Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
A not-so-short story for you
I published “All Change” about a year ago in Continuum Science Fiction — never really liked the new title the editor gave it (“The Gorjun is Free”), but then, “All Change” kinda sucks, too.
Here’s the story. It’s a bit under 5K words . . . not exactly a quickie, but some folks like longer tales.
There’s a bit of history to this one. I’ve long been a fan of Robert Silverberg’s Beyond Control, a collection which included contributions from Silverberg, Asimov, Bester, Carr, Dick, and Blish. If you can find it, buy it. When I wrote “All Change”, I wanted to capture the same all-hell-breaking-loose atmosphere of those stories.
This is also the story that a Certain Someone over at Writer’s BBS thought would be great as a screenplay. He knew how to write screenplays and I didn’t, so we decided to collaborate. One month later, Certain Someone and I were no longer on speaking terms, and my muse froze me out for weeks.
Enough of that. I have something else in store for you tonight.
D.
Hell of a good story, Douglas. It reminds me of another story, but one that is only half-remembered, one that I’ve absorbed into the subconcious underpinnings, so it’s like this story reminds me of me.
As for the title, I don’t like either, but I don’t know what I’d have called it. Maybe just ‘The Gorjun’? Eh, maybe not.