[yikes, has it really been a month since I last posted? This having to do a proper job again thing is way, way overrated….]

David finished raking up the leaves, and gathered them into a neat pile for burning. There was something in him that loved this autumn afternoon ritual, the smoke sweet in the air as the year slid away into dark mornings and cold nights. He bent down with his tinderbox and waited patiently for the leaves to catch. When he was satisfied that the tiny flame deep in the pile was in no danger of going out, he turned to the portable radio at his side and clicked it on. He’d expected a nice bit of classical music, something to enjoy while he savoured the burn, but found somebody talking instead. He twisted the dial through the other stations looking for music, but found the same broadcast on every channel. Listening to the play of voices, the urgent tones and sudden cuts to breaking news, he gathered that another city had gone Dark. A few minutes more and the realization that the voices were talking about Belgrade bought dizziness pounding at his head and a hollow pit to his stomach. That was the first in Europe to go. And only…what? two months after Santiago? It’s getting faster, he thought.
The fire was crackling now, wild orange flames grabbing and greedily devouring the leaves he’d gathered together so tidily. Despite the heat, he felt a little bit colder as he looked up into the grey sky, the first stars just visible, and wondered if there’d be any bonfires next year.

The guy behind the counter looked like Harry Dean Stanton after a rough night, all crumpled face, thick messy hair and dirty white apron. He didn’t look up from the grill when I entered the diner, just nodded at a stool at the counter. The cushion had been red leather once, but was now mostly faded silver duct tape, covering tears, knife cuts and god knew what else. I climbed up on it anyway, taking the chance to surreptitiously check out my fellow patrons. The lighting gave the few of them still there at that hour of the night – no, the morning – a pale and washed out look, like they’d been painted by someone who’d heard about flesh tones but didn’t quite get it. None of them were talking to, or even sat near, anyone else. I didn’t know what paths someone’s life lead them on that they ended up sitting alone in a trashy diner at three in the morning, stirring bad coffee and staring out the window at the night. Then again, I still didn’t quite know how I’d ended up here myself. At any rate, none of them looked like cops or spooks, and after I saw that my interest in them ended. I kept the silver attache case on the counter in front of me. I wasn’t going to let it out of my sight, not after what I’d been through to get it.
Harry Dean shuffled over to take my order. I ordered strong coffee, something to fuel my thoughts while I planned my next move, and tried to keep my face down. He saw it anyway.
- Fell asleep on your sunbed, huh?
- What?
- Your face, man, it’s all red down one side. Like you fell asleep under the lamps, you know? Hey, you ever see that movie? The one where the guy sees the UFO and it burns him, and his wife is all ‘we got to tell the neighbours you fell asleep on the sunbed’?
Damn. Last thing I needed was to draw attention to myself. This had been a mistake.
- No, man, no sunbed. Listen, forget that coffee, okay? I gotta get moving.
I got up and grabbed the case, but he kept talking.
- You’re a military man, aren’t ya? I was in the Forces myself, can always tell one. You work at that airbase down the road? Man, we see all kind of weird stuff from that place. Lights in the sky at night, you name it. Bet you can’t tell me anything about it though, huh? Or if you did, you’d have to kill me, haha-
The swing doors cut him off. I was alone on the side of the road, with sirens sounding in the distance, the silver case getting warmer by the minute in my hand, and my options rapidly running out.

For once in my life, I managed to get in on an online offer before it closed, so many thanks to the F&SF (special subscription rates here) team for sending me the above issue (across the Atlantic even), on the proviso I blog about it (it’s been a busy week for short fiction here at the Official Bugpowderdust Residence, what with Black Static turning up at the beginning of the week, and a new Interzone this morning), so here goes…

