>>Nostalgia For Infinity

Here’s this week’s Friday Flash Fiction, a short story set in the same loose post-apocalyptic world as Sun and Interdiction Zone. This piece was inspired by a particularly chilling chapter in Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us.

It could probably use some more research, but I don’t have the time before that Friday Flash postin’ time, so please excuse any daft errors (but by all means point them out).

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Long-term readers of this blog (hello mum etc.) may recall a whimsical science fantasy story I posted last December titled ‘Farewell!’ Sang the Swarm. It was a lightweight take on a very serious question that’s been puzzling many people around the world for some time: Colony Collapse Disorder. Whilst my take on CCD wasn’t too realistic (the alien hives observing our planet as part of a great experiment are withdrawing) I guessed it would probably be a bit more romantic than the reality.

Turns out I was right. Via weekly anarcho newsletter SchNEWS I’ve learned that teams of French and German scientists have come to the conclusion that a commercial pesticide known as Clothianidin is at least a partial cause of the loss of millions of bees colonies around the world. In further unsurprising news, it turns out that Clothianidin was developed by Bayer Pharmaceuticals and was passed for commercial sale in 2003 by the US Environmental Protection Agency despite the lack of safety research data. Presumably this assisted Bayer in selling Clothianidin (rebranded ‘Poncho’) to other markets around the world.

German regulators banned Clothianidin three months ago, the French (having banned an an earlier variant in 1999) declined its use, and in the US an environmental group has filed a lawsuit against the EPA. No doubt Bayer will continue to rake it in, and bee colonies will continue to vanish (albeit at a diminished rate).

(More in The Guardian and Coalition against BAYER-Dangers.)

As promised, here’s this week’s Friday flash fiction. It’s unusually long; about 70 words over the 1k limit. I considered trimming a few sentences but, in the spirit of the subject matter, decided “fuck it”.

The title, fact fans, is lifted from the best live/tour film you’ll ever see: Against Me!’s 2004 DVD We’re Never Going Home. It sums up most of the reasons why they were so special in the first half of the decade (for the record I think they’re still pretty special now, but they’re different people in a different band because of the success they’ve experienced – something the band spends a lot of time grappling with in the film).

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Sorry, gentle readers. I’ll not be posting any F3 this week either. It’s been another really busy week as I’ve been gearing up to cover someone else’s job at work, and although I’ve got three stories started I’ve not had time to finish one of them. I’ll endeavour to get at least one of them finished so I can get back on track for next week.

Once again I’ve tried to produce something a bit different to what I normally write. I’m not sure if it succeeds – I think I hammered it out too quickly for that – but I quite like the style at points, if nothing else. If you have a read please let me know what you think; feedback is always appreciated.

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Sorry folks, no flash fiction from me today. Long day, long week, etc. I’ve got a free day tomorrow, though, so maybe as a break from my other oddjobs I’ll write and post something.

Shame, really, as Paul has challenged me to write something under the title Om Nom Nom Bom. This is a pretty tough challenge, and I’m appalled that my mind has already begun churning through memories of Internet memes in preparation. I think my head is broken.

I suspect that this week’s celebration of one year of Friday Flash Fiction will be slightly overshadowed by Post a Rejection Letter Friday. But hey! Righteousness is right on, right?

I’m afraid that this week’s submission is another last-minute piece of fiction, as today has proven to be a lengthy work day fraught with some personal issues, but a promise is a promise. Rather than rush through a fresh idea I’ve decided to return to a concept I’ve tried to write in the past: a story written from the perspective of a faceless videogame enemy.

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You may have noticed that, after the frenetic multiple daily posts of last week, things have quietened down a bit at NFI. It just so happened that my scheduled Neverscapes reposts coincided with a big bundle of other writing. There’s not much on the cards this week, although as usual there’ll be the del.icio.us link round-ups to sift through for tasty Intertron plankton, plus Friday Flash Fiction at the end of the week.

Speaking of F3, I missed out last week which was a bit unfortunate as it was something of a special date. » Read the rest of this entry «

Here’s my flash fiction for the last Friday of June – I hope you enjoy it. I think it may be the first thing I’ve ever written in second person so I’ll be interested to hear if you think it works.

I’ve just noticed that in exactly one month I’ll have been writing F3 for a full year. So far I’ve posted stories on 32 of those 48 weeks, which I think is pretty good going.

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As with so many other weeks I had a bigger, deeper piece of flash fiction on the go, but it’s unfinished and probably wants completely rewriting anyway. So instead, have something that I wrote off the cuff today. Hope you enjoy it!

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