Traveling In Space

How many planets are there in our solar system?

Do you know?

We ask the question, because the question is asked– and tentatively answered– in our new feature short story, “Hey Mr. Tombaugh Won’t You Name a Star for Me” by Zach Smith. Whether you answer the question eight or nine might depend upon what year you were in school– a question of time. Any question involving space, as this story does, also gets us thinking about the question and meaning of time: our own, and maybe that of the universe itself.

Anyway, the story is an unusual one– science fiction and science fact. Zach Smith is a unique writer, with the gift of writing with clarity but also intelligence and meaning. We can safely say there’s no writer out there quite like him, nor so consistently worth reading– if you wish to expand your boundaries, your sense of time and space, as you escape for a few minutes the hectic pace of life, and jump into that alternate universe known as a short story–

I’ve been waiting for you for a long time, said Xarlox, as he reached out a beam of energy, that by a certain definition could be described as a hand, toward the probe.

Atmospheric Pop

Pop Lit Fiction

WE NOW have a second example of actual creative writing up at our new Fast Pop Lit site– “What Happened at Drake’s” by aptly named Lukas Tallent.

The idea: presenting an aesthetic of mood and style. We believe this short fictional piece accomplishes that: Drinks, a restaurant, nighttime.

Click on and plunge in.

There were fireworks in their eyes, and smoke from their mouths hovered visibly in the room. They both had drinks, brightly-colored and in tall fizzy glasses. He was talking to her, and she was leaning forward, her arms on the table, taken it seemed. The others in the bar were lost in their own dramas and excuses and relaxers and sports games. . . .

>> << >> <<

PETITION UPDATE: We’re over the 900 mark with the “Save the Writer!” petition calling for labeling of AI-generated bot books. Not bad for an effort backed by no big names or established institutions. The signers: everyday writers and artists. Those who’ll be most harmed by the mad rush of tech plutocrats to disrupt the arts.

Crazy New Fiction

Pop Lit Fiction

While we have much going on with this project, including a petition against Artificial Intelligence and the beginnings of a new site designed to compete with this one, today we provide an interlude with an entertaining new short story: “Yak… Yak… Yak…” by David Sheskin.

We asked ourselves: “Can we find a short story unpredictable enough in every aspect of its plot that no chatbot could ever copy, preempt or prompt it?”

As we were pondering this, David Sheskin’s story appeared in our Inbox.

We can’t give away too much, other than the story is mostly– though not exclusively– set in a classroom, and involves a college professor.

Is it an accurate depiction of college professors?

We’ve known some eccentric ones, so we won’t ponder that. We only hope you read the story and enjoy it.

It is hard for me to imagine how they can be so bold. Both of them are barely passing my course and today I am discussing linear equations, a topic I have promised will be dealt with in detail on the next test. But somehow these two don’t care. Or perhaps they do, and the reason they continue to chatter is that they share a common delusion — that certain college professors, specifically one Vernon Yam, don’t give ladies who attend class anything below a C in their course, even if the parties in question happen to be babblers.

New York City Fiction

Pop Lit Fiction

TODAY we offer a slice of New York City, via a very cool and quick short story, “Unstuck” by Kate Faigen.

The so-called Big Apple remains one of the most fascinating cities on the planet due to a host of characters all jammed together amid shops, skyscrapers, subways, mad traffic, culture, parks, and a smattering of confused sightseers overwhelmed by the experience.

GRANTED, not enough New York, or at least Manhattan, writers have signed the petition to “Save the Writer” from the onslaught of chatbots– the Bronx is better represented than Manhattan!– and our eventual plan is to move the center of American literary culture outside the city of concrete canyons. Nonetheless we present a classic-style tale, a yarn, the kind of quirky narrative told around a campfire– or under a streetlamp to enthralled listeners in urban neighborhoods like those in the Bronx– and we trust you’ll like it.

Today in Central Park I clocked the fourteenth weirdest thing I’d seen all day, which is no small title. A man rolled his eyes so hard that they got stuck. Right up there toward the sky like a rocket frozen in launch.

