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Showing posts from December 15, 2019

GOD IN THE MACHINE

This freebie story was originally written as one of my 850 word stories for Nature.  I was told that it was too complex for that length and believed that was right, so I wrote this version without worrying about length. But the SF magazines, the only places such a thing could ever be published, found it too complex.  So here it is.                                            GOD IN THE MACHINE                                                 by Norman Spinrad It was never going to happen for the right reason, so I had to agree to do it as low farce, and it would turn me into a public laughing stock if I failed.  There were those of my former colleagues who were already convinced that Emile Blanchard had already sold his soul to the devil who did not exist, by joining the holy-rolling neo-Luddites against the one they believed the devotees of the Singularity were creating if they hadn’t done so already. But the truth of it was that neither I nor the Christian Crusade Against Merlin

EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS SEE THE LIGHT?

EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS SEE THE LIGHT? Read it on Christianity Today:                      by Marc Galli In our founding documents, Billy Graham explains that  Christianity Today  will help evangelical Christians interpret the news in a manner that reflects their faith. The impeachment of Donald Trump is a significant event in the story of our republic. It requires comment. The typical CT approach is to stay above the fray and allow Christians with different political convictions to make their arguments in the public square, to encourage all to pursue justice according to their convictions and treat their political opposition as charitably as possible. We want CT to be a place that welcomes Christians from across the political spectrum, and reminds everyone that politics is not the end and purpose of our being. We take pride in the fact, for instance, that politics does not dominate our homepage. That said, we do feel it necessary from time to time to make our own opinions on

THE SLOW DEATH OF THE ENGLISH SHORT STORY

Here is another freebie short story, A GAME OF TELEPHONE.  I just had the impulse to write it without thinking where to submit it. There seem to be only 3, science fiction magazines left, a couple of crime magazines, and The New Yorker. The only offline paper magazines regularly publishing short stories of any kind.  And what I had written  just for the fun of it was not science fiction or fantasy or a crime story. So I had no choice but to submit it to The New Yorker, not really believing they would buy it, which they didn't. So there was no place left to send it, and I let it lay until I got the idea of posting stories on  NORMAN SPINRAD AT LARGE as free one time non exclusive gifts, if you can sell a story to a magazine that counts because so few are left, let it at least let be read here while not giving away first exclusive publishing rights.  So here it is.  Reading it again, I rĂ©alise it would make very cool half-hour radio play.  But alas, that also seems to be a dying f
                            CITIZENS OF THE WORLD The more I work to fully create NORMAN SPINRAD AT LARGE the more possibilities I discover but nothing I've found or realized is greater, more potentially revolutionary in the best possible sense. Flip down the sidebar to "Translation" and go to "choose language." Down pops a choice of about 140 languages. Choose one click it, and the entire web site translates into it in something like a minutes Up top is a box that lets you go back to the original English. Meaning that virtually anyone anywhere can read anything in NORMAN SPINRAD AT LARGE in their own language as long as they're on the site.  Next time you come back it reverts to English.  But I've discovered a bit more.  If you translate the website to another language you can cut and paste, say the free story below,  THE HELPING HAND, you can keep it someplace in your computer in the translated language. As I think you will see when you rea