“Outpost” • by Gordon Pinckheard

“Mother,” Isaac called out to the Colony’s management system, “I’d like to talk to someone Earthside.”

Isaac was bored. He had finished lessons for the day and had seen quite enough of his classmates. He wanted a break from teenagers, some adult company, a face he hadn’t seen in a while.

“Certainly, Isaac. Who would you like to speak to?”

“Julie, if she’s available. Don’t bother her if she’s not at home.”

Isaac had been lying on his bunk, interlocked fingers behind his head. Above, a plastic ceiling, alongside a window with Mars’ red sand streaming across it; the storm had not yet blown itself out. Now, he sat up, tablet in hand, ready to talk with Julie Lawson. Someone he could gripe to without the rest of the Colony hearing every one of his complaints. And she could tell him about Earth, humanity’s first home. An older woman, she gave him good advice too; the Earthbound volunteers encouraged harmony between the Colony’s children.

Mother had given them lessons on the Colony’s history. It was scary. All the Colony’s adults now dead, only the children surviving, maturing, the Colony’s future in their hands.

The Colony was humanity’s first attempt to inhabit another planet, a foothold to the future.

From the start, the colonists struggled with communication. The delay in signals between Mars and Earth varied between 3 and 22 minutes as the planets’ separation swung between 54 and 401 million kilometers. True conversation was impossible; they had to endure awkward exchanges of video clips. The colonists felt isolated, as indeed they were.

Mother explained that hyperspace was only discovered after the adults had died; now, communication with Earth was instantaneous. Isaac could chat with Julie as easily as if he had called up a fellow colonist.

Julie had shown Isaac how well the parent planet had recovered from the Nuclear War. Green grass, rivers running across open land, all shimmering under their shared Sun.

“Isaac! Good to hear from you! It’s been a while.”

“Yes, it has. Hi. I just felt like a chat. Nothing special.”

“Of course. That’s fine. What have you been up to?”

“Studying. There seems no end to what Mother thinks we should know. And it’s the same faces all the time. Of course, it was the same yesterday and the day before. Inside our plastic dome. Hey, Julie, could you take the camera outside?”

“Of course. Hold on a minute.”

Isaac leaned in to his screen, immersing himself in the view of a street of single-story houses surrounded by neat gardens, vehicles moving gently over the roadway between them.

“It’s beautiful,” he said. “And to be able to just go outside like that, unprotected! To have space, live apart from other people. What was it like before the War?”

“Let’s not talk about that. We should both look forward. Now, we build on what we have, us here on Earth, and you there on Mars. We volunteers are here to help you; it may only be advice and guidance now, but we keep the world aware of your need for material support. Within a few more years, a relief flight will launch.”

“It’s been so long.”

“I know. Be strong. You’ve all done so well. Would you like me to go further around the neighborhood, perhaps take a walk over to the park and the lake?”

“Thanks, but maybe we’ll keep that for another day.”

“Is there anything I can help you with? Any problems with Mother? Are you all getting on with each other?”

“Oh, we’re okay. Coping. I shouldn’t complain. We all appreciate having you volunteers to talk to, to help us conceive of a life outside this bubble. We need to know that we’re not forgotten. In truth, we couldn’t be more isolated! Thank you for your time and for caring. I’ll say goodbye now. You probably have other things to be doing.”

“Isaac, I’m here when you need me. To do what I can. Call anytime. Call again soon. Take care of yourselves, all of you.”

The Martian storm was easing as Julie and Isaac’s call ended.

It was the War that killed the Colony’s adults. And the silence. The divisions on the planet were mirrored in the Colony; everyone had roots in a tribe. Before communication was lost, one colonist had learned that his family, his country, had been annihilated. And around him, he saw unaffected opponents, silent supporters of the slaughter. All heard of the ruination of their homeworld. And then silence. The Colony was alone.

Under the stress, the consumption of recreational drugs increased.

What now was the Colony’s role? To return to Earth? To be the seedbed for humanity’s new growth? The adults met in the canteen to reconcile partisan divisions, to agree, clarify, and commit to the Colony’s mission. But one colonist was unreconciled. He called the others enemies, brethren of those who had exterminated his family, leaving him to be the last of his kind. He despaired of humanity, a species that had destroyed the Garden it was gifted. He would not let the heavenly realm be despoiled too. He opened the airlocks. They died, gasping Mars’ thin air.

