Nate Crowley's Blog

There and Snack Again: How to eat everything in Lord of the Rings

In February 2018, my wife & I decided to embark on a gruelling quest: to watch all three Lord of the Rings films (extended editions, of course), while attempting to eat everything that got eaten on screen. We were doing it in memory of my parents, who had both recently died, and who had loved both LOTR and good food. It blew up into a bit of a thing online, so we've decided to do it again this year (2019), starting at 6am on Saturday February 16th. And this time, we're inviting you to watch - and eat - along with us. In this article, I'll tell you all you need to know to follow in our footsteps: what to buy, how to prepare it, and when in the films to eat it. The Reason for the SeasonFirst, a bit of sentiment. As stated in the intro to this post, the whole reason for doing something this ridiculous was as a warm, joyful way to remember my parents. Dad died in February 2017, and by the time the first anniversary of his death came around, I’d lost mum as well. And so, on the eve of that drizzly day in February 2018, my wife Ashleigh and I found ourselves in their suddenly-empty house, with two lifetimes’ worth of sentimental junk to tidy away.I’m not going to lie: I was feeling a bit grim. But if there was ever a story about facing an impossible task and refusing to be beaten down by it, it’s LOTR. Those stories had been perennial favourites of my parents, and we’d watched them together several times over the years. The other thing we’d always done together was cook: cook, and eat, and talk about cooking while eating.Suddenly, looking at Frodo’s face staring pensively at me from the DVD box set in my parents’ living room, I knew what we had to do. We were going to go to the shops, get a good night’s sleep, and get up at dawn the next day with a ludicrous objective: marathon the whole LOTR trilogy, while eating an approximation of every dish that appeared on screen.And we managed it. We laughed, we cried, and we ate a lot of lembas bread. And as I live-tweeted our progress, we ended up with hundreds of thousands of people cheering us on. When it was all over, a good number of those people asked if they could join in for our next attempt - and so for them, I’ve written this guide. I hope it’s useful.We’re going to be starting this year’s marathon on Saturday 16th February, at the frankly insane hour of 6am, and this time we’ll be joined by our daughter, who was born six months ago. We like to think that if we’re Frodo and Sam in this journey, she’s Gollum.Anyway, let’s get to it. If you’ve got any questions, or if you just want to follow the action on the day, you can find me on twitter at @frogcroakley.Otherwise, let’s go #ThereAndSnackAgain….(PS - as it's likely to be item #1 on my FAQ - yes, I would like to write a vegan version of this guide, but I don't know if I'll have time before the 16th. Nevertheless, if anyone else wants to propose a menu, I'd love to hear about it!)Preparing for the journeyResearching online, I found quite a few people who had created menus to accompany LOTR marathons, but they all seemed a bit… sanitised. Typically, they comprised five to nine courses, each of which was ‘inspired’ by the food on screen, but bore little resemblance to it. They all seemed very pleasant and technically accomplished, but felt first and foremost like attempts to create a delicious themed banquet.I wanted our eat-along to be as epic as the story itself: relentless, extended, and occasionally pretty gruelling. And so, armed only with my memory of having watched the movies more times than I’d care to admit, we made a list of everything we thought got eaten in the films, and went to the shops to buy it.Here’s our shopping list, modified a little in hindsight, which you can use if you’d like to - below, there follows a guide on when to cook, prepare and eat the various dishes we did, as well as notes on optional extra courses, and the ingredients you will need for them:DRINKS: 1 box regular tea bags, 1 box herbal tea bags, 1 bottle sparkling water, 1 bottle chocolate milk, 1 bottle lemonade, 1 carton red grape juice, ale as required.FRUIT & VEG: 1 bag of apples, 1 carrot, 1 large pack cherry tomatoes, 4 large field mushrooms, 1 bag/tin new potatoes, 1 small pack of casserole veg, 3 varieties pickled vegetables, 2 large bunches of grapes, 1 tin tomato soup.BREADS: 1 sweet cake, 1 loaf rye bread, 1 pack lembas bread substitute.MEAT & FISH: 12 chipolata sausages, 6 rashers smoked streaky bacon, 1 whole chicken, 1 rack of ribs, 1 rabbit, 2 fillets smoked trout, 1 jar rilettes or tin of preserved pork, 1 jar sardine paste.DAIRY: 1 pack butter, 4+ varieties of cheese.EXTRAS: 1 tub hummus, 1 jar pesto, 1 pack rock salt.SNAX FOR GOLLUM: 1 pack jelly worms.General considerationsBefore you leave the Shire, here’s a few travel tips we gleaned from our journey:Start early - The extended trilogy runs to 11hrs36m without credits, and considering you will need to take a few breaks to prepare food, you can easily expect to add two or three hours to this. We started at 6am, and will do so again this year, but that just means we had a great excuse to huddle under a duvet with our pyjamas on.Prepare what you can beforehand - With the exception of the rabbit stew (which should ideally go on the night before), all the meals listed require less than 30 minutes’ cooking time. Even so, if you can spare an hour the night before to get cold courses prepared, plated, and put in the fridge, you will save a lot of time on the day.Think small - Even with a halfling’s appetite, you will fill up quickly if your eyes get too big for your stomach. Err on the side of caution with portion size, and certainly keep meals small until the Two Towers. Wherever possible, you should finish each course wishing you had a little more.Scaling up - This menu is designed for 2 people. Scale up ingredient numbers to cater for a larger fellowship, or consider including some of the optional dishes detailed, with a view to shaaaaaring the looooad.Do not lose heart - Depending on what options you take, this menu can account for between 20 and 40 courses, which seems pretty daunting. Nevertheless, many of these courses are single bites, or tiny drinks. In our experience, there were only four five dishes I’d count as major meals, which is pretty achievable - for a hobbit at least - in the space of 15 hours. We kept our portions fairly restrained, and weren’t shy to leave leftovers, so we never felt unpleasantly full.Choose your house rules - The menu you set will depend on what rules you choose for your marathon. For the truly hardcore, I’ve included asterisks to indicate the meals which are actually seen being eaten on screen. My recommended menu contains almost all of these, but also some meals that represent food shown, or even abstract concepts. (NOTE: I’ve counted a meal as eaten even when it is interrupted by an attack out of nowhere by ghosts or monsters; a circumstance which occurs surprisingly often.) - so often, food gets prepared only to be abandoned as ghosts or monsters attack from nowhere.Drinks - There’s a lot of ale in LOTR. Due in part to Ashleigh being pregnant, and the fact I didn’t want to be shitfaced by Helm’s Deep, we didn’t include this in our menu. I have included a few of the soft drink options we identified, but a booze-along trilogy marathon is a different story indeed (see: Challenge Rules).So, we’ve spent enough time getting ready - let’s set out for Mordor!The Fellowship of the RingGENERAL NOTES: Although it can be tempting to make a hearty start, keep your powder dry during Fellowship. There’s a very high frequency of food shown, and in the film’s middle portion the fry-ups come thick and fast. Don’t follow the light of Too Many sausages, or you’ll end up in the cursed marsh of Feeling Full By 10am. Remember: you only need to match what’s eaten.1) Tea and Cake*As soon as are we introduced to Hobbits by Bilbo, we see one pinching a cake off a tray. Cut yourself a decent slice, and wash it down with a cup of sweet, milky tea to start the day.HARD MODE: After the introduction, Gandalf visits Bilbo and we get a good look at his larder - tomatoes, bread, cheese and jams are all in abundance here, so you could create a small buffet to match. Also worth noting Bilbo’s immortal statement about feeling like ‘butter scraped over too much bread’...2) Cake - Round TwoAlthough it’s not explicitly seen being consumed, Bilbo’s enormous birthday cake is quite a spectacle, and probably deserves a second slice of whatever you’re having. IMPORTANT: whether you attempt this or not, make sure to save some cake for later.3) A Bite of an Apple*Merry takes a cheeky chomp from an apple as he prepares to create havoc with Gandalf’s fireworks, and you should do the same. The rest of the apple can be chopped and put into the rabbit stew, which should already be simmering.HARD MODE: We see a cheeseboard in the scene with the Gaffer in the pub. Soon afterwards, Frodo packs apples and bread for his journey. You could choose to honour these appearances. On Sam & Frodo’s early journey out of the shire, we see Sam cooking sausages, mushrooms and bacon - you *could* choose to eat them then, but since we don’t see them being eaten, I think it’s best to use this scene as a signal to get them under the grill for the scenes to come.4) Sam’s Midnight Bread*On the first night out of the Shire, Sam inexplicably wolfs down a bite from a loaf right before he goes to sleep. This seems like it should be replicated, but please don’t go to sleep.HARD MODE: As Frodo & Sam encounter Merry & Pippin, we see they have armfuls of stolen vegetables. They also find mushrooms as they fall down the hill. You could choose this moment for some sauteed vegetables, but it’s equally acceptable to just have someone run through the viewing room with an armful of cabbages.5) Peter Jackson Gnashes On a Carrot*As we are introduced to the Prancing Pony, we see Peter Jackson make his first cameo, as a carrot-chomping yokel. It’s pretty easy to match this, especially if you got the carrots out in the escape from the farmer’s field.HARD MODE: In the Pony itself, a plate of bread is visible.6) Second Breakfast*When Pippin asks Aragorn about Second Breakfast, he is thrown an apple. I chose a variety called Rockit for this scene, as they are sweet, red and perfectly hobbit-sized. Whatever type of apple you choose, it must be thrown and caught.7) Weathertop Fry Up*Before the hobbits are attacked by Mean Local Ghost Kings, they begin preparing a fry-up of Tomatoes, Sausages, Crispy Bacon, and Mushrooms. Smart viewers will have put these under the grill at the sign of Sam’s fry-up listed above. I recommend eating the bacon, mushrooms and tomatoes here, but leaving the sausages to cool. Whatever you do, make sure you keep half your sausages in reserve for Two Towers.8) Arwen’s Horse SpellWhen Liv Tyler summons a load of horses made out of river to wash away the Mean Ghost Kings, it’s a timely reminder to stay hydrated. Why not drink a refreshing pint of sparkling water to represent the magic in the water?9) Sausages and Bread*At the start of the second disc of Fellowship (if you’re watching on DVD), the Fellowship stops on the way to the Gap of Rohan for some fight practice and a light lunch. Now is a great time to eat the sausages you grilled earlier, along with some buttered rye bread.HARD MODE: When the hobbits are practising fighting with Boromir and Aragorn, an apple rolls past Aragorn’s head - if you’re not sick of the bloody things, you could honour this. More significantly, the entrance to Moria offers two potential bonus courses. The Fellowship’s casual ganking of a giant octopus outside the mines could be an excuse for calamari, while Gimli’s excitement over Red Meat Off the Bone could justify a T-bone steak for those of a truly dwarven constitution.10) Lembas in LothlorienIn Galadriel’s weird Ewok village, the iconic travel staple of Lembas Bread is introduced. Even if you choose not to eat it until the characters do, you should get it out now. Our marathon inspired endless debates about what Lembas Bread should be represented by - some said shortbread, others said drop scones, while some even argued for Kendal Mint Cake. We opted for Jacob’s Butter Puffs, which we would have wrapped in banana leaf if we had been better prepared. We also paired them with hummus and pesto - while this was a bit of an embellishment, it seemed like an appropriately elven thing to do.The Two TowersGENERAL NOTES: This film sees the bulk of your eating during the marathon, and should begin in late morning, between 9.30 and 11.00 - if you get it right, you’ll have had the bulk of the food before midday.11) The Best Salt in the Shire, Hypothetical ChickenThis is an odd, slightly metaphysical course, but one I think it’s important to include. Sam makes a big deal of having brought along a taste of home - the best salt in the shire - in case they find a chicken to roast. Frodo finds this very touching, and so we decided to recreate the moment by licking some seasoned salt while gazing longingly at the chicken we had prepared