Tell me of the kid touchers of your homeworld, Usul.

I read Lord of the Flies for my senior English class. Kids alone on an island reverting to barbarism is pretty entertaining. We had to do some group project for it, and mine ended up making a video recreating the scene where Simon hallucinates talking to the pig's head on a stick with a little stuffed toy we tore the top off of and put fake blood on.

T. E. Lawrence?

Last I read by King was his short story collection Full Dark, No Stars, which I thought was pretty strong overall. My favorites are the first and last stories, 1922 and A Good Marriage, respectively;

1922 is about a down-on-his-luck farmer whose bitterness over the impending loss of his land inspires a bloody idea to save it. Uxorcide, Bonnie-and-Clyde-style killing sprees, and rats abound. There's a pretty good, eponymously named song by Shooter Jennings based on it, too.

A Good Marriage tells the story of a wife's unsettling realization that her devoted milquetoast husband is actually a notorious serial killer. King was supposedly inspired by the story of the BTK Killer, and the public doubt at the time that Dennis Rader's wife could have known nothing about his crimes.

The other stories are Big Driver and Fair Extension, the latter being a somewhat uninspired reflection on the tragic escalation of petty paybacks and the depths of human greed and envy by way of a Faustian bargain. Big Driver is an interesting tale, though; a rape-and-revenge story from the point-of-view of a 'cozy mystery' writer.

No hard feels, mattstat. ;)

I thought that was an acceptable amount of cheek, but okay. See, this is what years of IS will do to you! I'll remember to suffer all buttinskies silently in the future. :P
 

Kindly knock that pedantic shit off, please. ^_^

*Insert obligatory ISer identification here*

It does seem unfortunately true that no one reviews new stories on the site (myself included), at least so far as I'm aware; certainly nobody is talking about it if they do. FWIW, the glimpses of new stuff I do catch on the main page always look like shit, but I guess you can't find diamonds in the rough without some effort.

Hell, the most that interfics get mentioned at all is when End or DEP updates us on their own secretive projects. I don't know how much anyone else really cares about making something entertaining or interesting to share with other people - IF just seems to be an incidental commonality at this point.

The forums are mostly left for... bitter rants and outbursts of abject misery sent out into the uncaring void. It's definitely not a place for the thin-skinned, easily offended, or anyone who generally doesn't assume caustic sarcasm is the default form of expression. :|

No joke, that SF idea is one I've had as well. I called it "Mother, Ship" and the idea is you'd play as a living vessel-thing akin to the Moya from FarScape. A crew of humans would somehow wander on/into you and you'd take them on as your responsibility. You'd even have little biotech creatures akin to white blood cells or some sort of mutualistic animals (think sharks and remora or ants and aphids) to use for interacting with the crew.

As for a female protag, I've got that planned for another SF idea of mine. She'd be security chief of a corporate colony ship that has to protect and defend her fellow crew members/colonists from hostile aliens and conditions and members of a rival corporation looking to stake their claim.

Those are two very gripping, suspense-filled sentences. I immediately want to read more. Therefore, write more.