Necessary fictions of 2009

With “Necessary” right there in our name, it’s no surprise we think of stories as a way to make sense of the world, to ask questions and explore ideas and look beyond ourselves. So with the “best of” lists come and gone, we asked our contributors something different about the past year:

What happened in 2009 (or in what we’ve seen of 2010) that sparked your curiosity? Did “Balloon Boy” seem like a metaphor waiting to happen, or did the economic collapse send you grasping for a way to respond? Maybe the Hadron Super Collider kept you up at night, waiting to vanish into a black hole. Or perhaps you can’t stop thinking about the deer in Europe who still won’t cross the old Iron Curtain twenty years after the fences came down. Whatever it was, we want to know what caught your attention and made you feel the need for a story (whether you actually wrote it or not).

We look forward to sharing their answers, and if you’d like to share your response — whether we’ve published your fiction or not — please feel free to send it to editor@necessaryfiction.com.