for eating during ROTK.12) A Bit Of Lembas Bread*You’ll get used to whipping out the Lembas bread, but this is (I think) its on-screen debut as a consumed item.13) Orc Power DrinkWhile Merry & Pippin are being given a piggyback by the Uruk-Hai, complaints of illness see Merry being forcefed a revolting brown ‘medicine’ by the hulking, tusked jokers. While I suspect the liquid was probably more akin to Jagermeister, we decided to be kind to ourselves and have a bottle of chocolate milk instead. If you can find it, a bitter Italian Chinotto drink would be a great non-alcoholic alternative.14) Looks Like Meat’s Back on the Menu, BoysFor my money, this is one of the best moments in the trilogy, if only for the haunting implication that orcs understand the concept of a menu. There will come a blog post where I consider the idea that orcs have a cultural memory of a more civilised existence. Where I wonder if maybe they are good people who have been woefully misrepresented in a history told by its victors. But it is not this blog post. For this scene, we cooked ribs in a dry rub, and arranged them like a busted-open ribcage over chipolatas roasted in a string as ‘guts’. You could use other meats - be creative. Whatever you do, make sure this is a larger meal than most on the list, and make sure your diorama of a ravaged orc has a face, in order to capture the horror of cannibalism. We used a biscuit with half-olives for eyes, an angry expression drawn in tomato paste, and pine nuts for tusks. Eat with savage gusto.15) Gollum Eats a Worm*Does what it says on the tin. Unless you are feeling truly brutal, I recommend a gummy worm sweet.HARD MODE: There is another opportunity to eat Lembas Bread here, for the committed.16) Gimli tastes Orc Blood*As Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli seek the ‘White Wizard’, old Gims licks a blade of grass and remarks on it being orc blood. Best not to think too much about how he knew the taste. In any case, this can be handily replicated by saving the juices from roasting the ‘Meat’s Back’ ribs, and tasting them. Eerily reminiscent of the doctrine of transubstantiation.17) Entish DraughtWhile being looked after by treebeard, Merry & Pippin cement their status as the Main Idiots of the trilogy by quaffing the ents’ special energy drink for trees. We chose to represent this with a jug of lemonade, which was very welcome after the salty meat of the orc. Feel free to fight over the lemonade, stand on tiptoe, and make weird rumbling noises in between gulps.18) Soup at Edoras; Cheese & BreadWhen the two children from the burnt village arrive at Edoras (Rohan’s capital, which now retrospectively looks like a Skyrim ripoff) on a horse, they are fed a red soup. Right afterwards, Gimli tucks into a selection of cheeses, and possibly some dry-cured ham. Although technically two separate meals, we chose to conflate them into one, with tomato soup and a cheeseboard. A bit of serrano ham probably wouldn’t go amiss either.19) Rabbit, Stew, Taters Cooked Three Ways*Sam has an argument with Gollum about food, which culminates in the weird grey baby man taking a bite out of a rabbit like it was an apple. Unless you can find or prepare some cured rabbit, I recommend skipping this moment and instead just enjoying a facsimile of the stew Sam cooks to demonstrate the proper preparation of a ‘brace of coneys’. It should be a simple stew, cooked for as long as possible to help the rabbit fall off the bone, and with a few root vegetables mixed in. Dry cider and rosemary make a good liquid base, but Rioja also works. Sam’s advice on potatoes - “boil ‘em, mash ‘em, stick ‘em in a stew” - also inspired us to serve a triple side dish of new potatoes, cooked in the ways prescribed.HARD MODE: During his row with Gollum, Sam offers a hearty shout out to Fish & Chips (with big fat chips), which you could use as an excuse to eat that dish, if you were feeling really committed.20) Vile Fish Stew*This is without doubt the low point of the whole experience, but in my opinion can’t be avoided. On the road to Helm’s Deep, Eowyn cooks a horrendous, fatty fish stew which Gimli turns down entirely, and Aragorn tries (with desperate politeness) to pretend is edible. To honour this, I made an unfortunate broth comprising cheap sardine paste, rye bread crumbs and butter, which we each sampled grimly, before tipping into the garden. This is the only moment of conscious waste in the whole marathon, but I think it’s an acceptable sacrifice. After trying the stew, Aragorn sits for a long while in the dark with a haunted expression, smoking his pipe until he passes out. After following his lead, you will feel his pain.HARD MODE: It doesn’t get much harder than this scene, but it’s worth noting the peculiar scene just after, dedicated to showing how many potatoes were brought to helm’s deep. I guess you could eat some potato here.21) Fish a la Gollum #1After being captured by Faramir, Frodo watches Gollum brain and consumes a fish from the forbidden pool. Raw salmon or trout would be most faithful here, but considering Ashleigh was pregnant, we opted for a fillet of cooked, smoked trout. (Although I did waggle the plate as she ate it, to give some semblance of life). After the revolting fish stew, this is hardly the most welcome course of the meal.22) Isengard QuenchedWhen Treebeard releases the river into Isengard, Saruman’s subterranean alchemy is quenched, releasing torrents of chemical steam. This is a good moment for a big, digestion-aiding mug of herbal tea, which also helps wash away the last of the lingering fish stew tastes.HARD MODE: Soon after the fall of Isengard, Merry & Pippin find a load of preserved meat and vegetables stored by Saruman (or as I like to call him, Isengard Kingsom Brunel). Return of the King begins with the eating of these supplies, but you could start now if you were so inclined.Return of the KingGENERAL NOTES: You’ve now completed the bulk of the endeavour - congrats! This movie is actually fairly light on meals, but contains possibly the largest of them all - so if you are playing this right, you should still have a decent appetite when the opening credits roll.23) Fish a la Gollum #2The film begins with a seriously dark set of reminiscences by Gollum, in which he reflects on ‘forgetting the taste of bread’ as he bites into a flabby, raw fish. You could repeat the course from the forbidden pool here, or get really accurate by serving a fillet of catfish, the type of fish portrayed in the scene.24) Yet More Lembas Bread*Self-explanatory….25) Isengard Stores*As introduced at the end of Two Towers. Gimli gets particularly excited by the salted pork in Saruman’s store, and so pork rilettes (or even tinned ham) are a perfect centrepiece for this meal. There’s a wealth of different vegetables and meats portrayed here, so you can be quite liberal when planning this dish - we opted for cornichons, pickled onions, smoked cheese, pickled red cabbage and preserved sweet peppers.26) Hail, the Victorious Dead!At Edoras, Theoden leads a feast to commemorate the fallen at Helm’s Deep. This is the booziest scene in the trilogy, and given its memorial nature, was the one scene where I matched the characters’ drinking (or at least some of it - I didn’t want to end up like Gimli). When Theoden toasted the dead, and Aragorn paused for a long moment before drinking, I got some dust in my eye.HARD MODE: While this scene is focused on the quaffing of ale, there is plenty of food on show, including plenty of cheeses, and an entire roast hog. For a large party of marathoners, an attempt could be made to replicate this. SUPER HARD MODE: During the remainder of the film, there are at least two scenes (Osgiliath, and the Beacon) where Gondorian soldiers are seen eating from bowls. While we thought hard about including Ambiguous Gondorian Stew on our meal list, we decided on the headcanon that the soldiers were ‘just making coffee’, and so let ourselves off. Will you be so weak?27) Denethor’s Grim Dinner*Perhaps the most intense eating scene of the trilogy comes when Denethor, the miserable steward of Gondor, monsters his way through a grisly dinner of cold chicken, grapes and cherry tomatoes as his son rides towards certain death. It is vital to properly roleplay this scene in order to feel the full horror of it: diners should tear the chicken apart with grim ferocity, burst tomatoes unpleasantly between their teeth, and dribble plenty of red grape juice. It’s horrendous, but necessary. For perfect scene setting, you should arrive at this scene not so full that you can’t bear to eat more, but full enough that it seems slightly gratuitous to do so. It’s the last significant meal of the trilogy, so go for a sprint finish28) GrondAlthough no food is consumed during its time in the film, I feel that Grond - the colossal, wolf-headed battering ram used to batter down the gates of Minas Tirith - is possibly the best single thing in the LOTR trilogy. As such, and as the self-appointed leader of the Grond Fandom, I insist this terrible weapon deserves special recognition in any marathon. Maybe you could choose to down a horrendously potent drink to acknowledge Grond, or kick over a model gate? Maybe you could just chant its name. Whatever you do, don’t let Grond go unremarked upon.HARD MODE: When Sam & Frodo are struggling up the slopes of Mt Doom, Sam tries to coax life into Frodo by reminding him of the taste of Strawberries. If you can keep yourself together at this point (goodness knows we couldn’t), you could try to share a punnet of strawberries.29) There And Back AgainFinally, when it’s all nearly over, and the hobbits return to the Shire to try and recapture a sense of their old lives, bring out the cake you had a slice of, all those hours ago at the start of Fellowship, and share the last of it. Think about everything that has happened since then, and how you’ve changed since that innocent time. Reflect on the impossibility of recapturing the past, but console yourself with knowing that all good things come to an end, and that one has to discover a way to move on. I will not say do not weep, for not all tears are an evil.---And there you have it! You’ve completed your adventure, and things will never be the same. Hopefully it will have been fun, and maybe it will even have been meaningful.For us, LOTR was a great way to bring cheer to an event with a very solemn purpose. It’s a story about the ending of things, and of the passing of wonder from the world - but it’s also a story about how, against that dark backdrop, good folk will go to enormous lengths for the things and the people they love. Even if that just means eating a 25 course meal in your pyjamas. Appendix 1: Challenge modesIs the above somehow not enough of a challenge for you? Why not impose some of these additional rules:Ale Mode: Attempt to match the characters drink for drink, using strong ale. Not recommended.Smoke-along: Attempt to smoke along with Gandalf, Bilbo, Aragorn, Gimli, Merry & Pippin, using your own interpretation of the ‘Halfling’s Leaf’. By the end of Fellowship, you’ll be fighting a deep wave of blackness, and if you remember ROTK at all, you’ll probably think you were inside the film. May help with appetite, however.Elf Mode: Only consume vegan ingredients from the list above - NOW WITH ADDITIONAL GUIDANCE - SEE BELOW:One(ion) Ring To Rule Them All: During the introduction of Fellowship, one viewer (representing Sauron) cooks and presents a single onion ring to the group, which must not be eaten. One viewer is elected as Ringbearer, and must hold the onion ring for the entire trilogy. Other viewers must constantly try and cajole them into giving it up, but they must stay strong until the climax of ROTK, when a player taking the role of Gollum gets to eat it. You may also make use of a chocolate finger at this point, for added realism.LARP of the Rings: For larger parties. Each viewer is assigned a character from the film. They may only participate in meals their character is eating on screen. Combine this with the onion ring rule above, and you’re basically conducting an indoor LARP of Lord of the Rings.Appendix 2: Elf ModeI was lucky enough to be contacted by @SorrellKerrison on twitter, who has provided the following recommended substitutions for tackling this whole business on Elf Mode, with a fully vegan menu:So the first big meat dish you come across is No 14 "Looks like Meat is back on the menu Boys". You can make a Vegan rack of ribs from Seitan, (Here's a handy guide: https://t.co/AUNx5YfoOe), And you can use Linda Macartney Red Pepper Chipotle Sausages for the 'guts'. Easy.No 15. You can get gelatine free gummy works and chews in most stores which have a 'free from' sectionNo 16 Orc Blood can just be some tomato juiceNo 19 Rabbit Stew. There is a Mock Duck gumbo (recipe available from PETA that would stand in nicely for this.)No 21 You can get fake fish gluons easily from most big supermarkets. Vivera even do fake fish cakes,For the breakfast section there is a Fakin Bacon and there are vegan deli chickens and chorizo to add to any of the pickle and cheese boards.That's it. All vegan no problem!