XXX

BY THE WAY, if you care or dare to sign the aforementioned petition, you can do it here. We thank you and thank everyone else who’ve appended a name or pseudonym or gone anonymous on the list to help protect writers and inform readers about plutocrat-enriching electricity-draining botbooks.

Human Fiction

Pop Lit Fiction

WITH IMMENSE CHANGE happening or about to happen at all levels of the literary and publishing worlds with the advent of A.I.-generated texts, at New Pop Lit we’re thinking about what’s important in our modest project. What do we wish to say or accomplish in coming months?

MOST IMPORTANT for us is the ideal of human creativity. Publishing the very best fiction and poetry– which we’ve been doing– while exploring new ideas of deep learning of human beings instead of deep learning of machines. Ideas counter to those of plutocrats pumping billions of dollars into ever-more advanced, ever-more insane technologies.

OUR LATEST example of excellent fiction not generated by bots is our new feature, “The View from a Window of the House on the Embankment” by Mark Marchenko. A story about the old Soviet Union– its author calls it “an alternative history fiction piece”– but maybe also a story about today. We hope you like it.

When the knock came at the door, Georgy was standing with his hands at the windowsill, gazing out of the window. Grey sky hung over Moscow. Before his eyes was ground covered with autumn splashes of orange and red, the square that was named after Repin (it was in 1958 when the monument to Ilya Repin, a Russian realist painter, was built on Bolotnaya Square; in 1962 the square was renamed Repin Square) just a couple of months ago, withered grass awaiting the first snow, a band of water, and the walls of the Kremlin. A river, slow, almost black, under his feet.

XXXX

(ALSO, the “Save the Writer!” petition calling for labeling of A.I.-generated books– a modest ask– is ongoing. Please read and consider signing. 441 readers and writers have done so to date. Thanks!)

All About Poets

Pop Lit Fiction

SAN FRANCISCO!

–a long-time center of America’s poetry scene, filled with memories of legendary poets Kenneth Rexroth, Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and so many others– and legendary poetry readings such as the one at Six Gallery.

TODAY we have a feature story set in San Francisco, about poets: “My Poet Friend” by San Francisco writer-poet William Taylor Jr. A story of atmosphere and humor centered around one poet in particular, who is– like so many practitioners of the poetic art– a character.

More, it’s a story about the lives of struggling writers. Many of us struggle for years and never “make it”– but writing is not about making it. Being an artist of any kind is about the mad pursuit and the lifestyle and the experience. Creating and sharing those creations, and in turn, experiencing the works– the sounds, images, words– of others. Always learning, opening brain pathways, developing spiritually, hopefully, while experiencing more vitally and viscerally than many the echoes of life. Falling short in our artistry, maybe, but leaving behind some legacy or trace we were here, or at least leaving our carcass on the slopes of the artistic mountain we were trying to climb.

Anyone having met writers both high and low knows the more authentic version is the poet friend found in William Taylor’s entertaining story.

My poet friend returned to the bar and we drank in silence, looking at the girls and wrestling with our existential dread. The Revolutionary Poets got louder and drunker as the night went on, their table crowded with half-empty pitchers of beer as they argued about poetry and politics. Linda was standing now, swaying a bit as she drove her points home, wine sloshing out of her glass.

New Fiction 2023

Pop Lit Fiction

ALREADY one month into the New Year and we finally put our first fiction feature up at our site. (A sign of our selectivity? The benefits of waiting?)

The story is “Glow Worm Farm” by Kathy Lanzarotti. One of the rare stories where both NPL editors not only agreed on the selection, but 100% agreed, in that we’d both give it scores of 10 out of 10. The question: Why?

Perhaps because it’s a template for an ideal short story circa 2023, when the task is to make the art form relevant and compelling. The story has it all– acknowledgment of the madness of today’s world, including the future of that world (robots)– with swipes at media and consumerism– with no shying away from politics, in highlighting violent aspects of the current extremist political landscape. Ostensibly set three years into the future, the tale makes the reader realize that future is here. The story contains also, amid the madness, an embrace of the natural, the living. That which gives life meaning. We’ve run a series of topical stories of late– as well as stories with great sensibility and emotion. “Glow Worm Farm” scores on both counts.

