May Day Fiction

WHAT’S HAPPENING?

A LOT OF STORIES are happening in America right now, from coverage of overseas wars to college encampments as symbols of unrest and dissent. In our opinion the chief story in this country is the widening gulf between rich and poor in America. A wealth gap of a kind that’s never been seen, not even in the robber baron days of the late 19th century. Today’s ruthless $200 billion-and-counting robber barons, Musk, Gates, Bezos, Zuckerberg and company make the previous kind look like unambitious storekeepers.

As our newest featured fiction we have a short story which gives us a look at what’s happening, “The Unhoused Gift” by Peter R. West, via characters on both sides of the equation. The story is set in Southern California.

I have a sister who lives in California. She keeps me informed on what’s happening, has said the state is a model for what will soon enough happen in the rest of the country. (I tell her there already are increasing numbers of homeless where we live.) Rising rents and cost-of-living; more unhoused people. “Your state’s going to turn into Brazil,” I say, about a country long known for its extreme wealth gap. “It already has,” my sister replies. Anyway, please read the new story and see what you think!

Like a bird of prey, Stanley Newman swooped down the curvy road that connected his Los Angeles hilltop mansion to the sprawling city below. The grin on his face grew bigger as he listened to a news report recounting how his client had walked away from the tabloid-covered trial. Stanley used every trick he’d developed over twenty-five years of legal scheming in the often-sensational Los Angeles criminal scene to help another big fish escape the hooks of justice.

February Fiction

Pop Lit Fiction

CREATIVITY: What is it? Sometimes it’s presenting a new way of looking at things, a new angle, new viewpoints. Merging genres or mixing styles. Or contrasting, as with our new feature story– “Molasses” by Bud Sturguess— comedy and tragedy. A look at the Titan submersible disaster of 2023 and reactions to it. The story is really about: us. Humanity, with all our flaws, quirks, ambitions and foolhardiness which make us the unique– or uniquely foolish– creatures we are.

Creativity is the goal of this project. Which means offering entertainment to readers, but at the same time, varied vantage points on art, life, writing. Anyway, we hope you enjoy the story!

Whenever I heard of the Great Molasses Flood, I used to grin and think, “how do you not outrun molasses?” It must have looked like a scene from Ghostbusters II, the evil slime oozing down streets and tunnels. I mean, molasses is used as a metaphor for slowness; how could anybody fail to escape a “flood” of it? Or did big fat globs of syrup rain down from the sky and trap whoever they landed on, like a mosquito in an amber fossil?

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ON OTHER FRONTS, we hope to soon revive our Open Mic blog, with new ideas planned for it. In the meantime, we’re offering a short, energetic piece of music there by Ben Macnair: “Fat Chaffinch.” A signal of the energy which will be coming to this site.

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.

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.

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(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!)

Beyond the Boundaries

Pop Lit Fiction

THE APPEAL of science fiction is the idea of testing the outer limits of science, technology– and of the imagination. To stimulate questions of “What if?” and “What then?” At its best, sci-fi combines creativity of ideas with creativity of writing. Such is the case with our new fiction feature, “DEDCOM-204” by Courtenay Schembri Gray, one of the most talented young writers on today’s literary scene. We hope you enjoy her offering.

What is life but a series of little deaths? Those impactful, perhaps traumatic moments that take a part of us, all in preparation for our eventual big death—the one we don’t return from. I like to visit mine, from time to time; at the facility on the edge of town. Dad loves to remember his adulthood; the time before—when a firefly was a glowing bug, rather than a moment in your life preserved in a jar.

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By the way, Ms. Gray also has a poem in our newest print publication, the ultra-collectible Fun Pop Poetry. Have you purchased your copy?

Pop Summer Crescendo

Pop Lit Fiction

WE ARE putting this project this summer as much as possible into the zeitgeist the vibe the flow of angst and anger rushing on all sides around us. We’re caught in a sense of chaos. Of reality, the world, and all stability preconceived notions of comfort and sense dropping beneath us– as if the floors and earth under our feet have given way. In all likelihood the challenges we all face are temporary. Which doesn’t make them easier.