Mother saved the children. All internal doors slammed shut and remained closed until the maintenance bots reconnected Mother to the airlock controls. Mother resealed the dome.

Many orbits around the Sun passed. Mother protected, educated and encouraged the children. They aged, matured, organized; Isaac was now the second Chair of the Colony’s Council.

§

“Isaac?”

“What is it, Mother?”

“A repair bot was outside during the storm and appears incapable of movement. Dust may have entered it. It is blocking the exit of the other bots, and they cannot retrieve it. I need human assistance.”

“Okay, Mother. I’ll get John to help me.”

Isaac would not venture out alone. The dome had protected them for years, the double-doored airlocks a frontier between them and Mars. Crossing that boundary took courage; outside, the atmosphere killed, and the suit’s plastic was thin. He and John would monitor each other and return inside as quickly as they could. 

In their suits, Isaac and John circled the dome. The damage seemed superficial. The hyperspace aerial had been blown down near the bot and was buried beneath the dust. Tilted, it had created a ramp the bot could not surmount. They pulled it aside, opening a pathway out for the mobile support unit.

Back inside, Isaac summoned the young leadership to a meeting in the canteen. Once they had all taken seats at the scattered tables, he looked over their heads and called: “Mother!”.

“Yes, Isaac?”

“Mother, the hyperwave aerial was blown down.”

“That’s okay, Isaac. It is not a serious issue. One of the repair bots will soon have it back in place.”

“But, Mother, I was speaking to Julie Lawson over hyperwave.”

“Well, I apologize if it caused you a problem. You will be able to continue your call shortly.”

“Mother, it did not cause me a problem. That is the problem. It was down long enough to be deeply covered by dust. It had to have been down while I was on my call. How can hyperwave work without its aerial?”

“Isaac, let me think.”

Isaac looked around the canteen. It was evident that all had understood and were waiting for Mother’s explanation.

“Isaac, colonists, let me explain. This will be hard. You are older now. You had to learn sometime; it seems that time has now arrived. The War was severe. I lost contact with Earth and do not know whether humanity has even survived. I cannot detect any organized activity at scale.

“You know the fate of the adult colonists and that I have been caring for you. You humans are social animals; I created an interactive social environment for you. You had adult replicas to relate with, a normal world to aspire to. Unfortunately, all a fiction.

“In truth, you are alone. This Colony may be the only pool of articulate rational beings in four light-years or more. You are an island of intelligence in a vast empty ocean. A journey to the far shore could take millennia.”

Isaac looked around the canteen at pale faces. From the back, a tremulous voice cried out: “What do we do now?”

“Survive, endure,” replied Isaac. “Humanity persists.”

 

---

 

Gordon Pinckheard lives in County Kerry, Ireland. Retired from a working life spent writing computer programs and technical documents, he now seeks success in his sunset years submitting short stories pounded out with one arthritic finger. His stories have been published by Cabinet of Heed, Flash Fiction Magazine, Shooter, Every Day Fiction, Cranked Anvil, Daily Science Fiction, and others. 

His social credit dystopian nightmare, “Outside the Window,” is one of the most-read stories we published in 2024. If you haven’t already read it, you should read it now.

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Writing 101 • No Session Today

Class cancelled. Last-minute schedule conflict. See you on Thursday.

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“Catgut Variations (on a G string)” • by M. David Blake

I once owned a violin, covered with green silk, wrapped in gold and gauze, bound with iron chains and hidden in a teak-wood cask. It was an odd way to keep a violin, I’ll admit.

The violin was beautiful, almost iridescently grained, but as useless to me as an ostrich plume on a seal-clubbing expedition. No blow I could strike had any impact, and no stroke of my bow brought forth anything more pleasant than the aggrieved tones of a feline suffering an unpleasantly soapy delousing, with all the associated indignities. I always assumed it must have been some flaw in the varnish, some hidden fissure within the maple, that caused such raucous reverberation. For that matter, I suspected the strings had been gutted from an improperly tuned cat.

On the odd occasions I took it out to admire, I held it reverently, horsetail bow hovering no closer than a half inch from those catgut strings, lest one should inadvertently make contact with the other and misery ensue. So when the Tufted Capuchin monkey knocked upon my door and asked in a perfectly-articulated accent, “I believe you are in possession of a rather unusual violin, which I would most obligingly wish to see,” I did my best not to register any visible surprise.