The first story here was “Fullbrim’s Finding” by Matthew Hughes. The story notes make it clear that this is part of an ongoing series, which is interesting, as although I found this story fairly unremarkable (another variation on what I’d like to call Sim’s Law - “Sometimes you can get what you want, and still not be very happy”), the hints and allusions to the wider background were very interesting. I’ll keep my eye out for more of these.
Lisa Goldstein’s “Reader’s Guide” was more to my taste. Stories about writing can be horribly self indulgent, but this is done with imagination and a clever approach to format. One of my favourites in the issue.
The lead story is Michael Blumlein’s “The Roberts”, a novella length piece about one man’s quest for his perfect soul mate and his struggle to keep them both happy once he’s found her. I had a few problems with this one. Blumlein falls too much into the trap of telling us what’s happening instead of showing us - we have to wait ten pages for the first line of dialogue - and the story is too slight for the fifty odd pages it runs. Worst of all for me though, were the references to the lead character’s invention of “Pakki-flex”. Now, I guess Blumlein is probably North American and so doesn’t know that Pak(k)i is in Britain an unfortunately widespread term of racial abuse against South Asians, and I’m sure no slights were intended by the choice of name, but to me, and probably most other British readers, it’s jarring and enough to knock you out of the story. Imagine someone in the US reading about a marvellous new invention called “Coonplex”, and you’ll see what I’m getting at.
“Enfant Terrible” by Scott Dalrymple is one of the shorter pieces in the issue. It’s a decent enough story, hard to describe without spoilers, but marred for me by the use of the second person. It’s an unnecessarily flashy technique that draws attention to itself and doesn’t serve the story in any way. The basic idea is strong enough to survive the voice, but this could have been a stronger piece without it.
Albert E Cowdrey’s “Poison Victory” is an alternate history story, where the Nazis never lost at Stalingrad and are now occupying large parts of Russia. One German ex-soldier regrets his part in their victory, and resolves to make amends. I liked this one, especially the depiction of life under German rule in Russia, as grey, miserable and washed out as you might expect.
The final story is “Dinosaur Train” by James L Cambrias. It’s an enjoyable piece of whimsy, where dinosaurs from a mysterious island are the main attractions of a travelling circus. Add an adolescent boy as lead character and it’d be easy to mistake this for a Ray Bradbury pastiche, but the story keeps its individuality. I espcially liked the boy’s grandad, the owner of the circus and a man engaged in what he must know is a losing battle against the forces of change but going down fighting nonetheless.

So overall I only disliked one story out of six, thought two were okay and enjoyed the rest. A good result.

I’m a little surprised to see so little reaction to the new Alastair Reynolds novel on the SF sites I frequent. I normally feel I’ve missed the boat on these things, as I don’t get to read the buzz books until long after ARCs have been sent out, read and blogged, (hence my thoughts on Matter are lingering in the drafts folder, never to be revealed) but as House Of Suns seems to have crept out with little more than a whisper, here’s my thoughts.
Campion and Purslane are both shatterlings, two of a thousand clones of one Abigail Gentian. They’re on their way to one of the periodic reunions of the Gentian Line, where the shatterlings gather to update one another on their adventures and experiences since the last meeting. They’re worried about the reaction to them showing up dozens of years late and, worse, showing up as a couple when consorting between clones is utterly taboo. When they do arrive, it turns out these are the least of their worries, as they blunder into the still-dangerous aftermath of an attempt to wipe out the entire Gentian Line. They meet a scattering of other survivors, and set about trying to discover who was behind the attack and why…
This is a stand alone novel, and moving away from the Revelation Space universe has allowed Reynolds to construct a new galactic background. The Gentian Line is one amongst several such powerful and long lived (six million years and counting) clone families, who watch the rise and fall of other civilizations in a constant turnover (the UA described in this book is one of the most hilariously cynical devices I’ve come across in recent reading). Alongside the Lines are a few other agencies operating on a similar timescale. The Machine People are a robotic society whose ultimate intentions towards humanity are unclear, while the Vigilance is paying particular attention to the disappearance of the Andromeda Galaxy. None of these elements are mere background colour, and as the plot unfolds all will play a part.
Worldbuilding aside, it won’t be all brand new for long time Reynolds readers. Like the story of the Inhibitors, this is played out over vast distances and enormous spans of time, and some of the technology will ring a bell with readers of the RS books – the Spitting Cobra is not a million miles from an Inhibitor technique, and the Homunculus devices used against the Gentian Line have a lot more in common with Ivanova’s hell-class weapons than their first initial. Below the surface, familiar preoccupations with identity and buried memory reappear here, and indeed are crucial to the denouement.
That said, on first reading this could be Reynolds’ best book to date. In the opening sections at least, there’s a lightness of tone that has been absent from his previous work, and the relationship between Campion and Purslane is the closest he’s come so far to a love story. His prose is improving, while he remains as inventive as ever, best demonstrated by a sequence in the middle of the book where a wonderful lyrical description of the kind of funeral we’d probably all like to have is followed by a just as lovingly described and unpleasantly inventive new form of torture. House of Suns is also significantly better paced than some of his previous work, and the revelations and twists are timed to keep the reader turning the pages faster and faster as the end of the book approaches. And it is a decent ending, something Reynolds has been accused of failing to provide in the past. Ideas mentioned hundreds of pages earlier appear in a new light, mysteries and motivations are explained, and while there are a few loose ends left dangling (the other Gentian Line survivors fall away in a manner that may be internally consistent, but perhaps not narratively satisfying), the climax goes up and on and out in the best sense of wonder fashion.