Short fiction: Charismatic Megafauna

Here's a story about an aquarium starship that has seen better days, and the trouble that befalls it when its crew make some extremely reckless curation decisions. It's unabashed space opera, with exobiological oddness galore, as well as some more familiar beasts...I’m watching fish swim round the fake easter island head - clockwise, like they always do - when the call comes in.They’re basically fish, anyway. Eyes placed penti-fashion round a tube with a mouth at one end, an arse at the other, and fat pink frills strung in between. Torgersen (he’s the aquarist for my zone) says they’ve got more in common with ‘chinies than anything else, but to the rest of us, fish is fish. It’s not like the visiting public knows any better.They found these ones down on New Hawaii, shoaling over flooded ruins where the continents used to be. Alien megacities, drowned and eerie. But whoever landscaped the tank didn’t have any photos of them, so they just went with Easter Island heads. Old Polynesia, via polystyrene. Lovely stuff. And the fish, like the punters, couldn’t have cared less.That old decorator did, mind. He bloody loved himself an Easter Island head. You’ll find them, with their sullen brows and shovel chins, pouting out of what feels like half the tanks round here. I clean the glass in Zone 8 (Reefs of the Cosmos), so I spend my life having staring competitions with them through scummy glass.Oh yeah, the call. Right.At the time, I’m meant to be working. But truth be told, the shift’s nearly over and I’ve zoned out most of an hour back. So I’m glad when the captain comes grumbling over the address system, calling us all to the ticketing hall. Gives me an excuse to turn my back on the glowering totems and those dumb, circling fish.It’s a long walk to ticketing, and I don’t hurry it. I walk past the cheap plywood where we’ve boarded over Zone 6 (formerly die glühendenflusswürmerzone, but empty since a heater failure four years back), and drum my fingers along the turgasaur’s tank as I walk through Zone 3 (Giants of the Mud). The poor sod’s lying against the glass again, gills flapping - getting old. He gives me an apathetic clack of those three-way jaws as I pass, but that’s it.“You’re always teasing that thing” says Lin, making a tutting noise as she emerges from the Zone 4 junction. It’s not worth arguing, as it’s not a real accusation. Lin just says whatever pops into her head - if she sees you doing something, however mundane, she’ll describe what you’ve done and consider that her duty towards maintaining a conversation.“That’s right” I agree, blandly. “I am always teasing the turgasaur”. One of the aquarists would have at least given me a vulgar bark at this - I’ve even tried to make it sound a bit rude - but Lin’s too dull to take the bait.The two of us used to be the kids of the crew. Me here for my education, her because… I think she was abandoned, maybe? In any case, we were the youngest aboard, so we hung out by default. We’re still the youngest aboard; we’re just not particularly young anymore.We stopped hanging out after the time we fucked by the threadbare mangroves in Zone 11. Neither of us really fancied each other, but it happened anyway. She thought she was cementing some sort of alliance with me, and I was bored. It wasn’t bad, but it didn’t need repeating.Now she works in the gift shop, sewing plushies of animals we haven’t had in 30 years, and selling them to zee-gee tourists when they pass through. When we do meet, like now, we pass the time reciting the things we’ve done in the last few hours, while I wonder how we ever managed to spend so much time together.“Why do you think she’s called us in?” she asks, nervous, as we cross the concourse to get to ticketing.“It’ll be about making more money” I say, irritated at being asked. Every single time the captain calls a meeting before a big tour, it’s about making more money.And Thynnie - the ship - she needs it, badly. We’re three weeks out of Nazareth, one of her crucial system stops, and a chance to shore up the coffers. The plan’s to tour the belt townships first, taking on a few dozen families at each, then take a week docked with the orbital at Khalkeús. In good years we’d skip the hicks in the belt, but it’s been a damned lean patch and we need every ticket.If it’s a bad run? Well, after the last bad run - at Bonanza - nine of us got laid off at port. I’ll likely go with the next batch if we can’t balance the books, and end up stuck with the rock-jockeys at Khalkeús. Hell, we all might end up there.So Miss Galba (she’s the Captain) will give us the usual bollocking to boost morale, knock out some rousing stuff about clean pumps and sparkling floors, and set us to get on with it.Only, when we get to ticketing, the mood feels different. It’s gloomy.Gloomier than usual, I mean. It’s always gloomy in ticketing. The dusty bunting, the echoing marble, and the mural with the silhouettes of animals we barely remember the names of… it’s pretty depressing, and the watery blue light coming in from Tank One makes it properly moribund.But today, the atmosphere is especially dour. The size of the room really shows up how few of us are left, and the tank light makes everyone look ancient as we gather in front of the big windows.There are the aquarists, sullen and clannish, with their tattoos and their scratchy blue uniforms. Torgersen and all the rest, and Agrei the boss man. There’s Temi, his counterpart in visitor services, glowering at him over a quaking roll-up. They hate each other. Then there’s Temi’s team in their scratchy yellow shirts, the engineers with their overalls, the cleaners, the cooks and a couple of dozen others. Six score of us, for a ship the size of a comet.And there’s the chief, Tas Galba, looking miserable as rain. We all feel quietly sorry for the captain, as she doesn’t really deserve what she’s ended up with. She had an ancestor, Pertinax Galba, who got rich supplying munitions to a Krax art-war. The story goes the Krax gave him the contract because they quite liked his name. You know the Krax, so go figure. You know the size of their wars too, so you know how rich this guy must have been. Still, he ran out of ways to spend it, so he decided he should own the largest aquarium in known space.He bought Thynnie - the Anna Thynne, we should call her - from the Abisade Freight Company, a couple of hundred years back. She was a water tanker, back then. Pertinax got her crew spaces scrubbed up as concourses and promenades, and built glass into her freight tanks. They say the Abisade firm had in turn bought her cheap off the Teçi when they gave up on tech to go back to the sea, so she was already wired for aquaculture.Anyway - she was a marvel. Hundreds of staff, creatures from every world people had rights to harvest, and even earth stock. Everything gleamed. For Pertinax’s daughter Fleur - Galba’s great-grandma - captaincy of the thing was an astonishing 8th birthday present. A watery world, touring the stars and drawing throngs at every stop.Unfortunately, when Pertinax died, Fleur’s luck ran out. The Krax decided they preferred sword fights to bullet wars, the contract folded, and she lost control of much of the family business. The upkeep of the Thynne beggared most of what was left, and she settled into old age as a drunk.These days, Thynnie is the Galba family business. There’s no wealth left but dregs, getting thicker and shallower each time Tas has to dip into them after a meagre tour. More corners get cut every year, and there’s no hiding it. The place even looks a ruin from the outside - the masonry, the beams and buttresses and gargoyles that Pertinax clad the outer hull with when he bought her, are pocked and crumbling. Last year at Phoenix, a sixty ton angel came loose when we were braking, made a hell of a light show as it hit atmosphere. Course, we were fined for that, too. The inside looks worse. Tank One, throwing light on the lines of Miss Galba’s face as she paces in front of the windows, is in an utter state. When it opened it was a marvel - a mile-wide bite of the terran arctic, with silvery shoals, plunging seals and real ice bergs in crystal water. Visitors on the decks above could watch seabirds swoop over its surface. Now it’s just a big, cold, empty space. The water’s murky after a hundred feet, and there’s not so much as a sprat to be seen.Tas looks up at the blue-green windows, hands stuffed in the pockets of her threadbare coat, and you can see it in her face: she’ll be the last captain of this place, and no one knows it more than her. Today though, there’s even more worry etched in her face. “As you know, we’re three weeks from the start of the tour” she says, looking to the side of us while she talks like she always does. “Usually right now, we’d be gathered here for the usual talk about best efforts and putting on a show and all the rest. However,” she adds, “today we’ve got bigger problems. The kelp tank.”The aquarists murmur now, and I twig this isn’t the first anyone’s heard of the problem. It doesn’t sound good. The kelp tank is one of the few big tanks on the ship, along with Tank One, that hasn’t been drained to save on fuel costs. It used to be one of the main attractions, called Monterey something or other (the Monterey system doesn’t even have any oceans, so it seems a weird choice). It used to have a bunch of earth stuff in it, but it all died apart from the kelp - so now that’s all there is. A great silent forest of the stuff, that we harvest and dry and feed to the ship’s algivores. If the kelp tank goes wrong, half the animals’ll starve.“It’s gone wrong” says Miss Galba, and I swear. “We’ve got a massive infestation of urchins that nobody cleaned up in time - and I mean massive. Don’t know what kind. They’re carpeting the place, and they’re chewing the kelp to pieces. Half of it’s been gnawed free of the bottom, and if we don’t sort the problem in time we’re going to lose the lot.” She sighs, and turns to glare at Tank One, before looking back at us.“There’ll be time to work out who’s cocked up and caused this once the run’s over with. For now, we just need to drop everything and clean out these urchins. And that’s before we get to tour-prep. As of first shift tomorrow, all teams are assigned to the kelp tank until this is sorted. Dive and collect, in double shifts. I don’t think I need to point out that it’s in all of your interests to get this over with quickly. That’s all”.A huge shadow descends behind Tas, and I almost groan. It’s like our collective mood, made flesh. Lonely Beth: the only reason there’s still water in Tank One. A Bowhead whale, shipped in at incalculable expense by Pertinax Galba himself, from the polar sea on Old Ares, and still alive all these years later. With the exception of a few invertebrates, and the nemoes in my section (there’ll always be bloody nemoes), we think she’s the only earth animal left aboard.She starts with her singing behind the algae-smeared glass, and it puts an end to the meeting. Nobody really likes being reminded of the old whale, least of all the Captain, and so we don’t linger in there.After the meeting, I do what I usually do at shift end; I go to see Young Tom in Zone 7 (Aquifers of Dasht), for a beer. I genuinely like this exhibit - it’s made to look like underground caves, with stalactites in polystyrene, and it makes for a great drinking den. There’s an Easter Island head in there too, of course, but nowhere’s perfect. The spectre crabs, invisible except for where light catches on their glassy legs, watch us as we knock back the cold bottles.Young Tom ain’t young. He’s about 60. He’s a cleaner like me, but he’s always wanted to be an aquarist. I think he’s the only person who hasn’t realised it’s never going to happen - out of everyone on the ship, he’s alone in not being a miserable bastard. He’s cheerful, and endlessly keen, and he’s not all there - it’s why I love spending time with him.But tonight, he’s sweating, and nervous. He’s on his second joint before I find out why.