A minisaga, mini saga or mini-saga is a short story based on a long story. It should contain exactly 50 words, plus a title of up to 15 characters. However, the title requirement is not always enforced and sometimes eliminated altogether. Minisagas are alternately known as microstories, ultra-shorts stories, or fifty-word stories.
The form was invented by writer Brian Aldiss and the newspaper The Daily Telegraph , which has held several minisaga competitions, as has BBC Radio 4.
Minisagas are used in business, as an educational tool, [1] a creative outlet, and a source of entertainment. They are not poems, but rather "bite-sized lessons for life and business". [2] They are often used to stimulate creativity, stretch one's thinking, determine the essential elements of a story, or enhance discipline in writing. They often attempt to be funny or surprising.
Below is an example by author Daniel H. Pink: [3]
When I was shot, fear seized me at first. No surprise that. But once I realized I wasn't going to die – despite the thermonuclear pain and widening puddle of weirdly warm blood – my mind recalibrated. And one thought, comforting yet disturbing, leapt into my head: I need to Tweet this.
There is a limited publishing market for minisagas, but minisaga contests are sometimes held by various publishers or websites, and a dedicated market for "50-word stories" exists at FiftyWordStories.com, with payments available for each month's strongest story.
Brian Wilson Aldiss was an English writer, artist and anthology editor, best known for science fiction novels and short stories. His byline reads either Brian W. Aldiss or simply Brian Aldiss, except for occasional pseudonyms during the mid-1960s.
Hugo Gernsback was a Luxembourgish–American editor and magazine publisher, whose publications included the first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories. His contributions to the genre as publisher were so significant that, along with the novelists H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, he is sometimes called "The Father of Science Fiction". In his honor, annual awards presented at the World Science Fiction Convention are named the "Hugos".
Damon Francis Knight was an American science fiction author, editor, and critic. He is the author of "To Serve Man", a 1950 short story adapted for The Twilight Zone. He was married to fellow writer Kate Wilhelm.
The Bilderberg Meeting is an annual off-the-record forum established in 1954 to foster dialogue between Europe and North America. The group's agenda, originally to prevent another world war, is now defined as bolstering a consensus around free market Western capitalism and its interests around the globe. Participants include political leaders, experts, captains of industry, finance, academia, numbering between 120 and 150. Attendees are entitled to use information gained at meetings, but not attribute it to a named speaker. The group states that the purpose of this is to encourage candid debate while at the same time maintaining privacy, but critics from a wide range of viewpoints have called it into question, and it has provoked conspiracy theories from both the left and right.
A novella is a narrative prose fiction whose length is shorter than most novels, but longer than most short stories. The English word novella derives from the Italian novella meaning a short story related to true facts.
Harry Max Harrison was an American science fiction author, known mostly for his character The Stainless Steel Rat and for his novel Make Room! Make Room! (1966). The latter was the rough basis for the motion picture Soylent Green (1973). Long resident in both Ireland and the United Kingdom, Harrison was involved in the foundation of the Irish Science Fiction Association, and was, with Brian Aldiss, co-president of the Birmingham Science Fiction Group.
Science Fantasy, which also appeared under the titles Impulse and SF Impulse, was a British fantasy and science fiction magazine, launched in 1950 by Nova Publications as a companion to Nova's New Worlds. Walter Gillings was editor for the first two issues, and was then replaced by John Carnell, the editor of New Worlds, as a cost-saving measure. Carnell edited both magazines until Nova went out of business in early 1964. The titles were acquired by Roberts & Vinter, who hired Kyril Bonfiglioli to edit Science Fantasy; Bonfiglioli changed the title to Impulse in early 1966, but the new title led to confusion with the distributors and sales fell, though the magazine remained profitable. The title was changed again to SF Impulse for the last few issues. Science Fantasy ceased publication the following year, when Roberts & Vinter came under financial pressure after their printer went bankrupt.
A peddler, in British English pedlar, also known as a chapman, packman, cheapjack, hawker, higler, huckster, (coster)monger, colporteur or solicitor, is a door-to-door and/or travelling vendor of goods. In 19th-century America the word "drummer" was often used to refer to a peddler or traveling salesman; as exemplified in the popular play Sam'l of Posen; or, The Commercial Drummer by George H. Jessop.
