“Panne d'Essence” • by Andrew Jensen

“A ‘pan of essence’ sounds like some Existentialist French cookbook. What’s it mean?”

“‘Out of gas’.”

“Mille Bornes is too French.” Jerry packed up the game. His increasing boredom sharpened his permanent edge. “We had enough français back in Montreal. Why’d you move to New Brunswick?”

I gestured at the gorgeous view from my porch overlooking the Northumberland Strait.

“Pretty, but Alberta’s magnificent. There’s action and money. We have real mountains, not these crumbling Appalachians. You’ve moved to the 1950s.”

I had been an Anglo refugee from Quebec separatism and my Acadian neighbours welcomed me to their gentle pace of life. Some created stunning art with few resources. People lingered at the store to share gossip and jokes. They cared.

“Life here is sane,” I summarized.

Jerry rolled his eyes and headed for the guest room. “Boy, you’ve changed.”

Haven’t we both. Goodbye, old friend.

________________________________________

Andrew Jensen has moved to New Brunswick with his family and too many dogs and cats. He has retired from the ministry, but of course, clergy never really retire. His stories have appeared in Canada, the USA, New Zealand, and the UK. This past summer, his work appeared in both Amazing Stories and James Gunn’s Ad Astra. 

If you enjoyed this story, you might also like to read his author profile, Six Questions for… Andrew Jensen, as well as these other stories.

“A Can of Piskies”

The elves’ latest plan to overthrow and conquer humanity was flawless and foolproof. All it required was the active cooperation of a large number of cats…

“Chapter 7”

There was a community uproar when the Golden Sandworm closed its doors… well, for a given value of ‘community.’ The guy with the bat’leth seemed pretty upset, but one mention of the police calmed him right down…

“Waxing Crescent”

25 years ago, the Moon disappeared. Really, is there anything more boring than commemorating something that happened to your parents? What can we do to make this interesting?

 

“Happy Anniversary?”

For some, the disappearance of the Moon was a prayer answered. For others, it was a heartache that would never go away.

“Running Away with the Cirque”

Even in the far future, even on strange new worlds, some people will still find their worlds just a little too small and dull, and dream of one day leaving it all behind and running away to somewhere else that’s fun and exciting.

STUPEFYING STORIES 24, by the way, is free to read on Kindle Unlimited. Check it out!

 

 

---

The Pete Wood Challenge is an informal ad hoc story-writing competition. Once a month Pete Wood spots writers the idea for a story, usually in the form of a phrase or a few key words, along with some restrictions on what can be submitted, usually in terms of length. Pete then collects the resulting entries, determines who has best met the challenge, and sends the winners over to Bruce Bethke, who arranges for them to be published on the Stupefying Stories web site.

You can find all the previous winners of the Pete Wood Challenge at this link. 

This time the challenge was to write a flash fiction story of no more than 150 words in length, inspired by and using the phrase, “out of gas.”

Special Thanks to Paul Celmer: for going above and beyond to help with this challenge!

Read More

“Once With a Blue Moose” • by Lori Jensen

Eighty-five percent of New Brunswick is forest. 

The land is broken by the lumber industry. Still, the trees loom. They swallowed the road I was driving.

I was lost. True, I was on the only road, but I needed a gas station. I needed people to stop me obsessing about moose. “Watch for moose!” everybody said. “They’re unpredictable. They’re everywhere! They’ll take your car off the road with their antlers before they kick it to rubble.”

My car sputtered, then stopped; and a moose walked out of the forest. Its antlers spanned the hood of my car. In the moonlight, the moose was blue. It moved forward as its head wove down toward my window. It tapped the glass. I don’t know why, but I rolled the window down. I could smell it; count its teeth; feel it’s breath on my cheek as it enquired, “Are you out of gas?”

________________________________________

Lori Jensen has been an Adult Protective Service Worker, teacher, Presbyterian minister, children’s book reviewer, psychotherapist, karate sensei, artist, and bead-weaver. She plays guitar and sings. She has lived in New Brunswick for months and is still waiting to see a moose. Her speculative writing has appeared in Illumine magazine and Bards & Sages Quarterly.

