Monday
[Editor's Note: Thomas Jay Rush is a member of the editorial staff at Matter Press's Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, an organization affiliated with FlashFiction.Net.]
In 1905, after Albert Einstein published his famous paper, but before the entire world came to realize its importance, there was an eclipse of the Sun. Scientists realized that the eclipse would be a perfect real-world experiment for one of the predictions implied by the paper, namely that large collections of matter such as the Sun would bend starlight. Hundreds of scientist sailed out into the ocean to put themselves directly in the path of the eclipse.
They wanted to see if the starlight, as it grazed past the edge of the Sun, would bend, forced to peek around the corner, so to speak. In the same way a spoon bends when you look at it through a glass of water. As they watched they saw distant stars shift their positions as the Sun moved in front of them. This effect is not visible if the Sun is not eclipsed because it is too bright. Before the ships got back to port the news had circled the globe. Matter bends light. Albert Einstein is the world's greatest genius.
I don't believe one needs to be as smart as Albert Einstein to write flash fiction (in fact, I know that is not the case), but when I read submissions for Matter Press and its Journal of Compressed Creative Arts I look for the type of fiction that, like a super-massive body, bends light. I look for stories that shift my vision. Stories that change my perspective. Stories that reveal the starlight hiding behind the Sun, preferably starlight bent and twisted by gravity.
About The Author
Thomas Jay Rush is the owner of a small internet-based software company, a fact he chooses to ignore, focusing instead on writing short fiction, poetry and a recently completed first novel, Doylestown. Mr. Rush is pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing degree at Rosemont College. He lives with his family in Gladwyne, Pennsylvania.
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