Robert Bagnall's Blog, page 2

Datum #2 - maybe not so weird after all?

This blog was inspired, eleven years ago, by my learning of Pope Benny's abdication via a talking bus stop. That inspired me to record, amongst other things, how the real world is catching up with sci-fi.

I learnt of Pope Frank's (who I mentioned only recently) death first from my wife who was alerted via a news website.

So maybe the world isn't getting weirder after all.

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Click on the images or search on Amazon. You're here, so surely you know how?

My Thoughts are with You. Your Thoughts are with the Authorities for Calibration Against Societal Norms

Award-nominated science fiction and slipstream author Robert Bagnall’s second anthology of twenty-four stories, variously bleak, funny, bleakly funny or – very occasionally – optimistic.

  

2084 - The Meschera Bandwidth

2084. The world remains at war.

In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.

The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.

Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.

Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.

24 0s & a 2

Twenty-four slipstream stories.  Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.
“Brilliant stories, well written!” (five stars, Amazon).

WTF WotF?

I’m havinga difficult 2025 so far, story sales-wise.

After making my first of the year fourdays into 2025 (‘Planes of Illusory’, a previously unpublished flash, to Angry Gable Press’ forthcoming anthology This Exquisite Topology: ACollection of Happy Abstractions), it’s been a total blank since. This decade, mysubmission to acceptance ratio has gone from 40 (2020) to 30, 18, 26, to 17last year, a downward trend I was getting used to. This year, I’ve submitted 75for that one bite. It’s earnt me $25. Financially, if that was ever my reason forwriting, I may as well panhandle outside the Co-op.

My lifetime record against the big boys in the pro markets iseven worse. Since 2017, when I started recording all my submission on the Grinder, Clarkesworld have seen and rejected 76 of my stories, Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores 71, Asimov’s 67, Fantasy & Science Fiction 66, and Apex 65.

But every so often I get a sign that they’re not entirelydeaf to my hammering on the door.  Trevor Quachri, editor of Analog, recently said “I like your style of writing andsuggest that you try us again”. Okay, he probably has that phrase on a keyboardshortcut, but, hey, it’s a nibble in thepseudo-fishing game of short speculative fiction submissions. Glass always halffull, and all of that.

One silver lining is that my consistent failure in the pro market means I stillqualify to enter The L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Competition. But eventhere, where I have got used to honorable (sic) and silver honorable (sic)mentions, I seem to now be casting my seed on stony ground.

Last year, I thought I’d write something specifically forWotF, more of a novellete than just a short story, something with a bit ofsweep and grandeur (think Oscar-bait movie rather than just movie). Somethingactually set in space rather than, say, Chingford. A tad over 9000 words, Ipolished it until it shone. I thought it was up there with, if not better than, my WotF finalistfrom 2017.

It didn’t even get an honorable (sic).

I had a very nice email exchange with Joni Labaqui, contest director. She agreed, if I resubmitted the following quarter, she’d steerthe story to a different first reader. I resubmitted. I can only assume this isa me-problem, because it came back unplaced again.

WotF send a very nice, albeit generic, email with the possiblereasons for one's abject, screaming failure. So, I invite you, dear reader, tojoin me in my attempt to work out what the fuck went wrong…

We appreciate your talent and hard work to produce thisstory. However, this one is not quite ready for us yet. Keep writing though,don’t give up. In order to help you, we’ve provided the list below of commonreasons that a story needs some work. Definitely consider revising itaccordingly and entering it again.

Here are the most common reasons:

Failure to Launch: Your story begins too slowly.There isn’t a lot of room in a short story for long introductions. As much asyou might love the introductory scene, if it doesn’t help the story hit theground running, consider whether you are beginning your tale too soon. Is therea good narrative hook? Have you let the reader know where they are in time andspace? Are you introducing your protagonist—or any character—for the reader tofollow? And please, don’t send us stories that begin with the character wakingup. Most editors hate that trope. Give us interesting action. Make us want tofollow your character through the entire manuscript. Make friends with yourdynamic verbs. Don’t “was” us to death.

There are 300 words, during which the maincharacter is introduced (“an ambassadorial magus and me, a fast-trackedcadet as aide”), before we get to “destiny came without warning, one moment calm, the next adisorientating, ear-splitting snake-hiss of jetting gas, a flash of darknessfollowed by pulsing washes of scarlet, the muffled roar of engines replaced ata stroke by a choking metallic whine and the shriek-shriek-shriek of alarms,and the vessel shaking like it was pulling itself apart.”

