many of my short stories are available below in the form of pdfs; by way of introduction or inducement a taster quotation, a brief summary, and a little introductory blurb are provided for each one
stories, short and long, figured in the splurge of rubbish I wrote as a yoot, before deciding I'd rather be a poet; I think it was something to do with being a slow lazy restless intolerant reader, that I preferred the shorter the better (ie poems); but I always had an urge to resume writing short stories, the more so after I got sick of writing the other things; determined to resist it (urges are there to be resisted, and anyway it's such a waste of time) I tried various ploys; one clever idea was to exorcise the demon by 'writing' the story in my head, but not writing it down – no, it didn't cure me; the final bright idea (you've guessed it) was to purge the urge by splurging – letting the one that was pressing upon me at the time gush out of my fingers, getting it out of my system so-to-speak, like vomitting; ok make it three, a strict course of three will definitely do it; well ok perhaps a fourth ... by the end of the year (2006) I'd written or drafted 34; hundreds since
Arabella Metlock
"Luckily for Geoffrey, when his mother died, her cousin Arabella Metlock was prepared to step into the breach. Into her shoes, his mother had said. Arabella Metlock was going to step into her shoes. She'd promised, and she did. Almost literally. Arabella Metlock did everything his mother did and more. Before long Arabella Metlock came to mean as much to him as his mother had"
Arabella Metlock comes to Vaughzey to look after Geoffrey and make sure he doesn't stop being loved, stepping into his late mother's shoes (and more)
this unusual love story started as a piece of experimental writing, effectively an extended prose-poem or sustained invocational chant, to see how far the repetition of the name Arabella Metlock could be taken – or if one could get away with it at all – without sacrificing narrative sense or driving the reader crazy; surprisingly, I think it works, in fact it's one of my personal favourites among my stories; the full name Arabella Metlock occurs 444 times (not counting the title)
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Black Country Stories
"I was sitting in the rain wondering if there was something more than whoring and scrubbing, or if I should open a laundry. When by chance the freak show came trundling through Tipton and the showman recognised me (no, he did too, he was an old Enoch of mine at the beerhouse). So he stopped the caravan and I went with him ... / I’m not a freak, I said jokily (I meant it jokily anyway). / You’re the world’s most beautiful woman, he said."
too skinny to be a whore, she ends up crawling in the gypsum mine ♦ no use for nothing without legs, she improves herself by becoming a Gornal whore ♦ not a freak, yet having eloped from the whorehouse her curvy figure gets her into the freak show ♦ no going to heaven for the children from the mine, though they get let out early to visit the freak show ♦ something more that the legless whore longs for is to be exhibited in a tank of water, like her mother
a set or series of pithy snapshots of low life among the sand pits and whorehouses and freak shows – hard to categorise, perhaps more bizarre than comic, more squalid than naughty
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Cat Sharing
"I suppose that’s what makes them regard him as peculiar; perhaps they think I am too, obviously they wouldn’t mention it. To me I mean. Chat to me and remark that he’s peculiar; chat to him and remark that I’m peculiar. Perhaps they had."
a shy woman looking for her missing cat encounters the peculiar old man a few doors along, has a quirky conversation with him, and later he comes ringing her doorbell
an odd story that started from the two separate ideas of inadvertant cat sharing and an eccentric old man's oddly inappropriate conversation, but somehow became instead an introspective portrait of the woman
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Creative Writing Course
"in real life you don’t necessarily have to think of words – we kissed, it said all we needed to say. I honestly don’t remember making an arrangement; yet I’d rushed there, as if I was supposed to be there that day, at that time. She seemed older."
a creative writing course that our narrator isn't enjoying is the background to a strange series of encounters, and an unexpected love affair
a kind of love story that's also a kind of timeslip story that's also probably a kind of ghost story
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Dave Slaney Stories
"The ratiocinating detective is like a time traveller: his casebook can embrace the unsolved crimes of the past, from Jack the Ripper to Stella Slaney's biro. For the essence of— / Who was Jack the Ripper then? / I forget. It's been on telly. I know who stole the biro though"
the casebook of Dave Slaney, possibly the most useless amateur detective in the whole of South Northamptonshire, as recorded by his admiring typist: thrill to the mystery of a Murdered Cow, the speculations about a Left-Open Gate, the intrigue surrounding a Missing Gargoyle, and finally time-travel back to Dave's childhood to revisit the day that aliens from an invisible spaceship tried to take over Northamptonshire – or did they?
these mildly comic stories are a further attempt (following An Inspector Farquhar Story, but in lighter vein) to write an anti-detective-story, defying or spoofing the genre out of a conviction that detective stories never make sense; see also the second series below
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Dave Slaney Stories – Second Series
"I thought this abandoned car was going to be the dullest you'd ever had, case I mean (not colour), but it's proving edge-of-the-seat – and lit up with humanity and unexpected cat treats to boot. I can hardly wait to know what happened next. / Nothing. / Nothing?"
