Nature Future Conditional

The story behind the story: Six names for the end

Futures is very pleased to welcome back Ken Hinckley with his latest story Six names for the end. Ken first appeared in Futures when he took a trip into the Galaxy with The ostracons of Europa. When not writing stories, Ken can be found at Microsoft Research inventing the future of sensors, mobility and multi-modal interaction. You can find out more about his work at his website or by following him on Twitter. Here, Ken very kindly takes some time out to explain what inspired his new tale — as ever it pays to read the story first.

Six inspirations for the end

Back to the word mines.

Where did this story come from?

Well, if I waited for ideas to lightning-bolt from the blue, I suspect I would never write a bloody thing.

So whenever I find myself at a loss for words, I go back to the word mines — which actually take the form of a spreadsheet in my case — and find me some.

Such a practice affords quite the tonic for productivity.

A dictum regarding a certain pathetic creature.

My philosophy regarding all creative work is the following:

Don’t wait for inspiration.

Seize it by the throat and squeeze the life out of the pathetic creature.

It’s not a crime, and it suits fictive mayhem well.

The fictional combinator.

Hence, I employ a rather abstruse method to devise stories. An algorithm, if you will — albeit a lousy one in that it guarantees no particular result whatsoever.

I maintain a spreadsheet salted with Names; Settings and Locations; and Other Problematical Things. Each occupies a lovely little column of alternating 50% grey.

This is helpful for getting the mind started, since stories (so I hear) tend to feature a Character, in a Setting, with a Problem.

Then I jiggle them about, often with reckless abandon.

Out comes a combination.

And off I go.

The hard part is trusting yourself to come up with something good.

An example, as served up by my spreadsheet overlord.

For this particular exercise in wordsmithing, out came NAMES FOR. (Sometimes the entries in my Names column go a bit meta, but being a purveyor of fictions and other assorted visions of the future, I can work with that.)

My spreadsheet overlord next suggested CAROUSEL as a setting.

And as a problem, arrived THE END. A weighty one, that.

Hmmmm… Names for the end. Not too shabby for a title. Perhaps there shall be six of them. That sounds all badass and biblical, somehow. I suspect I can make it work.

And, as for ‘Carousel’, as I have three young daughters in my loving care, that offers a setting of which I have an alarmingly vast experience.

Neutron stars of storytelling.

Lately I’ve been fond of framing devices, like the titles of these mini-chapters, as a tool for achieving the prime directive of fiction:

Leave out the boring stuff.

If done well, such frames become powerful attractors that draw the reader in, the neutron stars of a highly condensed storytelling.

The relativistic distortions leave the writer free to move about at will, unstuck in time, unbounded by space.

And the things left unsaid, in the vast empty spaces in-between, leave room for the fragments of story to resonate with one another.

A hopeful apocalypse.

I must confess, I’ve never been an especial fan of the apocalyptic story.

Yet Six names for the end suggests just such an unseemly denouement.

So the challenge was to find a hopeful apocalypse.

The story starts with a feint — an opening scene intended to elicit a laugh — then several short, sharp ‘chapters’ laden with despair and shards of hope alike. Only to be followed by…

A swift gut-punch at the end.

And it wraps right back into the image of the cracked skylights from the opening scene.

I have no idea how I came up with that, beyond trusting myself to do so.

And hopefully you enjoyed it. It sure was a fun story to write.

In addition to a forthcoming story (a rather subversive piece that resides way the heck out there on the fringe, tentatively slated to appear in Interzone #265), I’m already working the word mines in search of the next one.

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