[Poll] Vote: February '14 Flash Fiction Contest

[Megawatts]

I finished one yesterday, but somehow got confused with the date. All the snow up here, getting calls to help friends, shoveling the driveway, firing up the snowblower ---then having to replace all the belts in a frozen garage, and of course helping out in the community with the elderly, placed too much on my narrow mind!

But those things happen! and will critique those entered.

George T. Philibin

[Lester Curtis]

Congrats, Renee; you did a good job. You and I have something in common here: we both won on our first try at the challenge. Your win is more impressive, though; I was one of only three contestants.

I'm not yet accustomed to the new voting system, and with seven stories this month, I had a very hard time with it. I didn't have much trouble picking my favorite on my first pass (nice work, Michele), but sorting the others seemed harder for me than using the old system. Some of the stories were very close in overall quality, so that made it harder yet.

Anyway, here's what came out of my effort:

Rank the above stories where 1) is your favorite story and 7) is your least favorite.

1) Chicken of the Sea
2) Lara Midia
3) Experimental Values
4) Planet III, Mission I
5) Prehistoric Fear
6) Hlt Goes to Space…
7) The Subway Train

The story that in your view best met the challenge requirements:

Planet III, Mission I

I may be back with some comments.

[Megawatts]

Congrats, Renee and thanks for being with us now, and I hope you Stay! Your good!!

[Lester Curtis]

Herbert, you've prompted me to add some fuel to the fi--I mean, discussion.

"Experimental Values"

My biggest problem with this one is the ending, which didn't meet my expectations. Based on

The child demands a pet Velociraptor, the parent buys the unit, we issue monthly upgrades, and the parent pays the licensing fee. As the units disperse through the local population, they acquire targets automatically. The upgrades only buy the customers thirty days of protection.”

I expected that Lippincot would somehow sabotage the experiment so that the velociraptor would choose Penrose and/or Huff as its "target." Instead, she seems to be trying to electrocute them with a stun-gun, but she's doing it wrong, pulling the trigger first and then aiming. Perhaps J. L. Haines had some device in mind that wasn't adequately explained.

So, the whole ending was a little ambiguous. Not bad otherwise.


"Hlt Goes to Space…"

This story also suffered from a bit of ambiguity near the end, when the time-traveling aliens jumped from the Paleozoic to modern times -- unannounced. I had to reread it a couple times to figure it out.

It also seemed to me that quite a bit of the text was in the nature of a lecture on geological history. Some of this could be shortened to give the reader a little more clarity about the series of events.

I found an incongruity at the end as the human scientists were watching the action: the alien seems to be speaking English, as well as being somehow obviously female (not a safe assumption, given her other physical features).

Very nice otherwise; no violence or nastiness going on, and I liked the part about tourists collecting souvenirs.


"Lara Midia"

Rick, I thought this formatting worked well enough, though it was strange to encounter. Your notion of formatting the story in two columns IS possible with this board's software, but would require BB code (a LOT of it, I think) to be inserted by hand, line by line. "Possible" is not always the same thing as "practical." I wouldn't want the job.

Still, I wonder why you even went to this much trouble, because what you wanted to accomplish with it is nothing unusual, just an alternation between scenes or points of view. The alternation between regular and italic fonts usually suffices, along with the scene separators you also used. Still, the color change does make it extra clear for the reader, when it might take a few rereads otherwise.

I had a sort of philosophical issue with the premise of the story, about the mining. If these guys went back and extracted the ore, it wouldn't be available in the present, which introduces a possible time-travel paradox. Maybe continental drift would fix that, though.

Nice job, though; what could be more scary than a bunch of intelligent T. Rex?


"The Subway Train"

Under the old scoring system, I'd have given this one a "one" for "Challenge," since it didn't directly include either dinosaurs or prehistoric Earth. It did pass the fine-print requirements, which also did NOT include having two characters who "talk" to each other. So, "Dialog" would have gotten a zero; "Plot" as well.

It looks as though you just amused yourself describing the subway system's history, and the thoughts of the main character. That doesn't make for a very satisfying story, but you've already admitted that it's a mood piece.

Nice setting detail, and it left me curious about the rest of the character's journey. You could get a good story out of that.


"Planet III, Mission I"

Rich setting detail; very good job conveying the characters' mood (plus the fact they're from Mars). It's amazingly easy to overlook how thin the plot is. It's just as easy to forgive that. Very good job.


"Prehistoric Fear"

This one has the feel of a Twilight Zone episode. The ending was too abrupt (damn thousand-word limit!). I hope the author is planning on putting out a slightly longer version to overcome that problem.

Excessive use of caps-lock, and some of the dialog was just a little stiff.


"Chicken of the Sea"

Ah, yes. Dinner is served. The plot's been used a few times, but it's still fun to play with.

[Lester Curtis]

Your notion of formatting the story in two columns IS possible with this board's software, but would require BB code (a LOT of it, I think) to be inserted by hand, line by line. "Possible" is not always the same thing as "practical." I wouldn't want the job.

You'll have to elaborate on that Lester. I couldn't figure out a way to make it work with the existing BBCode on the board. I could have spaced Richard's story into two columns, but I didn't see a way to prevent it from wrapping and turning into a complete mess if someone resized their browser window. Which codes would you have used? (so I know for next time. )

Ah, the browser window -- hadn't thought of that, and I guess it would wreck the thing.
I only know of this theoretically, and those codes may not be available here, but might be installed (or not). I found out about this while doing a web search on BB code and how it's used. It's a way to force the preservation of whitespace within a line. I don't recall the particular code or exactly how it's used. Do a search and you'll find it pretty quickly; BB code has a very short list of commands.

I did a cheat once -- can't remember if it was here or over at C&C -- I wanted to indent some lines. I typed a string of periods and then changed their font color to white. Works okay for the first line in a paragraph, but yeah, line-wrap could ruin it elsewhere.