Stories "Ventures into Unknown Terreritory " 42:70

Requiem by Robert H. Heinline (1940)

Length: Seventeen Pages
Genre: Science Fiction-Space Travel-Romance

Short Summary-No Spoiler

Robert H. Heinline answers the question; "Can an old man travel in space?"

Stories: Ventures into Unknown Territory 39:70

Adrian Berg, R.A. (b. 1929)

The Lake, Kew Gardens, Summer, Night 1984

Kew Gardens by Virginia Woolf 1919

Length:Four Pages
Genre/Movements: Impressionism and Postmodernism

Short Summary with No Spoilers

 The visitors to Kew Gardens are reminded, by the gardens beauty, of their past affairs and dips into the eddy of love.

Stories: Ventures into Unknown Territory 37:70

A Drowning Incident by Cormac McCarthy (1960)

Genre: Southern Gothic, Western, modernist

Length: Two Pages

Non Spoiler Summary:

A walk in nature reveals the story to be written; a life and death drama is played out.

2011-2012 Winter Short Story Festival 34:70

Prairie by Brian Evenson is a "Zombie Tale" of our Pioneer Past, when Pioneers had to do things that were often left out of the annals of history.
 Genre: Zombie Horror
Length: 4 pages

2011-2012 Winter Short Story Festival 32:70

A Suburban Fairy Tale by Katherine Mansfield

Mr. B. was a stout youngish man who hadn't been able—worse luck—to chuck his job and join the Army; he'd tried for four years to get another chap to take his place but it was no go. He sat at the head of the table reading the Daily Mail. Mrs. B. was a youngish plump little body, rather like a pigeon. She sat opposite, preening herself behind the coffee set and keeping an eye of warning love on little B. who perched between them, swathed in a napkin and tapping the top of a soft-boiled egg.

I love the description of the two characters in this short story.   A man stuck.  His wife a youngish plump little body comparable to a pigeon.   You can picture a little nest as they preen over little B.  This bit of fantasy blended with reality is a perfect illustration of the division between the "adult world" and the "world of the child."  It reminds me of a gathering of crows and the fact that I use to call these birds ca-ca birds, or short ca-ca.  Dad mom look at the cacas.   Its like an arma-dildo instead of armadillo.

2011-2012 Winter Short Story Festival 29:70

Zora Neale Hurston—novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist—was known during the Harlem Renaissance for her wit, irreverence, and folk writing style. She won second prize in the 1925 literary contest of the Urban League’s journal, Opportunity, for her short story “Spunk,” which also appeared in The New Negro.

Zora Neale Hurston tells it straight as she saw it in Spunk her first published short story.  Hurston was a master as mixing folklore, true-life, and mid-Florida scenery into one mean picture.  Did she write of the American experience, or the AfraAmerican Experience?  I believe she writes of people neither white nor black, of a certain place and time, and that she goes beyond the limitations of classification. Enjoy the story for the story that is told, and find the connections where you may.

“Ain’t cher? Well, night befo‘ las’ was the fust night Spunk an‘ Lena moved together an’ jus‘ as they was goin’ to bed, a big black bob-cat, black all over, you hear me, black, walked round and round that house and howled like forty, an‘ when Spunk got his gun an’ went to the winder to shoot it he says it stood right still an‘ looked him in the eye, an’ howled right at him. The thing got Spunk so nervoused up he couldn’t shoot. But Spunk says twan’t no bob-cat nohow. He says it was Joe done sneaked back from Hell! ”

2011-2012 Winter Story Festival 27:70

Alfred Tennyson tells of a heroic heroine and Sir Lancelot's quest in this telling epic poem titled the Lady of Shalott. I love the setting that was created by this poets feel for England; you can feel the warm ground mixing with the cold morning sky.

(Part Four) In the Sotrmy east-wind straining,
The pale yellow woods were waning,
The brodad stream in his banks complaining,
Heavily the low sky raining
Over Toward Camelot;
Downs she came and found a boat
Beneath a Willow left afloat,
And round about the prow she wrote,
The Lady of Shalott.
...
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady of Shalott.

