DISCUSSION THREAD -- October 2024 -- 75 Word Writing Challenge

The Judge said:
As Provincial recognised, the robot was based on the image of Robby from the 1956 film Forbidden Planet, the re-imaging of Shakespeare's The Tempest (though I confess if I ever saw the film, or Lost in Space in which much the same robot appears, I've forgotten everything about them!) but the story touched more on Fireball XL5...
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Fireball XL5 is the series I was thinking of; it has a robot made up of lights, plant pots and toilet rolls, which acts as the co- and auto-pilot on the spaceship and talks incomprehensibly - and that is really saying something, since Zoonie is even worse. I am also too young to have seen it the first time round, but have watched episodes on dvd/bluray. Thanks to the work of Fanderson, a huge amount of material has been preserved.
 
Congratulations to @Cat's Cradle, and many thanks to the wonderful people who gave my story a mention. :)

RE THE VOTING PROFILE: Though my ancient psychology degree is (at this distance in time) rather poorly remembered, I seem to recall being taught that, when people memorise lists, they retain the first few and the last few items more frequently than any others, with a bias towards the last few (the most recent items push out older ones, à la Homer Simpson.) But I don't believe that statistics is the whole story here, or even the main part.

There may be an issue with overshadowing that explains the large bump at the front of the voting profile. The first few stories may seem fresher and more original than subsequent stories because you haven't yet read anything similar to compare them with. However we have all been speared through the heart by something that someone else has written, regardless of where it was in the list. That is why the honourable mentions are so important. They say huge amounts about the quality of a story. :)
 
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Thanks to Starbeast for the vote, and Provincial for the mention (and anyone I missed). I voted for Cats Cradle - I am the kind of guy who feels bad when someone points out how lonely it would be to be one of the robots that get sent to Mars, so how could I not vote for the tale of Cleanbot-75?
My shortlist went:

Were the Moone Indeed Made of Greene Cheese -- Guttersnipe​

Grand Theft Carbon -- AnRoinnUltra​

Dare to live life… -- Bowler1

Hast Thou a Vista? -- Ursa major​

The Infinite Optimism Drive -- Christine Wheelwright

En retard à la fête -- Bren G​

...but I enjoyed all of them - this always comes across sounding a bit insincere to me on re-reading but I can't emphasise enough that I genuinely do, and thank you everybody for the monthly flash fiction anthology!
 
I capitalized most of the nouns in the story as a reference to the early Modern English feature in the 1700s. I did make a few mistakes. :/

I suppose the whimsicality was partially inspired by Gulliver's Travels.
 
Congrats @Cat's Cradle

Thanks for the vote @Provincial plus the mentions folks.

I went with one of the original retrofuturists, Leonardo da Vinci, an exceptional artist and visionary. One who sketched planes, cars, diving suits, helicopters and tanks long before anyone else.

A spot of plagerism I suppose, as I did use two quotes attributed to da Vinci. It seemed somewhat appropriate for him to speak his own lines.

"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward"

"The knowledge of all things is possible"

In my opinion, the latter highly appropriate for retrofuturism and optimism.
 
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