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‘When I Close My Eyes’ published in Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores.

‘When I Close My Eyes’ is out now in the excellent online SF magazine, Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores.

The story first appeared in Interzone #271 in 2017. It was at the time my ‘hardest’ SF story yet – with a bereaved astronaut trapped by a rockfall in a cave on Titan, encountering some fragile but peskily well-organised Titanian aliens. (There’s still a ghost in it, though, which I guess means that as SF goes, it isn’t that hard!)

The story has shown some staying power – it was also in the ‘Best of British SF 2017’ from NewCon Press, and was podcast to great effect by Starship Sofa.

The podcast is still available for free, and you can read the text version free at Cosmic Roots. So there’s really no excuse if you have the slightest interest in hydrocarbon weather systems and the remorseless power of grief.

Here’s a taster:

WHEN I CLOSE MY EYES

The rock fall killed me. I just didn’t know how long it would take to die.

I was face down with something heavy on the back of my legs. My visor display was dark. If the suit had lost power, death was already at my elbow.

“Tak, confirm operational.” A soft insect buzzing. “Repeat, confirm operational.”

“[buzz] – [click] – confirm. But I’ve had better days, dude.”

“You and me both. Run full systems check.”

“Running, dude.” Some joker programmed the suit computer with the voice of Keanu Reeves in Point Break, squinting in the sun and waxing his surfboard. Usually it cheered me up.

I chinned the radio switch. “Willis, this is Darlo. Do you read?”

Static.

“Willis. Darlo. There was some kind of cave-in. I still have power. Checking systems. Are you OK?”

More static. I chinned off the radio. Willis should be fine. She stayed in the crawler, after all. It was another poor sap who entered the cave. Me. I tested the movement in my limbs. Both arms were free. I could lift my left leg but the right didn’t budge. I had sensation in it, but something pinned it down, something with some serious mass; with gravity less than a tenth that of Earth, I could expect to shift a sizeable rock unaided. 

“OK, dude, systems check complete.” Tak sounded as businesslike as he ever did; like he’d just spotted a shift in the swell and zipped up his wetsuit. “Batteries seventy-six per cent, oxygen sixty-five. Suit intact. Heater cycling between sixty and ninety, nitrogen scrubber -.”

“Wait, what’s with the heater?” The suit’s heating systems normally ran at around fifty per cent.

“Losing heat fast. Possible radiator vane compromise.”

That figured. The suit had fantastic insulation and in normal use some heat got vented away through tiny metal filaments on the back. If the rockfall had damaged them, the heater would need to compensate.

“So how long have I got?”

“You can lie here for nearly five hours, dude.”

“Yeah, but I plan to get moving.”

“Hey, did I mention that the GPS sensors are damaged and I can’t get a signal from the crawler or the base?”

“Lucky I know the way out. How long have I got with normal motion?”

“Probably four hours, but that heater’s a bummer. Might need to go easy on other power.”

“Is that why we’re lying here in the dark? You didn’t say the lights were damaged.”

“They’re not.”

“Main flash on.”

The beam lit up in front of me. I was face down on a layer of ice. Where my visor touched the surface, the ice fizzed and crawled upwards as if tiny worms were escaping. Probably traces of frozen methane in among the water ice, melting in the slight heat given off by my suit.

I lifted my head, directing the beam horizontally. There was about six feet of icy ground ahead of me, ending at a wall of rubble and ice. I pointed the light higher, but could see no top to the obstruction. So far, so bad. But that way led deeper into the cave. That was where I’d been heading when the cave fell in, and I certainly wasn’t going that way now. I wanted to go back.

I had a simple plan. Walk back through the tunnels to Willis and the crawler and then take it easy with a hot drink while she drove the four miles back to Ligea Base. All I had to do was remove whatever was trapping my legs. And hope the tunnel behind me wasn’t blocked. And hope my power lasted long enough to stop me freezing in the -180C temperature. Simple.

