Anyway. I thought this was one of the best groups of stories in a long while, and -- with one exception -- I haven't quite decided which ones to vote for yet. Reviews to follow:

• Enclosed: Fucking excellent story. I could smell this world, see it, taste it. It's easily the best story of the lot. It should be more than a WFC story on husi.
• 3:17 AM: This story was sad, but hopeful by the end. It felt like there should have been more, though -- like it was the beginning of something rather than a whole story in itself.
• Spike: This one was a nice story -- a little too nice, I guess. It also felt like the beginning of a much larger fantasy work, rather than a 2500ish word short story. I love the line What's the product of a meme and an anti-hero, integrated over the exchange of ideas in an internet chat room?
• Sylvia Endicott Weld: Very nicely drawn characters, in an odd situation. I like the notion that Sylvia couldn't quite find emotion of her own -- she was like an emotional vampire, or something. Actually, this reminded me of the plots of some of the lesbian vampire books I read as a young dyke.
• Hello, What's This?: Time travel paradoxes make my head hurt, and this seems like it doesn't quite address some of the more pressing paradoxes. It's well-written, though, and it feels like a small piece of something else. I'd be interested to read more.
• The Alley: This story has some moments, but it feels kind of disjointed, and I didn't quite get the ending. Did the one guy just vanish? Was he dissolved? And who was the chick Loretta?
• Broken Glass: Interesting take on loneliness, and the sadness comes through, especially in the end, but I got the female characters confused -- they weren't individuals enough in their own right, and I wasn't sure who the woman was in the framing text. Was the beginning and the end part of the same moment, and the rest a flashback? If so, why is Melissa talking in the beginning and Emily at the end?
• Mother's Bible: Interesting vignette, and some good details, especially about the table. It felt a bit too generic, though, like these characters were types and not real people. I didn't feel like the narrator's decision not to look for the PO Box was authentic, as well -- at least there should've been some sort of conflict there.
• Connecting Train: Well, it's interesting, though it felt a bit disconnected. It took me a while to realize that the middle bit was told from the point of view of something in the wallet, and that the pictures (fake IDs?) could talk.
• Haunted House: This story did a nice job of setting up the scene, and I kind of liked the twist, but I felt it should've come earlier. The story just sort of ended, without really finishing, if you understand.
• Frame of Reference: This feels authentic, and captures the loneliness and claustrophobia of graduate school well. I liked how the picture worked to just accept whatever meaning was given to it in its particular context.

• Enclosed: Nice picture of gritty, random, obscene combat for no reason. I particularly liked the description of the guy's revenge fantasy.
• 3:17 AM: Very sweet. Hope it turned out well.
• Spike: Cool creation of a whole world, and an interesting character or two, in just a couple thousand words. The bit about wandering through different dimensions as you turn corners in a city crackles like lightning about to strike.
• Sylvia Endicott Weld: I like this one, a lot. Delicate whimsy. Salvation through inflicting porn on someone else. Whodathunk?
• Hello, What's This? Smuttier than necessary. The robe is like another character. Sequence of events is (intentionally?) confusing.
• The Alley: I like the ending. And the whole alley to nowhere seems exactly the thing to give me the shudders.
• Broken Glass: Haunting, and I mean that in a good way. Had a bit of trouble keeping track of who's who. A++ would read again.
• Mother's Bible: Very affecting story of something you just didn't want to know. A few formatting issues distract somewhat.
• Connecting Train: Thief as victim, both once known to the crooked cop. It's a very gritty kind of a crime drama. The middle part from the point of view of something in the wallet is (shall we say) interesting.
• Haunted House: Sweet story that shows the deep fracture in the family. And she's still disconnected from everything but the television, even in the afterlife.
• Frame of Reference: Well-written account of the disintegration of a grad student's career: sad, but in a bittersweet kind of a way.

And now on a completely different note, why does the spellchecker want to replace Whodathunk with Vietcong?

Power up your flaming yo-yos already! --StackyMcRacky

I offer my sincere apologies to anyone that is offended by my evaluation of their stories.  My intent is not to harm, but to give my honest opinion on the prose I read.    Again, I mean no offense; although I am aware I may cause offense or otherwise upset some authors.   

Please be aware that there may be SPOILERS in each review.  I recommend you read the stories before reading my reviews.

