Elly Bangs

@ellybangs

Author of the apocalyptic cyberpunk novel UNITY, available in bookstores and libraries near you. Short fiction and more at elbangs.com. Queer and trans. (She/her)

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Elly Bangs@ellybangs· 7d

So I guess "dicey" technically means "of uncertain outcome, as in a roll of the dice" -- but when somebody says a situation is dicey I hear it as "you're absolutely gonna get diced like an onion if you go in there"

Etymology chart indicating that "dice" the verb and "dicey" the adjective both come directly from "dice" the noun; "dicey" does not imply you're going to get diced like an onion.

Elly Bangs@ellybangs· Jun 18

Current status

An odd little yellow plastic humanoid figurine, naked and dirty, with a beleaguered and dubious expression in its eyes (for it has no other facial features) lies supine on a city sidewalk near a drain.

Elly Bangs@ellybangs· Jun 7

Do you reckon a danger buffet is like a regular buffet except dangerous? Or is it a situation where you can pick out custom quantities of the particular kinds of danger you want to be in?

Under a gloomy sky, a weathered bare concrete building crudely inscribed with the words "GOT EARS? HEAR THIS! DANGER BUFFET"

Elly Bangs@ellybangs· May 30

Two homemade pies, one triple-berry and one apple, fresh out of the oven. They have lattice top crusts.

Elly Bangs@ellybangs· Apr 22

Pleased to be reading a short bit of my novel UNITY among some amazing authors! Sign up to join us at noon Eastern on May 1st. strongwomenstrangeworlds.weebly.com

Flyer image for Strong Women Strange Worlds First Friday QuickReads: scifi, fantasy, and horror, with short readings by featured readers Elly Bangs, A.L. Kaplan, Lauren Beukes, Anne E.G. Nydam, A.Y. Chao, and E.D.E. Bell -- May 1st, 12pm EDT, free on Zoom.

Elly Bangs@ellybangs· Mar 12

Philip K. Dick: In my short story "Sales Pitch" I invented the fasrad, an autonomous commercial AI that destroys your life and drives you insane, as a cautionary tale Tech Company: At long last, we have created the fasrad from classic sci-fi short story "Sales Pitch"

A search result for "Fasrad - Hosted AI Agents"

Elly Bangs@ellybangs· Feb 7

Incomprehensibly bizarre block of text, ostensibly written by an English teacher, claiming that the phrase "let's blow this popsicle stand" is a reference to a Jamaican terrorist who tried to take over the world in the 1940s, using mind-controlling radioactive popsicles, only to be killed by "a strange cult" that bombed all the nation's popsicle stands.

Elly Bangs@ellybangs· Nov 21

A transit map on a bus or train, with words scrawled over it: "If you promise to stay alive just a little bit longer I promise that we are going to make this world a place with living in by any means necessary. I ain't giving up, I swear."

Elly Bangs@ellybangs· Nov 9

J. Frank Parnell's radiation monologue from Repo Man (1984): "Ra-di-a-tion. Yes, indeed. You hear the most outrageous lies about it. Half-baked goggle-box do-gooders telling everybody it's bad for you. Pernicious nonsense! Everybody could stand a hundred chest x-rays a year. They oughta have 'em, too."

Elly Bangs@ellybangs· Oct 2

My writing career summed up in one image:

A Furby smoking a cigarette and staring blankly into the distance, with the image of a burning city overlaid like a PTSD flashback, and the text caption "It is what it is"

Elly Bangs@ellybangs· Sep 16

If you see this, quote with the energy you bring to BlueSky.

A 1970s-style public awareness poster from Scarfolk Council Civil Defence titled "Protect & Survive & Be Merry", in which a small child draws a mushroom cloud in the frost on a window pane. It says "In the event of a nuclear strike this Christmas, 1. Do not have snowball fights with fallout ash. Do not make a fallout snowman. 2. If you run out of food, eat the Christmas tree but first remove tinsel, baubles and other ornaments. Rub mulled wine into irradiated gums. 3. Package deceased family members in discarded wrapping paper. Do not use ribbons. Use spare gift tags as corpse identification toe tags."

Elly Bangs@ellybangs· Sep 13

What poster did you have hanging in your room as a kid?

Movie poster for the early 2000s restoration of Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927)

Elly Bangs@ellybangs· Sep 10

How my perception of people has evolved over the course of my life.

A graph of how the author's perception of humanity has evolved over the course of her life, with people broken into four categories: truly good (very thin throughout), imperfect but basically good (a steadily shrinking segment), naturally inclined to goodness but evil in practice (a steadily growing segment), and iredeemably evil (an exponentially growing segment)

Elly Bangs@ellybangs· Sep 4

You're having a dinner party with characters from Star Trek. What four shapeshifting women are you inviting?

