Fiction Friday
What can you say about Edgar Allan Poe? You might say he is the Grandmaster of Horror. You could posit that he is responsible for more nightmares than any other author. You may state that he is a tragic figure in literary history with a legacy of morbid curiosity that has never been seen since. You will get arguments with each of these statements, however they are all quite true. There are few authors whose name evokes a perfect understanding of their body of work. It is as if a Poe story or novel is imbued with the morbid curiosity of the darkness within us all.
Such it is with The Works of Edgar Allan Poe. This week’s Fiction Friday comes from the repository at Project Gutenberg. Following the break is an excerpt from the short story “The Gold Bug”:
, is certainly that type of story.
. This short lived TV show from 2005 about sea monsters was an enjoyable re-watch. Only fifteen episodes long, very few of the questions set forth in the show are answered, yet the ending makes you okay with that.
Good fiction takes the reader into worlds that can differ either a little or a lot from our own, but in ways that allow for a seamless transition. Creating fictional backdrops that don’t jar the reader’s sense of credulity is far harder than it might seem, however. For that reason writers tend to stick with constructs that are easiest for them to develop. In science fiction it seems to me these constructs potentially fall into one of three categories–all human universes, ones where humans and aliens mix, or all alien ones. I’ve given the pros and cons of each type considerable thought recently as I prepare to make my entry into the world of writing. I thought I’d share my thoughts this week, as well as pointing out some examples of each type of universe.