---

The Pete Wood Challenge is an informal ad hoc story-writing competition. Once a month Pete Wood spots writers the idea for a story, usually in the form of a phrase or a few key words, along with some restrictions on what can be submitted, usually in terms of length. Pete then collects the resulting entries, determines who has best met the challenge, and sends the winners over to Bruce Bethke, who arranges for them to be published on the Stupefying Stories web site.

You can find all the previous winners of the Pete Wood Challenge at this link. 

This time the challenge was to write a flash fiction story of no more than 150 words in length, inspired by and using the phrase, “out of gas.”

Special Thanks to Paul Celmer: for going above and beyond to help with this challenge!

Read More

“Parting Ways” • by C. L. Sidell

Some places can only be found when you run out of gas.

Solilee, one mile.

Melanie locks the car and leaves the road, red container swinging. 

§

Like unnumbered travelers before her, Melanie discovers a memento on the path. A tattered bunny that summons memories of her long-dead sister, Paige. 

§

Solilee appears differently to everyone. For Melanie, it’s ramshackle buildings, vacant streets, a playground. 

She pushes a swing. 

Recalls her last interaction with Paige twenty-five years ago—guilt, still heavy as an anchor. 

§

Paige, materializing on the merry-go-round, skips toward her.

“I’m sorry I let go,” Melanie says.

“You haven’t let anything go.” Paige, wearing her favorite carnation-pink overalls, remains unaged. “Let go.”

§

Each encounter ends the same, with Solilee dissipating.

But do you continue grieving? 

Or do you move on?

§

Casting a final glance over her shoulder, Melanie picks up the gas can and walks back to the main road.

________________________________________

A native Floridian, C. L. Sidell grew up playing with toads in the rain and indulging in speculative fiction. Her work appears in The Cosmic Background, Dark Moments, Dread Machine, Factor Four Magazine, Impossible Worlds, Martian Magazine, Stupefying Stories, and others. You can find her on various social media platforms @sidellwrites

If you liked this story, you might also enjoy:

“It’s In His Kiss”

Go ahead. Kiss the frog. What could it hurt?

“Long Distance Call”

She’d discarded everything after the funeral, except his phone…

 

“Release Me”

Carrie and Vanessa just wanted to find a good spooky story
to tell on Halloween. They got more than they bargained for…

 

“Planting”

Things planted in the offseason here
grow real different, they truly do. 

---

The Pete Wood Challenge is an informal ad hoc story-writing competition. Once a month Pete Wood spots writers the idea for a story, usually in the form of a phrase or a few key words, along with some restrictions on what can be submitted, usually in terms of length. Pete then collects the resulting entries, determines who has best met the challenge, and sends the winners over to Bruce Bethke, who arranges for them to be published on the Stupefying Stories web site.

You can find all the previous winners of the Pete Wood Challenge at this link. 

This time the challenge was to write a flash fiction story of no more than 150 words in length, inspired by and using the phrase, “out of gas.”

Special Thanks to Paul Celmer: for going above and beyond to help with this challenge

Read More

“What Fuels Us” • by Richard Zwicker

Thaxxon gazed at his freighter’s viewscreen of stars, imagining planets teeming with fools.

His calm shattered as a ship of unknown origin appeared. A ripped-off client? When it refused to identify itself, he radioed: “I sold all my weapons of mass destruction except for the one pointing at you. Back off or die!” It was a bluff, as he frantically set his engines to maximum speed. A wail rose from the three imprisoned Doracens whose life force fueled his ship. “Do your job!” he shouted.

The lights dimmed. Silence.

The ship was on emergency life support! He stormed to the engine room. The energy capsules were undamaged, but the Doracens were gone! A material transference, but how? The Doracens didn’t have space technology. Who would bother to save them?

Back on the bridge, he watched the unknown ship vanish, leaving him to drift, out of gas, among the sea of fools.