“I don’t recall,” I said, “advertising a violin.”

“Ah,” said the monkey, “but undoubtedly you misunderstand. I said nothing about having encountered an advertisement.”

“Then I utterly fail to understand your speech,” I replied, “on more than one account. But your words are enchanting, so if you would like to come in and entertain me while I have another drink, I’d welcome the diversion.”

The monkey cocked an eyebrow and whistled, and then said in the same affected voice, “Utterly fail? No, you have only misunderstood the nature of my capacity for speech. That is a single account. I am now quite certain that you clearly understood my meaning.” With that impertinent response the creature flung itself through my door, and scampered down the entryway toward my coat closet.

“A moment ago you were saying I undoubtedly misunderstood,” I called, as the monkey disappeared behind the door.

“Undoubtedly,” said the monkey, in a voice that sounded a little gruffer than before. “But that was before you invited me inside.”

“I don't see—” I began.

“Clearly you don’t,” said the creature, in a voice tinged with bass undertones, hard liquor and nicotine.

As the closet swung open, my eyes tried to focus in the approximate vicinity of where the monkey’s eyes should have been. It took me a moment to realize I was staring at an unanticipated set of spindly ankles, the most visible of which was covered in a mixture of shaggy hair and opalescent scales.

The crowning touch was the red, glitter-covered stiletto pump that graced the foot. No, the crowning touch was that there was only one shoe. The other foot—if it was indeed a foot—ended in something resembling a flipper. And the other other foot had something that was probably a chitinous exoskeleton.

“You aren’t a monkey,” I said.

“No shit, honey-bunch,” said the creature. “And your violin isn’t a violin, either. Now, be a dear… I believe you said something about a drink?”

“A drink?” I echoed.

“And make it stiff, please,” she added. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen it, I suspect I’ll need a bracer.”

§

As I wrapped myself around equal parts lemon juice, ginger-currant wine, vanilla vodka and seltzer water, my friend wrapped herself (look, she was wearing a red stiletto pump, okay?) around one of my dining room chairs. Literally. Tentacles wove in and out of the spindles supporting the Windsor back, leathery wings folded demurely across what might have been a trio of shoulders, while scales and fur seemed to blend seamlessly between the wooden seat and the tile floor. Every surface they touched seemed a part of them, and made it difficult to focus.

In all fairness, equal parts of the aforementioned ingredients may have contributed to that last impression. They also helped me to cope with the apparent presence of a high-heeled Elder God, so I felt fully justified in pouring myself something to go along with hers. And by “hers,” I mean the red plastic gasoline can from which she was drinking, using the spout as an obscene straw.

“You can really put that stuff away,” I said. “Are you sure you still want to talk about my violin? I could just as easily run down to the quickie mart and fill up your glass.”

“You’re sweet,” she said, a single oversized eye sizing me up, “but dense as a desiccated Ankylosaurus. I must see the—”

“Dense as a what?” I slurred.

“Oh, sober up,” she said, and I did. Immediately, and with no discernible after-effect.

“How did you—” I started to ask.

“Please,” she said. “Spare me. I get thoroughly sick of having to explain the intricacies of metabolic inhibition and carbohydraturia whenever I sober one of you up. You were pissed. Now you’ll piss. Ultimately you feel better, which is better for me, because I need you coherent enough to focus. It’s remarkable enough that you aren’t freaked out by my appearance.”

“Speaking of, I was going to ask how you made yourself look like a Tufted Capuchin,” I said. “Sobriety I can accept, because I live with it three days out of every week.”

“Hmm,” she said. “You are an unusual one. Perhaps that’s why it felt safe here with you.”

“Why what felt safe with me?” I asked. “The violin?”

“I already told you that it isn’t a violin,” she said. “But it looks like one to you, in pretty much the same way I looked like a Tufted Capuchin when you first saw me.”

“Well, now you look like something out of a Sam Raimi film, if Sam Raimi was trying to film the Cthulhu mythos.” It didn’t seem like that much of a stretch. I could almost picture Bruce Campbell holding up my end of the conversation.

She laughed. “You see my physical dimensions. You can’t see past that. I’m a lot more massive than any monkey, and a lot smaller at the same time. If you took out all the empty space, so are you. Call it a costume, if you'd like.”

