In the age of Flock cameras and facial recognition keeping lawyers from attending large, public events at Madison Square Garden, I don't think that being "on the run" is believable now, let alone in the future.
be awesome if braiden comes across some buried ar15 and a shitload of ammo and adopts a I DONT WANT TO BE ON THE RUN I WANT THEM TO FIND ME attitude as hes at the end of his rope and we get to see force of will on display
I thought the box in the back of the Tesla was going to be a Glock w/ ammo or maybe something like a Bible, and then it would've been David v. Goliath or maybe the end of 1984.
As did I. Dead women are a common thread in Baruth stories, both Jack and Mark's. You can probably do a lot of damage with a 20oz. of heavy metal in a closed fist and it's more poetic than a roll of quarters.
1) Men, generally, acquire resources in order to provide for their wives and children, while Women acquire resources to "be independent."
2) Women prefer access to a high-value man to monogamy: it's highly unlikely that Braiden is a top 15% man, and he's highly unlikely to be a top 5% in looks man, which he'll need to overcome his government-imposed low status.
hes a tall white dude which by itself would make him appealing so if this dude eats enough cricket protein and lifts heavy junk often enough hell be fine
That was pretty good. I don't know that it really needs any work. I know a few small presses that do anthologies and all that if you want to submit to anybody. I know a few large presses too, but that's probably too political for most of them.
As Gen X this touches on my fear of dying in some nursing home being forced to listen to all that boomer shit greatest hits that I have heard a million times too many. Maybe I can get a chip implanted with nothing but classical, psychobilly and obscure country 45s to keep me from driving knitting needles in my ears.
I’m a late Boomer, really have nothing in common with most of them, but cannot stand the “boomer shit greatest hits” either. I was listening to this stuff on 8-Tracks back then and cannot believe it’s still everywhere. This is why I gave up the boomer music and only listen to old school jazz in my house these days.
I don't know about you, but '30s jazz always seems so much more, I don't know, SOLID than 60's jazz. It's like how an NBC show like "Law & Order" seemed to have weight and quality, but anything produced by USA Network came off as cheap & flimsy? The difference between thick Detroit cast iron and paper-thin Shanghai sheet aluminum. Or how ABC's sitcoms from the 80's & 90s seemed so much more well-crafted than the dreck Fox aired.
That is a great comparison. While I truly appreciate 20-30’s jazz for all the reasons you give, I prefer 50-60’s jazz along with some early 70’s jazz, too. That is the jazz that does it for me.
Maybe performers in the 30s knew they had to get it right the first time. Didn't they actually cut the wax master back then while recording? With tape or digital you can erase and redo the take, presumably with the master disc if there was a mistake, you had to get a whole new one.
However many of the 50’s and 60’s jazz albums were one session recordings with everyone in the same room. When you consider that these albums are some of the best jazz ever recorded, it’s just mind boggling. These jazz cats showed up for a session, did a quick rehearsal, then cut the album. Then they sometimes did it again the next day or week. Thank God the output of that time was so prodigious since that era of music will never be produced again with that originality. It was just a brief confluence of American talent and culture.
There’s a great moment at the end of the song “One for Daddy-O” on the Cannonball Adderly album “Somethin’ Else” where you can hear Miles Davis faintly rasp “is that what you wanted, Alfred”, directed towards producer Alfred Lion. If you don’t own “Somethin’ Else” you need to.
You dumped your last ten rounds into pop culture as the elevator door was closing, and now you have to get your armor off before the acid eats through it.
Science fiction is supposed to be a mirror of civilization and human nature, an exploration of life and what it means to be alive. So I've read, anyway. But for me, science fiction is cool starships and laser rifles and interstellar nations but more than that, it's an ESCAPE.
I'm wired wrong, apparently. I want mechanics instead of electronics. I want my music polished, instead of a gritty reminder of how much life sucks. I want fiction to make me feel good, to make me want to live in whatever world I'm reading about or watching. I need to believe the future will be better than the degraded present.
I've had my fill of fictional postapocalysm. My filters are packed solid with negativity about the world. And so, for the first time ever, I have to give your work a thumbs down.
