dead. This guy was worse than those nuts who believed they could fly; this guy didn't believe he couldn't fly.

A pipe grabbed his foot. A loud snap as his shoulder hit. Rainwater trailed down his face as he lay there, gasping up at the sky. Lightning revealed a figure suspended in the air.

It was the Deviant. He hung there, leather boots five feet up. Every so often blue-white energy would spider up his form. Despite the rain, his hair blew dry in the wind.

The Deviant spoke, though his mouth didn't move. A soft sound, but heard over even thunder.

"You and yours have held sway long enough. The Reckoning is upon us, and it is time for a change."

Samson struggled to get to his feet as the Deviant began to chant. A crack of thunder, and the last thing Samson saw was a wind-blown silhouette against a backdrop of purple and grey.

Then everything went white.

---

Andrew Portner is a Senior-level college student working toward a Computer Science degree. He likes techno, red meat, and kittens.

Comments

[dikaiosunh.livejournal.com]

Not to harp on Phil Dick as a source, but he actually wrote a story (whose name I can't recall at the moment) with a central conceit similar to the Reality Deviant - the main character is a sort of psychologist who works for the police helping track down delusionals whose delusions are so strong they become real (and it's made harder by the fact that most of them don't think there's anything weird about how they see the world - e.g., "what, can't *you* fly?").

Granted, Dick lived in Berkeley in the 60s, (and quite possibly suffered from schizophrenia) so his major themes (aside from, and sometimes combined with, Christianity) are drugs and insanity.

[jackofallgeeks.livejournal.com]

Never heard of Dick but, after what you've said about him (Christianity, drugs, and insanity!? Sweet!), I may have to check him out.

Seriously, though, I think you'd be hard-pressed to write anything that didn't resemble something else already, and I think many of those resmblances are pure coincidence (ie, taking a proverbial page from another author's proverbial book when you've never heard of them before, like in this case). And I think that's all in the numbers -- with all the literature (and other similar media) out there already, "it's all been done before."

[dikaiosunh.livejournal.com]

Oh, I wasn't trying to put your piece down as derivative or anything - just pointing out an affinity.

You've probably heard of Dick's work, but just don't realize it. Several of his pieces have been made into movies (with mixed results). _Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?_ became *Blade Runner* (not very faithful, but a good movie in its own right), "We Can Remember it For You Wholesale" became *Total Recall* (not faithful at all, and crap), "Second Variety" became the movie of, I seem to recall, the same name (didn't see it, but trailers made it look not faithful at all, and probably crap), "Impostor" was from the short story of (again, I'm pretty sure) the same name (also didn't see it, but trailers made it look reasonably faithful and halfway decent), and "The Minority Report" was also from a short story of the same name (reasonably faithful, though Spielberg cheesed out on the tough choices at the end).

I've heard word that someone is planning a movie of _Through a Scanner Darkly_, which is in many ways an overtly Christian parable on drug use and redemption...

One thing that Dick movies tend to lose is the cultural context of his stories. Dick wrote mostly from the 60s-80s (I think he died in... '92?), and most of his stories are steeped in a very Cold War/McCarthyist dystopic atmosphere (some of us are old enough to remember at least the tail end of the Cold War). Many of his short stories especially are set against the backdrop of uber-conformist 50s-style 'air conditioned nightmares'. The cyberpunk treatment many of his pieces get is a reasonable translation of the paranoia into our contemporary set of fears, I suppose... but I still yearn to see someone do "Service Call" as a short film with everyone sporting house dresses and Ward Cleaver helmet-hair.

[jackofallgeeks.livejournal.com]

Dude, I HAVE heard of Dick, then -- I've been meaning to get a coppy of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep for years now! That's going on the list right behind The Divine Comedy, lest I forget. I think I'll look into Minority Report (as I liked the movie) and We Can Remember it For You Wholesale (as I liked the concept, if it was just another Action movie), too.

I've always kinda liked dystopian themes, a la 1984, and the recent movie Equilibrium. The Giver is really dystopian, too, and I like that. Plus, I think I'd enjou a little of the '80s-style and McCarthyism stuff, too.