Off the starting grid after less than 3% of the story. Conclusion: Not guilty.

Needs more Science Fiction or Fantasy Elements: Thiscontest publishes only speculative literature. We do not accept mainstreamstories. If there is no science fiction or fantasy element introduced earlyenough for us to recognize, that also helps to bring about the conclusion ofthe story, this may be the reason why you are receiving this letter. Justbecause a story takes place in a science fiction or fantasy setting doesn’tmake it science fiction or fantasy. If the plot can be moved to any othersetting, with any other characters, with no change in the outcome, it’sprobably not speculative literature.

The fifteenth and seventeenth words are ‘ship’ and ‘hyperspace’,so context should be clear. It deals with disembodied intelligences seeking bodies to occupy. And did I mention it’s all set in space? Is that not SF enough?

Conclusion: Not guilty.

Not Sticking the Landing: Your story peters out, ordoesn’t end in a way that satisfies what you promised the reader in thebeginning. Beginning with one character and ending with another but making noreference to the initial quest at the end, or going off on a tangent that leadsthe story in a completely different direction confuses and frustrates thereader. You might have submitted an excerpt from a longer work without makingit stand on its own. Make sure that you finish your plot.

The story is about “a secret diplomatic mission to bring peace to aconflict promising to spill over from Negus Umbra to other worlds” (top of page2). The narrative, which centres on how to continue the diplomatic missionafter being stranded in space, ends with Negus Umbra’s fate sealed, determinedby the protagonist’s actions and decisions – and mistakes. It doesn’t just hangtogether, it’s laser focussed.

Conclusion: Not guilty.

Playing in some else’s sandbox: You may have decidedto write a story using a trope that we have seen far too often. Vampire orwerewolf stories, angel stories, secret aliens living among ordinary people,the protagonist suddenly discovering that s/he is immortal, powerful, the ChosenOne, the long-lost child of the monarch are all well-worn and tired. Thosetropes may even have vocabulary which has become all too familiar in similarstories, and will make yours seem like a poor copy. If you have a new andoriginal take on a typical plot and write it well, send it! We’d love to seeit. Or you may have impinged on copyrighted or trademarked worlds. Fan fictionis not allowed, especially in an ongoing property, such as a popular movie,television show, game, or book series. But even if the universe you chose iswell out of copyright, you may not have a unique enough take on it.

Not fan fiction. No well-worn tropes, other than aspacecraft suffering an accident. And whilst I don’t claim to have invented theidea of disembodied alien intelligences requiring bodies, it’s not exactly the Benjamin Sniddlegrass level of well-worn, is it? And I’ve just Googled the names of aliens andalien races I cooked up by blindly stabbing at the keyboard. Qu’TyTh’Gth,anyone? No, didn’t think so.

Conclusion: Not guilty.

Too Much Violence: Stories featuring egregiousviolence, gore, or torture are not suitable for this contest. If it’s notnecessary for the plot, then cut it out. Otherwise, revise your story and sendit elsewhere. Send us something else that fits our guidelines.

Yes, there’s blood, there’s violence, but short, sharp,story-relevant, not dwelt on, and no more than in a family-friendly movie like Star Wars.

Conclusion: Not guilty.

Too Much Sex, Sensuality or Profanity: Ouranthologies are meant to be read by young adults on up. If the theme is tooadult, or there are “on screen” sex scenes, it’s not for us. If you can tone itdown, you may rewrite and try again. Otherwise, there are other markets thatwill accept it. Some sensuality is fine, even welcome, if it works in the plot.One F-bomb won’t scuttle your story. Long passages of swearing aren’t suitablefor this contest.

They’re stranded in space. Oxygen is running out. There’sno time for sex. Maybe there isn’t enough?

As regards profanity, I once had an emailexchange with Joni Labaqui regarding a different story when I defended it ashaving ‘no more swearing than around a normal British family dinner table’. I thinkshe was a bit shocked when I unpacked that for her. I can only conclude Americans don’t swear, like womendon’t fart. That said, I had WotF’s puritanism on my radar for this one, and the strongestword here is ‘steel’.

Conclusion: Not guilty.

Children’s story: As above. Our anthologies aremeant to be read by young adults on up. If the plot is too simplistic, if thecharacters are led by the nose to their conclusion, that’s why you’re receivingthis back.

