“Avoiding Gagarin” published

Thank you to the kind folk at Aurealis magazine who have included my story, “Avoiding Gagarin”, in their latest edition. And they have included a cool art work as well. This has been a fun time for me. I had three stories accepted for publication in three different magazines at quite different times, however they […]

School camp

The school camp was held in another universe. The cabin was small but the huge moon pouring through the window swelled it with liquid light. I could not sleep with the drilling of mosquitoes. I could not sleep this far from home. I had to lie in the tedium, desperate for the hours to pass. […]

Aurealis

Aurealis has been promoting Australian speculative fiction and supporting Australian writers since 1990. Their latest endeavour is to seek to become a Science Fiction Writers of America qualifying market, one of the prerequisites for which is to pay writers 5 cents a word (soon to be 6 cents) for stories published in their magazine. In […]

School massacre

I had to have my dog put down before Christmas last year. There is no art in that, nothing but bathos. Orwell may have made something out of shooting an imaginary elephant, but there is no poetry or great message in the death of my cute little dog. I stayed with him as the vet […]

International Burns Day

I thought that it must have been International Burns Day with the victims on parade, their different scars on display. Marks I had not seen before. Hair up, showing pigmentless flesh below the ear. Flashmark along the arm. Puckered skin running down the rear of a shoulder. Are these the marks that all lives leave, […]

To dream the impossible etc

News of the bus misadventure high in the Canutes caused me to reflect on an incident from my school days. Those of a certain age will remember the tightening of the local school curriculum, when a scientific fine tooth comb was drawn through the hippy length hair of what in those days passed for the […]

One of many reasons I love Tim Powers

The real reason to write fiction, after all, isn’t to make money, nor to show the human heart in conflict with itself, nor to give a picture of one’s time, nor to call attention to the plight of any oppressed classes, but to show off. You want to be able to say to visitors, “Sit […]