Tag Archives: dystopia

A Science Fiction Sensation: The Nexus and Other Stories

science fiction short stories with zombies, ghosts, aliens, clonesThe Nexus and Other Stories

by Elise Abram

Aliens, ghosts, clones, zombies, vampires, nightmares come to life, teleportation…

There are more things in heaven and earth than modern man will ever know or understand.

The Nexus

They say be careful what you wish for. Meet Josef Schliemann, noted expert in pseudo-archaeology who sponsors a dig beneath a historic church in downtown Toronto. Said to have been built on a tract of land sacred to prehistoric Indigenous peoples living the in the area the secrets of the site have been lost to time. Will Josef survive when he finds the object of his desire?

 A Morgan by Any Other Name

In a future where cloning has been perfected—sort of—Rachel, a Morgan model, should have the world at her feet, but she’s not happy. What is the one thing a teenage clone desires?

At the Mere Thought Of

 What happens when your worst nightmare comes true? Businessman Crane is about to find out.

The Circle of Life

Bob wakes up the night after attending a wild rave to find he’s not himself. He wakes up, buried alive, and hungry…for flesh. 

One book, thirteen stories.

In The Nexus and Other Stories, science fiction author Elise Abram explores the myths of the modern world. When, science fiction author Elise Abram explores the myths of the modern world. When vice overcomes common sense, the results cannot be positive. Elise Abram writes from the heart, examining the beliefs and obsessions of contemporary life, speculating what might happen if the science we are toying with and/or if the creatures we glorify in our popular culture become commonplace.

Buy The Nexus and Other Stories today!

Watch “Almost Human” Instead

I don’t see many movies in the theatre anymore, mostly because there hasn’t been much that’s piqued my interest lately. But this week was my husband’s birthday and he wanted to see Chappie. I agreed so long as I could have a large bag of popcorn and a big glass of cherry-vanilla Coke, thinking I’d have Hugh Jackman to console me.

I should have put up more of a fight. Though it features Jackman and Sigourney Weaver, Chappie is B-movie fodder at it’s mediocre-best.

In a future ripped from the pages of an Almost Human script, Chappie proposes that a few years from now the Johannesburg police force will consist totally of robot automatons. Deon Wilson (Dev Patel), the man responsible for inventing them, has finished an AI program for the robots in his spare time. He steals a robot marked for demolition to test his AI program, which is, in turn, stolen by a group of street thugs who name him Chappie, turn him into a gangsta, and convince him to commit crimes.

Jackman plays the villain in the piece, an ex-soldier, jealous that his destructive behemoth of a robot design lost out to Deon’s design for mass production, who manages to shut down the entire robot force with a virus for the sole purpose of killing people by proxy with the machine. His performance, like many of the others in this movie, is one-dimensional and disappointing.

Do not pay to see Chappie in the theatre. Watch the DVD of iRobot followed by the canon of Almost Human on Shomi instead. No amount of movie-style popcorn and Coca-Cola served from one of those fancy-shmancy machines is worth it.

Literary Devices from A to Z – Brought to you by the letter C

 

 

 

 is for Conflict

 

 

 

Conflict is what drives the plot forward. It also supports character development. Without conflict there is no story, end of story.

There are generally 3 main types of conflict authors use, person vs. self, person vs. person, and person vs. society. There are other sub-types, such as person vs. machine/technology (which could be lumped into person vs. society), person vs. the Gods (which is a type of person vs. person conflict), to name a few.

Person vs. Self

Internal monologue is a hallmark of person vs. self conflict, in which a person struggles over a decision. Quite often, the character weighs the pros and cons of his/her situation in an effort to gain control of a predicament.

He brushed away a blood-soaked lock of hair from her forehead. It left behind a copper trail. Her skin was pale, her lips and cheeks inordinately red where her makeup had clung in spite of the blood that had left her. Nigel cursed himself for the situation in which he was in. Maybe if he’d let her know how he felt, things might’ve been different. If she’d only known it was he who truly loved her, not the thug that had fired the bullet that ended her life. If she’d have known, perhaps she would have declined to follow Posner to this room because she’d worry for him and what he’d think.

—Chicken or Egg: A Love Story

In this example, Nigel berates himself for not expressing his love for Paula while she was alive, a mistake he vows to correct when he travels back to a time before her death.

Person vs. Person

This type of conflict occurs when a character finds him/herself in opposition to another character. The conflict can manifest itself through dialogue, online communication, or action sequence:

He swung at her. She ducked; he clipped her on the shoulder sending her reeling. She shrugged her shoulder twice in an effort to gauge how hurt she was; seemed fine.

