VIVA LA CREATIVE ANARCHY! You and I friend, are at the forefront of this Anti-Pop fiction movement… we are breaking down the barriers of sweltering dullness and reclaiming the unfettered spirit of the imagination that makes our world so cross-gened and wild! Your review is a personal one to me… to have the approval of Mr. Curt is to be lionised by the Urbis Denizens of Fiction Fancy! ONE-HUNDRED BOWLS OF BORSCHT FOR THE CAUSE, COMRADE! ONE-HUNDRED BOWLS OF BORSCHT!
Short Story / A Bit of Science Fiction, Mate
A tree scissor-sliced with blood burst from the blunt electric thunderstorms, raining savage Medusa hair in shriek-streaks down upon the townsfolk, splitting and silting into dams of sulphuric acid and sizzling through the marble-fronted ramparts and canopies. A rampant roar of thunder, a green gurgle of toxic ion overspill and a gentle shard of bone-snapping lightning rocked through the planet as the sanguine heavens released swirling blood sprays ad infinitum.
From the molten heavens, wax angels poured down in strips, leaking seas of spiritual harmony across the unrepentant beggar people of Susslow-XYZ 2.0333333. A procession of six tonne boulders fell onto their gnarled backs, smashing all the ultra-dearth libraries in sight with a respectfully silent crash.
And so on and so forth.
Clive #37, blue-in-the-face, brown-in-the-butt, turned to his fiancée, Lisa #21 and remarked:
“Ornate, but unimpressive. Lively thunderstorms. Creative use of pyrotechnics. Ultimately a little showy and self-important. Grandiose use of mood lighting detracts from the otherwise solid sense of impending doom. At times its insipidity belies the artist’s intentions, rendering the entire display aesthetically redundant.”
Lisa was used to his harsh judgements. As a critic for Which Armageddon? magazine, he had reviewed the greatest ends to mankind ever staged. She was a struggling artist who enjoyed his jovial green turbo thrusters and Bug Sucker XKJ. With this device, sponsored by Mormon Condoms, he was making Fly Pies and Mosquito Flans to be sold to Fulcrum Octogenarians at swanky fêtes on the planet Jump Junction.
This afternoon they were engaged in a trans-galatic, inter-romantic lovers’ tiff.
“Look, all I’m saying is must we be so harsh about my work?” she asked, referring to both herself and himself in the same clause. This was an unpleasant habit certain MkII clones had, an inability to understand basic tenses. They were also known to use jam when making pasta instead of actual pasta.
“We must. And we will be. I was sorry about what I am going to write in the newspaper, when it is founded,” he replied, recalling one splendiferous global annihilation from Arkan Fizzbay III.
“Your turbo boosters are of much pleasure to me, however, it is unbecoming for a dark-lidded monkey alber MkII clone like me to talk to a basic-bum MkII clone in such a manner,” she said.
“What?”
“Shut up.”
After this exchange, and a cup of smelly gruel with pregnant universal onion fat (choked in custard), she left for a walk in a place that looked conspicuously, occasionally, oftentimes, not very regularly, sometimes like a forest on the Planet Earth, somewhere around Tallahassee in New Americaland II. She came across a vagrant spying on young couple having a picnic.
“Excuse you… what am I doing?” she asked.
“You is walking… I is grub peeping!”
“Are I?”
“Yeah… if I wait here long enough, I might get some leftovers of that cake they’re having.”
“Couldn’t I just ask for some?”
“Maybe you could. But I haven’t eaten for nineteen days.”
“Right. Well, that’s pretty stupid of you, isn’t it? I’ll starve yourself that way!”
“Do you have any food?”
“Yes, I did. It was very nice. Well, good night!”
Having parted from the smelly hobo, she hopped in a generic space tractor and headed for the Information Point for the city of Buglsweld. Due to the overcrowding problems, certain cities had to be cleansed via a nuclear holocaust. Upon rebuilding, the mayor decided to have one shed for everything, and one principal operator of this shed for everything. Should someone wish to live in Buglsweld, they had to get planning permission from the Shed Emperor, a cockroach named Pollis with a rather irritable disposition.
