Robert Bagnall's Blog, page 5

Confused of Devon

Yes, we can all fall back on William Goldman's famous "Nobody knows anything", uttered in the context of the fickle nature of Hollywood, to explain away bizarre editorial responses to story submissions, but sometimes the email coming back to you is so off-beam that you can't help think... WTF?

I've just had such a wtf moment - appropriately, in an alphabetic way, to WotF as the Writers of the Future contest has just returned my 4th quarter 2023 entry as a 'did not place'.

Now, I'm not arrogant enough to think I should automatically be at the top of the list, or even on the list, every time, but with some 75 stories published and four appearances in the Best of British Science Fiction anthologies, I'm not exactly wet behind the ears at this game and can tell when a story has merit. And this one (call me superstitious, but I don't like referring to a story by name until it's sold) had been a very near miss with Shoreline of Infinity, liked by Strange Horizons, and had just been let go by Galaxy's Edge having been held for further consideration for 600 days. (Yes, that's not a typo - 600 days, from New Year's Day 2022 until this September.) That is not the palmares of a 'did not place' story. Hence, I ask again: WTF???

I thought it may be instructive, for my sanity if nothing else, to plot out my success, or otherwise, with the Scientologists, since I made it into the final six years ago...

2nd quarter, 2017: finalist, with a story that's been rejected 21 times since, without ever being an obvious 'near miss' for anybody other than WotF3rd quarter, 2017: didn't enter4th quarter, 2017: honourable mention for 'The King of China's Mirror', published by Shoreline of Infinity earlier this year1st quarter, 2018: unplaced, with a story currently held by Apex, albeit significantly rewritten2nd quarter, 2018: unplaced with 'Inktomi and the Skyship', which appeared in Wyldblood #73rd quarter, 2018: honourable mention for a story that already had positive feedback, albeit a pass, from F&SF4th quarter, 2018: 'The Disappearing', which later appeared in Bourbon Penn #27, was unplaced1st quarter, 2019: unplaced, with an earlier draft of my latest 'unplaced' story - they clearly don't like it!2nd quarter, 2019: silver honourable for 'Faivish the Imbecile', later published by token market Quiet Reader3rd quarter, 2019: another silver honourable, this time for a triptych of stories, the middle of which is released next month as 'Don't Eat the Bundyroot' in Ossuary Press's Under the Stairs anthology4th quarter, 2019: an early draft of 'Thus with a Kiss I Die', published by Aurealis in March this year, is unplaced1st quarter, 2020: 'Roadkill' fails to place, but is published in 2021 by Uhri as part of their Needle Drops' series2nd quarter, 2020: a novelette of which I am very fond but remains unpublished is unplaced - but given it's about cults, maybe that's not a surprise3rd quarter, 2020: silver honourable for a story that's had 25 rejections, and almost made it into Parsec, but remains unpublished4th quarter, 2020: silver honourable again, this time for a redrafted 'Thus with a Kiss I Die'1st quarter, 2021: honourable mention for 'The Credo of Comrade January', which is scheduled to appear under the Dragon Gems imprint before the year is out - so they assure me2nd quarter, 2021: a silver honourable for my 3rd quarter 2018 story, already liked by F&SF and directly off the back of a couple of rewrites at the request of Cosmic Roots & Eldritch Shores, up from honourable mention3rd quarter, 2021: silver honourable for a 17,000 word novella that remains unpublished and, having run out of obvious homes for something of an inconvenient length, remains in a drawer4th quarter, 2021: an honourable mention for a story that's otherwise racked up 20 rejections without even a hint of buy-signals1st quarter, 2022: an honourable mention for 'The Charmed', a hard-to-pigeonhole tale due to be published in the Alchemy Book of the Unknown by PS Publishing next year2nd quarter, 2022: an honourable for another squad player that has kissed 28 frogs and found none of them to be princes3rd quarter, 2022: continuing the run of honourables for a story that Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores requested a rewrite only for the next draft to be dismissed in a single line4th quarter, 2022: just an honourable for another story busy collecting rejection slips, although I'm particularly fond of it1st quarter, 2023: an honourable mention for a story written for 2nd quarter, 2023 - as if presaging the WTF direction of travel of WofT, I resubmit my 3rd quarter 2020 effort, which received a silver honourable, and it doesn't just get an unplaced, it's deemed "not quite ready for us" - i.e. not even considered3rd quarter, 2023: an honourable for another reasonably told tale that may find a home eventually

Which brings us to my latest result, the repeat first round knockout for the resubmitted 1st quarter 2019 entry.