This summer we plan to have the writing– the art– we present reach a crescendo. Afterward which (we hope) the world will resume a course of peace and harmony. Setting the stage for a fun and reinvigorating pop culture revival.

FIRST UP in our literary symphony is a short story by M.C. Schmidt— “We Love You, Ringo”— ostensibly about a Beatles tribute band, but at the same time about a relationship, and maybe also, about the world we live in today. Humor combined with seriousness. We hope you enjoy it.

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ALSO when you get a chance drop into our Special Projects room on this site and check out the latest piece of quirky writing there: “Aim For the Snyder Brothers” by Bud Sturguess. With more fun stuff already posted at the blog, and more (including a collaborative project?) to follow.

Don’t miss any of it!

Chaos In America

Pop Fiction

MOST of the chaos is in our heads as the networks and social media pump images of violence, tragedy, and trauma into our heads 24/7. BUT there’s enough reality to it to concern everybody with a conscience and with half a brain in their head.

The populace is in panic.

OUR TASK as a literary site is to capture the current cultural vibe– the real one, not a watered-down and insular Manhattan-Brooklyn version.

At the moment, the strongest vibes aren’t coming from New York. They’re coming from hinterlands like Uvalde or Buffalo, where the already-unhinged have completely lost it, and the world explodes into chaos like a fictional Killtown.

Which we present in a short story, “Chaos In Killtown.” Its “3-D” multi-dimensional framework is an ideal vehicle for the expression of chaos. The narrative comes at the reader from every direction. The goal with this particular story is to be completely pop, but also to capture the hysteria of now. Does it?

The mayor sat in his riverfront mansion at an enormous table sampling yet another enormous meal. Calls came into his private phone from aides saying the city was in chaos and he had to do something.

“The city is always in chaos!” the mayor shouted back, and disconnected.

Solving the Writer’s Dilemma

Pop Lit Fiction

The Writer’s Dilemma is that there are an estimated two million novelists in America, and maybe ten million self-styled poets– with many more of both writing in English in other countries. The performers are on the verge of outnumbering the audience. Or: writers have become the audience.

THE SOLUTION

The only possible solution is to recreate the art. To construct works wholly new, to set those who write them apart from the innumerable crowd.

TOWARD THAT END we recently ran a contest for stories with two viewpoints. We present the winner of that contest now: Tom Ray. His winning story is “What He Thought Was Right.” His tale is about two Vietnam veterans, and their encounter with a World War II veteran and that veteran’s grandson. Has the clash of generations always been with us? A clash, maybe, not of generations so much as viewpoints. It’s an excellent story. We hope you’ll like it.

Harold said he served in infantry, and Art believed him. Old guys who lie about Vietnam would shut up and kind of drift off when they found out Art had been there. And Harold didn’t tell war stories that sounded like a movie script. He’d just make a few vague statements, always ending with, “I saw some bad shit over there, man.”

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At the same time, we have new work at two of our supplementary blog. At our new Special Projects blog, home of quirkier writing, we have “The Little Squirrel and the Baby Eagle” by Wred Fright. At our News blog we have a look at what we’re up to behind the scenes, with a post titled “Prototypes.”

Something for everyone!

Winners and Writers

Announcement

A QUICK ANNOUNCEMENT

FOR THOSE who haven’t heard, we have a winner in our first cash prize contest, one Tom Ray. Check out our NPL News story about it.

ON OTHER FRONTS, we’ve been using our revamped Special Projects blog for quirky writings, often of a humorous nature, as well as for sneak previews of pop lit things-to-come. Peruse our latest offering, “Sending the Dog to a Farm” by Gregg Maxwell Parker. Next up there will be amusing fiction from Wred Fright— before we move on at last to our planned collaborative novel– which should be fun!?

Plus much more.

(Art: “Organization” by Arshile Gorky.)

Fiction 2022

Pop Lit Fiction

OUR FIRST FICTION FEATURE OF THE YEAR–

–and it’s a good one, capturing the insanity of the hypertechnological world we live in now, but also structurally a terrific tale, full of unpredictability and imagination, as well as subtle humor. The story of which we speak is “The Swipe” by Michael Maiello, who is one of the finest talents on today’s writing scene. It has to do with a dating app, an image, and the world, and– we can’t say more. Read it!