Upon arrival, she entered the shed to find the cockroach reading a volume of crab supplement, Prime Pincers.
“Yeah?”
“Hello… I come to inquire about the arrangements for the Buglsweld Thunder Festival. Can you help, or can you not help, or could you help, or could you not help, or will you not help, or will you maybe help, if at all possible?”
“Make an appointment.”
“I see. When were you free?”
“I am free in two minutes.”
She sat down for the first minute on the small, mezzanine chair beside the cockroach. Why the chair was mezzanine remained to be explained by the author.
“Perhaps we can share a steadfast future dialogue?” she asked.
“No,” replied the cockroach.
The four minutes elapsed.
She approached the roach.
“Might I had the meeting with the relevant people?”
“He’s not in. Come back soon.”
She left in an Übergrump Deviot Program. Being born out of robot wedlock, she often had to input emotion software to help her emote. The new Windows Angry Bint 2.0 was particularly effective at rendering her incensed, apoplectic and slightly irksome.
Upon returning to Clive #37, their bordello was consumed with flies and associated bugs that had been turned into delicacies. Clive was held in the corner at antennae-point by a particularly aggrieved gnat, threatening to displace his cups.
“No more fly pies, right?” it demanded.
“I can’t make a promise.”
“If you don’t… we’ll electrolyze your grandmother.”
“Consider it done.”
You need to log in to urbis or create an urbis account to review this writing.
Reviews
Sort Reviews by Newest | Oldest | Highest Quality | Lowest Quality | Newest Comments |
tarleisio reviewed Version 3 -
Read 100% of the Item
I have a sneaking suspicion that writers who prefer writing in a language not-their-native have fewer qualms and inhibitions about subscribing to the Nitroglycerin Theory of Language (patent pending). This theory hypothesizes that for writers such as these (that means you, my friend), their preferred utensil of verbal expression can be used and stretched in ways that would never even occur to writers with no knowledge of any other language – or utensil - than their own. Some of them (again, that would be you!) go so far as to set up cunning and innovative word traps that lie in waiting like a hidden nest of inland taipan snakes, just waiting for the next juicy victim to sink their fangs into – or, like so much verbal plastique, if you prefer, to explode at inopportune moments. ;-)
In other words, as verbal nitroglycerin goes, your writings should have been patented by Nobel AB many years ago. Although how they’d manage to pack this into malleable clay I can’t even begin to imagine.
You have more madcap ideas in 200 words than many writers have in 200.000, and while the coherency factor isn’t always there – if it even is – with linguistic creativity on a scale such as yours, some enlightened readers may find to their horror they don’t much care.
As a reader, I’m too hotheaded and impatient for experimental prose if it comes across as an inside joke that leaves me bound and gagged outside, in the pouring rain, naked, in November. As science fiction, this is, well – otherworldly, maybe? I love the idea of staging apocalypses as entertainment, of robots in love tiffs, of cockroach bureaucrats (I believe I’ve even met a few of those!). All of this is not something you’d come across much in the sci-fi section of your local Barnes and Noble. All of this is different, and “different” in sci-fi is always very, very good.
There are ghosts between the letters of your words and paragraphs, too. The ghosts of William Burroughs and Charles Bukowski in your use of humor and skewed juxtaposition, a whiff of Joyce in your attempt to tear down the rigid conventions of language and structure, a breath or two of Heinlein in your lover’s tiff. And I’m not complaining about it, either.
The one pathetic, minuscule, peripatetic objection I have (she wrote in her best Minnie Mouse voice), is that you can do so, so much here. You have the literary equivalent of death-by-chocolate cake here.
So get in there and – blow not just our minds, but our literary waste lines, too!
- add/view comments (1)
Curtastrophe reviewed Version 3 -
Read 100% of the Item
From its opening italicized blast, the story explodes upon the reader an eclectic range of literary tastes and influences.
