An update to the update

A few more people have asked, “What call for submissions?”It went out a few weeks ago, first to our followers on social media and then to the writers on the Pete Wood Challenge mailing list. Whittling it down to the nub:WHAT I’M LOOKING FOR: Sixty-two previously unpublished flash fiction to short-short SF/F stories, 1,000 words in length or less, specifically for publication...

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Update: re submissions

Because so many have asked: no, we are not open to unsolicited* submissions right now.[About that asterisk: Right now we don’t have the time or resources to handle being fully open to submissions. I’m especially leery of our being listed as an open market on Duotrope, as every time that happens we get absolutely inundated in submissions from people who either don’t read...

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“This Island Gilligan’s” • by Bruce Bethke

Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip…As all properly educated science fiction fans know, Russell Johnson, a.k.a., “The Professor,” is the only actor who appears in both the 1955 Universal Pictures science fiction classic, This Island Earth—   and on Gilligan’s Island. Not only that, but in both roles, he played essentially...

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Status Update • 27 June 2023

Here’s what’s going on in the Stupefying Stories/Rampant Loon Press office right now.The new and improved SHOWCASE: The Next Generation launches this coming Saturday, July 1st, at 0700 CDT. Beginning Saturday, SHOWCASE will be bringing you new stories daily, at 0700 CDT sharp, with all stories carefully hand-selected and lovingly polished to a high gloss by award-winning,...

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“The Big Bad Wolf: An Apologia” • by Julie Frost

 Look, I only agreed to this phone chat from the… who are you again? The Black Forest Mirror-Gazette? Right. Because I’m tired of the undeserved smear campaign you people keep victimizing me with. What happened to getting both sides of the story? For the record, I still don’t trust you. “Journalistic integrity,” my left hind leg. Oh, hey, a semi-hostile question right...

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MINING THE ASTEROIDS Part 11: Eco-Airs Building Asteroids into Rotating Space Settlements?

Initially, I started this series because of the 2021 World Science Fiction Convention, DisCON which I WOULD have been attending in person if I felt safe enough to do so in person AND it hadn’t been changed to the week before the Christmas Holidays…HOWEVER, as time passed, I knew that this was a subject I was going to explore because it interests me…There has been some “new...

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“Scott’s Exit” • by Bruce Bethke

 What a change two months can make. The last time I saw Scott, he’d had a bad relapse and was a mess. Tonight… I dunno. I think I liked the mess better. “Hi kids,” he said, as cool, cocky, and obnoxious as on the day I first met him. “That’s not the way you start,” Tom reminded him. “The traditional way is by saying, ‘Hi, my name is Scott, and I’m—’ ” “Bugger tradition,”...

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“Relapse” • by Bruce Bethke

He was looking bad, rough. You can tell when someone’s had a relapse, and it doesn’t take ALPS-heightened senses, either. They say recovering alcoholics can smell it when someone in their group has gone off the wagon. Scott didn’t smell funny, but clearly, he’d lost it. Normally the guy was overdressed to a fault and cheerful like a daytime game-show host. Then he went missing...

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“The Were-Weasel’s Tale” • by Bruce Bethke

“Sorry I’m late. There was some nasty weather in Chicago today and I was stuck in O’Hare for a few—okay, I know, I’m making excuses. Let me start over. “Uh, hi. I’m Scott, and I’m a were-weasel.” [Group: “Hi, Scott.”] “I hope you’ll excuse me if I seem a little nervous. I’ve never actually—I mean, I’ve been coming to Were-Creatures Anonymous for about a month now, but...

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Curse of the Were-Weasel: Lessons Learned • by Bruce Bethke

Fifteen years later, the problems with Curse of the Were-Weasel seem obvious. Not to hog all the glory, but the biggest single problem with Curse was me, and my insistence of trying to do this thing entirely with writers. Huh? What? Who else would I have used? Understand, this was one of the times when my background in music and theater really let me down. I didn’t understand...

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Curse of the Were-Weasel: A Retrospective • by Bruce Bethke

In the first decade of the 21st Century—an unimaginably long time ago, it now seems—long before there ever was a Stupefying Stories, there was a sort of an online writing workshop called The Friday Challenge. The Friday Challenge pulled together a talented but eccentric group of promising young writers, and produced a number of equally promising but eccentric literary projects,...

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20 Free Stories!

While working on the upcoming reboot of SHOWCASE I stumbled across this old web site, which I’d forgotten was still out there. We called this one the “crevasse” because it was cold, sterile, bluish-white, and stories fell into it, never to be seen again.Nonetheless it is still out there, and is still readable, for now. It includes hot links to twenty stories you probably haven’t...

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“First Date” • by Bruce Bethke

I have it bad for la chica bonita. Go figure. I live in Minnesota. I’m as Nordic as Nordic gets. I come from that ancient genetic factory somewhere north of Oslo that makes ‘em tall, broad, and strawberry-blonde, with a beard you could hide a battle-axe in. In school they called me ‘Harald the Red.’ Yeah, that’s right, with two a’s and no o. My dad is a history buff. He...

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