“It was me” he blurts, all of a sudden, like he’s surprising himself.“What was?” I ask, stoned enough to have to try and remember his previous statement to see if it connects to this one. It doesn’t.“The urchins” he says, leaning forward with wide eyes. “I put ‘em in the kelp tank. I didn’t mean to, mind. I was trying to help, see. They’re earth urchins and all! Not any of the alien ones, like the captain probably reckons. Earth urchins, no word of a lie. But they’re my fault and now… shit Bea, what am I going to do?” I take the joint off him and frown as I inhale, trying to work out how to respond.“I dunno, mate” I answer. “First off though, I’m going to need to know what the hell you’ve actually done”.So Young Tom takes me back through a doorway cut into the fake cave wall, back into the maintenance corridors, and even further, into the hidden places of the ship. There’s hundreds of acres of this stuff - rooms and corridors and holds machine halls that’ve been closed off during the ship’s decline, or which never even got worked on. There’s even Teçi stuff, if you go deep enough. For a moment I’m anxious this is leading up to a grim seduction attempt, but then I clock it’s probably the weed talking - Tom’s never shown an ounce of that sort of attitude. What he’s actually up to becomes clear when we clamber over a filthy old doorframe and into what looks like a bio lab run by pissheads. There’s glass tanks everywhere, with bubblers and filters and all manner of things dashing around in them. There’s shrimps, which I’ve seen before, and some eely things that I haven’t. And floating dead in a big perspex cylinder is, I swear, a proper flying fish. I’ve got my hand over my mouth before I work out why I’m shocked - it’s all bloody earth stuff.“I wanted to impress the aquarists” says Tom, cringing as he spots the dead fish. “I wanted to be the one what turned things round, you know? I wanted to get things breeding back here. Then,” he says, putting on what he thinks is a suave voice, ”I’d invite them back and say ‘ah, hello mr Agrei sir, welcome to my private collection, now what was that you were saying about me being barely fit to clean filters?’ Course, I’ve had a bit of a rough time with it. I thought the urchins were dead and gone, being honest, so I flushed their pool into the sump that drains to the kelp tank. Didn’t realise they’d released larvae, did I? And so when...” he trails off, as he realises I’m not paying much attention.“Tom” I say, still staring round his chaotic little hideaway, “where the hell did you find all of this?”“Oh, well the tanks was just lying around in aquatics, for the most part, though a few of them I...”“Not the tanks, Tom. The animals. The fucking earth animals.”He shows me. It’s a huge container unit, sides all frosted, with a date on the side from 170 years ago. All by itself in a cargo hold nearby. It’s got to have been some of Pertinax’s original stock, mislabelled or loaded wrong, and lost for all this time. Who knows what it’s worth. We go inside to check it out and it’s cold - way colder than even the water in Tank One. It’s radiating from stacks of what look like steel bombs, all different kinds, from acorn-sized all up to people-sized and bigger. Most are covered in ice, but Tom’s chiseled some free.“They’re T-bombs,” he tells me, proud of his research. “Terryformers. Made ‘em during the start of the diaspora, to drop into oceans on the new worlds, get ‘em earthly. Packed with animals, fresh as the day they froze ‘em. I’ve opened a few, just the little ones, and they defrost in a second - it’s properly magic!”“This is some mad-tech” I gasp, running my fingers along the row of bombs and brushing the ice free. There’s words etched on the steel, all precise in italic writing, but it’s not in a language I know. No pictures either, so there’s no way to know what’s inside. I shake my head.“You’ve got to tell the Captain about this”“Are you kidding? After the urchins? After I’ve screwed up and killed half the things I’ve defrosted? She’ll kill me! I can’t let anyone know about this til I’ve got something to show for all my mucking about. Please don’t tell Miss Galba, Bea!”He’s right - the captain probably will kill him when she finds out. Still, I’m pretty sure she’ll kill him all the harder if he manages to waste any more bombs by the time she does find out. I think I’d join in - it’s bloody crazy for him to be hamfistedly playing with something so precious. He might mean well, but it ain’t right. Tom’s got himself in a proper mess here, and I can only see one way out. To his credit, he suggests it first.“Alright, alright,” he says. “I’ll hand this all over to the Captain. And I won’t let off any more of the bombs. But please, in return, will you at least help me sort out this urchin problem before I own up?”“OK Tom” I say, and hold my head in my hands, massively regretting having shared the joint. We’re a pair of window cleaners, and we’ve got to fix an ecosystem overnight. Then I have an idea.Half an hour later, we’ve broken into the aquarists’ station at Zone 12 (Oceans beneath the Ice), and made an incredibly reckless decision. It seemed sensible at the time, based on two things we knew - that Zone 12 adjoins the kelp tank and used to be plumbed into it, and that its main tank is full of creatures that will almost certainly eat sea urchins.Rimecrawlers, they’re called. Massive, brown leather woodlice with beaver tails, and a mess of hooks and razors underneath. They come from Felice-Tartarus, a rock zipping around a neutron star binary, with massive winters and short, completely insane summers. And they’re on the same chemical framework as earth, too - RNA analogue, oxygen respiration, hemo-red blood chemistry and everything.They live in a big domed tank, with fake ice at the apex, and real stone (not a moai to be seen) as a substrate. And we feed them urchins. Not earth ones, obviously, and we don’t stock any from the rimecrawlers’ homeworld either. But it turns out urchins have a hugely common body pattern, and we breed a kind from the lakes on Malacca. Most every creature on the ship that eats that sort of thing loves them - especially the rimecrawlers.Given all this, we couldn’t believe our luck that they were housed right next to the urchin infestation, with only a closed-off pipe separating them. It seemed rude not to open it up.And so now we’re watching them flood through into the kelp tank like a slow stampede of beige sofas, wondering what the hell we’ve done, but too far into the madness to make it worth worrying about anymore. In truth, we’re surprised how quickly they’re moving habitat. We’d turned their temperature down to try and coax them across, but it looks like they didn’t need any persuading. We don’t know whether it’s the smell of the urchins or what, but they’re getting stuck in like belt miners at a real-meat buffet.When we see the first rimecrawlers emerge into the kelp tank and start hoovering up urchins, we can’t believe our luck. We’ve only bloody sorted out the problem. We’re going to be heroes - at least until the captain works out how the urchins got into the kelp tank to begin with. But by then, we’ll be able to reveal the T-bomb haul, and be heroes again.I’m just beginning to worry about how deeply I’ve been sucked into Tom’s horrendous logic, when fatigue hits me instead. We’re due back at the kelp tank for second shift, so we decide to make our meddling look like a system failure, call it a night, and let the rimecrawlers get on with it. The next morning, on the shitter with a fuzzy head, I realise what a terrible mistake we’ve made.I’m looking through the aquarist’s manual that I keep in my cabin, since I’m curious about the rimecrawlers. But when I get to the section with their picture, I see the heading says ‘Rimecrawlers/Slasher-Jacks’. And next to the picture of the familiar, puffy bottom-feeder, there’s a picture of something I don’t recognise - something explosive and red, with jagged arms.Then I focus, and the blood drops out of my head as I read the text. I’ll read it for you now:At perihelion, when Felice-Tartarus sails closest to the star-pair from which it takes its name, an astonishing change takes place. Across the length of its canyon-seas, the ice melts, and vast seasonal storms wash soil from the highlands into the surface waters. Algal spores, long dormant in the ice, burst into life to take advantage of the influx of nutrients, and begin to proliferate. In just a few short days, the canyons have turned a bright pea green - but the changes have just begun. As soon as they detect chlorophyll, the rimecrawlers, after spending the long winter bulking up on the sea floor, will immediately birth the next phase of their lifecycle: the slasher-jack. Originally a parasite of the rimecrawler that would gestate inside its host through the long winter, the slasher has now achieved such a close symbiosis with its former victim that the two species share DNA; in essence, each is now a larval form of the other. One to three will emerge violently from each adult, and begin rapid predation of anything in the area. In contrast to the energy efficiency of the rimecrawler, the slasher-jack has a raging metabolism in keeping with the blistering urgency of summer on Felice-Tartarus. After consuming enough meat, each slasher will anchor itself to a rock and bud polyps, each of which will birth a parthenogenetic copy of the adult, until the photosynthetic season ends. Then, a genetic switch in the polyps will cause them to encyst, growing into rimecrawlers rather than slashers, and the cycle will continue.I didn’t get as far as that, of course, but I thought I’d finish the paragraph in case you were interested. I get to about halfway through and start cursing, yanking my pants up as I run out of the bathroom and doing frantic mental maths. First shift will have just started, and it’s just shy of four hours since the rimecrawlers made it into the kelp tank. The book had said the change would be quick, but I wish it’d gone into specifics.I’m just wondering over the definition of ‘immediate’, when I’m answered by the address system. It’s the captain, calling all staff to the sick bay.As it turns out, things could have gone much worse. Bible Joe’s lost a bit of his leg, but it’ll only be a couple of weeks til he grows it back - it’ll be fine in time for the Nazareth tour.The big problem now is the slasher-jacks. Not only are they making it impossible for anyone to get in and deal with the sea urchins, they’re a threat themselves. They’re evolved to eat and multiply as fast as possible, to clean out an entire ecosystem while it lasts. At the moment they’re laying into the urchins with gusto, but once they’re gone - and Agrei reckons it’s going to be hours, not days - they’re going to get started on the kelp.And while the urchins are chewing the holdfasts something rotten, the slashers are going to go mad on it. What’s more, soon they’ll start multiplying. At this rate they’ll have eaten the lot and encysted by the time we reach Nazareth, and we’ll be ruined. The kelp tank’ll be barren, but for yet more rimecrawlers - hardly a crowd-pleaser of a species at the best of times - and we’ll have a massive green food shortage. We’re going to have to buy in hydroponic crops, and it’ll wipe out any profit from the tour, if not bankrupt us outright.Tom and I are fucked. And justice won’t be long coming - the captain clearly smells a rat. Suddenly, our stoned certainty that we’d made the whole farce ‘look like a system failure’ looks completely puerile. She knows someone opened the pipes last night, and is certain we’ve got a saboteur on the crew. Temi’s yellowshirts suspect Agrei’s blueshirts and vice versa, and everyone suspects the engineers, since they have their own language and keep largely to their quarters on the engine decks. Looking round the crowd in the medical suite, things seem just a couple of degrees from a brawl. More importantly, there are cameras set up now, round every entrance to the kelp tank, so it’s going to take some serious thinking on mine and Tom’s part - ie, on my part - to sort this mess out now.I go to see Tom after the meeting, back in his pathetic secret lab, and he’s in a state. His eyes are wide, his hands are shaking, and he stinks of sweat. I’m trying to come up with some sort of platitude to make us seem less doomed, when he cuts me off.