---

 

Richard Zwicker is a retired English teacher living in Vermont, USA, with his wife and beagle. His short stories have appeared in Stupefying Stories, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Dragon Gems, and other semi-pro markets. Two collections of his stories, Walden Planet and The Reopened Cask, are out now. A third, The Sum of its Parts, is due out soon.

In addition to reading and writing, Richard likes to play the piano, jog, and fight the good fight against age. Though he lived in Brazil for eight years, he is still a lousy soccer player.

Richard first came to our attention with “Stellar Dust and Mirrors,” which appeared in the now out-of-print Stupefying Stories #5, and “Riddle Me,” which first appeared in Stupefying Stories #7. Richard was kind enough to let us reprint “Riddle Me,” so you’ll find it at this link. As well, you’ll find “The Slings and Arrows of Childhood” and “Talking Turkey with Tom” at these links, and his most recent contribution to Stupefying Stories magazine, “Possession is Ten-Tenths of the Law,” in Stupefying Stories 26.

---

The Pete Wood Challenge is an informal ad hoc story-writing competition. Once a month Pete Wood spots writers the idea for a story, usually in the form of a phrase or a few key words, along with some restrictions on what can be submitted, usually in terms of length. Pete then collects the resulting entries, determines who has best met the challenge, and sends the winners over to Bruce Bethke, who arranges for them to be published on the Stupefying Stories web site.

You can find all the previous winners of the Pete Wood Challenge at this link. 

This time the challenge was to write a flash fiction story of no more than 150 words in length that was inspired by the phrase, “out of gas.”

Special Thanks to Paul Celmer: for going above and beyond to help with this challenge!  

---

Did you enjoy this story? Then check out our magazine. It’s free for Kindle Unlimited subscribers, and you can get the four most recent issues with just one click.

(Or get just one at a time, if that’s what you’d really prefer.)

Read More

“Do Not Go Gentle” • by Karin Terebessy

I am very young, barely out of my hydrogen years, and almost out of gas.

“Is this death?” I ask. 

Magnesium and Oxygen, teenage stars near me, just split with Carbon. They are in their post-breakup glow-up phase, cavorting with Neon. This has made them bold.

“Commoner,” they taunt. “Stick to your own class. Leave the upper classes be.”

Rotating, I spot the middle-aged stars, Sulfur and Silicon.

“Will I disappear?” I try.

Sulfur sniffs uncomfortably. Silicon awkwardly scratches an itch.

“We are too busy to think about nonsense.”

They sound afraid.

Ancient Iron, so close to death herself, lumbers nearby like space debris.

“Will you remember me?” I manage.

With extreme effort, she lifts a rusty smile.

“There is a red giant asleep within you.” Her voice is flinty. And kind. “Remember you? Little one, unleash your potential and you will light up the sky.”

 

---

Karin Terebessy likes to write speculative flash fiction stories. Her work has appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Stupefying Stories, Flash Fiction Magazine, Sci-Phi Journal, and other ‘zines. She is currently attempting to write a novel based on her short story “Mood Skin” which appeared in Stupefying Stories in 2016. You can follow Karin on TikTok @karinbendsreality or find her on Instagram at karinterebessy.

Her most recent appearance in Stupefying Stories was “Chasing the Moon,” a story that placed very high in our Top Ten of 2024 list. Coming in right behind it was one of the most powerful and disturbing stories we’ve ever published, “Broken.” Before that she gave us “Bandages” in Stupefying Stories 26, but she’s been with us since “The Memory of Worms,” in the now out-of-print Stupefying Stories 16. In addition she’s given us many SHOWCASE stories, including, “Robin’s Egg,” “Not Quite Ready for Armageddon,” “The Finder of Lost Things,” “Mood Skin,”  “The Real Reason Why Mrs. Sprague Came by Her House So Cheaply.”

If you liked this story, check them all out. It will be time well spent. 

 

 

---

The Pete Wood Challenge is an informal ad hoc story-writing competition. Once a month Pete Wood spots writers the idea for a story, usually in the form of a phrase or a few key words, along with some restrictions on what can be submitted, usually in terms of length. Pete then collects the resulting entries, determines who has best met the challenge, and sends the winners over to Bruce Bethke, who arranges for them to be published on the Stupefying Stories web site.

