About Sirius Business

I used to be a regular at sfsfss, a local sci-fi book club. One time, instead of the usual discussion, we all wrote short stories and then went around discussing each other’s. Mine was Sirius Business.

I had about a month to write. As usual I did it kind of last minute. I was procrastinating as it was surprisingly stressful even to start. That’s nothing new. But unlike other tasks, it was stressful even after I started. Clearly I cared a lot more about what other people thought, but my self-image was that of someone who’d just write and not worry about criticsm. Writing the story brought all of that to the surface so that I could work on them. While that was hard, I’m thankful. (twss)

I also had a lot of fun imagining things, putting them to words, and rephrasing them for clarity. It reminded me of programmimg.

The feedback I got was that they didn’t really understand what was going on, and that it ended pretty abruptly. Is the human among aliens? Are the people there dog-shaped? (No, they are all human-shaped from convergent evolution)

Another set of friends teased me that this is an autobiographical story of an immigrant. I didn’t think so, but the glove does fit.

About a year ago, when I wrote this, I’d have been horribly embarassed about publishing the short story on my website. I’m glad I’ve grown.