Tag Archives: satire

Publication day, Satire, Science fiction

Two Funerals (And a Wedding)

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Two Funerals

Terror House Magazine is an independent literary journal based in Budapest, Hungary. Its mission is to publish fiction and articles “too edgy, unusual, or honest to be released elsewhere.” The latest issue features my short story “Two Funerals (And a Wedding).”

Carter Black is a young man with a special gift, one he’s inherited from his mother. She assures Carter that he and others like him represent the next step in human evolution, though he often wishes he could be like everyone else. But when his mother dies, Carter is forced to confront the true significance of that gift, and must also decide whether he will finally marry his patient and long-suffering fiancée.

Like Carter Black, this story is not quite what it appears to be. On the surface, it’s an entertaining science fiction tale. But it’s also a funny/sad satire about a world that’s followed its dogmas to the point of self-delusion, if not insanity. You could call it dystopian, but the aim is to provoke debate. After all, literature can startle and heal at the same time. I hope you enjoy it.

Fantasy Fiction, Flash fiction, Satire

Bewildering Stories’ Third Quarterly Review, 2016

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bwblueship

From Bewildering Stories:

Bewildering Stories ends the season — winter or summer, depending on your hemisphere — with the Review Editors’ selection of favorites from the third quarter of 2016. New readers will have easy access to the recent best of Bewildering Stories, and veteran readers will have a chance to catch up on anything they may have missed.

The Quarterly Reviews are not a contest, competition or poll. And there are no quotas: anything — from everything to nothing — may qualify in any genre. Rather, they answer a practical question: “If a friend asked you to recommend something outstanding from the past quarter of Bewildering Stories, what would you choose?”

I’m happy to announce the editors at Bewildering Stories included my piece “Whisper Listing” in their short list of best flash fiction stories.

Fantasy Fiction, Flash fiction, Satire

Whisper Listing

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Whisper Listing

“In transactions involving haunted real estate, the rule is not only caveat emptor but also caveat venditor.”

The looming presidential election is shaping up as a combination fiasco and tragedy of such staggering proportions, the only thing we can do is laugh. So in a desperate act of escapism, I wrote a satirical flash fiction piece entitled “Whisper Listing.” It’s featured in the latest issue of Bewildering Stories. Here’s hoping it provides a bit of comic relief to our ongoing political agony.

(In real estate, a “whisper listing” is a house for sale in a market restricted to a select group of potential buyers. Celebrities often use them to avoid publicity.)

* Be sure to check out Challenge 680 linked at the end of my story!

Poetry, Satire

Charlotte Observer Limerick Contest

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Limerick

The Charlotte Observer hosts a limerick competition every year that runs from Saint Patrick’s Day to April 1st. They call it their “Politics & Public Policy Limericks Contest.” This year the paper encouraged entries lampooning the presidential campaign, but the current campaign is so bizarre and depressing, I just couldn’t imagine making a humorous rhyme about it. So instead, I decided to write limericks about local disasters.

The editors published my limerick on Charlotte’s I-77 toll lanes controversy. The public hates the idea of paying tolls, but there’s the added sting of a Spanish company (?!?) building the lanes and keeping all the profits they generate. Weird, huh? But so ripe for ridicule! From the Charlotte Observer editorial page:

It wasn’t all presidential politics, though. Give Mike Tuggle bonus degree-of-difficulty points for rhyming the word ‘criteria’ and going the foreign language route to finish his piece about the Interstate 77 toll lanes:

I can’t understand the criteria

That mandate toll lanes from Iberia.

The gain from those lanes

Stays mainly in Spain.

It’s Charlotte’s camino mysteria.

Stay tuned for future satirical entries in the coming weeks. Yes, I live in a target-rich environment.

Ambrose Bierce, Fantasy Fiction, Satire

Salman Rushdie on Fantasy

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Rushdie

Salman Rushdie, who was knighted in 2007 for his contributions to literature, will speak here in Charlotte at Queens University tomorrow night. He’s earned his honors. Because of Rushdie’s unblinking portrayal of what he deemed religious fanaticism, both Ayatollah Khamenei and Al-Qaeda have called for his murder. In London a few years back, only dumb luck saved him from a fanatic’s book bomb (a real one, not to be confused with one of Larry Correia’s book bombs!).

This is a man who has risked his life for his art. So when Rushdie speaks, he’s worth paying attention to. His observations on fantasy fiction deserve wide circulation:

I think that magical realism is one version of a kind of literature that is found all over the world. It is much older form with, in many ways, a richer tradition than the realist tradition.

These stories are very old. I just thought one of the things I like about the old stories is while they are full of flying carpets and ogres and dragons and things like that, they are completely realistic about human beings. The people you find in the stories are beautifully drawn.

“Ogres and dragons and things like that.” Works for me. And Rushdie’s comment about the power of satire struck me as pitch-perfect: “Satire is the classic weapon that artists have always had against hypocrisy and tyranny.”

Jonathan Swift and Ambrose Bierce would be proud.