Eric James Stone

Jason Sanford, editor of StorySouth, has chosen “Tabloid Reporter to the Stars” as one of his “stories of the week.” Here’s part of his review:

This wonderfully written science fiction story deftly pulls off laugh after laugh while also illuminating critical issues surrounding science, religion, culture, and, most importantly, what exactly is that thing we call truth.

Jason — whom I do not know, so he’s not just saying nice things because we’re friends — also sent a letter to the editor of Intergalactic Medicine Show. Here’s a clip:

I can’t tell you how many lines made me stop and smile or laugh (especially the ending). My favorite line was “‘Yes, I am a Seeker of Truth.’ And I’m willing to lie in order to get it.”

Dean Handforth — another reader I don’t know — sent a letter to the editor including the following:

I don’t remember laughing so hard at the end of an SF story in years. … More Eric James Stone, please.

You can read the letters to the editor here.

More reader reaction, some from people I know and some from people I don’t, can be found on this topic at the Hatrack River forum.

All this is very ego-boosting, of course. It feels great to have written a story that catches people’s attention.

My story “Tabloid Reporter to the Stars” is now online at Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show.

In what appears to be the offspring of the unholy union of a chain letter and the Spanish Inquisition, my author friend Julie Wright has “tagged” me, so now I must reveal five things that few people know about me.

1. Snakes, as you know, live in mortal fear of . . . tile. And I live in mortal fear of . . . moths.Now, you may think it’s rather silly to be scared of little things like moths, but it all goes back to an incident when I was about six years old. At the time, my family lived in Venezuela, and they have some big moths down there, with wingspans of 6 inches or more. (See, for example, the Black Witch Moth.)

   I slept on the bottom bunk of bunk beds, and one morning I woke up to find a giant moth over my face, just like one of those aliens from the movie Alien, except for the facts that (1) this was a few years before Alien was released, and (2) the moth wasn’t actually on my face: it was hanging from the bottom of the top bunk. But it was above my face, and if it had dropped down and laid its eggs in me I might have been erupting moths out of my chest. (The mere fact that no known species of moth lays its eggs in humans so that its offspring later erupt out of the chest does not prove anything. This might have been an unknown species of moth.)

   Over the years, my fear of moths has lessened to that point that it is not really a mortal fear. They just give me a small chill down my spine is all. But you can bet that if I ever had to open the long-sealed chamber holding the Ark of the Covenant, it would be filled with moths.

2. Not only can I wiggle my ears — I can wiggle each ear independently.
3. If one loosens the standards to include stage plays, then I have a Bacon Number of 2:
• I was in the 1985 Bountiful High School performance of Arsenic and Old Lace with Teresa Troseth.
• Teresa Troseth was an extra in Footloose with Kevin Bacon.
4. Speaking of arsenic, most people don’t know that “jet some arsenic” is an anagram of “Eric James Stone.”
5. I bought a new laptop last week.

I guess I need to tag five people now to reveal information about themselves: Scott M. Roberts, Alethea Kontis, Spencer Ellsworth, Isaac Stewart, and James Maxey.