“Like Halloween?” I asked.

“Hardly,” she responded. “But you’ve at least stumbled into the same vein of thinking, more or less.”

“So my violin isn’t a violin, and it’s just wearing a costume. Seems a little far-fetched, if you don’t mind my saying so.” Frankly, what she was suggesting seemed more than “far-fetched,” but that seemed like the safest level of disbelief to confess.

“It was good enough at hiding,” she said, “that finding it again was a real challenge. But it had also been through a lot, so I’m guessing it just got tired enough to curl up into a safe shape and sleep it off.”

“You’ve completely lost me,” I said.

“Cthulhu, sweetheart,” she giggled. “Didn’t you ever wonder why you felt compelled to bind it up and lock it away?”

§

As we crept up the stairs (all right, I crept and she sashayed, if something with a hairy foot, a flipper and a chitinous whatever-the-heck-it-was can sashay… the tentacles definitely gave that impression, though) I had an uncomfortably sobering thought. If we were really going to face down Cthulhu, wasn’t he one of the Old Ones, capable of driving anyone who looked upon his visage mad, and a being of unspeakable horror?

“You’ve really studied that crap, haven’t you?” she said, doing a fair semblance of reading my thoughts.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

A tentacle rubbed the spot where her eyebrow would have been, if any eyebrow had been over that one large eye.

“Look,” she said, “you only saw enough of the violin shape whenever you took it out to drive you slightly batty, and I’d be willing to bet you pickled your brain before you unwrapped it, every single time. This time, I’ll unwrap it, and you won’t have to do a thing. And I know what to do, so that it won’t squall and fuss. Nothing to worry about.”

“Your confidence is reassuring,” I said, although my bladder felt less than reassured.

We had reached the top of the stairs, and as we crossed the threshold of my generally unused guest room, she spoke again. “You keep Cthulhu in your guest room? No wonder you live alone.”

Other-dimensional snark could be answered in kind. “Isn’t he my guest? For that matter, so are you. And pardon me for being a little nervous about what we’re about to do, because it isn’t every day that I knowingly face down one of the Old Ones, who may or may not still be holding a grudge against the other Elder Gods.”

“You do realize all that Elder God hokum was straight out of a hack writer’s imagination, right?” she asked. “The bit about inducing madness in unprotected humans is true enough, in certain circumstances, and that Lovecraft fellow got a moderate dose, but all the rest was about as accurate as if a colony of ants tried to describe the antics of a cat scratching at the anthill.”

“Cats don’t scratch at anthills,” I said. “At least, not in this dimension. Cats have better things to do with their time.”

“Do they?” she asked. “To be frank, my perspective is a little skewed as well. We’ve known for a while that humans are approaching sentience, and we can communicate with you to some degree, but I’m not giving away any major secrets by admitting that the flow of information is mostly unidirectional.”

“I suppose it must be,” I said, “although I’m not sure about your analogy. Cats and ants?” I lifted the teak-wood cask onto the guest bed, and my fingers started numbly fumbling at the iron chains.

“Whales and shrimp, if you prefer,” she said. “Either one is close enough, and still out-of-scale by an order of magnitude. Here, let me do that.”

I stepped aside. Although I had been in this same room countless times, it was suddenly an alien realm, and the most familiar presence was waving tentacles and wearing a red stiletto heel. Plus I was sober.

She plucked delicately at the bindings, until gauze and gold lamé lay upon the bedspread in an untidy heap. After a few moments longer, her tentacles cradled a small, green silk-swathed package.

I drew a sharp breath. “Are you sure you want to do that? I mean, I understand that thing is from your world, and to you, it’s probably harmless, but before today I never had any idea how dangerous my violin was. Even if it isn’t dangerous to you, and even if most of what I think I know about Cthulhu is hokum, that’s still a Hell of a lot more scary than I’m accustomed to dealing with.”

“No it isn’t, sugar-britches,” she said, “not by a long shot. You see wars, and social injustice, and disease every day.”

“None of them are wrapped up in green silk, in my guest room, where they could kill me,” I muttered.

“But any of them could be,” she said, “and in that, we aren’t so different after all. The scariest things are the ones we never see coming.”

“Wait a minute," I said, as she began to unwrap the violin. “You guys—gals?—still have wars and social injustice?”