You can find all the previous winners of the Pete Wood Challenge at this link. 

This time the challenge was to write a flash fiction story of no more than 150 words in length, inspired by and using the phrase, “out of gas.”

Special Thanks to Paul Celmer: for going above and beyond to help with this challenge!  

Read More

The Never-ending FAQ • 29 January 2025

Welcome to the latest installment of The Never-ending FAQ, the constantly evolving adjunct to our Submission Guidelines and general-purpose unfocused Q&A session.  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.

Q: When did you decide to grow a beard?!?!?!

A: I never “decided” to grow a beard. I’ve been growing a beard since I was 17. Shortly before Thanksgiving I decided to stop shaving for a few weeks, to see how it looked if I let it grow out, and more importantly, to test the theory that if I let it get long enough it would eventually stop driving me mad with its itchiness.

What do you think? Keep or shave? Pick one or the other. No trying to split your vote by saying, “Trim it back to a goatee” or anything like that. Pierce Brosnan looks great with a Van Dyke. I don’t.

Mutton chops or an Imperial are right out.

Q: I tried to post a comment but couldn’t. What’s going on with commenting?

A: This site has been discovered by the spambots again, and for the past month we’ve been getting carpet-bombed with spam comments trying to sell you sketchy pharmaceuticals, cyberpunk fashion accessories, and Middle Eastern-sourced decorative tiles and paving blocks. Consequently, we’ve had to switch on strict content moderation, block anonymous commenting, and delete suspected junk comments without mercy. 

Would that we could simply identify and block spam commenters. But doing that is about as effective as trying to block junk phone calls by blocking the caller ID they’ve spoofed.

Q: I’ve been following your “Ask Dr. Cyberpunk” saga of woe. Why not simply self-publish your original novel?

A: Because unfortunately, it does not exist—or rather, something exists, but it resembles a complete and functional novel in the same way that a crash reconstruction resembles a complete and functional aircraft.

This is because of the way I work, and almost always have worked. I rarely start at the beginning and write straight through to The End. I develop my major projects in a decidedly non-linear way, writing bits, pieces, descriptions, and above all, key scenes first, and then figuring out what else needs to be written to bridge the gaps between the key scenes.

Hence my one piece of enduring advice to aspiring novelists: write the ending first. Then figure out what else you need to write in order to set up and support that ending, and write it. In the process you may wind up throwing out your original ending, as the characters come to life in your mind, hijack the story, and demand that it head off in a different direction. But at least you will begin with some idea of where you intend to go.

Most of the time, when I hear writers complain about being stuck or having writer’s block or that sort of thing, the real problem isn’t a lack of inspiration or imagination. It’s that they began writing with no clue as to where they wanted the story to go or how they intended it to end. Therefore, they have no sense of whether they’re making actual progress towards getting to where they want to go, or are just stumbling around in the foggy dark spaces inside their mind.

Q: What’s going on with Stupefying Stories? You’ve been silent since your Top 10 of 2024 series of posts at the beginning of this month.

A: I published the last of the Top 10 posts, TOP 10: Special Edition! The Pete Wood Challenge, on January 7th. On the morning of January 8th, I got the news that my brother had died overnight.

This was not completely unexpected. He’d been fighting a difficult battle with cancer for a long time. Still, this came as a shock. I’d spoken with him just a few days before, and while he was unhappy to be back in the hospital again, he seemed cautiously optimistic that he was on the mend and would be going home soon. 

Then, the phone call.

Perhaps this wouldn’t have come as such a shock to me if it hadn’t happened within days of both my wedding anniversary and my late wife’s birthday; but it did, and for the past three weeks I’ve been…lost in thought.

Sometimes thoughts are dark and foggy spaces. Other times, things suddenly shine through with brilliant and disturbing clarity.

Q: Gee, that’s, er, interesting. So is anything going on with The Pete Wood Challenge?

