Short Stories

Just finished another story.  Now there are thirty ready to go to print.

'The Family Skunk' A Sneak peek at the ‘Ins’ and ‘Outs’ of family life in Mrs Skunk’s household. What can you do?  They get older and they get more and more adventurous.  Next thing you know your life is full of panic.

'Armageddon at the Speed of Light' Just because you understand very little does not mean everything is inexplicable to everyone else.  But, often, it is. A colossal war between physical factions spreads doom at the speed of light.

'The Moral of the Russian Nobleman' A case of putting all one’s eggs in one, gilded, basket? A famous pun brought to life in an aristocratic manner.

'Seventy Two' A new angle on the Universe. How can you be lonely when you can dance on silent feet and revel in distant companionship?

'Pillbox' How many lives need to be spent to achieve one objective? Being in charge means making the tough decisions; how will you react when you find out the decisions were unnecessary?

'Quasimodo’s Apprentice' Quasimodo drops a clanger. Quasimodo needs an apprentice and puts an applicant through the ropes  -  and the window.

'South From Alaska' He was dying to tell her how much he loved her. A Science Fiction writer’s last flight of fancy.

'Silicon Ballet' Love is blind—and fatal.  Everywhere. Reuben is cute, Reuben is slow, Reuben is careful.

'When Fate is Sealed' How do you choose who is to die? This is happening now, to us.  Cheap parts to keep costs down will always be a problem.  Sometimes justice is slow, painful and poetic.

'Tracker' There is always a choice. Did he know the truth or was he guessing?  At some point in life a decision has to be made even if you know the result is going to be bad.

'Sunshine' Discard history at your peril. There will be a problem.  Tomorrow.  The problem will always be tomorrow.  The problem is always someone else’s it will never be our problem.

'Homework' A triumph of hope over experience. We wait for a better future rising out of a troublesome and lethal present.  Soon we will be free.  Soon.

'Winston’s Puzzle' A pedestrian tale of a Zebra crossing paths with the King. Winston was a ‘neigh-sayer’.  He makes disasters and catastrophes out of nothing.  Only Hawksworth can solve this problem for him.

'Three’s Company' How do you feel about re-incarnation when your best friend’s a cat who cooks? In an isolated rural community on the edge of nowhere lives a man who has a cat for company.  It is a community of conservatives who disapprove but who will not go against the memories.

'A Cross-Stitch in Time' You can go into the past, you can go far away and you can come back  -  but what do you leave behind? Some things you can neither calculate nor predict.  Adrianna was just too beautiful, too shapely and too tempting for an innocent ‘egg-head’.

'The Chewed-Off Willy' A lion’s dented pride. You wake up with the devil’s own hangover feeling really, really awful and thinking that things just cannot get worse when, suddenly, things get much worse.

'Maryam and the Whirly Thing' Maryam thought she had the best of several worlds but, to others, it might have been the worst. She overcame her fear of the ‘Whirly Thing’ and tried to use it to do good.  But sometimes ‘good’ is so elusive.

'The Defection of Kua' The law might not stop you but something, somewhere, always will. She was happy on her home planet, she was happier here.  Until that one thing, that one bad memory came and plagued her until even she snapped.

'Disc' Even dead men get revenge. You can only kill someone once.  It may be the worst kind of death but it is still only once.  But then they turn around and get you back.

'Life and Times of a Journey' What if you had been born a hundred years ago with what you know now? An adventure of the greatest possible magnitude in their time.  They had been chosen as the first interstellar astronauts.  Life is good.  Life is short.

'The Black Knight with the White Horse and the Red Balloon' The archetypal ‘Shaggy Dog’. Nonsense.  Just sheer nonsense.  But what fun nonsense is!

'Birth of an Enemy' Space has always been empty.  Except that now someone is filling it. As far as we knew we were alone in the galaxy.  We had encountered no other intelligent life form.  Now someone wants to kill us with our own ships.  Have we made our ships too intelligent or is someone out there hunting us?

'The Tale of Hermann Limpitt' Just because you’ve seen ‘Gorillas in the Mist’ doesn’t mean you know everything about them. There are times when, no matter who or where you are, you just have to spend a penny.

'Meevo' In a polluted world where climate has shifted radically, there lurk mutants.  Some are good but many are not.  One is evil. The best squad of the best soldiers are mobilised to find and erase one mutant.  A mutant who will make you see what he wants you to see.

'Crater' They arrived by accident but now they know we are here.  They want to harvest us and our planet.  We want to live.  There can be only one winner. They are ‘immortal’.  We breed.  They want us  -  dead.  We want them  -  dead.

'Crater II' They arrived by accident but now they know we are here.  They want to harvest us and our planet.  We want to live.  There can be only one winner. They are ‘immortal’.  We breed.  They want us  -  dead.  We want them  -  dead.

'Ruthermore Heidigens' The Greatest Wizard in the Known Universe.  The Only Wizard in the Known Universe. The biter bit.  You con me, I con you.  Sorry about the ‘man in the middle’.

'The Hags of Teeb' Be careful what you try to get because you may not know you’ve got it. A bit of inter-racial bigotry never did any harm.  Not in the long term, anyway.

'The Return of the Prodigals' Everyone who thinks they are omnipotent should realise that there is always somebody bigger, tougher, wiser—and luckier. The Deep Space Squadron gets its first break courtesy of a ‘Social Worker’ and goes into battle

'Rhittach  -  The Beginning' You can’t keep a good girl down.  Sometimes it’s even harder keeping a bad girl down. She was born on the tundra and raised in a fighting school.  She never had a chance to become a woman, only a killing machine.