Cassandra's back from wherever she's been, so there's catching up to do on the casebook of useless amateur detective Dave Slaney: thrill to the web of intrigue behind a Poison-Pen Postcard, the disruption of village life caused by an Abandoned Car, the scarey stakeout in wait for a Phantom Nudist, the moving tale of an apparently Borrowed Cat, and finally revisit the old scandal of the postmistress's Mystery Lover, alias who begat Norris
more mildly comic stories in the unexciting new anti-detective-story genre
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A Day in the Life
"I’m crying all this time. Obviously when you hear your mother’s died it’s very upsetting, I mean if you didn’t already know. People with memories are spared the grief, once does for every day."
after waking to discover prompt-cards by her bed, implying she's suffering from amnesia, Nicky gives an account of her day, including what she learns about her and her sister's past
the sheer horror of some severe forms of amnesia, brought home by the haunting case of Clive Wearing, inspires a bittersweet story reconstructing a typical day in the life of a sufferer – or rather, not a typical day, for effectively her life is just the one day; see the interesting note after the story
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The Day T. S. Eliot Came to Tea
"Poetry was probably dead, if that's what you were meant to conclude; but croquet was too, and summer afternoons on the verandah, and civilised English tea-times, and having a pipe by the fire. It was hardly Eliot's poem that changed the world."
a daughter records her father's recollections of the day T. S. Eliot came to tea, a bittersweet evocation of English literary society on the verge of being changed forever by warfare and modernist poetry
this brief story was written for the centenary of the publication of T. S. Eliot's poem 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' in June 1915
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Doreen Wymark
"It was the policewoman and a different policeman, very tall but looked about twelve. I let them in, moved some things and a cat, and sat them on my little sofa. They looked ridiculous, like a pair of extras from the Spike Milligan show."
Doreen Wymark is fetched by police to identify her former boyfriend's body, drawing her into a series of misunderstandings and false identifications
hard to know how to categorise this one, or where it came from – anti-police-procedural as back-up to the anti-detective-stories? or perhaps it was prompted by the occasion I rang the bank and having answered their security question was told no, that's not your mother's maiden name!
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Down the Wood
"The stronghold of the king and queen of the wooded land was as Jenny had said it was – at the close of each day, it was within a vast woodland that went on and on, undisturbed by train or plane or anything alien to the wooded kingdom. Wherever we were in the unsilent night, we were many miles from any railway-line – or many centuries."
a boy walking in the wood comes across a boulder and tugs at a lump of rust protruding from it, and before the day's end he's been married to Jenny and made king of the wooded land – but what kind of king? he wonders
my version of the story of stories, the ultimate story, the keystone of all story-telling, the story that somehow contains all other stories
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"The Fair Philosopher to Rowley Flies ..."
"Her hand, though, her small hand – I have drifted from her hand – her pretty hand made a gesture of waves or undulations some inches over the edges of my machine. I wonder if that is the true edge of it."
orrery maker Master Rowley is captivated by a young woman who comes to his shop to view his machine, and some months later he receives a visit from her guardian
a curious story inspired by a contemporary piece of verse (from which the title is taken) and also drawing on my actual study of the scientific instrument maker John Rowley, though of course it's an impudent imposition upon him; see the interesting historical notes after the story; it's also a strong contender for the most shocking or unexpected twist (all stories must have a twist, of course, but really ...)
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Fearless Vampire Killers
"You’ll all have noticed how, in all vampire stories, the men with stakes always set off rather late in the day, saying there’s no time to lose. Encounter very few obstacles, no opposition, and never once stop to wonder if they should have worn a different pair of trousers. Yet don’t reach the crypt till the sun is about to go down. And there they are ... just as a shadow falls across the thin window-slit, and the red eyes open. / Well we’re not going to make that mistake. Pleasant dreams, and I’ll see you all at dawn."
follow our fearless females on their self-catering half-term vampire-killing holiday, and thrill to their nail-biting attempt to get to the crypt on time
a comic story prompted by the curious fact that vampire slayers, with all the hours of daylight at their disposal, always set off late in the day and ... well you know the rest – surely our intrepid early-rising girls can do better
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Five Views of a Burning
"I could not bring myself to speak of my mission, my purpose, my failure. I just said I had come to pray for her. I prayed and wept all night. It rained all night. / But it had come too late, the benediction of rain. Like me, it arrived too late."
