Welcome to this week’s installment of The Never-ending FAQ, the constantly evolving adjunct to our Submission Guidelines and general-purpose unfocused ask-me-anything forum. If you have a question you’d like to ask about Stupefying Stories or Rampant Loon Press, feel free to post it as a comment here or to email it to our submissions address. I can’t guarantee we’ll post a public answer, but can promise every question we receive will be read and considered.
We’re up against a deadline this week and running behind schedule, so let’s just get right to the questions.
Q: Do I still have time to send you my entry for the Space: 1999 short story contest?
A: Yes The deadline is Labor Day, September 2nd. If we’re going to start running these things the week of September 9th, we need to have them in-hand at least a week earlier. Even earlier would be better.
More details here: Space: $19.99!
FWIW, this wasn’t meant to be a contest. I was thinking of it more as a role-playing thought exercise. IF Friday, September 13th, 2024, is indeed the 25th anniversary of the day the Moon was blown out of Earth’s orbit and launched across the galaxy—
We’d originally thought we’d be lucky to get four good stories, and at a stretch, we might see six. To our surprise we’ve received quite a few good stories that spring from this premise, so we’re reconsidering how many we’re going to accept. We may end up running these stories into a second week, or running some of them in October.
One comment, though. If your idea for your story is, “What effect would the disappearance of the Moon have on Earth’s werewolves?”, we’ve already seen that one. And seen it. And seen it. So unless your name is Julie Frost, it’s probably not necessary to send us that story again.
Q: What’s going on with Stupefying Stories magazine?
A: That’s why we’re up against a deadline. Detailed answers here. We’re not going to hit our planned September 1st deadline, but we’ll come reasonably close.
Q: How do I get my book onto your Friends of Stupefying Stories list?
A: That’s easy. Tell us about it. Sending an email usually works best. Include the Amazon link (or books2read, or whatever) if you can.
Yes, we’ll be happy to look at ARCs, either electronic or print. Query first.
We have a nice bunch of titles for the next update to the F.O.S.S. list, but it wouldn’t hurt to remind us that you have a book you’d like us to put on the list. We’re juggling cats here this week.
Q: Speaking of the F.O.S.S. list…
A: Yes, we know. There are problems galore with the StupefyingSF shop on Linktree. Most aggravating of all is that for reasons unknown, Linktree has slapped a “Sensitive Content” label on Stupefying Stories 23 through 26, effectively blocking sales, and all our attempts to find out why they’ve done so have returned an auto-generated email accusing us of “violating community standards,” without telling us which standards we’ve violated or how. (Their standards, by the way, are breathtaking in their length and scope. Honestly, having read their community standards statement, it’s hard to imagine how any piece of written fiction doesn’t violate at least one of them.)
The good news is, these Amazon direct links still work.
After a few frustrating and completely unproductive go-rounds with Linktree’s Content Police, we finally remembered that the reason why we got Linktree in the first place was because we needed it for our failed Instagram experiment. But given that the Instagram experiment did fail, well, we don’t need Linktree anymore, do we?
We’ll be canceling our Linktree account and closing out the StupefyingSF bookshop by the end of September. We’ll replace the F.O.S.S. list on Linktree with something that looks more like this.
It’s a bit of a pity. The one thing Linktree did for us that showed some promise was it gave us an easy way to consolidate all of our audio book links under one click.
But since almost no one clicked through on that link, it doesn’t justify keeping Linktree. Instead, we’ll go back to making more use of homegrown inline ads, like this one:
A: Too long. Too loud. Seriously, I hated the audio mix. It’s been a long time since I found a movie physically painful to listen to. (For reference, that movie was Mamma Mia 2. Pierce Brosnan is a terrific actor but should never be allowed to sing in public.)
If you’ve seen Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, and Alien: Resurrection, you’ve already seen this movie. There is nothing new in this movie. The set pieces are all lifted from earlier movies. The action is all lifted from earlier movies. The most important lines of dialogue are all repeats of Ellen Ripley’s most important lines in earlier movies. If this was a record album they wouldn’t even bother to pretend it was a new product: it would be called Alien’s Greatest Hits. The one worthwhile thing in this movie is David Jonsson’s performance as Andy, the obligatory twitchy and unpredictable android. (You’d think Weyland-Yutani would have those things debugged by now.)
