By Now You've Read the Six Word Stories

But have you seen these cool cover designs?

(If you haven't read the stories, check them out here. I'm not being very original, but my favorite is Margaret Atwood's entry: "Starlet sex scandal. Giant squid involved.")

Comments

Mae Travels said…
From languagelog.com, here is another comment on the Wired short-story story:

"Margaret Atwood, alas"

Wired magazine asked "sci-fi, fantasy, and horror writers from the realms of books, TV, movies, and games" to emulate Ernest Hemingway's six-word story ("For sale: baby shoes, never worn.").

Two are worth quoting:

Joss Whedon: "Gown removed carelessly. Head, less so."

Margaret Atwood: "Longed for him. Got him. Shit."

It seems odd to find Atwood categorized as a genre writer. Maybe the odd thing, really, is making the distinction in the first place. But I wonder, did Pynchon and Vonnegut turn them down?

Here's another short work by Atwood, a poem from Power Politics (1971):

you fit into me
like a hook into an eye

a fish hook
an open eye
October 30, 2006 12:05 AM
Abigail Nussbaum said…
Atwood's written at least two genre novels, Mae, so at the very least she has a connection to the field.

Within genre circles, there's actually a little bit of resentment towards Atwood. When The Handmaid's Tale was published, she infamously rejected the label of science fiction, saying something along the lines of 'SF is rocketships and aliens; I've written literature.' As I understand it, she backed down from that statement when Oryx and Crake was published.
October 30, 2006 12:02 PM
Mae Travels said…
That wasn't my comment -- the whole thing was from languagelog.com. Mainly I liked their implicit point that 6 word novels resemble poems.

I agree with Atwood that Oryx and Crake is much closer to sci-fi than Handmaid's Tale. I should have added my own comment to the quote: I am in favor of a broader view. Eric Rabkin (a local English prof. who does a lot of scifi talks) defines the first scifi as certain Biblical stories, and he includes everything you possibly can think of as scifi. I like that approach. I am against a distinction between literature and other kinds of fiction. Same problem with some Doris Lessing and several others, if you insist on drawing a line.
October 30, 2006 7:22 PM

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