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Fifty word science fiction stories


William Overington

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Thank you all.

I have found the following.

http://wwwimages.adobe.com/content/dam/acom/en/products/type/pdfs/WarnockPro.pdf

It appears that the font has some ornaments are available.

So shall we have a rule for this thread that someone may use ornaments around the text without that use counting toward the fifty words

William

 

Until December 2022, using a Lenovo laptop running Windows 10 in England. From January 2023, using an HP laptop running Windows 11 in England.

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27 minutes ago, MikeW said:

And seeing how I invaded this thread, ...

 

You, and everyone, are most welcome to post. Also, without prejudice to the generality of the previous sentence, you did provide an answer to my question about the font.

28 minutes ago, MikeW said:

… , a contribution...

 

Thank you.

28 minutes ago, MikeW said:

...which will be my only one.

 

Alas!

William

 

Until December 2022, using a Lenovo laptop running Windows 10 in England. From January 2023, using an HP laptop running Windows 11 in England.

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38 minutes ago, MikeW said:

I invaded this thread

Since you "invaded" this space, and in keeping with the sci-fi theme, does that make you a Space Invader?

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Visions of sugarplums danced in my head. Merry Christmas to all (and to all, a good night).

542455423_AChristmasDream.thumb.jpg.64b1a770f8f46760fa844172cd2dc9e2.jpg

NB - for those who want to know these things, the font is Perpetua 21 points with -10% tracking.

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Thank you.

From the story. If the narrator of the story dreams, does the "someone else" experience that dream?

Regarding tracking. I did not know the term in relation to typography, but I have now found the following.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter-spacing

I had known of letter spacing from handsetting metal type, though not as a numerical quantity and not of negative letter spacing.

I had met letter spacing in the context of spacing between capitals in a title.

I found that tracking is available in Affinity Publisher.

I was having problems finding it until I found that I could pull the character panel onto the page, thereby making it easier to use, though now I have found it and tried it I can use it from the character panel's storage position.

Could you say why you chose use negative tracking please?

Any particular reason for that typeface?

William

 

Until December 2022, using a Lenovo laptop running Windows 10 in England. From January 2023, using an HP laptop running Windows 11 in England.

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The font used in the passive starship story is Aldine 401 BT, which is like Bembo.

The font is at 30 point. There is no leading between the lines (that is, in Affinity Publisher parlance, Paragraph Leading is the same as font size).

William

 

Until December 2022, using a Lenovo laptop running Windows 10 in England. From January 2023, using an HP laptop running Windows 11 in England.

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Each of the stories that I have published in this thread were prepared using an A5 landscape page, starting with the Frame Text panel the same size as the margins that appear by default.

I export as a png file making the height 512 pixels, which makes the width become 726 pixels.

William

 

Until December 2022, using a Lenovo laptop running Windows 10 in England. From January 2023, using an HP laptop running Windows 11 in England.

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8 hours ago, William Overington said:

From the story. If the narrator of the story dreams, does the "someone else" experience that dream?

I will leave the "meaning" of the story to the reader. I can tell you that, although I have not read a great many of Phillip Dick's works, I have always enjoyed his themes. Chief among them, how do we know that we are real, and are we defined by our own memories (two of the questions in those stories that became "Blade Runner" and "Total Recall")?

8 hours ago, William Overington said:

Regarding tracking. I did not know the term in relation to typography

To me, tracking is just "plural" kerning – instead of changing the space between two letters, this is the wholesale changing of space between larger tracts of text.

As to the questions about font choice and negative tracking, these were based on my subjective opinion of the "look" of the typeface. I found Perpetua to be rather formal and it seemed to fit the story, which had a philosophical bent. The negative tracking was applied because, without it, the text just appeared too "airy."

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Over 26 hours and 110 views since my previous post.

Stuck for inspiration?

If so, how about having a go at creative writing by continuing from one of the following?

----

She gazed up at the gibbous moon in the sky and wondered if

She had always struggled learning languages, but putting the bracelet on her wrist she found she could suddenly speak and understand Portuguese. Now she

Now that petrol for cars has been banned, he looked at the classic car in his garage and

----

No need to post if you don't want to, but this is not a competition, and all posts are welcome.

William

 

Until December 2022, using a Lenovo laptop running Windows 10 in England. From January 2023, using an HP laptop running Windows 11 in England.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

In lines 'less crowded' than the surrounding ones, consider triple clicking to select the entire line and next simultaneously press alt and arrow to the right several times to give it a better distributed appearance, which results in more space between individual letters and less space between the words.

Home: https://vectorwhiz.com  : : : :  Portfolio blog: https://communicats.blogspot.com

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Oh, I had replied some hours ago, it looks like I did not click send.

The text appears to have been lost, but it was something like the following.

Thank you. I did not know about it before.

I have had a go at this and, probably because of me being new to it, it seemed somewhat hit and miss.

I started with a copy of the original .afpub file so that I still have the original.

I tried the technique and at one time the word 'being' went to the next line!

However, I got the following so I decided to export a png graphic file and post it into the thread.

Is it the case that the width of each of the glyphs is not altered but that what happens is that some of each of the five spaces between the words is distributed into the twenty-six gaps between the letters within the words?

Thank you again.

William

 

mobile_respaced_third_line.png

Until December 2022, using a Lenovo laptop running Windows 10 in England. From January 2023, using an HP laptop running Windows 11 in England.

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1 hour ago, William Overington said:

Is it the case that the width of each of the glyphs is not altered but that what happens is that some of each of the five spaces between the words is distributed into the twenty-six gaps between the letters within the words?

What it does basically is increase the space between the letters in words as a result of which the space between words decreases, provided the justification function was added to the paragraph. I use it a lot for visual poems and simply place an Enter (line break) at the end of each line.

Home: https://vectorwhiz.com  : : : :  Portfolio blog: https://communicats.blogspot.com

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6 minutes ago, VectorWhiz said:

What it does basically is increase the space between the letters in words as a result of which the space between words decreases, provided the justification function was added to the paragraph. I use it a lot for visual poems and simply place an Enter (line break) at the end of each line.

Thank you.

In mine, actually the whole paragraph was justified, from the original, and the word 'being' went onto the next line at one stage, but after that it seemed to do it only on the highlighted line, notwithstanding that there was no line break between the two lines.

With poetry the layout is often different right from the start and I too use line breaks for poems.

William

 

Until December 2022, using a Lenovo laptop running Windows 10 in England. From January 2023, using an HP laptop running Windows 11 in England.

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On 12/24/2019 at 10:15 AM, William Overington said:

Regarding the story of the troll.

1. Suppose that the narrator is telling the truth.

Then the friend is lying.

The friend says that the narrator is telling the truth, therefore the narrator would be lying.

Oops!

2. Suppose that the narrator is lying.

Then the friend is telling the truth.

The friend says that the narrator is telling the truth, therefore the narrator would be telling the truth.

Ooops!

Years ago I put a series of three electronic NOT gates in series and fed back the result to the beginning. No input value, it just ran. The circuitry did not explode, but as there is a small propagation delay in electronic circuitry, then the output viewed on an oscilloscope was a very high frequency square wave. I di not think at the time but if I had made the length of wire for the feedback loop longer I might have been able to slow down the frequency of the oscillations a little.

William

 

 

 

I think there is a flaw in your logic in case 2. Suppose that the narrator is lying. Therefore his friend does not always lie. But he may be lying, or he may be telling the truth - there is no way of knowing. Troll saved.

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