The absolutely worst thing about this movie is that through the “miracle” of CGI and practical effects they brought the late Sir Ian Holm back to life one more time, to play essentially the same character he played in the original Alien, 45 years ago. I hope his estate got a huge pile of money for letting them desecrate his corpse like this.
Q: Okay, that’s not a recommendation. In that case, what did you think of Deadpool and Wolverine?
A: Speaking of desecrating corpses…
Actually, I thought Deadpool and Wolverine was hilarious, and a lot of fun. The editing could have been tighter, but it was a great wrap-up and send-off not just to the Deadpool series, but to pretty much every movie made by every studio that has owned a piece of Marvel intellectual property since… 2000? 1998, even?
This isn’t a movie that will win new fans, but then, that’s not its point. If you didn’t love Deadpool and Deadpool 2, don’t bother with this one. In fact, if you haven’t seen at least Deadpool, Deadpool 2, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and Logan, large parts of this movie will make absolutely no sense to you. For that matter, it wouldn’t hurt to have at least a passing familiarity with the whole X-Men series of movies, as well as The Fantastic Four, Daredevil, Elektra—oh what the hell, Blade, as long as we’re at it—Captain America, all the Avengers and Avengers-adjacent movies and TV series…
But the most important one to have watched before watching this one, besides Deadpool and Deadpool 2, is Logan, as this movie begins as a direct segue from the ending of Logan. At the end of that movie Wolverine finally dies, nobly, heroically, sacrificing his centuries-long life to save his cloned daughter and a whole new tribe of mutant children. It’s a total tear-jerker of an ending…
And then this movie begins with Deadpool digging up Wolverine’s corpse, to use it like a ventriloquist’s dummy, and takes off running from there and never stops.
Yeah. Great fun. Total nerdgasm. I don’t think I’ll ever need to watch another Marvel movie again. This one doesn’t just end the Deadpool series, it’s a fitting headstone for the entire Marvel cinematic universe, and should be the end of them all.
Not that that will stop Disney from making more. I mean, just look at what they’re doing with Star Wars.
Q: Enough stalling! Why is there a Pete Wood Challenge banner at the top of this column?
A: Because Pete Wood is not merely an attorney, he is an attorney who specializes in appeals. So when I told him, months ago, that it was time to shut down The Pete Wood Challenge, he immediately began to craft his appeal.
I was not eager to shut down TPWC. Over the years we’ve made a lot of new friends through the challenge, and it’s let us publish some terrific flash fiction. But the hard truth of it is that with each new challenge the readership numbers continue to shrink, and the pool of authors willing to participate in the challenge continues to shrink, and I didn’t feel like sticking with it until, like The Incredible Shrinking Man, the diminishing returns finally diminished to nothing and evanesced out of existence.
Pete, however, is not one to give up. He kept trying different angles, and working different strategies, until he eventually wore me down and I relented. So here we go, one more time. This is either The Last Pete Wood Challenge, or The Pete Wood Challenge: The New Beginning. Which it is is up to you.
Turning the mic over to Pete, now:
THE OFFSEASON CHALLENGE
Bruce, this is what I posted on CODEX. This challenge is open to both members of Codex and, for the first time, non-members of Codex.
If this works out, we’ll have more challenges in the future. It’s all going to come down to readership. This may be the last challenge. It may be the first of many.
Write a flash fiction story of up to 150 words, not including the prompt. Your story must include the phrase “the offseason” or “the off-season” or “the off season.”
Deadline is October 20th at seven a.m. EST.
This challenge is open to the general public. However, at least two stories will be from codexians and at least one will be from the general public. Winning stories will be published the week of November 4, 2024.
Any genre is fine. BUT, no stories about politics. No analogies about politics. No characters who are obviously patterned after politicians. So, if you want to write a clever story about Sheriff Harris and Deputy Walz and the gunfight with the Trump gang, don’t write that story. You get the idea.
Prizes will be awarded as follows: 1st place- $20 2nd-$15 3rd-$10 Honorable Mention (1-3)-$5
HOW TO SUBMIT AN ENTRY
Codex members: Post your stories in the announcement thread on Codex.
Non-codex members: Email your story to southernfriedsfwriter@gmail.com
Put “submission off season” in the subject line.
One story per writer, and codexians cannot submit with the general public.
Good luck!
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