No, it’s really not.

Conclusion: Not guilty.

Devotional or Political Content: If you have aspecific point to make that feels as if you are lecturing the reader, pleaseconsider a market that publishes that kind of material. If we are overwhelmedby your agenda, we ask you to tone it down and concentrate on a plot that will pleasea wide variety of readers.

If there’s an unwitting agenda at play, other than ‘we’reall doomed’, I can’t spot it re-reading it. But then, allegories tend to go over my head.

Conclusion: Not guilty, at least not deliberately.

Reality check: Your plot or character behavior iswildly implausible, so much that it stopped us dead. This doesn’t mean thatmagic can’t exist. It means that a character in danger of losing his life isn’tgoing to philosophize about unrelated subjects for sixteen pages. Is the rewardfor fulfilling the quest ridiculously small or entirely pointless? Charactersdon’t work against their own self-interest. Even self-sacrifice fulfills someinner need. Look at your plot from the point of view of a stranger. Would areasonable being act that way?

Okay, this one is subjective, but I had it front and centrein my mind whilst writing. The story concerns a disembodied alien intelligencethat the inexperienced protagonist goes up against and loses. Her decision todo so is, I think, consistent with her character and the impossibility of her circumstances.

But, if my fault falls under any of these headings, it maybe this one. The story is written to an eight-sequence structure (as most of mylonger stories are). But I’ve skipped the eighth. The seventh is where thecharacter gets to their lowest point, when all seems doomed, before snatchingvictory from the jaws of defeat in an uplifting finale. But, in this story, thereis no snatching, no finale. The antagonists win. Sometimes life is like that. Sometimesstories need to be like that.

But I’ve noticed an increasing habit amongst publishers, particularlyAmerican publishers, to reject the downbeat on principle, as if there's now an unwritten law stories have to be uplifting, that the good guys and girls need to win every time. Reality check? I think that’s exactlywhat I’ve done. Deny reality in stories, and it’s a small step to denyingreality in the real world. Which sounds a bit too much like the world we're living in. Writers of the Future? Maybe too much like Writers of the Present.

Conclusion: Not guilty for reasons of insanity. Or should it be for reasons of excessive sanity?

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Click on the images or search on Amazon. You're here, so surely you know how to do that?

My Thoughts are with You. Your Thoughts are with the Authorities for Calibration Against Societal Norms

Award-nominated science fiction and slipstream author Robert Bagnall’s second anthology of twenty-four stories, variously bleak, funny, bleakly funny or – very occasionally – optimistic.

  

2084 - The Meschera Bandwidth

2084. The world remains at war.

In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.

The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.

Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.

Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.

24 0s & a 2

Twenty-four slipstream stories.  Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.

“Brilliant stories, well written!” (five stars, Amazon). 

 

Gizmology & Technomancy

I've just provided a few, very minor, formatting comments to JayHenge Publishing for my story 'Inktomi and the Skyship', included in their latest anthology, The Apparatus Almanac: Gizmology & Technomancy.

I was a day late with my notes but, turns out, the deadline for comments was the day after the publication date. Things move so fast nowadays, don't they?

And to think, had they had time to take my points on board, it could have been so much... no, scrub that; knowing what JayHenge turn out, it's probably already as good as it gets.

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Click on the images or search on Amazon. You're here, so surely you know how to do that?

My Thoughts are with You. Your Thoughts are with the Authorities for Calibration Against Societal Norms

Award-nominated science fiction and slipstream author Robert Bagnall’s second anthology of twenty-four stories, variously bleak, funny, bleakly funny or – very occasionally – optimistic.

  

2084 - The Meschera Bandwidth

2084. The world remains at war.

In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.

The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.

Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.

Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.

24 0s & a 2

Twenty-four slipstream stories.  Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.
“Brilliant stories, well written!” (five stars, Amazon).

The war against the machines begins... err... down the pub

Some things should be sacred. Thursday nights are pub quiz night, even if it means Friday mornings are often somewhat jaded. But, I'm pleased to report, my Fridays are now bright-eyed and bushy tailed, because we are boycotting the quiz. In protest over AI.

Well, not so much AI as what happens when it's used by an idiot.

