Tag: science fiction

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Something in the Air: New Story in Kaleidotrope Magazine

Thrilled to make my debut in the latest edition of Kaleidotrope Magazine, with a story called “Something in the Air.”

The story – and the whole magazine – is free to read online here. The magazine is well worth your time.

The story features an unfortunate linguist tasked with investigating the alien markings on a mysterious ancient slab retrieved from beneath the Antarctic. All other scientific tests having failed, the linguist tries to decipher what appears to be writing inscribed into the surface of the slab. But the message on the monolith contains a surprise that has a dramatic impact on the linguist, and through him the rest of the world.

There’s a story behind the story. It takes place at Porton Down, the UK’s chemical and biological research facility in south west England. Many years ago, I was lucky enough to visit Porton Down. Not because my work had anything to do with chemical or biological weapons (it did not!), but because I had met a senior official from Porton Down on a training course, and he organised the visit for a number of us. It was a memorable and fascinating day, including an outing to look at the UK’s stock of decommissioned chemical weapons (not as grand as it sounds – it was a cattle shed with pallets holding mainly rusty World War One gas shells that had been found over the years).

Continue reading “Something in the Air: New Story in Kaleidotrope Magazine”
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The Past Is Not Past: A Manifesto

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

— William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun

The bones of the past

In a years-ago job interview, I was surprised when an interviewer picked up on the reference at the bottom of my CV to writing fiction.

“Tell us about these ghost stories,” he said.

Unprepared, I muttered something mock-profound about ghost stories being a metaphor for the way the past affects the present. It seemed to suffice: I got the job.

Someone once asked me why so many of my stories are concerned with the way actions have consequences over time, memories persist, and the bones of the past poke through into the present.

Things happen. People make choices. Relationships end. Political decisions are made. People die. But their consequences don’t end there.

I studied history at university and have retained a fascination with the way the past affects the present. If you know where to look, the present is full of remnants of decisions and experiences from decades or centuries ago. Buildings, institutions, borders, traditions, memorials, family stories, even apparently ordinary places contain layers of earlier lives.

If the past could speak

When I started writing fiction, it was natural to ask what would happen if those buried layers of the past could speak to us.

My first published story, On The Fishermen’s Path*, was essentially a ghost story. I have often returned to the theme. Ghosts are quite literally the past refusing to remain past. In truth, I’m less interested in ghost than the question: What happens when the past has unfinished business with the present?

Actions have consequences

I don’t just write ghost stories. Most are science fiction. At first glance, history, ghost stories and science fiction look like very different interests. But what connects them is my fascination with the way the past continues to exert pressure on the present.

The common thread is consequence across time.

That fascination looks different in science-fiction clothing. My stories have explored grief and the power of memory; time travel and alternative realities; technological or scientific changes whose consequences unfold later; choices that produce unexpected futures.

I never consciously tried to express that theme through my fiction. But when I look back, I can see it recurring.

In Sort Code, a couple find themselves bounced in and out of different periods of the past. In When I Close My Eyes, the first astronaut on Titan is haunted by memories of his dead wife. Fifty-One puts a timecop from the future into wartime London, where falling in love forces him to choose between changing the future and letting someone die. In Vincent’s Penny, Sebastian is rescued as a boy from a bleak life of poverty and abuse by a mysterious, powerful stranger, who grooms Sebastian for a very dark and dangerous form of “greatness”—one that weaves through time from the sixteenth century to Blitz-era London.

Other stories have approached the idea through alternate realities, grief, memory, or the consequences of choices made long ago. Perhaps this is why I keep coming back to ghosts, even when I’m ostensibly writing science fiction.

And back to ghosts

It’s probably no accident, then, that my next novel is a ghost story.

The Wrong Ghost takes the idea in a particularly literal direction: darkness from the past intrudes upon a family in the present. Someone thinks they are being haunted. They are, but that’s not the biggest problem.

The novel grew out of a 2013 story, The Other Woman**, that stuck with me, and was given wings by the discovery of the history of a house near mine, with a sad story attached.

Ghosts, history and stories about alternate realities all allow us to ask the same question in different ways:

How much of the past are we really able to leave behind?

That question has been following me for a long time.

*On The Fishermen’s Path, Pan Book of Horror, 1986

**The Other Woman, Urban Occult anthology, Anachron Press, 2013

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“The Physics of a Gunshot” now free to read

My (admittedly nasty) story “The Physics of a Gunshot” was published in Trollbreath Magazine a few months ago.

Just to update – as a summer treat, the magazine has now generously made the story free to read online.

You can find (and – ahem – “enjoy”) it here: https://magazine.trollbreath.com/the-physics-of-a-gunshot/

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Everywhere is Everywhere and Anywhere Else is Nowhere

My story, “Everywhere is Everywhere and Anywhere Else is Nowhere,” was published eighteen months ago in top Scottish SF magazine Shoreline of Infinity.

It’s always lovely to have a story picked up and given a second life, so I’m pleased that it’s being republished in the latest anthology from Water Dragon Publishing, the Dragon Gems Spring 2025 Anthology.

