Tell your story well, but quickly

As happens to all good things, Wired magazine's article featuring six-word stories by famous sci-fi writers turned up on Metafilter, where, as one would expect, the meme was taken up and propagated with alacrity. The results (358 comments as of this post!), some of which (for example, wendell's remarkable series and, though the spirit of it is different, this punctuation-themed story) are incredible, are at I read until my eyes exploded. Unfortunately, for perhaps the first time ever, Monterroso's famous story is too long to make the cut!

Of course, one can't see something like this without giving it a try oneself. Two quick stabs I made at it follow. Regrettably, the pun in the first is not my own.

The eighties, the nineties -- the naughties.

We didn't know until too late.

I'll post more as I think of them. I hope readers will leave some in the comments, too.

By the way, I'm sorry for the long silence. More content will follow over the next few days, or early next week.

UPDATE 26 October 2006, 6:30 PM.

If only I'd listened to mother.

Also, in the spirit of The Onion:

Unusual amounts of blood amazed passersby.

UPDATE 27 October 2006, 3 PM. Boy, this is addictive. I woke up with a great one this morning, but couldn't remember it long enough to get up and write it down. Oh, well -- here's another one:

It isn't over yet, I hope.

UPDATE 1 November 2006. Various people, not least among them the redoubtable naper271 whose contribution can be seen below, have expressed dissatisfaction with the genre. I will post soon about another genre, suggested by the previously-mentioned A; but for now I should mention that, before you judge this genre too harshly, you should look at the examples on the Metafilter thread above, not my own (poor) examples.

UPDATE 25 April 2007. As with so many other things in life in general, and this blog in particular, the statement above that I would post soon about another genre was a filthy and reprehensible lie. By way of consolation, here's another example: "A dream of prosperity ended badly." Well, naper271 may not like these, but I do.