A drabble is a short work of fiction of precisely one hundred words in length. The purpose of the drabble is brevity, testing the author's ability to express interesting and meaningful ideas in a confined space.
The exploration of politics in science fiction is arguably older than the identification of the genre. One of the earliest works of modern science fiction, H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine, is an extrapolation of the class structure of the United Kingdom of his time, an extreme form of social Darwinism; during tens of thousands of years, human beings have evolved into two different species based on their social class.
The Nokia tune is a phrase from a composition for solo guitar, Gran Vals, composed in 1902 by the Spanish classical guitarist and composer Francisco Tárrega. It has been associated with Finnish corporation Nokia since the 1990s, becoming the first identifiable musical ringtone on a mobile phone; Nokia selected an excerpt to be used as its default ringtone.
The Derby Telegraph, formerly the Derby Evening Telegraph, is a daily tabloid newspaper distributed in the Derby area of England. Stories produced by the Derby Telegraph team are published online under the Derbyshire Live brand.
Mini MPV—an abbreviation for mini multi-purpose vehicle—is a vehicle size class for the smallest size of minivans/MPVs. The mini MPV size class sits below the compact MPV size class and the vehicles are often built on the platforms of B-segment hatchback models. By the European definition, the mini MPV commonly consists of cars with two rows of seats, while in Asia mini MPVs with three rows are common. Sliding doors are sometimes also fitted to mini MPVs. Mini MPVs are also called tall-hatchbacks or small MPVs.
"The Streets of Ashkelon" is a science fiction short story by American writer Harry Harrison. It has also been published under the title "An Alien Agony". It was first published in 1962, in Brian Aldiss's New Worlds #122. The story has since been reprinted over 30 times in fourteen languages, in anthologies and also in academic textbooks. Science fiction critic Paul Tomlinson, who helps run Harrison's official website, has estimated that it is Harrison's most widely published story.
Nebula Science Fiction was the first Scottish science fiction magazine. It was published from 1952 to 1959, and was edited by Peter Hamilton, a young Scot who was able to take advantage of spare capacity at his parents' printing company, Crownpoint, to launch the magazine. Because Hamilton could only print Nebula when Crownpoint had no other work, the schedule was initially erratic. In 1955 he moved the printing to a Dublin-based firm, and the schedule became a little more regular, with a steady monthly run beginning in 1958 that lasted into the following year. Nebula's circulation was international, with only a quarter of the sales in the United Kingdom; this led to disaster when South Africa and Australia imposed import controls on foreign periodicals at the end of the 1950s. Excise duties imposed in the UK added to Hamilton's financial burdens, and he was rapidly forced to close the magazine. The last issue was dated June 1959.
The Witcher is a series of six fantasy novels and 15 short stories written by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. The series revolves around the eponymous "witcher", Geralt of Rivia. In Sapkowski's works, "witchers" are beast hunters who are given supernatural abilities at a young age to battle wild beasts and monsters. The Witcher began with a titular 1986 short story that Sapkowski entered into a competition held by Fantastyka magazine, marking his debut as an author. Due to reader demand, Sapkowski wrote 14 more stories before starting a series of novels in 1994. Known as The Witcher Saga, he wrote one book a year until the fifth and final installment in 1999. A standalone prequel novel, Season of Storms, was published in 2013.
The history of journalism in the United Kingdom includes the gathering and transmitting of news, spans the growth of technology and trade, marked by the advent of specialised techniques for gathering and disseminating information on a regular basis. In the analysis of historians, it involves the steady increase of the scope of news available to us and the speed with which it is transmitted.
Nebula Awards Showcase 2001 is an anthology of science fiction short works edited by Robert Silverberg. It was first published in hardcover and trade paperback by Harcourt in April 2001.
Nebula Award Stories 1965 is an anthology of science fiction short works edited by Damon Knight. It was first published in hardcover by Doubleday in 1966, with a Science Fiction Book Club edition following in October of the same year. The first British edition was published by Gollancz in 1967. Paperback editions followed from Pocket Books in the U.S. in November 1967, and New English Library in the U.K. in April 1969. The U.K. and paperback editions bore the variant title Nebula Award Stories 1. The book was more recently reissued by Stealth Press in hardcover in February 2001. It has also been published in German.
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