starting with the anguished monk who's arrived too late, the torture and burning of a heretic are seen from the differing perspectives of five of those involved or affected
a story-sequence where an implicit story, which is not itself directly told, builds through the differently focused accounts of the five narrators, each of whom, even the monk, is really telling his own personal story
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A Ghost Story
"The sound we heard was a quiet, gravelly rolling sound, a bit like a gardener pushing a wheelbarrow. / We turned in unison, our arms being linked, though I'm not sure which of us initiated the movement. I think we heard it at the same moment. / The car was right beside us, moving slowly"
two people stop at a village inn, go for a walk, and later make love
a brief ambiguous ghost story entwined in a brief ambiguous love story, or vice versa
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Goodnight Miss Sam
"None of it’s relevant any more. I wait for my new life. I lie in the dark, listening to the rain, thinking of my future. Like sleeping beauty, I wait for my beautiful boy to kiss me. Kiss me awake"
Sam is lying on her back in the dark, listening to the rain and going over her future (like you do), starting with how she'll deal with office romance in its several manifestations
this was an experimental piece of writing – 'a story about what's going to happen, instead of about what's happened' – where the story, or perhaps the character, turned out better than the experiment; though the fact that time is subverted may be what lends it its peculiar poignancy
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A Great Gift
"It began, as I said, at the monastery. That curious moment when it dawns on you that something you didn’t believe in might be true. Appropriate to have such an experience in a monastery: a ‘more things in heaven and earth’ moment. The odd feeling that what you were searching for might well have been there all along, peeping at you from the long grass."
an anthropologist living reclusively in a remote part of Kazakhstan is introduced by a lama to a genuine Kishi-kiyik, the legendary wild man of the snows – or in this case a young female, whose trusting attachment to the lama is transferred to the more sceptical scientist
a story inspired by Odette Tchernine's book about the Yeti and the Russian investigations into the legendary creature's possible existence, which is generally believed in by the natives of the area; see the interesting note after the story
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Hanging Round the Deanery, or Random Jottings of a Mathematics Tutor Touching Matters Not Wholly Mathematical
"I have seldom if ever known a Little Girl go in the river without coming out wet, while wetness is invariably found not only improving (to which I expect Little demurral) nor yet merely useful (in respect of the purpose stated) but the one guaranteed way of making her Mother say What, you let the Little mite picnic in her wet clothes – it didn’t occur to you to take them off her? You’re a bounder sir, a seven-year-old is not safe with you"
a Victorian mathematics tutor rambles about his hobby (or obsession) – 'the game of Little Girls' – describing some of its pleasures and frustrations and contemplating (among other things) going up in a balloon, inventing a trap, and accepting a living near Mobberley
a spoof on the absurd notion that Oxford maths dons back in the day were fond of little girls, inspired by and dedicated to the archetypal such
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A Heron Beneath the Bridge
"I think I went home to decide. To decide who I was, or who I wanted to be. I never thought, when I stood watching the heron in the river, that walking across a bridge could do that – could change my life."
a lonely woman sees a heron beneath a bridge, and then walking over the bridge encounters a man who's been taken ill, stops to help him, and finds herself assuming the role of his partner
I actually saw a heron beneath the bridge one day, and thought I should write a story about it, or anyway that it would make a good title for a story – why or from where this particular story arose to do the honours is, as is often the case, a mystery
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Honoured Among Lumpies
"Grub’s my best friend. We’re blood sisters, we’ve already decided we’re not going to let anything come between us. Unless it’s our Hunter, he’s got a crush on her. If dad knew that he’d go hare."
a precocious girl named Tomboy and the two people she loves – her big brother and her best friend, a Neanderthal girl – refuse to let convention separate them, and reject the traditional hatred between human beings and Neanderthals
a story of the relationship between two neighbouring villages, of human beings and Neanderthals, separated by nobody's pastureland where children of both villages play; at its heart it's a triangular love story, in the context of a re-imagined world of early prehistory; see the interesting note after the story
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In Search of Bare Monkey Man
"We thought hiring all female porters it might be different, women being so much more sensible, but they soon started mumbling about jewjew and bare monkey man, exactly like the men, and shrieked and ran at the first view of the cliff, exactly like the men. Weird how all Africans are scared of escarpments."
the partly comic, partly rude, partly horrid misadventures of an expedition into the jungle to find the legendary 'bare monkey man', employing the good old technique of trying to attract him with an offering, tied between two trees
as often happens in writing stories, I started from a very slight premise or joke – the way that in Tarzan films the native porters always take fright and run off at the first sight of 'the escarpment' – without the least idea where it was going to take me; not, as also often happens, where I was expecting, and certainly not to the lost fountain of immortality
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An Inspector Farquhar Story
"To call it a ‘case’ is misleading for it was not really a case at all, and might have passed as routine (though tragic for those it touched) had it not been for the Inspector’s tenaciously enquiring mind and humane sympathies, which led Farquhar himself to become in a degree one of those touched by it."