“We’ve got to own up” he says, in a hoarse little voice. “We’ve got to say sorry and take what comes to us. I’ve been an idiot, Bea, and now Bible Joe’s been hurt.”“Speak for yourself” I snap back, pissed off because I can’t work out who’s most to blame for the mess we’re in. On the one hand, I’m only involved in this at all because I took pity on Tom, but on the other hand, it’s only since I got involved that legs started coming off people.“If we own up now, we’re off at the next settlement” I say. “We’ll spend our days cleaning urinals in a Nazareth mine-hab.” And that’s if we don’t get quietly spaced on the way there, I think, but keep it to myself.“Well, what other options do we have?” says Tom, waving his arms about, “start chucking in more animals we know nothing about and hope for the bloody best, do we?”“Well, yeah” I say, the wind taken slightly out of my sails, as that had been my exact plan. “I mean, we can’t get in any worse trouble now, right? I reckon if we’re in for a penny, we’re in for a pound. And anyway, if we’re going to get chucked off the ship at the next stop, don’t you at least want to have a go on another T-bomb first?”Despite his panic, Tom can’t help himself from grinning.“Semicossyphus pulcher?” I say, mangling the unfamiliar words as I squint at the side of the bomb.“Nah, sounds too cute” says Tom, not turning round from his rifling through the smaller canisters.“Alright then” I say, brushing frost from a long, thin cylinder. “How about Anarrhic… can’t pronounce that... Ocellatus? Looks like there’s a good few of these.”“Nope, sounds too flimsy”“Enhydra lutris?” I ask.“The name’s too short” says Tom, “sounds crap.”I’m searching the rows of bombs for something new, when it catches my eye. In the ice at the back of the container, there’s something else. It’s so big I think it’s the wall at first, but then I see it’s got a nameplate. Tom’s rambling on about something or other, but I shut him up and get him to pass me a screwdriver so I can break a patch of ice off the metal. “Carcharodon Carcharias” I breathe, head tilted so I can read the little steel letters.“Now that’s got a ring to it” says Tom.“And it must be massive” I say, taking in the size of the cylinder under the ice.“I’ll get the drill” says Tom, with a nod.It takes three hours with the drill, plus a blowtorch and a pilfered loading mech, to free the T-bomb, but at last it comes loose. It takes another hour to get it strapped into the mech’s armature, and hauled through the back-corridors to the top of the kelp tank. We pause for a moment before heading out onto the prep gantries over the tank, knowing that everything we do next is going to be on camera, then give each other a silent nod and make a move.It’s only when you get on top of the kelp tank that you realise how big it is. It stretches down the side of the ship for hundreds of metres, its surface rippling with unseen currents, and green masses swirling deep below. You think it’s silent at first, but it’s not: the air above the water echoes with drips and slaps and sloshes, while the lights hum and the machines chug. And it’s so damned humid - the moisture in the air slickens your skin immediately, and shoves the tang of salt right up your nose. We’ve got no time to take the place in, though. We know that somewhere an alarm is going off, and we’ve got a few minutes at best to do our business. Tom’s crouched by the end of the T-bomb where the controls are, his tongue stuck out as he stabs in the activation code. Then he slaps an indented panel and says it’s done, and we both grin like idiots. We count to three, wave at the nearest camera, and roll the bomb into the water.After a splash that echoes for ages, and a ripple that makes it all the way to the tank’s edges, there’s nothing. No flash of light, no plume of bubbles, no heavenly choir. The T-bomb just disappears like a stone, and we feel nervous as hell. Five minutes later, we’re still peering into the dark water, and nothing’s happened. Then Tom pipes up.“Shit, I hope I hit the 3 rather than a 4”“What do you mean?”“In the code” says Tom, face sinking. “I’m sure I pressed 4 now. Shit.”“Well, surely it gives you a sign you’ve done it right?” I say, desperate.“Yeah, there’s a little green light comes on. But I forgot to check.”I’m about to scream at Tom, when a door bursts open at the far end of the gantry, revealing Agrei and a pack of aquarists. They’re scowling through their beards, and Agrei is brandishing a wrench. They’re running at us, furious.I don’t know why I do what I do then. Maybe I’m trying to be a hero. Maybe I’ve just massively miscalculated what I should be most afraid of. Maybe I’m just irrationally dedicated to solving the problem. Either way, when I hit the surface of the water, I realise I’ve been incredibly stupid.Still, I think, as the cold clenches round me like a fist, since I’m here, I might as well get the job done. After a moment’s flailing I bob back to the surface, and fish in my pocket for goggles. I clean the reef tanks from the inside once a week, so I always keep them on me. Yanking them on, I suck in a breath and plunge down, feet kicking hard.Now I’m in the tank, it’s not half so sinister as it looks from above the surface, so at least there’s that. I listen to the muffled tick and warble of bubbles as they stream past me, and stretch out to grab a rope of kelp. Luckily it’s not one the urchins have gotten to, so I can pull myself down it fist over slimy fist.Six metres down the water squeezes my ears, so I grab my nose and equalise with a snotty creak. A few body lengths later, I do it again. I don’t think about the slasher-jacks - I just keep my eyes on the bottom and focus on moving down the kelp.Thirty metres down, I spot the T-bomb, resting on the sand of the tank floor. There’s a green light glowing merrily on its upper end.An intense feeling of relief lasts about half a second before being barged out of the way with fury at Tom. If he’d just thought to check, I wouldn’t have ended up thirty metres deep in a pool full of monsters. Immediately, the flush of anger drains, replaced by frigid, dripping fear. The T-bomb’s side is wide open, a few rags of red membrane trailing from the inside: whatever was in it is now very much out.I’m turning to make my way rapidly back up the kelp when something stings me in the hip. My hand moves reflexively to brush whatever it is away, and finds a hot fleshy hook, easily the size of a steak knife, driven into my side. Then another slams into my shoulder, and it’s on me.On paper, the slasher-jack looked like a stocky red squid. Up close, it’s nothing like one. Its face is something like an eyeless seal’s, a mammal skull with the skin ripped free, snapping dementedly as I try to shove it away from my face. Its body is gelatinous, covered in shifting red plates, and its arms are like whipping, spongy spinal columns. The hook in my side rips free, taking cloth and flesh with it, and another embeds in my back. I’ve got both hands on its neck now, trying to force its horrible face back, but the flesh just slides through my fingers.I’m screaming, blasting bubbles into that gnashing mouth, and I thank god it’s going to eat my head first when I feel a tremendous, swooping movement in the water. Then there’s an impact, and I find myself travelling sideways at speed, the water thundering in my ears. The slasher-jack’s face is still there, but it’s gone limp. There’s something white and grey behind it.I can see huge gills, billowing as jaws compress, and eyes that roll back in pits. A deep, wet crunch, and the slasher-jack’s body shudders. Black blood fountains from the cavernous gills, and obscures the scene. The hooks let go and I tumble, stomach flipping as I lose my sense of up and down.Then I see the spotlamps, in rings of light far above, and I kick as hard as I can. There’s barely a cupful of air left in my lungs. They’re flexing uselessly, and it feels like I’m a rocket without enough fuel, struggling upwards against gravity. Blackness starts to crackle at the edge of vision, and things get too primal even to worry about being eaten by monsters.A split-second after my mouth springs open to start huffing down seawater, I breach the surface and splutter. The gantry ladder’s ten meters away, and at the top is a thicket of outstretched arms, beckoning hands and shouting faces. I start kicking towards them, but before I reach the ladder, I can’t resist looking down.She’s ten metres beneath, a dark shape moving like a starship above the tank floor. Sleek and silent, vast and dense, planar and precise in a shapeless world. Newborn, and an empress already. As I glimpse her, the limp body in her mouth quivers and disappears, leaving a cloudy trail like red ghosts. Then she’s gone, her tail sliding into the kelp.Sally, we came to call her. She saved me that day, and she saved the ship.When word reached the Nazareth townships that we had a great white, they sent ships out on a fast burn to meet us. Every kid in the belt wanted to see her. For once, ticketing didn’t feel empty - there was even a queue. Lonely Beth stayed by the windows as the tourists flooded in, singing a song we’d never heard before. Like she knew something was different.Lin sold ten thousand soft toy sharks that season. We sold enough tickets to make up for the lost kelp, and seed a new algal tank besides. We even took on new staff, and Miss Galba bought herself a magnificent new coat.Sally even saved Tom’s career. While he’s never going to be allowed anywhere near the fish, the aquarists decided it would be fitting for him to be assigned to the Rimecrawler tank, where he does the cleaning, and gives a little talk to visitors on the peculiarities of life on Felice-Tartarus. It seems a pretty fair punishment.As for me, I clean the outside of Sally’s tank these days (there’s not an Easter Island Head to be seen), and I do a lot of reading. Do you know, they never once managed to keep a great white in captivity, even back on Earth? And while there’s records of some having been seeded on a few of the fallow worlds, it’ll be five hundred years yet before they’re opened up for settlement.For now, she’s one of a kind.And looking up at her, as she cruises slowly down the length of the kelp forest, it’s hard to see her as a captive at all. While the windows on one side of her world are smeared by pointing fingers, on the other side they look out on space as black and fathomless as her eyes.

