About the forum game

[admin]

The forum game has more than 3500 hits. Even counting for multiple visits by the same person, that is probably more people than read most short stories in the science fiction magazines, outside of the "big five". More players would be welcome. If you want to join in, just copy what has been written so far, hit "reply", paste, and add a word (at most two words, one of which is no more than three letters long).

[admin]

I've made a new rule...that you can add your short word earlier in the sentence. It seemed necessary for the story to make sense.

[admin]

The forum game has been dormant for a while. I'm going to shorten the thread in hopes that will encourage new blood to join in, by deleting most of the middle posts.

[Stinky93]

sorry, I kind of gave up on it. It stopped making any sense at all and seemed to be just random words.

[admin]

That may be my fault. I did some research. Since the story began as a sports story, and then developed into a story about a game of extreme sports between the Army and the Navy, I went back to a classic Army/Navy game, and opened a time portal between the two.

Westerns have three plots, sports stories only one -- the underdog comes from behind to win the championship. The big problem with this story is we haven't yet established who is the underdog.

[Brightonian]

Seeing that the story centres around a space/time fissure connecting to November 1930, I was curious if any significant events occurred around that time and found there had been a major volcanic eruption at Merapi, Indonesia. But the forum has resisted my attempts at bringing this into the story, perhaps wisely.

[admin]

Actually, I looked up the eruption on Wikipedia, and some of the names I've introduced into the story, though they sound like silly names, are actually real Merapi names.

[HAL Jr]

sorry, I kind of gave up on it. It stopped making any sense at all and seemed to be just random words.

but isnt it meant be a bit of fun?

[admin]

There is a difference between silly and fun, as the guy who wears a lampshade on his head at a party finds out.

I used to be in a lot of round robins -- stories where each writer added a page or a short chapter and then sent it on. This kind of writing was popular among both professionals and amateurs during the first two thirds of the 20th century -- there was a round robin by H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith (among others). Usually the round robins I was in would go two or three rounds, and then somebody would turn in a totally silly chapter, in which all the characters fall down a rabbit hole. I don't think any I was in ever ended, though the HPL, REH, CAS round robin not only ended, but was published.

[HAL Jr]

There is a difference between silly and fun, as the guy who wears a lampshade on his head at a party finds out.

Ah you were at that party too!

[admin]

I was the guy wearing the lampshade!

[HAL Jr]

I was the guy wearing the lampshade!

No wonder I didn't recognise you!

[admin]

Since there are just the two of us at the moment, how about we add a sentence at a time?

[HAL Jr]

Well I have increased the word count now and then.

[Stinky93]

Perhaps this would be more interesting if we entered a sentence at a time, as long as the sentence is limited to something like ten words or less. It just seems too random to me as it now stands.