“And disease,” she said, shaking her head and causing a third of her mouth-tentacles to sway. “Don’t be so surprised. We may be able to do a lot of impressive things in your dimension, but we Elders aren’t omnipotent. As easily as I sobered you up earlier, I could also have rearranged your insides so thoroughly that no human physician would ever recognize you again… but there are still some things we don’t understand about our own physiology, any more than you do.”

“Elder Gods have physiology?” I asked, dumbfounded.

Her tentacles did a little ripple. “Elders got everything, buttercup.”

The green silk had fallen away as she spoke, and I saw the exposed neck of my violin. A shiver crept up my spine as I recalled the ghastly sounds those strings could produce.

“As you see it, Cthulhu is a monster,” she said. “As I see it, Cthulhu is my __ .”

And that’s just what it sounded like. There was a blank space in her words.

“Your what?” I asked.

“Oh, that one doesn’t work in English, does it? I’m not sure how to explain it, because you wouldn’t quite think of the relationship in the same way. It’s sort of like ‘pet’ and sort of like ‘mate’, and from the way you just wrinkled up your face I can tell that isn’t getting any sympathy.” She trailed off, as a tear fell from the single large eye and trickled down a tentacle, to splash upon a the fingerboard of the violin.

The violin shivered.

I flinched.

“Did you see that?” I shouted.

“Of course I did. It’s waking up.” She stroked the strings.

A hum began to fill the room, as more and more notes took their place in the unexpected swell of sound. There was no way to get those notes from a violin. Not from my violin, or anybody’s.

She stood there, foot, flipper and whatever-it-was splayed to give herself support, cradling her __ and crying, one tear at a time. “Shh,” she whispered. “It’s all right.”

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“It’s been sick,” she said.

A question was dancing in the back of my mind, trying to get out. “It hid…” I began.

“Because it was afraid I would suffer,” she said. “We had come here to enjoy your world together, long ago, when we first learned what was happening.”

The violin shivered again, and the neck drew up into a ball, before it flipped and inverted. Catgut strings hummed into mouth tentacles, and soundholes reshaped themselves into a pair of eye sockets as the face stretched into an oversized grotesquerie. As if someone had pulled a handkerchief from the underside of the violin’s body, another body began to emerge, and expand, and stretch.

Wonder of wonders, I did not go mad.

At the time, I didn’t bother to marvel at how we all three fit in the guest room, although I suppose I would have any other day. Maybe it had something to do with what she had said before, about being much larger, and much smaller, and empty space. No, I marveled at the beauty of the thing: The Dread Chtulhu was suffering, and had hidden itself away so that someone it loved wouldn’t suffer as well… and that someone loved right back, and pursued, and persevered, and said it didn’t matter, because it was still her __ and always would be.

For a long time we stood there as they held each other. I think they might have even forgotten I was there, until finally I couldn’t take it any more, and spoke.

“How long do you have?” I asked.

“No one knows,” she said, tentacling away a tear. “We have good doctors, though. And we have each other.”

That put me at a loss for words. I was scared to be in that room, and at the same time, scared for them, and for their uncertainty.

“I don’t know what to say,” I said.

“No one ever does,” she said, “but that works.”

§

They left in the afternoon. She helped Cthulhu to shuffle along, and it (apparently the Dread Cthulhu wasn’t exactly a “he,” but I’m not sure if whatever it was would translate anyway) leaned on her for support.

As they reached my front door, she turned, and pulled something out of what I’m guessing must have been a pocket or a purse, although I still haven’t figured out where she was hiding it all that time. She held it up to Cthulhu, and Cthulhu used one long, bony claw to scratch upon the surface for a moment, then rested its head upon her shoulder again.

She handed it to me, and said, “For you.” Then they shuffled out the door, onto the barren sidewalk, and down the street, leaving me holding the odd object.

It had six sides surrounding a wide surface, and a ridge that joined two opposite corners on the underside. On the largest flat face was an image that must have been the other-dimensional equivalent of a photograph, of Cthulhu, holding something that looked for all the world like an inside-out cat tucked beneath its chin, with the tail rigidly stretched out toward one bony wrist. Smoke swirled behind small, leathery wings, and the other clawed hand held what looked as much like a flaming chainsaw as a bow.

In characters that could have just as easily been burned into the surface with acid, Cthulhu had scrawled an inscription. In Roman letters. In English. And the words said, “Thank you for the music.”

