When I visited the back door portal to Literally Stories Friday morning charged with the task of ordering random words into something a little less random my first thought on typing Week 38 was; Is there any significance to the number 38?
In short. No significance.
The best ‘fact’ I came up with was it is the probable year of the marriage of Claudius and Messalina.
Fascinating.
However if you add ‘th’ to 38 and then parallel, too, the plot thickens into something almost but not quite significant, as you now have the 38th parallel. The demarcation between North and South Korea. An imaginary line that also passes just north of Ashgabat in Turkmenistan, all of which makes one wonder how newspaper columnists survived before the advent of the internet search engine? None of which leads me to this week’s litany of literary marvels that began with The Aviator.
Frederick K. Foote added another beauty to his LS oeuvre with a tale of human and machine symbiosis, which knocks motherboards off the Six Million Dollar Man.
Like Fred Tobias Haglund had an eye on the future when he served up Direct Democracy. The literary equivalent of a dry Martini enjoyed on a dry Summer’s day in a hermetically sealed room fitted with a dehumidifier. Makes it sound a little dry doesn’t it, but don’t be put off by my rambling as this but-a-step-away-from-reality story is a most rewarding read.
Diane Dickson made it a hat-trick of speculative fiction on Wednesday with a classic apocalyptic tale of Armageddon, With a Bang Not a Whimper.
Was there a fairy tale ending, a last-ditch miracle that saved the world in this grim and tragic affair? That is for me to know and you to find out.
Not a week goes by that Literally Stories does not welcome a new writer. Darlene P. Campos is this week’s new name. Pow Wow Travels the story in question.
Larry Kicking Bird and James Eagle take a road trip on Highway 18 with fellow Native American Sitting Bull the butt of their jokes. If funny/sad/heart-warming is your thing then look no further.
Welcome to Literally Stories, Darlene.
Hugh Cron asks more unfathomable philosophical questions about conscience, sanity, morality, crime and punishment in Consequences.
One hundred and fifty years have elapsed since Fyodor Dostoevsky ground-breaking story, Crime and Punishment, but judging by Hugh’s modern-day Raskolnikov, this evergreen tale in its many guises resonates today as it did then.
Before I round off Week 38 with the results of Literally Stories readers jury AKA as Story of The Week, a quick mention for the Sunday slot. This week we feature Hugh Cron ‘In Conversation…’ with himself. Several of the 967 words in this piece are not swear words hence the WARNING, LS Editor, Hugh, has imposed upon his writing. Another story about humans and machines, only this time there is precious little symbiosis going on.
The King of Jantelagen – Tobias Haglund – has been deposed in a bloodless coup. All hail the new King! Congratulations Jono Naito. His story of a bunch of escapees from an old folks home loose in the Everglades called Neverland, is a shiny new addition to the glittering literati already residing in the LS Hall of Fame.
Below is your chance to immortalise another LS author>>>>>
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