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Bam! 172 Hellaciously Quick Stories

Luc’s book of flash fiction stories, Bam! 172 Hellaciously Quick Stories, is now available in paperback and for Kindle on Amazon.

Bam! 172 Hellaciously Quick Stories throws normal people into strange circumstances in stories that can each be read in a few minutes. Cinderella tries to get a grip after her divorce; inventions go horribly wrong; robots rebel; a thinking teddy bear is trapped for decades in a toy box; love blossoms in a hotel corridor unmoored from time and space; dinosaurs invent the steam engine; girlfriends blink in and out of existence; and Very Bad Things happen that might be worth it in the end. Writers of the Future winner Luc Reid’s stories bridge science fiction, fantasy, humor, and the unclassifiable.

Click here to listen to the author reading several stories from Bam! at Readercon 2012. You can also listen to professional actor J. Louis Reid reading stories from Bam!: Hunting for Ernest Hemingway in Kudu Heaven, The War with the Clowns, and The Wave’s Second Day.

Futurismic post on Bam!

“It’s not easy to inject an entire world into one scene, but Reid does that time and time again. The characters, whether they live in one sentence or 20, are real people.”
— David Kopaska-Merkel in his review of Bam! on Dreams & Nightmares

“172 fantasy and science fiction, flash stories … each of them short enough to read in a few minutes, each of them rich, well crafted, meaningful.”
— Deborah Walker in her review of Bam! on Skull Salad Reviews

“thanks to this author’s unfettered imagination, quirky sense of humor, and great touch with twist endings, these short stories provide entertaining and often intriguing micro reading experiences. Highly recommended!”
— Amazon.com review

“Reid’s smart humor and eye for irony are sure to attract plenty of readers, and keep them perusing the collection at their leisure.  The wit he employs in the stories is perfect for setting up the most poignant of stories … because just as you begin to anticipate more humor, the weight of what is being said sort of sneaks up on you.  It makes for a great read.”
— Shelly Bryant, reviewing Bam! at SlothJockey.com

Full Table of Contents

Introduction

War, Chaos, Calamity, and Murder
The War With the Clowns
The Last Log Entries at the Philadelphia Office of the Centers for Happiness Control
Tornado on Fire
The Plot Against Barbie’s Life
Exploded
Just Like Meteors
Helmut, Deep in the Rock

Magic
Up Late With All the Power in the Universe
Upon Emerging from a Brazen Vessel
This Is the Tie
Shadow and Glimmer
The Nature of the Key
Make You Happy

Aliens
Random Sample
Red Seeds
Introduction to Outcasts on Earth
Secret-Runner
The Winter Life
Of the Third Sex, in a Park
Made of Fail
Naked Among the Aliens
Don’t Look Down
Grandma Britnee on Extraterrestrials
One Hole Goes In. One Hole Comes Out.
Thanatoarchaeology
I Wouldn’t Mention It If I Were You

Adventure
Hornets the Size of Grapefruits
When They Return
Introduction to An Eyeball of Power
Something Was Different
A Cage in a Pit in Another Universe
Yah Za
And Then Something Was the Same
Introduction to Parthenia Rook, Adventuress
Parthenia Rook, Episode 1: The Third Oldest Trick
Parthenia Rook, Episode 2: The Shoe in the Brain
Parthenia Rook, Episode 3: Fallen Lepidopterists
Parthenia Rook, Episode 7: The Gory Candlestick
Parthenia Rook, Episode 8: The Bonobo Machine

Love, Marriage, and Romance
Introduction to After Cinderella’s Divorce
Cinderella Begins Dating Again After a Bitter Divorce
Cinderella and Prince Charming Have a Post-Divorce Meeting to Discuss Some Financial Matters
Prince Charming Comes By After the Divorce to Pick Up Some Things
Cinderella Runs Into Snow White After Therapy One Afternoon
Cinderella Tracks Down Her Fairy Godmother Through a Facebook Friend and Visits Her at the Nursing Home
Extended Stay
Where the Light Bulbs Go
Ma Belle, Sa Bête
When Love Goes Wrong
The Automatonist’s Assistant
My Girlfriend the Mentalist
I’m Sorry About That Last Letter
The Bison Girl
The Ninja’s Girlfriend
Silver Box
Behind the Girl’s School in the Piazza Pescivendoli

Reality
Tech Bulletin: Vulnerability Found in Humanity 3.5
The Edges of Creation
Robin’s Egg Sky
Worse Than Riders
Stone Cold
Alternatively …
There Was No Friday