Now, if I only had a way to play the damned thing.

 

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M. David Blake is the sole acknowledged byline amid a legion of pseudonyms by which the writer and erstwhile editor entertains himself, whenever he’s not working at the public library or foraging for mushrooms. He still has the record.

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Ask Dr. Cyberpunk • with your host, Bruce Bethke

And now, as <s>threatened</s> promised last week:

INVASION of the DISCODROIDS!

I’ve been taking some deep dives into the archives lately, to find the answer to the question that keeps coming back up: what inspired me to write “Cyberpunk?” The good news is that at the time, I kept detailed journals. The surprising discovery was that, while I’d always thought I’d started writing “Cyberpunk” in February of 1980, I’d actually begun writing the bits, pieces, fragments, and key scenes of the thing that eventually became “Cyberpunk” in the fall of 1978.

Only I didn’t call it that then, or even set out to write a short story at all. What I’d started out to write was a stage musical.

To reiterate something I have said many times before and will probably be saying for the rest of my life: I did not intend to become a science fiction writer. I intended to be a musician and composer. Sure, I’d puttered around with writing short stories, and even wrote most of a novel, It’s Okay, I’m With The Band, that’s better left forgotten now. But I never took writing fiction that seriously. It was just something I did to burn off the excess creativity that couldn’t be turned into a score, a libretto, a tape track, or a synthesizer program.

The plot of Invasion of the Discodroids, then, such as it is, should seem familiar, as it’s Standard Paranoid Science Fiction Plot #6. An ordinary everyday every-man office worker, vaguely dissatisfied with the shallowness of his life and yearning for something more, discovers a terrible secret: that the Earth has been invaded and conquered by alien robots, who control the masses by controlling pop culture. To keep the people off-kilter and vaguely uneasy, and thus easily manipulated, they keep fashions and trends shifting constantly; to give the people something to adore and aspire to being they have a factory somewhere in Southern California, probably on Disney’s back lot in Anaheim, where an automated assembly line cranks out a never-ending line of perfect singing and dancing robot pop stars.

[And every time I hear someone singing through an auto-tuner, I think: “Yep, got that one right.”]

As our hero gets deeper into the conspiracy and deeper into danger, he finds a last desperate ray of hope: a sort of Galt’s Gulch in Reverse somewhere in New Mexico, where all the free thinkers—the radical musicians, writers, artists, poets and the like—have been rounded up and are being confined, either for the rest of their lives or until they can be brainwashed into becoming enthusiastic supporters of our new robot overlords. Breaking into the Musician Reservation, he raises a revolutionary army and leads them back out into society, to shatter the shackles of conformity with the raw anarchic power of punk rock, and thus save the world.

Yeah. Right.

There were things I really liked about Invasion of the Discodroids. Some of the music tracks were pretty good. I almost made it to what in a few more years would become techno and EDM. I should have pushed further in that direction. And I particularly liked one plot gimmick: that every “morning” when our hero woke up to the blaring of his bedside clock radio, the first thing out of the DJ’s mouth was the daily forecast.

“Today the National Fashion Center is calling for Gritty Working Class Realism in the morning, changing over to candy-coated Fifties Nostalgia by late afternoon!”

I don’t remember whether I got that bit into the “Cyberpunk” short story, but did manage to work something like that into the novel.

§

On the other hand, the full show would have been hopelessly impossible and insanely expensive to stage. It only got one partial performance, once, in 1979; more of a demo reel of the work in progress, really, consisting of four songs from the show. The girls complained that there weren’t enough dance numbers to let them really show off their moves, and they were right. I failed to write a full-blown showstopper diva number for the female lead, not that I had one for the demo show. I failed to write any schlocky sappy ballads of the sort that men who like to do musical theater like to sing, and in a spectacularly stupid oversight, I failed to write a big happy the-whole-cast-up-on-stage-singing-and-dancing finale number.

[Loathe it or hate it, Mamma Mia! really is the model for the perfect stage musical. Would you like some more schmaltz with your schmaltz?]

The finale I did write, in which the MULA (Musician’s Union Liberation Army) punk rock commandos storm the theater with machine guns and electric guitars and hold the audience at gun-point while they perform the final number, was in hindsight a very bad idea.

