The Day After the Lottery

...everyone gets the piece of paper with the black dot on it.

June 27 is the day upon which Shirley Jackson’s infamous “The Lottery” occurs. “Lottery in June, corn heavy soon.” One unfortunate person takes it for the village while the rest of us ponder the wisdom of our traditions and maybe “this is the way we’ve always done things” isn’t an excuse for barbarity.

Swiped from the Warhammer 40K Techno-Barbarianposter Facebook page.

In real life, the day after is even more interesting. It was on this day in 1914 that a 19-year-old anarchist changed the world for the worse with multiple gunshots into the car of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie. It was the excuse used to start World War I, known then as the Great War, because no one had seen anything like it. The royal families of Europe had especially lethal toys to play with this time around. 

There would be no more watching the battles from a picnic blanket on a nearby hill for civilians as troops shot and stabbed at one another. (Seriously, this used to be a thing.) Now there was death from above as machine guns in flying machines strafed positions from the air. Clouds of mustard gas blinded and sometimes killed. The death toll at either the Somme or Verdun was an obscenity justifying putting every last member of these royal families against a wall. The bloodlines of countless families were ended because of Kaiser “Little Willie’s” (as his relatives called him) need to make a royal spectacle of himself.

So much pain, ruin, and death came of that one 19-year-old kid with a pistol on 28 June 1914. I haven’t even gotten into the sequel to this war, which came about as a direct result of how the original finished. Let’s just say this calendar page is redder than most.

Two of my favorite people from back in the day when science fiction (or speculative fiction, as Mr. Ellison more aptly insisted) meant something died on this day, namely, Rod Serling, creator, writer, and host of The Twilight Zone, in 1975; and Harlan Ellison, in 2018.

I know a couple of people who have birthdays on this day as well, so it obviously isn’t all tragedy and loss on 28 June. Just a little more tragic and lossy than most. It is what it is.