Author Archives: James Pyles

Going Home After All These Years

pier 14

Pier 14. (Photo: Curtis Simmons/Flickr)

“You embarrassed me this evening.” Myron was standing with Rachel outside the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco waiting for the valet to bring around the car.

“It was the truth. What are you complaining about?”

“Truth or not, you shouldn’t have said it.”

“It’s over and done with. Here comes the car now.”

He pulled out his wallet and extracted some bills. “Thank you,” he uttered softly as he tipped the young woman and then received the car keys.

“Here.” He tossed them at his wife, her unbidden reflexes deftly causing her to catch them.

“I’m driving?”

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Why Some Creative Works May Never Win a Hugo Award

stewart

Screenshot taken from twitter

Okay, so the people on twitter who (very politely) accused me of being a moron because I was clueless about exactly what the Hugos are, and how creative works are awarded Hugo Awards are correct. I didn’t do my homework. I did have one woman accuse me of not even being a fan, and admittedly, in my youth I read a ridiculous amount of science fiction and fantasy compared to today.

So many books, so little time.

That said, I do read science fiction, but not every book I read is SciFi. Am I still a fan? Maybe not by that person’s standards, and I especially don’t read brand new science fiction, since I can’t afford to buy a bunch of brand new books, digital or otherwise. I usually depend on the public library, or occasionally a friend will lend me a book, but those works are usually several years (or decades) old.

That brings me back to the Hugos and twitter. I’m not getting any more tweets, but some of those previous tweets are being “liked” on twitter, and they show up in my notifications. I saw the tweet again yesterday that I posted a screenshot of above.

So really, the Hugo voters, those who nominate a work for a Hugo, and then those who vote for finalists and winners, aren’t all that many folks. Who are they?

I went to the Hugo Awards FAQ page and found out:

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The Magical Backyard

dragonfly

In form and name, the blue dasher dragonfly illustrates the beauty and flying prowess of these insects. (Photo: Bonnie Taylor Barry/Shutterstock)

“What’s that, Grandpa?” The little three-year-old girl was out in the old man’s backyard exploring as usual, while her grandfather watched from a chair on the patio.

“It’s a dragonfly, Dani.”

“Dragonfly?” She looked in wonder as the insect alighted onto one of the potted tomato plants at the edge of the concrete.

“Yes, it’s a flying bug.”

“A bug?” She looked down and cried out excitedly. “Here are some more bugs.” She squatted and pointed her finger.

“Yes, those are ants.”

“Ants?” She acted like she’d never heard the word before.

“Look on the fence.”

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The Proposal

path

© Sue Vincent

Fear drenched Simon Clark like the sweat that covered his body. The wooded path made it look like a morning in early Spring, but the reality of the brutal August heat and the hazy smoke of a dozen wildfires across the west belied the scenery.

“I can’t do this. It’s too hard.” He wasn’t muttering to himself, but to his unseen companion.

“You have to, Simon. Too many people are depending on you.” She always sounded like a young woman, but there was something slightly mechanical about her tone.

“I just want to go home.”

“You are home.”

“I don’t mean that. I want to go someplace where I can be safe. Someplace where it’s cool and dry and I can relax.”

“You don’t have time for that right now. You have a job to do.”

“Why does it have to be me? I didn’t ask for the responsiblity.”

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Stopping the Fire

fire

MorgueFile May 2018 1382470355ix82z

Noa hoped the authorities would think the fire was caused by a lightning strike long enough for her to get away. She knew the machine was experimental, and Professor Klein finally admitted it would be a one-way trip when he taught her how to use the device.

Her physics professor at Cambridge confessed his covert time travel project to her right before they heard the news that radical extremists had seized Iran’s new nuclear arsenal. In a flash of light and heat, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa were gone, along with everyone the young Israeli student had ever known.

Eventually, they’d find the remains of her vessel, but there wouldn’t be much left for the experts to analyze. They would know it was some form of technology, but the melted and fused chassis and control circuits would never reveal their secrets.

Now she was here, but that wasn’t going to be the hard part.

She had traveled back fifteen years into the past to stop a war. Today’s date was Wednesday, August 4, 2010. She had five years to change history, and she would do anything to keep Iran from ever getting nukes.

Anything.

I wrote this for Week #31 of this year’s Flash Fiction for the Purposeful Practitioner writing challenge. The idea is to use the image above as the basis for crafting a piece of flash fiction no more than 200 words long. My word count is 193.

I know this story will probably be unpopular, but I like writing the “flip side of the coin,” so to speak, the stories no one else will write because they go against certain political and social “sacred cows.”

I know the Iran Nuke Deal is highly controversial, and opinions vary wildly as far as whether or not it has been successful. We do know that if nothing changes, the deal will expire, allowing Iran to once again pursue the development of nuclear weapons.

Frankly, I can’t see how Iran could nuke Israel without killing a whole lot of Arabs along with the Israeli Jews. Jerusalem is way too close to Jordan for them to get away with leveling the Israeli capital city, and they’d have to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount as well. I don’t think that would happen.

However, they might decide to take out Tel Aviv, although with all the money the U.S. paid out to Iran as part of the Nuke Deal, the Ayatollahs are probably having more success in killing innocent Israeli citizens by funding Hamas and Hezbollah.

To read other stories based on the prompt, visit InLinkz.com.