A halloween story: The Yeti

Here is a very, very silly story I originally wrote on twitter, for Halloween 2013. It's a story of monstrosity and redemption, set in the cold and darkness of the high alps. It has a very frightening twist, that might shock more fragile readers. Read on if you dare... Once there was a town up in the attic of the world, where the air is thin, and snow crackles under a sky like deep water. A man was leaving this town with just a bottle and an old blanket, his tears turning into icy slivers as the wind danced past him. “I’ve been a devil and a fool” he wailed into the flurry of the mountain pass. “I’ve lost my family’s trust! However now shall I win it back?” “Here’s a place for those who’ve failed and been cast out” whispered the pooling shadows. “You’ll not find comfort here, but you’ll find company.” The man glugged from his chipped bottle, and squinted at the gloom. Everyone knew there were no people living out past the old town watchtower – so who was this? “You know who I am” came the voice, like wet velvet on the man's neck. “I’m an exile, like you" it said. "I’ve been loathed all my life; held under suspicion and fear since ever there were people to loathe me.” “I’m the rattle of pebbles on a still night, the cracking of ice on an empty lake. I’m the hairs that twitch on the nape of your neck as you turn your back to the dark. I’m…” “The Yeti” squeaked the man, dropping his bottle as two vast, glowing orbs appeared in the dark before him. “Vroom” said the ŠKODA Yeti, as it roared forth into the pass, striking the perfect balance between on-road performance, family orientated practicality and rugged 4x4 styling. With a choice of two- or four-wheel drive systems on both diesel and petrol engines, as well as flexible Varioflex rear seating, sizable boot space and higher ride height as standard, it was perfect for life among the ancient stones. “Drive me into town” roared the Yeti with gasoline gusto, “and we shall make a right from two wrongs. Do this one thing for me, and we can make an end to both our exiles.” Trembling, the man climbed in, and began to steer the mighty vehicle back towards the lights of town. At the mere push of the off-road button, the Yeti turned into a highly capable off-road vehicle, adept at climbing slippery slopes, descending steep hills and maintaining control on difficult terrain using the very latest 4x4 systems. The mayor of town, disgraced TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson, gasped in disbelief as he saw the metal monster skid to a halt in the town square. “Sound the alarms!” he cried. “It’s that rubbish Czech car again – run it out of town!” “No!” cried the man, holding a hand out in pleading as he scrambled from the driver’s seat. “It’s actually really good, and the ŠKODA brand has come a long way from its old reputation for unreliability. Have a go for yourself!” Clarkson hesitated, a bleak frown on his face, before reluctantly climbing in. Minutes passed as the snow tickled the windscreen. “It is good”, he exclaimed finally in disbelief, as he noticed how the cabin was spacious, airy and flexible, yet contained a variety of standard features. Astounded to the brink of tears, the usually unpleasant mayor named the vehicle Top Gear Family Car of the Year 2009, and invited it to stay in the town forever and ever. “I knew you would see past your prejudices and learn not to hate the Yeti” purred the offroad family vehicle. “And I knew you would find a stylish and practical alternative to traditional family hatchbacks," cried the man’s wife, throwing her arms around her husband and gushing forgiveness. "It handles brilliantly, too,” she added. And so the Yeti won the trust of the motoring world, and the man found his way back into the hearts of his family. All for a reasonable £13,595 on a 3-year 0% interest hire purchase agreement. THE END

Flash fiction: Chimps, eggs & lightspeed

This story was the result of a stupid hypothetical question I asked on twitter, about how many chimps turning hand cranks it would take to generate sufficient energy to accelerate an egg to the edge of lightspeed. It's very silly, but I guess you could call it hard SF. Enjoy.Brother Sidney rushes into the kitchen with wide-open eyes. “There’s been an explosion, down at the mill!” he blurts. “It’s the scramblers!”We’re just tucking into our soy - a cup & a half each each. Grandpa says there used to be less rationing. There used to be less chimps, too. (We’ve all seen the posters: “chips for the chimps”, “save it for the apes”. But c’mon - after a bad harvest, we all know who goes hungry.)“What’s going on?” lisps mum. She used to handle chimps, before the accident. Now she lathes cranks - you don’t need both hands for that. “Best see for yourself” says Sidney, and we head outside. Sirens howl, and other families are spilling out of doors all along the terrace. Down the valley, past the crank manufactories, the birthing clinics and the soy mills, the squat immensity of BritCrankStatWS2 is on fire.Grandpa curses when he sees the damage. “By the Quick Egg” he says, and spits. “This is going to set the kinesis quota back by weeks.”“Bloody scramblers” curses Sidney, kicking a faded can of crank grease across the street. “Why would anyone want to slow the Egg?”Mother says nothing. It was scrambler sabotage that caused the accident; that lost her an eye and a nose and four fingers to the chimps. As we’re watching, there’s another explosion: this time it’s in the chimp cemetery on the hill, east of the microwave transmitter array.“Why would they bomb graves?” asks Sidney. But then we look to the sky, and realise it’s not the scramblers doing the bombing. It’s... them.We’re used to seeing lights up there. Sometimes on a clear winter day we’ll even see the thing itself - the grey hoops of the eggcelerator. Grandpa says people live up there - the controllers, the ovo-knowers, the custodians of the Quick Egg. They’ve been there for ages and ages. We send them energy, and each Beaster, they send the cure for that year’s crop blight. That’s all the contact we ever had - until tonight.Tonight, the hoops are blazing in the dark, dropping torrents of sparks. “They’re shelling us” says Grandpa, voice catching in his throat.Down the valley, another shell hits. Screaming starts, and we know that the chimps are loose. They aren’t what chimps used to be. Six feet high and 120kg, misshapen to turn a crank each day for 50 years. Born in vats, with speed in their blood. We don’t stand a chance.But we don’t run. Because there’s words in the sky now. We are transfixed. ‘CONGRATULATIONS’ they say. ‘THE EXPERIMENT HAS BEEN SUCCESSFUL’.A shell strikes the terrace. A chimp rushes shrieking from an alley. Sidney draws a knife and lunges, but a gnarled arm sends him flying. I don’t care. My mouth gapes as letters paint themselves across the whole of the sky. Behind them, the eggcelerator grows in brightness. ‘IT TAKES 512 YEARS’ they announce, ‘TO GENERATE ENOUGH ENERGY TO ACCELERATE AN EGG TO .99 OF LIGHTSPEED USING CHIMPS AND HAND CRANKS’.‘IT’S ALL OVA’ say the letters in the sky, before being replaced by a marvellous, cataclysmic dawn.