(based on a true story…)

It’s a warm summer day, the first of the year, and Alice is sitting on her bench in the park. This is the eighty-second first day of summer she’s seen in her life, and every year she loves the way the sun warms her legs and the world seems like it’s starting over again. The bench isn’t really her bench, of course. It’s not even her Albert’s, although afterwards she did look into one of those plaques that you see on benches in parks, the ones with a name and two dates on. It was all too much money and too much fussing though, and it’s not like she needs a silly little metal sign to remember him. So today she’s sitting on Lewis Campbell 1927-2004, listening to the stream and looking at the marsh orchids standing high along its banks. Down there a bit there’s a woman throwing a ball for a dog, and coming along the path there’s a young couple pushing a pram. Alice hopes they stop and say hello. She likes to see babies. She makes a little bet with herself that it’s a boy, but she knows she won’t mind if it turns out to be a girl.

Much kerfuffle recently on Nine Inch Nails giving away their new album for free (free in this case quite possibly meaning “a tide of crap from nin.com washing up in your inbox now we’ve got your email address”), all celebrating the death of the bigtime record label, etc etc (incidentally, how come this kind of naked direct marketing / data mining scam is OMG EVIL when governments or Tesco do it, but cutting edge and subversive when carried out by washed up musicians? Answers on a postcard…).
Anyway for me the lesson to be learned is that for all their many and varied faults, record labels do still have their place, and that place should have been at Mr Reznor’s side, whispering in his ear “Trent, you know deep down, don’t you, that this is not good music? Even by your own admittedly mediocre standards, this is a particularly piss-poor run through the same tired old angsty nonsense that’d be embarrassing coming from a kid with a scraggly beard and a leather trenchcoat, let alone a millionaire rock star. Hell, look at Dan out there on the other side of that screen. He’s gone and downloaded it, started listening to it, and then deleted the zip file off his desktop before he’s even got to the end of track four. Why don’t you go back into the studio and try and come up with something else, huh?”.