Inspector E. Farquhar, the thoughtful detective, whose catchphrase is a resigned 'Ah well', looks into the suicide of a student at Oxford, and is drawn deeper into the young gentleman's unconventional family life and background than expected
this is my first anti-detective-story, conceived out of a conviction that detective stories simply don't make sense, never, not even the best of them, and fictional detectives detect very little, even the best of them; being in Oxford, I was also affected by my low opinion of the Inspector Morse novels, which are appallingly dreadful; so I created an Oxford detective who was better written but genuinely useless at detecting; the story is set in 1930, and some of the characters encountered or mentioned are real; I have since, after reading it many times (as only writers do, I suppose), solved the residual mystery
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Jayne Tremayne, Schoolgirl Conchologist
"My entire self-image transmorphed in that moment. I’d been bare-born anew – and bare-bare baptised – and this time I came out right. / My dad and the water healed me that day, cured my negatichy body-image for good, cast me from the cursed world into my true elephant, a creature of the ocean."
children's nodulist Jane Orsen, award-winning orphan of the Jayne Tremayne books and TV serieses, tells us about her life and career, her triumph over personal difficulties, and the magiful day her dad took her swimminning and she truly undiscovered herself
a story both heartwarming and hilarious, complete with quirky wordplay, Australian slang, freckles, and dunking the pink overall; note that this story absolutely must be read in an Australian accent
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Khnanga Mbuhtazouehbo
"She spoke perfect Queen’s English, as if she’d been to the finest school. And she had. She was very well educated, but kept it buttoned, less interested in knowledge than in correctness – Etiquette, Protocol, Poise, Saying The Right Thing & all that. She knew items of cutlery I’d never heard of, and where to put them. Not that she was fussy – she was everso untidy once you got to know her; she didn’t mind which spoon you ate your grapefruit with."
our doting narrator tells us about her girlfriend, and also dreams about her – 'I always dream about Kananga Booterswaybo. And plane crashes.' – also confessing reluctantly that she also also dreams of Elizabeth
a rude comic story with a surreal dream sequence and lots of naughty bits
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A Little Wood
"I told them I was lost. / I didn't say in the Little Wood, because that would be ridiculous, they wouldn't believe me. You couldn’t possibly get lost in the Little Wood, it’s much too small. It’s as crazy as suggesting you could get lost in time, and wander into a past age, into the dawn of humanity."
a youngster on a natural history quest gets lost in a little wood, in spite of knowing it's much too small to get lost in, and once darkness falls is befriended by a strange group of people
a magic wood and timeslip story – curious how woods always seem to take you back in time (see Down the Wood for another)
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Marching to Zion
"We knew what it was of course, we all knew there’d been a disaster: in a pit village you live your whole life expecting it, so you know what it is when the earth shakes, well before they start turning the siren. Mam went all pale and just sat down at the kitchen table holding the teacloth to her mouth."
an orphan brought up by strict Welsh Methodist foster parents, not liking being Welsh and facing the prospect of being taken out of school and sent to work at the pit-head now she's 12, decides to run off
a curious character study against a rich background of Methodism and mining; and a story that (in spite of the narrator's denials) definitely needs to be read in a Welsh accent
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Memories of Dylan in an Oxfordshire Village
"Asked if he saw anything of South Leigh’s worthies of that time in the characters of Under Milk Wood, Mr Warburton laughed and said there was no doubt of it. But of course, he added, they have all been given Welsh names and accents to protect their true identities."
Dylan Thomas lived in Oxfordshire for a year or so after the Second World War, and sixty years on a number of different villages lay claim to the honour of hosting the famous poet, and also inspiring the characters of Under Milk Wood
a composite comic story inspired by an actual article in a local magazine
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Mermaid Dust
"The old Indian smiled. I love her too. I know you do Flick, he said, that’s why I’m telling you. / What do you think of the Mermaid Bug, I said. / We’re all going to die, he said. Then his face broadened into a big smile. I’m looking forward to it."
Flick and family in their run-down shack wait for the plague, now known to be caused by mites that came with the dust from a comet's tail, to wipe out humanity
a brief end-of-the-world story that's quiet and static, introspective rather than apocalyptic, focusing on the modest humanity of the unimportant characters
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A Message to Mr Smith
"You carry the hex, he said, his eyes wide as if with fear. English magic strong, but voodoo release you, voodoo stronger. / I rose and stepped back, partly at the strangeness of his message, partly because he was perspiring and seemed in dread of my proximity ... / He couldn’t really have thought me under a curse, could he?"
an Edwardian English woman encounters a man on a train and finds herself caught up in a surreal sequence of events, seemingly revolving around the delivery of a note or message
this experimental story seemed like a breakthrough when I wrote it, and remains one of my personal favourites; I'd been trying to solve the problem of writing a story that made no narrative sense yet was still readable and satisfying as a story; so it's enigmatic both as a narrative story and as a literary creation, since why it works remains a mystery, as ever
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Miss Fu
"It was a special honour to belong to the final watch, the furthest future; but my honour was greater. I was a final reserve unit, one of those with capability for final command. Our responsibility, whichever one of us was nominated, or survived, was to assist humanity in its great endeavour by ensuring to the utmost of our ability successful achievement of the point of complete synchronicity."