!!!!!!!!Spoiler Alert!!!!!!!!!!!

Enclosed  6/10 Rating

The prose in this entry occasionally was breathtaking, but it also stumbled badly here and there.  Reading of the story went pretty smoothly without too much cause to stop and re-read. 

I wonder if the author was trying to make the main character’s loneliness more real by making it seem as if the main character was indifferent at times.  Clearly, Joe was everything to him, and the rage he felt against the pilot that killed Joe was impressive.  Yet, the story had many elements of dystopia that could lead us to a larger loneliness, loneliness for two billion dead and a planet forever changed.  I found the story depressing but considering the subject of WFC7, that isn’t surprising.  I didn’t care for the story, but I don’t like dystopias either.  It fulfilled the purpose of the WFC7, if in a somewhat rambling way.

3:17am  7/10 Rating

An easy reading story.  Well constructed and to the point.  I found the prose itself pleasing and while not particularly pithy of phrase, it flowed smoothly.

The story itself brought to mind a cook who simply couldn’t make a cake, despite having all of the ingredients, equipment, and time needed.  Love was present, marriage was present, sexual attraction was present.  Yet, our protagonist was lonely.  So lonely that infidelity was considered a possible way out.  The only thing I didn’t understand about the story was the emphasis on marriage.  It was put on the same pedestal as love.  Yet, the protagonist considered infidelity to end it, albeit as a last resort.  I would almost say that the author places marriage on a higher pedestal than the protagonist does.  The story ended in a way I found acceptable, if not satisfying.  The protagonist was beginning to let his feelings be known.  It’s a start.  This story fits the WFC and was generally well done.

Spike  9/10 Rating  --Voted

Unlike the previous two stories, this one contained lots of dialog.  Good dialog and good characterization.  The flow of the story was easy, with the exception of the name Sherry and Sherwood.  I never got if the protagonist was a man or a woman.  Not that it matters to the outcome of the story, just a little weave to the outside.

The story leads us on a small journey in a magical world where magicians, math, science and parallel universes are all dealt with.  It was a fascinating glimpse into a new world.  I have to say to the Author, that the world concept behind Spike has legs.  Flesh it out and run with it.  Fascinating.

“Spike” fulfilled the lost object portion of the WFC7 and was an excellent representative.  Well done and an enjoyable read.

Sylvia Endicott Weld, from the Fall of 2004 to the Spring 2006  5/10 Rating

The writing of this story is good, the pacing good as well.  We get to know Sylvia, we get to know Paul, such as there is of him.  The prose moves well, doesn’t trip over itself.  Although I have to admit I had to look up what “anchorite” meant. 

The story itself is interesting.  I don’t know if it fulfills WFC7.  Clearly there is loneliness and clearly there is something lost and then found.  It seems to me to be about someone with a mental illness.   It was a good story, but….I’m not sure I get the connections.  It is possible they are simply too subtle for me.  I tend to take things at face value and perhaps that is why I am missing something in the story.  It left me wondering why another’s horror of pornography had anything to do with the clinical depression Sylvia had.  I have to say this story had tremendous promise and it let me down.  Well written, but the story craft is either poor or beyond me.

Hello, What’s This?  3/10 Rating

This story could flat out use editing.  The prose is halting, the eye has to frequently re-read sentences to get this gist.  The entire feel of the story was “first draft”  Also, for reasons that are probably not the author’s fault, the story was spaced in a manner that made me want to tear my hair out. 

The story itself was a bit of a rambling mess and the characters elicited no emotion from me.  I spent most of the story confused, then bored, then not caring.  The WFC themes seem to be minimally present.  In short, I don’t have much good to say about this story. It didn’t even engage me enough to leave me wanting.

The Alley  4/10 Rating

The writing is good in this story, not too polished, but not jerky or displeasing either.  It works in the background, allowing me to concentrate on the story, not on the writing itself.  Very workman like and well done in that respect.

The rest of the story had me going “Um, what?”  I don’t really see the WFC7 themes.   I appreciate that there isn’t always time to make full explanations with limited space, but this read like a chapter chopped out of a bigger book.  I have no idea what was going on and no real emotion for any of the characters. The story has potential, it just never goes anywhere. 

