I cut my sci-fi teeth early on the work of kids authors like Nicholas Fisk and John Christopher. At 11 years of age I wrote the beginning to a `tripods` trilogy that ripped off not The War of the Worlds but Christopher`s `Tripods Trilogy`. His `Death of Grass` blew my mind. Once I discovered Star Trek the next generation I was all-in. Recently the work of Neil Stephenson and Dan Simmons pushes my buttons. I don`t write hard SF, instead I tend towards the post-apocalypse and the mad.
Freya 13 |
My Kids |
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| Delathon Rent, a 28 year old technician on the Freya 13 space station, sits slumped in the Outer rim command pod with a gas hatch sealed behind him, video-phone in his lap, waiting for it to ring. He’s been waiting for about 10 minutes now, after intermittently placing calls himself to the Freya Commune for the last hour. He has an awkward itch in the corner of his right eye. He wants to scratch it with the machined tip of his blue biro, but he doesn’t. He’s afraid to even touch his eyes.
He can’t forget Boli’s face. The moment the first of them burst loose from his fingers. Poor Boli, smiling all black-eyed and blind when it happened. Talking to his parents, maybe, or an old girlfriend. They’d left him to die, and so he’d died. Image from here. |
“It happened 2 years ago,” he says.
“What did?” Silence. “You don’t remember?” “Did I ever know?” Silence. Reflection. “I don’t think you ever did.” “Then that’s good.” “Yes. It is.” Image from here. |
Route 66 |
Hunting Ground |
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| Black highway snaking through an empty desert, star-studded midnight sky overhead, reflecting on the polished blacktop. Constellations dot to dot across the shiny old road, here and there disturbed by the central glint of refracting cat`s eyes, forming new and curious imaginary beasts on the black surface, the earth`s alteration of heaven`s map.
All around blocky sandstone buttes loom from the darkness, like giant gardeners tending to the strip of alien stone set through their territory. Somewhere, perhaps on the peaks of the gloomed out outcroppings, a wolf howls into the night. Image from artbypavel. |
REN, TEKALUS, LORIE
They pick up the blip off the bait drop corner, burning bright green on the inner screen of their visors, flashing with a rapid-fire heartbeat, scouring afterglow trails into their eyes. It`s the strongest they`ve ever seen. Each blood beat swells across their visors like an explosion, waves spreading and lapping over the in-screen maps, washing out grey line buildings and buckled black roads beneath it. Image from here. |
Cullsman #9 |
The Book of All |
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| They`re coming. It`s been 20 years, and now they`re coming.
I knew it, of course. I`ve been preparing. It`s the reason I`m here, after all, the reason we`re all here, the 38 of us that are left. Preparing for the Cull. This world I`ve known, soon, there`ll be nothing left. Everything I did, thought, every choice I made, none of it will matter. Everything will be wiped clean and forgotten. A world of work, a generation, and nothing to show for it. I am glad. I am going home. I will see my wife. My daughters will be 22 and 23 now, surely sick of only knowing their father through old simulations. I will understand. I have watched their images dancing through my rooms every night for the last 15 years. I am ready to meet them now. I am going home. Image from Rassouli. |
I`m a cripple. Always have been. I was born with one of the latest cerebro-spinal disorders, unpleasant off-shoot of muddled genetic manipulation in vitro. My father was one of the leading scientists in the field at the time. He was also a drunk.
My name is Dr. Pario Souder. I`ve been tied to a chair my whole life. My voice is fake, an interpretation through a voice box reader strapped around my neck. My motion is powered by the faint movements of my right hand, the only spinal thread they could preserve as my body warped itself through my early development. I am the inventor of the Book of All. I wrote it, and I seeded it. Nobody would have expected as much, least of all me. Image from here. |
Fade out
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Deathwatch
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| They strapped a man to the ceiling today. I know him. His name is Wasari Ichimura. I tried to talk to him afterwards but he wasn`t interested, and I was too tired to give chase. Most days now, my muscles don`t stop shaking `til past midnight. You`d think you`d get used to it. Even now, my last desk job 12 years distant, my frame swelled by 50 or so pounds, I still shake through the night.
My wife thinks it`s funny. Thought it was funny. Now it just scares us both. Image from here. |
It`s a beautiful day already. The sun is up and dawning like a golden rip in the pewter and orange sky, leaking rays of light across the blue ocean and bridge.
Everything is still. It`s a beginning, the start of a new day. Strange thing is, everything that matters is already over. The man lies pinioned to the grindstone of the bridge, door heavy over his slack frame, I`m kneeling here beside him, and the kid has gone for coffee and bagels. We`re all ready, in our places, but there`s nothing left to wait for. Image from here. |
Universal Time |
Fortune City |
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| I’m working the deep 7 run again. Last time I was out here, must’ve been pre-schism. Before the split, and opinion divided the universe.
-Blah blah. That’s what my mistress says, when I try to discuss politics. -All I can hear is blah blah. Image from here. |
I started talking out loud around 3, I think. It’s a sweltering day, but that’s no excuse. It’s more to do with the height, I think. The wind rushing in my ears and I couldn’t hear a damn thing I was thinking.
What was I saying? Oh. |
The Blue Chipset and the Thing |
The Giant Robot and the Myna Bird |
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| I’m standing at the Way-station Hub. Everybody around me is dead. I’m holding the blue chipset in my hand and I’m willing it to work.
Over my head the sky is swirling. It’s a purple vortex. I’m waiting for it all to end. Image from Andrew Jones. |
The giant robot stalked the empty world, looking for its lost arm.It had fought in many wars, from the beginning to the end. In ancient Thrace it had brought down the gates of Thermopylae. In Samarkand it had crushed the Czar’s men underfoot. On the fields of the Somme it had walked the no-man’s land and razed the flags of the Third Reich.Towards the end had been the lasers. The large bombs. The A-bomb, and the B-bomb that followed it. Artillery that could shred its skin, and tanks that could push it over. Image from here. |
The haikyoist must be prepared to sit in any chair at any time, due to the fatigue caused by having to walk around a bit.
I found him one mad and lonely marsh-walking night, on an abandoned strip of road in the middle of nowhere. He cried out from his hole.
This is where planes go when they die, taken out to the boneyard to be shot in the head like Old Yeller.
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| By N2H | ||||||||
on All the Demolished Haikyo
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