Saturday, November 11

Aliens disguised as typewriters? I never heard such --

Time for some collections of very short novels. Here's a David Langford piece about the game of Drabble (the four players sit from left to right and the first person to write a novel wins). Naturally, the novels have to be short - 100 words is the limit. Or, for hardcore players , 50. Or even eight, for Micro-Drabble - the headline is the definitive science-fiction microdrabble.
And now Wired has published a collection of six-word Drabbles (nanodrabble?) inspired by a Hemingway short ("For sale: baby shoes, never worn.") Some examples:

Machine. Unexpectedly, I’d invented a time - Alan Moore

Osama’s time machine: President Gore concerned. - Charles Stross

The baby’s blood type? Human, mostly. - Orson Scott Card

Let's have them - eight-word pieces of science communication. In the comments. Here's mine: Evolution: because some inherited mistakes turn out OK.

9 comments:

Sophia said...

Why science? The unexamined life's not worth living.

(With apologies to Socrates)

Brains: Both weirder, and simpler, than you think.

Risk - impossible to avoid completely.

DNA, it's not like a sodding barcode.

Sophia said...

Oh hang on, needs to be exactly 8, not just 8 or less? Scratch some of them. I'll think of some more.

Nixoniad said...

Horror story...

"Can't feel my feet!"

"They're not yours now."

Nixoniad said...

DNA - it's not a blueprint. It's a cookbook!

(Apologies to Richard Dawkins and Rod Serling)

Sophia said...

Here's my trilogy on why chemical bonding is like relationships.

Vol I: Swapping needs, holes filled, no strings, passing ships.

Vol II: Sharing things makes stronger bonds, but seldom forever.

Vol III: The free radical threatens existing bonds, watch out!

Coda: Not everyone likes homo-bonding, but it's certainly creative.

Nixoniad said...

Soph, that's verging on the Primo Levi. Or possibly the Edwin Morgan.

"Blood = Devonian seawater; we = spacesuits for fish."

Sophia said...

Why thank you Alec. It does suggest that I'm rather more cynical than even I think, doesn't it?

But it does often strike me that people are like atoms.

Nixoniad said...

Hence the phrase "nuclear family". Ah ha ha ha.

Sophia said...

Yeah, potential source of great power, work in mysterious and invisible ways and they are apt to blow up catastrophically without warning.