One of my personal go-to common-sense-merchants, Tim Harford, has covered the issue of how systems and humans combine, reporting that the best cocktail is one part fit-for-purpose but not bleeding edge technology, and one part switched on homo sapien. If the AI's too helpful, the human switches off. If it only provides part of the answer, we're forced to bridge the gap. And, if the human isn't switched on to start with, it doesn't really matter how good the AI is, as whatever old shite comes out will be inevitably relied on.

Like - for a tiebreak on one round, nearest wins - in what year was the third oldest Beatle born? We said 1941, our opponents 1944. The answer's 1942. We lost. 

At the time, Google's AI summary said George was the third oldest Beatle, whilst one click - a click Chris the quizmaster refused point blank to make - would have revealed the detail proving at a glance it was Paul. But if you Google it now, it's suddenly correct. But not at the time. That's an early Easter egg we missed out on.

More tellingly, a tie-break we weren't involved in was 'what was Concorde's longest non-stop flight'? Answer: 28,238 miles. 

WTF?

Think about that for just a second. Which makes it a second longer than Chris took. The circumference of the planet is less than 25,000 miles. But it was the first answer that fell out of Google, so it must be true. Even if it's patently absurd.

There's no point in taking part in a quiz where the randomising factor of Googlebollocks is just going to wind us up so, for the foreseeable, we're out of here.

There is a serious point to this churlishness, of course. Tim Harford's example of being overly-reliant on technology was Air France flight 447. Had, say, those pushing the buttons on the flight deck filled the shoes of Stanislav Petrov, who disbelieved a nuclear alert, or even Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was ready to wake the president but not until he had confirmation, we'd all be dead several times over.

I like to think they were products of an analogue, mechanical, work-it-out-for-yourself world, where people were more ready to question the half-answers clunky, wheezy, not especially powerful systems provided. There was an obvious need for humans to make up the gap. But what about now, when technology can probably think of things that technology can do that we can't? It's not as though the world's teetering on the brink of World War Three. Oh, hold on...

I fear AI may be the death of us. And, I fear, it may all be our fault.

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Click on the images or search on Amazon. You're here, so surely you know how to do that?

My Thoughts are with You. Your Thoughts are with the Authorities for Calibration Against Societal Norms

Award-nominated science fiction and slipstream author Robert Bagnall’s second anthology of twenty-four stories, variously bleak, funny, bleakly funny or – very occasionally – optimistic.

  

2084 - The Meschera Bandwidth

2084. The world remains at war.

In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.

The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.

Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.

Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.

24 0s & a 2

Twenty-four slipstream stories.  Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.
“Brilliant stories, well written!” (five stars, Amazon).

Time travel all over again

Last week, Eric Fomley, over at Shacklebound Books, brought out a second anthology of time travel drabbles, Chronos 2 (do you really want me to spell out what it's a sequel to?) Sixty-six stories of time, time travel, time zones, time manipulation, flash-forwards, space-time, time freezes, and so many other variations on the theme. My wage-slavery story 'Working Late' gets a second airing after first appearing in Black Ink's CTRL-ALT-DEL.

Why not check it out on Amazon.

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Click on the images or search on Amazon. You're here, so surely you know how to do that?

My Thoughts are with You. Your Thoughts are with the Authorities for Calibration Against Societal Norms

Award-nominated science fiction and slipstream author Robert Bagnall’s second anthology of twenty-four stories, variously bleak, funny, bleakly funny or – very occasionally – optimistic.

  

2084 - The Meschera Bandwidth

2084. The world remains at war.

In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.

The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.

Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.

Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.

24 0s & a 2

Twenty-four slipstream stories.  Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.
“Brilliant stories, well written!” (five stars, Amazon).

Alternate alternate history

One popular storyline that keeps on giving is the ‘What if the Nazis had won' narrative. Robert Harris’ Fatherland, Philip K Dick’s Man in the High Castle, and Len Deighton’s SS-GB are three examples that pop into my mind. It makes for an interesting, if unsettling, gedankenexperiment, contemplating what day-to-day life would have been like in this alternative timeline. File the results alongside time-travel to kill Hitler as a baby stories, if there’s still room in that drawer.

I’ve made my own small contribution to the oeuvre with The King of China’s Mirror, published in Shoreline of Infinity 34. My setting was a vague pre-internet post-war, when Greyhound buses still had corrugated aluminium sides. There’s no obvious resistance movement, and no sense of an army of occupation. They’ve integrated and assimilated, them into America as much as American into them. My Nazis are already more about getting your bins collected than book-burnings and pogroms.

