Wordspill-Welcome

Wordspill:

it wasn't long until everyone on earth had been exterminated except for the authors. the authors, they said, are the only true value tht the earth holds. eelements are found everywhere in the universe, but minds like these, well, you know. we're not exactly creative and neither would you be if you had to stare at the sun in order to extract energy to power the thirteen stomachs and one measley brain you have. the only reason they were even able to converse is through the self-sacrifice of members of their species to power one of them.

anyway, so all these authors had been rounded up into small pens. from browsing the internet with their minds, the aliens had discerned that the best environment for a writer was a sparese room, with a typewriter and perhaps a record of jazz. of course, these notions were conceived from the kind of people that didn't write at all, or just merely liked talking about writing, and so were absolutely nothing like the harems , and bars that most authors preferred. at the very least, cried the authors, give us a sfinger of scotch every now and again!

but no, the alines would not be swayed. in any case, it happened that the aliens required someone to weed out the good authors from the bad. after all, they said, we only have limited room on our giant space pods, we can't ake you all. and so began the long process of culling down the author population on earth. this was no easy task, as anyoen that has ever had an idea and written it down using the english language--on any sort of medium--is an author by their definition. therefore wehowever, since they had no eyes, and only language excited them, the aliens preferred writers of the written word. rather than painters or scultpors or other such beasts. they vaporised them upon landing.

anyway like is aid, they needed someeone to thin the crowds of writers. bring in THE CRITIC. that is, me. i had a tought time of it at first, as whenever i found a ccareless passive voice, or lazy grammatical venture, or justabitooexperimental experimental piece, well, i was killing someone.

the authors hated me of course. alled me the spwritten word's hitler. day after day i whittled them down, for years. and day after day they grew more restless and revolutionary, as people who know in their hear tof hearts that they've penned a cliche and that it might damn well kill them do.


and as matters would have it, they dreamed up (they are authors after all) a way of overthrowing the aliens. they wrote
subliminal messages in the texts that I had to read through, in exquisite prose of course, and hidden to my eyes, but that would cause the aliens to kel over and vomit up their brains. eventually so much of this got through that they decided it was time to move by brute force. after a messy fight, with half the fan fiction battallion getting slaughtered, and a lot of the transgressives wandering off to die frozen in space, they won. and i, of course, was a hero to the masses.

but the people that were not the masses knew me, and they knew that i had culled a lot of them. eventually iw as presented to meet the inner circle. upon stepping inside the belding i was attacked savagely by a person who I had critiqued before the fall of humankind. someone who i had said was a pretentious nobody with fat too many cliches. he died, shot from behind by a cool calm fantasy science fiction author.

'Well, come on in." he said "everyone's dying to meet you."

Scrubup:

It wasn't long until everyone on Earth had been exterminated. Everyone except for the authors. The aliens took the view that the authors held the only true value of anything on the planet. Rocks are found everywhere, said They, and we don't care so much for the music. We do, however, like being read stories before our long hibernation periods. Unfortunately we aren't a creative race, and neither would you be if you could only see the universe in abstract mathematical equations written in base thirteen. The aliens saw exercises in writing as complex algorithmic relationships to be cracked open and solved. A successful romantic tale was merely a series of correlated concepts to be deciphered. But the deciphering gave them the only kind of pleasure they knew, and a great one at that, of having solved a terribly complicated problem.

All the authors had been rounded up into small pens. From browsing the Internet with their minds, the aliens had discerned the the best environment for a writer was a sparse room, with a typewriter and perhaps a jazz record. Of course, these notions were conceived based on the blogs maintained by the kind of people that don't actually write at all, or merely like talking about writing, and so were absolutely nothing like the fully-stocked harems and bars that most authors prefer. At the very least, cried the authors, give us a finger of scotch every now and again!

After all the authors had been rounded up, the aliens made a disconcerting announcement; they needed someone to thin the crowds of writers. After all, said They, we only have limited room in our space pods. We can't take you all. So began the long process of culling down the author population on earth. This was no easy task as, according to the aliens, anyone that had ever had an idea and written it down using any language--on any sort of medium--would be considered an author by definition. This meant a lot of authors. So they needed someone that would be able to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.

Enter yours truly. The critic.

I had a tough time of it at first, as whenever I found a careless passive voice, or lazy grammatical venture, or just-a-bit-too-experimental experimental piece, well, I was sentencing someone to die. But I eventually got used to the idea that if they really been dedicated to the craft, they'd have polished their words a little more. The authors hated me of course. Called me the written word's Hitler. Day after day I whittled them down. Years and years. And with each one persecuted for a misplaced comma, the authors grew more restless and revolutionary. An expected reaction when people know that the cliché they let slip through while editing one lazy Sunday afternoon might just kill them.

As matters would have it, they dreamed up (they were authors after all) a way of overthrowing the aliens. They wrote subliminal messages in the texts that I had to read through, in exquisite prose of course, and hidden to my non-mathematically inclined eyes. These messages contained inconsistencies in hyperspace that would cause the aliens to keel over and vomit up their brains. Eventually so much of this got through that they decided it was time to move by brute force on the remaining aliens. After a messy fight--half the First Fan-Fiction Battalion were slaughtered, and a lot of the Tiger Transgressives wandered off to die frozen in space--they won. And because of my passive, but crucial, role in the proceedings, I was a hero to the masses.

But the authors that were not the masses knew me. They knew me from before the invasion, and they didn't forgive and forget that I had culled an awful lot of them. Eventually it happened that I was presented to meet the inner circle. A pale man with a haggard beard, thick curly black hair, and wearing a black leather jacket opened the door.

'Well, come on in," he said. "Everyone's dying to meet you."