“We don’t have to do this, you know,” he told her.

“You should have thought of that before you threw the first punch,” she replied. She took a step forward and swung at the underside of his jaw with all the force she could muster. He intercepted the swing by grabbing her wrist. He twisted her around until he had her in a bear hug, her arms pretzeled around her midsection.

–Chicken or Egg: A Love Story

Person vs. Society

In a person vs. society conflict, a person challenges the accepted social mores of society. This frequently happens if the protagonist is an anti-hero (like Dexter Morgan of Jeff Lindsay’s Dexter series) or dystopian fiction. In “Hope Floats”, the unnamed preteen protagonist goes against society when he leaves the confines of his underground community in search of food, something only “paws”, adult males, do:

I climbed out from the rubble to feel sunshine on my face for the first time in a while, I don’t remember how long. I know how to keep time, that’s not the problem. It’s just that these days we tend to rely on the maws and paws to keep track for us. It’s their responsibility to tell us when we’ve had too much of anything. Too much sleep. Too much fun. As if I’m not old enough to figure that out on my own.

Leave your comments below. Describe a memorable conflict. What kind was it? What genre was it?

Can “Defiance” Defy the Odds?

Defiance is a combination of both a TV show and a video game

Defiance premiered on Showcase Monday night, to lukewarm reviews. I, on the other hand, rather liked the show, and will be watching further episodes. Defiance takes place 33 years after Earth is invaded by an alien ship, called The Ark, transporting seven different types of sentient beings from the same solar system. They arrive on Earth, terraform it to their liking, and now the aliens and humans are trying to co-exist in the dystopia. Defiance is the town that rose up from the ashes of St. Louis.

Julie Benz is terrific as Mayor Amanda Rosewater. She plays her with a maturity that haven’t yet seen in her other roles. Grant Bowler is Joshua Nolan, a scavenger who makes his living collecting and selling the remains of The Ark as they fall to Earth (a phenomenon known as Arkfall). He arrives in Defiance and gets into trouble defending a boy accused of murder. He gets out of trouble by agreeing to find the real murderer and winds up staying on as sheriff of the town.

Defiance may suffer from a case of trying to do too much too soon. I don’t think I’ll ever learn all of the alien species (collectively known as The Voltans), and the soap-opera style subplots pile up until the last minutes of the two hour episode. In spite of the premise’s predictability (for example, I knew Nolan would become sheriff the moment the current sheriff is killed), and inconsistencies (Why terraform a planet to rid it of its greenery when it is the greenery of the planet that makes it desireable?) I enjoyed the show due to its nod to Shakespearean archetypes. I loved the Romeo and Juliet vibe going on between the son of the Tarr family and daughter of the McCawley clan. Just as entertaining is the scene between Datak and Stahma Tarr in the tub. Upset that his son will marry a human, Datak rants that his wife will spoil his bath if she continues to talk about his son’s choice for a mate. That’s when Stahma channels her inner Lady Macbeth and convinces Datak that if the children marry and something were to happen to the girl’s father and brother, then their family would stand to inherit the McCawley business and eventually control most industry in the town. The implication is that Datak will have something to do with the death of the male McCawleys. Later, when Datak is disgusted by his son’s conformation to the human custom of giving the McCawley girl a ring as a promise to wed, Stahma calms him by suggesting the mere fact the children are engaged will be enough to prompt Papa McCawley’s demise.

Defiance is unique in that quite a bit of money and planning has went into the simultaneous release of the show and video game and (according to online sources) the hope is that watching the series will unlock hints for the game and playing the game will further endear viewers to the characters. While I won’t be playing the game any time soon (that’s just not my thing), I am looking forward to next Monday’s episode, especially in light of the cliff-hanger posed by the episode’s final moments in which former Mayor Nicky Riordan, played with sinister flare by Finnoula Flanagan, hints that there is something subversive about to happen in the near future that will change life on the planet as they know it.

I will definitely be watching; will you?

graphic from:http://www.slashgear.com/defiance-is-both-a-tv-show-and-a-video-game-08276908/#entrycontent

About the Author

Elise Abram, English teacher and former archaeologist, has been writing for as long as she can remember, but it wasn’t until she was asked to teach Writer’s Craft in 2001 that she began to write seriously. Her first novel, THE GUARDIAN was partially published as a Twitter novel a few summers back (and may be accessed at @RKLOGYprof). Nearly ten years after its inception Abram decided it was time to stop shopping around with traditional publication houses and publish PHASE SHIFT on her own.

Download PHASE SHIFT for the price of a tweet. Visit http://www.eliseabram.com, click on the button, tweet or Facebook about my novel and download it for FREE!