“Tak, main flash off. Save power while I decide what to do.”

The beam cut out and darkness sprang on me from the shadows. My head was still up and I saw her clearly. She sat with her back against the pile of ice and rock, her legs stretched before her and her hands in her lap, as if she were at a picnic. She wore the blue dress with white polka dots that we buried her in. She smiled at me.

“Not here. Dear God.” I lowered my head to the ice. “For Christ’s sake, my eyes are open…”

(To read more, check out Cosmic Roots…)

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New Story: Bad Moon Falling in Galaxy’s Edge #45

My new story, ‘Bad Moon Falling’ is out now in the latest issue of Galaxy’s Edge magazine. Obviously, like any writer I love any new sale. But the fanboy in me is especially thrilled to be in this publication (which you can get here).

Call me shallow, but I’m always going to get a kick out of my name being on the cover with such SF legends as Robert Silverberg, Mike Resnick, and Katherine Kerr.

Galaxy’s Edge was created by Mike Resnick, one of the unarguable greats of the field, whose short fiction I love (and which I believe earned him more Hugo nominations than anyone else). Sadly, Resnick died earlier this year, but it’s great to see his magazine continuing under new editor, Lezli Robyn.

As for the story, it’s probably the ‘hardest’ SF yet from me, with signals from space that turn out to be from aliens, but not in a good way. Here’s a taster…

 Bad Moon Falling

“Hello, Nick.” Kuldeep had taken ages to pick up. “Do you know how late it is?”

“We need to talk,” I said. “Can I come over?”

“Haven’t we talked enough? I’m not going to change my mind.”

My reflection in the monitor winced. Lines of numbers behind my face made it look like I was projected onto newsprint.

“It’s not about us. I need your advice,” I said. “There’s something wrong with the Moon.”

***

The world’s attention was on the Mars launch. The twenty-four hours a day, wall-to-wall coverage of every detail of the mission looked like continuing for the whole seven months until the crew reached Mars. People were lapping it up.

Not me. The day after Pegasus left the atmosphere, Kuldeep told me to move out; she needed time for herself, to develop other interests. “It’s not you, it’s me,” she said. But it was me who had to go.

I returned to my old room at Jake’s place, but I didn’t spend much time there. I threw myself back into work. If I was going to feel this shit, I might as well get things done.

Most people have forgotten the Ross signals. Fifteen years ago, a series of radio pulses came from the direction of Ross 128, eleven light-years away. The signals caused excitement for awhile—speculation that they might be artificial, from an alien interstellar civilization. The fuss soon died away, when no one could wring any sense from them, but I got a grant two years ago to continue what looked the hopeless task of decoding them. It’s more a hobby than a job now, but I pick it up when I have time. Kuldeep dumping me opened canyons of time.

Maybe you think it’s easy to know whether a signal is just cosmic white noise or contains a message, and to decode it if it does. My background’s in linguistics, and trust me, it’s not easy. You can look for patterns of distribution and frequency, but that only takes you so far. Even a terrestrial language like ancient Egyptian was only cracked when the Rosetta Stone gave us the same text in Greek and hieroglyphics. Some experts say it’s impossible to decipher a message where the underlying language is unrelated to any other.

I was more optimistic than that—I’ve got a knack for puzzling these things out, part science, part instinct. But no one knew if Ross was even a signal. Before I could decipher it, I had to be sure there was a message, and not just a stray blast of stellar noise. I also had to eliminate potential sources closer to home.

That was what led me to the Moon, and the long-forgotten Lunar Seismology Survey.

***

I took the Tube to Kuldeep’s Lab at Imperial College. A couple of her workmates nodded as they passed through Reception, but nobody stopped to chat. They all knew she’d elbowed me. It was obvious how cut up I was, and people don’t like to get close to bad feelings in case your misery rubs off.

Kuldeep appeared and led me to her pod. She poured us coffee and sat behind her desk, looking as gorgeous as the day we met. The sight of her stirred a flood of memories and hollowed out my chest.