There's FAR too much dystopian and postapocalyptic fiction about the possible future, and that colors not only my impressions of what's coming down the pike, but lots of other people's. Cynicism is stylish right now, but cynisim is ultimately for losers.
Personally, I think 90s Star Trek is a good way to do sci fi. There's lots of conflict but the core story is optimistic and the hero nation is a functional place with basically decent people & institutions. I don't buy the utopian atheism of Trek, but certainly mid-20th Century America showed that a "Solid B+" country is doable in the real world.
I agree with everything Ice Age said, except I liked it quite a bit anyway.
One of the purposes of SF is to help avoid bad futures like this. To do that it needs to be: a) in time and b) popular. I wish you much good fortune with b); for a), too late.
GoT was frustrating to me because you could see that after the first half of the first book it was just going to be disappointment for the reader, again and again.
I always group Stephen King into this category. Short of a few novels into the Dark Tower, I don't know that I've managed to get through any of his novels I've tried, but I think his short stories are generally good. I suspect it is a lot easier to get a good short story out of a weird idea than a whole novel, and if King has nothing else, he at least has interesting ideas.
I based the workhorse on a real place in Ohio, not the communal living area from the series 1 episode with the treadmills, but there are only so many ways to draw it!
Although a minor throw away in this, it is a topic I am increasingly fascinated by. Partially because in the circles I travel in it used to be the assumption, but is now anathema. It is partially because my circles have changed a bit.
Briefly, each nation, in its old definition, is exceptional. The special was American, Anglo-American, and Western. It was good. The loss of this good as an assumption is painful to me in everyday life. The loss of this good also seems to be born of ignorance, not always of those three circles in a venn, but of the other nations that are somehow now assumed good by comparison.
The vilification of the goodness of those traditions being the genesis of the horror contained in this story disturbed me.
Also, your best fiction since the story about the girl at a beach motel who just assumed some people of Porsches and some people didn't.
"Also, your best fiction since the story about the girl at a beach motel who just assumed some people of Porsches and some people didn't."
Oh, every single thing about that story was drawn directly from a real weekend except for the main characters job and the reason for his agitation... in real life i went to Destin to await the results of an unexpected pre-contract drug test that I only passed via what I assume was the hand of God stopping the drugs from reaching the test strip.
How it was written makes the case that a mindset of fatalism vs. agency can play a large role in class distinction and economic outcomes, and I remember that far more than the narrative details of your weekend. It probably falls into a similar category of fiction to an entirely true (in the narrative sense) story I tell about a girl who looked amazing in a sweater that I slept with then took to dinner at the Blue Danube. We ended up getting into an argument about the nature of God's forgiveness, and the relative importance of knowing what you are doing is wrong while doing it in the assumption of forgiveness.
The story wraps up accurately with her asking me if I accepted Jesus Christ as my lord and savior while sobbing. What comes before it I change around to more coherently present both her case and mine.
I do sometimes end with an entirely fictional "Check please!"
When I tell the story I think of it as fiction even though everything other than being more pithy than I am did happen.
When I was young and up my own ass it was a funny story about a date with a sexual aggressive woman gone wrong.
Now that I am older and can see that she would tell a story about sleeping with a guy and then being challenged about the sincerity and depth of her religious beliefs, possibly(and very unintentionally on my end, if I have a type it is slutty) slut shamed then left at a restaurant.
I like the way you brought us along on Braiden’s path of optimism, and then dashed his hopes with the cruel reality of a conniving bitch. There’s a lot of teenaged boys living this story in every day. And we wonder why they climb up on a roof and start shooting.
This story could continue and go in a number of different ways including the addition of other colourful characters.
seems too real at times
i hope braiden beats consuelas head in with that anker power bank
good show regardless and theres a game somewhat similar to this
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1161580/Hardspace_Shipbreaker/
I fully expected this story to turn violent and have Braiden on the run.
In the age of Flock cameras and facial recognition keeping lawyers from attending large, public events at Madison Square Garden, I don't think that being "on the run" is believable now, let alone in the future.
be awesome if braiden comes across some buried ar15 and a shitload of ammo and adopts a I DONT WANT TO BE ON THE RUN I WANT THEM TO FIND ME attitude as hes at the end of his rope and we get to see force of will on display
I thought the box in the back of the Tesla was going to be a Glock w/ ammo or maybe something like a Bible, and then it would've been David v. Goliath or maybe the end of 1984.