EIEAAEIN (longest title I’ve ever written!) is about a world transformed by instant travel, but at a subtle but devastating cost to some.

The anthology is well worth your time, with an exciting variety of tales. You can get it from Water Dragon, or the usual suspects like Amazon.

Meanwhile, here’s a taster for my story…

Everywhere is Everywhere and Anywhere Else is Nowhere

Inside the house, male voices belt out the fortieth rendition of “Blessing grant, oh God of nations, on the isles of Fiji”, sung by the bunch of rugby players who ported in with Alex from Malibu. These guys are built like wardrobes, and they’ve drunk western LA county dry. Kelly’s in the garden, working on her fifth large Chardonnay of the afternoon, watching the sun sink into the hills, casting shadows on the river.

When the phone rings, it takes her several seconds to place the sound. She finds the receiver wedged between two cushions of the chesterfield.

“Kelly? It’s Byron.”

“Byron! How are you? Haven’t seen you in…”

Well, how long is it? They kept in touch after college and there was a year when they were an item, but that must be a decade ago. Kelly’s hazy about it now, but didn’t they part on bad terms? Byron called her a sellout for working in PR; she said he was a loser for thinking there was any money in whatever neuroscience dead-end he was mad about that week. 

“Kelly, we need to talk. There’s something…”

“Shores of GOLDEN SAND! And sunshine, happiness, and song! Stand UNITED! We of Fiji. Fame and glory ever!” A conga line of Fijian rugby players sashays down the staircase. Alex is at the front, a bottle of rum in one hand, wearing a pair of shorts as a hat. “Kelly!” he yells. “Come to Fiji. The sun’s coming up.” Kelly shakes her head and points at the phone.

“…important we talk,” Byron says. “People need to -.”

“ONWARD march TOGETHER!” The rugby singers boom louder as they reach the Port room, but the volume shrinks as they go through. “GOD…. Bless…Fiji.”

“I need your help.” Byron’s voice cracks. “I don’t know who to call.”

The house falls silent as the last reveler transmits to Fiji. Kelly hates a quiet house; it swells with empty space for her thoughts to fill.

“Come over, Byron. But be quick. I’ve got a date in Fiji.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” he says. “Don’t tell anyone. And don’t use the -.” Kelly clicks off the phone and drops it on the couch.

She waits a whole half hour and Byron doesn’t show. She checks the Port settings maybe a hundred times. Kelly hates hanging around, especially when the floating party’s ported to the other side of the world. It’s dark outside and a Fijian sunrise sounds attractive. She picks up the phone and presses ringback. The call shunts to voicemail and she hangs up.

She changes into swimsuit and sandals. In the Port room she half-expects Byron to flicker in behind the glass door before she can leave, but the cubicle’s dark. She steps inside. The cubicle lights come on and ripple in lilac, and a puff of air on her face makes her blink. When she reopens her eyes, she’s in a different room and she’s got that tingling buzz of her senses dialed up a notch, like a first glass of wine. People say porting stimulates endorphins; it sure works for Kelly. She opens the door and smells the sea. This house has wooden floors, smudged with sand and damp footprints. Outside, a verandah gives onto a beach. As always after a Port, Kelly’s mildly horny and fuzzy, briefly unsure where she is or why she’s here. Down at the shore, people dance around a driftwood fire. A fat sun heaves itself into a salmon sky. Kelly runs to join the party….

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Go Your Own Way – Out Now

No better way to start the new year than to make my debut in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, a magazine that gave birth to so many of the SF stories that inspired me when I was a kid.

“Go Your Own Way” is the fourth in my “Way” series. You can read about earlier instalments (and read one of them) here, in the sadly now defunct Intergalactic Medicine Show. You can also find a free podcast of the very first Way story – “Once There Was a Way” – here on the Starship Sofa site.

The new story concerns a young man called Ferdinand, who stumbles on a mechanism for travelling 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. Eventually tired of wandering, he settles down. But his life is turned upside down when he encounters another version of himself, and is forced to confront the question of which of them deserves to choose the life they both want.

If you want to read the whole thing you’ll need to buy Analog (and you should!). You can do that here. In the meantime here’s a taster:

“A glowing path of light angles toward me and into the trees behind. A luminous boardwalk of mist hovers a few inches above the ground.

I know where it leads: step on that path and I can go anywhere, across countless universes and infinite variations of this world and all it contains. I thought I would never walk the Way again, but here I am. I don’t know where I’m going. I’m not coming back.

I didn’t say goodbye to Shona. But that’s okay: she won’t even know I’m gone.

###

Picture me two months earlier, after a day at the beach. I’m back at the car when a familiar voice behind me twists my gut in a tight fist.

“Any chance of a ride?”

He’s five yards away; tired and weatherworn, skinnier than I’ve become since I settled. His smile is familiar – equal parts ‘aw shucks’ shyness and the grin of someone who knows a joke you don’t. It’s me: like a twin brother, but I have no siblings.

“Are you on the Way?” I ask.