She folded her arms. “Okay, I haven’t got long.”

“Like I said on the phone, there’s been huge activity on the far side of the moon.” I pulled the laptop from my bag. “I mean, huge. Too big for the Moon. I’m amazed no one’s picked it up.”

“Maybe they have,” Kuldeep said. “But start from the beginning.”

“Okay, it was when—”

“But keep it short. Chandler not Proust.”

“No need to be rude, Kul.”

“Look, I’ve got a million things to do,” she said. “And no offence, but we weren’t planning to see each other for a while.”

You weren’t, you mean...

(To read more, check out Galaxy’s Edge. While you’re there, subscribe!

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Vincent’s Penny on Podcastle

I’m delighted that Episode 628 of the splendid fantasy podcast Podcastle features my story ‘Vincent’s Penny’.

You can get the podcast here, or wherever you normally get your podcast fix. Subscribe while you’re at it – you’ve got hundreds of back episodes to catch up on.

‘Vincent’s Penny’ was first published in issue 16 of Australian online magazine Dimension 6, in April 2019. You can still get that copy of the magazine, free to download here.

I was pleased with the story in print, but I’ve got to say it gains an extra dimension read by the tall and talented Matt Dovey. This is the third time I’ve had one of my stories interpreted by Matt. Previous outings were both on the Tales to Terrify podcast – for ‘Ravello Steps‘ (May 2019) and ‘Looking After Shaun‘ (July 2018). I thought those were good, but I was bowled over by the way he handled ‘Vincent’s Penny.’ Check out Matt’s website for more of his work.

Here’s a taster of the story. Head over to Podcastle for the rest of it, should the mood take you…

Vincent’s Penny

May 1941

I’m a child this time. Five or six years old.

Fully clothed under a bed, on a wooden floor. I touch a hand to my throat, but there is nothing there. I examine my hands and arms, astonished by the smoothness of the skin. At last, I crawl out from beneath the bed and leave the room.

Light from a jagged hole in the roof, blue sky beyond, streaked with horsetails of cloud.  The floor is dusted with splinters of wood and brick. The window at the end of the hall has daggers of glass clinging to the frame.

Over the banister, more rubble and destruction below. Some of the stairs are broken, but I pick my way downstairs, helped by the fact that I am so light now, in this child’s frame. I could skip across a field of grass and barely disturb the dew. There is a door at the foot of the stairs. I turn the handle and push, but at first it does not move. Maybe the wall has shifted in the raid. I try again, ramming my tiny shoulder against the wood.

The door releases its grip and tumbles me outside.   

The Previous Day

Before they take me out, they put a hood over my head. A hand on my arm guides me down a flight of stairs. On the flat, they shove me forward. Hands pull me to a halt and there is the sound of a car door, before someone pushes down on the top of my head, pressing me inside. As the car engine starts, I hear a loud wailing in the distance.

“Air-raid siren,” I say. “Are you sure we should be going for a drive?”

“No need to worry about Hitler’s bombers,” a familiar voice says. “Nothing he can do to you that’s worse than what Vincent’s got in mind.”

The car gathers speed. The sirens fall away and another sound comes; a strengthening growl high above. I can picture the swollen metal bellies of the Heinkel bombers, stuffed with high explosives. With the motion of the car, I feel the ancient metal disc move on its chain beneath my shirt. Vincent’s penny; maybe it can bring me luck again.

“You can let me go. Who will ever know?”

“Why would we do that?”

“If you let Vincent do this, who will stop him doing worse in the future?”

The car stops, doors open and close. As they lead me away from the car a succession of explosions in the distance makes me flinch. A sound like a giant striding towards us, wading through houses and shops.

The hood is snatched away, revealing a large empty space, an abandoned warehouse. A table and three chairs in the centre of the room.

