Tags
I have for your enjoyment my first published story of the year, and in what is becoming a tradition, the first published story this year was published on the Short Humour Site (also the first place I was ever published). Checking my notes… well, it’s only the second year in a row, but I may be making it a tradition. This is the first story I’ve “completed” this year and my first published story to be written on a real TRS-80 Model 100. So far this year, I’ve spent 49 hours writing, but I have a lot of other things in various stages of progression.
Before we get into this thing, I highly recommend that you read the story before reading the rest of this blog post, as there is a little game you might like to play while reading this story. Which is… See how many paradoxes you can spot. I’ve counted 7, and I may have added more subconsciously.
The story is only 500 words long (this blog post is actually longer by almost a hundred words) and concerns the discovery of a random teapot in outer space. Explaining more of the story would involve spoilers, so… let the spoilers begin.
The following paradoxes are included in the story:
Russell’s Teapot – the central part of the story and half of the story title. It’s more an analogy then a paradox, it states that if someone says an object (like a teapot) exists and can’t be observed, does it really exist? It has implications for religion. The character of Russell in the story is an homage.
The Invisible Pink Unicorn – the other half of the title, the Invisible Pink Unicorn is a goddess of certain parody religions. The paradox is how can something (like a unicorn) be a color (say pink) and invisible simultaneously. Both of these paradoxes are explained in the story specifically.
The Berry Paradox – I came across this paradox in the David Foster Wallace story “Good Old Neon” it deals with really big numbers. For example, “the smallest number that can’t be described in under 60 syllables,” but that description is only 18 syllables long. The character of Berry was based on this paradox.
The Indescribable Paradox – describing something as indescribable is itself a description, sort of a linguistic version of the Berry Paradox.
Occam’s Raiser/Lair Paradox – these were better described in earlier drafts. Still, they were briefly alluded to in the story when Berry says, “We may be hallucinating.” the implication being that Two people hallucinating the same teapot in space would be a more complicated explanation than seeing one teapot floating in space. When this story is collected, I may add that segment back in. Speaking of which, I think I may use this as the title story of an upcoming collection.
Zeno’s Paradox – this is based on the idea that if in a race someone gets a head start, no matter how fast the challenger might be, they will never overtake the one with the head start because the one with the head start will move on a little more. I came across this paradox by accident when I tried to figure out how long it would take a neutron star to stop spinning (they do slow down over a very long time). I realized pretty quickly how I calculated it would never hit zero; it would just keep moving slower and slower. Zeno’s Paradox was an excellent way to finish the story.
How many paradoxes did you pick up on? Are there any I put in there and didn’t notice? Possibly, but if not, it is a very very short story, and I hope you enjoyed it.
The Unicorn’s Teapot | The Short Humour Site | February 13th 2023