If I'd had 10,000 words!
Mass shooter does mass shooter things, was mentally ill, says the media.
everyone else will realize he was justified and thus based and live eternal in the minds of those pining for change
like gary plouche or marvin heemayer
As did I. Dead women are a common thread in Baruth stories, both Jack and Mark's. You can probably do a lot of damage with a 20oz. of heavy metal in a closed fist and it's more poetic than a roll of quarters.
theres no way the mini latinx couldnt be beaten to a pulp immediately coin roll or not
I think it's because I am...
...dead to so many women!
Very well written, Jack.
Is that a cliffhanger? Does she later insist on Girl On Top?
john
That would imply hope. This is realism.
nothing more real than hope
ESPECIALLY IF THE GIRL IS (VOLUNTARILY) ON TOP!!!
john
not saying i disagree but i have no idea what this is a reference to
This violates two principles of human nature:
1) Men, generally, acquire resources in order to provide for their wives and children, while Women acquire resources to "be independent."
2) Women prefer access to a high-value man to monogamy: it's highly unlikely that Braiden is a top 15% man, and he's highly unlikely to be a top 5% in looks man, which he'll need to overcome his government-imposed low status.
but hes a criminal which makes him cool
hes a tall white dude which by itself would make him appealing so if this dude eats enough cricket protein and lifts heavy junk often enough hell be fine
That was pretty good. I don't know that it really needs any work. I know a few small presses that do anthologies and all that if you want to submit to anybody. I know a few large presses too, but that's probably too political for most of them.
Coming from a master of the art this is tremendously encouraging!
As Gen X this touches on my fear of dying in some nursing home being forced to listen to all that boomer shit greatest hits that I have heard a million times too many. Maybe I can get a chip implanted with nothing but classical, psychobilly and obscure country 45s to keep me from driving knitting needles in my ears.
What about Beach House?
Teen Dream (2010): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4mLcQl-45Q
Bloom (2012): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3frA_rj918
Depression Cherry (2015): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cy5MiOqarYs
Thank Your Lucky Stars (2015): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQyiZiwklgw
7 (2018): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dyclbb_6Ycs
The names of the others here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beach_House_discography
https://youtu.be/bBBBQSleyw4?si=ifJjcYqqzLLkJldl
the doowop will continue until morale improves
Cruel, very cruel.
I am partial to some of it https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8WQBrJ4JOWQ&list=PL7DB4205FE2538177&index=77&pp=gAQBiAQB8AUB
I’m a late Boomer, really have nothing in common with most of them, but cannot stand the “boomer shit greatest hits” either. I was listening to this stuff on 8-Tracks back then and cannot believe it’s still everywhere. This is why I gave up the boomer music and only listen to old school jazz in my house these days.
30's jazz or 60s jazz?
I don't know about you, but '30s jazz always seems so much more, I don't know, SOLID than 60's jazz. It's like how an NBC show like "Law & Order" seemed to have weight and quality, but anything produced by USA Network came off as cheap & flimsy? The difference between thick Detroit cast iron and paper-thin Shanghai sheet aluminum. Or how ABC's sitcoms from the 80's & 90s seemed so much more well-crafted than the dreck Fox aired.
That is a great comparison. While I truly appreciate 20-30’s jazz for all the reasons you give, I prefer 50-60’s jazz along with some early 70’s jazz, too. That is the jazz that does it for me.
I’m really a fan of all things Mid Century.
Maybe performers in the 30s knew they had to get it right the first time. Didn't they actually cut the wax master back then while recording? With tape or digital you can erase and redo the take, presumably with the master disc if there was a mistake, you had to get a whole new one.
However many of the 50’s and 60’s jazz albums were one session recordings with everyone in the same room. When you consider that these albums are some of the best jazz ever recorded, it’s just mind boggling. These jazz cats showed up for a session, did a quick rehearsal, then cut the album. Then they sometimes did it again the next day or week. Thank God the output of that time was so prodigious since that era of music will never be produced again with that originality. It was just a brief confluence of American talent and culture.
