Neal Stephenson's six word opus
Neal Stephenson has published his first piece of fiction since 2004's The System of the World in November's Wired magazine. Alas, it is part of their "Very Short Stories" collection, featuring 33 6-word stories by 33 different writers. Here is Stephenson's:
Tick tock tick tock tick tick.
Quite a change from the 2,700-page Baroque Cycle, but not as good as Joss Whedon's:
Gown removed carelessly. Head, less so.
<<< Hide and Seek The ending of The Prestige >>>
Quick, someone turn that into a Firefly episode.
By the way, does anybody think it should have been:
?
No. That's not as hot.
Eh, I just think its funnier if you spend a lot of time carefully taking off a gown, only to be totally boorish in your head removal... as if your priorities are backwards.
Of course you would take a head off carefully, how else does one remove heads?
To bother taking your gown off carefully, only to do a sloppy head removal seems absurd... and funny.
but the sex appeal of a gown carelessly removed, juxtaposed with the gore of decapitation, makes whedon's version better.
in my opinion.
Post the rest of the short stories, now I'm curious about them and they're not online.
I like Whedon's, but I don't get Stephenson's.
Maybe time started going backwards?
Wired link.
Alan Moore's is brilliant:
Machine. Unexpectedly, I’d invented a time
- Alan Moore
Aaronfsky used the same gimmick, to less success:
whorl. Help! I'm caught in a time
- Darren Aronofsky and Ari Handel
Ah, web only entries. Thanks.