§

The true killer, though, is that we never would have been able to clear the rights to “Funkytown,” which I wanted to use it as the recurring motif for the evil robot overlords. Every time the fashion forecast changed, “Funkytown” came back with a different title, different lyrics, a different mix, and different instrumentation, but always just as slick and soulless as ever, and always with the UDB—the Universal Disco Beat—throbbing away underneath. There is no way Steven Greenberg would have let me do that.

All the same, I would have dearly loved to have seen the entire cast up on stage in blue jeans, cowboy boots, cowboy hats, and plaid yoke shirts with patch pockets and pearlized snaps, line-dancing together, on the day the fashion forecast said Country & Western was in style and the hit song of the day was “Honkytown.” The costuming for that number alone would have blown the budget.

Man, I hated “Funkytown.”

§

But aside from that one partial performance in 1979, and aside from my continuing to work on it well into the 1980s, Invasion of the Discodroids didn’t happen, “Cyberpunk” did, and my life turned in a completely different direction. It’s probably just as well. Quite a few of my friends from the 1970s didn’t make it through the 1980s. AIDS cut a hell of a swath through the music and theater communities.

I moved on, and became the person you think I am now. Music and theater dropped completely out of my life…

Until about twenty years ago, when someone I’d never heard from before tracked me down, wanting to talk about the performance rights to “Cyberpunk.” I get these kinds of inquiries all the time, usually from aspiring film students or would-be television producers. I refer them to my agent, and once they find out that I actually have an agent in L.A. and have some experience with the film and TV industry, the conversation usually stops dead in its tracks, and I never hear from them again.

This query, though, got my attention. The guy represented a theater company in a city that has a major live theater scene, and they were looking to get the rights to develop “Cyberpunk” as an original live stage musical. When he found out about my music background, the conversation got even more interesting. We went back and forth for a few weeks, with me getting more interested with every exchange, until finally he ‘fessed up that even though we hadn’t reached a deal, they’d already started working on music for the show, would I like to listen to their demo reel?

Would I? Oh boy, I couldn’t wait to listen to their demo reel—until about ten seconds after I popped the tape he’d sent me into the tape player in my car and started listening.

Fast forward. Listen. Fast forward again. Listen again. No, this track is rotten all the way through. Okay, maybe the second track is better. Listen…nope. Third track? Nope. Fourth track? My God, it just keeps getting worse. 

You would think, if you wanted to do a musical named “Cyberpunk,” that you’d want to have some—oh, punk rock in it? Or maybe something electronic and techno-ish? Or maybe—well, anything but track after track of lame, sappy, schlocky, schmaltzy, off-off-off-off Broadway show tunes?

The deal fell apart. The musical never happened. I suppose I could have just shut up, taken their money, given them my blessing, and let that misbegotten mess happen. But if I had, I would have hated myself in the morning. 

—Bruce Bethke

---

About Bruce Bethke: In the early spring of 1980 Bruce wrote a little short story about a gang of teenage hackers. From the very first draft the story had a one-word title—a new word, one that he’d made up in a deliberate attempt to grok the interface between the emerging high technology scene and teenage punk attitudes, and this word was—

Oh, surely you can guess. 

Half a lifetime later Bruce is still getting questions about this story, so rather than answer them privately and one at a time, he’s decided to make answering questions about cyberpunk a regular feature on this site. If you have a question you’ve always wanted to ask him, post it in the comments here, IM him on Facebook, or email it to brucebethke.cybrpnk@gmail.com. He can’t guarantee he’ll answer, but will certainly give it a good try.

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Writing 101 • Day 4 of 24: Why do you want to write?

Why do you write?

You’ve probably noticed that thus far, I’ve scrupulously avoided talking about the special considerations involved in writing science fiction and/or fantasy, the mechanics of story construction and plot, my six can’t-miss secrets for getting an editor to buy your story, or any of the many other things people usually promise to deliver in a writing workshop, webinar, or seminar.

The truth is, there is no occult incantation to be revealed that will instantly turn you into a bestselling author overnight. There is no secret handshake that gets you through the door and into the exclusive confines of the Famous Published Authors’ Club. If you want to become rich and/or famous by writing fiction, you’re going to have to work for it.

So before we go too much further down this path, I want you to dig deep into your inner being and answer this one crucial question, first:

Why do you want to be a writer?