Fairy Dust

stacks

© Sandra Crook

He had let the garden go after she died. Erin was six when she was hit and killed in a crosswalk. She believed fairies sprinkled magic dust on the plants to make them grow.

After Jared and Paulette divorced, it had been just the two of them. Now he was alone in the backyard at night.

At first, he thought he was dreaming when he saw them. He walked closer to the stacks and got on his knees. They were little people with wings spreading dust. One came nearer, right up to his face. The little fairy smiled. “Hi, Daddy.”

I wrote this for the Rochelle Wisoff-Fields writing challenge. The idea is to use the image above as a prompt to craft a piece of flash fiction no more than 100 words long. After a lot of editing, my word count is 100.

My wife buys a lot of things at yard sales because they’re cheap. This includes a ton of children’s books for our three-year-old granddaughter. We have several books in the Pinkalicious series (no, I’m not kidding), and my granddaughter loves them.

In one of the books, Pinkalicious believes fairies come every night to sprinkle dust on their garden to make it grow, and she and her brother Peter, not only camp out in the backyard at night to see them, but build the fairies a pretty impressive little house.

That’s where I got my basic idea.

To read other stories based on the prompt, visit InLinkz.com.

Is Jeff Sessions Trying to Establish an American State Religion?

I know I’m pushing it, but I decided to share these thoughts here on my “fiction” blog.

James Pyles's avatarMorning Meditations

sessions U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

I just found out that “Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday announced the Department of Justice’s creation of a ‘religious liberty task force’ to ‘help the department fully implement our religious guidance'” over at CNN.

Actually, someone I know from my Powered by Robots sister blog reblogged an article called The First Amendment Under Siege posted at The Shinbone Star. You can find out more about their staff here (although discovering that one of their reporters used to work for MSNBC told me a lot about the particular bent of this publication).

I suppose I shouldn’t get into politics on my “religious” blog, but this topic is or should be of interest to all people of faith in the U.S.

It’s tough to get an unbiased view of what Sessions is up to, so I had to look at a number of differing…

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The WorldCon 76 Incident: The Consequences of Twitter

toxic twitter

Toxic Twitter

After I wrote The WorldCon 76 Incident: This Never Happened to Me on Twitter Before (and yes, I posted links on twitter and Facebook), I thought it was over. True, I did get one response from a very nice person saying (basically) that I was overreacting and people on twitter were just trying to be helpful.

I responded to him by saying that it was difficult for me to tell if their intent was to be helpful or critical, since at least some of the statements were ambiguous. I also compared twitter to a “wild west show.” I didn’t hear back from him and so that was that, or so I believed.

Then this morning, I got another response from someone who hadn’t addressed me before, stating (again basically) that I was uninformed about WorldCon, the Hugos, and one of the people who had been most critical (to the point of hostility) of me. As I looked at the tweets of the person who is supposed to be an important voice, I saw said-individual was pretty critical of a lot of other folks, specifically conservatives who have questioned the objectivity of the aforementioned Hugos (AKA, the “Sad Puppies”).

None of the people who addressed me have their tweets hidden, so I thought I’d take a look at what else they had to talk about. I wanted a wider understanding of the individuals involved. To that end, I’m posting screen captures of a few tweets of two of these people while doing my best to hide their identities (except for David Hogg’s since he seems to thrive on publicity).

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The Red High Heels

red shoes

© Yinglan Z.

George looked admiringly at the shoes on his wife’s delicate feet. This was the finest shoe store in Hong Kong.

“What do you think?” She turned her ankle, modeling the heels.

“They look lovely. Another wedding gift, Edith?” He smiled at her as only a newlywed can.

“Would you?” She clapped her hands and laughed.

George turned to the salesman. “We’ll take these as well. Can you have our purchases sent to our hotel? A dozen pair would be a little difficult for us to carry.”

The salesman stood and bowed. “Of course, Sir. We would be glad to be of service, but since I am the last person in the store this evening, they won’t arrive until tomorrow.” He internally scoffed at the American tourists. Frivolous fools. They could never suspect he was an intelligence analyst for the Communists. His cover was perfect.

Edith and George gave each other knowing looks. The two American agents were there to kidnap and interrogate their adversary. By dawn, they’d know everything about China’s complement of nuclear weapons.

I wrote this for the 176th FFfAW Photo Challenge hosted by Priceless Joy. The idea is to use the image above as a prompt for crafting a piece of flash fiction between 100 and 175 words long. My word count is 175.

I forgot about the word count and was over 300 words into writing my spy thriller when I remembered, so I had to edit it down quite a bit. Now it feels somewhat forced and hurried, but I hope I got my idea across successfully. Never trust appearances.

To read other stories based on the prompt, visit InLinkz.com.

Dark Carnival

carnival

Image credit Grace Ho via Unsplash

“Oneida, I wish you wouldn’t torture yourself this way. Come back with me.” Del held out long, skeletal fingers toward the diaphanous waif that he loved with all his heart, that is, if he still had one.

“Just a few more minutes. I like to hear their laughter.”

“We have laughter, too. It just takes a bit of adjustment.”

“I know.” She continued to stare wistfully at the people being whisked about on the rides. “You’ve told me before.” She turned towards him, a quizzical look on what was once her face. “How long has it been?”

“Since you arrived? Barely a decade, my love.”

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