A: As a matter of fact, YES! The latest Pete Wood Challenge, “Out of Gas,” rolls out next week, with eight, count ‘em, eight new flash fiction stories by fan-favorite writers Jeff Currier, Sophie Sparrow, Christopher Degni, Andrew Jensen, Karin Terebessy, Crystal Sidell, Richard Zwicker, and introducing, Lori Jensen!

But, operating on the principle that nothing is ever easy around here, I need to finish getting these stories coded up and in the publication queue this week, because next week the contractors are showing up to finish the remodeling and repair work that was made necessary by last summer’s destructive hailstorm, and I’m probably going to be losing Internet connectivity for most of the week.

So if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to work. 

Nil desperandum,
Bruce Bethke

Read More

Ask Dr. Cyberpunk: with your host, Bruce Bethke • LAST CALL! NO KIDDING!

REMINDER: this is the LAST CALL for FAQ questions. I wrote the story 45 years ago. I’m tired of talking about it.

If you have a question you’ve always wanted to ask me about my story, “Cyberpunk,” or the writing thereof, send it to brucebethke.cybrpnk@gmail.com. Given that we want to have Cyberpunk and Cyberpunk Revisited ready to release in March 2025, I have set a hard deadline of Saturday, February 1st, 2025. After that date, any and all questions about “Cyberpunk” will receive the same reply: “Buy the book.” 

Sorry to have to say this, but only questions sent to the above email address will be considered. The spambots have discovered this site again, and for the past month we’ve been getting carpet-bombed with spam comments offering great deals on sketchy pharmaceuticals, cyberpunk-related fashion accessories, and inexplicably, Middle Eastern-sourced decorative tiles and paving blocks. Therefore we have had to switch to strict comment moderation and are now blocking all anonymous comments.

Who was it who said, 25 years ago, that the future of the World Wide Web was that it would eventually choke to death on its own excrement? Oh my gosh, that was me.

§

ONE MORE REMINDER: this is the LAST CALL for FAQ questions. If you have a question you’ve always wanted to ask me about my story, “Cyberpunk,” or the writing thereof, send it to brucebethke.cybrpnk@gmail.com. Given that we want to have Cyberpunk and Cyberpunk Revisited ready to release in March 2025, I have set a hard deadline of Saturday, February 1st, 2025. After that date, any and all questions about “Cyberpunk” will receive the same reply: “Buy the book.”

And while you’re waiting for Cyberpunk and Cyberpunk Revisited, considering buying some of our other books, too, okay? At least, take a look at SS#23, and maybe read “Eddie’s Upgrade,” by Kevin Stadt. If you like cyberpunk fiction, you will love that story.  

Read More

WRITING ADVICE: Analyzing What Went Into EMERALD OF EARTH *** THIS IS LONG. I KNOW. I ASK YOU TO READ IT...***

THIS IS A LONG PIECE...SO MOVE ON IF IT'S TOO MUCH!

In September of 2007, I started a blog with a bit of writing advice. A little over a year later, I discovered how little I knew about writing after hearing children’s writer, Lin Oliver speak at a convention hosted by the Minnesota Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Since then, I have shared (with their permission) and applied the writing wisdom of Lin Oliver, Jack McDevitt, Nathan Bransford, Mike Duran, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, SL Veihl, Bruce Bethke, and Julie Czerneda. Together they write in genres broad and deep, and have acted as agents, editors, publishers, columnists, and teachers. Since then, I figured I’d finally learned enough been published enough times that I can share some of the things I did RIGHT. Here's a few of those things.

While I don’t write full-time, nor do I make enough money with my writing to live off of it, though someone pays for and publishes ten percent of what I write. When I started this blog, that was NOT true, so I may have reached a point where my own advice is reasonably good. We shall see!

As my kids and wife will attest, I started EMERALD OF EARTH twenty-one years ago in response to the wave of dystopian science fiction aimed at young adults. Of COURSE there has always been "dark" science fiction -- HG Wells' WAR OF THE WORLDS springs to mind!

