What I Think About When I Think About Futures Stories
Henry Gee
Monday, 02 November 2009 23:43 UTC
Hardly a day goes by when I don’t receive a new submission to Nature’s guilty pleasure back-page feature, the Futures Science Fiction page. I won’t go into the history of it here (it’s all in this anthology, published by Tor, in all good bookshops, a great stocking-filler for the geek in your life), and you can read detailed guidance notes for authors here.
Here, though, I’ll give a few notes of what I’m looking for. Each story in Futures is what’s called a short-short or a vignette – also called ‘flash’ fiction (because it’s here and gone in a flash). This compressed, intense form of fiction is much harder to write than it looks.
To be successful, a Futures story should be like any other story. It should have a beginning, a middle and an end (what we literati call a ‘narrative arc’). It should have characters, who experience some kind of journey, whether actual or metaphorical, and are changed thereby. And a neat twist at the end is good. Compressing all this into fewer than 1,000 words is tough.
The most common mistake people make when writing for the column is sending in a ‘scenario’. This is, in essence, a set of notes for building an alternative world or a projected future, with little or no character or plot development.
Such tales are guilty of the solecism known as ‘info-dump’ – they tell you a lot of things explicitly about the world they describe, interrupting the action. Given the brevity of the stories, it’s best to make as much of the background as implicit as possible, even if the reader has to work harder to understand what’s going on. In fact, a small amount of reader bafflement can be quite effective.
On the other hand, the ultra-short form suits itself to styles that wouldn’t work were they pursued to any length – fake news items, book reviews, diary entries, letters, advertisement brochures and so on. These can also tell a story, involving characters, narrative arc, etc., etc., but in a more disguised, nuanced way.
Humour can also work well. The length of a Futures story is about right for a good joke, particularly of the shaggy creature from Alpha Centauri dog variety.
A shaggy dog. Recently
It helps that stories are well-written, and the author has taken pains over such things as spelling and punctuation. However, many otherwise perfectly good stories doen’t make the cut. In the end, I can’t always say what it is about any given story that ‘grabs’ me; the ‘tingle’ factor that elevates it into the Nature-worthy category. Perhaps it’s different for each story. Some are laugh-out-loud funny. Others make me think. Some are skin-crawlingly creepy. And a very few I find moving. It’s my hope that as the Editor, I can represent the reader – so that if I like the stories I publish, then I hope you’ll like them, too.
And if youd don’t, then I’d like to know why.
Updated 02 November 2009 23:46 UTC
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Replies
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Why don’t I have such a great job as yours? I wish I could spend all my time reading the fantastic stories such as the you publish in the Futures, particularly the ones not published. Perhaps you could bring out an anthology of them – the unpublished ones – someday (From what I understand, what Tor has brought out is a collection of the published ones. Am I right?).
Barring an odd story here and there, I have always liked the stories that make it to the Futures.
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The unpublished ones would make for a fairly dull read. But yes, there is an anthology of 100 of those we’ve published (the link is in the main post above). It’s alsso available in paperback.
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Mmm, yes. Nicely described, and do I detect a soupçon of self-defensive, head-em-off-at-the-pass in there? If everyone who wanted to submit to Futures read this, maybe you’d get fewer crap submissions?
I can completely understand the difficulty of cramming any kind of sensible narrative into 1,000 words or so – which is one reason (along with a complete and utter lack of imagination) that you haven’t seen (and likely won’t see) a submission from me. You can thank me later, believe me. ;)
I really have to explore that anthology now… hm, I have an Amazon gift certificate…
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do I detect a soupçon of self-defensive, head-em-off-at-the-pass in there?
Yes.
For a lot more, see the famous Turkey City Lexicon.
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I’m emerging briefly from my self-imposed NN exile to agree with Henry that writing flash fiction (or, at least good flash fiction) is not as easy as it appears. Now, back to NanoWriMo…
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That Turkey City Lexicon is a very entertaining read, Henry. Thanks.
[trying to be brief]
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Nice dog. Cool hat. Hey, I bet there’s a story in there somewhere….
Illinois Smith: Dog Detective
Life’s a bitch – and then you scratch. Being cano-engineered is great for the detecting business – think nasal input off the scale – but tough when it comes to opening doors. Or taking your hat off. But I get by….
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