Ian Patterson's Blog, page 5
February 21, 2025
Transition: Chapter 7
Table of Contents
Chapter 7: MicahThey do, in fact, deliver new clothes for me. And I do, in fact, wake up and get ready for another day at the lab. Through the morning routine, the previous day’s events are playing through my head, and I recognize with a dim horror that the feeling I’m experiencing is excitement. It’s not the idea of saving humanity, or myself,...
February 14, 2025
Transition: Chapter 6
Table of Contents
Chapter 6: Not MicahIn the middle of a barren field, an expanse of fine sand, is a mirrored bubble of a building. A perfect hemisphere with no obvious entrances that shimmers with heat. Surrounded by myriad rows of solar panels, those tin soldiers that stand as stalwart wardens against the looming climate disaster, but that will be overcome in the first dust s...
February 7, 2025
Transition: Chapter 5
Table of Contents
Chapter 5: MicahWhen the lights start to brighten in my quarters, I know I can stop trying to sleep. I’ve made it to the other side of night, dawn is breaking, the machinery coming alive again. Gravity returns, bringing reality with it. I’m tired, but more clear headed than I have been in weeks. Months? Years?
The tumorous mass of Bambi moves from my shoulder, where he’d slept thr...
February 6, 2025
Afterburn by D. Andrews
I’m reading more SPSFC entrants this year, and the first on the list is Afterburn by D. Andrews. This book is currently an unofficial quarterfinalist alongside mine, so I was really excited to check it out! I’d heard it described as a sci-fi psychological thriller, which, given that I can’t remember the last thriller I read, had me intrigued from the start.
The novel throws you right into it, and Andrews does fantastic work at blending the showing with the telling in setting up her world. The nar...
January 31, 2025
Transition: Chapter 4
Table of Contents
Chapter 4: Not MicahAt what level is existence? Is it found at the surface level, that vague concept of reality that humanity clings too so pugnaciously? Is it found a layer lower, where electrical signals create your interpretations, reactions, and memories? Or deeper still, in the infinitesimal particles that constitute everything else above them, and share themselves freely with the surroundi...
January 26, 2025
The Wealth of Crustaceans
First off, this masterpiece of a book cover is from PaperbackParadise, who you should drop everything you’re doing and go follow.
I wrote this for our local open mic at the Cottonwood Center, which has been a really fulfilling thing for me recently. I went so long in my life without making any art, and then making things in a vacuum, that it really feels like growing into a local community is an incredible and enriching experience. Like a lost puppy, I stumbled around a few different spaces unt...
January 24, 2025
Transition: Chapter 3
Table of Contents
Chapter 3: MicahI wake in the dark. Some great beast breathes out, its mechanical chest rattles all around me. I’m trapped inside it, swallowed whole. I can feel its hot breath tickle my face. It pings, pops, creaks. It builds to a cacophony quickly, and then settles. My brain snaps into reality again, remembering where it is. How has humanity settled in geosynchronous orbit but still relies on this god awful elect...
January 17, 2025
Transition: Chapter 2
Table of Contents
Chapter 2: Not MicahWhile the man sleeps, I observe the rest of the station. It hums with the day’s activities, which appears mostly to me as a series of inconsequential tasks that are repeated mindlessly. One person cleans a thing, so another can make it dirty. One person makes food, so another can eat it. That same bustle that I see in all of the worlds. When viewed from high enough up, humans really do resemble ants.
It was down close, granular, wh...
January 16, 2025
The Ministry of Time
“If you ever fall in love, you’ll be a person who was in love for the rest of your life.”
If there is one thing I’ll say, now having finished The Ministry of Time, it is gorgeously written (and narrated in audiobook). Kaliane Bradley has a disarming quality to her prose, and her frequent metaphors, that had my heart aching as I repeated the lines aloud. She strikes that magical balance between humor and grief that hits the core of me. I lapped it up.
“I had always thought of joy as a shouting, ...
January 10, 2025
Transition: Chapter 1
A note before you continue onto the main event. This is a prequel to my debut novel, Transference. It’s available in a lot of different places, and I’d love it if you gave it a read. I put my novels up first on Substack, completely for free, because that’s the writing I’m doing. I’m releasing these as first-drafts, which means there will be errors, plot holes, and issues. Part of this is to normalize that writing is a process, and it doesn’t usually (ever) start with glorious perfection. Part of...
