Rural science fiction is an idea I’ve been thinking about for a while. I’ve not invented the genre, but I do argue that it’s sorely under-explored. William Gibson’s newest trilogy, the one that begins with The Peripheral and extends into Agency is a beautiful example of it. The exploration of technology in a largely impoverished setting is the hallmark of cyberpunk. What do poor people do with generally horrifying corporate tech? How can they misuse it and otherwise bend it to fight the powers that be? It might appear that shifting that concept from Manhattan and the Bay Area to Brattleboro might not have a huge impact, but that would be wrong. It changes a great deal, and as someone who lives in the country and aspires to do so until I die, it’s a lot more compelling than a bunch of bozos running about hellish rainy cityscapes. I’d rather read about a bunch of bozos running about hellish rainy hillsides. Or nice hillsides.

Writing a novel by blog post seems like an ill-fated errand. Especially when it would be published in process with little drafting and rereads, as everything I publish here is functionally straight off the dome with about 5-10 minutes of polish slapped on top. 

Short stories on the otherhand, now that’s a thing that could be interesting for multi-monthly posting in a half-finished way! That I could do! And since this is my blog and it isn’t homework and I can use this time as a studyhall I’ll spend this evening combobulating a few notions for what I might want to write in the new year, short stories wise. 

Here are five, straight off the dome, piping hot. Maybe I will write one of them or all of them, or maybe just two of them. 

1. The story of a young girl meeting the digitized consciousness of her grandfather in the form of his favorite automobile. After failing to upload his consciousness to the cloud, a mere copy of a billionaire’s consciousness occupies his favorite car; exploring his vast estate, he runs into his granddaughter and they go on a ride.

2. A pair of brothers from a Vermont homestead must wrest their prodigal sister from the bizarre clutches of New York City on the eve of a nigh-apocalyptic century storm. Barging into a “big city trouble” scene of which they have no knowledge or interest they put it to violent rest before driving slowly north through the ruined highways and biways of New England.

3. A fan of obscure text-based roleplaying games called M*s accidentally stumbles into an ancient Telnet environment that may have started as such, but is now a functional network for the growth and delivery of black market cannabis. 

4. A maker of spoons receives a lovely bit of cherry from unseen forces. Unbeknownst to him, he lives on a vast generation-ship designed to provide the now aeons-deep inhabitants with an ideal pastoral life as Shokunin.

5. A young woman is the “face man” for a collective of New York City craftspeople tired of advertising themselves. Together other like-minded creatives have established an underground network of makers capable of producing damn near anything with low-cost manufacturing tech. On a busy day she picks up a mix of corporate prototypes for Nike and a TV pilot followed by an illegal weapons platform destined for an unknown client who’s paying her not to ask questions.

That’s five, feel free to tell me which you like and which you don’t. On squarespace I believe there will be a comment’s section, which will either be dead or hilarious. 

Text me your top picks, and don’t forget to Like and Subscribe!
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