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    The Ultimate Show
    The Ultimate Show
    The Ultimate Show
    Ebook68 pages56 minutes

    The Ultimate Show

    By Vaughan Stanger

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    About this ebook

    The Ultimate Show brings together four of Vaughan Stanger's published SF and fantasy stories, this time on theme of entertainment. Each of these tales pokes a probing finger into a favourite leisure-time activity,mining them for fun and horror, sometimes simultaneously. So, if you've ever stared in bemusement at a piece of conceptual art, or been the butt of a stand-up comic's joke, or crowd-surfed during a rock concert, or maybe spent a little too much time watching sport on television, these stories will appeal to you.

    Nancy Fulda (Nebula Award nominee and proprietor of AnthologyBuilder.com) wrote of "Slices of Life": "My favorite from this batch is Stanger's Slices of Life, the poignant tale of an artist who turned his own death into a form artistic expression, and the woman whose heart got dragged along in his wake."

    Meredith Wiggins (in The Future Fire's review of the 'Music for Another World' anthology) wrote of "Star in a Glass": "there was one (story) in particular which seemed to create a whole world through suggestion, and left me with the fervent hope that it will be expanded into a full length novel at some point. ‘Star in a Glass’ by Vaughan Stanger is the story of the re-forming of a ‘prog-metal-ballet’ band in the near future ... the details Stanger intersperses within the tantrums and trials of the band create a richly textured (if somewhat gritty) world; one which I would personally love to visit again."

    This collection also features "Hand in Glove", the story of a psychotic glove puppet and its virtual successor, and "Extra Time", a story that might just make you nervous about watching televised sport.

    Let the show begin!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherVaughan Stanger
    Release dateJun 11, 2013
    ISBN9781301731459
    The Ultimate Show
    Author

    Vaughan Stanger

    Until recently, Vaughan Stanger worked as a research manager at a British engineering company. From 1997 to 2011, he wrote science fiction and fantasy stories in his spare time, effectively setting himself homework. The results of this head-scratching were published in Nature Futures, Interzone, Postscripts, Daily Science Fiction and Music for Another World, to name but a few. Translations of his stories have appeared in nine languages.In January 2012 Vaughan became a full-time writer. Currently he's busy writing an SF novel. The head-scratching has got worse if anything. There are also some new stories in the works, plus further e-book compilations of his previously published stories to come.

    Read more from Vaughan Stanger

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      Book preview

      The Ultimate Show - Vaughan Stanger

      Introduction

      This collection brings together four of my previously published SF and fantasy stories. Each tale pokes a probing finger into a favourite leisure-time activity. So, if you've ever stared in bemusement at a piece of conceptual art, or been the butt of a stand-up comic's joke, or crowd-surfed during a rock concert, or maybe even spent a little too much time watching sport on television, these stories should appeal to you.

      Let the show begin.

      Slices of Life

      I woke up this morning with a head full of doggerel. The poem bore the stamp of youthful enthusiasm, if not of quality. A quick search through my diaries revealed that I wrote it on my sixteenth birthday. You would doubtless recognise the source of my inspiration, Leroy, if I recited that piece to you now.

      There once was an artist who pickled a cow,

      Then sliced it in half with a chainsaw.

      He encased it in glass,

      Did the same to its calf,

      Yet was mocked for creating an eyesore!

      In truth, I was never much of a poet, as you reminded me whenever you read my scribblings. Even so, those clumsy lines evoke the delight I felt on hearing that Mother and Child Divided had won the 1995 Turner Prize. The furore whipped up by the tabloids was sheer inspiration to a wild-child who delighted in raising hell in her GCSE arts class. Back then, Damien Hirst was to die for. Sound-tracked by Damon Albarn, of course.

      Two years before Britart's finest hour, the State of Texas executed a murderer by lethal injection. Showing laudable, if ironic, concern for the future, Joseph Paul Jernigan donated his body to science. A magnetic resonance imager scanned Jernigan's cadaver, slicing him into pixel-planes thin as salami. The so-called Virtual Human was uploaded onto the Web. Some people thought the images macabre, others called them art. By papering the walls of your studio with them, you placed yourself squarely in the art faction.

      Giddy with ambition and blitzed on acid, we brought our influences to bear on one outrageous project after another, melding digital media and roadkill into surreal installations that became a cause célèbre on the fringes of the British arts scene. But after four years of partying and three years of marriage, our relationship ended in acrimony. Once matters were in the hands of our lawyers, we never spoke again. With good reason I might add, for I had every reason to hate you, didn't I Leroy?

      Until a week ago, I thought that the passage of time had blunted my anger, but I felt its familiar sting when I recognised your handwriting on that old-fashioned manila envelope. I was on the point of turning down your invitation when my Homebot relayed the news of your death.

      As I walk down the long ramp that leads into the vast chamber of grey-painted brickwork and black-steel girders that houses the Tate Modern gallery, it occurs to me that I, Tanya Roberts, may be nothing more than an early work to be dusted off and put on display in the exhibition of your life. I feel sure that you are manipulating me, just as you did a quarter of a century ago.

      Manipulated or not, I cannot help but be impressed by this, your ultimate creation. The hologram of a nude, middle-aged man towers over me, so tall that his scalp seems to graze the skylight. Your ruggedly handsome face is tilted downwards and your eyes are closed, as if the drone that suffuses the Turbine Hall has lulled you to sleep.

      The cultural commentators have heralded this piece as your definitive bid for artistic immortality. To a world-famous artist afflicted with a terminal disease, the temptation to create some kind of grand summation of one's life's work must have seemed irresistible. But the title of the piece, You and Me in Disunity, is pregnant with implication. Perhaps that is why you invited me to attend a private viewing, before the cognoscenti descend en masse.

      My mind conjures up a vision of the Turbine Hall swarming with the smug-looking, dressed-to-impress darlings of the Establishment, gossiping and name-dropping and guzzling champagne. I dismiss the image with a shake of my head, glad to have left that world behind.

      Determined to obtain the best possible view of your hologram, I climb the stairs to the second level, then make my way to the barrier at the end of the platform. My head is at the same height as your feet, which float in mid-air ten metres from me. Only at this close range can I confirm my suspicion that your body has been sliced into sections, as if filleted by an invisible cleaver.

      Hyperslice installations are nothing new to

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