Guest post: cancelling the apocalypse

It often gets me down that it's seen as stupid to expect anything other than looming apocalypse: while the world can look grim, a life without hope isn't great either. Here, Anna Fruen explains how optimistic SF can shine a light through the mushroom clouds. When Nate said he wanted people to write guest posts for his blog, I wanted to contribute right away. Out of charity, for the most part - I mean, the man needs SOME sort of web presence. I believe in his future, y'see. In fact, I think it's important to believe in the future in general.A lot of people view fiction, and especially science fiction, as escapism. It can be that, but it also shows us how things could be: how humans might respond to new challenges. And we can learn from those imagined responses, if we choose to. Of course, the nature of the challenge tends to be heavily influenced by the era the work is conceived in. When you're looking forward, your view is coloured by the current political climate, cultural expectations, and even by your mood that day.The JetsonsRemember those old 1940s pictures of a not-too-distant utopian future? The prosperity of post-war peacetime led to the development and sale of endless gadgets, which made consumers' lives easier piece by piece. We looked to the future, and it was bright: robot servants, flying cars, and clean, spacious cities. We were all going to be the Jetsons, right?This sunny outlook darkened from the 50s. America had established peace at tremendous cost, and once the world knew the Soviet Union had atomic bombs as well, the image of the big, red, world-ending button loomed large in the public consciousness. Sometimes, when I'm talking to someone older, the subject of the cold war comes up. They talk about how normal it seemed: some people had bunkers, some would be lucky, but most would become shadows on the wall and warnings about the hubris of man. We began to wonder how - and if - we could rebuild after disaster, and what humanity might look like in the wake of societal collapse.Everybody is super bonedThese are the futures we're more familiar with in the 21st Century. Rather than a clean, egalitarian version of tomorrow, we look forward to a post-apocalyptic wasteland in which the few remaining humans war over dwindling resources. Maybe there are zombies, maybe there are triffids, but one thing is always clear: it was humanity's fault for pressing some kind of button. For dropping the virus. For meddling. Of course, this is true to the roots of the genre - just look at Frankenstein* or Jekyll and Hyde - but it's not the only way science fiction can be.In 2004, after watching the Day After Tomorrow, I suddenly became bored with the grimdark, everybody's-super-boned take on our future. Of course I know we could destroy ourselves. I know that we very well may. But we still need a contingency plan. If there's nothing put by for our future marked "in case of no emergency," we're going to get too despondent to actually work on turning this world into a better one. If we accept self-extinction as a harsh and inevitable truth, then what's the impetus to change anything? Why bother recycling your plastics if we're all going to be underwater in 50 years? It's a seductive line of thinking, and it's one I've fallen prey to at various points, but it's important to remember that the future isn't written in stone. Just in tropes.Tough loveMy main objection to apocalypse fiction is that it's lazy. Most of the humans die, and "we," the ragtag group of survivors, inherit the earth. Suddenly there's room enough for all of us, and we can go right back to consuming and using and taking, the way we always have. No learning, no growing, no tough decisions.I'm interested in something far harder: optimism. Noam Chomsky said “Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so.” But it's difficult, pals! It takes effort and determination. And because so few people bother to write it, it takes more imagination.A wizard will sort itSome SF authors solve the problem by gifting mankind with magical powers, usually framed as emergent evolutionary traits. In Anne McCaffrey's Pegasus series, some people manifest mental powers. They may be mindreaders, telekinetics, or even broadcasting / receiving empaths who can be deployed as crowd control. Despite all the talk of brainwaves and EEGs, however, there's no expectation that humans could work towards this in the real world.Others talk about tech-enhanced humanity, in a way that sounds distantly possible if we really level up before reaching a crisis point. This overlaps with cyberpunk in its employment of cybernetics, neural implants, or the ultimate "uploaded to the cloud" endgame described in Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross' The Rapture of the Nerds. Right under our nosesBoth of these approaches come under the umbrella of transhumanism, and the solutions they present rely on tech that doesn't exist yet, or biology that isn't going to happen by itself. But what about solutions that already exist? What about the energy so prosaic that people petition against it obstructing their view, or so ubiquitous that your calculator ran off it in high school? While browsing Tumblr a couple of years ago, I stumbled across a post about a near-future SF aesthetic called Solarpunk. Being the fictional counterpart to bright green environmentalism, it focuses on how technological advancement and social change could form a more sustainable way of living. It was described by missolivialouise on Tumblr as "based on updated Art Nouveau, Victorian, and Edwardian aesthetics, combined with a green and renewable energy movement... A balance of sustainable energy-powered tech, environmental cities, and wicked cool aesthetics." (The art in her post is gorgeous, by the way, so do click through.)A blueprint for optimismThe aesthetic is rich and interesting precisely because of its optimism. Art nouveau is a wonderful jumping off point for an ecologically mindful society. The sweeping, natural lines echo the organic elements, and as Olivia points out, solar-panel stained glass (a viable option in the near future) could lead to a huge surge of interest in sustainable architecture. You may want to check out Matt Cloyd's TED talk on what Solarpunk life could look like, and how it could change our cities. It's not just an iconic look, but also a shift in thinking that emphases locally-sourced produce, ecologically conscious power consumption, and artisanal goods (not in a pretentious way, in an "I know the woman who made this chair" way).I wish I could tell you everything about Solarpunk's history, but there's not much of it. This is a genre whose hallmarks haven't yet been set in brass. I love the potential of that. As a framework for stories, it frees us up to imagine a future in which we are overcoming our current problems, not being destroyed by them. Life imitates artThe future will find us. We're headed there now, and if we don't start making decisions that reflect that fact right now, we're failing our planet and our grandkids will be dead, or mad at us. Or both. So how can we get it right? Not all at once, because that seems insurmountable, but in all the little ways that will hopefully add up to something big. Well, stories might be a good first step.Imagining better futures is how we may bring them into being: not through the magic of positive thinking, but through life's tendency to imitate art. We've seen this before. It's why people are still so desperate to make hoverboards happen. It's why we still secretly want jetpacks, even though we know how likely we'd be to finish off half a bottle of prosecco and annihilate ourselves against an office block. It's why almost every discussion of advanced AI robotics references Asimov's three laws. Speculative fiction shows us the way, and we do everything in our power to follow it. Once something's been imagined, and described, and shown, it all feels so much more possible. Don't you think?You can find Anna as @Thiefree on twitter, or hosting the 3 Parrots Podcast, a marvellous celebration of hypothetical dilemmas. * EDITOR'S NOTE - we're now two for two on guest blogs that mention Frankenstein. I'm going to make that a rule.

