Tag: science fiction

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Everywhere is Everywhere and Anywhere Else is Nowhere

New story klaxon!

It’s a delight to have a new story out today in the UK’s premier science fiction magazine – Scotland’s award-winning Shoreline of Infinity. The story is called “Everywhere is Everywhere and Anywhere Else is Nowhere.” It’s about a world transformed by instant travel, but at a subtle but devastating cost to some.

Shoreline has been going for a few years, and has really grown impressively, so I’m pleased to have finally sneaked in. And it’s great to be alongside some super work from other writers including Bo Balder, Monica Louzon, Ken MacLeod, and Heather Valentine.

You can get the magazine in print or digital, and it’s well worth your time. 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….

Read more in Shoreline of Infinity 31, available here
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Fifty-One: New Edition Available in Paperback and e-book

As I mentioned last month, the sad demise of Filles Vertes Publishing left my time-travel adventure, Fifty-One, out of print.

Well, I’m pleased to say it’s now back on sale. Options are:

Amazon: paperback and e-book available here

The book is also available through the Independent Publishing Network, so you should be able to get it through bookstores too.

Finally, you can still snap up one of the remaining signed copies of the first edition, from me or ebay! Details here.

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Fifty-One: Bad News and Good News….

My science fiction novel, Fifty-One, was published in 2018 by US Indie, Filles Vertes Publishing. Sadly, FVP has gone out of business.

This means that Fifty-One is currently unavailable, which of course sucks (but more on that below). That’s the bad news.

As for the good news – it means I am now the lucky owner of the total UK stock of the first edition of Fifty-One. If you don’t have it yet, and want to get your hands on a signed copy of what will obviously one day be a collector’s item (possibly), all you need to do is:

  • for the personal touch, drop me a message (form below).

I’m also planning to reissue the book as a second edition – paperback and ebook. News on that very soon, so watch this space.

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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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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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Eligibility Post – 2018

It’s a little late, but at this time of year it’s customary to pull together a list of work published in the previous year (which may -ahem! – be eligible for various awards). There has been some fantastic fiction published in 2018, and it’s daunting presuming to be in that company. But I’ll just put here what I’ve had out in 2018.

Fifty-One (Filles Vertes Publishing, February 2018)

mockup-5-94560481516669712-largeAfter a long and winding road to publication, my time travel romance novel came out in 2018, from small press with a big heart, Filles Vertes Publishing.

If you haven’t read it, treat yourself here. Interzone said it was better plotted than Connie Willis! There’s a love triangle, time travel, and flying bombs.

Short Stories

By coincidence, my three new stories published this year were part of a series. I wrote about the ‘Way’ stories back in August, when the third one was published. All the stories are concerned with the consequences for people who stumble 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.

All stories are eligible for British and international awards, should anyone think them worthy.

In order of writing (but not strictly the order of publication), the three stories were:

full moon for sigmundOnce There Was a Way (published in anthology, Flicker: Stories of Inner Flame, Filles Vertes Publishing, September 2018)

Siggy meets 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, along 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.

The Flicker anthology is available here. Or from Amazon.

Sigmund Seventeen (Electric Spec, Vol 13, Issue 2, May 2018)

Electric Spec June 2018
Image Copyright Brian Malachy Quinn

Something told me that ‘Once There Was a Way’ was not the whole story. I left Siggy wandering the Multiverse, searching in vain for the Ellie he left behind. But what about Ellie?

That thought led to Sigmund Seventeen, the sad tale of what Ellie did after she lost Siggy.

As I said in this Electric Spec blog post, both stories have a theme that lies at the heart of much science fiction: whatever the powers and possibilities that become available to us, through technology or otherwise, our fate is often determined by the flaws that lie within us. In Once There Was a Way, Siggy loses Ellie because he always wants to look around the next corner and suspects the grass is greener, and so fails to see that what he already has. In Sigmund Seventeen, Ellie risks wasting the endless possibilities available to her in a doomed search to replace the man who got away.

Sigmund Seventeen is available free at Electric Spec.

Hard Times in Nuovo Genova (or How I Lost My Way) (Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, issue 64, August 2018)

Nuovo Genova artwork
Artwork by Kelsey Liggett, from August 2018 IGMS

Hard Times doesn’t feature Ellie or Siggy. But it’s still basically a boy meets girl story, set in multiple versions of Chicago. Except the girl has the power to travel at will between alternative universes, and the boy doesn’t. Surely a recipe for relationship trouble!

This story–like all my stories set on the Way–is at heart about this truth: what we get out of life is largely determined by what we are able to bring to it. There’s no magical or technological fix that can make us what we are not.

You can subscribe to Intergalactic Medicine Show – which I heartily recommend – here.

 

 

And finally, two stories that were not new came out in audio form in 2018. Both remain available for free if you want to check them out. They are:

When I Close My Eyes

Ghosts and tricky aliens afflict a stranded astronaut on Titan – available in Starship Sofa, episode 534, narrated by Gareth Stack

Looking After Shaun

Shaun comes back from the Far East with some kind of fever, and takes to his bed, with increasingly disturbing consequences for his housemates. Available free in Tales to Terrify, episode 336, ably narrated by Matt Dovey.