I know I will never leave this place…

(Continue reading…)

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Hard Times in Nuovo Genova: available free in the IGMS Archive

Even the name – Covid-19 – is like something out of a science fiction story, and truly we are living in strange and dystopian times. We have to take our comforts where we can.

That being so, it’s great that so many organisations have stepped up and made content available free at a time when we’re locked down. The online magazine, Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, sadly closed last year. But they have now posted all their stories online, free of charge. You can check out 14 years’ worth of stories and artwork here.

While you’re browsing, you might want to take a look at my story, Hard Times in Nuovo Genova, which featured in IGMS in August 2018, and was later included in the Newcon Press collection, The Best of British Science Fiction 2018.

I wrote about the story in my post of August 2018. It’s basically a boy meets girl story. Except the girl has the power to travel at will between alternative universes, and the boy doesn’t. A recipe for relationship trouble, if ever there was!

Go on – give it a read. You know you’ve got time. Here’s a taster:

Hard Times in Nuovo Genova (or How I Lost My Way)

I see them occasionally, wandering through Columbus Plaza or hanging around the lakefront. Always alone.

They’re obvious, if you know what to look for: something a bit off about their clothing; maybe the material or style sticks out–buttons on the shirt when everyone here has those tiny hook and eye things; blue denim worn tight when the men of Nuovo Genova favor baggy cotton pants.

It’s how they act, too. They drift up behind market traders on a cigarillo break and eavesdrop while pretending to tie a shoelace. They sit alone outside a café, pretending to read a newspaper. But they never turn a page as they listen to the talk at the table behind.

They’re passing through and they need to learn about the place fast. It’s not as if they can ask: Excuse me, what country is this? Was Roosevelt president in 1940, or was it Lindbergh?

I spot them easily because that was once me. Before I lost the Way.

Sian is waiting when I appear. She puts a finger to her lips and leads me off the beach. We sit with our backs against a tree, facing the lake.

The air is cold, with no sound except our breathing and the murmur of waves. I sniff the air. There’s something odd about the smell: metallic and smoky, like ash washed by rain. I look south toward Chicago, but there are no lights.

“It doesn’t feel good,” Sian whispers.

“How can you tell?”

“You develop an instinct. We should stay here until light.”

It’s hard to sleep on a cold beach when you have just arrived somewhere completely unknown. Several times, I am close to dozing off when a noise from the trees makes me stiffen and pull Sian close. There’s a screech like an animal in pain, followed by a low scraping sound, moving away inland. Another time, an eerie howling, like a pack of wolves a mile away.

“Maybe it’s a werewolf,” I say. “Full moon, after all.”

“You think you’re joking.”

Somehow, we sleep and wake to daylight the color of dirty dishwater. A bloated, rusty sun emerges from the lake. Oily cords of cloud paint stripes across the sky.

“Look at the city,” Sian says.

At first glance, the skyline is comforting in its familiarity. Then it comes into focus: stunted towers, like broken teeth; a wall of dark buildings, lit in places by sunlight on jagged remnants of windows. A rusted hulk of a ship half-submerged in the lake two miles south.

We stay on the beach all day, watching the dead city, but we see no movement. We leave with the moon...

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Once There Was a Way – Out Now on Starship Sofa

Those great folks at Starship Sofa have done an audio version of my story ‘Once There Was a Way’. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts, or on the Starship Sofa site. While you’re there, be sure to subscribe – they do some great stories.

The story first appeared last year, in the first anthology from Filles Vertes Publishing (who also published my novel, Fifty-One). The book – which features numerous other great stories – was called ‘Flicker: Stories of Inner Flame’, and you can check it out at Filles Vertes Publishing.

The story is one of three first published last year in the ‘Way’ series. It features a young man called Siggy, who meets a woman called Ellie. They fall in love, and she shares with him a fantastic secret: she has stumbled upon a mechanism for traveling between different versions of reality, between worlds that are subtly or dramatically different from our own, depending on how far you go along a mysterious path called the Way.

