Unca Dave's Incredible Ego Trip: Stories

My (ahem) Collected Works of Fiction

For a year in 1985-86 I had the opportunity to work pretty nearly full-time at trying to become a commercial writer of science fiction and fantasy. It was one of these clearly-defined moments that life offers too rarely: "If I don't try, I'll always wonder if I could have," was the deal.

The answer turned out to be no, I could not produce fiction at anywhere near the level required to even pretend at a living income. Fiction is tough! I'm an experienced writer with many books on my resume, and I never spent harder, more frustrating hours at a keyboard than during those months. Like a lot of people I supposed that, if I only took the time, I could produce fiction. The truth is, it takes both innate talent and a lot of practice. After working at fiction both hard and long, I can only admire the people who can produce good stories consistently. The way I feel about Steven King or the late Robert Heinlein is the way a moderately skilled minor league baseball player feels about Barry Bonds or the late Babe Ruth.

Anyway, the following is the anthology of all my completed stories.

Story Link

Introduction

The Diamond Mind Maybe my most successful story. It sold for $200 to a friend who was going to be editor of a new computer magazine, but the magazine never published its first issue. Still, it was my third sale. "The Murrn dispense the universe in quirky little doses" is a fun sentence. There's a series there...

The Smallholding A fantasy about the power and uses of imagination, and about the sacrifices one can make to stay alive. A very well known SF writer, female, who critiqued this story absolutely loathed it. All she could see was a self-centered husband who ignored his wife and family. Chacun a son gout...

Memoire: Saucer Summer A memoire that I copied out of an issue of The New Yorker that will not be in print for a few decades yet.

Rose Peddals, Hurrah! Written during the Clarion West workshop in 1986. Avram Davidson, one of the icons of Fantasy writing, published a rather silly story by in a magazine that month and I thought, 'Hah, I could do that Victorian-flavored-whimsey thing at least as well as that.!' In retrospect, hmm, no, perhaps I couldn't....

The Falling Temple At Clarion West, Joan Vinge passed around a photo of a Taureg (?) woman, enigmatic eyes glaring out from under a chadour of shiny black fabric, and asked for a scene based on this image. It's astonishing what can pop out of your imagination: in this case, a letter home from a young Victorian woman touring a very far place...

The Forester's Wife My attempt at pseudo-medieval fantasy, stylistically influenced by Samuel Delaney's Neveryona and by Delaney's critical works. This was to be "Winter" in a four-story Seasonal. Beware: according to people who actually know something about woodcraft, the details of outdoorsmanship in this story are grotesquely inaccurate. So don't try to survive outdoors in winter based on what you read here.

The Walking Machines Another try at whimsical humor. Well, there are a few snickers in it. Too few, and a contrived ending, as well.

Climbing a Leaner A tale of childhood in a different place. All I really meant to say was that wherever you are born and reared is home, no matter how exotic it might seem by other standards. After I'd finished it, I noticed that it could be the most elaborate and highly abstracted sexual metaphor ever. That's a real danger in fiction: You have to drop the bucket into your deepest wells. Sometimes it comes up with a frog in it.

A Bomb In the Head The first story I actually finished, and the first I sold (to Amazing Stories, for $400). This story also earned one (1) nominating vote for a Nebula award in the short story category. Of course that was far too few for it to even appear on the ballot, but heck -- at least one member of the SFWA read it and liked it.

Lost Child The sequel to "A Bomb In the Head," written at Clarion West. This story, too, was purchased by Amazing Stories, for another $400, bringing my gross income for one year of bleeding into a keyboard to an even $1000. The energy driving these dark visions arose in the conflicting emotions I felt when homeless people first impinged on my comfortable suburban life. That was a decade ago, before we all got hardened.

Story Link	Introduction
The Diamond Mind	Maybe my most successful story. It sold for $200 to a friend who was going to be editor of a new computer magazine, but the magazine never published its first issue. Still, it was my third sale. "The Murrn dispense the universe in quirky little doses" is a fun sentence. There's a series there...
The Smallholding	A fantasy about the power and uses of imagination, and about the sacrifices one can make to stay alive. A very well known SF writer, female, who critiqued this story absolutely loathed it. All she could see was a self-centered husband who ignored his wife and family. Chacun a son gout...
Memoire: Saucer Summer	A memoire that I copied out of an issue of The New Yorker that will not be in print for a few decades yet.
Rose Peddals, Hurrah!	Written during the Clarion West workshop in 1986. Avram Davidson, one of the icons of Fantasy writing, published a rather silly story by in a magazine that month and I thought, 'Hah, I could do that Victorian-flavored-whimsey thing at least as well as that.!' In retrospect, hmm, no, perhaps I couldn't....
The Falling Temple	At Clarion West, Joan Vinge passed around a photo of a Taureg (?) woman, enigmatic eyes glaring out from under a chadour of shiny black fabric, and asked for a scene based on this image. It's astonishing what can pop out of your imagination: in this case, a letter home from a young Victorian woman touring a very far place...
The Forester's Wife	My attempt at pseudo-medieval fantasy, stylistically influenced by Samuel Delaney's Neveryona and by Delaney's critical works. This was to be "Winter" in a four-story Seasonal. Beware: according to people who actually know something about woodcraft, the details of outdoorsmanship in this story are grotesquely inaccurate. So don't try to survive outdoors in winter based on what you read here.
The Walking Machines	Another try at whimsical humor. Well, there are a few snickers in it. Too few, and a contrived ending, as well.
Climbing a Leaner	A tale of childhood in a different place. All I really meant to say was that wherever you are born and reared is home, no matter how exotic it might seem by other standards. After I'd finished it, I noticed that it could be the most elaborate and highly abstracted sexual metaphor ever. That's a real danger in fiction: You have to drop the bucket into your deepest wells. Sometimes it comes up with a frog in it.
A Bomb In the Head	The first story I actually finished, and the first I sold (to Amazing Stories, for $400). This story also earned one (1) nominating vote for a Nebula award in the short story category. Of course that was far too few for it to even appear on the ballot, but heck -- at least one member of the SFWA read it and liked it.
Lost Child	The sequel to "A Bomb In the Head," written at Clarion West. This story, too, was purchased by Amazing Stories, for another $400, bringing my gross income for one year of bleeding into a keyboard to an even $1000. The energy driving these dark visions arose in the conflicting emotions I felt when homeless people first impinged on my comfortable suburban life. That was a decade ago, before we all got hardened.

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