A few of the awards from my book club’s recent awards gala.
For the past year I’ve been organizing a Science-Fiction book club based out of Vancouver. We recently held our First Annual Awards gala. House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds swept the show, winning Book of the Year while one of the characters won “Best Human Character of the Year” and another won “Best Non-Human Character of the Year.” We also gave out awards (photo above) to a few of the club members.
Last week the group had a short story contest. The rules were it had to be 100 words or less, and the theme was “Unintended Consequences.”
Below are the stories, shared with permission of the authors:
Story One
He scans down the bar for unprotected devices, hoping to get lucky.
Jackpot. Brunette. Leather pants. One seat between them, unoccupied.
He cracks her phone, starts looking for something to chat her up about. We all carry our diaries in our pocket and few of us bother to close the book.
Bass thrums. He sips his drink to staunch a growing headache.
Photos. Wow.
Search history. Come back to that.
Texts. Wait. What?
He pauses looking down at a picture of himself.
“Target acquired.”
“Payload delivered.”
He looks down at his drink, pain behind his eyes supplanting reality.
“Contract complete.”
Story Two
The ship touches down on the bare rock and space-suited figures emerge. They scan the air and test the soil to see if the organic matter and single-cell organisms they’d seeded millenia ago had taken hold. Sensors blink negative, again. And negative again, later. And negative again, much later. It will be millions of years and hundreds of thousands of planets before they look back through deep time and space to that one planet and see something: A glimmer of life. On the planet Terra in the Sol system. They log the information and return, smiling, to their dreamless hypersleep.
Story Three (The Jump)
"A parachute jump!" he exclaimed. "You've had this on your bucket list forever" she said and hugged him.
He left home early for the safety training so she drove to the airport alone.
One by one parachutes unfurled followed by awkward landings in a nearby field. She waited for him to run toward her buzzing with adrenaline.
But he never landed in the field. The instructor said he'd vanished after the training.
She returned home.
That evening he walked quietly through the door, sat down and turned on the television. She looked at him. "What?" he asked. "Nothing" she replied.
Story Four
Dr smith looked at the company’s quarterly earnings and couldn’t help but smile. His breakthroughs in stem cell research had not only sent the company stock soaring, it also meant the country was now the only real option for stem cell treatment in the world. The patent ensured it would be for the next twenty years. Dr smith clicked through his inbox wherein he’d received congratulations and links to news sites that speculated on the ways his research would change the world. One headline wiped the smile off his face:
Human Farming Black Market Created By Demand For Stem Cells.
Story Five
“Once more, please.”
“I just…” “I know. One more time, please.”
“Fine. It was just standing there when I got home.”
“How did it get in?”
“I told you, I don’t know.”
“Windows intact? Door still locked?”
“Yes. It was just there.”
“What did it do when you entered?”
“Nothing. Just stared.”
“You're sure it was the same one?”
“Yeah. I mean, I assume. Is there more than one?”
“Where was the victim when you entered?”
“On the table.” “Dead?” “Yeah. He was my... our old boss.”
“Then?”
“Nothing. It left. Why my house?”
“You tell me. You designed it.”
We’ll probably be doing a few more of these over the next few weeks and I’ll continue to post them.
In the meantime, please feel free to support the charity of choice of our book club: Books For Me Vancouver:
Books for Me! is a non-profit Society and a registered charity based in Vancouver. For many families, buying children's books just isn't possible. Books for Me! provides children from these families an opportunity to build their own libraries for free. Our program comes to life as children choose their own book to take home and keep.