So, what to conclude?  Well, these may not be statistically significant, but 0% of my finalists, 43% of my silver honourables, and 33% of my honourables have been published, but the success rate for those unplaced or worse is 50%, plus other 'failures' are being held. Plus my unplaced seem to have as good a chance at semi-pro or better rates, with silver honourables like Faivish the Imbecile going for a token rate.

The most statistically watertight claim may be that there's little to no correlation between the Writers of the Future contest placing of individual stories and eventual publishing success, at least when you raise the quality threshold to at least 'honourable' levels. Perhaps the acid test is to resubmit my 2nd and 4th quarter stories to see if their 'not ready to be considered' and 'unplaced' status is repeated - or else, sell them in the meantime! Watch this space.

Like the man said, nobody knows anything.

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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.

Curry tonight?

If you fancy a curry tonight, can I suggest you go to YouTube and watch the Delta Literary Arts Society perform my story 'The Ultimate Vegan Curry'.  Bon appetit...

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Click on the images or search on Amazon

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.

Don't Eat the Bundyroot!

Yes, folks, in one month exactly you can get your hands on Ossuary Press's Under the Stairs, in which you'll find my story imploring you to not eat the bundyroot!

Find them on that X-thing @OssuaryPress or order it straight from Amazon.

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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.

Get yourself to British Columbia!

 By Friday!

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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.

The guilty party in The Innocents

'The Innocents' is a 1961 British gothicpsychological horror film starring DeborahKerr, based on the 125-year-old novella The Turn of the Screw by HenryJames, with a screenplay smeared with the buttery fingerprints of TrumanCapote and, to a lesser extent, John Mortimer. The psychological underpinnings of the film's screenplay have made it the subject of numerous critical and scholarly essays, particularly in the area of film theory and it was selected by The Guardian as one of the 25 best horror films ever made.Quite a pedigree. Which makes you wonder whothe hell am I to wade in with my pennyworth.And it's quite a simple criticism really, having rewatched it a few days ago. And it has nothing to do with 'psychological underpinnings' (can you tell I culled much of that from Wikipedia'?) but from a writerly perspective. I've mulled on why it simply does not work for me as a film (and, I seem to dimly remember, as a book). There's somebody missing.Let's just precis the first act. Miss Giddens (Kerr) becomes governess to two orphans on a largecountry estate, the previous incumbent having died. Whilst her charges aregenerally angelic, she grows disturbed by their occasional odd, and oddly adult, behaviour. She is also disturbed by disembodied voices and apparitions she—and only she—witnesses.She concludes that these are the ghosts of her predecessor and her lover and are in possession of the children so they canphysically continue their relationship. She determines to rescue them from thispossession.And therein lies my problem. What on earth would make Debs come to such a bonkers conclusion as a first guess? The kids are playing up and there are ghosts around. There's nothing, nada, zilch, zip that links the two. Not a smidgen of a suggestion unless you cook it up in your own mind.The only way that I would buy this line of reasoning in any way, shape or form is if either she had exhausted all other possibilities, or somebody put the idea in Miss Giddens' head. It is too great a leap for somebody to make, at least in one step, and I'm not sure what the 'other possibilities' are here as I'm inclined to tick the 'unrelated' box and deal with each issue separately. Which makes me think we need somebody whispering this concept into Giddens' shell-like.Okay, Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces was published decades after James wrote his story, and wasn't the go-to in Hollywood when the film was made as it was when, say, Star Wars was being story-boarded, but even so... it describes established story elements rather than inventing them afresh. The mentor has existed for ever.Without a mentor, possibly an unreliable mentor, to plant the idea of possession in the governess's mind I'm just left unempathetic and unengaged as she goes off on a bonkers one. Maybe that's the idea: horror movie as clinical observation of somebody's cheese sliding off their cracker. But I always regard the main character as being my proxy in the storyworld, as the eyes I see that world through. Their going mad means my going mad. That makes it my cheese sliding off my cracker. No dice.When I first learnt story structure under (okay, a writer of an Oscar-nominated short), one of the many things that stuck in my mind (far less red wine had flowed under the bridge) was that protagonists' thought processes must be clear and reasoned, even if, say, driven by gut instinct, whereas antagonists can display leaps of logic worthy of a wuxia hero. Bond must show his workings, whereas only Blofeld's allowed to act like a loose cannon.How much better, then, to have a mentor figure whispering in Miss Giddens' ear: when the children act like that, they're not the children, they're possessed by the spirits of Miss Jessel and Peter Quint, and for Miss Giddens to come to think, slowly, over the course of the second act: that's ridiculous, but wait, that does accord with what's happening, and there it is again, that's the only conclusion, it can't be anything else, the children... they're possessed, I have to help them...Truman! Truman!! We're gonna need a rewrite... #
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.

