Here it is:
“What the hell is an ice shark?“
Enjoy! Because until it’s published, that’s all you get.
Oh, and also: Fuzzy Nation on Blastr’s list of 11 sci-fi and fantasy novels they’re looking forward to in 2011. See what the other ten are. I can’t disagree much with this list.
It’s a shark made of ice. Next.
Is this a short-short story?
*seethe*
Icy Shark, Icy Shark, does whatever and Ice Shark does.
After the Fuzzies, you’ve decided to rewrite Alan Dean Foster’s Icerigger series? :)
Ice Shark. It’s not unlike an ice-weasel, only much more sharky.
Knock, knock.
An arctic sea dog who lurks the seedy pool halls hustling other fish
My life is indeed changed forever.
I have it on good authority that he’s only a dolphin…
We’re gonna need a bigger boat.
does this mean i have to be afraid of what’s in my fountain soda now, besides all those nasty, yummy chemicals?
Ice Shark?
A really cold LandShark? Do you need a bottle opener to defeat it?
Thanks for the Blastr link, John. I already knew about Fuzzy Nation, but I wasn’t aware that Vortex, the third in Robert Charles Wilson’s Spin cycle, will be coming out in July. Pre-ordered. :-)
is an ice shark the ice floating around my drink?
The Blastr list covers up through July. Lots more to come … and I know of one that I am very much looking forward to, but then I have a vested interest in it, heheheheheh.
And only too late Jimmy noticed the frontal ‘N’ had been added with a crayon. There was a scream, a splash, and then silence.
“Remember”, the fish-king croaked, “there are no nice sharks! None! Not ever!”
It’s a relative of the Land Shark, but instead of candygrams, it knocks on your door and tells you that it has some slushies for you.
Ice Shark: “The drink that makes a pan-galactic gargle blaster seem like a virgin mojito”
Ice sharks. I am all atremble.
Scalzi — Chillin in the Steve Alten end of the sf pool.
Bill
SubPress
with ice laser beams
Ice sharks, Ice sharks,
Roly poly Ice sharks
Ice sharks, Ice sharks,
Eat them up, yum.
Ice Shark: “The mortal enemy of fire dolphins”
My psychic powers tell me that it’s a SF adventure set on Europa, where they fail to bring a big enough fishing pole and the expedition is slowly winnowed down by the natives, leaving only the attractive female protagonist alive to escape with deep insights into the true nature of the universe.
Scalzi, that is some damned fine writing. You have outdone yourself!
“Super Frineds for $400, Alex”
“It was Wonder Twin power that finally got the twins kicked out of the Justice League gym.”
“What the hell is an ice shark?”
“Correct, but please try to control your language.”
“Sorry. Super Friends for $500.”
An ice shark is a shark? or rather a chunk of ice that, under certain conditions, might end killing you and all your sidekicks just in time to let the really really bad guy strap his mass destruction weapon and flee?
It’s kind of hard to ponder….
At long last a sequel to 1984′s The Ice Pirates. If Robert Urich had only lived to see this day.
Coming in 2012 – “Jaws On Ice!”
Directed by Steven Spielburg
Screenplay by John Scalzi
Oh, ICE shark. I thought you said “nice shark”, and I was going to tell you where I got it. But that’s very different!
I’ve got it! you are writing this year’s Dr Who Christmas special…well we had a fog-shark Christmas 2010.
The speaker obviosly misheard “Eye Shark”.
Nasty little things, those.
An Ice Shark is one who lends out ice cubes. Since the cubes are usually melting a little at a time, you’ll never be able to pay the vig. You’ll be into him forever and you’ll get your legs broke!
Stay away from Ice Sharks!
An ice shark is simply an ice cube shaped as a shark. Sorry to disappoint you.
They look really nice in drinks, though – if you can make them right.
Greg,
While i appreciate the effort in your original re-interpretations of my fairly benign statements, I think your creative talents might be better spent on the “What the hell is an ice shark?” thread.
John,
I think I may change my gravatar to one of a snowflake with a mallet hanging over it.
Regards,
ZBBM
Ice Shark; (n) A ship designed to cut and remove, and hold sea ice.
