Showing Tag: " fiction" (Show all posts)

EXPERIMENT IN SHORT FICTION: SUNDAY MORNING WITH AN OLD MARRIED COUPLE

Posted by John Allen Small on Friday, February 23, 2024, In : Fiction 

(Digital Art by Me!)

Still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, Nathaniel Rackham (Smoky Gulch High School Class of 1957 - Go Wombats!) stumbled into the kitchen one Sunday morning after sleeping in late and gave his wife of sixty years a peck on the cheek as she prepared breakfast. 


Allene smiled at her husband in response as she stirred the corned beef hash she was browning in the skillet. But her smile faded as she noticed the unusual expression etched upon Nathaniel’s face.


“Something wron...


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EINSTEIN, THE JETSONS AND THE VOICE OF WORLD CONTROL...

Posted by John Allen Small on Friday, July 2, 2021, In : Opinion 

“Books, young man, books!”


It’s probably not the sort of thing a lifelong science fiction nerd like Yours Truly ought to be admitting publicly. There are fellow nerds out there who will almost certainly demand that I turn in my old Buck Rogers secret decoder ring and surrender myself for interrogation by Darth Vader’s sinister Death Star probe droid once the news gets out.


I’ll just have to take my chances, I suppose. After all, I’m the guy who years ago got chased out of a Star Tre...


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"A STORY A WEEK" NO. 36: TIME ENOUGH AT LAST?

Posted by John Allen Small on Wednesday, June 4, 2014, In : A Story A Week 
(NOTE: This week's "Spohn Challenge" entry was inspired by a silly April Fool's Day article that ran in my old hometown newspaper years ago when I was a kid. That's why it is written in the form of a newspaper article.)



(From the Eureka Creek (OK) Weekly Pedestrian, May 30, 2014) 


In a move calculated to boost local tourism, industry and retail sales, neighboring Sipokni County may soon be divided into three time zones.


The Sipokni County Board of Commissioners announced the possible convers...


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"A STORY A WEEK NO. 15" - THE DALMATIAN

Posted by John Allen Small on Monday, January 6, 2014, In : A Story A Week 
(NOTE: I had this one done and ready to go on schedule last Friday, but ended up getting bogged down with stuff at work and didn't get around to posting it as planned. Then I forgot about it until this morning. So here's Entry 16 in the weekly Spohn Challenge project...)


Grandpa Charlie was taking a drive with his grandchildren one day when a firetruck zoomed past. Sitting in the front seat of the fire truck, just like you see in all the old movies, was a Dalmatian. Never having seen any of th...


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COSMIC LESSONS I HAVE LEARNED

Posted by John Allen Small on Wednesday, June 20, 2012, In : Pop Culture 

 

Somebody – it may have been one of my high school English teachers, but I can’t remember at the moment – once told me that a person can’t learn anything valuable from reading science fiction, or from watching it on television or at the movies.


Who says? 


If, indeed, my old college professor Dr. Bill Finger was correct in observing that there are lessons to be learned at every stop we may make along the way in this life, then it stands to reason that popular fiction in general – a...


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About Me


John Allen Small John A. Small is an award-winning newspaper journalist, columnist and broadcaster whose work has been honored by the Oklahoma Press Association, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press, the National Newspaper Association, and the Oklahoma Education Association. He and his wife Melissa were married in 1986; they have two sons, Joshua Orrin (born 1991) and William Ian (born 1996). Mr. Small is the News Editor and columnist for the Johnston County Capital-Democrat, a weekly newspaper headquartered in Tishomingo, OK. He obtained his nickname, "Bard of the Lesser Boulevards," from a journalism colleague - the late Phil Byrum - in recognition of the success of his popular newspaper column, "Small Talk." (In addition to the many awards the column itself has received over the years, a radio version of "Small Talk" earned an award for "Best Small Market Commentary" from the Society of Professional Journalists in 1998.) John was born in Oklahoma City in 1963; lived in the Bradley-Bourbonnais-Kankakee area of Illinois for most of the next 28 years (with brief sojourns in Texas and Athens, Greece, thrown in to break up the monotony); then returned to his native state in 1991, where he currently resides in the Tishomingo/Ravia area. He graduated from Bradley-Bourbonnais Community High School in 1981, and received his bachelor's degree in journalism from Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais in 1991. The years between high school and college were a period frought with numerous exploits and misadventures, some of which have become the stuff of legend; nobody was hurt along the way, however, which should count for something. In addition to his professional career as a journalist he has published two short story collections: "Days Gone By: Legends And Tales Of Sipokni West" (2007), a collection of western stories; and "Something In The Air" (2011), a more eclectic collection. He was also a contributor to the 2005 Locus Award-nominated science fiction anthology "Myths For The Modern Age: Philip Jose Farmer's Wold Newton Universe," edited by Win Scott Eckert. In additon he has written a stage play and a self-published cookbook; served as project editor for a book about the JFK assassination entitled "The Men On The Sixth Floor"; and has either published or posted on the Internet a number of essays, stories and poems. He has also won writing awards from the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the National Library of Poetry. He is a past president of the Johnston County Chamber of Commerce in Tishomingo; was a charter member and past president of the Johnston County Reading Council, the local literacy advocacy and "friends of the library" organization; served as Johnston County's first-ever Americans with Disabilities Act coordinator in 1994-95; served two terms as chairman of the Johnston County (OK) Democratic Party; and has taught journalism classes for local Boy Scout Merit Badge Fairs. He is a member of the New Wold Newton Meteorics Society.

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