Miss Fu assumes command as final field-effective captain of the vessel for the approach to the point of complete synchronicity, but finds that the only other surviving inhabitant is Colonel Stang, who appears to be on her way to command section with hostile intent
a science fiction story told largely through dialogues between Miss Fu and the vessel's Control System
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Mr Bingley Is Come To Netherfield
"Come in my dear, come in, says Mr Bennet, do come in, do. I confess I was hoping to hear your gentle knock, I was, so that at least I can have sensible conversation with someone. What’s to do, my dear Penny, what’s to do d’you think? You know I get better counsel from you than from Scroggins, the attorney, I’ve a mind to engage you at a fraction of his rate, say a sixteenth plus bed and board and shoes"
five sisters engage in different but characteristic sorts of behaviour, and their world-weary father comments
a brief spoof upon a well-known family from one of our greatest works of fiction; though whether Mr Bingley is really to blame for any of it isn't apparent
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My Wicked Uncle: A Christmas Story
"I said, I suppose they paid you to take me. I paid them, he said. I tilted my head. They were for doing you in so I said I’ll take her, they said she’ll be better in the Bay of Biscay than down one of your shafts, I said no not to kill her, I’ll keep her and make use of her, they said what possible use could the brat be to you, I said housework and sex"
our young heroine is sent by her parents to stay in the big dark house of her reclusive and taciturn uncle, and makes the best of it
one of a number of stories in which I try to subvert the expectations of the gothic stereotypes of old dark house, or wicked uncle (etc), or hysterical helpless heroine, by making the heroine more level-headed, the uncle less wicked, and the house at least not quite so much of a prison; and being a Christmas story you know it's going to have a happy ending
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MZ14-12
"I had years to think about the million-dollar question. Years enough to worry it round in circles and back again, and change my mind a thousand times. A hundred and ninety-six anyway. Years and mind-changes enough – you’d have thought – to think of a name for it, yet I never really fixed on one. Let’s call it the F Question – in honour of Friday Nights. The question of the Future."
an astronaut tells how getting pregnant caused her to be abandoned on a distant planet, where she becomes reconciled to her role as the founding mother of a new human colony (or possibly species)
inspired by a Marion Zimmer Bradley short story (see the note after the story), but exploring in a different way the dilemma of a mother and son marooned on an otherwise uninhabited planet
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Notebook 2
"Starting a new notebook at least makes you take stock. I filled the other too quickly. Reading through it – what a load of twaddle really! I’m resolving to be more to the point and less longwinded from now on – as well as less flippant. It’s not an adventure holiday, it’s a scientific expedition."
the surviving part of Ricky's diary provides a scientifically valuable account of the first expedition to reach the top of the Major Escarpment and explore the previously unseen world beyond
my sister wanted a story about exploration, so that's why I wrote it, though really it's about meteorology; as usual after I gave it to her I got no feedback, and when I eventually got around to asking her if she'd read it she said she didn't remember; Jim however said he couldn't put it down, and Gemma said it was the best science fiction story she'd ever read and ought to get a prize – which frankly was prize enough; so this is officially my most acclaimed story; note, in case of confusion, that it begins in mid sentence
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Number 22
"to be frank the only Public Issue I feel strongly about these days (in spite of being down for five) is the question of Evolutionary Segregation, sometimes called Downgrading. I hold that we shouldn’t continue Segregating, and thereby adding to the numbers of the Dependent and Disenfranchised; in fact I would go so far as to say we should actually be Reintegrating. In some measure that follows from having exceeded my Stage 3 Subscription in the Care Strategy for my Docile."
having ended the 74th World War the 14th Barracloughite Administration makes 'the Purge of Old Dissent, sometimes called Outsider Syndrome' the new headline conflict, with unexpected consequences for the narrator, a mildly dissenting optimistic pacifist and advocate of 'the Harmonious Reintegration of Humanity', whose voice journal recording these events constitutes our story
superficially a political story (the only political story I've written, as politics is boring) yet paradoxically this is my best story – not my favourite, and definitely not a readers' favourite, but uniquely epic and all-embracing as it draws you (if you let it) into a futuristic world in which much has changed (including human beings) while some fundamental values and themes have not; Eddie thought it was hard going because of the jargon, so I put more in, because the jargon is the only literary trick available to evoke such a vastly distant future – it's meant to be disorienting – and the answer is not to pause but to persevere and immerse yourself until it starts to sound normal
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Pafthrunckle, and How She Came to Have More Than Twice as Many Names as She Could Count
"Broomfrattle told him she did not know if she had one really, a name that is, and was just about to mention some possibilities when the gaint said that she ought to be called Troggrugog because she was the littlest woman in the world. Troggrugog said shyly that she knew she was quite little but was not quite sure if she was quite as little as that. But the giant, as is the way with giants, would have none of it"
a poor little twig gatherer living in the north-west corner of the forest is visited by a wizard, some louts, and a giant, and then a talking snowdrop advises her to go to the village in the clearing in the middle of the forest, where she finds work at an inn, until a prince arrives
'Once upon a time ...' – surely all story writers wish to write a story beginning thus, and this is mine, a fairy story as ever was; apparently she can only count to four, because she has four fingers on one hand and uses the other hand to point at them with
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People Who Do Not Dream
"When we asked them if they were the People Who Do Not Dream they denied it. As Baynes-Leighton correctly postulated the one people in the jungle who do not know who the People Who Do Not Dream are are the People Who Do Not Dream. Chuli translated the name they called themselves as People Who Live In The Valley Where The River Is Like A Snake."
