Working on the black hole story.

I think the key to doing short stuff may be to ignore backstory. Don't put any backstory in it at all. One must think of it as doing a live on-the-scene newscast rather than telling a story. Action, action, action!

Aside from the fact that the situation I've got in it so far is frankly impossible, it's going fairly well. I've gotten through the first act, so to speak. The disaster has happened, they barely made it out with their lives, and now they're stranded God knows where in the middle of a globular cluster. This involves several highly improbable if not completely impossible things -- One, with the cometaries and asteroids flung through the solar system they should have been toast from the micrometeorite strikes alone. Two, trying to slingshot around a black hole is ludicrous. Three, globular clusters occur completely outside galaxies, and the kind of speed they would need to be thrown anywhere near a globular cluster would have vaporized the ship, synthetic diamond keel or no. Four, if there is one constant in this universe it is that one cannot escape from a black hole. Death and taxes are ephemeral frivolities compared to the absolute iron-clad, take it to the bank certainty that nothing can escape from a black hole. It is the original "Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200" card.

Oh well, science-fiction is built on impossibilities. Just that I think of Dr. Clarke shaking his head disapprovingly and I cringe.