In fact, I was really and truly hooked on science fiction by the grim future in John Christopher’s THE WHITE MOUNTAINS books. Lois Lowry’s THE GIVER came when I was in high school, and Margaret Atwood’s THE HANDMAID’S TALE rose to the top NOT as teen lit, but as subversive science fiction – not for teens, but for adults who were looking for MORE after rereading the HARRY POTTER fantasies a dozen times.

Then came the deluge of the “book-to-movie” best sellers like THE HUNGER GAMES and MAZE RUNNER following on the heels of what I think of as “teen carnage” novels where, like the Harry Potter series after GOBLET OF FIRE with teens slaughtering each other and being slaughtered by evil adults became normal for YA fiction. Because while they were ostensibly for teens and YA, adults were reading them in DROVES.

There’s been some serious research on this as well: “Why Do Adults Read Young Adult Novels?" Monica Hay, Fellow at Portland State University0 Department of English wrote “Book industries and trade, Publishers and publishing, Young adult literature” (from the abstract): “Young adult books are widely read by adults. Through interviews with publishing professionals and a survey of 2,139 participants, several reasons were discovered regarding why adults read young adult literature.

“In the research, the most common reasons were the influence of Harry Potter and Twilight, the relatability for millennials, the social media presence of YA online, and the success of women writers in the category. Survey participants had more to add. The survey themes were nostalgia, ‘less pretentious,’ ‘faster reads,’ diversity, escapism, ‘less graphic,’ and perhaps most importantly, hopeful.”

So I started to look at a DIFFERENT future than the doom-and-gloom presented by some of the books that adults and kids appeared to be reading.

What if Humanity launched into a serious exploration of the Solar System and it wasn’t just with soldiers and old people? What if the future included young people? The ones would would spend a long time living in space?

I was compelled to give my novel a title that would draw in YA readers expecting carnage in their reading. I changed it to EMERALD OF EARTH: HEIRS OF THE SHATTERED SPHERES, with the intent of writing a series. And I WILL if sales of the first book go well. came out in March 2024, and while sales haven’t been stellar, I’m doing things like this to boost the signal.

It takes place in a future where Humans have launched into an exploration of the Solar System thoroughly and methodically. Using a hollowed out asteroid called the SOLAR EXPLORER (SOLAREX for short!) as a base, they will spend a year at each planet, probing, landing on, collecting samples, data, and answering questions without having to worry about shipping tiny amounts of material “home” to be analyzed by experts. The experts were right there.

But at one point, I thought EMERALD OF EARTH was boring and would have had a hard time finding advocacy among the more exciting titles (except THE GIVER; that was hardly self-explanatory, nor was THE HANDMAID’S TALE or even Butler’s 1979 masterpiece, KINDRED). Flashy titles had replaced subtle, so I had to do the same.

I came up with EARTH ATTACKED! Ugh. Then I tried LEGACY OF THE WOUNDED WORLDS…Worser and worser!

Finally, I resorted to something I’d never done: I sat down with a thesaurus and the “Legacy” title and found synonyms for all of the words and wrote them on slips of paper. Then I went to a table and began to rearrange them, speaking them out loud countless times until I found one title that held up under the stress of repetition.

HEIRS OF THE SHATTERED SPHERES. Instead of a single book, though, I suddenly had an idea for a SERIES.

Emerald’s story would be its own story, separate from eleven others but intertwined with them because they all live aboard the hollowed out asteroid SOLAR EXPLORER.

Emerald’s story would be the first of a much, much larger story. I wouldn’t have her defeating Inamma in one fell swoop. She needed to fight for her existence, so I made Inamma smarter than it had been before and more subtle.

Even more though, I needed Emerald to have “kid problems”. She needed to deal with issues every kid on Earth needed to deal with. So I gave her friend problems. She wanted them but couldn’t seem to keep them. But what began as a nebulous, “I can’t get friends”, needed a firmer foundation.

