The new issue of Flurb is out.
Check it out at “http://flurb.rudyrucker.com/7/index7.html!
Go there now, and return here to comment!
By the way, as of August 12, 2009, FLURB #7 has had over fifty thousand unique visits. Thanks to the wonderful writers who helped make this possible.
March 3rd, 2009 at 7:47 pm
Authors often ask me about submission guidelines. Here we go:
Late August and early September, 2009, is when I’ll be thinking about the next issue, Flurb #8.
If you want to send me a piece, send it as an RTF file attached to an email with FLURB SUBMISSION as email subject line, and send it in late August or early September, 2009. If you’ve already sent me a story, please resend it at that time, if it’s still available. You can find my email address from the “Email Rudy” link on my blog page near the top right.
I prefer short pieces (1,000 to 4,000) words, with an artistic, modern, literary, engaged quality, and with a reasonably strong SFictional element. I tend to avoid parody or hypertext. I only rarely publish poetry. I do not publish previously published work.
Terms: FLURB does not pay contributors. You keep copyright and all rights. FLURB leaves your story online indefinitely, unless you want it removed.
As of September 2, 2009, Flurb #8 is full! Thanks to all who sent in such great submissions. I’ll be posting the issue by Sept 15.
March 3rd, 2009 at 11:56 pm
how about a pdf version? back and forth, links to piece, back to index is tiring. It’s a wonderful zine, anyway.
March 4th, 2009 at 1:18 am
Just read the Terry Bisson piece, it’s lovely. Can’t wait for the Billy collection to be published. Unfortunately will have to wait till my lunch hour to read the rest of the ‘zine.
Ach, who am I kidding…?
March 4th, 2009 at 6:04 am
loved the richard kadray story. many thanks and keep ’em coming..
March 4th, 2009 at 9:30 am
I enjoyed your illustrations. Thank you for experimenting with such elegance.
March 4th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
this was awesome.
March 4th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Hi Rudy, I have to do a webpage re-design as a major class project. I would love to have a go at re-designing FLURB. It will cost you nothing and you don’t even have to use the design if you don’t like it! Please let me know if you’re interested.
March 4th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
Hi Rachel, Thanks for the offer, but, no, I’m happy with how FLURB looks right now. It includes what I think are important elements: a serif font in a rather large size, narrow columns, and a white backgroudn to make reading easier. The borders along the left edge gives each story a feel of continuity. And I like breaking it up with large pictures.
March 4th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
“Off-Track Betting” by Madeline Ashby was very interesting. Thank you both. I like 4> (4) “Develop within her body a complete model of the Mote communications network.” Chuckle.
The first two stories are as far as I have gotten… I will read the rest later. Bravo !!!!
March 4th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Hi Rudy,
That’s cool. I really enjoy reading the stories on FLURB but the navigation is a bit difficult so I thought I would make the offer.
Thanks for responding.
March 4th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
Rachel, you’re not the first to mention navigation. I’d be happy for suggestions about how to make it easier. One easy idea is to use target=”blank” addresses for the individual stories, so that the main page stays open in a tab. I might do that quite soon.
A stronger form of navigation would be to have a steady band of links along the story edges. Possibly a floating menu bar would help, although I don’t know how to code that. Of course, for surfers who remember about using the “back” button of the browser, it’s always easy to go to the page before…
One thing I probably should do the main page is to move the back-issue links to right under the Table of Contents. Put them into a table of cells so as to take up less room. And maybe do the TOC in a smaller font so it’s easier to overview. It’s fine if the editorial intro is the last thing on the page, way down at the bottom.
March 4th, 2009 at 7:18 pm
I like your site the way it is. Leaving it alone would be ok by me. I almost always open links like you have in a new tab so the original page stays open. When I’m done with a story, cntrl-w and it vanishes – poof! Back to the TOC and on to another tale.
Thanks for taking the time to put it all together and let us enjoy it. That really is wonderful.
March 4th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
And now I just finished Cody Goodfellows story: “Squonk Hunt”. Fantastic. So that’s why the Squonk cries… excellent!
March 4th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
I really enjoyed ‘Initiation.’ It has a ‘Weird Tales’, sinister flair of Ashton Smith, with fevered imagery.
March 5th, 2009 at 5:46 am
I love the energy and darkness of the Simon Logan story, a battle cry against advertising and consumerism in a cyberpunk setting!
