Spaceships Don't Come Equipped With Rearview Mirrors: 50-Word Stories

By Ran Walker

With Spaceships Don't Come Equipped With Rearview Mirrors, Ran Walker returns with his second collection of one hundred 50-word stories, picking up where he left off with his first collection, The Strange Museum: 50-Word Stories. These new stories of humor, horror, science fiction, romance, literature, and poetic prose illustra

• Language: English
• Publisher: 45 Alternate Press, LLC
• Release date: Mar 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9781020001390

Ran Walker

Ran Walker (he/him) is the author of 31 books. His short stories, flash fiction, microfiction, and poetry have appeared in a variety of anthologies and journals. Prior to becoming a writer and educator, he worked in magazine publishing and practiced law in Mississippi.He is the winner of the Indie Author Project's 2019 National Indie Author of the Year Award (selected by judges from Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, IngramSpark, St. Martin's Press, and Writer's Digest), the 2019 Black Caucus of the American Library Association Best Fiction Ebook Award, the 2018 Virginia Indie Author Project Award for Adult Fiction, and the 2021 Blind Corner Afrofuturism Microfiction Contest. Ran is an Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Hampton University and serves as a Contributing Editor with Writer's Digest. He lives in Virginia with his wife and much better half, Lauren, and his amazing daughter, Zoë.

Book preview

Spaceships Don’t Come Equipped With Rearview Mirrors

SPACESHIPS DON’T COME EQUIPPED WITH REARVIEW MIRRORS

50-WORD STORIES

RAN WALKER

45 Alternate Press LLC

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

© 2023 Randolph Walker, Jr.

All rights reserved.

Cover image used courtesy of Strvnge Films

ISBN: 9781020001383 (Paperback)

ISBN: 9781020001390 (Ebook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023901457

First Edition

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

45 Alternate Press, LLC

Hampton, VA

CONTENTS

Preface

Part I

1. How To Become Legendary

2. My Girlfriend, the Actress

3. The Cruciverbalist

4. Seeds

5. Euphonic Cacophony

6. Trick or Treat

7. The Neighbor

8. Able to Leap Tall Insecurities in a Single Bound

9. Day 701 of the Pandemic

10. Please Don’t Slap the Picasso

11. Night Landing

12. The Octogenarian

13. A Life in the Life of an Actor

14. The Last Snowflake

15. The Lost and Found

16. The Gamer

17. Cotton Candy Clouds

18. Mama-San

19. Men in Mourning

20. The Funambulist

21. La Voyeuse

22. The Bibliophile

23. Flying Saucers

24. Natsu

25. Ink

26. Dialogue of a First Date

27. The S Word

28. Purple

29. Beaufort

30. The First Book

31. The Entertainer

32. Extinguished

33. Spaceships Don’t Come Equipped With Rearview Mirrors

34. The Dude Behind the Mask

35. African-American Feature-Length Animation

36. How to Write a 50-Word Story

37. Slow Times at Daily High, Circa 1992

38.