Broken Glass  8/10 Rating  --Voted

This story flowed well, it never gave me pause to wonder about a turn of phrase or stutter in sentence.  It seems complete and polished.  A good effort.

The story didn’t seem as if it was going to end up going anywhere, but to my surprise and gratification it did.  The story, after a somewhat slow start, hauled me in and held me there. The themes of loneliness and lost objects were woven in delicately, rather than hit us over the head.  Very well done.

Mother’s Bible  7/10 Rating  --Voted

The prose is well done, and while not the most polished thing, it certainly allowed me to get to the meat of the story without any trouble.  The feel of the story was that of a finished product, and the product of a mind that can plan more then one move ahead.

The story itself was satisfying, if a tad depressing at the end.  It included the elements of the WFC7 and did so with a fast, sharp ending that pierced the “A Christmas Story” feel with a brutal certainty.  Well done.

Connecting Train 7/10 Rating

The writing was good on this piece, the prose smooth enough to get you through the story.  Perhaps a little too much body detail where it wasn’t necessary, but still.  I felt that the writing here was effective.

The story itself was a bit confusing at first, but then came together nicely.  It was well thought out and had some surprising elements.  The main characters, with the exception of the wallet contents, were all a more or less props.  Yet, it was still an effective way to show the transitory nature of things, loss, loneliness, and the finding of objects.  It fulfills the WFC7 requirements and overall left me satisfied.  A solid effort.

Haunted House 6/10 Rating

Good writing, directly to the point.  Descriptions only where needed and a clean feel to the writing.  Not terribly polished or complicated, but none the less serviceable.

The story itself was refreshingly clean.  A simple tale of loneliness and the death of a loved one.  The story did not confuse or obfuscate the issue, it presented it as it was, no frills.  A good effort and not frustrating.  However, not terribly original either. 

Frame of Reference 4/10 Rating

The prose in this piece is difficult.  The author suffers from the same affliction that I have oftentimes in my own writing, a penchant for commas and lists of things that are happening.  The prose got in the way of the story, some sentences had to be re-read or went on a long time.  On top of that, the “chapter” format for a very short work of 2500 words or less feels like a crutch.  The work could do with some revision.

The story itself fulfilled the requirements of the WFC7, but left me cold.  I can only think that the protagonist is insane or simple.  Considering the university setting, I imagine that simple is not likely.  I didn’t identify with the protagonist nor did I care about nearly anything that happened in the story.  It was strangely lifeless.  Not a bad story, but not a good one either.

I'm not poised to win again (far from it, in fact), but I reckon we get the five or six guys every contest plus three or new or irregular contestants - if we haven't already got a two-time winner, we're due for one, right?

They all suck. Let's get that part out of the way. I wouldn't publish any of these, though a couple show promise. This is supposed to be a a "Writing FUN Challenge," but I wonder if some of the authors were having "fun." Others clearly did and exercised their imaginations along the way.

I didn't have much to say about all of them. Sometimes I just focused on the style, formatting, or word choice. With others -- generally those that didn't have glaring errors a copyeditor should have caught -- I could only nitpick regarding plot, character, or things that rubbed me the wrong way. Don't take that to mean that I liked your effort.

I had grades (A-F as well as "Shows Promise," "Needs Revisions," "Hopeless," and "Not worth the space of 256's server it takes up") worked out as well, but for the sake of brevity cut them.

1. Enclosed
I don't like "a sterile hollow feel." My first inclination with 'feel' as a noun is to treat it not as an emotion, but a grope. Bah, language of 'myth' and a 'god' as a way to pump up 'climate change.' How cliche. OOH, nature is so big and powerful! "Truthful total honesty"? In contrast to the non-truthful kind of honesty? "Since the invasion" and no comma. Why capitalize "Armies" in "Armies of the US"? I hate the use of the colon after "have goals like" -- no colon. There is no list coming. And so on.

Lots of non-sentences. Something approaching interesting description in the paragraph beginning "The room was being heavily pelted now," but it goes downhill again with a return to abstractions and important Capital Letter Terms. Would you say "a picture of I"? -- I didn't think so.

I don't care about Joe or the narrator. I don't care about this storm or the "setting" or "situation." And stop with the double-space between sentences. It's sort of okay for typewriters, but f*cking annoying anywhere else. Bored now.