In building my world, I may have been channelling a bit of British history, in that whilst there was resistance following the Norman Conquest, within fifty years we hadn't become part of France - rather, the Normans had become English and we'd started seven hundred years of fighting the cheese-eating surrender monkeys. I've found that aspect of history both fascinating and rarely discussed.

And, although it’s never said in my story, they’re probably distancing themselves from their recent history, how they got to where they are. That was then, this is nineteen-fifty, sixty, seventy-something. In the real world, we commemorate the Holocaust, but allied acts - which you could call either war crimes or justified military actions with disproportionate civilian casualties - such as Dresden, or the fire-bombing of Tokyo, are rarely thought of as being in the same category, even if they're of an utterly different scale (to quote Marlon Brando, 'it's not an ouch contest'). However, had the Axis powers won, I suspect Dresden, Tokyo and the like would have shuffled up the queue as warnings from history.

History is, after all, written by the winners. 

Then, walking around the magnificent Palma Cathedral last autumn, I realised we had an actual example of this in action. The gold, the art, the finery - all built on the rape of continents, the massacre of people, in the name of a credo that sets itself up and right, noble, and justified but, and was prepared to impose its vision through superior firepower. If you weren't with them, you weren't even human. Their actions in South America in particular, but elsewhere too, are a matter of record. The Pope has openly spoken of and apologised for genocide.  

I’ve struggled to put figures on how many indigenous people were killed in the New World in the name of the Catholic Church, but online discussion suggests it makes the Holocaust look like small beer. Let's say it as it is: the Catholic Church was as morally repugnant as the Nazis.

But we have nothing like the same visceral reaction to those actions. Is it because of the passage of time? (In my story You Will Know us by our Trail of Dead. That and T-Shirt Sales, a PR executive tries to reposition the Waffen-SS alongside pirates as a children’s fancy dress staple given both are now aspects of history and those guys raped and murdered too.) Or is it as simple the effect of history being written by the winning team, and what doesn't get actively written into history slides from our collective memory? 

I appreciate the counter arguments. Why shouldn’t the passage of time - and change in morals - make a difference? What's the difference between not allowing history to erode a wrong and bearing a grudge against people long dead? How do you unpick history, anyway? Tribes have fought each other since time immemorial, and Catholic Spain in the New World, or the East India Company in South Asia, are just more recent chapters in an epic tome about one bloke punching another for a piece of land or a cow. We’re still at it, just now oil or economic influence is more important than lebensraum, and methods have evolved from lining your troops up on the border, recent Ukrainian throwbacks notwithstanding.

But, as with the real Norman example, and my imagined Nazis, Catholic invader and Latin invaded have become one. The descendants of the survivors of Catholic horrors are now proud Catholic themselves, crucifixes around their necks, just as we British rapidly became one with our Norman overlords. To me, this is possibly the most fascinating aspect: how quickly the vanquished make the best of a bad situation and join the winning team.

Of course, the Catholic Church has rebranded; it's not all about coming over to the dark side. I like Pope Frank a lot and wish him well. But it would have been the same with the victorious Nazis - in time. It took the Catholics centuries in South America to be the good guys. 2025 may still have been too early if the Nazis won (the children of those who fought, like me, are now dying out, so that link with history is weakening). But, I suggest, eventually, this alternate history would have added up to a swastika in the logo of the municipal bin lorries and a cheery, unthinking Heil to your neighbours each morning.

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Click on the images or search on Amazon. You're here, so surely you know how to do that?

2084 - The Meschera Bandwidth

2084. The world remains at war.

In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.

The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.

Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.

Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.

24 0s & a 2

Twenty-four slipstream stories.  Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.

End of year report - Part 2

So, to the second half of the year which, for me, started in August with regular customers JayHenge taking steampunk tale 'Inktomi and the Skyship', first run by Wyldblood in 2022, for their anthology The Apparatus Almanac. JayHenge work slowly but produce large collections; this one is still accepting submissions, hence don't expect publication any time soon.

Then nada until October, but, like buses... First (and it happened on the first), 100-Foot Crow take my drabble 'Dominoes Tumbling'.

Then three hits in three days. Graveside Press come in for 'Doctor Herzog's Collection', my L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Competition finalist from 2017, for their Tiny Terrors strand. Ten-thousand-word stories are hard to place; having been a near miss several times, it's good that this has finally found a home. No news on a publication date yet, though.