Innagural Winter Short Story Festival 19:21

This story of a cold time was found in my Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library-American Indian Myths and Legends.  It tells of a time when the planet was cold and all of the animals were about to freeze to death.   The story shows how the wolf, the fox, the wolverine, the bobcat, the mouse, the pike, and the dogfish steal fire and warm up the world.   -  Enjoy the story Keeping Warmth in a Bag.

Interesting Facts

1. The story is from the Slavey Native Americans who lived in British Columbia.  
2. The Slavey are related culturally and linguistically (of relating to the language used by a group) to the Plains tribes in to the south.
3. They made their living by hunting, fishing and trapping. 

Innagural Winter Short Story Festival 17:27

Illustration by Gregory D. Rothbard
Possible Christmas Sweater Design? Might Work!

The Boy Who Killed Santa Clause by Mark Allan Gunnells ©2007

 

 It’s the advent blue note time of year; we get amped up and then somewhere in the middle of the crazy advent shopping and preparation frenzy, we get the blues.   Today's story hits this note well; it is a dark impression of American youth today and their relations to Santa.

 Caveat Lector: not for kids. 

 Quote from the Story:

"’Cause I don’t want it to be like last year."
Tonya sighed heavily and rubbed at her temples. She’d been hearing this same tirade from her son for an entire year now. "Henry, there was nothing wrong with what you got from Santa last year."
"I asked for an X Box, and he gave me a Playstation. It’s not the same."

Innagural Winter Short Story Festival 15:27

Sketch by Gregory D. Rothbard

The Wager of Gerald O’Rourke: A Christmas Story by Francis J. Finn, S.J. (1859-1928) – 00:27:34 

A young lad wants to make sure he is up for Christmas Mass.  No one believes he will get up?  So he makes a wager with his friend of four dollars, that he will indeed arise without assistance before any one else wakes, by 3:30 AM!  This is a great traditional Christmas Story, about a boy who will break the malaise and sleep that usually plagues him. The story answers the question, "What good do little events have on the grand scheme of things?"

Innagural Winter Short Story Festival 14:27

How does Santa do it?  Visiting billions of houses? Eating trillions of cookies, and not get completely bloated; wouldn't he explode from eating so much?  Also how is it possible that his reindeer are not "diced venison off the runway." A physicist gives us the answer in today's Christmas Science Fiction story: Harnassing the Brane Drane by Robert Brilling.  

To make better sense of this you may want to skim the wikipedia articles on brane cosmology and the Planck constant.  I really enjoyed reading this story, especially after learning a tidbit more on brane cosmology and the plank constant.Also I found the book, Warped Passages Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions by Lisa Randall to be very helpful.

Innagural Winter Short Story Festival 13:27

Christmas Wedding by Vylar Kaftan

The story begins with a wedding in Florida.  The first sign that something is wrong in this Science Fiction Christmas story is the mention of snow in Florida.  Snow in Florida can happen, but there is enough snow to make snowballs, this is very unlikely; so what has happened?  Doomsday Scenarios? And while it snows in Florida, Mel prepares for a wedding day on Christmas:

Through the door she saw hundreds of poinsettias, clustered around the small chapel. The red-and-green centerpiece on the altar blossomed like a holiday garden. White candles, wreathed with pine, flickered on the sides of the pews. Collagework covered the walls–thousands of pictures, carefully clipped from bridal magazines. Green garlands edged the windows at the chapel’s sides, framing the snowy scene outdoors. Red and green ribbons draped down from the ceiling, connected to a suspended cluster of–

“Mistletoe!” she exclaimed.

Can tradition exist in a snow day in the post apocalyptic period?  Can non traditional love (three ladies getting married)find traditional form during Christmas?  

Now she had to hold herself together like a vase glued with elementary school-paste, until there was a time and a place to be vulnerable.

Love cracks into the guarded places when we are most vulnerable.  I knew I wanted to marry my wife when she provided shelter, during my first hurricane experience in Florida.  It was a small hurricane but knowing that she was willing to put up with my fear encouraged the love I had for her.  This story illustrates how people gather together during the toughest times; that what really matters is our personal relationships with people who are in our immediate, and non traditional families.  