2. 3:17 AM
Take the comma out of the first sentence and I might like it. What a whiny narrator. So emo. So much I. Comma after "green glory." No comma after "Destroying the marriage." What you've written does not parse as such as requires reader intervention. And "an" not "and." "What was I thinking" is a question.

The narrator claims loneliness, but I see no evidence except these protestations. The narrator is a whiny pansy, and one who makes a three paragraph narrative look like seven paragraph one by repeating things over and over to no great effect.

Except my boredom.

3. Spike
Dump the pop-culture references (see: Hogwarts). In any case, it's Harry Potter meets Jasper Fforde. Hyphens-as-m-dashes make me cry. "I should have been cheesy" should be "It should have been cheesy." Stories with spikes need vampires, and this one doesn't have them. At least it came in under the word count. Barely.

The "conclusion" just seems like a way to wrap it up (close on the word count) with passing attention given to making it "meaningful." The spike works as a Magical Plot Device. It makes the main character feel confident or with purpose until Bob/Robert is found, and then it doesn't. So then it is contemplated, and then Bob pontificates about "finding your own." How therapeutic. Otherwise the math-plus-'magic'-plus-whatever epistemology and ontology shows promise. There is some playfulness in/to the system, but the ending ruins it for me.

4. Sylvia Endicott Weld, from the Fall of 2004 to the Spring 2006
Dump the first comma. And the one in the second segment after "Other times." The paragraph "Even Paul ..." has a failed é. Lots of 'tell' rather than 'show,' but lots of over-deterministic details that seem to serve as 'characterization.' I do like "a cross between the odor of fried chicken and the scent of rotting grass clippings."

I can accept "The chief draw of the obscene was the window it gave her on the affectless chasm of nothing within her." This, though, like the rest of the narrative, points to emptiness and not loneliness. Sylvia is a boring cipher; the prose is more interesting than the tale. Then with the post-wine-and-porn segment the piece awakens and moves forward. I can only take "strong but sympathetic personality" as either irony or mischaracterization, preferably the former. Yet since this comes from a first person narrator this makes said narrator too unreliable for my taste, since such a narrator would undermine the whole piece. The therapy-though-feeding-on-others'-discomfort makes Sylvia a potentially interesting emotional vampire, and the "near un-dead" state, etc., mentioned earlier support this interpretation, but I say only "potentially." Sylvia's emotional distance followed by bizarre porn needs mirrors the superior Piano Teacher, perhaps seasoned with a dash of Radley Metzger's The Image (aka The Punishment of Anne).

5. Hello, What's This?
How quaint, that font.

Great, more student/school fiction. Just what we need: fiction about academics and IT professionals on a site full of both. Even if the fiction in question also has strong genre elements. The 2nd paragraph ends with a simile and the 3rd begins with one. I find it awkward. And then it's followed by a "you," and it's not clear whether this comes from our still-unnamed "she" or from the narrator. Ah, this guy snores in bed; the wife was snoring just a couple snories/stories ago. Lots of punctuated one-worders -- "Guy. Whatever," "ahem" and so on. Almost a variation of mutant Valley Speak.

Ah, David and Maria. "It's never a good idea to make jokes suggested by someone's name. They've heard all of them before." And I've read that before.

Another 'whatever.' It works less like a part of the narrative and more like a quirk of the author. The same with 'well.' Followed later by Maria's "OK, that was a bit breezy" it all comes across as a bit nervous and self-conscious, which I find fine for characters' psyches but less so in the fabric of the narrative itself.

The latter three segments of the story are, until toward the end of the final segment, three different stories: there's loneliness after a "failed" relationship, there's psychedelic sci-fi, and there's lovey-dovey witty banter. The sci-fi-ish stuff reappears late, but the sci-fi concept does nothing for me, for while as actual space-time-continuum bending or just mere what-if-dreaming it does provide glimpses of futures and potential futures with David, it doesn't really inform the characters, based on my reading, and the multiple versions do nothing but exchange banter. The sci-fi-ish concept is a plot device only, and one that doesn't stand on its own or develop in any way. A shared dream would have been as good, a feverish hallucination would have worked, as would have some other High Concept. And where did Maria's characterization go? Her background, so carefully established early on, plays no real role. The background in "Sylvia Endicott ..." at least allows the whole setting to work as social satire of sorts.