I am picturing a whole ice age world for this ship now. How sad that it won’t be that. Oh well.
oops, wrong thread.
sorry
Is that the infamous 3rd sentence?
I don’t know from ice sharks, but Peter F. Hamilton had his alien elves the Silfen hunting ice whales in Pandora’s Star.
One of Peter F. Hamilton’s books had ice whales. Which were hunted by alien elves.
Ha ha, Eddie and I had the same thought.
This made me laugh. Thank you.
Seven simple words transformed me forever.
Months I carried on, full of anguish and hopelessness. The turning planet seemed bereft of any colour; I languished on a bed of grey no matter where I travelled. Desperately I clung to any words I could find, but they failed to bring me from the precipice of the black vortex. There seemed no end to the torment, until I chanced upon these words one afternoon:
“What the hell is an ice shark?“
Upon reading the words, I was lifted. I felt a blossoming of hope, an illumination, a multiplicity of worlds heretofore unknown, and shed the misanthropic cape I had swaddled myself in lo these many days. I met all strangers with the same spellbinding words and they too felt the infusion of joy.
Is that what you meant to have happen, John? Or perhaps with less hyperbole. At least, maybe a little less Strindbergian.
An Ice Shark is an expensive Edox watch.
(Warning: Avoid their website. They might design great watches, but whoever designs their website has succumbed to Flash Fever.)
@ cturkel, #11
No: we’re going to need a bigger sled.
Or maybe a bigger snow machine.
Of course, you can never go wrong with a bigger dirigible (the R101 and the Hindenburg excepted)
Our scene opens…interior shot of an igloo. A woman wearing traditional Inuit garb is reading a magazine.
Doorbell sound efect: (ding dong)
Inuit Lady: Who is it?
Voice: Ice Shark
Inuit Lady: I’m not comming out for you, you’ll eat me.
–after a slight pause
Doorbell sound efect: (ding dong)
Inuit Lady: Who is it?
Voice: air conditioner repair…
Inuit Lady: Look, I know it’s still you, go away.
Voice: ice delivery
Inuit Lady: sits back down muttering to herself “Damn Ice Sharks”
Doorbell sound efect: (ding dong)
Inuit Lady: Who is it?
Voice: John Scalzi
Inuit Lady: Oh, why didn’t you say so before….
as she crawls through the igloo exit we see a foam shark head miming eating the lady’s head. we hear screams and the fake eating sounds
I am guessing it’s like a loan shark, only it trades in ice…
Will the trailer for Ice Shark vs. Snow Octopus become an Interwebs sensation when it’s posted on YouTube?
My life is changed.
Thanks, thanks, John, I’m sssooo excited about the project now. I’m going to spend the afternoon googling ice and sharks, then trying, with my feeble imagination, to come up with some Scalzi-esque storylines where ice sharks would play a pivoted role in the plot development. Er, I hope you don’t jump the ice shark, again. I’d like to see another good 100K novel out of you soon. Ooh, thanks, John.
Hmmm. And how long until we get the rest of the story??
I ate an ice shark once.
It tasted like chicken.
Cold chicken.
As far as 3rd sentences go, I like it. As far as teasers go, please elucidate.
I presume you have seen these already, ref: sharks, as such?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um2mcZmO7vs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jump_the_Shark_(The_X-Files)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Please_clarify
[requesting detail on term "super-soldier," something you could do]
PS: Lee loved the autographed book! Thanks!
But does it come with bacon?
Also, to echo the commenters on bastr. . .no Ghost Story?
It has frickin’ ice lasers in its frickin’ head.
I still remember how the guy looked when he walked up to the walked up to the edge of the curling lane and asked, “Gosh, how do you play this game?” That should have been a red flag right there. The open, vacant expression, hands in the pockets, a slight stumble when he came out on the ice. It all seemed so perfect. I didn’t see it. Mac didn’t see it. None of us did.
“So, you just slide this big rock down the lane?” I don’t even know what he was doing there. He had on the kind of nice clothes that rich people buy to try and look casual, and when he shook my hand I caught a glimpse of gold under the cuff of his tailored blazer. He looked at me and Mac with almost childlike enthusiasm.
“It’s a stone,” Mac said, “and we call it the curling sheet, but yeah. It’s that simple. Wanna try?”