[dikaiosunh.livejournal.com]

Well, be prepared for "We Can Remember..." not being anything like the movie at all.

In terms of his novels, _Electric Sheep_ is pretty decent, but I honestly think it's one of his weaker novels. In terms of his relatively straight-up SF, I'd suggest _Now Wait for Last Year_ or _The Man in the High Castle_ instead. YMMV.

Maybe I'll have to read _The Giver_. I've been on a nonfiction kick for the past few years, though...

[jackofallgeeks.livejournal.com]

YMMV?

"Now Wait for Last Year" sounds interesting. You think it'd be a better start than "Do Androids..."?

Yeah, "The Giver" is fiction, and it's apparently supposed to be on a 4th-grade level, or something, but I'm loving it. I'm overly sentimental anyways, but spots just keep really grabbing me, y'know? I really like this book.

[dikaiosunh.livejournal.com]

If we ever play the Werewolf game again, I can lend you some of my Dick*, as long as you promise to return it (my copy of Collected Short Stories Vol 1 was in Afghanistan, last I heard).




* I know, that sounds wrong. Funny story: I met the woman I was dating at the end of HS in part through turning her on to Dick (sorry, couldn't resist). I don't know if y'all had "senior wills"... Anyway, we did, and (among other things), I 'left' her Philip K. Dick. Of course, wordcount was limited, and we knew what we were talking about, so I abbreviated it to just "Dick." Even capitalized, it got blacked out in the final copies... They also completely munged my Pontius Pilate quote in the yearbook, but that's another story...

Guys who just need Dick; really NEED it.

[jackofallgeeks.livejournal.com]

-laughs- I would take you up on that offer, but even if you gave me some Dick, it'd be behind at least two or three other books, each of which are rather thick -- I wouldn't even start on the Dick for a couple months. And as I said, I plan on getting a copy of "Do Androids..." for myself anyways, and that can be my introduction to Dick. Unless you'd like to lend me Dick for extended periods of time, as I would promise to return it when I finished, it'd just be a matter of how long you'd be will to have you Dick on my shelf.

Curiosly, what Pontius Pilate quote, and how'd they mung it?

Re: Guys who just need Dick; really NEED it.

[dikaiosunh.livejournal.com]

Well, the quote was supposed to be "You say you speak the truth. What is truth?" - which is a pretty pointed question about epistemic relativism (and all tied up with political power, in context... it's hard to pack too much into a two-line senior quote).

What got printed was: "You say you speak the truth. What is the truth?" - which is more like a casual, "I've heard your pitch and I'm interested, do you have any pamphlets I could read to find out more?"

hold the phone.

[nif.livejournal.com]

::in hushed tones of reverent awe:: ...Warren Ellis? THE Warren Ellis? I'm fighting tears of joy here, Andrew. If he does a little comic book called Transmetropolitan I will get down on my knees and wash his feet with my hair. You do not understand. You cannot understand. His is a genius that lesser writers like Shakespeare and Voltaire could never hope to achieve. I would just like to say long live Spider Jerusalem, ciagrettes, and bowel disruptors controlled by murder thoughts.

[jackofallgeeks.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've heard of the guy before -- my brother runs in certain circles where his name pops up from time to time. Donno if it's the same guy your thinking of (though, really, how many Warren Ellises can their be who run Die Puny Humans?), but apparently he's also got an LJ around here somewhere, and his call for submissions came down the pipeline -- specifically from Kirt. I don't think he'll take my piece, but it never hurts to try.

I feel bad now -- I shoulda said something sooner, and then maybe you could have submitted something. I've always liked your stuff.

[nif.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I don't know if I would have submitted anything. There are not many literary figures that I actually feel intimidated by, but Warren Ellis is one of them. The fiction thing you did would have become a Mission, to be obsessed over and fretted about. Plus I haven't written anything in so long- too much real life drudgery has sucked anything creative right out of my bones. Slowly I'm being lured into the sordid world of fanfiction, to the point where I'm itching to try my hand at it. This is why I'll never amount to anything.