6. The Alley
Ooh, a trenchcoat. Fluttering impotently. Hell-issued even. Who needs subtlety? And Urban or Contemporary Fantasy. As if there isn't enough of that on the market. It's the anti-"Spike" in a way.

As anti-contemporary-fantasy it also has potential, turning Bradley merely into a reject from the "World" of accounting. He's a man who has lost his marbles.

And gained some psychoses and a pop/soda can. Or you can call it a hellish companion and a Key.

However, the middle part of the "Ok, then" paragraph doesn't work for me (from the "Wait. I was on my own" part). Then it picks up again, especially as Bradley takes his key/can and ends up at the playground. He's such a pathetic figure here. Something about the whole Charlie & Loretta ending just does not work for me, though. No, it started not working somewhere around "This isn't even a real place. You didn't notice? Who's doing your training?" The expression 'copout' comes to mind for some reason. There's a nice thematic link with all the "small" words in the final paragraph, but they don't really contribute to the story in a way I care about. It does, however, relate, if only tangentially or perhaps unintentionally, to "trying to look larger" from the first paragraph. Still, it's a non-ending.

Broken Glass
Shattered Glass was already a movie. As was Broken Flowers. The problem with the second sentence and its two clauses should be obvious. The third paragraph dangles in an unresolved sort of way. The fourth features a colon I don't like, but I can accept it. So the glass is not fracture-sharp, but still far from dull, and yet Keith's fingers plunged into the sand? Either the author went overboard with a love of useless imagery or Keith is a f*cking idiot. Or both.

Ah, "construction-paper-and-magic-marker sign." Precious.

Overall it has nice imagery and is relatively compact. The misdirection is rather obvious, though it helps to sort of hide the significance of the glass (well, plus there is the final metaphor, which is unnecessary but poetic in its own way). The "sodas" pulled from the fridge that first meeting aren't mentioned as being glass until later, so the reason why the glass on the shore reminds Keith of Melissa is hidden until later, even though it is made explicit early on that it has to do with the first time they met. Something about this strikes me as sloppy in an otherwise tidy piece.

It's formula, though, the same tale I've heard and read before, just packaged differently. College romance -- yawn. It has an object; the loneliness is less tangible, though the threesome provides yearning.

Mother's Bible
Ooh, look -- MORE QUESTION MARKS IN PLACE OF APOSTROPHES/SINGLE-QUOTES.

It's 2007: get a clue.

The second sentences isn't a sentence. Many more long noun phrases and such clutter this piece.

This is not a pipe.

All the talk of Mother and Father makes me think of some cult. It's psychotic reverence. The whole "For the second time ..." line is a waste of good letters. Words. ASCII characters. Whatever. We gain no new, useful information here. Of course the narrator wonders what it is; it was just introduced as something unrecognized. Of course, this narrator just like to talk when nobody is around. Another sign of psychosis.

"I wonder what this is?" That's even worse than "Oh, nothing could happen now ..." or "Duck? Where?"

And then the letter that is not offset or quoted comes, at first appearing as part of the continuing narrative. I did a double-take at "written," expecting "read" (on the part of the narrator).

The "What the hell ..." belongs to an idiot of a narrator. I can understand it as a response after the narrator looks at the date of the letter but not before. The "My God" is likewise melodramatic -- sorry: mellow dramatic -- and immediately deep-sixed any lingering sympathy I had for this text.

The sad part is that there is a decent story here, in concept if not in execution. It's a three-part narrative: 1) the table and naive memories of childhood; 2) the uncovering of history, history that calls the known-past into question; and 3) a return to those memories now as an outsider. The title is wrong; this has little if anything to do with the Bible in question. The table is a better "object" of interest as well as object around which to develop a title. We have various objects but no real consideration of loneliness.

Connecting Train
Such coincidences. I call such narratives over-determined.

Ah, the conceit of the talking-object. How quaint. The items in the wallet have voices, almost as if this were urban fantasy or magical realism. What's next, talking animals?

Speaking of which: a woman named Springer with "canine black eyes." Please tell me this is a joke. And "parlance of our times"? Watch Lebowski much?