They can’t bury their dead here. The ground won’t hold them. If you put a coffin down in that swampy ground, like as not it’ll surface and be banging at your door in the middle of the night. When the very first of the First Fathers set up their trading post right here where these two great rivers meet they weren’t thinking about graveyards. Graveyards is long term stuff, and they just wanted a quick profit. Reckon they’d be as surprised as anyone to see this city here now.
So then, if burial’s out, you need mausoleums. Lovely great white marble things, dotted here and there round the city. Course, the damp and the humidity get to them just as much as any other building. Covered in moss and those funny hanging ferns now, most of them. Anyway, you die, you can’t be put in the ground, so you gets interred in one of them. Or maybe you’re just stitched into a weighted sack, thrown in the river and good luck to you, but that’s the paupers. I’m not interested in them. There’s no money in paupers. I only offer my services to those that can pay for them, and I always get the money upfront.
My services…that’s what I’m doing now, standing outside this corpse house with the great and good of the Verbeviers. See, these mausoleums, they’re all well and good, but over time, they gets full. And people don’t stop dying. So to make way for the new, we have to get rid of the old, don’t we? Madame Verbevier’s uncle passed on yesterday, so they want to get him down soon as possible, what with it being high summer and all, but their mausoleum’s full up, which means that old great great great great aunt whatsername is being turfed out to make room. They’ll take the bones up to the mountains, rebury them there, and then probably forget all about her. Seems like these days paying honour to your ancestors only goes back a few generations, but what do I know? My nearest ancestors threw me out soon as they realized what I was, what I could do. There won’t be any honouring for them, I can tell you.
There she is, fretting around the servants as they carry her bones on the silk cushions. She’s all wispy, like one good gust of wind might blow her away, but then most of the old ones are. I never tell the relatives that, mind you. I did once, early on, and the woman of the house went hysterical and collapsed, which earnt me a scowl from her husband and the most beggarly tip you ever saw.
Poor old dear. Look at her, she don’t know what’s going on. It’s up to me to calm her down and take her where she’s got to go. I go up to her shade and start talking softly, playing a nice slow air on my mandolin. Out the corner of my eye, I can see the Verbeviers straighten up and stare at me. They can’t see her, but they know whatever’s going on here, it’s going on now. I ignore them and concentrate on my charge, singing and playing to keep her calm, focused on me. I walk away up the road, still playing my music, and the dead woman walks with me.

[As I said yesterday, way over the 1000 word limit today, but I have been off for a while, so I can be excused….]

Stuart stared out at the sea from his balcony and told himself he wouldn’t go back to the bar that night. He’d been there too long too often, until there were only a few days left of his holiday. A few days until he had to pretend to his work colleagues that he’d seen more of the Greek islands than the inside of one taverna. A few days until he had to fly back and face Elaine again. She would be sat there, yet another self help book open on the arm of the chair, face down with its spine cracked. She would look up at him and say in her most gentle and understanding voice, “Stuey, I really think we need to talk through some of our issues”. That was exactly what he didn’t want to do, that was why he’d got on this last minute flight, and that was why he relented and decided that one drink tonight wouldn’t hurt after all.
The tavern wasn’t particularly busy. It was on a back street of a small village on an unremarkable island, normally frequented by middle-aged Greek men, with no interest in leaving their muttered conversations and games of dominoes to talk to the crazy Englishman who came in every night and sat alone, drinking and staring into space. Stuart knew he was a quiet drunk and guessed that was why he was tolerated there. On the next island there were enough Englishmen starting fights and vomiting in the streets that one who just sat quietly and drank was almost welcome.
The bartender knew his face by now and had a drink ready in the time it took Stuart to get from the doorway to the bar. The first few times Stuart had come in, the barman had tried to start a conversation with him in hesitant English. After Stuart had made it clear that he was interested in drink, not conversation, their relationship had been mostly silent. Tonight though, he started speaking as soon as Stuart picked up his drink. “Mister,” he began, “the bar closed tomorrow night. Tomorrow night is special night on the island. All the men stay inside. None of these men”, he paused and swept his hand around to take in the half dozen or so Greeks in the room, “none of these men will be here tomorrow, no man goes outside. The other patrons backed him up. Normally oblivious to Stuart, they gathered around the bar and nodded their heads vigorously in agreement as the barman warned him off. “Tomorrow night she comes” was the most explanation he was offered.

