RAFT -- A Science Fiction Short Story by Larry Tritten

Last edited Sat Aug 3, 2024, 09:39 PM - Edit history (8)

From "DARKER MATTER".. (Online Science Fiction Magazine)

"From out of space came a slender, cylindrical space vessel, half a mile long, hurtling at a skewed angle.
It's metallic fuselage bore scores of concave impressions, as if a vast mailed fist had hammered along it's length, and it seemed to be falling.
As it fell, in what appeared to be a listless way, dark incandescent red and orange colors limned it's shape.

Against a universe alight with placid starlight it was an aberrant sight.

An observer would have known immediately that here was a tragedy, a rare drama being played out against the endless dazzle of countless suns reduced to points of white light, impartial and ubiquitous.
The craft moved, fell, as swiftly as a meteor, the hot colors burning it with increasing brightness."

And then, falling like a meteor that burns more greatly upon entering an atmosphere, it exploded.
Vast involuted pearls of radiant light consumed the vessel and for hundreds of miles around it there was turbulence, an inflammatory spectacle, floral in appearance, reducing the quiet drama of mere distant starlight to momentary insignificance."

More:
https://darkermatter.com/issue3/raft.php






Larry Tritten (1938 - 2011) was a veteran freelance writer with more than 1,500 publishing credits to his name
[Many times in "The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction"]
His writing spans an enormous range, including humor (Harlan Ellison described Larry as "the best humor writer in America), travel, fiction (including science fiction and fantasy), non-fiction, erotica, theater criticism, and more.
He has appeared in many magazines including The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, Playboy, Newsday, and scores of newspapers, including The Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Sun Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, and others.

About his story 'Raft' Larry says: "The story was inspired by a short story by Evan S. Connell Jr. titled: 'The Yellow Raft' about a pilot shot down in the South Pacific during World War II.
It gave a science-fiction take, just as Harlan Ellison's Year's Best American Short Stories story. 'The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore' is his take on Shirley Jackson's short story, 'One Ordinary Day With Peanuts'."

Larry was born in Nebraska, grew up in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, and spent the last 50 years of his life as a freelance writer living in San Francisco.