The same day, Story Unlikely, who had already taken 'Snake' to podcast, decide they'll print it as well. The pod is here - good to know someone out there liked it - no news on the words-on-a-screen publication as yet.

Then, two days later, Legiron Press take my Dartmoor-set eldritch comedy 'Too Few Surnames' for their twenty-fourth anthology, Monster. That just missed their Halloween publication date, but given they took it less than a fortnight beforehand, that it's out at all is a minor miracle.

...but it may explain why they didn't ask for any exclusivity period in the contract, enabling me to sell it (for buttons, admittedly) a mere fifteen days later to Three Coin Theatre for Liminal Tales, an evening of performed story readings at London's Water Rats on 12th January. The trailer's here - I think my story is the only one not to be read by its author, being in the far more secure hands of actor Esme Pitman.

The same November day I also get my 70s-set story 'Tip of the Tongue' accepted by Tales to Terrify, only to wake up to the fact that they don't pay for flashes when the contract arrives. As I only write for money - fame optional - I withdraw as quickly and with as much dignity as possible, promising to pay closer attention to the fine print on submission pages. Yes, reader, I was that time waster.

One last acceptance of the year, and a nice one to end on, as it's the return of Steve Capone, this time for sleep depravation horror story 'Second Amendment' for Whisper House's second anthology, Dread Mondays. That makes it 22 for the year.

And three days later it was Christmas.

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Click on the images or search on Amazon. You're here, so surely you know how to do that?

2084 - The Meschera Bandwidth

2084. The world remains at war.

In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.

The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.

Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.

Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.

24 0s & a 2

Twenty-four slipstream stories.  Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.

End of year report - Part 1

Having tried over the last few years to submit a story a day, and having both missed and overshot that target, for the second year running I've managed the magic 365 submissions. It was a target I screamed towards like Bodie in a Capri for much of the year, to the extent that I've only sent out four efforts in the second half of December in order to skid to a halt, Professionals-style, on that totally arbitrary and meaningless figure.

But, before we begin, some bad (taste in the mouth) news.

My last acceptance of 2023 was a story for a Nirvana-themed horror anthology from Book Slayer, to be called Negative Creep. It got as far as signed contracts and advanced reader copies going out for review. Then... nothing. The project froze, like a mosquito in sap, but with less chance of a Spielbergian reanimation. 

I've had projects which haven't come to fruition - shit happens - but not when ARCs have gone out and reviews been posted. And I've usually heard from the publisher, not from others via social media. But in this case they've just left everyone, thirty writers, hanging - not a single word of apology or explanation. Just a black hole.

As well as being utterly fucking unprofessional, it leaves authors confused as to whether we can shop our stories around again, or are they now lost in some Schrodinger's cat publishing netherworld? Have they, in any legal sense, been published or not?! So, please understand when I send out this short and heartfelt message to publisher, Roxie Voorhees, on behalf of all those affected: YOU UNMITIGATED CUNT.

Rant over.

January 2024. First sale of the year: Sci-Fi shorts taking my weird reflection on consumerism, 'Auntie'. And, had I known they'd use this image, I'd have tweaked the team of lawyers in the story to suit.

January also saw that most-rare phenomenon of two acceptances on the same day, although it was possibly not that odd as they were both for Shacklebound anthologies. Drabble 'Heaven or Hell' appeared in Drabbledark III in March, available from Amazon. The other, a reprint of another drabble, 'Working Late', is slated to see the light of day in Chronos 2 early next year.

Just one sale in February, a flash, the snappily titled 'God’s Gift to His Creation, and the Price We had to Pay for It', in Extrasensory Overload from Angry Gable Press. I've just finished reading it, and liked it.

March was a good month. First came news that 'Thus with a Kiss I Die', my Shakespeare-tinged body-swapping corporate-versus-academia longish short story first published by Aurealis would get a second burst of the limelight in Best of British Science Fiction 2023, my fifth appearance in the series.

This was tempered later in the year with the news that BoBSF would be on hiatus next year. I hope to see it return in 2026, maybe less-confusingly titled Best of British Science Fiction 2026? Best of British to editor Donna Scott and her Slab Press projects if she's reading this.