Animals
Now Mosquitoes Live There
Swine Flew
How It Is
The Hydra Keeper
The Otter Bakery
Learning Persuasion
Talk to the Frog
On the Talking Horse Circuit
Bad Dog
This
Sects with a Goat
Happy New Year, Said the Rooster
The Wolf at My Door

Time Travel, World-Hopping, and Parallel Universes
Handy Tips for Detecting Interdimensional Travelers
Bam!
One Problem
43 Futures
Good News from the European National Lottery Foundation
Twenty-Eight
Sneak Peek
A Series of Notes Stuck on the Refrigerator of a Small Universe-Hopping Cooperative
Somebody Else Who Could Have Been Us

Identity
A brief note about the sea
The Wave’s Second Day
Handsome Martha and the Sycophants
Leap
I Crush Everything
The Sun, at Night, in the Sea
Duck Blind
At Rise

Heaven, Hell, Angels, Gods, Demons
Hunting for Ernest Hemingway in Kudu Heaven
Jakob Black-Thumb
God Is Not Screwing Around
Out the Angels Come
My Friend in Hell
The Angle of Death
Delayed Appearance of the Monkey God
Your Recent Visit from the Monkey God
Aftermarket
One Bright Morning

Space
Crash
When I Said I Wanted to Be Immortal
Leap Day

Children and Family
Princess Mermaid Tinkerbell
Catch
We Knew Your Ma, But That Was In the Old Days
Magic Pants
Of Few Words
Unexpected Presents
Chance Meeting with a Baby on a Train
Among the Roots of the Big Oak
Old Bear

Very Strange Things
Eat Me
Personals
And Then a Curious Thing Happened
Curiouser
In Answer to Your E-mail
Wait, What?
We’re Sorry
About These Urban Legends

Zombies and Golems
Explained: Parents
Disco Zombie
Brains You Cannot Have
Zombee Apockalips Nawt Sew Bad, Akshully
Trash Golem

Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence, and Robots
The Broken Ones
The Reality That Counts
Talisman
Plugged In, Networked, Computerized
What Goes Around, Stays Around
‘Til We Run Out of Cake

Dreams
Dreams of a Thousand
In the Dream Wars
When the Center Falls Away
And I Woke Up Before It Was Done

Work, Chores, Labor, School
Better
Chosen
In Human Resources
The Sovereign District of Noël
In a Lucid Moment
Clever Ways to Make Do
Your Call Is Important to Us
Repairs in the Wasteland

Science, Inventions, and the Future
Ha!
Flying Machines
In teh Urly Dayz uv teh Intertubez
Lunch in Mongolia
As You Know, Professor
Things You See, People You See
Consolation Prize

Apocalypse and Endings
How It All Ends
Five Months After the Collapse
Just Only the Endings
Brat
He Had a Void in His Chest
Or
Evans-Wadhams-Wolcott
Doors
The Victory at Rocktown
Zero
On That Last Afternoon

Letters and Words
A Is for Authority
B is for Bureaucracy
The Strange Story of Hugh Djass
A Turn of Fortune
Miners’ Dialect
Please Present Your Octopus

Death and Dying
An Account of the Last Lucid Moment in the Long, Illustrious, and Most Surprising Life of Albert Hill, Boxer, Composer, Paleontologist, Notorious Flirt, and Respected Statesman, formerly of Cornwall, Staten Island, and the Now Vanished Village of Kalna Yama in the Mountains of Bulgaria, the Title of Which Is Much Longer Than the Actual Text
The Follower in the Darkness
Every Last Trace
Postcard from the Near Bank of the River Styx
A Method for Choosing
In the Elevator with Albert Einstein

4 Comments

  1. MARCIO FRANCESCO  •  Dec 28, 2011 @4:18 pm

    Just for Kindle? Publishing on Smashwords is no longer available?
    I just need it in epub. format, is it possible? Soon? Nope?

    What a pity. The sample book is just awesome.

    Regards

  2. Luc  •  Dec 28, 2011 @5:08 pm

    Thanks very much for your interest in the book. Unfortunately the Smashwords edition isn’t currently available, though it may be again in the spring.

  3. Jim Valvis  •  May 18, 2012 @1:50 am

    Worth every penny. And probably I ripped you off.

  4. Luc  •  May 18, 2012 @8:18 am

    Thanks! And yet somehow I still feel pleased with the whole exchange …

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