“Aren’t we all?”

I’m not sure who’s included in that ‘we’; very few people can travel the Way. He must mean the different versions of me, scattered across endless dimensions. That fits – I once walked the path between worlds, and it’s obvious this alternate version of me can too.

“Why are you here?” 

“Aren’t you pleased to see me?”

“It’s a little overwhelming.”

“I just arrived,” he says. “You know what it’s like; feel I’ve been through a spin cycle. I could do with some food. And some tips on how to get along here.”

A surge of relief – he’s new here, so not the version of me I feared he was – is quickly succeeded by unease: Is he planning to stay?

“Don’t worry, I don’t expect to stick around,” he says, like he knows what I’m thinking. Which makes sense: who else would know my mind better?

“Weird, isn’t it?” He’s watching me, reading my thoughts on my face.

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you drive us somewhere we can get a drink?” 

We get in the car and I start the engine. “Know any good pubs near here?”

He shrugs. “It’s your universe.”

It’s not, of course, but I don’t say anything….”

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New Story: Fundamental Things Apply

It’s always a pleasure to make a sale to a magazine I’ve not published in before. So, I’m delighted that my story ‘Fundamental Things Apply’ is now out in the February/March issue of Utopia SF magazine.

Utopia is available digitally, and you can find it here.

‘Fundamental Things Apply’ features time travel, terminal illness, the recursive and uncontrollable power of grief and – as the title suggests – the movie ‘Casablanca.’

Here’s a taster:

Fundamental Things Apply

Like the rest of the team, Davey Justice had kept his distance after Sarah’s funeral. I heard laughter from rooms I wasn’t in, but a thick silence dropped over the Lab when I was there. Until now.

“Sorry to bother you with this, Rick.” We’d been working at our laptops for the past hour, and he took advantage of a natural break when I got up to get coffee. “The funders visit? The committee are hassling me to sort it.”

“Now’s not a great time.”

“Of course,” Davey said. “I’ve stalled them, but…”

“Not yet.”

“They’ll need a presentation soon, don’t you think?”

“Not yet.”

When I sat again at my screen Davey’s eyes burned the back of my head. The rest of the team didn’t yet know about the full success of the Projector. They knew we were close, but I’d kept the final tests to myself. I couldn’t keep the secret forever, but it was hard to think ahead.

***

I held Sarah’s hand as she died. “I can’t go on without you,” I said.

“You must.” I think that’s what she said, but she could barely speak by now: her words were dry leaves rustling, her hand was parchment stretched over a bundle of sticks.

Her illness struck in what should have been our moment of triumph. One day, we’re looking at the test results that proved our time projector would work. Next day, some very different test results. The doctor projected Sarah’s X-Rays onto the white wall of her office. There was a shadow on the right lung and an archipelago of dark spots on her throat. I stared for a long time, as if I could read a message in the pattern of marks beneath Sarah’s flesh.

When she died, my life stretched ahead like Arctic tundra. I had my work, but without Sarah it meant nothing. I knew how grief worked: it would take time to move forward; I had to work through the emotions. But I couldn’t get past denial, couldn’t shake the feeling that things would be better if I just had the chance to say something more to her. A little more time at her side, to prepare myself to lose her. I guess the idea of using the Projector was always in the back of my mind.

Our Project was based in a Georgian mansion, set in Berkshire parkland, curtained by trees and a high brick wall. As Director, I had unrestricted access and the gate guard nodded me in without remark when I swiped into the Lab in the early hours of the morning.

The Projector worked far beyond our hopes, but it was still experimental. The dogs and rabbits we sent back were unharmed, although I didn’t know whether there were effects on them that I couldn’t yet detect. So using it was risky, but what did I care? The worst possible thing had already happened to me. I switched it on and adjusted the settings. I would do only thirty minutes, and I knew exactly the minutes to choose.

I jumped back seven weeks, a few days before Sarah’s death. The noon sun glared from the concrete sidewalk as I waited across the road from the hospital. I remembered this day, how hot it had been when I briefly left Sarah’s side to get a sandwich.

And there I was now. My seven-week younger self emerged from the hospital, glanced both ways and shuffled into a side street that contained coffee shops and a deli. When I was out of sight, I crossed the road and entered the hospital. One of Sarah’s nurses saw me as I entered her ward. A flicker of a frown crossed her brow, no doubt because she had just seen me leave. But she didn’t speak, and hurried on to her next task.

Sarah had been moved to a private room when it became clear that she was going, and there was no time to transfer her to a hospice. I slipped in and closed the door. It was 12.10. I sat beside the bed and took Sarah’s hand. She gave no sign that she was aware of my presence. The only sounds were the soft ping of her monitors, and the irregular sigh of her breathing. My memory was still too fresh of her breath stuttering and finally ceasing, as if the planets had frozen in the sky. Three days from now.

“If you can hear me,” I whispered. “I’ll be here as long as I can.” There was the faintest pressure on my fingers, as she squeezed my hand with what strength remained to her….

I’d love to know what you think, of this or any other story. Just leave me a comment.