Blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah.
posted on May 16, 2008 - View this thread

In 1974 - or 1976, depending who you ask - Armistead Maupin began writing "an extended love letter to a magical San Francisco” in the form of a serialized, fictional drama published originally in the Pacific Sun, the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco Examiner, originally called "The Serial" which then became collectively known as Tales of The City. It is a suprisingly beautiful, deep, emotional, cosmopolitan and lasting tale about life in San Francisco in the turbulent, heady days of the 1970s and 1980s. Widely credited with and cherished for helping spread a little of the openess, tolerance and acceptance that San Francisco is now famous for. It then became a series of books - Tales of the City, More Tales of the City, Further Tales of the City, Babycakes, Significant Others, Sure of You - and lastly, the spin-off tale of Michael Tolliver Lives. Almost exactly twenty years after first publishing, it then became an excellent miniseries from the United Kingdom's Channel 4, which aired in the United States on PBS, but not without protest or limitations.
posted on May 4, 2008 - View this thread

Paulo in London asks musicians to write him a story on an index card.
posted on Apr 15, 2008 - View this thread

Over 2000 classic tales and fables including Aesop's Fables, Bulfinch's Mythology, Indian "Why" Stories, tales by Oscar Wilde, Beatrix Potter, Rudyard Kipling, Louisa May Alcott, L. Frank Baum and Harriet Beecher Stowe and stories about Abraham Lincoln, Robin Hood and Baron Munchausen. And more! The folk and fairytale collection is particularly rich, with hundreds of stories from all over the world.
posted on Apr 1, 2008 - View this thread

Best Story Ever is a series of clips featuring various celebrities -- Henry Rollins, Lewis Black, Dee Snider, Chuck D, Ron Jeremy, Bret "The Hitman" Hart, and many more -- telling their best stories. Some are lame, some are funny. But hey, what's your best story ever? (It can't be lamer than Alan Thicke's, can it?)
posted on Mar 31, 2008 - View this thread

The 21 Steps is a spy thriller short story that is told using Google Maps. [via mefi projects]
posted on Mar 20, 2008 - View this thread

Canal Zone Images is a collection of stories and images about the Panama Canal Zone. Did you know that the construction workers were paid in gold and silver ('spiggoty' dollars)? "Paper money was not used on the pay car at all. In the first place, there was always a danger of its blowing away, and in the second place paper money in the hands of negro workmen soon assumed a most unsanitary condition."
posted on Feb 25, 2008 - View this thread

The Wager: "I'll bet you that video games will never become a significant form of cultural discourse the way that novels and film have. I'll bet you that fifty years from now they'll be just as mature and well-respected as comic books are today," posits game designer Steve Gaynor. Responses and rebuttals.
posted on Feb 19, 2008 - View this thread

Kiuchi Nobuo - a Japanese airman in World War II, was captured and sent to a prison camp in the Ukraine. He tells his story with drawings.
posted on Feb 5, 2008 - View this thread

Best Buy Bodhisattva.
posted on Dec 19, 2007 - View this thread

You should read these three stories by Amy Hempel. (Oh, and maybe listen to her read, here.) While you're at it, read some of these idiosyncratic but beautifully-written stories by grammarian Gary Lutz.
posted on Jul 30, 2007 - View this thread

The world is one step closer to felix's trickle-charging story-telling bear.
posted on Jul 27, 2007 - View this thread

2BR02B is a short story by the late Kurt Vonnegut (so it goes) from 1962, brought to you now by Project Gutenberg.
posted on May 4, 2007 - View this thread

How To Talk To Girls At Parties by Neil Gaiman. Full text and reading by the author: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.
posted on Apr 18, 2007 - View this thread

The Addventures. Imagine the possibilities of an interactive web, but before Flash, before Java, before video plugins, before anything but text and graphics (and graphics take up so much bandwidth!). Addventures came out of this era, and over the years there have been quite a few (not all paths SFW) incarnations of the concept. You can even roll your own with open source. Can you find your old stories?
posted on Mar 21, 2007 - View this thread

Ficlets are extremely short stories (a maximum of 1024 characters). Other writers swoop in and write prequels and sequels to your ficlet, making interesting branching narratives a la Create Your Own Adventure.
posted on Mar 15, 2007 - View this thread

Esquire sends out 250 napkins to writers across America - from prolific novelists to those finishing off first works. Nearly a hundred respond back - from sex to frustration, poetry to twisted liaisons, even a mini book and plans for murder.
posted on Feb 27, 2007 - View this thread

"Good People": A new short story by David Foster Wallace. New to Wallace? Like "Good People"? Read "Incarnations of Burned Children", a story with a similar sense of tension and dread. Want more? Okay.
posted on Jan 31, 2007 - View this thread

Tell a story in 5 frames is a Flickr "group" and nothing more. Not every folksonomy succeeds as well as this one. "ride of your life" is a classic.
posted on Oct 13, 2006 - View this thread

