At the beginning of this year, I resolved to pick up my writing again, in part inspired by the success of one of my dear friends who is working on a sequel to her wonderful book Myrtle Takes Tea. Stacey, and her husband, Nick, shared with me their experiences in writing and integration of social media forms such as Twitter and Facebook. The discussion brought back to mind The Turing Horse. I had been struggling with this one; it had originally been written as an email epistolary (a story told in letters), but the ending never quite worked. All this discussion about twitter, blogging and social media got me thinking, "perhaps the next incarnation of The Turing Horse could be in the blogosphere, as a form of hypermedia fiction!"
On my way back to Manchester from their home in London, I sent out a lone tweet that would change everything:
Is anyone using twitter as a medium for short fiction? #shortshortstory I didn't get much response back and pretty much left it there, but about a month later one of my writer friends from UNCG days, Chris C., had received the tweet and asked me if I was going to be entering the TweetFiction Twitter stream contest. Contest, what contest?
The British Science Fiction Association was founded "to encourage science fiction in every form" and during Olympus Eastercon 2012 they challenged writers to tweet good short science fiction or fantasy in 134 characters or less through their TweetFiction Twitterstream #TBSFA contest. I took up to the challenge on two fronts!
The first front was to tell The Turing Horse as a series of stand alone tweets, but I didn't want to just leave it there. 2012 is the centennial celebration of 100 years since the birth of Alan Turing, whose Turing Test concept had been inspiration for the original short story. I could not pass up this opportunity to launch The Turing Horse as a hypermedia fiction blog, tying in real world stories and events into the work of fiction, and I really enjoyed setting it up!!!!
The second happened in the course of writing and reading the fiction of the TBSFA TweetFiction contest; I had more stories to tell! I began converting other short stories or story concepts from over the years into TweetFiction shorts. Here they are:
| TweetFiction | Background |
|---|---|
| Know how fast you're going? Speedometer. Check. Know where you are? GPS. Check. So, when do you want to go to in #Schrodinger's car? #TBSFA | Schrodinger's Car - draft short story |
| The 5th Atheist Crusade killed 99% of true believers, a few prayed giving thanks 4 all. One final Crusade & the sun never rose again. #TBSFA | The Last Sunset - draft short story |
| The first signs of the deadly black hole cluster devouring galaxies came from afar, as the stars in the sky shifted from red to blue. #TBSFA | Brand new |
| Werewolf grooms for her / She plans . . . he'll join her tonight! / Surprise! Vampire pups. #TBSFA #haiku | Nuzzles and Bites, No Howling - short story combined with my friend's sequel The Dog Catcher retold as tweet and haiku |
| Travel to the alternate universe was impossible, but data was easy & once the alternet was setup the movie downloads were to die for. #TBSFA | Story Concept inspired by desire to view episodes for TV shows cancelled or great films that were ruined (e.g., Firefly, the fifth season of Babylon 5 that would have been produced if JMS's notes on 5th season hadn't been lost at hotel during convention, Alien Ressurrection with the ending filmed as Joss Whedon' had intended, and many others) |
| Earl breathed, tucked his tail & sprinted, Tires screached & cheers chattered down from the trees and telephone wires. #RiteOfPassage #TBSFA | Squirrel Rite of Passage Story Concept |
| Timemachine connects to iPad, launches chron app, quick check of 2morrow's stocks & he's rich! iOS 9 installs...update failed. Retry? #TBSFA | Chrond Geek Fiction Short Story Concept inspired by the notion of alternative uses of the crond unix process |
| The dark elf pulled the jack of the smart gun from his temple No way! he yelled at the producer That dragon's real, princess can burn #TBSFA | Merging two role playing games in consecutive years of StellarCon: Drow Quest, an AD&D game in which dark elves are on a quest to save the evil princess from the good dragon, and Drow Quest II: Sweet Home, Seattle a Shadowrun game in which the dark elves from the original Drow Quest are transported to a cyberpunk world in which magic and technology coexist, provided new technology and are sent on missions as part of a reality TV show: "ratings are high" |
A culmination of encounters and events inspired me to pick up my dream to write science fiction again; You have to pay attention to see how God works in our lives; sometimes, on reflection, you can see His fingerprints in serendipitous events that only become apparent on later reflection and I think that is why we are called to meditate on these things. I'm grateful to my friends and family for continuing to encourage me. I hope it makes for some fun reading along the way.
Next, I need to figure out how I can get some of those short stories published as eBooks . . . .
Update 07 May 2012:
Chris. has won two tickets to Beyond the Border - Wales International Storytelling Festival for his entry in their Twitter contest: "Eyesight. Wits. Tongue. Sword. All should be sharp." Way to go Chris!!!!
BSFA has advised they will be announcing the winners of their TweetFiction contest on 9th of June 2012 at something called the AGM.
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