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Sunday, April 22, 2012

Sci-fi short story, By Pain Possessed, now live on Kindle Direct

I once took a creative writing course at the University of Kansas from that master writer of classical science fiction, James Gunn. By Pain Possessed was one of my efforts for that class and he was favorable to it, and actually suggested the last paragraph. Gunn was really a very good teacher. He explained point of view in a way that suddenly made it come alive for me. He was stern with his criticism, but fair. I remember him criticizing one young man's story: "A drunk bemoaning his fate is really boring." According to the Wikipedia, he is still living and in Kansas City. I wonder what he thinks of this whole epublishing phenomena. He was very business-like when it came to writing: you wrote to get published and you got published to make some money. I remember when I took his class I was one of the older students. He was then working on, and would read to us, segments from a novel about the changing of the millennium. 2001 was not far off. After he read one segment, I raised my hand, and noted that it seemed he had forgotten that the new year does not come to the entire world at the same time, but according to time segments. His face blanched, I mean white. He was, I believe, aghast that such a simple scientific fact had escaped him. That novel, which I believe was called "The Millennium Blues" factors in that time-change reality.

James Gunn's Wikipedia reference is here:


He was a master of the craft and I was lucky to have had the opportunity to learn from him. If you are interested in classical science fiction, I encourage you to encounter him as well.



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