Immaculata by sirat

btw ... sirat may rile a few here with his comments and his writing may only appeal to those with a sci-fi bent but I think it fair to point out that he was runner up in this years Fish competition - previously trailed on ABC - and will be enjoying a weeks leisure and drinking in Ireland as a result. Oh, I think a writing course is also thrown in. well done David!

I read it and cherried it. It's a wonderful story - congratulations Sirat!

Thanks. I'll look forward to it. Good luck in your exams.

Agree that this is an excellently woven tale! What a great twist at the end! And I admire the way sirat explores the separation between what the church preaches and what it actually practices. This is not a lightweight just-to-entertain piece of writing.

Goodness me! I'm off line for 24 hours and when I get back all this is going on. First. many thanks for all your kind comments. I am genuinely surprised, because although I quite liked "Immaculata" myself, my writers' group gave it quite a mauling and I was expecting a fairly lukewarm reception. All false modesty apart, I thought the last one I posted here, "Collateral Damage", was a better story, but it went virtually unnoticed. It's a funny old game! Now, I've got to come back on this stuff that stormy petrel is putting about. "sirat may rile a few here with his comments" Moi? What is this man on? I've never riled anyone here - I wouldn't have the sharpness of tongue. My natural sweetness would prevent me. All I've ever said here is that we should have a comments box under the stories. Why should that rile anybody? And as for your other charge: "his writing may only appeal to those with a sci-fi bent" I would be deeply offended by that if I wasn't such a nice chap. I would say something nasty, like stormy petrel's work appeals only to left-handed black lesbians living in house boats on the lower reaches of the Danube, but I won't because it just wouldn't be me. Now be fair, I've only got one sci fi story on this site and as far as I can see it hasn't appealed to anybody much. But I'm in a good mood at the moment so I'm not going to say anything like that. This is the first time I've ever had a thread here devoted to one of my stories. Thanks again Bryan, and as soon as you have some of your work up I'll be sure to comment. I'm very envious of the courses you're studying: I did "A" level Astronomy at night classes for fun last year and loved it. With those credentials you could get a job on the SETI project (search for extraterrestrial intelligence). Now that would be something I would really love. Not boring you non-scientists or appealing to the wrong people are we?

goodness me David, anybody would think I have just mauled you and your work when I was, in fact, drawing attention to your success in a competition that was advertised on ABC last year. I was trying to be complimentary. Sorry about the sci-fi bent but that is because everytime I see the word SIRAT it reminds me of that genre and I forget about your non sci-fi work. With regard to the 'rile' comment I was referring to the various discussions on methods of criticism and, yes, the boxes. I didn't say you deliberately rile people but I sensed that some were riled from the tone of their replies. Perhaps rile was an inappropriate word. I find it odd that you have picked up on the first sentence of my comment and not mentioned the main point of my post or acknowledged the fact that I was congratulating you on your success.

Oh all right stormy. I'm just an over-sensitive artistic type at heart. Yes, thanks for the congrats, I'm looking forward to that extended drinking bout in Cork. Actually I'm going over to a little presentation ceremony at the end of June, linked in with a musical and literary festival of some kind. It should be good fun. Then I can take the week in Anam Cara any time I want. I'll try to write something about it for ABC when the time comes. Don't get riled, stormy, It's only my twisted attempt at humour.

I was 'riled' by Stormy once. but realised that threads are often misunderstood, and changed my mind. I will read your story, sounds good. by the way my (minor ) cherries also surprised me - I felt that a couple of other pieces were far more meaningfull and better composed - but they were ignored. I guess you can't appreciate your own work objectively - or all the others are fools! (hmmm! sounds reasonable)

Or both?

sirat, hahaha! It's true about the mystifying cherry pick process. What I think is probably my best ever poem just slid right on by; and readers gave it a low rating too!! Wrote a nonsensical ditty about our cherry pickers. Think I'll submit it just for laughs...and given the tone of what I'm writing these days that should be a relief for everyone! PS. finished S. Will send feed-back. Scanning is prohibitively expensive, so I'm two finger typing the film comparison onto my hard drive...you might get a copy one of these days...

Oh, sorry to give you all that trouble. Why not just make a photocopy and send it to me snailmail? In fact if you send me a good copy I can scan it for you here, free of charge (!) and send it back as a Word file or whatever format you want (within reason). Looking forward to your report on s. David.

Hello again. Still up to my eyes but I've found one or two things I can upload. Just to come back on what you said about my course, sirat, I enjoy it but it's a bit stitched together. I changed my options more times than I care to admit in my first year. If I was starting out again and knew that I was going to end up with these options I would find a University that did the single honours subject called Astrophysics. Both subjects are well taught here but there isn't very much integration between the physics and the astronomy elements. Most people taking Cosmology combine it with one or more of the maths options. I've made it harder for myself than it needed to be. Still enjoying it though. What's this mysterious thing called S that Britgrll is going to report on? Why do people here have names like Britgrll and e-griff? Is e-griff electronic? Is ABC a front for some kind of spy ring?

Britgrrl and I are using ABC as a base from which to launch our bid at world domination. I have reveived the long awaiyted report on S today and world leaders shall begin disappearing tomorrow morning to be replaced by electronic replicas under our control. e-griff was the prototype and despite his being so unconvincing as a real person we feel that we have learned enough from this partial success to be able to produce electronic versions of the likes of Tony Blair and George Bush, who present less of a challenge, being pretty unbelievable as human beings at the best of times.

