Why'd I get a notification for this?

@GnomeSlice - I think all Writers.SE chat users get a notification that there's an upcoming chat.

I didn't even know there was a writers.se.

I don't think.

Then I really have no idea why, sorry.

@justkt @standback any idea?

I don't think I have an account here... actually, I might.

Nope. That's weird.

Is it possible you once followed a link to a chatroom bookmark here?

chatroom bookmark? I dunno, entirely possible.

You know, like one of these.

I have no idea. At any rate, clever name for the chatroom here. =] I'm not going to stay though.

I probably came one or twice to ask about something I'd written.

:)

Hello everybody! Who's here for the scheduled chat?

@NeilFein Me. I think.

We need an icebreaker. What's everyone reading now?

Someone just today was telling me about an author named 'MAtt Ruff'.

I'm in the middle of an anthology of Steampunk stories.

Anyone familiar with him?

No, who is he?

@NeilFein Oh, I love Steampunk, what's that?

@NeilFein He writes about... interesting things.

One of his books is a love story between two people, both with multiple personalities.

This: Dreams of Steam 2

He's only got five books, but they all have very interesting sounding premises.

I was hoping someone here could give me a recommendation of where to start.

This one looks interesting: mostlyfiction.com/authorqa/ruff.htm

That's the one the person I was talking to recommended.

If you don't get one here, that might be a good question for the SFF recommendation chats, if they're still having them.

amazon.com/Mirage-Novel-Matt-Ruff/dp/…

This one looked like an interesting piece of alt-history, too.

That does look pretty cool.

amazon.com/Sewer-Gas-Electric-Public-Trilogy/dp/…

Interesting premises, no?

Indeed!

This steampunk collection looks interesting too.

Yeah, but it's filled with typos so far. Ugh.

(I have a review copy, so it could just be that.)

@NeilFein What sort of typos? Steampunk is famous for spelling things in a specific way. Like 'Flyte' rather than 'Flight'.

Yeah, I know about that. I mean spell-check mishaps and actual typos.

They also use straight quotes in some stories and typographer's quotes in others. It's very distracting. But the stories are quite fun so far.

Do you read sci-fi shorts, at all?

Oh, yes.

Have you read one called 'I have no mouth, but I must scream'?

Grew up on them. And I work as an audio tech at the Steampunk World's Fair every year, and I do editing for Steam-Funk Studios.

By Ellison? Yep, it's a creepy one. And very good.

The elective I took last year in my Multimedia course was 'the science of science fiction'.

I loved it. It was an English course (writing, reading), so I wasn't expecting it to be that interesting.

I even got to write a short story myself.

What kind of material did they cover?

What do you mean? What did we write? Or what did we read?

Bunch of short stories, I don't remember the names specifically.

Both.

...I also appear to have lost my copy of the story collection book we had to buy.

=[

Well, there was some stuff about how much sci-fi technology became, or inspired current real-world technology.

Neat.

So we had to take a current technology, and 'extrapolate' it to a fictional, future technology.

I wish I could find that book... :/

Then I could give you the names.

I did my story critique on 'I have no mouth but I must Scream' even though it wasn't part of the given collection.

One of my friends suggested it.

Creepy story.

@NeilFein Would you like to read the short story I wrote?

It's pretty poorly written, but... eh.

Sure!

Hm, I had it on Google Docs, but the formatting kind of sucks eggs.

Give me a sec.

OK

@NeilFein Is a PDF okay?

Do You Hear What I Hear

Got it, thanks.

I great writer, I am not. The diction is... pretty juvenile. But eh, I enjoyed writing it.

I'm gonna read it again too, been a while.

It could be smoother, but it's not bad. It reads like it's a setup for something else.

@NeilFein Yeah. I wasn't even really supposed to write that much, basically the project was to write a premise your fictional tech could fit into.

@NeilFein A lot of sci-fi shorts are written that way.

Much of them feel like they end right before the big resolution.

Have you noticed that? Or is it just me.

No, it's not you.

Kind of inherent in the length. I think you see a lot of it in flash fiction as well.

I've heard that term... but I can't pull out a definition for it.

It just means "short fiction". There are whole websites about it.

Ah, that makes sense.

I thought I wrote a decent clip there.

Anyway, I've avoided my homework long enough, and it looks like nobody else is showing up for this chat event.

Nice meeting/talking to you. =]

K, later. :)

Before I go, let me post a really unique short story that a read a while ago.

Assuming I can find it.

Monkey On My Back.

It's a really strange read.

But quite deep, if you can get into it.

And with that, I'm off.

Later!