The Gorjun is . . . um . . . riding a giant vibrator?

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Boo-yah (or, as my ten-year-old says whenever he wins a game of chess*, “Huzzah!”) My first non-electronic publication, which is to say PRINT publication, is in PRINT, in Continuum Science Fiction, a PRINT science fiction magazine.

“The Gorjun is Free” is a story about a dysfunctional family, an alien artifact that looks like speckled poop, and several not-so-random changes to the fundamental constants of the universe. Former title, “All Change”, which no one liked but me.

So I’m leafing through, admiring the speckled poop illustration**, when I noticed this eye-popping breach of Strunk and White:

Like any true wonder, I couldn’t take my eyes away.

The opening phrase refers not to the sentence’s subject, but to the object of the narrator’s gaze. Well, you can bet I’m not going to read any further.

Other neat stuff: Editor Bill Rupp put my story first, wham, right there on page 2. In the table of contents, my story and byline are in larger font than the other stories. You would think I had a hand in the editing.

*Yes, we are all geeks in the Hoffman household.

**In fairness, I did describe the artifact that way . . . but, did the artist have to take me so seriously?

Walnut, November 21, 2005. Category: Writer's Life.