Sita Sings the Blues is a feature film (in progress) combining the ancient Indian epic Ramayana, the 1920's blues vocals of Annette Hanshaw, and classically informed but modern animation. The animator wanted to envision what the Ramayana would look like told through the eyes of its much loved and much maligned female character, Sita. This is not the first time the Ramayana has been retold from Sita's perspective, Sanctuary, a play by Hema Ramakrishna is a feminist reinterpretation that has garnered a lot of controversy. Retelling the Ramayana is part of the tradition.
posted on Sep 24, 2006 - View this thread

The Girl of Your Dreams. "Jesus had a dream girl. Jesus had a girl that He wanted to marry for several thousand years. But she treated him like shit."
posted on Jan 19, 2006 - View this thread

Alexei Sayle's writing for the Independent in the Motoring section. Occasionally it's about motoring, too! Also found was his "Imitating Katherine Walker" [html/pdf] and an excerpt from his book of short stories 'Barcelona Plates'. more inside
posted on Jul 30, 2005 - View this thread

If Hemingway wrote A Visit from St. Nick. By Thurber, published all the way back in 1927.
posted on Dec 20, 2004 - View this thread

The True Story of Audion This was surprisingly interesting and funny.
posted on Nov 12, 2004 - View this thread

101 years in 101 words
posted on Oct 19, 2004 - View this thread

CRAZIEST = 311 points Scrabble can seriously affect your mental health. [Flash]
posted on Sep 22, 2004 - View this thread

Two Years Before the Mast. "In the following pages I design to give an accurate and authentic narrative of a little more than two years spent as a common sailor,before the mast, in the American merchant service. It is written out from a journal which I kept at the time, and from notes which I made of most of the events as they happened." At the beginning of his third year of Harvard a severe attack of measles interrupted Henry Dana's studies, and so affected his eyes as to preclude, for a time at least, all idea of study. The state of the family finances was not such as to permit of foreign travel in search of health. Accordingly, prompted by necessity and by a youthful love of adventure, he shipped as a common sailor in the brig, bound for the California coast.
posted on Sep 14, 2004 - View this thread

The Shore, a short-story by Richard Ford.
posted on Aug 6, 2004 - View this thread

Anacrusis is a collection of short stories. Very short stories, written under a strict length constraint. It's a perfect way to get your daily dose of weird, funny, thought-provoking fiction.
posted on Jul 8, 2004 - View this thread

Warning: this is possibly the worst story ever told. Ever wanted to know what it's like to have a beef tapeworm? (Fun fact: they're the kind that fills your whole intestinal tract!) A storyteller on The Fray helpfully clues us in to the experience of living with, and eventually destroying, his li'l parasite buddy. Don't read it if you don't want to wish for death at the end. (Blessedly, there are no photographs, though there are some toon-like illustrations.) Via Boing Boing.
posted on May 7, 2004 - View this thread

The Horror of Blimps. This is just a short ROTFL funny story about a toy blimp gone bad. Brightened my day, anyway. (Thanks, Ken.)
posted on Apr 21, 2004 - View this thread

"A wicked noblewoman presides over a decadent court of masked revelers. The most beautiful of waxen automatons is brought to life by a sorceress, her very heart hiding a deadly secret. And then love triumphs, if but for a single moment, before a sudden and terrifying finale. This is the bizarre world of The Princess of Wax".

Limned by descriptors such as "sinister", "ravishing" and "decadent", illustrated by a noted French surrealist painter, and inspired by a real-life fantastical figure, "The Princess of Wax - a Cruel Tale" (web site here), promises to be a satisfyingly twisted modern addition to the cherished fairy tale genre. More >>>
posted on Sep 15, 2003 - View this thread

"At the center of the universe is a horribly wounded angel. It is nothing anyone would call conscious, and is only in the barest, barest sense of the word still alive. If anything resembling awareness remains, that awareness consists of nothing but an infinite field of gridded black and white squares, a test pattern scattered with dancing dots that shift and jump and blur into one another. This test pattern is useful. " This piece of fiction, which appears on kuro5hin, evokes echoes of Douglas Hoftsadter (Godel, Escher, Bach) and Nancy Willard (Things Invisible To See, Sister Water , and lots of children's books) simultaneously. [more inside]
posted on Sep 13, 2003 - View this thread

Nims winter story is a beautiful, if unseasonal, Swedish animation. May not be too clever on dial up.
posted on Jun 1, 2003 - View this thread

Planetarium. A puzzle-story in 12 weekly installments.
posted on Apr 21, 2003 - View this thread

Young-hae Chang's latest, Operation Nukorea, is shattering, unflinching, and beautifully executed. It's a little tale about consequences, and what happens downstream from decisions not sufficiently considered.

It probably would have brought tears to my eyes even if I did not have family in Seoul. Watch it through to the end.
posted on Apr 18, 2003 - View this thread

Ever wanted to be an author but didn't know how to start? Here's your chance - a story already underway and waiting for you to add your contribution. [more inside]
posted on Sep 18, 2002 - View this thread

afraid to get tested? don't be. these are stories of all our HIV tests. it's always hard, but it's worth it. keep yourself safe, keep your lover safe.
posted on Dec 1, 2001 - View this thread

A friend of mine has started posting a [true] story on ThemeStream. Interesting reading (if somewhat smutty and violent). Plus, ThemeStream's royalty rate goes down soon, so read them now and help him suck even more VC money :)
posted on Sep 14, 2000 - View this thread