Writing at this sort of length isn't any easier, to my mind, but it's a different kind challenge. With longer stories you have to worry about characters and places and keeping continuity. Stories of this sort of length, don't have time or the words for real characters, it's the idea that is important. You need a really good idea.
Have I mastered these really short stories and got the good ideas needed? Probably not, yet, but as ever you can be the judge of that.
Here is my collection of flash fiction.
These first 3 stories where written in one night for the short story competition on escapepod during January 2007. The ideas for each of these was taken from one of the many stories ideas in my ideas file hence the idea was ready all I had to do was condense it to fit the 300 word limit. In each the story is at or just under 300 words!
As expected I didn't win, but I did get some useful comments!
The Weapon
The ultimate irony of the final war, is that we started it.
Our fears about the pace of their weapons development, drove us down this path.
We would never accept their rule and clearly they would not accept ours, so in this time of peace, we where driven to planing for war, the last war.
We took the primal forces of creation and twisted them to destruction, we created the ultimate weapon.
And we called them monsters.
All of our considerable resources where put in to this one weapon. We gambled almost everything on creating this weapon. Hoping that it would secure a long term peace. A peace of us ruling over them by terror. We knew such a peace would not last. We destroyed the fragile peace after the pervious war and started the final war.
Having such a weapon of terror is no good unless your enemy knows you have it. We showed it to them, confident that they could never create such a thing.
We where right, it was far beyond them. They couldn’t build the weapon, but they had to have the weapon.
It was the final straw, they knew we had the power to end everything with this weapon. They had to have it.
The war that followed was invertible.
Now they know the location of the weapon, many have died on both sides to get to this point, but now every one will die unless some one sees sense and ends this madness.
They surround us, they have to have the weapon, we can’t let them have it.
The only chance now is to destroy it. If we do, our race will end today, and maybe that is good and right, but life will go on elsewhere in the universe.
Wyvern
Her arm burnt for a few seconds where the needle had penetrated her arm, but the pain quickly died away as the normal drab world around her was replaced by the colorful world of the hallucination.
She knew the risks, everybody did. Wyvern could kill on the first dose and, no one knew why, but hallucinations...no the world it took her to where worth the risk.
The shabby, dump stained walls crumbled to dust, beyond them the sky became crystal clear and tinged with pink. Huge columns of sparking crystal jutted miles in to the cool, clear and fresh air.
She rose above the gently swaying grass the grew from the old rotten floor boards. Above her the huge shimmering semi transparent form of one of the wales could be seen. It’s paddle shaped tail slowly propelling it through the air
She reached out for it, wanting to say hello to the beautiful creature.
As if propelled by her will alone, her form quick lifted towards it’s huge form.
She didn’t stop at it’s shimmering skin however, it was no more substantial than a cloud. It was warm and fluffy inside, like a pillow.
Her skin tingled a little and she smiled. No one she knew had touched a wale, and now she was inside one.
The huge creature suddenly convulsed and the blue shimmering light gathered around the tiny black spot with in it.
The tingling on her skin suddenly felt like little needles and she felt a pressure all around her.
She gasped in pain as the blue light flashed around her.
The addicts body trashed on the old wooden floor. Her mouth opened in a silent scream. But suddenly she stopped, a drop of blood running out of her ear.
Wyvern had claimed another victim.
Point of no return
Now our failure is complete.
With the failure of the last cryogenic plant our fate is
sealed.
It is not surprising really, given the speed which we built
this ship, that things should go wrong. We had the full
resources of an entire world, but the one thing we really
needed, time, we didn't have enough of.
Those who stayed behind on our doomed will probably live
longer than us.
The sub light speed acceleration when off without a hitch.
The problems started in the early stage of warp
acceleration. Of course things didn't go really wrong until
we had gone faster than light. Things didn't go wrong until
we had gone past the point of no return. There where signs
that things where not going well then, but we could see
what the star was doing to our solar system. There was
nothing really left for us to return to.
We had reached the point of no return hundreds of thousands
of years ago, when the white dwarf star that is now pulling
our star apart was thrown out of it's own system and
started it's journey.
Our journey is now really over, with no coolant, the super
conducting wave guides which generate the warp field are
warming up. Very shortly they will stop being super
conducting and the warp field will collapse very quickly
after that. With out the warp field the normal laws of
physics will apply and we will decelerate to less than
light speed. The super heated gas that once was our ship
will decelerate.
The crew don't know this. They should be happy in there
last few moments only us, the engineers, those who have
failed, know the truth. We alone bare the knowledge of our
failure.