an expedition into the jungle to find and study an elusive tribe encounters what appears to be a surviving remnant
an anthropological story with elements of prehistoric fantasy, science fiction, and morbid horror, and ultimately a curious twist; the narrative voice is meant to be monotonously deadpan and detached to an extreme degree, in sound and attitude
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A Princess from Kwangtung
"in what slight leisure-time a servant girl has, she watches the dancers and then practises their dances privately; and so we hid in the place where she practises and peeped through a lattice. And that is how we came to be privileged to witness the most beautiful dancing our eyes have ever seen or our hearts could bear to – but she did not know we were watching her."
a beautiful peasant girl whose ambition is to be a dancer is taken from Kwangtung to the palace-city at Kanbalu as a floor scrubber, but clings to her ambition and dreams that the great emperor will notice her
a story that imagines the life and inner-life of the peasant girl, and follows her progress, in the context of a reasonably accurate depiction of existence within the court and palace; see the interesting note after the story
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Randle Wilbraham's Time Machine
"Build a tower, Squire says. / A tower. / Aye. / Where does he want it? / My father looked up into mid-air, where he thought the summit of the Hill used to be, as if it was truly to be a castle in the air. Then he gestured with his head towards the sheer rock face behind his shoulder, the great cliff that rises above Sugar Well. / Put it on top o't crag."
a child's-eye reminiscence of events and conversations that lead up to the building of a tower on top of the hill
an exploration of the background and inspiration to the building of the Tower, or to the concept of a Tower, using a fictionalised approach that brings the various strands together in a more fluent way than non-fiction historical writing could; it's a rare example among my stories of one that tackles a local history theme and thus overlaps with my other great interest – I suppose it got written only after years of failing to write it as non-fiction; the Tower is the one in the photo, which also shows the Old Man beyond; the extensive notes following the story preserve information that will enrich it for some, while those with no stomach for such antiquarianism may well find that the story can be enjoyed without them
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Restwarplington Stories
"To Sir Basil Hubert Socs, KB, fell the most delicate commission, that of visiting Sir Baxter Tremors Bonsul Bovril Beanstalk, Bart, JP, then resident at Plumley Hall, and speaking to him diplomatically on the matter ... Sir Basil Hubert Socs was renowned for his diplomatic skill, and managed to conduct his visit to Sir Baxter without the slightest offence being given, without any suggestion of his intent, and indeed without the matter being raised at all."
might Sir Baxter Tremors Bonsul Bovril Beanstalk, Bart, JP, be prevented from receiving the honorary freedom of Restwarplington after an anonymous objection on the grounds of his acquaintance with a performance artist? ♦ will Sir Basil Hubert Socs, KB, diplomat and local historian, manage to define and clarify or for that matter resolve the exceedingly dull and perennially unresolved question of the overlordship of Newton's Farm? ♦ can the very natural desire of some ladies to enter into affiliation with the Archibaldian Society be afforded a harmonious consummation in spite of dissension in certain quarters? ♦ are there some afternoons in the ancient borough when nothing of note happens, and a story can't be written about them? ♦ and how will it come about that a little girl gets invited to perform the opening ceremony of the Restwarplington and District Horticultural Society's biennial flower and produce show, to unanimous approbation and acclaim?
the Restwarplington stories have a long back-story, written in 2006 but embodying characters and places and situations that I made up as a child – I used to extemporise Restwarplington stories to amuse schoolfriends; hence forty years on a whole world of Pickwickian comic absurdity already existed in some disused lump of my brain
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Seven
"They wasn’t hungry, none o th’Occupants, but true to the word they was fair percolated by ’tupperware. They’d a bought it all if that Hilda Brocklebank an them women from Bright Hour hadn’t a bin there. An if they’d had ’brass."
a spaceship has landed at Thither Cloughthwaiteside and the Occupants join in with the ordinary life of the village, including going to school, collecting tupperware, and becoming Methodists
a comic story in a distinctly Lancashire accent
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Sex Club
"What we were looking for we knew wasn't going to be called what it was any more than it wasn't going to be what it was called (and anyway, we're nothing if not flexible!): Club X or Club Y or (perish the thought) Club Zed ... So obviously, to crack the code, we had to try them all. Except of course the WI."
our nice but naughty narrator and her partner try out local clubs (except of course the Women's Institute) in their quest for secret suburban hanky-panky (or something of the sort)
a naughty comic story that's all about the humour, though sticklers for political correctness should steer clear of it (secret suburban hanky-panky that is)
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Shelley's Dissertation: A Love Story
"I still have time to think of my dissertation so I am still not hoping to possibly to do it along these lines if possible I think. But I’m afraid you would might really find it a waste of of your valuable and precious to meet and discuss with me I’m afraid."
the collected e mails of Shelley M. Waring documenting her brief encounter or relationship with visiting professor Dr Gab Mashelo
a bittersweet comic story of misplaced love told through badly-written e mails, with all the usual errors and nervous/excitable illiterateness
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Short Shorts — Misc
"The worst thing, as memory fails, is how clear the memories are."
