Ridiculous Fiction by Chris Auman

Ridiculous Fiction #2: Dinky Does His Laundry by Chris Auman continues with three more stories of silliness and absurdity. These stories were written in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The title story is about a hapless man named Dinky who just wants to do his laundry in peace. Also includes “Rick’s Planet,” in which a god contemplates the plight of his struggling creations. And, most ridiculous, “Death Fungus” is an edge-of-your-seat ride to the end of the universe, but only if you’re a deadly fungus.

Specs.

4.1″ x 5.8″, 24 pages, grayscale throughout, full-color glossy cover.

About Ridiculous Fiction by Chris Auman

(From the intro to Ridiculous Fiction #2)

When I was younger, much of what I wrote was pretty silly. I cranked out story after story filled with cartoonish characters like Jim Bob and Pencilneck, Dinky Dellabella and Peabody McSlackem-Jackem. The common theme in these stories was well-meaning, dumb, male protagonists.

I did attempt to get some of these stories published. With one exception (see below), they were soundly rejected. Unwilling to rewrite and remove over-the-top absurdity from these stories, I instead invented a new genre for them. Their former flaws became virtues in a new genre I called Ridiculous Fiction.

“Dinky Does His Laundry” is one such story. It tells the tale of an unfortunate and irritating fellow named Dinky whose attempt to do his laundry in peace is denied by his fellow launderers. It was, in fact, written while doing a wash at a laundromat in Lincoln Park, Chicago, circa 1990. “Rick’s Planet” was written later that year as a final project for a class on Darwin’s Theory of Evolution at Columbia College. After graduation, I sent it to a small sci-fi publication called Mind’s Eye. Much to my surprise, they published it. Mind’s Eye was not a slick lit journal with a large circulation. It was more zine than magazine, but it was a big thrill either way.

“Death Fungus” originated as a single-paragraph story that I wrote as a teenager. I expanded the saga into a trilogy several years later and published it in Reglar Wiglar #12 (1999). Apologies are due to Mr. Douglas Adams, whose influences here may cross the line from flattery to flat-out theft.

And there you have it, Ridiculous Fiction #2. It only gets dumber from here.

“Dinky Does His Laundry”

Everyone played tricks on Dinky, especially people he did not know. His parents and friends (and he did have a few) had long grown tired of the continuous gags and public humiliations, but to strangers, Dinky presented a challenge.

“God Rick”

Your planets messin’ up, Rick,” Todd would say, and it was true, to a point. Creating and maintaining a functional, populated planet was not always, if ever, an easy task. There was a large margin for error. Rick knew this, but he had confidence in his work. He liked to think he knew what he was doing, even if the others didn’t think so.

“Death Fungus”

In the beginning, God created Earth. It took him several days, but on the eighth day, God created Death Fungus, and it was naaaasty!