Bryan, sirat is a tease. He actually lambasted my report, gave me a D- and sent me scuttling back to the drawing board to do more research on this side of the earth, which happens to be Deep-Thirteen Plus at sea level somewhere in USA. I needed a top secret clearance for this muckety-muck mindless stuff due to the inordinately paranoid nature of a president who shall remain nameless and somehow suspects we may be out to get him. Britgrrl is my code name. Stands for Brit Brat Gorilla. The brat bit is a nickname because I do occasionally suffer temper tantrums. You can check this out by retrieving Dissembling from Deep Four abc cleverly superimposed on this site where it lurks totally unnoticed, unread and in a low priority status file. Do you want to join us? Only requirement is use of extraordinarily long winded sentences at which the two of us excel!

I'm beginning to fear for my sanity now. You're starting to scare me, Britgrrl. I think one or two of our lecturers here have already been replaced. And maybe my landlady. How can I identify the imposters?

Beware Numbers 1525, 2292, 970 and 90. They will approach you offering cherries. Do not accept. I repeat: DO NOT ACCEPT!!! No doubt a little discreet (e)inquiry on your part will uncover the fact that your lecturers and landlady did succumb to the latter temptation. Oh. woe to us all! Run off some posters. Spread the word! Welcome to abctales Bryan **says she with maniacal grin*** Read Touched With Fire today (Kay Redfield Jamison). Confirmed my conviction that I am indeed a genius!

good book that...

Liana, yes. I don't have her most recent book. Time to browse at Border's (chain book store here). Now that's a dangerous activity for me; never get out of those places without spending a fortune, and that a day or two and many coffees after I first enter!

Hey, Bryan, Congratulations on the cherry for your very first posting to ABC. I'm not really a poetry man as I never tire of telling people on these threads, but I really like the one called "Consumption" which is very dark and ironic and indeed the cherried one "Proportion". Maybe there's something in this poetry lark after all. For anyone who wants to have a look, Bryan's poems are ultra short and I think work really well. Am I right in thinking that "Tea With my Sister" relates to a suicide, or is that none of my business? I wondered if your work would have anything to do with astronomy and I see that at least one of them has. For some reason though I wasn't expecting poetry. This man is full of surprises. http://www.abctales.com/abcplex/viewuser.cgi?u=bryan

Just to let you know sirat (though I think this thread has dropped off the front page) I've sent you my comments on Bottom Feeders: it's a lovely story. Feel-good science fiction is very rare and this is a particularly clever one. I've mainly suggested a few corrections to the astronomical background, though it isn't at all bad.

Oh no. He was approached!!! Hello, hello....Bryan? Are you still with us? Mayhap he invented some Star War device for self protection since he is a star gazing type.... Bryan..congratulations. Sirat alerted to your postings. Bet that sweet distraction (Proportion) is also your protector in our ongoing efforts here! Thought Consumption a brilliant commentary on our collective preoccupation, and Sound Barrier....clever title that...rather like an extended haiku which speaks volumes. I wanted to know more in Tea...

Thanks to both of you for the congrats. Those are quite old poems that I wrote during my last year at Sixth Form College. I have a fair number of stories but when I looked through them I felt none of them was really good enough to be shown in public yet. Unfortunately I don't know when I'm going to have time to go through them and do the rewrites. I think I won't be on line much in the next few weeks. I thought those poems were very slight compared to what other people have got on this site and was hesitant about posting them. I feel really encouraged by the way they have been received. Thanks again, sirat and britgrrl (can't get used to that name). Sirat is right that Tea With My Sister is part of my attempt to come to terms with my sister's suicide, when she was twewnty-three and I was sixteen. It's still the biggest event in my life and the one I find hardest to talk about. If I post my other stuff you'll see that it figures quite a lot in one guise or another. Thanks to everyone who has read those few little lines of mine, especially whoever it was that gave them the five-star ratings. Oh, the girl from Proportion? Yes, that's Jenny, she's still around but we can only meet up in the summer now. She's what keeps me sane and stops the demons from rising.

Whew! You did survive! Hey Bryan, the best of luck on your exams; exciting and absorbing topic...not to mention difficult. My name is Shelagh. Now complain about the spelling and pronunciation. People do. All the time!

Good to see you back here Bryan, and the best of luck in Year Two exams which I know must be looming. To be honest I was a little bit worried that I had commented on "Tea With My Sister" in a very heavy-handed and thoughtless way, but your reply tells me that all is okay. The mysterious S that britgrrl was to report on is my one and only novel "SIRAT" which is a sci fi piece about the emergence of electronic intelligence in a network of super-computers. You might like to read it some time, it's available as a free download from my home page at: http://davegardiner.com/index.html Britgrrl is helping me to weed out the British idioms as it's supposed to be set in America. I know it's probably far too long for you to look at just now but maybe some time? The other thing I would love you to look at is the sci fi short story that I have on this site, called "Bottom Feeders". It's at: http://www.abctales.com/abcplex/viewStory.cgi?s=9442 It has a more astronomical theme than "SIRAT". I'll look forward to any comments when you have the time.

I don't think I'm going to have much time to read a novel in the foreseeable future. I'll do my best to read Bottom Feeder and send you my comments by e-mail. Bryan.