Let's do Business: the Big Mike Blog #1

Today I’d like to reach out to you regarding an exciting new opportunity.I’d like to talk to you about Business.While a lot of you might know me as a fledgling SF author, or just someone who tweets utter bollocks about animals on twitter, you may not be aware that I am also a game developer.Of a sort, anyway. This year, the people at Failbetter Games (Sunless Sea, Fallen London) started a funding initiative for narrative games. I somehow made a successful application, and ended up in their first flight of funded projects, alongside exciting stuff like Voyageur, Hearts Blazing, Astronaut: The Best and Marshlight.My game, Big Mike Lunchtime’s Business Training ‘95, will take the form of an app for mobile/tablet use, and will offer players a satirical, text-based journey into the beating heart of business. The game isn’t technologically groundbreaking: it’s almost entirely text, with a few images, and I’m writing most of it in Twine. It probably won’t even have sound. But I’m happy with that - as a one-man team who has never so much as coded a web page before, this was never going to be about graphical shock and awe.What it is - hopefully - is a really fun, unusual way to explore a topic. That topic, in a nutshell, is how ordinary people take on utterly bizarre behaviours when engaging in commercial activity. It’s about the cargo cult mentality of corporate culture: the belief that certain modes of dress, speech and action must naturally beget success.A basic example: anybody who begins to work in an office will, unless they make a conscious effort to stop themselves, begin to say “going forward” when they mean “from now on”: it’s not a better way of saying it, it’s just what business people say. See also the substitution of “individuals” for “people” or “myself” for “me”. Going forward, please direct any individuals arriving at reception to myself or one of my colleagues.A narrative game was the perfect vehicle for exploring this, as it’s a type of story that can only be driven by player choice. I want to drop my players into a world that makes no sense, and confront them with a recurring dilemma: maintain a rational mindset and face endless conflict, or embrace the madness and thrive.Having worked as a business journalist, a job I began with absolutely no experience of the corporate world, it’s a dilemma that I’m intimately familiar with. And it’s something I want to share - I want you to understand just how little separates you from being someone who can talk about actioning deliverables with a straight face.So: that’s Big Mike Lunchtime’s Business Training ‘95. With a bit of luck, it will be out int he first quarter of next year. In future updates I’m going to be telling you a little bit more about the game’s story, and offering some tips on what not to do when writing a choice-based narrative (I’m becoming a real expert in completely cocking up on that front). For now, I’ll leave with you with the game’s Readme.txt. Enjoy.(If you have any questions or suggestions, please do leave me a comment - making these things on your own is a lonely business, so feedback is always invaluable)Welcome to Big Mike Lunchtime's Business Training '95.I don't know much about this game, beyond the fact it was a training programme aimed at the UK business market, and that it was produced by a developer called Dogsoft, which went out of business in 1996.Dogsoft was an obscure software house. Its only other release, ostensibly for the consumer market, seems to have been a management simulator called Worm Salesman '94. This has vanished entirely, however; the only hints of its existence come from a scattering of frustrated posts from players in long-defunct usenet groups.A few newsgroup posts about a worm selling game: that’s all anyone knew about Dogsoft.It would've been all anyone ever knew, if it wasn't for Rona Norris.Rona is a YouTube parkour enthusiast with a modest following. Last year she was filming in a condemned office block in Swindon, when she came across BMLBT95.The game - a single, heavily-scratched CD-ROM - was found in a desk draw alongside a dessicated scotch egg, a crumpled tie, and a pile of mouldering reports. Its case featured a shakily-drawn image of a man with a pinstripe suit and bulging eyes; an odd style for a piece of B2B training software, to say the least.Rona contacted me immediately. Having refurbished several vintage educational CD-ROMs in app form (see Aztec Question Frenzy, Medieval Prison Riot and Fish Knower 3, I had made a name for myself as something of a digital archaeologist, and was fascinated to see what I could make of her discovery.Even so, I'd never worked on a project quite like BMLBT95. For a start, the CD was horribly damaged - it appears to have been used as coaster at least once, and bears what appear to be human teeth marks across much of its surface.Things got weirder when I looked at the code.Once I managed to lift the readable information from the CD, I found most of it to be unintelligible.That’s not to say Big Mike is unplayable - in actual fact, the code I could make sense of was fairly straightforward to package into a modern app shell. It’s just that the rest of the data on the CD... well, it made no sense at all. Despite this, it contained massive libraries of information that, for reasons I still can’t fathom, the “core” game couldn’t work without.Since I couldn’t find any way to contact the former staff of Dogsoft for information, I was left with no choice but to lift the full content of the CD, junk code and all, into this app.There are places where I’ve had to fill in for missing or damaged sections of the game, and aspects of the original UI I’ve had to rework to account for a mobile platform. There's also plenty of references in the game to a manual, but unfortunately I've not been able to track down any trace of one to include alongside. Nevertheless, aside from those concessions, this is exactly the game Dogsoft put out in 1995.I will warn you - there’s not much to it. The game is pretty much just a series of eight fairly basic roleplay exercises, intended to train sales and negotiation skills against a series of increasingly stubborn business adversaries. The simulated AI is pretty cute, and there’s some fairly entertaining dialogue generation in there. But even with plenty of time built in to laugh at the cheesy business jargon, you’re unlikely to get more than a half hour of fun out of BMLBT95.Then again, I’m guessing that’s not why you downloaded this app. If you’re anything like me, you’re just fascinated to see a forgotten piece of software, a strange little piece of history, brought back to life for the digital age.Enjoy Big Mike, and remember - it’s all about Closing Those Deals!

Guest post: Being a half-arsed God

In my first guest post, David Thomas Moore, commissioning editor at Abaddon Books (and therefore my editor, the poor bastard), talks about running shared worlds, and the magic - not to mention bafflement - that can happen when multiple authors write in the same setting. Along the way we'll meet Macbeth as a lich king, and Frankensteins galore. When Nate said he was going to be hosting guest blogs, I threw myself bodily at the task, since I figured it would make a change to have him edit me for once. Given my work, he asked me if I could write something on shared worlds, and that seemed as good a topic as any.But what the heck is a “shared world”? As the name suggests, it’s where a fictional world – the setting, cosmology, history and overarching plot – is shared by several creators writing their own stories.Sometimes the stories overlap and intersect, forming large-scale stranded narratives; more often they stand alone, or in short sequences within the larger canon. You’re likely most familiar with them in the context of franchise (or “tie-in”) fiction: books based in the world of a movie, TV show, game or comic (Star Wars, Doctor Who, and Warhammer 40,000, for example, have all spawned scores of tie-in novels by dozens of authors over several decades). Franchise fic is hugely attractive to dedicated fans, who get to see the implied and invisible parts of their favourite worlds fleshed out and expanded upon, and learn the histories of their favourite characters.But not all shared worlds are franchise fic! Abaddon Books, my imprint, was founded by Jon Oliver in 2005 as “franchise fic without the franchise”; we would create and develop our own worlds, and invite successive authors to build on them over the years. To that end, we’ve established more than twenty shared worlds over the past decade, ranging from steampunk (Pax Britannia) to space opera (Weird Space) and post-apocalyptic (The Afterblight Chronicles) to urban fantasy (Gods and Monsters). A few of our worlds have been visited by a dozen or more writers; several of them have only ever seen one. We’ve dipped our toe in franchise (as part of the Rebellion group of companies, we’ve published stories set in the worlds of 2000 AD and the Sniper Elite video games) and stretched the definition of “shared world” (the Tomes of the Dead series, to which Nate’s mad, brilliant Schneider Wrack books belong, are really only thematically linked), but by and large we’ve kept to this formula.And, of course, one of the biggest challenges with managing shared worlds is continuity. In an ideal world, all of my authors would read every single other book in a series and memorise them before putting pen to paper – and some, to my delight, do exactly that – but in many cases, they’ve only read one or two titles, and perhaps have a shaky memory anyway. So we get manuscripts that forget the rules of the setting, or add new rules; that move cities and borders, kill (or revive!) core characters, radically change the tone or outlook of a setting or worse. And my job, as commissioning editor since 2012, is to fix things; to correct inconsistencies, smooth out niggles and remember obscure details that no-one has the time for, so that all these stories somehow fit together.It’s a bit like being a slightly shit God. God, we’re told by those who claim authority in these matters, is all-powerful, omniscient and omnipresent; He answers every prayer (even if the answer is often “no”) and has a plan for all of us. Well, I’m all-powerful, as far as the poor schmecks of Abaddon’s many worlds are concerned, and broadly omnipresent, at least in principle. But I’m only spottily omniscient, and most of my plans extend to what I’m having for lunch. What I’m saying is, sometimes shit’s allowed to slide.At its best, it’s easy; even fun. In the run-up to their respective third novels, two of the Afterblight authors – Scott Andrews and Paul Kane – actually went out to the pub together to plot out each of their storylines, work out areas of intersection and overlap, and plan suitably satisfying climaxes* for their books, with characters crossing the boundary both ways. All we had to do was a bit of cross-checking and tidy-up.Sometimes we’re on the ball. Four of our series (to my recall) have reasonably thorough and up-to-date “world bibles” covering important setting details and story beats, that I can refer to (or simply send my writers before they start work), and which have proven invaluable in keeping things in order. Another three have more sketchy efforts, that at least stop us embarrassing ourselves. When Malcolm Cross wrote Orbital Decay he read the entire series – ten books in a week, bless him – and pulled out relevant quotes, and we built a world bible together; and we did a similar job from scratch when launching Extinction Biome (and when Anne Tibbets stepped in to help with the production, she joined in with gusto).Sometimes the effort of coordinating can produce unexpected delights. When planning Monstrous Little Voices, I got all five authors together and gave them a basic write-up of the premise, and we spitballed plots and details from there. The idea had always been that the stories would be based in a common Shakespearean world (where Romeo and Juliet’s Friar Lawrence had once studied alongside The Tempest’s Sycorax, for instance); I’d envisaged coordinating some overlapping events and characters, but not necessarily trying to tease together a single narrative. Adrian Tchaikovsky came up with one of the more left-field ideas (that MacBeth was still alive, five centuries after his reputed death, as a sort of horribly sustained lich-king) and supplied what would turn out to be the unifying device of the whole collection: a cursed knife. Jonathan Barnes, providing the most left-field idea of the collection (a sort of parallel-universe backdrop) inspired the explanation of where the knife came from (and you can read the secret/bonus origin of the knife here on the blog). So the effort of establishing and enforcing continuity can yield wonders.It can also uncover some unfortunate blunders. Jonathan Green’s Pax Britannia universe, like most steampunk settings, revolves around a British Empire indefinitely trapped in a sort of heightened Victorian age, where great steam-powered machines dominate the world and villainous moustache-twirling industrialists seek to overthrow the sainted Queen.† When Al Ewing joined the series, sensibly deciding to stick to another continent and avoid stepping on Jon’s toes, literally the only thing he knew for sure about steampunk was that there is no electricity and everything is steam-powered. Except that’s not true, of course – Farraday’s innovations in electricity generation date to the 1820s, and most steampunk features electricity alongside more esoteric power – and Jon’s books had electric lights and other details from early on. It wasn’t until I was working on Jon’s sixth book, Anno Frankenstein, in which the Nazis were re-animating dead soldiers using power from a hydroelectric dam, that I discovered our error.Al gamely announced that the El Sombra trilogy is set in Pax Britannia’s “Universe B,” and even wrote in a device in his third book, Pax Omega (the entire plot of which revolved around the mysterious absence of electricity) to explain the dichotomy.So it’s a mixed bag. It’s eminently satisfying, if you’re a bit of a details-obsessed nerd like me, and can be frustrating (if entertaining) when you encounter fuck-ups, and it’s its own form of creativity and something a little like design or project management; and it’s essentially the core of shared world management.---*Yeah, that was totally deliberate. I’m a fucking child.†Okay, it’s actually a bit more nuanced than that.

Aquariums, Horror, and Blind Cave Salamanders

My first post is going to be an act of gruesome self-plagiarism, as I'm basically just repackaging a link to a blog I wrote for Tor.com last week. It's about my mental relationship with aquatic horror, and includes some mild revelations about Darwin and Charles Kingsley, some surprisingly interesting aquarium history, and a zombie goldfish.Here it is.