Christmas Wedding by Vylar Kaftan (Double Click To Read)
Story was listed in the BestScienceFictionstories.com: Top Christmas Stories.

Innagural Winter Short Story Festival 12:27

She hadn't done Christmas in almost eight months.  


She'd given him a Gone With The Wind
 Halloween and a Fourth of July with whistling busters, panoramas, 
phantom balls, and double-break shells, but those were only stopgaps.  
The man needed cookies, he needed presents, he was absolutely aching for
 a sleigh filled with Christmas cheer.

A quote from the short story by James Patrick Kelley the Best Christmas Ever. Kelley

presents a story of the last remaining man, and his heart ache for someone to share

Christmas with.  The story is modeled after Capra's Wonderful Life. 

Caveat Lector: Some of the material is not suitable for young children, but the 

overall feel is fantastic.  

Innagural Winter Short Story Festival 11:27

Sometimes the greatest surprises are awaiting for us in our technologically enhanced dreams.  Here is such a story: Spider by Duncan Shields.

Innagural Winter Short Story Festival 10:27

Hoodoo Mc Figins Christmas 

A boy wants to play Santa Clause to his parents.   So what happens next is a miracle.

Innagural Winter Short Story Festival 9:27

Hansel and  Gretal were forced into the deep dark wood, where they meet a witch who brings them to a wonderful gingerbread house; only to find evil in the most pleasant of Gingerbread Houses. 

But what of the witch?  She is described as a heinous specimen, for which had no right in doing those evils so described.  But, didn't she have a right to these castaways?  Didn't she feed them, in a time of famine? House them from the evil black forest? So were they hers to eat?  Wink. Wink. Nod. Nod.

So what does this have to do with Christmas?

First, I have noticed some awesome looking gingerbread houses for sell at our local Publix Grocery Store.  

Second, during this time and season, there are plenty of young children who's parents have abandoned them to the wiles of the world.   This year we must think of them when we are having a grand time with our family.  We must also be thankful for the times we get to spend with our family, and the gifts we lovingly can give to each other.

Innagural Winter Short Stories Festival 8:27

Father Frost a Russian Fairy Tale:
Fairy Tales are dark things.  They tell us of a subteranean darkness.  This story is similar to the little match girl, in that it shows the need to protect youth from the adult mean world.

Deserted by her father, the poor girl sat down under a fir-tree at the edge of the forest and began to weep silently. Suddenly she heard a faint sound: it was King Frost springing from tree to tree, and cracking his fingers as he went. At length he reached the fir-tree beneath which she was sitting, and with a crisp crackling sound he alighted beside her, and looked at her lovely face.

I was listening to the Schnitt-Show yesterday, and he was talking about a teacher who told her elementary class that Santa was not real.   This is not her job.  Her job is to allow the children to be formed by their parents, and allow these parents to celebrate the miracle of St. Nick.  A teacher should protect her students from the cynical adult world.  The only cure from the icing of ones heart is to embrace the myth.  The Father Frost story ends with a warning about what happens when adults keep the warmth of home away from their children.

"At that moment the door flew open, and she rushed out to meet her daughter, and as she took her frozen body in her arms she too was chilled to death."

Innagural Winter Short Stories Festival 7:27

The Christmas Gift that Came to Rupert by Brette Harte

Little drummer boy,
beats on his drum, announcing the
arrival of Christmas.

Innagural Winter Short Story Festival 2011 - 6:27

Indian Pete's Christmas Gift by Herbert W. Collingwood.
This story's theme is good but the times it was written taint the discovery.  But all strangers with strange customs are welcome to celebrate the Holidays with us.

 You might want to tell your young ones that this is the way we use to think about Native Americans, and women and that it is dated material, and that our viewpoints have changed.

Innagural Winter Short Stories Festival 5:27

Our Lady's Juggler is another story about the gifts we give to others.

Unfortunately, this is not a sound recording yet, but hopefully this will change as this is a public domain story, so here it is in its written form.