Some are sweet—{[(“Being born out of robot wedlock…”)]} Humor (Though could also be lumped in with proceeding category.)
Others, a bit tangy—{[(”...splendiferous global annihilation from Arkan Fizzbay III…”)]} Science Fiction
Of course there’s the just plain salty—{[(“Creative use of pyrotechnics. Ultimately a little showy…”)]} Mainstream
A Bit of Science Fiction, Mate is essentially what this reviewer sees as a bookend to a trilogy. (Note: The Wild Winter Chords of Transatlantic Discontent and The Melodious Spirit of American Phalli) It is the third leg of a barstool upon which rests the cantankerous Anti-Pop Fiction movement. It--much like this review--calls attention to itself with unselfconscious musings. With Cthulu-like influence, it reaches out into the nebulous crannies of readers’ imaginations and leaves them proclaiming, “More! Give us more of your tentacle prose!”
I say this in all seriousness—this is good. Though other Mikhail_S works share similarities, I believe this veritable trifecta will become the canon (not cannon, though the metaphor is apt) for which future absurdists, bohemians, soon-to-be tendril lovers, urbanites, creative anarchists, and all around degenerates cite as a primary influence.
So, as I rate this work in a binary pattern of ones and zeros, I can honestly say, “I liked it.” Good work.
-Curt
Viva la creative anarchy!
DCAllen reviewed Version 2 -
Read 100% of the Item
I would read 200 more pages of this, quite happily.
Love the play with tenses in the dialogues. Not sure if this is the ultimate chaos, but it will or did appropriately make communication strange in the story. Out of robot wedlock. Good. I think it would be better to use “update” her emotional software. In the list of emotions that follows, it would be better to use “or” irksome, to mean that these are separate emotions that could be programmed and not degrees of emotion, implied by “and”.
This is readably bizarre. Strength: the characters, the witty dialogue, the chaos of language and place. Weakness: character motivation. Why does this character take the walk to Americaland, why does she go to talk to the cockroach? Her wandering, I’m sure, is supposed to “destabilise” the conventions of plot. The dialogue at the beginning (transatlantic lovers’ tiff), however, shows more character motivation than the rest.
six tonne boulders = six-tonne
inability . . . tenses. (Is this particular issue one of tense?)
Consider it done? No more fly pies or the grandmother?
DC_Karma reviewed Version 2 -
Read 100% of the Item
LoL, what the hell just happened? I dreamed I was reviewing this really witty, ever-clever, maybe-too-wild, possibly not, uber-eccentric word filled, very hard to follow, still really easy to laugh with, silly story about bug-pies—-oh! It’s real!
I won’t point out your over-the-top word usage and how it makes the story a bit harder to follow, because I am pretty certain that was your intent.
There is no denying that this was a very unique read. Lisa #21 was hilarious in dialogue. I like the ‘glitches’ that you gave to these clones, but think you should consider rephrasing the word ‘habits’, if it is a common problem in many Mkll clones, it makes it more than a ‘habit.’
The food is very unique, and before I got to the end wanted to note to you how it was a great job with making it different. Onion fat? In custard? Mmmm. I had no idea that the story was going to go where it did.
Born out of robot wedlock? Lmao, you have some imagination. Nice touch.
I cracked up. An angry gnat. I had no idea what was going on through a lot of the story, but I didn’t really need to, did I? LoL.
I still don’t know what to make of this story; so I’m sticking with the humorous side of it and categorizing it that way in my mind; it makes it easier to digest. This was fun!
Thanks for the read.
Showing 1 - 4 of 4
Review item
Add to favesCreator
Relevant Links
Item Stats
GENERAL
2 Reviews 10 Comments
Version 3
Latest Activity: 4 months ago
REVIEW QUEUE
Appeared in Queue: 422 Times
Skipped: 16 Times
Ratings & Rankings
Versions
| Version 3 | Version 2 (Deleted) | Version 1 (Deleted) |