Late March saw 'Formula 719 - A Cure for Ennui', a black comedy about the counter-productivity of relying on technology to get us out of the holes we dig for ourselves (to me) or straight sci-fi (to, seemingly, everyone else) made it into the British Science Fiction Association's Fission #4.

And, two days later, Imagitopia said they'd run 'Devil Ray at the Doorway', previously published by Medusa Tales, as a podcast. They're currently on hiatus, but promise to be back and to run the stories already picked.

April saw another brace of acceptances across a handful of days. On the 11th, Parsec Ink took half (yes, half) of my story Charabanc for their Hospitium anthology, part of the Triangulation strand. Editors Greg Clumpner and Brandon Ketchum may have had the help of the Devil someplace as it was on sale by early July.

And, on the 13th, 'The Other Brother Grimm', about the one you've never heard of, was taken by Mystery and Horror LLC for my second appearance in their Strangely Funny series. It's yet to appear.

May saw another two acceptances.  Firstly, 'Sérénade Mélancolique in A Flat', a dark piece, more atmosphere than horror story, that I wrote thirty or so years ago, hidden in a virtual drawer ever since, was picked up by Dark Holme's Nightmare Narratives for a song (see what I did there?). The website's since disappeared, and I've made my punning title hard to Google, so the only evidence that it was ever published is probably this blog. Ooops.

And then, on my birthday, Whisper House Press took my flash, 'One, Two, Three' for their Costs of Living anthology. I'm slightly confused about timelines, as I've had my e-book copy for a while, reviews are appearing online, and my video interview was done in early autumn, but everything says a September 2025 release date. Having met him on screen, I like the chief Whisperer Steve Capone and what he's trying to do, and wish him and Whisper House Press well.

In June, I managed to get my name on the front page of the Grinder twice, with acceptances two days running. Firstly, Wyld Flash came back for some repeat business, running my ambient flash 'We Are All Made of Stars' the following month.  Then, the next day, Donna Scott's Slab Press came in for 'The Trouble with Vacations', previously only available as an Overcast podcast, for its Laughs in Space collection. That was published in August.

So, fourteen acceptances in the first six months. Find out in part two how the second half of the year went.

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Click on the images or search on Amazon. You're here, so surely you know how to do that?

2084 - The Meschera Bandwidth

2084. The world remains at war.

In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.

The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.

Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.

Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.

24 0s & a 2

Twenty-four slipstream stories.  Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.

Now you can work from home at anything!

Yes, we’ve now reached such a state of joined-up interconnectedness that you can now do any job, absolutely any job whatsoever, from anywhere, anywhere you damn well please. Here I am, working hard at signing punters’ copies of PS Publishing’s marvellous Shadowplays anthology, sans bookshop, sans books… and sans punters!

Shame that in this new utopia we have to rely on Royal Mail, though…

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Click on the images or search on Amazon. You're here, so surely you know how to do that?

My Thoughts are with You. Your Thoughts are with the Authorities for Calibration Against Societal Norms.

Award-nominated science fiction and slipstream author Robert Bagnall’s second anthology of twenty-four stories, variously bleak, funny, bleakly funny or – very occasionally – optimistic.

  

2084 - The Meschera Bandwidth

2084. The world remains at war.

In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.

The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.

Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.

Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.

24 0s & a 2

Twenty-four slipstream stories.  Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.
“Brilliant stories, well written!” (five stars, Amazon).

Get yerself to that there London Town

I only wrote a matter of days ago that those good people at Liminal Tales would be doing a performed reading of my story 'Too Few Surnames' "sometime in 2025". 

Well, turns out 'sometime' means January 12th, at London's Water Rats on Grey's Inn Road. If you're in the Big Smoke, wondering what to do in the grey days of winter, get yourself along. I hope you have a blast.

And, for those who missed it, here's last year's performed reading of one of my stories, 'The Ultimate Vegan Curry', by British Columbia's Delta Literary Arts Society.

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Click on the images or search on Amazon. You're here, so surely you know how to do that?

My Thoughts are with You. Your Thoughts are with the Authorities for Calibration Against Societal Norms.

Award-nominated science fiction and slipstream author Robert Bagnall’s second anthology of twenty-four stories, variously bleak, funny, bleakly funny or – very occasionally – optimistic.

  

2084 - The Meschera Bandwidth

2084. The world remains at war.

In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.

The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.

Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.

Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.

24 0s & a 2

Twenty-four slipstream stories.  Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.
“Brilliant stories, well written!” (five stars, Amazon).