The shapeshifting "Salt Vampire" from ST:TOS S1E1

Iman, the shapeshifting Chameloid from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

Anya, a shapeshifting allasomorph from ST:TNG S2E10

Ardra from ST:TNG S4E13, who doesn't physically shapeshift but does project cool disguises using holography

Elly Bangs@ellybangs· Aug 21

If you see this post a wizard

Photograph of a raccoon waving its paws around a large floating soap bubble, with a Tumblr-style caption that reads "HE IS DOING...... SPELLS......"

Elly Bangs@ellybangs· Aug 20

The "fighter vs. giant" meme where the fighter is labeled "JB's shame over disinforming children about the holocaust" and the hundred-foot-tall giant is "my shame over that time I was a jerk to a stranger when I was 14 years old in like 1997"

Elly Bangs@ellybangs· Aug 12

I made this in January when the board was still empty and here's where things stand now.

A bingo card of catastrophes that could reasonably happen during the current US presidential administration. Squares currently checked off: concentration camps, Trump-Musk Feud, free space, martial law imposed. Squares highlighted to show they're pending but not yet checked off: marriage equality repealed, new nuclear arms race, major economic collapse.

Elly Bangs@ellybangs· Aug 9

So it turns out the sound of even a tiny submarine imploding under two miles of water is so loud that you can hear it clearly all the way up on the surface. It makes sense, but I honestly wouldn't have imagined it that way.

Excerpt from the USCG report on the Titan submersible implosion: "[...]at a depth of 3346.28 meters [...] the TITAN suffered a catastrophic implosion, resulting in the immediate loss of all lives on board. Two seconds later [...] heard a 'bang' emanating from the ocean's surface, which the investigation later correlated to the TITAN's implosion."

Elly Bangs@ellybangs· Jul 21

My second double feature results in the theater's permanent closure after the few attendees who stick out the entire evening slip into comas and die of sheer depression (although these are both important films that deserve to be extensively seen and discussed!)

The Day After (1984), an American film accurately depicting global thermonuclear war

Threads (1984), a British film accurately depicting global thermonuclear war

Elly Bangs@ellybangs· Jul 21

You’ve inherited a movie theater, what’s your first double feature? This potential combo has been on my mind a lot recently for some reason.

The Brother from Another Planet (1984), starring Joe Morton as a lone extraterrestrial who gets stuck on Earth

The Man who Fell to Earth (1976) starring David Bowie as a lone extraterrestrial who gets stuck on Earth

Elly Bangs@ellybangs· Jul 19

me and my book project

A diptych illustration: on the left, luminous, otherworldly pipework and machinery rises under a starry sky with two moons; on the right, a woman sits at a table in her living room, solemnly setting fire to a sheet of paper. Behind her, her orange cat makes a flying leap through a window, crossing the boundary between the two worlds that make up the image. This is the cover art for San Diego Lightfoot Sue, painted by Leo and Diane Dillon.

Elly Bangs@ellybangs· Jul 19

This is where I post from

A lone phone booth at the entrance to a long, dark alley in a crumbled part of town: a haven of warm white light islanded in the dim and sickly glow of the street lamps.

Elly Bangs@ellybangs· Jul 6

Close-up of two strawberry-rhubarb pies, fresh out of the oven, with the fruit visible through a thick lattice crust dusted in sugar and cinnamon, cooling on a stovetop

Elly Bangs@ellybangs· Jun 6

A version of the "illusion of free choice" meme in which a cow contemplates two pathways that lead to the same end, but each pathway is labeled with one of the garbled, unintelligible emotions from the wheel chart created by regurgitative AI.

Elly Bangs@ellybangs· May 25

What goes on in that creative brain of yours?

A motion-blurred photograph of someone firing a bow and arrow while rolling rapidly downhill through the woods on a plastic carousel horse mounted on wheels

Elly Bangs@ellybangs· May 24

The latest object the crows have left for me in the birdbath:

A Panda Express fortune cookie fortune that says "YOU ARE IN THE COMPANY OF EXCEPTIONAL FRIENDS -- ENJOY"

Elly Bangs@ellybangs· May 1

It's 2023. A dramatic disaster surrounds Worldcon. It's 2024. A dramatic disaster surrounds Worldcon. It's 2025. A dramatic disaster surrounds Worldcon.

Meme image of Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen sitting on a rock on mars

Elly Bangs@ellybangs· Apr 15

describe yourself with a building

A painting by Sacha Goldberger, depicting a dusty roadside diner somewhere in the American Southwest. In the distance, flying saucers careen through the sky and blast the joshua-tree-stubbled landscape with destructive energy beams. In the foreground, a few people stand in the open doors of their 1960s-style cars, staring at something outside the frame.

Elly Bangs@ellybangs· Apr 13

Show me a picture on your phone that has your energy that isn’t a selfie.

A highly detailed woodcut illustration of a person with the head and antlers of an elk sitting despairingly on one of several stumps of cut-down trees in the middle of a dark forest.

Elly Bangs@ellybangs· Apr 11

Seems like prayer wheels don't work quite the way she believed, though? I don't know about motorizing it, but wrathful protective energy sure sounds like music to my ears right about now, tbh