Entanglement is a meditation on togetherness and loss (I don't really like this sort of twaddle any more) ♦ Dog explains why next-door's dog used to bark non-stop all day while they were out at work ♦ Why did you stop writing poems? someone asked me, and I thought of the answer many hours later, like you do ♦ How to Deal with a Squatter is a naughty little curio and by no means everyone's idea of how to tackle the problem ♦ Not Dead is a sort of Gothic horror prose-poem ♦ Elf Girl may or may not be a naughty fairy story ♦ Wooden Daughter appears to be an erotic address to a lump of wood ♦ A Stranger on Boxing Day evokes the lost tradition of the visitor who brings a year's worth of good fortune (see the interesting note after the story)
a file of very brief unrelated miscellaneous stories, some of them perhaps better seen as prose-poems; see also the short science fiction stories below
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Short Shorts — SF
"It's hard being human in a world full of machines: especially when it's so difficult to tell the difference."
Bunker 17 sees humanity in a stand-off with the creepies who've learned to jabber, our narrator having to wade through them to fetch carfine stuff to fuel firefence ♦ The Burp of Doom reveals that you're allocated a specific number of burps at birth, and once you've burped them ... ♦ World End Week takes us through how our narrator spends her final week, knowing that the world is due to end on Saturday ♦ Brave New evokes a future in which humans and androids not only coexist but integrate, and reproduce ♦ Future II, after the dreadful catastrophe, is a strange fantasy world or universe in which the narrator is worshipped by her son because there is no one whiter ♦ Silver People follows the twins into the surreal world of the fourteenth epicosm, where everyone is silver and drifts in the gentle rain, almost smiling ♦ Report 76·84019 records the bureaucratic processing of the fat old man and the skinny little girl, and is probably the second-greatest science fiction story ever written
a file of brief unrelated science fiction stories, embracing comic and creepy, matter of fact and mystical, pedestrian and poetic
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Silent Jinny
"having paid for her myself I must wait for the morrow for reimbursement from the provost’s clerk ... So – or thus I reasoned – until the morrow she is mine. Gallows meat is lawfully claimed by the anatomy school; the borough’s fee and the delivery men’s trouble have alike been satisfied; in the eyes of the law she – the person she was – is no more. So her body, her abandoned flesh and bone, belongs to me."
what are the options, for the 'resident curator and assistant demonstrator at the anatomy school', when your corpse arrives from the gallows and still shows signs of life?
our anatomist's answer to the dilemma is a slightly naughty one, though it all seems to work out happily; watch out for the twist though (all stories must have a twist – even those that don't, where the twist is that they don't – but this one definitely does)
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A Sojourn on the Moors
"The servants viewed my fondness for him with perplexity, and were in constant expectation that I should see him in his true colours and ne’er stop running till I was t’other side Hebden Bridge – as one of the more droll of the old gardeners was heard saying."
the new tenant of the Grange gets to know the surly landlord who lives at the Heights, and likes him in spite of his surlyness and in spite of everyone else considering him a species of demon
a variation on the characters of a well-known novel, written as a homage to the original while also embodying a serious re-interpretation of its central character
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Thursday Night
"You mean you really think they’re Satanists? She nodded. These friendly old chaps? The friendlier they are the less you can trust them, like all men. Aah, so it’s just your prejudice, your dislike of men. She looked serious: I don’t dislike men as much as you think; but it’s nothing to do with what I’m telling you about the Hunt. The Hunt? I said, taken aback."
a young couple becomes suspicious that something strange is going on in the village, their new home, and as Gareth is drawn into it but becomes secretive, Maggie is left with her friend Juliet's chilling notion of what's about to happen
a village Satanism story, partly prompted by a friend in search of Dennis Wheatley novels, but equally one of a number of experimental stories where I explore whether a clichéed genre has really been flogged to death or can still engender a decent, original story; being in experimenal mode doubtless emboldened me to write Juliet's climactic narrative as a pseudo-poetic obscene chant, either ruining the innocent soap-opera in which the story begins or providing the outrageous, horrific contrast that village Satanism presupposes
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A Time Traveller
"Her ‘team’ was divided as to whether the return instrument would work, or even survive the first journey. The test run would therefore aim to take a ‘short jump’ back, so that the alternative return by what she called the ‘slow route’ would be available – by which she meant re-living through real time."
two friends share an interest in time travel, one from a sceptical philosophical standpoint, an armchair time traveller, the other a scientist seriously dedicated to achieving it
the first of my time travel stories, written as a homage to the H. G. Wells original but taking a different perspective
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Triner's Bottom
"Her singing held us spellbound. There is no question that after she stopped, time and the world and the whole falling spreading universe were transfixed and motionless for – well, if time has stopped you can’t say for how long can you?"
