To be continued.....

Welcome to the complex mind of a greatest average Joe.....

7:31 PM

Shortest short stories.....

Posted by aSwIn kUmAr |




Human’s imagination started with the advent of language. He invented words to express his emotions and sentences to covey the situation. He started with epics and poems, to express his imagination. As centuries passed by, there was a change in his mind. He thought “why we must say all the things to others…..let us make others to think “. He reduced the details in his stories to improve listener’s imagination. Thus Epics give way to novel, which evolved to short stories.
Ok, how far could you reduce a short story ….two sentences?? Two words? Lots of people tried to implement KISS [Keep It Simple, Stupid] principle in storytelling and succeeded to an extent.
Who was the first on to write the shortest story? The answer has been Fredric Brown's "Knock":

"The last man on earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door...."

It was considered as the best short science fiction ever. This appeared in the December 1948 issue of THRILLING WONDER STORIES.
Then Forry Ackerman claims he wrote the shortest one ever, titled "Cosmic Report Card: Earth" consisting of the single letter
"F". [Hope you got the meaning!]
Reading these, Hemingway once wrote a story in just six words, in his style:
"For sale: baby shoes, never worn."
Let us now see sci-fi, fantasy, and horror writers from the realms of books, TV, movies, and games to take a shot themselves.

FUTURISTIC:
Computer, did we bring batteries? Computer?
- Eileen Gunn
Internet “wakes up?” Ridicu - no carrier.
- Charles Stross
Epitaph: Foolish humans, never escaped Earth.
- Vernor Vinge


I’m your future, child. Don’t cry.
- Stephen Baxter
Lie detector eyeglasses perfected: Civilization collapses.
- Richard Powers
TIME MACHINE REACHES FUTURE!!! … nobody there …
- Harry Harrison
Time traveler's thought: "What's the password?"
- Steven Meretzky
THRILLER:
It’s behind you! Hurry before it
- Rockne S. O’Bannon
Tick tock tick tock tick tick.
- Neal Stephenson
SPIRITUAL:
It cost too much, staying human.
- Bruce Sterling
To save humankind he died again.
- Ben Bova
Heaven falls. Details at eleven.
- Robert Jordan
Nevertheless, he tried a third time.
- James P. Blaylock


SARCASTIC:
We went solar; sun went nova.
- Ken MacLeod
Bang postponed. Not Big enough. Reboot.
- David Brin
HUMEROUS:
Deadline postponed. Five words enough...?
- David Brin
Will this do (lazy writer asked)?
- Ken MacLeod
Finally, he had no more words.
- Gregory Maguire
There were only six words left.
- Gregory Maguire

The beauty in these stories lies in the fact that it makes us to write the remaining story. We are the story writers here. Our brain’s imaginative unit works more when we read this….Let us all try to write more like these. C’mon, it’s not that much hard….We are living in the age of SMSs. We can surely do it!!
[P.S] I tried myself, rewriting “knock” –
“The last human …..on Mars.” How was that??

[The Author humbly bows his head to the writers who wrote these stories. Including the last one, all rights are reserved to the respective writers. ]
To Be Continued………

3 comments:

Deepak said...

it rocks! but i cant understand any of them!?

pRiYaN...! said...

short n sweet..

-bluffmaster

Anonymous said...

Till date i didnt know that short stories can even be in a single line or word and thats cool

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