The prolific Ahmed Khan has just released the list of stories appearing in one of his upcoming anthologies, Fun Times in Strange Lands.

I was pleased to see that “Hounding Manny” made the grade for this anthology, which is aimed at “precocious” 10-12 year olds who enjoy speculative fiction. Fully illustrated too, which is cool.

“Hounding Manny” is a reprint of a story originally published in Oceans of the Mind. You can find “Hounding Manny” here. Bonus points if you spot the inspiration for the title character. Come on it’s easy!

I’m starting to get excited about the release of MARVELLOUS HAIRY, and I found this round-up of quotes about, and relating to, the publisher, Crossing Chaos Enigmatic Ink (CC). I particularly liked this one from Tom Bradley, and why he describes CC as “The Enigmatic Polygeneration”:

“The envy inspired by exquisitely smooth foreheads and cheeks; the superciliousness engendered by wrinkles and arthritic gaits; the mutual revulsion that results in commingling the disparate B.O.s of maturity and im-; the disharmony of voices cracked with senectitude and late teen hormones; the ambiguous eros ignited when the androgyne grace of late adolescence rubs against grizzled moobs; the subcortical whiffs of the Freudian family-disease that obtrude on every animal awareness when figures substitutable for parent and spawn rub elbows, when personal encounters take place among people separable by more than a sibling’s number of years — none of this signifies through the hermetic medium of the internet.”

Tom Bradley, at 3A Magazine.

Warning: while this post may be about comedy, don’t expect it to be comic.

I would consider the quote “comedy is tragedy plus time” an old saw, but it’s still an interesting idea. Could every tragedy become funny, given enough time? The British comedian David Mitchell seems to think so. (I’ll link to his video rant, which tries to explain why Vikings raping and pillaging in the Dark Ages is funny, but the Soviet takeover of Berlin in 1945 isn’t yet, below.)

The quote should really be, tragedy plus time allows comedy. Depending on how you portray events, you can still achieve either a laugh or tears, and sometimes both. That’s what art is all about, right? But can you imagine taking a scene say, Schindler’s List, and turning that into a rip-roaring farce? Wait, no! Don’t even try to imagine it, because, as they say in another cliché: “it’s too soon. ” You can make jokes about Nazis (not much fun in Stalingrad), but please, no jokes about their atrocities. Personally, genocide strikes me as one of those events that is impossible to turn into comedy, no matter how long ago it happened. (But perhaps I’m not really trying. Maybe there is some good humor to be had in the Church’s elimination of the Cathars, for example.)

Read the rest of this post at The Skwib …>

I have another 100-word tale up at Name Your Tale, “The Chair That Sat Back”.

There is a new Storyblogging Carnival available at Back of the Envelope, and one of the stories there is a real gem: The Terrible Day I Met Bruce Campbell (as told by the World’s Strongest Librarian).

And it’s a bit behind the times, but the Annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest recently announced the winners and dishonorable mentions here.

Some of the latter:

Detective Fiction:

The dame sauntered silently into Rocco’s office, but she didn’t need to speak; the blood-soaked gown hugging her ample curves said it all: “I am a shipping heiress whose second husband was just murdered by Albanian assassins trying to blackmail me for my rare opal collection,” or maybe, “Do you know a good dry cleaner?” (Tony Alfieri, Los Angeles, CA)

It was a quarter ’til eight in the ninth precinct when I got the call of a possible two-eleven at a nearby Seven-Eleven that turned out to be just a four-fifteen–that is until my number two from the ninth discovered the one-eight-seven under the Tenth Street Bridge, some two-bit mob soldier with a blossom of five .357’s right in the ten-ring. (Jeff Riley, Fort Worth, TX)

Science Fiction:

George scratched his head in abject puzzlement as he tried to figure out where he’d parked the rocket this time in the 100-acre parking lot of Nallmart 75B, but then he remembered that a ship-boy had taken his DNA key-but which one, the kelly toned humanoid or the atmosphere-of-Rylak-hued android; scanning the horizon, he at last turned to Babs and asked “how green was my valet”? (Leigh A. Smith, New Douglas, IL)

And the winner of the Fantasy category:

A quest is not to be undertaken lightly–or at all!–pondered Hlothgar, Thrag of the Western Boglands, son of Glothar, nephew of Garthol, known far and wide as Skull Dunker, as he wielded his chesty stallion Hralgoth through the ever-darkening Thlargwood, beyond which, if he survived its horrors and if Hroglath the royal spittle reader spoke true, his destiny awaited–all this though his years numbered but fourteen. (Stuart Greenman, Seattle, WA)

Thanks to LittleNelly for the pic.