There’s a great moment at the end of the song “One for Daddy-O” on the Cannonball Adderly album “Somethin’ Else” where you can hear Miles Davis faintly rasp “is that what you wanted, Alfred”, directed towards producer Alfred Lion. If you don’t own “Somethin’ Else” you need to.
Yeah, the "genius" of Rudy Van Gelder boiled down to:
0. Have house with angled ceiling
1. Don't fart when Coltrane is between the sheets of sound.
2. Having your parents agree to build a windowed control room looking into their living room.
You'll probably be listening to whatever the workers at the home want to hear, so may check now if you can tolerate what the youth is listening to
Ugh no thanks, I have a very idiosyncratic taste in music, perhaps only equaled by my brother.
One of my main goals in life is to separate myself from the popular culture.
To wash it off?
I’ve already washed it off.
I just don’t want it on me again.
You dumped your last ten rounds into pop culture as the elevator door was closing, and now you have to get your armor off before the acid eats through it.
These all live side-by-side in my personal music library:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msrq0HjwJUM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vcRWOGdCvU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERbnRfPN8jE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwRcbNRTpek
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sv29DzgiXZA
The Hu seem like the perfect soundtrack to driving around in one of the last V8 MOPARS
Mongolian heavy metal.
Hell, that PHRASE is metal!
Wow, great stuff. William Gibson-esque.
Yes, it also reminded me a bit of Paolo Bacigalupi. I got his Pump 6 collection, a good set of dystopia Sci fi
Been re-reading Gibson lately and mainlining 80s/90s cyberpunk flicks. It was nice to have that context in mind before reading this.
I thoroughly enjoyed Jack’s story and hope he writes more. Lots more. There needs to be a name for the sub-genre he just invented.
-SalvagePunk?
-Post-Post-Modern Dystopia?
-Idiocracy Noir?
All great suggestions. I vote for number three.
In general I support fiction .
I'm only a few paragraphs in and it's 100% slanted yellow journalism, I expect better from you Jack .
Okay, having read the entire thing I approve .
It could be polished but why bother .
More please .
-Nate
My God, Jack. What Hell awaits your progeny.
It would be serious, right!
Very much reminds me of "The Pearl". Great read
It could happen.
Thank you for writing and sharing this, Jack. I can dig it. Regarding whether to post more, I say follow your muse.
Dark, and that works. Well done!
You can draw a straight line (albeit a long one) from today to this. It's a likely outcome if we continue on this path.
If they get CBDC done, if anything it will be WORSE!
Science fiction is supposed to be a mirror of civilization and human nature, an exploration of life and what it means to be alive. So I've read, anyway. But for me, science fiction is cool starships and laser rifles and interstellar nations but more than that, it's an ESCAPE.
I'm wired wrong, apparently. I want mechanics instead of electronics. I want my music polished, instead of a gritty reminder of how much life sucks. I want fiction to make me feel good, to make me want to live in whatever world I'm reading about or watching. I need to believe the future will be better than the degraded present.
I've had my fill of fictional postapocalysm. My filters are packed solid with negativity about the world. And so, for the first time ever, I have to give your work a thumbs down.
I think this is more of a real life issue than an artistic issue.
Do you have any suggestions as to a way forward?
It's both.
There's FAR too much dystopian and postapocalyptic fiction about the possible future, and that colors not only my impressions of what's coming down the pike, but lots of other people's. Cynicism is stylish right now, but cynisim is ultimately for losers.
Personally, I think 90s Star Trek is a good way to do sci fi. There's lots of conflict but the core story is optimistic and the hero nation is a functional place with basically decent people & institutions. I don't buy the utopian atheism of Trek, but certainly mid-20th Century America showed that a "Solid B+" country is doable in the real world.
Cynicism or reality?
https://www.thepublica.com/germany-woman-convicted-of-offending-migrant-gang-rapists-receives-longer-prison-sentence-than-the-rapists/
And then one day, suddenly, for no reason at all, people elected Hitler.
baffling why anyone would want a charismatic leader who cares about them in power
nothing legal
I agree with everything Ice Age said, except I liked it quite a bit anyway.
One of the purposes of SF is to help avoid bad futures like this. To do that it needs to be: a) in time and b) popular. I wish you much good fortune with b); for a), too late.
