Portrait of two tennis pros at a younger age

BRENDAN: Gather round, children.  Yes, bring your rackets.  Grace, give me that ball.  Grace.  Thank you.  Sophie!  Can I have that ball, please?  Thank you.  So, where was I?  Oh right.  Because today is the last day of the spring clinic, and you guys have done so well, we are going to play Atomic Fireball!

CHILDREN:  Hooray!!!

(Smiles slowly turn to confused looks.)

A FEW CHILDREN: But we don’t know how to play Atomic…atomic…whatever.”

BRENDAN:  Come closer, so you can…Dani, stop bouncing that ball.  Thank you.  So you can hear the explanation of the greatest tennis game every played.  Dani!  Thank you.  Now listen carefully, because this explanation will take time, but is worth it, I promise.

(Children come closer, a little nervous, but mostly excited.  Some have played before and while they were unable to quite explain to the other kids why the game was so much fun, it was quite clear they had loved it.)

BRENDAN: The year is 2055, and Earth is under assault by the evil Dunlopians, a marauding race of space aliens, who have come to destroy mankind and plunder our planet’s precious resources.  They’ve already conquered our space bases on Jupiter, Saturn and Mars, (all your base now belong to us) and maintain space superiority of our solar system.  It’s only a matter of time before they’ve sucked our planet dry, ensuring the end of mankind, and moved on to new planets.

(Children appear somewhat nervous about this impending doom, but more excited about the seemingly limitless possibilities) Read more »

There’s a new sci-fi mag: Lightspeed Magazine, which encourages its submitters to “take chances with their fiction and push the envelope.”

So, there’s that.

Their model is interesting: a new story each week, alongside essays on the themes in said story. Also available in ebook format each month. And podcasts. To me, this seems wise: give away a story or two via the podcast, package your constantly-updated content in larger, less frequent clumps, and reach audiences in multiple ways.

They seem strong-willed; from the editorial: “The number of fantasy and horror stories far surpass the number of science fiction stories. We’ve set out to rectify that.”

Noble effort to do things the right way? Doomed effort because of genre concentration?

Bigger question: does a genre short story automatically have more merit than a genre novel? The idea being that you’re not going to make cash with short stories, so you must not be selling out. Or is this just an excuse to write parables with aliens more quickly?