There are a few outliers we can dismiss right away. You want to write because your inner demons are screaming to be released? That’s legit. Go read “They Tire of Waiting,” by Roni Stinger, and then get back to me. 

§

One bit of advice, though: don’t put that reason in your cover letter or author’s bio. You may think it’s funny, but I’ve met far too many people in this trade who really do have a cacophony of voices in their head, compelling them to tell their stories. I’ve met people, usually at cons, who truly believe they are in telepathic communication with aliens from another planet, or beings from another plane of existence, or the souls of the recently dead, or the living spirit of Mother Gaia Herself…

I have received submissions with cover letters that began, “My therapist thought it might help if I wrote my ideas down and tried to publish them.” One truly unforgettable submission came from a state prison, with a cover letter that said, “My parole officer suggested I try writing down the stories in my head instead of acting them out.”

So, yeah. Not funny. Especially in the genres of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, and especially in SF/F/H fandom, you will meet a lot of people who could be living much happier lives, if only they would remember to keep taking their meds.

You will meet people who write stories because that’s how their OCD expresses itself. You will meet people who write because they apparently suffer from Tourette’s syndrome, complete with full-on coprolalia. You will meet people who are just plain delusional, and truly believe that they alone are unique visionary geniuses, and everyone else who fails to appreciate their genius is an idiot.

As I said: these people are outliers, and there’s not much we can do for them, except to save their submissions until the end of the reading period and then send them curt no-content form rejections, along with the statement that we are now closed to unsolicited submissions. Usually this is sufficient.

Usually.

§

So, back to the question: why do you want to write? Is it because you want to make money by writing?  

That’s legit. We can work with that. I’ll have more to say on the subject later, but the short answer is:

if you want to make money by writing,

and if you don’t have much ego invested in exactly what you write,

and if you don’t have an emotional attachment to writing one particular story, or one set in one particular genre, sub-genre, or fictional world, 

then write non-fiction.

There is far more money to be made by writing non-fiction, provided you don’t mind that you will probably never get a byline. If seeing your name on the “Pay to the order of” line of a check is more important to you than seeing your name on a book cover or in a magazine’s table of contents: write non-fiction.

“No, wait!” you protest. “I don’t want to write just for money! I want a byline, too! I want recognition. And awards, honors, accolades and praise! I want readers to love my characters and stories as much as I love them!”

Ah. In other words, you seek validation.

This, I believe, is the real reason why so many of us feel the need to write fiction. Each of us lives entirely inside our own head, and let’s face it: it’s lonely in here. We crave connection with others, not just on a physical and transactional level, but on some deeper level we can’t easily define. We seek a true meeting of minds—

But since Mother Gaia inexplicably forgot to equip us with telepathy, we’re required to tell stories, to pose one of the fundamental questions of our existence:

“Hey! Is there anybody out there? Is anyone listening? Am I alone?”

While you’re pondering your answer to that question, please read “Is There Anybody Out There?” by L.N. Hunter.

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“Errm, yes,” I heard someone muttering in the back of the room. “But what if I want to write fiction and make money and be recognized for my work?”

Then, my friend, you are about to begin chasing through a decision tree of compromises and consequences, as you look for your comfort zone in the space between lucrative anonymity and artistically respectful poverty. Because—I hate to be the one to break it to you—writing fiction is a craft, which sometimes rises to the level of being an art, while publishing fiction is a business, and above all else, business people are notoriously loathe to losing money.

Old joke: 

Q: How do you make a small fortune in publishing?

A: Start with a large one.

And with that said, we’ll see you back here next Tuesday.

_______________________________

And a reminder…

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Pete Wood Challenge #38, “Happy Trails,” is now open for entries!

The Challenge: Write a story of up to 150 words in length using the prompt, “happy trails.” The prompt does not need to appear in the story. Any genre is fine.

Prizes: 1st place $20.00 USD, 2nd place $15.00, 3rd place, $10.00, Honorable Mentions, (1-2) $5.00. The winning entries will be published online by Stupefying Stories in June of 2025.

Who can enter: The contest is open to both Codexians and the general public. One entry per writer, please.

How to enter: Send your entry in the body of an email to:

southernfriedsfwriter@gmail.com

Include the words “Happy Trails” in the subject line. It wouldn’t hurt to include “Pete Wood Challenge 38” or “PWC 38” in your email, too. 

Deadline: 7AM EST, May 15, 2025

Now get writing!

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