As a guidance counselor, I’d started working closely with several autistic students and had come to understand them just a tiny bit. The ones I dealt with were brilliant – but challenged by the world they lived in. I realized that my growing understanding of these young people might be an aspect of Emerald that I hadn’t really developed.

Once I started to understand Emerald, other things fell into place – things like answering the question: “What do teenagers DO on a spacecraft called SOLAREX, committed to a twelve year mission?” So I had to give them “school in space”. But NOT a clone of “school on Earth”, cloned from a form that came from England with American colonists in the 18th Century.

To tell you the truth, when it comes to school for teens in space, SF writers have TOTALLY lacked imagination!

Star Trek: The Next Generation and ST:DS9 have children and teens going to school and SITTING IN DESKS!!! They don’t even go to a holographic “virtual school” that is identical to what we had during the pandemic as in Michael’s Burstein’s award-winning short story, “Teleabsence”. Yet we’ve fled BACK to kids with butts in seats in schools…because we’ve got this weird idea that PARENTS are incapable of educating their kids and ONLY TRAINED TEACHER can do the job.

As a teacher for 41 years: during which time I taught science 6th grade general science, 7th grade life science, eighth grade Earth science, 9th grade physical science, 10th grade biology, 11th grade chemistry, and 12th grade physics, as well as designing and teaching TWO Astronomy classes – as well as writing classes for gifted and talented young people between 4th and 10th grade – I can tell you that THE BEST TEACHERS ARE PARENTS.

(I’m one of those, too…and a grandparent.)

For science fiction writers, you have Orson Scott Card training children to just “be soldiers” in ENDER’S GAME books. Why is that? I think the Science Fiction world has treated the future of education as if we’d already reached the PINNACLE of “educational technology” here in 21st Century America…I don’t even see SF attempting to include educational theory and practice from other cultures! A quick Google search reveals only that there are lots of articles on how to use SF to teach about science or inspire girls to be scientists. This list / is a good start, but hardly complete – at least I hope it’s not complete.

At any rate, to create an educational system that made sense, I drew from my own experience. One thing I knew for certain was that I didn’t want my teens – and there are 130+ of them on SOLAR EXPLORER – just “going to school” and then “hanging out”.

As important as that activity is, and knowing that I’m not speaking tongue-in-cheek – these young people are not only going to be in space for twelve years, they are going to mature into adults who will in their own time take their places in the operation of the ship. Some will be “promoted” to apprenticeships or leadership positions; some will become menial laborers. Some perhaps will become philosophers, others still recorders, writers, and artisans.

But how do they get there? NOT ONLY just “hanging out” on their cellphones and on social media all the time! That is PART of their education – social and educational media are adjuncts to formal education – but THEY have to be adjuncts of PARENTAL education efforts as well.

Honestly? This society has abdicated our wisdom by waving our kids in the general direction of “teachers”. THAT’S A BAD THING. I’m telling you here that not ONLY have I known absolutely shitty teachers; I’ve known EVIL teachers. You know what else? There are times in my life that I’ve been a shitty teacher myself.

Education in classical literature, mathematics, social studies (including history as well as the social experiment they live in!), physical education, science (duh!), art, and practical skills like programming, global languages, welding, recycling technologies, particle physics, gravitational manipulation technologies, and mass communication and journalism – how do you cover all of these things without sitting the fat butts of these kids down? And we need to start teaching our kids MANNERS – not sloppy adult manners, but a FOUNDATION of manners that EVERY SINGLE SOCIETY ON EARTH HAS.

In my novel, SOLAREX is a tiny, closed society. You might consider it a microscopic section of countries like “Andorra, Luxembourg, Greenland, Norway, Liechtenstein” where “literacy reaches virtually 100 percent.” Surveillance is practically universal (though I touch on the fact that it’s NOT!), so teens will only get into minimal trouble in the ways that they do. As well, there’s an “illicit” athletic outlet (pryzhok) as well as plenty of other things to do. Education is experiential as well as academic. They work on Intensive Training Teams as well as receive homework assignments in the “traditional subjects” we expect teens to study. They also receive tangible rewards as a result of inter-Team competition in both their vocational training and academics. And YES, “‘Vacation days, Leisure Study days and tours, credit chits to buy food at the alternate restaurants and hang outs, mostly.’”