Topicality and emotion: a powerful combination. Must reading for anyone interested in where short fiction is now, and where it’s going. Where it should be going.

When the National Guard arrived, most of the neighbors were outside. Sarah watched them trade rumors from the nutshell of her porch swing. Mayberry on her lap. A cup of cinnamon coffee in her green mug that read, I’m a Ray Of Fucking Sunshine. Rumors and speculation was all anyone had at that point. The WiFi and cell service, TV and radio, stopped with the blast. Sarah was no scientist but she’d watched enough movies to know this wasn’t a good sign. And then there was the sky, cast a hazy pink orange that was both light and dark at the same time.

Fiction Finale 2022

Pop Lit Fiction

THIS HAS BEEN an excellent year for us in terms of fiction, maybe our best. The goal for 2023 will be to top it.

This year we close with an amazing story from Nick Gallup, who consistently has given us amazing work, in part from a clear writing style and in part from a knowledge of people, combined with a sense of structure– setting up on the front end what will happen on the back end. As he does with “The Stenographer,” which is about history but also about today. Very much about today. Presented in an understated yet dramatic way.

For anyone who loves the short story and enjoys reading.

Mom told me that one of the things she regretted about her college years was she hadn’t taken stenography and typing before enrolling. Stenography, she explained, would’ve been an asset for taking notes during lectures. Typing, in turn, would have been a boon for preparing term-papers, as it was her experience that typed term papers received higher grades than those written even in the best cursive. Made sense to me, so I let her talk me into taking a secretarial course at night while I worked during the day.

XXXX

ALSO: Watch for our FUN POP POETRY Special Edition, soon available at our POP SHOP.

Art and the Actual World

Pop Lit Fiction

INSTITUTIONS MOVE SLOWLY, including those of the established literary world, while super-plutocrats like Elon Musk are able to move at lightning speed. Coming technological changes are upon us designed to make the human animal, including writers and artists, obsolete.

HOW do we oppose this?

For starters, with better art– art which emphasizes humans and the human and our interactions with the natural world around us.

WE HAVE such example in our new feature story, “The Slow Pace of Pardon” by Christopher Laurence, set in a cabin in the woods, concerning possible wolves, a dog, a family, a mysterious reappearance, and unwanted interlopers. Atmospheric and well-written– making for terrific reading.

“So, looks like this’s what’s been making those tracks.” he thought. He felt a kind of relief knowing he could remove from his deposit of worries the vision of a rabid, snarling wolf bounding up his path. It was just a poor dog some sad bastard must have let free at the start of winter, when he decided he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, be feeding it anymore. He could tell it was thin, and hunger must have finally forced it to put fear aside and come out into the open, where its energy failed it finally, and dropped it on their doorstep.

XXXX

IN THE NEW YEAR we intend to do more to forestall our replacement by artificial devices concocted by diabolical billionaires bent on constructing an artificial cyber world of robots, brain implants, fake realities and other nightmares.

ALSO: Speaking of real-world reality, we’ll be releasing within days an alternate version of our latest “zeen” print publication. We’re calling it Fun Pop Poetry Special Edition. The zeen is a mere sample of what we’re gearing up to achieve: actual custom-made publications with countless combinations of colors and styles, to fit the reader’s personality. Is any other publisher large or small offering this? (Are any even imagining such a thing?) We’re determined to lead the world in literary innovation.

The Pop Mission

Pop Lit Fiction

AS WE enter the dwindling days of 2022, our thoughts turn toward our plans for the new year. Fresh ideas geared toward grabbing increased territory on the literary map. WHILE we’re not sure exactly how to accomplish that, beyond rough notes on strategy and tactics, we know that by necessity it means reliance on literary POP– readable writing which has clarity and intelligence. Toward that end we feature writers able to achieve that elusive mix. One of them being Bud Sturguess, whose new story– “No Romance On Mount Nebo”— we spotlight now. We hope you like it.

As friends will often do with friends, my friends decided it was time for me to hop back into the dating scene. I had no interest, but romance and relationships are among the things friends push on friends the most. Even more than narcotics. I’ve no statistics to back up this claim, but it seems to me friends are always selling friends the outlandish claim that “there’s somebody out there for everybody.”