In space no-one can read about not being able to hear you scream

As if the transition from summer to autumn isn’t bad enough, we’ve decided to make this year’s even more painful by revisiting George ‘you can never have too many cute furry things’ Lucas’ Star Wars ennealogy (go on, look it up; I had to).  Yes, it's a classic, but not only have we lost the middle chapters in their original form and now have to put up with ‘improved’ versions - improved like when your kid brother improves your mint 1972 Dodge Challenger with go-faster stripes using permanent marker - but, most crucially, we have the initial ‘is the hor d’oeuvre meant to taste of sick?’ barrier to vault named Jar Jar Binks.

Not that this post has anything to do with Jar Jar, but it’s a hobby horse I like to exercise at any opportunity.  Consider its legs stretched.

No, this post is nothing more than a simple observation on the Fourth Estate and its role in the Star Wars storyverse: it doesn’t have one.

I don’t know about you, but I’m swimming in a media world. I check the headlines on my phone each morning whilst making tea; I’ll read online news with a mug of the aforementioned char in bed; and something news-related will play on the television at some point in the day, every day. And I don’t think I’m at all unusual in this (apart from the working-at-home luxury of being able to take my tea back to bed of a morning).  In fact, I’ll contend I’m behaving like the majority of people from Vladivostok to Tierra del Fuego.  I’d also argue that if you took away access to news, as happens in the less enlightened parts of our planet, people will react in a variety of ways, including seeking to overthrow you with extreme prejudice.

But none of that happens in the Star Wars storyverse. Which, when you think about it, is weird.

That means of communication exist is clear - grainy blue holographic images play out in real time from travellers who only left days or hours before throughout, so there’s every opportunity to dispatch the Kate Adie of a long time ago and a galaxy far far away to report back.  What few screens they have don't appear to be any good for, say, watching a decent sci-fi movie in high-definition, but given the ability to produce starships and huge cities, the infrastructure of broadcast media must be easily within their grasp.  But even without screens, they've surely invented the printing press.  Or does moveable type post-date faster than light travel in this world?  Only that would help explain why the Senate need a commission to be sent to Naboo to establish the facts of the invasion rather than simply turning on a tellybox to get minute-by-minute coverage.

There appear to be no newspapers, television, nor equivalent of an internet.  Nor is there anything in the way of advertising or marketing (compare and contrast with Bladerunner's prescience), even though every third person is some sort of vague 'trader'. And there seems precious little interest from the populace in information of almost any kind, from baseball results to celebrity gossip.

Which makes them strange, parallel creatures to us, the humans looking like humans but clearly under the skin lacking some basic human circuitry...

Oh, hold on. I just remembered. It's all a fiction created by someone who will only worldbuild what's directly necessary to the story - social structures, faster-than-light travel, tax laws, TAX LAWS! - even if the other stuff talks to basic human wants and needs, and its absence creates a screaming, inexplicable void.

But cute, furry creatures... you can never have too many of them.

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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. 

Medium rare

I've been published, I've been podcast, and now - a whole new medium - I'm going to be performed on stage...

Actually, I don't know if I'm going to be performed proper, or just read out with immense panache, but either way, the Delta Literary Arts Society have taken my flash The Ultimate Vegan Curry for their "horror/sci-fi themed dramatized event, Killer Verse" and will do with it as they please. Something wonderful, I trust.

And, in case you're wondering, the delta in question is, I think, of the Fraser River just south of the (genuinely, I'm not just saying it) wonderful city of Vancouver.

If you go, let me know how it goes.

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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.

An end to history

A meta-posting today: a post about and that leads you to another post, in this case the Public Domain Review's essays, and specifically Thomas Patteson and Deirdre Loughridge's  Cat Pianos, Sound-Houses, and Other Imaginary Musical Instruments .
Not just because it deals with fantastika, and therefore falls under the very wide, though not always watertight, umbrella of this blog.  And not simply because the Public Domain Review's essays are consistently engaging and thought-provoking and deserving of your attention.  But because it throws up an odd parallel with the world of science fiction.
You see, there was a time when there were sounds we had never heard, sounds that could not conceivably have been heard then.  Every time a new instrument was invented, it created a new, never-before-heard, sound.  Hell, if you want to be impossibly fine-grained about it, every time a new instrument was made, it created new sounds.
Even in my lifetime - and I think RA Moog Inc must have been hard at work on the Mini Moog Model B prototype when I took my first breath - each new wheezy analogue or early digital device like the Fairlight had a specific recognisable sound quality, a warmth or a iciness or a razor-sharpness, that gave bands distinct identities.  But now, digital synthesizers (are they even synthesizers given that suggests processing pre-existing elements?) can create any sound imaginable, starting as they do from abstract parameters.  All of Patteson and Loughridge's instruments - we can hear them now, and without having to stick needles into felines to boot.
And what does this have to do with science fiction, other than I'm very fond of a bit of kosmische musik burbling away as I write?  Well, we live on a planet with pretty much every square metre of dry land now explored.  Maybe there is a lost city or two under jungle vines, but no undiscovered continents or even islands. We know what's over every horizon.  In space, too, we know the Moon and Mars are just rocks and dust, and the ones too far to ever reach are balls of frozen methane and ammonia.  There's nothing out there.  We are alone.  We have been everywhere we can ever go, just as we've heard every sound we can ever hear.  My lifetime has been one of closing down possibilities, an end to history if not the end to history.
Which is, I continue to tell myself, why I write speculative fiction because that's the only place left for adventure and am not, say, training to be an astronaut.