The next red flag was right there in front of me. Someone who had never played would be bad, yes. But it takes a very special kind of skill to be as bad as he was. He threw the stone like he was bowling, and if flew through the house without even thinking of stopping. It bounced back, smacked off two other stones and landed smack on the button. A bulls-eye, and I didn’t even have a chance to start sweeping for him.
The guy laughed some kind of off-the-shelf tourist laugh. “Wow! Guess I don’t know my own strength!”
“Well, it’s not really about strength,” Mac said, winking at me. “It’s about skill.”
“I can see that,” the guy said. Then this look came on his face, a look that was supposed to be sly but just looked stupid. “You guys… you know, ever bet on this game? Seems like a great betting game.”
“No,” I said. “People don’t usually bet on curling.”
“But there’s a first time for everything,” Mac said.
“Okay,” the guy said, rubbing his hands together. “Let’s make it interesting!”
That’s how I managed to lose two weeks of my paycheck and finally found out what an ice shark was.
I have officially decided to begin spouting, “What the hell is an ice shark?” at every opportunity.
Biting cold, I assume.
Ice shark – sounds like a close relative of the sky shark in the recent Dr Who Christmas Special…
I assume everyone’s seen Rockfish? If not:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpO13RuLg3k
“I said “Did you see her eyes spark?”. Only I didn’t have my teeth in, and you were only listening with half an ear.”
John Scalzi – Misunderstandings through missing body parts (2011).
BTW – I saw Fred Pohl on the blastr list. Wow, that guy is still going strong!
Well, once the WIP goes superballistic and is translated into all known languages of the universe, 80 million Germans will go:
“A Greenland shark of course. Duh!”
Just saying :-)
I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife’s grave. Then I went to the new Red Lobster at the terminal of Phoenix Station. The rotational axis and was surrounded by a single shaped, transparent crystal aquarium that comprised its walls and ceiling. I’d been avoiding the place for the better part of a month, and would have avoided going altogether if it weren’t for the Consu on my tail.
“You can’t charge meals on your BrainPal, Scalzi.”
I opened my hearing to include alien telepathic chatter. The Consu were questioning a lookalike by the name of Stross.
“But I need to get inside,” I said desperately. “I’m . . . starving.”
The squid smirked. “Well the only way you’re getting inside without federation food stamps is if you’re with the CHUM crew.
“Huh? Who the hell are they?”
The squid said, “Trainers from Ohio.”
“Trainers?”
“For the ice shark, duh!?”
“What the hell is an ice shark?”
“You want in or not?”
“Hey, Asshole,” I said. “Say hello to my little friend, MP-35 ASD-324-DDD-4E33C1!”
I raise the rifle to the squid’s head and smirked.
The squid swished around in its mobile tank. “Did you just call me Asshole? Chum!”
Dammit! “No, of course not. That would be rude. Asshole is the name of my MP-35 ASD-324-DDD-4E33C1.”
The squid hollered into its underwater PDA. “We got a live one here, Bender! Volunteer CHUM with an MP-35 . . .”
Moments later, the squid turned a greenish shade of gray.
“Scalzi,” said the squid, deactivating the PDA with air bubbles. “Looks like the ice shark is going to tear you a new Asshole!”
The doors to the new Red Lobster open . . .
I have a sneaky suspision that this is relates to the OMW universe.
The cover design for Vortex is pretty awesome.
Yes, my life is changed forever. The song ‘Fish Heads,’ which I first heard on Dr. Demento some 30 years ago has been earworming me since I first read this post. I see no reason why I should suffer alone.
Gotta go with the other culinary posts. Ice shark = DELICIOUS!
Hopefully your ice shark will be cooler than that stupid ice spider from Star Trek. Please?
where else in the world could 6 simple words elicit such an insane amount of insane responses??!!
You Know, I have here in my hands a dogeared, worn out copy of “Icerigger” by Alan Dean Foster. Other than ‘Dune,” it’s one of the few Sci-Fi books I have to re-read every few years.
After “Fuzzy Nation,” you wouldn’t be getting into the remake business, would you?
No.
Unfortunately, “ice shark” doesn’t really roll off the tongue, at least not in english.
Rats. I want more Skua September.
I’ve been interested in *land* sharks since I was a kid….