March 5th, 2009 at 9:43 pm
Unsurprisingly, another great issue. Why is Flurb so much better than magazines that are put together by people who are paid specifically to put magazines together? Bwerk, it makes my head hurt.
There is no underground anymore. In fact, there’s not even any ground.
March 6th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
RR
“All Hangy” was sheer joy, all a sense of shared possibility. Thanks
HW
March 6th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
I love the site. How do I submit a story of my own?
March 7th, 2009 at 8:32 am
David, I describe how to submit a story in the very first comment in this thread, just scroll up and you’ll find it. Short versoin: email it to me in September, 2009.
March 7th, 2009 at 11:59 pm
I was listening to the thru-you youtube music mixer while reading this. You-tube mixing…the beginning of the Motes =). Your Motes scare me though. Excellent tale. Thanks!
March 8th, 2009 at 12:51 am
Mr Richard Kadrey’s story rocks 🙂 amazing read. It’s brilliantly bittersweet and emotional and too rocking. Makes sense on a whole new level after half bottle of vodka.
Cheers man!
N
March 8th, 2009 at 12:51 am
Thoroughly enjoyed Billy and the Flying Saucer and will be back for more. Thanks.
March 8th, 2009 at 7:56 am
Hi Rudy,
Great to see your string of creative history. Perhaps we can meet sometime at the steering wheel?
March 9th, 2009 at 9:45 am
It’s a shame about the lack of proof-reading in Simon Logan’s story. Reading about “isles” in a supermarket is very distracting…
March 9th, 2009 at 10:11 am
Martin, thanks for catching those typos in the Logan piece. I fixed them just now.
March 12th, 2009 at 7:42 am
FLURB should pay. You should award a Rucker painting to the contributor who
gets the most Stars from readers.
March 12th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Terry Bisson and Charlie Anders are two of my favorite writers in the whole world. I was so happy to find them both in Flurb just now. Thank you!
March 12th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
Holy sh*t. That was fantastic. Mesmerizing.
March 13th, 2009 at 8:05 am
Hi Rudy-
Any possibility of Flurb being published, maybe like your paintings book? I love the content, but don’t like reading more than I have to on a screen. I’d be willing to pay for something more permanent than just printing the stories from my computer. Maybe a best of Flurb?
Thanks.
May 5th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
FAB
May 13th, 2009 at 10:37 pm
Not usually a Scifi reader, not at all really, but I liked these stories a lot. I think I ought to pick up more scifi.
May 15th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
Hiya Rudy, I don’t know what I was expecting when I came here from Peter Wilsons Wikipedia entry, but it certainly wasn’t something as great as I found ” All Hangy” I mean really it blew me away, as I sometimes feel like Roberto does when he’s not quite ready to jump, with my own fears of my leg bones being driven into my chest. Thank you very much for you work here, kind sir! Roger
June 4th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Coooooooooool stories!
Loving Cobalt Imperium and the crazy one with the photos of Sea anenemones.
June 30th, 2009 at 8:49 am
Billy and the Flying Saucer is so deadpan weirdly cool, so, um, Terry Bisson, from the dangerously funny part(s) of his brain. Happy to find him lurking here on FLURB. Learned of FLURB from Warren Ellis website; discovered Warren Ellis from Twitter. Ah, this modern world…
July 25th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Finely crafted study in the nature of human “separateness” that dooms or damages most relationships. Keen insights and fascinating concepts with finely honed humor — dark but not entirely bleak. I appreciated the details and the pacing…I felt I was actually at the cafe…almost eavesdropping into the relationship. The point of all of us being some form of alien to others — cut off emotionally or having partitions for our emotions and selves was beautifully expressed. What’s ironic and tragic, is that even as these tings are happening with us, we regret and wish they were not–but they are nearly unbreakable rules of self protection — survival instincts from the deepest most reptilian parts of our natures. We yearn to connect, to love and be loved, but we fear losing what little we have that represents the “who” of who we are.
Maybe we are at one time, too intellectual and too ancient and reptilian at the same time. We yearn for unity but we are consumed by the fear of disappearing into a sea of impersonal bliss or someone else’s bliss. There is a great short story by R.A. Lafferty entitled, “Other Foot Forgot” or some such. Entertaining and interesting expression of the same stype of fear and alienation.