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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.

Tell Nietzsche that I'm just doing the plumber

There's been a lot of heat and noise created over the last few months by artificial intelligence in general, and ChatGPT in particular.  That's certainly true from the perspective of one who pitches speculative fiction tales into the mouth of the beast that is semi-professional publishing - every site has suddenly started asking for confirmation of the author's humanity - but, whatever your point of view, AI is probably upsetting the apple cart, then picking the least bruised ones off the floor to eat whilst grinning at you in a way that says there's damn all you can do about it and you both know it.

Like mushrooms or Hitler, ChatGPT has sprung up and made its presence felt in a shockingly tight timescale: it was only released on the last day of November 2022, and by mid-March 2023 the CEO said they were "a little bit scared" of what they'd created.  I'm that far behind with even my most up-to-date podcasts - what will the world be like when I get to listen to this week's More or Less?!

But I think we've been here before. Whether the video nasty hysteria, mutually assured destruction, or the seemingly permanent occupation of the number one spot by the ghastly (Everything I Do) I Do It For You, it only seems bad because we can't yet see the light at the end of the tunnel.  But, in this case, I'm not even sure we're in a tunnel.

You see, I argue we've actually been in a world of machines that can speak intelligently for some time, and to a degree that may surprise.  Calling the first (and, to be honest, only) witness for the prosecution... Friedrich Nietzsche.

Now, say what you like about about bonkers Freddy - being dead, it's not as if he's going to sue - but there does seem to be a consensus that the guy was a genius, with an estimated IQ of 180.  And, as a genius, we should dwell on his pronouncements and consider them deeply.  Words such as these, picked pretty much at random from his masterpiece, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (GD's review: "It's like Jesus, but cooler"), which I'm currently working my way through:

"I wish that the earth shook with convulsions when a saint and a goose mate together.""And when all footholds disappear, you must know how to climb upon your own head: how could you climb upwards otherwise?""They have put all the faults and weaknesses of mankind between themselves and me - they call this a 'false flooring' in their houses."

Now, I don't know about you, but I don't think these are qualitatively different from the drivel called 'predictive text' that we've had to battle against for years now.  The one that sticks in my mind was when I texted the good lady wife with 'I'm just doing the' - washing-up, I think - and my phone's best suggestion follow up word was 'plumber'. QED: genii produce gnomic bollocks indistinguishable from mobile phone predictive text.

So, what to conclude? Maybe we're actually regressing? Perhaps it's actually taken years to produce levels of artificial intelligence on a par with most humans, because whilst we may not have IQs that'll win world titles when consistently produced by three darts, our intelligence is of a messy, hard-to-describe as an algorithm sort, coloured by random noise, gut feeling, emotion, sentiment, cognitive bias, and an ability to compensate and make allowances for all those self-same things in our fellow human beings, the ones that don't run like machines.

Or that bonkers Freddy was actually bonkers and if it sounds like gibberish, it's just that. I know which one I think is true.

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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.

Four out of seven ain’t bad

A couple of weeks ago a small package wrapped up in brown paper came through the letterbox and turned out to have a couple of complementary copies of the latest edition of NewCon Press’s Best of British Science Fiction.  And very nice to see my name at the top of the list, even if only for alphabetical reasons. Regardless, it does give me a small tingling of pride and assurance I must be getting something right some of the time. My fourth appearance since the series launched in 2017 (with the 2016 edition; I still find the retrospective titling confusing - the Car of the Year gets announced that April, and if a sci-fi best of can’t be forward looking, what can?). 

The book launch will be live across Planet Earth on YouTube at 7.30pm Tuesday 25th July.  Hope to see you there.

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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.