Stupefying Stories #23 • T-Minus 7 Days

 ILLUSTRATION: JEANNE KOSFELD ©2020 Today’s featured author is Terry Faust, another author returning to our pages, and his contribution to Stupefying Stories #23 is “The Secret of Erin Stewart,” a mystery/police procedural story that should touch the heart of any true Minnesotan, you betcha. About this story Terry says—well, he says quite a lot, actually, but his comments...

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Stupefying Stories #23 • T-Minus 8 Days

 Today’s featured author is Karl Dandenell. Karl is a relative newcomer to Stupefying Stories with his one previous appearance in our pages being the decidedly cyberpunkish story, “The Carpetbagger’s Ball,” in SHOWCASE #1. For his contribution to Stupefying Stories #23 he’s gone all the way over to the opposite end of SF/F genrespace with a tale of sorcery, scullery,...

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Stupefying Stories #23 • T-Minus 9 Days

 Today’s featured author is Julie Frost, and the story she’ll have in #23 is “Woe to the Hand,” another of her wonderfully well-written stories of werewolves, vampires, pack dynamics (note the clever way I worked in the link to her highly acclaimed novel), and some of the more disturbing aspects of paranormal romance. These days, her author’s bio reads like this:Julie...

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Stupefying Stories #23 • T-Minus 10 Days

 Okay, we didn’t hit the target date of 11/15, but I’m pleased to report that we’re now on a solid track to release Stupefying Stories #23 on Monday, 11/30. The process of copy-editing and quilting together this issue has proven quite a bit stickier than expected, aided and abetted by the fact that the process of my wrapping up things with my soon-to-be former employer...

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The Return of The Son of The Friday Challenge's Old College Roommate!

This came up first on Facebook, but after thinking about it a bit longer I decided to put it out here for all to see. This grew out of a discussion of that classic 1956 sci-fi movie, FORBIDDEN PLANET, and how while it was a beautiful film, it somehow just didn’t quite nail the X-ring.So here’s the challenge. Imagine that you are a screenwriter, and you’ve just been hired to write the script for the first film in the new remake series, THE FORBIDDEN...

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Ultimate Geek Fu (Reprise) • by Bruce Bethke

A tip of the propellor beanie to old friend Arlan Andrews, for accidentally reminding me that I wrote this for our old Friday Challenge site, damn near ten years ago. It remains as relevant as ever today. Without further ado, then... Ultimate Geek Fu: January 12, 2011 Today we approach the apotheosis of Ultimate Geek Fu, as we seek the answer to what may be the ultimatest...

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Writing as a Newborn 9th Gendered Polyoriented Alien Wizard • by Guy Stewart

“Samther-Esuel was lucky this world had similar pronouns to the nine he was used to. His current fetish was to be called by a masculine pronoun to go with his nickname, Esam . “He’d been long-gone, reveling in ‘amispringa’ when he got word that his parents had been executed by revolutionaries. He’d never go back, so what other world than River would suffice for an almost Newborn 9th gendered polyoriented Alien Wizard? “The last thing had him worried....

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Armistice Day 2020

I sat down to write a column this morning, and the words flowed so easily it began to seem as if I’d written them all before—so I did a quick search, and found that yes, I had. With no apologies, then, here is my Armistice Day column from two years ago. I could spend all morning polishing and revising it but don’t think I could say it any better.   ~brbArmistice Day 2018 ...

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No Blog Post This Morning

 No blog post this morning; I’m busy with copy-editing and book production stuff. However, it is becoming obvious that we have some gaps in our in-house skill set and need to get help in certain areas.Watch for “Help Wanted” post to go up later today.~...

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Congratulations!

To Clancy Weeks, for “State of Grace” in the current issue of Analog. Longtime friends and fans of Stupefying Stories will remember his cover story, “Zombie Like Me,” in Stupefying Stories 20 (January 2018), which yes, you can still buy!Observant readers will also notice the names M. Bennardo and Gregor Hartmann in the table of contents of the same issue of Analog. M. Bennardo...

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Schedule Update

When I did the Mythaxis Review interview a few weeks ago, I obviously had no frickin’ clue that Otogu the Insatiable, Devourer of Days, was about to drop an enormous cowflop on me. In that interview I said we were planning to release Stupefying Stories #23 on November 9. Due to subsequent disruptions of an external nature we are not going to make that date. Instead, we’re...

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The State of the Loon: 11/07/2020

The reason for the insane pressure at work and all the multiple deadlines stacked on deadlines these past three months, which consumed so many of my nights and weekends and even forced me to cut a vacation short after two days up at the cabin (I'm happy about that, I can tell you), finally became apparent this past Monday, when the company announced a divisional re-org...

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Upgrading Me

I became a cyborg a month ago. It’s not nearly as cool as science fiction promised me it would be.Nonetheless, it became medically necessary. As we age, different biological subsystems wear out at different rates. At first you adapt, improvise, adjust your behavior, and look for workarounds. Eventually you get to the point where the only thing left to do is to replace the...

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Introducing Bruce Bethke™ 2.0

Another week, another batch of queries, all along the lines of, “Are you the Bruce Bethke?” I’m never sure how to answer that. The snark is strong in me. It can be hard to resist the temptation. “That depends. Are you here with a royalty check or a search warrant?”What they usually mean, of course, is “Are you the Bruce Bethke who wrote the short story ‘Cyberpunk’...

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Talking Shop: MacGyver, Mood Congruence, and Building Good Characters • by Eric Dontigney

img border="0" data-original-height="426" data-original-width="640" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpSKPiwixLnshhi_A74CvcEZ1d5MUj-IEAah2eQ4fPTnrOaHQIOAMF7eRgEQIqM4Pynt5gMX4LsduLLY5UYU0g2KUcTzuQyjUpzSr7utm1FUFG3CVE74zotIr2LD1Gww1IoYlOHDsol5RN/w200-h133/knife-1177401_640.jpg" title="Image by Photoshot from Pixabay" width="200">So,...

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Speaking of the Mythaxis Review interview

What was meant as a one-line throwaway joke about The Adventures of Mindy the Vampire Shagger has proven surprisingly resonant. Actually, we have great plans for dear Mindy. Therefore, let’s establish this right up front: Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE ...

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