This subject may have been covered before. If it has - apologies...
There are few things to tempt this lurker into posting but one is Tharg's insistence on printing useless, banal, sub-standard tripe in the shape of 'Future Shocks'. This week's 'Queen of Spin' was a new low. I do wish he'd stop it. Comments welcome.
Ah well, at least 'Bad Company' has finished, so it's not all bad ;)
As far as I'm concerned, the best thing to happen to the Future Shocks format was Shakara, which began as a series of standard FS style stories before linking them together and actually giving them a little more purpose. By the way I'm saving this week's prog for later, so I can't yet comment on it.
Fair enough - good things can come from bad (I quite enjoy Shakara). Still, there is a need for some improved quality control.
I don't like the way future shocks are limited to 5, occasionally 6 pages. Some of them seem too stretched or packed in. Perhaps in future we could have some of differing lenghts, maybe?
"suit you sir"
-tu-p
Future Shocks, short and sweet
Done well they approach perfection
Like Haiku
Nathan McGuffin-san
I can't think of a more approriate title.
I understand that the whole point of a future shock is to show that you can write a basic short story, with the neccesary structure and give the required ending. And I'm also glad they are still in. I just wonder if people shouldn't worry about the twist ending so much. I mean really you are then just using the whole story as a vehicle to get to the shock ending. Which means you may have a good story with a daft ending, or a good ending with a tortuous story.
I thought this weeks was the best for a while.