canny granny

Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure

Can you describe your life in six words?

Your whole life, what’s gone down before, the good, the bad and the boring, your future hopes and dreams all wrapped up in six little words. Go on. Give it a go. I dare you.

Stumped? There are 800 six-word memoirs in this little book. Some are more like epitaphs and I don’t know about you but I don’t want to think of my own epitaph, thanks very much. It inspired me to ask what others might write for their own.

I asked some people on the bus, but they weren’t much help and mostly looked at me as if I were a bit dippy, however, you, gentle reader, you have time to come up with your own, totally oblivious to the gaze of passing strangers.

Here are a few examples …

• Hope my obituary spells “debonair” correctly
• Took different road, never got there
• Wasn’t born a redhead; fixed that

Can you condense your own life into six words? If you can, let me know. The best one gets 500 EC points or 300 BE credits.

The story of Cinderella has been haunting me. A few days back I posted Fairy Tale, a story from Gardner Dozois which showed the commonplace basis of the gothic tale.

But from childhood I always knew it was a horror story and some clever person has shown me just how right I was.

cinderella

Today, something very different. Totally different. A fairy story from Gardner Dozois.

Dozois was the editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine for twenty years and is the editor of the annual anthology series The Year’s Best Science Fiction. He has written or edited more than eighty books, won thirteen Hugo Awards as the year’s Best Editor, and two Nebula Awards for his own short fiction.

Go here to read Dozois’ Fairy Tale

It wasn’t a village, as is sometimes said these days, when we’ve forgotten just how small the old world was.

More of his short fiction can be found online at Asimov’s Science Fiction.