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Don’t Hitchhike
© Tue, 23 Sep 2008 Kevin McGehee Completed Thu, 15 Jan 2009
6 comments
McGehee's Fiction Projects | Fiction | Short Stories
UPDATE: I’ve consolidated this story in this one post, since it’s the one that’s received actual reader comments.
I wrote this story—or more accurately, the story this version is based on—years ago, and did actually have it posted on the web for a while. In retrospect the ending was beyond suspension-of-disbelief design specs, and OSHA should have closed it down.
By the way, alert readers might think they can figure out, based on physical descriptions, where “Clearwater” is. It’s true I may borrow from the physical environments of real places to describe the settings of my stories, but the people and events are entirely my own invention and are not meant to reflect on the actual residents of real places.
Except California, if it makes them look bad or weird. Because, I mean, come on…
It was a hell of a place to be afoot, out in the middle of the desert, a hundred miles from anywhere, walking along a stretch of two-lane highway where you were more likely to be bowled over by a galloping pronghorn than see a passing vehicle.
And if a car or truck did come along it would be just my luck if it was somebody from Clearwater who’d recognize me, hit the gas, and blow on by. The moral of that story is, step soft sometimes or you’ll curdle that milk of human kindness that just might save your life. A man could die walking across Little’s Empty, which is what people call this wide-open tract of nothing. I was facing a long hike in work boots, blue jeans and a T-shirt. No hat to keep the sun off, just a dirty red bandanna for a sweatband. My worn, shabby old gym bag wasn’t big enough for more than two changes of clothes and anyway I’d figured to ride my Harley the whole way home from Little Springs (named after the same guy as the desert, and if I owned this much desert I’d damn sure own the springs too) in three hours at most. Damn machine gave out on me halfway between, and now I’d been walking for an hour, the hot sun blazing down on me from a cloudless sky, burning the back of my neck as I trudged on northward.
My feet hurt like hell, but if I heard somebody coming I suppressed the urge to limp.
Pandæmonium
© Mon, 20 Oct 2008 Kevin McGehee Completed Tue, 16 Dec 2008
4 comments
McGehee's Fiction Projects | Fiction | Short Stories
The place was called “Pandæmonium,” with that funny A-E-melted-together thing that’s supposed to mean something more than just noise and chaos. In this case I suppose the “something more” would be sex and booze, and probably drugs. Also probably a virus if you weren’t careful.
Dark Heart
© Wed, 13 Feb 2008 Kevin McGehee In Progress, last updated Tue, 16 Dec 2008
6 comments
McGehee's Fiction Projects | Fiction | Short Stories
An idea for a story can come to me in any number of ways. For this one, I thought about supernovas, and how it might be desirable in a future, spacefaring era, to be able to tell when one is going to go off.
Well, how do you tell when one is about to go off? You have to study them to learn these kinds of things, right?
And when you’re watching all the potential supernovas relatively close to human settlement, and you can’t learn anything more from them until one goes off and potentially causes trouble for people in the neighborhood, you might want to expand the number of stars you’re watching so you can gather more data and make your forecasts more accurate before they’re needed closer to home. And that’s where these folks come in.
Inorganism
© Fri, 14 Sep 2007 Kevin McGehee In Progress, last updated Sun, 16 Dec 2007
McGehee's Fiction Projects | Fiction | Short Stories
Having recently seen I, Robot, I’ve been inspired to write something based on what I see as a more likely evolution of existing technology—one in which robots as conceived by Asimov don’t quite exist. Advanced cyberservants are inevitable, but I see them more likely to be extensions of the persons they serve rather than as potentially distinct entities that just happen to be manufactured. The close integration between the organic source identity and the inorganic extended identity is what will blur the line between “created” life and its “manufactured” image.
As far as I know, Asimov never really integrated the concept of nanotech into his robot stories, and though it played a role in the movie its full potential wasn’t explored. Certainly I’d rather my robots were linked to me than to the robots’ version of Microsoft. “Three Laws Safe” would work better that way, I think.
Medicine Mountain
© Sat, 30 Jun 2007 Kevin McGehee In Progress, last updated Sat, 30 Jun 2007
McGehee's Fiction Projects | Fiction | Short Stories
I’ve used this opening sequence in previous story attempts, but finally decided that having the story told from the point of view of a policeman who didn’t even know the victim well, wasn’t the way to go. The victim’s brother, however, was enough of a screw-up that it might make for a more interesting tale, and one in which I could take a freer hand with the ways and means.
By the way, one of the 5 Hat cowboys mentioned in this piece was named Calhoun in the unsuccessful short story that inspired it. I suppose it’s possible he or one of his descendants returned after 1879. One of these days I should try that story again—only, you know, better.
Update, August 26, 2007: I just dug up the hard copy of the original submission of the 5 Hat short story mentioned above; I might just be able to take a crack at telling this story again, in a way that people would actually want to read it.
Wash & Zoë‘s Wedding
© Sun, 26 Mar 2006 Kevin McGehee Completed Sun, 26 Mar 2006
McGehee's Fiction Projects | Fiction | Short Stories
Prior to the release of Serenity, the studio-hosted Browncoats website hosted a number of contests, including one calling for fans’ versions of the vows said by Zoë and Wash when they were married. I couldn’t settle for merely writing vows—I had to write the whole scene.
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