The. Shortest. Fiction.
January 10, 2012 12:07 PM   Subscribe

For those of us with really short attention spans.
posted by nospecialfx (19 comments total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
As I clicked through page after page of images on Corbis.com I wondered what turn had lead my once-promising creative career to this new low.
posted by nathancaswell at 12:11 PM on January 10, 2012


tl;dr
posted by lalochezia at 12:15 PM on January 10, 2012 [1 favorite]


tl;dr
posted by Floydd at 12:17 PM on January 10, 2012


I love postcard fiction, and there is some decent stuff on there, but nothing beats Hemingway's flash fiction: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."*

*May not have actually been written by Hemingway.
posted by asnider at 12:17 PM on January 10, 2012 [2 favorites]


I love those images on the main page where the words just fade out the way my attention does when I start reading stuff.
posted by aubilenon at 12:17 PM on January 10, 2012 [1 favorite]


Man, is 100 Words still going? Maybe I'll do February.
posted by Decani at 12:19 PM on January 10, 2012




People with short attention spans are also easily distracted by vibrant images. Thanks for making it even more difficult to read. And making me feel like an even worse reader.
posted by LoudMusic at 1:11 PM on January 10, 2012


The last man on earth sat in his room. Suddenly there was a knock on the door.

Not the shortest science fiction story ever told.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:02 PM on January 10, 2012


The last man on earth sat in his room. Suddenly there was a knock on the door.

That's when the last woman on Earth entered. And thus began the final letter to Penthouse Forum in the history of the world.
posted by asnider at 2:09 PM on January 10, 2012 [1 favorite]


Time ended. Yesterday.

(Sorry, don't recall the author. Delaney?)
posted by SPrintF at 5:51 PM on January 10, 2012


When he woke up, the dinosaur was still there. (or something like that, the shortest SF story)
posted by dhruva at 6:03 PM on January 10, 2012


The Shortest Sci-Fi

"This device has the capability of totally altering reality, if it hasn't already", said the iguana.

The glitch in the time machine became obvious well before his multiples filled the room.

"Based on my research, I don't think we should ever attempt to contact the beings on this planet". (version one: said the Earth scientist, version two: said the scientist about Earth)
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:30 PM on January 10, 2012


MartinWisse: "The last man on earth sat in his room. Suddenly there was a knock on the door. "

Ah, that's explicitly referenced in one of the stories in the SF collection, but I don't have it to hand, unfortunately.
posted by Chrysostom at 6:44 PM on January 10, 2012


I clicked on the link, saw "shortest fiction" in the titlebar while the page was loading it's white & black stripes, realized what it was, that I'd seen it before a couple years back, wasn't interested, and hit the back button before any text had actually rendered yet on the page.

True story.
posted by lastobelus at 2:20 AM on January 11, 2012


There once was a man from Hong Kong,
For whom limericks were much too long.
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 2:56 AM on January 11, 2012


ts;dr
posted by marsha56 at 3:58 AM on January 11, 2012 [1 favorite]


Yes, indeed.
posted by Scattercat at 12:23 PM on January 11, 2012


I do love short short fiction, and flash fiction, bang zoom, in and out fast. Obviously it's not worth a flip if it's not carried off but when it is carried off, when a writer can tell a story in xxx amount of words, it's great.

In so many collection so short stories, the stories are long/too long maybe, and only upon really digging into them do I find that I maybe wish I'd not spent that time with them, but flash fiction, hey, if it blows, I'm out ten minutes or fifteen maybe.
posted by dancestoblue at 2:14 PM on January 11, 2012


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