[Poll] Vote: August '13 Flash Fiction Contest

[Lester Curtis]

Well shiver me timbers! One clipper's moved ahead. I do believe it's I.Verse, that old sea dog! Ha ha ha!
What are the rest of ye doing? Dancing a hornpipe? Smartly there me hearties, or he'll get all the booty.

Hmmm.... Booty....

That tongue hanging out just took on new meaning . . .

[Robert_Moriyama]

Hmmm.... Booty....

(Verse) Did they have DoGS aboard pirate ships? There's a whole lot of ocean left before this ship sails into port.

I seem to recall that it was wimmen that ye salty dogs (the two legged kind) believed to be bad luck. On most ships, the cabin boy was the only booty to be had...

(The few cases of female pirate captains only prove the rule -- they were certainly bad luck for the men they replaced!)

[Lester Curtis]

Congrats, Verse! I thought that one was yours.

I also thought I had a better chance. Well, as I've said before, that's what I get for thinking.

Anyway, here are my comments.
***********************

Wreckers
Grim and relentless. Outstanding in every aspect.
Score: 60

Family Business
I was able to get this into fairly decent order. I'd been percolating the notion of it for a while before I started actual writing on it, just a few days ago. I managed to get it fairly close to the word limit on the first try, which is good, because I didn't have time for a second try.

Tandoristé Sunset
Another excellent job, except for the question of what the captain was doing just before she got shot down. Kind of a plot hole; it could have been fixed, but likely at the expense of some of the expository dialog. Not a deal-breaker by any means, though.
Score: 58

THE XEBEC, Lettre de Course, A PRIVATEER’S VOYAGE
This one has a rather disjointed feel to it. I liked the idea of the Letters of Marque and all, but the context of soul-trade, or theft, or whatever, didn't appeal to me much, and didn't seem very well developed. Gratuitous hot-babe and lesbian titillation, both kind of cheesy. Dialog as infodump.
If the writer had developed a conventional SF context around the marque-and-reprise angle, this might have worked, seeing that no one else approached that theme. Various technical errors.
Score: 34

Gatcom Creek
These people didn't seem to be pirates to me, just scavengers. Very large plot hole at the cafe when Sergio arrives; if he'd known Pepe for so long, he should have known the daughter as well, or at least known about her. Pepe lied about having a bum leg, and Sergio should have known that, too.
This story seems to be much more about lovers' tragedy than piracy.
Score: 28

Challenge Across the Sea of Monsters
"Ramming at FTL speed . . . " if Bill Wolfe were here to comment, he'd explain that someone had just destroyed the entire universe, but that's a long story.
The cheat was clever, and the story was entertaining.
Score: 40

[Lester Curtis]

Thank you, thank you!

Family Business
53 including a 10 for Dialogue, my personal favourite. Space pirates doing pirate things but the poor sods were just hungry. Very good story and it ended in a hopeful place. At least no one had to walk the plank!

Thanks for the endorsement, Verse. It makes up for coming in second-last.

[Robert_Moriyama]

bottomdweller came in last? The comments indicate that some voters weren't sure her story really fit the challenge (not pirate-y enough?), but I find myself wondering if she forgot to vote and got hit with the 10% penalty. She was one of the better writers during my tenure as Short Story Editor (of course, it may be that my tastes account for my so-so showing in the few Challenges I have entered...)

[Lester Curtis]

bottomdweller came in last? The comments indicate that some voters weren't sure her story really fit the challenge (not pirate-y enough?), but I find myself wondering if she forgot to vote and got hit with the 10% penalty. She was one of the better writers during my tenure as Short Story Editor (of course, it may be that my tastes account for my so-so showing in the few Challenges I have entered...)

Yeah, she usually does better than this -- except when she doesn't.

[Lester Curtis]

Tandoriste’ Sunset: Unrealistic. “Lost a couple of fingers – that’s all.” Waaaaattt? If you lose a couple of fingers you’re bleeding to death all over the sand.

You're wrong about that, too; people get their arms lopped off with machetes and survive.

I have personal experience, though it's only the ends of two of 'em. Amazing how few people notice that, even after hours of hanging out with me in person.

I will say this: it HURTS. A LOT. For a LONG time. The pain would wake me up, someone would give me a tiny white pill, and then I had just about enough time to eat before the drug knocked me out again. I spent about a week sleeping on the couch just so no one would touch me anywhere on that whole side of my body.

But now I can give people the finger in shorthand.

[Robert_Moriyama]

Wreckers: Nice touch with his pregnant girlfriend being onboard the ship that gets blown-up. However, I think bodies don’t just float away into space, I think they automatically explode.

Thanks, BD. Glad you liked it. But bodies in the vacuum of space don't explode, which is a pity because a I had a whole gory explody body scene that I had to re-write when I found out the truth.

Dammit, there goes the big strawberry-jam-exploding-head scene in "Outland" ("High Noon in Space", starring Sean Connery) and similar stuff in "Total Recall". But the psionically-induced exploding heads in "Scanners" are still okay.

[Robert_Moriyama]

Re bodies in space

i thought blood "boiled" away.

I think the theory was that you would get a BLEVE (Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion). As the blood boiled due to lack of air pressure, the gases would rupture blood vessels and skin. Of course, even if that did happen, it wouldn't be like a balloon popping -- it would be bursts of liquid and gas through areas with natural openings and / or thinner skin (eyes, ears, nose, butt, etc.). Speaking of butts in vacuum -- a stranded astronaut could drop trou as a means of ejecting some reaction mass for a little delta-V. (His crewmates, however, would all say, "I am NOT cleaning THAT up!")

[Lester Curtis]

Now e.g. take a spacecraft where a malfunction of the life support system leads to a slow build up of pressure to eight atmospheres and subsequent hull breach...

Wow. That's some hell of a reserve air tank. Maybe not out of the question, but I'd have to wonder why the craft was designed that way -- as well as how it could fail in that manner.

[Megawatts]

Congrats to Verse on a very good win. Didn't have time to enter this one, but I did read your story and thought it very good!!