As for Ros's boney shoulder -- I would expect so at 6'0" and 140lbs. What is this, Skeletons R Us? Ros establishes Willis as a voyeur, but I find this a needless detail, since it doesn't seem to follow from his actual behavior in the first segment. Sure, I guess "different voices" can view the world and characters differently, but this feels somehow disjointed.

I guess that's appropriate since Willis has no cigarettes.

Haunted House
Perhaps it's a typo, perhaps it's inconsistency with tenses: paragraph 2, "She's grown."

It's a non-ending, with the sudden introduction of the man Jackie shares her bed with. It's unimportant. There's not much a story here, though what there is is revealed meticulously and by the numbers. Every detail fits in a well-crafted paragraph. There are no surprises. More prose is spent describing regions and neighborhoods than anything else. Phoenix this, California that, Brooklyn this, and oh, this accent, and here be stoops.

I've sort of gotten to know Jackie, but I don't care about her. There is no development in her I care about. Sure, she develops a certain peace of mind and desire to return home, but that's uninteresting, and we already knew she wanted to go home. The knowledge gained is that her mother, who never dated after the parents split, isn't lonely. But I don't think we ever feared that she did, or felt that Jackie feared she did. Or cared. There's no conflict or plot; it's just a lot of description.

Frame of Reference
Lots of precious 90s cultural references throughout this one -- that's not necessarily a good thing. These details and the named "characters" are all just ciphers and inkblots. There's no there there. But this is Manhattan, KS, not Oakland.

In the second paragraph, you want mimeograph to be plural and followed by a comma, not a period. This is too short for "chapters." Pretentious. In "Chapter 2," the first paragraph, the sentence beginning "Through her glasses" makes no sense. In the "I nodded at the door" paragraph the segment "Dr. Carla P-, stopping for the day" makes no sense. Stopping what for the day? Stopping where? Something is missing. The same is true toward the end of "Chapter 4," in the sentence containing "The RA-ship I can office." You probably mean "offer." Unless this is some sort of joke dealing with the supposed precision of this recollection. One paragraph later "pocked" should be "pocketed."

I get the "point" of the final "chapter" and sentences -- the reverse of who/what is/was lonely and who/what was the 'found' object -- but it's awkwardly phrased to the point of being near-gibberish. The so-called editing on this one leaves a lot to be desired.

Covers:

• toxicfur: Somehow an old-fashioned Western album cover more than a book cover. I find it sad; the road doesn't feel liberating but ... lonely.
• Kellnerin: Nice layout and use of colors and fonts. The word "Loneliness" doesn't stand out too well against the black. I like the "WFC The Seventh" formulation.
• bo: The glare on the bottles and the fact they are at a slight angle (receding, relative to the camera's plane) is slightly distracting. There's something snarky about its this image's attitude, and it's also more of a "Call for Papers" than "cover."
• iheartgoats: "Found Object"? Check. Somehow connected to loneliness? Check. Elegance in design? Not exactly.

_
"The german quoting guy is a little bit out there." (fleece)

3:17 AM It wants to be literary, but reads like an above-average quality diary entry. I want to say, "Good for you, and good luck with that" to our narrator, but that's all.

Spike A case of something that feels like part of something bigger. I'm not sure I buy the idea of a preppy in IT, but it's a quibble. I like the concept of metamathematics.

Sylvia Endicott Weld, from the Fall of 2004 to the Spring 2006 I sort of liked it, but I didn't think it was good. There are some good turns of phrase, but it falls into a literary category that I inherently do not enjoy.

Hello, What’s This? I like the image of her sitting on the top of her dresser, drinking tequila and watching him, but that's the only hint we really get of what kind of person she is. We get almost nothing of him, of why she falls for him so hard, or why he can't come back without the doohicky activated if he knows what time and day he met her. Plus, they sound alike. The dialog is sort of flat. I liked it a lot up to the second #, and then it fell over.

The Alley "It's a case that practically screams for the midgets." I like this line. I like this story, but have to agree with the previous comment that it feels like part of something bigger.

Broken Glass Oh, so close. This is very good, so much that I want to add five words to a sentence in the opening section. I think it also could stand about one or two hundred more words from the author.

Mother's Bible Good effort, but something about it doesn't touch me. Actually, nothing about it touches me, but I'm an unsentimental bastard.