Siggy has a wanderlust, and showing him the Way is like giving him the keys to the sweetshop. He can’t resist using it without Ellie, only to get lost in parallel worlds, forever searching for the version of reality he left behind, the one with his lover in it.

It’s always nice to hear a story interpreted by someone else, and Andrew Leman does a fine job with the narration (including some suitably English dropped aitches!).

Here’s a taster of the story. For more, check out the podcast or buy ‘Flicker’ (and support a super independent publisher).

Once There Was A Way

I had known Ellie a month. We were at a party near the coast. It was after midnight when we kissed in the dark under the trees at the bottom of the garden.

Ellie said, “There’s something I want to show you.”

“Will I like it?” I assumed we were talking about sex, which was fine with me.

“I’ve never shown anyone else. I think you’re ready.”

She took my hand and led me through a gate, into a cliff-top meadow overlooking the Atlantic. A full moon stood sentinel over the sea, laying a shimmering trail across the water.

“Do you want me to show you something amazing?”

“Right here?” I admit, I was still thinking about sex.

“It only works at full moon.” She stepped closer and kissed me again.  “Close your eyes and relax.” Her hands were on my shoulders. She eased me backwards, a step at a time. “Tell me what you feel under your feet,” she whispered. “Each step.”

“Grass, of course. Grass again. Wait -.” A change in the texture of the ground, some kind of artificial surface.

“Open your eyes.”

I had one foot on a layer of mist, which was not there a few seconds before. It glowed faintly in the moonlight, making a ghostly path that snaked away from us, rippling along the cliff top. I thought at first it was some trick of the moonlight and a trace of sea mist, abetted by the wine we had drunk. But, however impossible it seemed, there was no denying that I stood on a thin strip of light a couple of inches above the grass.

“What is it?”

“It’s called the Way.”

“But what is it?”

“You can find out by trying it,” Ellie said. “You’re always keen to travel. But you have to do exactly as I say. Don’t go far, just a few minutes and then come back. Count the number of steps you take and make them even. You have to take the exact same number on the way back. And also, take this.” She reached up and unclasped the silver necklace she wore. “When you come back, give it to me before you do anything else.”

“Why?” The chain had a tiny silver dolphin on it.

“I’ll explain later. Now go, but hurry back.”

***

Is this two hundred trips, or maybe more? I’ve lost count. This time, her house isn’t even there. Instead, a brutalist 1970s apartment block squats on a patch of grass. Two teenage boys sit on the roof of a wrecked car. They watch me as I approach. I keep walking.

Once out of sight, I take the turning that should lead to the pub. But that isn’t there either. There is a row of narrow houses, some with boarded windows.

No house, no pub. No way of knowing if Ellie ever lived here or ever will. I should be used to this. I should have learned by now not to hope. But every time it’s a punch in the gut.

The full moon remains high and I walk back to where I left the Way. I step on it without a backward glance, and the buildings around me fade away.

I move on.

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Best of British Science Fiction 2018

As trailed earlier in the year, I’m pleased that my story ‘Hard Times in Nuovo Genova’ is included in the latest collection of the Best of British Science Fiction. You can find the book here.

Best Of British Science Fiction 2018 cover – image is Les Edwards’ Chasing the Lightship

The book is out now. If you want to buy it (and you should, you know), consider getting it direct from the publisher – NewCon Press. Whenever anyone supports an independent publisher, another fairy is saved.

I was gutted that I couldn’t make it to the book’s launch, at the science fiction WorldCon in Dublin. But I hear the event went well, and the book sold out on the day (so that’s good news for Tinkerbell and friends).

Hard Times’ was first published in August 2018 in Orson Scott Card’s sadly now-defunct Intergalactic Medicine Show. It’s one of three stories published last year in the ‘Way’ cycle of tales of love and loss in alternate universes. To see it nestling alongside such great British Sf writers as Alastair Reynolds, Aliya Whitely and GV Anderson is such a thrill.