Past & Future Story Challenge 2014

Glad to see entries.

Now for three statements, one of which is true:
1) I wrote 54+ entries.
2) I wrote 0 entries.
3) I wrote some of the entries, with "some" being a number that's greater than 0 but less than 54+.

Yes, one of those statements is definitely true

Just a comment, having read 20% of the entries. So far past and future are pretty well balanced. What I do notice is some in which the context (past or future) has obviously had some thought put into it and is important to the plot - and others where we're told in effect "this happens in Manchester in 1820" or "on a space station orbiting Saturn" but the plot might as well have been placed in Athens (Georgia or Greece) in 2014. I've always believed the nature of the challenge was important, so the first group is better by me. That's a personal view, of course, and all of us mark according to our own preferences. There are already some I love for the clever idea, some for the brilliant description, and what's more, some of them are not by me unless old age is taking its toll...

Well done and good luck to everyone who entered a story. I do have to say that I found this quite a challenge to write a story for.

It's called a challenge!

Well I am halfway through now and agree with what Barretthunter said. One thing I have noticed with this batch of stories is that there is an awful lot of exposition in some of the stories. I agree that the scene has to be set someho but i am a firm believer in "show don't tell." Just my thoughts.

I quote Spankingtheater in the Save The Contest forum entry:
Quote
I hope prospective authors aren't being intimidated by thinking their stories need to be historically accurate or exhibit some amazing futuristic predictiveness.

The past and future are just settings, after all. In the past - and the future - people will wake up, eat food, have rows, break rules and enjoy sex. Would most stories in this library look radically different if they were preceded by the line, "1900 A.D" - or even "2150 A.D"?

This challenge is not really about the past or the future.
It's about storytelling.
And I encourage you all to reach into your imagination, and just write...
Unquote

So why bring up accuracy? It was discussed not to let it scare people away from writing a story. That's why it's called fiction. A little research won't hurt, but I hope no one is nit-picking any stories. So far I think I have 90 percent read and commented on. There are some fantastic stories to be had here.

I'll have you know my story is 100% accurate - just wait 150 years or so, and you'll see I was right!

I haven't read nearly as many stories as some people here - but I've enjoyed the ones I've read so far!

Bendover:

We've had this debate before and I disagree with what you've said. In fact, I think you've miss-stated the argument. Of course the challenge is about storytelling. But it's reasonable to expect a story to be set in a credible setting. In my view it'll be better for evidence that the writer has given the setting some thought. It's even better, if the setting is strange (in the past or the future, for example), for the strangeness of the setting to connect to the plot. That, I suggest, makes a better story. As I've already said, in the stories set in the past, there are minor questions of fact (I was pulled up once for using the term "chit" in dialogue a seventeenth-century story) and major ones. Yes, it would bother me if a story set in the Iron Age seriously introduced dinosaurs. One of the stories does just that, but I fancy it's joking).

For what it's worth, out of curiosity I've tried to categorise the stories. By my imperfect count 26 are set in the future, 32 in the past and three in both. That's pretty even and it suggests imagining the future was at least as challenging for authors as getting the past right. The possibilities for the future are endless, but unsurprisingly, certain themes or situations recur: six feature time travel as an important theme and six introduce a society where corporal punishment has become prevalent (I wonder why). Three involve some kind of simulation by advanced technology, two games with robots, two something like supernatural powers and four are what I'd call space opera (set in the future, usually in space, but the plot could easily be transported to the present). Apart from those, we have one on the legal status of spanking, one on animals become rare, one on all-knowing screening technology, one on a world dominated by women, one on a spanking experiment and one on computer advice - and only one on aliens arriving (which is a bit surprising).

Of the ones set in the past, disappointingly to me, almost every one appears to be set in the U.S.A. or England (not even any Scottish, Irish, Australian or Canadian venues), though Italy features, and the Garden of Eden. There are some marked favourite places and periods. The First World War from a British perspective scores 6, the USA around 1900-1920 has 5, and 19th or early 20th century Britain (probably England) has 4. Genesis has 3, as does Britain 1900-14. Medieval England has 2, Victorian England 2, England of the Civil War and Commonwealth period 2, 19th or 18th century Britain 2 (some stories are clearly set in the past because of archaic language or behaviour, but it's not at all clear when), 19th century US 2, 19th or early 20th century US 2, and there's one for the early 19th century (location unclear), 16th century Italy, Prehistory somewhere, late 17th century England and the Roman Empire. Two of the US stories are set in what you could call the Wild West, though one is set when the West had become rather less wild.

Perhaps I should reassure Bendover that none of this affected my marking, except where the linking of the story to something historical was neat and clever so it amused me. I'd like to mention an example but I shouldn't, though it wasn't one of mine.

PS - if anyone is so careful as to add up the numbers - they don't add up. That's because some stories can feature more than one category: for example, time travel to a CP-dominated society being invaded by aliens.

I am a bit of a medium (not a large, as some might suggest) and I happen to know that all of these these scenarios will come true. So, future-historically speaking, they are all accurate. I commend the writers of all of these stories for their ability to predict the future so well. As an aside, I request they provide me with next week's winning lottery numbers. Thank you.