Hey, I thought it was well-WRITTEN, but just like Mad Men, or The Sopranos or Game of Thrones, the subject matter was off-putting to me.
Yep, me too, all of the above.
GoT was frustrating to me because you could see that after the first half of the first book it was just going to be disappointment for the reader, again and again.
The group of "adventurous short fiction writers who create worthless novels" is surprisingly large.
I hope that ain't my destiny.
I always group Stephen King into this category. Short of a few novels into the Dark Tower, I don't know that I've managed to get through any of his novels I've tried, but I think his short stories are generally good. I suspect it is a lot easier to get a good short story out of a weird idea than a whole novel, and if King has nothing else, he at least has interesting ideas.
Next time we will polish up the starships and prepare for heroism! Cause I dig that stuff too.
Oh HELL YES!
Watch a lot of Black Mirror?
I based the workhorse on a real place in Ohio, not the communal living area from the series 1 episode with the treadmills, but there are only so many ways to draw it!
Well, now I'm curious about this 'workhorse'....
I have to admit, I found this piece entertaining, similar in a W. Gibson way as has already been mentioned.
Er, work *house*.
I have personally been in 52-man cells.
they call those classrooms now
On exceptionalism, American or otherwise.
Although a minor throw away in this, it is a topic I am increasingly fascinated by. Partially because in the circles I travel in it used to be the assumption, but is now anathema. It is partially because my circles have changed a bit.
Briefly, each nation, in its old definition, is exceptional. The special was American, Anglo-American, and Western. It was good. The loss of this good as an assumption is painful to me in everyday life. The loss of this good also seems to be born of ignorance, not always of those three circles in a venn, but of the other nations that are somehow now assumed good by comparison.
The vilification of the goodness of those traditions being the genesis of the horror contained in this story disturbed me.
Also, your best fiction since the story about the girl at a beach motel who just assumed some people of Porsches and some people didn't.
"Also, your best fiction since the story about the girl at a beach motel who just assumed some people of Porsches and some people didn't."
Oh, every single thing about that story was drawn directly from a real weekend except for the main characters job and the reason for his agitation... in real life i went to Destin to await the results of an unexpected pre-contract drug test that I only passed via what I assume was the hand of God stopping the drugs from reaching the test strip.
I don't doubt it.
How it was written makes the case that a mindset of fatalism vs. agency can play a large role in class distinction and economic outcomes, and I remember that far more than the narrative details of your weekend. It probably falls into a similar category of fiction to an entirely true (in the narrative sense) story I tell about a girl who looked amazing in a sweater that I slept with then took to dinner at the Blue Danube. We ended up getting into an argument about the nature of God's forgiveness, and the relative importance of knowing what you are doing is wrong while doing it in the assumption of forgiveness.
The story wraps up accurately with her asking me if I accepted Jesus Christ as my lord and savior while sobbing. What comes before it I change around to more coherently present both her case and mine.
I do sometimes end with an entirely fictional "Check please!"
When I tell the story I think of it as fiction even though everything other than being more pithy than I am did happen.
I didn’t wake up this morning thinking I would ask a fellow ACF subscriber,
“Uhh, sir, would you mind submitting this to Jack for publication under the “F****** for Harambe” sub-hed”
Nope.
When I was young and up my own ass it was a funny story about a date with a sexual aggressive woman gone wrong.
Now that I am older and can see that she would tell a story about sleeping with a guy and then being challenged about the sincerity and depth of her religious beliefs, possibly(and very unintentionally on my end, if I have a type it is slutty) slut shamed then left at a restaurant.
Doesn't seem as funny anymore.
nah its still pretty funny
Very good!
I like the way you brought us along on Braiden’s path of optimism, and then dashed his hopes with the cruel reality of a conniving bitch. There’s a lot of teenaged boys living this story in every day. And we wonder why they climb up on a roof and start shooting.
This story could continue and go in a number of different ways including the addition of other colourful characters.
Well done.
I kinda figured that instead of fucking him, she was gonna fuck him over.
You've been around long enough to recognize the type, maybe.
"Come on, it's me...Love! I wouldn't lie to you an eighth time, would I?"
- Sam Kinison