Author Archives: Rejected Short Stories

My name is Flight Lieutenant Susan Kirts and I want to tell you about a crisis situation which too many people are ignoring. The problem is simple – there are too many homeless people in space. This may be stating the obvious to some of you, perhaps most of you with any common sense, butContinue reading “There are too Many Homeless People in Space”

I am the senior entomologist for the London Borough of Battersea. I have done this job for twenty two years, during which time most of my work has involved minor infestations and flea bites. In the last several years, however, I have been almost exclusively preoccupied by bees. Unfortunately this obsession has resulted in myContinue reading “The Truth About Colony Collapse Disorder”

“One should not intervene, it simply isn’t ethical, that has always been my position”. “With all respect Dr Linn, it’s a little too late for that argument now. We have intervened, so why stop at this point, when things are so critical?” “I wasn’t informed of these interventions and would never have sanctioned them –Continue reading “The Sinkhole Inquiline”

H.M.S Monad, an immense and rusty hospital ship floating 20,000 miles above The Dip, describes itself as a ‘rest centre’ for the walking wounded, a sanatorium for agents who have been burnt out by their psychically enervating field work on behalf of the Fleet. The Fleet or (Collective Transparency) is sustained by a feclicific concretionContinue reading “A report from Hospital Ship Monad”

Mark Baxter’ is a narconaut. This means he smuggles drugs between planets and galaxies, mostly the highly addictive class A drugs known as ‘Pure O’ and ‘Mad’. Within a few minutes of meeting it’s strikingly clear he isn’t particularly ashamed of what he does and he doesn’t fit the stereotype of a drug trafficker either. RelaxingContinue reading “Interview with a Narconaut”

On average every 23rd wave that crashes onto the shore is twice as large as normal. W.W Watts knew that because he had inherited 23 chromosomes from his mathematically capable mother and another 23 from his only slightly less numerate father. W.W. Watts understood numbers well enough to have a vague sense that he wasContinue reading “23”

Within six months of launching my own online psychic business it was doing better than I’d ever imagined, despite the recession. I don’t mean to sound smug. It was a big risk setting up Beaurepaire Clairvoyance.com, right in the middle of an economic and personal downturn, but I’ve come to realise ours is a professionContinue reading “The Belper of Hill Wood”

Mr Faks was working late in his nail salon halfway down the Dip, behind the counter he was having a sneaky, (and thoroughly illegal), cigarette while arranging various bottles containing an assortment of film forming agents, resins, plasticizers, solvents, novelty colourants and other products that gave a special twist to his unique range of artificialContinue reading “An Erroneous Judgement”

At each pole of Endymion a halo of yellow-green light shimmered. Deep cracks in the magnetic fields of the small, experimental planet made this happen, as the great sun blasted Endymion’s atmosphere with gusts of charged particles. Lonny had designed these cracks himself and was pleased to see they worked so beautifully, creating a bowContinue reading “His Aurora”

The twenty seventh Snow Crystal Morphographer, Abbotess Tharsis, lived in the private monastery of Nakaya, 3 miles up on the North Western flank of Olympus Mons. To my mind the volcanic mountain resembles a breast with an inverted nipple, but the gentle and seemingly endless slopes of the mountain are commonly compared to a circusContinue reading “The Snow Crystal Morphographer”