Instructors design educational pathways for students – “He was willing to admit that he’d been a master query marker guide at one time. He’d figure out what someone needed to know then lead them there. After the suicides, he’d adjudged himself a stupid query marker guru, quit, and fled.”

I’m trying to explore ways that we might educate our young people. It SEEMS sometimes like it’s a lonely business, educating young minds. It SHOULD NOT BE. It needs to be EVERYONE’S job…

And it’s no longer seen that way. And from MY perspective, that is ALSO the main reason the Pandemic Distance Education hit our kids so hard…NOT ALL OF THEM THEM…but lots of them.

I put forward community effort on SOLAR EXPLORER as a model for us to return to – and then allow communities to ADAPT TO THEIR KIDS…Comments anyone?

LINKS: https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/eng_bookpubpaper/35/; http://sf.hackeducation.com; http://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-highest-literacy-rates-in-the-world.html;
IMAGE: https://www.amazon.com/Emerald-Earth-Heirs-Shattered-Spheres/dp/1958333166/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.PMZul37u_A-yH1LfdxoJ_4iBsTIPAa-dcKcAYmv6WDJZJACtYOnZ8toIWHepGLzwDgcwPZa5ySaFTyXxDHB6x85EysrwG8c_Fs_6IxTzQ6L3naz7ZGJ4nJL1UMFwPAR6HPceUFI79nNdKI79TOzkCzNlUM0Fslu7enXSYjoi5shC0EWph5S5EukqRan_LFpafkgVdrt5AriNaxk4v6AWYTRuDaSk_91uYI1tD4ZiQ3s.RSgRAQeOVuHkoEpV9T_vci5uBYmbWChcdjg1uzqkqpw&qid=1713588732&sr=1-1

Read More

TOP 10: Special Edition! The Pete Wood Challenge

Following up on last week’s TOP 10 Stories of 2024 posts (The Best of 2024, The Rest of the Best (Part 1), and The Rest of the Best (Part 2), Pete Wood asked me to run another report breaking out the most-read Pete Wood Challenge stories of 2024. I’ll have more to say about this tomorrow, but for today, here you go. According to the readership metrics, these are the top Pete Wood Challenge Stories we published in 2024.

THE TOP 10 

#1. “Wielder of Wit,” by Ian Li

 

#2. “The Offs,” by Ted Macaluso

 

#3. “In the Line of Duty,” by Gustavo Bondoni

 

#4. “The Triennial Igneous Tri-Partite Competition,” by Pauline Barmby

 

#5. “A Change of Management,” by S. R. Kriger

 

#6. “Like Clockwork,” by Yelena Crane

 

#7. “The Potato Singer,” by Ian Li

 

#8. “Hosting a Tempest,” by Ian Li

 

#9. (Tie) “Astronaut Countdown,” by Brandon Case

 

#9. (Tie) “Punch Flavored Punch,” by Yelena Crane

 

#10. (Tie) When the Woman in the Forest Says,
“Please, You Must Help,”
by Elis Montgomery

 

#10. (Tie) “Summit, in Memory,” by Ian Li

  

HONORABLE MENTIONS

In addition, these stories ranked high in the readership numbers, but not quite high enough to break into the TOP 10.

#1. “Reflections on Carnival-by-the-Sea,” by Christopher Degni

 

#2. “The Sirens’ Salvation,” by Kimberly Ann Smiley

 

#3. “Forgetting on Draft,” by Elis Montgomery

 

#4. “Dangerouser and Dangerouser,” by Sophie Sparrow

 

#5. (Tie) “Tonight, We Embrace the Dark,” by Gideon P. Smith

 

#5. (Tie) “To Hell and Back,” by Kai Delmas

 

Aside from, “You need to publish more Ian Li stories!” what do these numbers mean? We’ll talk about that tomorrow, in the next installment of The Never-ending FAQ.

Read More