"Cold Talks"
(Science fiction)

I have a general rule: I don't publish my stuff on Web sites or in electronic-only publications. Not that I'll be the next Stephen King, but if I happen to strike it big, I'd hate for all my stuff to be floating around for free out there. Plus, electronic publications have nothing invested in what they publish, so they tend to publish anything. There's some truly dreadful writing out there on Web sites, often by writers with dozens of publication credits, yet they don't even understand basic grammar and proper use of punctuation. It's easy to publish an e-zine when it costs you nothing to post a story you've received.

Then again, there are many print ventures out there that aren't too far behind. But I digress.

I have published online before, with "The End of an Era," but have made it a point not to do so. Having this story appear online at The Cud is different. My friend Evan Kanarakis runs the site, and he publishes good stuff. Plus, it's the least I can do for one of the finest guys I know.

So for his annual January "All Things Lit" issue, I sent him a short-short that he used. You can read it in its entirety at http://www.thecud.com.au/live/content/cud-short-fiction-1.

Let me tell you a bit about "Cold Talks," though. This story is entirely dialog, with no narrative of any kind, not even dialog tags. It's sort of a tip of the hat to Terry Bisson, a fantastic writer who penned one of my favorite stories ever, "They're Made Out of Meat." It's also a dialog-only tale, which I read when it was originally published in OMNI magazine. (Ah, those were the days. OMNI took a daring plunge in 1996 when it went electronic-only, an idea that was way ahead of its time; sadly, the venture flopped and the magazine folded. But I'm digressing again.) The story is a conversation between an alien captain and his first officer; they've come upon Earth and are trying to figure out these strange creatures that are made entirely out of meat. I always liked how Bisson told a complete story with nothing more than dialog, and always wanted to try it. "Cold Talks" is my attempt.
 

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