a stranger takes a wrong turn and arrives at a tiny hamlet seemingly marooned in time, where he meets Peggy, the singing barmaid
a timeslip story (if that's the word), shades of Brigadoon and H. G. Wells but actually inspired by one of Rudyard Kipling's short stories; this was the 'perhaps a fourth' referred to in the intro blurb above – and clearly there was no going back
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Vernon's Hertz-Benz Instantaneous Displacement Engine
"The machine resembled the motor cars I’d seen, except that it had wires trailing about it and no wheels. I assumed that was a mere detail that could easily be supplied once it was ready to move. No, that’s exactly what I mean, he said, I’ve by-passed wheels. This machine never moves, or never seems to move. It gets you there without having to trouble Mr Dunlop"
Potter's friend Vernon, looking to invent a flying machine, combines the internal combustion engine of Benz with the electrical waves of Hertz and comes up with the surprising phenomenon of instantaneous displacement
my best and most convincing, if least sceptical, time travel story, set in Edwardian times
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A Visit to the Countess
"She closed the door like a pressure seal. Perhaps time stopped at that instant. All sounds seemed to cease. The house was quiet with dust. It was so silent that I cannot really say she spoke at all: she at most whispered. I'm not even sure she whispered. It was almost as if her thoughts were audible in the tremor of cobwebs"
venture with our unsuspecting narrator into the ancient house or castle of the mysterious Countess, but once she's closed the door behind you don't expect time or normality to continue
this was the first story I wrote after resisting for years the urge to write prose fiction, and finally failing; the first three stories I wrote were homages to three of my favourite works of fiction (the other two are A Sojourn on the Moors and A Time Traveller), this one being based on the opening scenes of a novel about a certain Count; it was originally written by hand on sheets of thin yellow paper; note that the pauses are part of the story
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The White Lady of Clent
"Watson your brilliant knack for cutting directly to the nugget is infallible. You’re right. The White Lady of Clent is not the problem here; she may even help us solve it. A doctor has to be holistic, even a ghost doctor. What’s haunted here is the soul within a living human being."
psychical investigator Dr Shadrach Dryander and his young companion and chronicler, disturbed before breakfast by an obnoxious but troubled gent, go to stay with him at Clent Priory to investigate its ghost and meet his niece, the 'pert and bothersome' Miss Edie Toynt
Edwardian ghost detectives Dryander and Watson and their archetypal case provide a hybrid genre that solves two of my literary shortcomings – being unable to write a convincing detective story because I don't believe in detective stories, and being unable to write a ghost story because I don't believe in ghosts; I think it works well, in fact it's one of my favourite of my stories; not that I'm claiming credit for the genre, it's the reason 'The Hound of the Baskervilles' is the most successful detective story ever – what's baffling is that there aren't more ghost detectives out there
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Willy Willcox and the Golliwog
"Oh I know how silly it seems, to a wise man like you, I realise it’s not rational. I know now love isn’t, it’s ludicrous, it’s nonsensical, it’s magic. I never felt this for the sheep, not even that little lamb that time. Nor our pig neither. I honestly didn’t want to come and bother you about it, but I can’t abide not knowing. How long do I have her for? How long will she last? How long ..."
the consequences of a magic spell to make a rag doll come to life so that it can be properly shagged are described in turn by the shagger, his little sister whose doll it is, and in between by the living doll itself (sorry, herself)
a naughty and very quirky comic story (or should that be quirky and very naughty?); and to save you counting, it's 100
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Ysbiana
"So, who do you my people think is the most beautiful of my other four granddaughters who haven't yet got a boat named after them? who shall we name the next boats after? (The names of the three beautiful princesses, Ysbagana Ysboafa Ysbulanga, rang from the crowd in no particular order and in perfectly indistinguishable proportion.)"
the legend of how the sacred boat Ysbiana gets her name, and how the king's best-beloved granddaughter gets a husband who truly loves her
a brief story that emerged from the idea of writing a series of 'legends of the islands' set in some imaginary primitive civilisation; the idea was scrapped but this tale was too charming to scrap with it
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The Zygort Orgocracy
"Those who mistakenly believe that the Zygort Org is afraid to defy the massing forces of the Djain Kfarlag, who have conquered the 742nd Galactic Sector, need to watch events carefully and hold their judgement, and their tongues: for their underestimation of her political and military sagacity, her selfless sense of duty, and her personal bravery will soon be utterly confounded and they will bare their feet in shame, and homage."
a race of warrior women are under attack from a vicious enemy, their only strategy being for the ruler to submit herself as hostage and endure a terrible personal ordeal, while behind the scenes the actress playing her can't be dissuaded from her commitment to realism
a science fiction scenario, interrupted by more down-to-earth matters; a surprising illustration of the suspension of disbelief, since the interruption far from spoiling it seems if anything to intensify the drama and poignancy of the main story
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