‘Unlikely Stories, Mostly’ by Alasdair Gray

My collection of short stories Unlikely Stories has been inspired by several sources. This title is my spin on the title of a book that I read in the 90s. It was by a Scottish author and was titled Unlikely Stories, Mostly. I picked it up from the British Council Library in Chennai. The book was wonderfully illustrated and I was very intrigued by it.

When I named my book as ‘Unlikely Stories’, its positioning was ‘Your stories maybe MOSTLY unlikely but my stories are ALL unlikely’!

I recall nothing from the book except one story in which a guy finds a growth on his body. It grows larger and turns out to be his full-size clone. The two embodiments of the same person dissociate and start competing for the same possessions.

I do not remember how the story ends but the concept was used in the Evil Dead movie Army of Darkness.

FFmpeg command to create this endlessly looping GIF

ffmpeg -i Bad-Ash-and-Good-Ash-Army-of-Darkness.mp4 \
       -filter_complex \
          "[0:v:0]trim=end=4,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[v1];[0:v:0]trim=start=25:end=32,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[v2];[0:v:0]trim=start=64:end=74,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[v3];[v1][v2][v3]concat=n=3:v=1:a=0,fps=5,scale=w=160:h=-2:flags=lanczos,split[v5][v6];[v5]palettegen=stats_mode=diff[p];[v6][p]paletteuse=dither=bayer:bayer_scale=4[v]" \
       -map "[v]" -loop 0 -y \
       animation-ash-clones-in-evil-dead-army-of-darkness-movie.gif

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