Connecting Train I had to read it twice. The first time was an annoying experience of what-the-fuck? The second time, it was kind of cool. But I don't like to work that hard. I'm a lazy bastard, too.

Haunted House Signifiers, or whatever they're called: "the woman," "the old woman." They distance the reader, and the daughter, and remove any impact of this particular ghost. Also, we already know that Brooklyn is different from Phoenix, and you don't need to say it more than once, if at all, but I did like the description of walking back through the neighborhood.

Frame of Reference "…a schoolgirl uniform for bearish cross-dressers." It's good to have at least one strong image, but there wasn't anything else in the story I cared about.  It seemed overly dependent upon the academic environment, like I was meant to be filling in blanks. That's it: academe fanfiction. Sort of.

-- Do the math.

1. Enclosed Wow, was this not the story I was expecting from the title. Hell of an opening line. The theme could lead to a very moody, contemplative kind of story (as many of the entries were) but this wasn't, and that was refreshing.
2. 3:17 AM Felt a bit too sketchy. The premise and the intersection of loneliness/finding was fine, but needed to be more fleshed out, made distinctive somehow.
3. Spike "Information architecture" is peripherally part of my job description, and man do I want to do that kind of info arch. If I had to quibble, I'd say the dialogue felt a little flat, exposition-y, but the description itself was excellent.
4. Sylvia Endicott Weld, from the Fall of 2004 to the Spring 2006 I can appreciate the quirky angle on the theme in this story, but it's just not my speed. Sorry.
5. Hello, What's This? Fun, if a bit familiar. This is what I think of as a spirograph sort of story, that keeps looping around a point without necessarily getting to it. That's not a judgment in and of itself -- it could either be made more stripped-down or given room to stretch. Title didn't feel well-matched to the story.
6. The Alley I liked the narrative voice, or Voice -- it felt easy and confident. Some nice turns of phrase in this, though the ending threw me for a loop.
7. Broken Glass The narration in this one, particularly in the framing story, is somewhat twisty, or maybe like an unraveled thread. Who'd have thought the theme of loneliness would inspire so many stories about math.
8. Mother's Bible I liked the table details. The story felt a little like it was cropped at both ends, without much setup for the protagonist sitting down to go through the boxes, and a bit too abrupt of an ending/resolution.
9. Connecting Train A little gimmicky, though who am I to diss a gimmick. I like how much of this story lies in the things that the respective characters don't know, the spaces between them that aren't bridged.
10. Haunted House Nice sense of mood and place. It's perfectly well executed, though other stories just grabbed me more this round.
11. Frame of Reference Sloppily edited, yes. But what's there is charming in places. Objects almost being characters without being narrators.

and hit upon the idea of beginning with, "Well, that was three hours I'll never get back". But, much like certain 'textually-destructive' philosophy, there's a problem in that any internally-consistent reasoning for assailing the tenets of others can typically also be applied to the source tenets themselves, until we end up having consumed our own jacksies recursively to the point where, aside from possibly being topologically interesting, we find our only remaining utility is in being used as reserve deck quoits[*].

See: If I'd had anything better to be doing with those three hours, I'd have damned well been doing it, and not casting them into the /dev/null of the past with such reckless abandon (actually, that's a bit harsh; perhaps adding them to the /dev/random entropy pool is a more appropriate image). It's catch 22, baby. Heads, I win; tails, you lose. It's the anti-burglar device that stops you getting back in when you've locked yourself out. It's the abyss winking coquettishly back at you. The saucy little harlot.

Oh yeah. Stories and stuff ...

Can I be bothered to do individuated snapshit reviews this morning? Let's see ...

• Enclosed - Starts intriguingly, with an element of ...

Actually, no. No, I can't. Fuck your external validation.

Oh, go on then. You're a charming and persuasive lot; and I, a flip-flopper. I think I'm going to take these in rank order (no pun intended), starting with the ones which caught votes. There was something like a twenty point spread, top-to-bottom.

• 1.) Sylvia Endicott Weld, from the Fall of 2004 to the Spring 2006 - I liked this. It had a playful sense of detachment and, like Cape Horn, some pleasingly misanthropic (or perhaps just honest) undercurrents. It seemed nicely fitting to the form -- not a novella squeezing optimistically into short story jeans after a particularly heavy Christmas -- and is the sort of thing a modern-day Dahl might have written on a train journey through Crewe.