By the time the next night rolled around, Stuart had decided that the warnings were either a joke at his expense or some ridiculous local superstition. Either way he was determined to ignore them, even when he stepped out of his lodgings and saw that the streets were empty. They were never busy, but he couldn’t remember ever being the only person on the cobbled road down to the bar. He made little of it and continued on his way, thinking that the moon seemed very bright that night.
Soon he could see the lights of the tavern, on as normal. The warnings were just a joke played on a gullible tourist. I’ll show them who’s gullible, he thought as he pushed through the doors, expecting laughter or surprise at his entrance. He received neither. The bar was empty. The lights were on, the door was open, but there was no one in there, not even the barman. He walked over to the bar and knocked on the counter, trying to attract some attention. None came. He looked around, and saw on one of the tables a glass full of wine, and an untouched plate of food. He walked over. Olives, dolmades and some sort of grilled cheese, all untouched. No sign of anyone to eat it, no indication of why it had been left out. He was reminded of kids leaving a glass of sherry and a mince pie out for Santa Claus. Must be some weird Greek superstition. He’d have to try to get a drink somewhere else. He thought he remembered seeing a bar down by the beach. Might as well give it a try. He headed through the empty square for a road sloping downwards.
What he’d thought was road turned out to be little more than a dirt track, flanked on either side by deep foliage. Without the unusual brightness of the moon, he could have broken an ankle several times over on the uneven ground. A few minutes down the hill he was distracted from his careful steps by a rustling in the hedges. Probably just a badger or something. He carried on down the track, figuring as long as it kept heading downwards, he was heading towards the beach and a drink. By God, he really wanted that drink.
As he rounded a corner the vegetation dropped away on one side, and he could see the sea below him, people swimming in waters made silver by the moonlight. Heartened that he was on the right track, he continued on. After a hundred yards or so, the bushes sprang back up and so did the noises. He could hear branches snapping and leaves being crushed underfoot. He tried to convince himself that the unusually bright moonlight meant the creatures of the island were going to be especially active, but could not shake the thought that the noises were made by something a lot bigger than a badger. He wasn’t even sure if badgers were native to Greece. The noises grew louder, as if something was approaching him. He felt a sudden fear, and told himself not to be so stupid, just as a hunched figure burst from the hedge in front of him, rushed across the track, and dived into the bushes on the other side. There was an impression of something manlike, a beard, a naked torso. The legs weren’t right though, as if they had been covered in dark fur. And the way they bent at the knees…Jesus, he thought, I don’t have a drink for a few hours and I begin to hallucinate.
He picked up his pace, the longing for a drink replaced by a more basic need to get off this track, and find a place where he could talk to another human being under bright electric lights, and leave the dark and the moon behind. He was out of breath and huffing when he rounded a corner and saw he was standing at the top of a small beach. There was no welcoming tavern, no string of lights, no people. He was alone.

The beach was not much more than a tiny strip of sand, enclosed at either end by cliffs. Out to sea, he could see the figures in the water he had spied from above. He took a few more steps forward and was about to call to them when he saw a small set of buildings to his left, carved pillars holding a roof over a statue shining white in the moonlight. Going closer, he could see the statue was of a robed woman with an owl perched on her shoulder. At its feet were a few small piles of foodstuffs. Offerings, he thought, and instantly wished he hadn’t. This was getting too weird to be some kind of alcoholic delusion. He was turning to walk away when something stepped out from behind one of the pillars, the same creature he had seen on the track. As it walked forward into the moonlight, he could see that its legs were indeed furry, ending in hooves instead of feet. Small horns grew on either side of its head, and when it grinned he could see sharp teeth. Some schoolboy part of his memory kicked in and he knew he was looking at a satyr. “But, but you’re not real!” he spluttered. He turned and ran, to find another of the creatures standing at the foot of the path he had come down. He had nowhere to go but towards the sea, where the figures in the water had come closer. He ran down to the water’s edge and began yelling, “Help me! Help me!” He could see that they were all female. Of course they are, a voice in his head told him, the men aren’t allowed out tonight.
The leading swimmer stopped and stood waist high in the water several meters from him. Stuart realized that this striking figure was the model for the statue behind him. She was tall,with skin shining silver, not the simple reflection of the moon but from a light burning inside her. He sank to his knees in desperation and confusion. Shaking his head, he saw that the satyrs were close behind him, kneeling on the sand, heads down and eyes averted from the goddess in the surf.
Her eyes were pure silver with no iris or pupil. They fixed on him, and held him motionless. When she spoke, her voice arrived in his head without seeming to pass through his ears. The words were harsh and guttural. Somewhere in his mind, he realized that this was the Greek spoken tens of thousands of years ago, when she had roamed the Mediterranean and lived in splendour on Olympos, before the beliefs of men had changed, and strange religions come out of the deserts, stealing her worshippers away and diminishing her power until she was restricted to just a few nights every century or so on this forgotten strip of beach. For all that, she was still powerful, and Stuart knew he had displeased her. To spy upon a goddess bathing….no mortal could do that and remain unpunished. The words were angry and her eyes were blazing. The stream of Greek suddenly ceased, and she flicked her arm as if to dismiss him. She turned away and moved off out to sea, her handmaidens dancing attendance in the waves.
The pain started in his feet. He wrenched his shoes off, and watched screaming as his toes fused together, and then split down the middle. His legs began to itch and burn. He took down his trousers and was not surprised to see coarse black hairs forcing their way through his skin. Reaching up, he could feel the beginning of horns at his temples. A fresh wave of pain came as the bones in his knees began to snap and be reshaped. Behind him the two satyrs listened to the screams and waited for their new companion to join them.

