Having read rubbish like, oh,
War Drums and
Gulliver's Fugitives (just to pick two that I can shamelessly plug my fivers of), I wouldn't say
Antimatter is terrible. It's just . . . mediocre, with patches of stupid (the lack of doctors) and hormonal (Dax's first line here is a
dead-on summary of two pages that were, shall we say, clearly aimed at the male teenager audience). Overall, bad. It's a shame because, as I said above, the premise and storyline have a lot of potential.
I'm glad you liked Sisko's little chuckle. I felt that that was the weakest line of the entire fiver while writing, but looking at it now I see that it's not bad at all. Sometimes the difference in perception between writer and audience can be enormous.
Anyway, this is probably my last novel fiver for a while, as I don't have any unpublished fivers that are developed beyond a scene or two. (Other than one for a very obscure computer game, which would have to go through official channels even if it were in publishable condition; and my stuff for the Fiver By Committee, which is looking stalled at the moment.) As my signature and webpage say, though, I'm open to suggestions, and there's always the chance that I'll be struck by sudden inspiration and churn something out. I might also try a few five-second parodies.