Thanks for making this available for others to enjoy and share!
Zenbob
August 11th, 2009 at 12:02 am
“Sir, the movie is sentient. We can stop trying to ride it now. It is asking to talk with you.”
— from a scene in the metamovie ‘BIZAR’, being made at this moment in memoryville.
R.U.Squared and his old friend SirYes just happened to be in the refectory at that instant, pitching ‘Enlightentertainment’ (or ‘3-EN’), an immersive low-mental-gravity ultrakarmic hybrid-media-ride… and this meant bringing, and drinking, the kool-aid.
The CFO of McDisney (“Michael Eisner”) put down his plastic mug and closed his eyes,
then began realizing they had never paid Mickey anything, no stock options or residuals… not even one weekend with Minnie at the village on Catalina Island. Nothing!
August 12th, 2009 at 9:43 am
HAL-1701, good stuff! I enjoy your comments, even though I don’t usually have the time to mention that.
August 12th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
FLURB reminder: I’m starting to plan issue #8 of my webzine FLURB. Issue #7 received over 50,000 visits.
If you want to send me a piece for consideration, send it as an RTF file attached to an email with FLURB SUBMISSION as email subject line, and send it anytime from now (mid August, 2009) to early September, 2009. You can find my email address from the “Email Rudy” link on my blog page near the top right.
I prefer short pieces (1,000 to 4,000) words, with an artistic, modern, literary, engaged quality, and with a reasonably strong SFictional element. I tend to avoid parody or hypertext. I only rarely publish poetry. I prefer not to use previously published work.
Terms: FLURB does not pay contributors. You keep copyright and all rights. FLURB leaves your story online indefinitely, unless you want it removed.
As of September 2, 2009, Flurb #8 is full! Thanks to all who sent in such great submissions. I’ll be posting the issue by Sept 15.
August 30th, 2009 at 10:35 am
Hello. What you say about translating some stories into other language, russian for example?
Of course, with publishing links and authors. Maybe I shall email?
And just a small note: you have wrong link to blog at “All hangy”-page.
August 31st, 2009 at 9:55 pm
frozen-desert isle. antarctica.
um:
a question re whitespace and using monospace (fixed width) font... :
can a Flurb story use a monospace font? i think that would give auteurs the big choice between Courier and CourierNew, but, it then enables typewriter poetry and ascii art aspects of a story. i mean, it opens up another synergistic aspect to the author involving the actual alignment of words, and whether a word gets put on the next line, and all kinds of things like that... the difference between a generic 'car' (that has four wheels) and a volkswagen 1963 van with a custom built interior.
can a Flurb story have whitespace kept intact as created? it matters what words get separated and put on the next line, and what the rivulets of spaces down the page actually look like! it's a whole aspect of writing. the more i tried to write about this, the more i realized what a huge and deep issue this is... similar to seeing "handwritten" fonts where every 'e' looks the same... as if aliens were manifesting stuff for us to read, and they don't care about anything but the literal words...
and i can't see what THIS will look like when it gets posted. so basically all i am writing is a long string that gets folded into a paragraph... and i get to space twice between paragraphs.
"LCD screen": (lowest common denominator)
it's sort of a turing test thing :
does your story make it through intact if it is printed out and read on a teletype ?
or, conversely, is your story so amazing that it requires control of typesetting etc etc?
... but at least teletypes had fixed-width spacing !
September 1st, 2009 at 7:44 am
Fiskus, I only have the right to post my authors’ contributions on FLURB, and I don’t own translation rights. If you’re interested in that, you would need to take it up with the authors individually.
September 1st, 2009 at 7:50 am
HAL-1707. In a word, no. I format all the FLURB contributions to a common shared format, aiming for something that’s pleasing to the eye and readable on the screen. Typewriter and ASCII art and whitespace flowsnakes can be interesting, sure, but those aren’t things that lie within the range that FLURB has staked out: short or medium length SF stories with something odd and literary about them, with an occasional SF poem thrown in—and once in a while an image.
September 27th, 2009 at 10:17 am
Kadrey’s “Trembling Blue Stars” makes me want to put on my Yuri Gagarian T-shirt.
March 19th, 2010 at 9:39 am
Since I loved Guffey’s recent story “Ticks” so much, I just had to go back and re-read “The Initiation”. The strange imagery is truly compelling. More Guffey please!!!