Who would have thought moving to Bournemouth was going to be so much like dropping off the face of the world? I have been netless for far too long, which means I’m a bit late making this announcement…

Odd Two Out Publishing is extremely proud to present:

Copies of ILLUMINATIONS: The Flash Fiction Anthology will be available to order for £6.99 from Odd Two Out Publishing, or from the authors themselves. All profits from the sale of ILLUMINATIONS will be donated to the NSPCC.
Odd Two OUT

Cor, bloody hell eh?

FFF service will be resumed tomorrow, with a piece that flagrantly laughs in the face of the sub-1000 word rule mentioned above, but then again I do have a lot of ground to make up….

[In my head, this was going to be some kind of magical realist ecoterrorist story. On paper, it…isn’t. It’s a long way short of what I wanted, but it’s Friday and something’s got to go up. Consider it a work in progress. Don’t forget to check out all the usual suspects - Neil Beynon, Gareth Lyn Powell, Paul Raven, Shaun Green, Gareth D Jones, Martin McGrath, Justin Pickard, and the latest convert, Greg O’Byrne]

He found her at last in South America, crouching on the muddy orange banks of a diseased river. So many months of chasing, asking questions, following rumours, finding dead ends and false starts, and now here he was. He watched concealed within the greenery as she crouched down, and traced patterns in the mud with her fingers. At the same time she was talking, in a language he’d never heard. Her speech continued, slowing down, becoming rhythmic until it was the same few syllables repeated, like some kind of chant. He could see the pale bellies of dead fish floating on the water. He knew they had bought her here.
She straightened up, bowed her head, drew her hands in towards her chest, and then flung them violently back out again. For a second, nothing happened. Then the sky began to darken, and he felt a breeze blowing past him towards the water. The wind blew stronger and stronger, buffeting his back and howling in his ears. A dark spot appeared on the water, started circling and spreading, and then erupted upwards as a huge waterspout sprang out of the river. He shielded his eyes from the spray and watched her stand with arched spine and arms flung wide, her head thrown back, eyes shut and with an ecstatic smile on her face. The dead fish were sucked in and sent spiralling upwards, their scales reflecting silvered sunlight through the water to dazzle him. As suddenly as it came, the spout disappeared. The last few fish fell back to the water, and the slap of their bodies hitting the water shocked him into action. What had happened here was over. He had to confront her before it was too late. He broke out of the foliage and ran towards her. She turned at his approach, and he was close enough to see her eyes widen before she jumped into the air and didn’t come down. He watched her rise, three, six, twelve feet and more, until her form was lost in the distance and she became a black mark against the blue of the sky, a black mark which suddenly accelerated and was lost to view.

It was a week before he hit a town big enough to carry English language newspapers. By that time, the mysterious rain of dead fish inside the offices of a chemical company, who just happened to have a plant upstream from the place his almost-encounter had happened, was long gone from the front pages. But looking through the rest of the paper, he knew his next destination. There was a photo of a delegation at the airport, headed off to Europe to meet representatives of the oil company who were wavering on bringing their operation, and jobs, to the country. There she was, stood in the row behind the President, in a smart business suit and neatly cut hair, smiling at the camera. He phoned his travel agent and booked a ticket to Munich. Maybe this time.