Andrew Johnston
Bio
Educator, writer and documentarian based out of central China. Catch the full story at www.findthefabulist.com.
Stories (73/0)
Cheery Little Monochrome World
Daniel's stomach folded twice over upon itself as the subway train squirmed through the network of uniform concrete veins that ran beneath the city streets. It wasn't that the ride was a rough one – transportation services were excellent in whatever city this was (the name eluded him for the moment but the subway was good anywhere you went). The teal interior walls were cleanly scrubbed, the comfort filters doing superb work in cleansing the air of the aromas of perspiration, fast food, and cigarette smoke. It was enough to make one feel sorry for the drivers on the streets above whose own personal vehicles – produced as they were by dinosaur companies that yet resisted the call of rationality – had no similar guarantee of sanitation and comfort. No, if there was anything tightening the vise on Daniel's gut, it was internal – jet lag, exhaustion, stress, all the unpleasant hallmarks of an otherwise prestigious position. Experience had not yet gifted him with a tolerance for the mental and physical rigors of constant travel.
By Andrew Johnston3 years ago in Futurism
A Brief Guide to Worldbuilding (And Why It's Not That Important)
"Worldbuilding" is one of those concepts that ebbs and flows in writing communities. It's a non-topic, and then suddenly it's the only thing anyone wants to talk about - and when worldbuilding is at its high water mark, there are resources in abundance to address it. There are checklists, map builders, podcasts, worksheets, books, and hundreds if not thousands of articles on this allegedly all-important topic. At times it seems like the only thing an aspiring novelist should care about.
By Andrew Johnston3 years ago in Geeks
The Seven Deadly Sins of Dialogue Tags
How many people have written posts on this exact topic? Dozens? No doubt. Hundreds? I'd believe it. They keep writing them because it's an area where the point never sinks in. To the novice writer - almost invariably afraid of repetition - getting creative with dialogue tags just makes sense, no matter how many times people tell them not to do it.
By Andrew Johnston3 years ago in Lifehack
Have You Found The Fabulist?
Six years ago, I inadvertently sent a novel overseas, but it was only because I was trying to get it published. It's not that complicated, I assure you - it does get a little messy, though, and I'm going to be asking you for your help a little for now. For now, just know that this is a story of desperation and misdirected creativity that went a little farther (literally) than I'd imagined.
By Andrew Johnston3 years ago in Geeks
In Praise of Instruction Manuals
There was a time in my life when I kept better care of my video game instruction manuals than many people do of their books. I was certainly better organized when it came to them, with a carefully chosen spot for each one. The console manuals sat in a plastic carrier, separated by system, occupying a nook under the table that held the consoles. The PC manuals, being larger, were in a magazine holder in the closet a few feet away. At a moment, I could find any of them, along with maps, reference cards, mini-posters, and any of the other detritus that might tumble out of a game box.
By Andrew Johnston3 years ago in Gamers
The Ocean Unseen
The inhabitants of Detriti had always held a certain romantic fixation with the gloomy shell of dense ice that defined the upper limits of their world. Ahine was not unusual in this regard, except perhaps for the depths of her obsession. As a child, she joined with many others in their gleeful attempts to break through the barrier, digging at the dark surface with broken harpoon points, old hand drills and jagged shards of flint. It was a ritual of sorts, a tradition going back a hundred generations to the earliest Detritan explorers and mythmakers. There was something primeval about it, a connection to the planetary heritage that drew Ahine back even after she deduced that the effort was futile. And when she finally set aside those childish implements for good, she did not turn her thoughts back inward as most of the others did. Rather, her own fascination only became more intellectual.
By Andrew Johnston3 years ago in Futurism
Short Shorts: The Essentials of Flash Fiction
Even with our ongoing cultural obsession with really long books, the literary scene may actually be trending toward very short works. Flash fiction is a relatively recent concept but it's spreading with zeal, with new flash markets and anthologies cropping up just about every day.
By Andrew Johnston3 years ago in Geeks
Distance is a Fallacy
TRANSMISSION 53 We've finally done it. After months of sitting alone in this tiny remote outpost - has it just been months? It truly feels like it's been five years since I was sent to this isolated shed on the frontiers of oblivion - I finally have something substantive to report. I have received communication from a non-terrestrial source and, after many rounds of analysis, I can confirm with a <0.01% margin of error that the transmission was from an intelligent source. I have already broadcast the preplanned welcome message and am eagerly awaiting the response, which I will of course pass along to headquarters promptly as I receive it.
By Andrew Johnston3 years ago in Futurism
Storytelling as Mind Control
Propaganda can be an insidious beast. The most ironic object I own is sitting next to me as I write this. It's an article I picked up for $6 in a bookstore in central China - a copy of George Orwell's 1984, fully translated into Chinese. Within these pages is a classic tale of a government worker tasked with the annihilation of any information that might run contrary to the tale spun out by Big Brother, now available in a real-world nation that has made the machinations of Minitrue seem almost quaint.
By Andrew Johnston3 years ago in The Swamp
Early Voting
For a project of its amazing scale and ambition, the Psephos Engine was launched with little fanfare, noted only by a few circles of bleeding-edge computer engineers and a tiny handful of truly obsessive political nerds. It was to take the best of existing research and knowledge, synthesize it with top-level computer architecture and algorithms, and then pump a tremendous quantity of data points into the mix with the intention of consistently predicting the outcome of a democratic election. The response from most was an eyeroll, and even the project heads were careful to avoid the usual buzzphrase-laden talk about future technologies and society. Instead, they quietly went about the work of preparing their machine for its debut prediction, feeding in the information and pruning back the stranger forecasts that it generated.
By Andrew Johnston3 years ago in Futurism
The Ethics of Save Files
A seldom remarked upon quirk of video games in the 90's was that if you rented a game, you might also find yourself in possession of a fragment of someone else's free time in the form of a save file. This might represent a hour of that person's time or fifty, played across a single evening or piecemeal over weeks. But for the duration of the rental, you had absolute control over this frozen span of time, with the power to use, abuse, or dispose of it as you wished - all while knowing that soon, another person would have the same control over your time.
By Andrew Johnston3 years ago in Gamers
A Dirge for the Prairie
Out on the high prairie on a brightly moonlit night, there's no sound more ominous than the sharp keen of the coyote's howl. The raspy shudder of a rattlesnake is a terrifying sound, but an experienced trailhand can push down his fears and deal with the danger - not so with the coyote song. Don't compare it to a wolf's howl, either. The song of the wolfpack is this strong and muscular wail, an intimidating sound that speaks to the beast's primitive need to stake out its territory. It is a fearsome sound, while the coyote song is a sound of sorrow. It is all dissonant and haunted and it calls out to the dead to rise and dance to its eerie tune, and if you’re in the wrong place when you hear it, that could be what comes next.
By Andrew Johnston3 years ago in Horror