• 2.) Enclosed - Men doing men's things with men's burdens in a time of men. Being a man (or at least playing at being one occasionally), I'm probably more susceptible than I ought to be to this type of thing. What happened to men, anyway? We used to be competent, fix Spitfires, smoke pipes and say 'bloody' a lot, with an air of both grim and cheerful confidence. Now we sit ribbiting frog-like 'fuck's while engaging in navel microscopy over ephemera. Progress.

• 2.) Connecting Train - This was good, and I would probably have ranked it higher but for two things. As others have mentioned, it was a little bit impenetrable at first. I'm not sure it's the concept so much as elements of the grammar. I didn't mind too much (having a sneaky enjoyment of Ellroy's work), but still had a stutter or two in parts. Secondly, there was a vague feeling of "So what?". It wasn't that it tried to squeeze too much in; more that it realised it couldn't and so lopped off its own body as a solution. There are interesting elements here, but many of them went unwritten.

• 4.) Spike - Tantalising. Very tantalising. In some respects this was the best of the bunch, particularly the way that it handled its exposition. The start was superb, with elements, motivations and reasons flowing nicely into each other to develop a rolling sense of momentum. And where did that momentum drag us? Back down the 'Fantasy/Sci-Fi' aisle, unfortunately. Similar to 'Connecting Trains', it felt cropped rather than compressed. It had its moments, though; definitely.

• 5.) Frame of Reference - OK. Very much OK. Yes, some of the criticism elsewhere is valid, but I thought its observations and heart were in the right place. Perhaps you have to have been there in some sense to relate to the progression involved, but it was, if not a diamond in the rough, then certainly a brand-new Titleist ball that you can redeem back at the shop for £3.50.

• 5.) Hello, What’s This? - Indeed. What is this? What fettlingly crunchsome sort of thing is it? You see: the reason Kyle Reese had to be sent back to '85 was because he was John Connor's father. John knew this for his entire life, which was why he specifically sent (and had to send) Reese. Do you see how that works? No. I know you don't. Now watch it again. I know it probably all makes sense in your head, but what's been overlooked is that there are precisely eight thousand, nine hundred and ninety ... three other ways of it making sense too. Or maybe it just makes absolutely no sense at all. Ay-toe / Ah-toe.

  Facetiousness aside, this was oddly compelling, and the writing is good in the sense that it drives and doesn't get in the way of the narrative -- but -- it commits the cardinal sin of offering a false carrot. The reason 'Existenz' can be made so intriguing is precisely because they know that they don't have to resolve the questions they set up in order to keep the viewers' attention at the end of the film. Good. They've got my money, so in that sense it was a success. But now I won't ever be watching another of their stinking movies, so in that sense it wasn't.

• 5.) Broken Glass - Again, this was good in a certain sort of way, but not good in that it felt like a "creative writing" assignment to read. "All mouth and no trouser", as someone might have said, once, in an airport paperback about grim northern folk mining mud with which to feed their kestrels. Great mouth, no doubt, but the lack of trouser is an issue. This metaphor's getting tortured and oddly distracting, so I'll leave it there ...

• 5.) The Alley - Too much Matrix? Not enough Matrix? Why am I thinking about the Matrix? Wait a goddamn second; how did I end up in this aisle again? I was looking for cookbooks. Good writing but little ... weight. The angle's not really my cup-of-tea, so it may be a subjective issue, but the only person who comes close to pulling this type of thing off is Gaiman, and he fails more often than he succeeds. To get over the subject matter, it needed to have a killer hook, or some compelling holistic completeness, but there was not enough for me, I'm afraid.

• 9.) Mother's Bible - Characteristically accurate in that it's what many people would actually do in real life, and the motivations are captured quite well in an artfully concise and glimpsed way. However: Many people also shop for beans in real life, too. Is it worth reading about? I'd say, "Yes" -- but only just. Again: elements of the dry "creative writing" exercise permeated this piece, perhaps with a thin veneer over an autobiographical parallel.

• 9.) Haunted House - A lot of what I wrote about other pieces applies here, too. Did you ever go fishing as a small child and maybe hook something? All the way in you'd be equally engaged, excited and apprehensive about landing