1. Pothole–this happened to me, well to most of us–a cyclist in Madrid bunny hops over a small pothole. The hole doubles every day. His physics student girlfriend is able to work out the hole will swallow Madrid in x days, the world a few days later. The universe, or this one, in less than four months! A new story.
  2. View From–a man wakes up on the ceiling of his apartment. He’s stuck. Communicates with girlfriend through the door, but suspects she might have something to do with his plight. Described by one editor as Kafkaesque, so true. A new story.
  3. Gravity’s Tears–In Canada a meteor shower actually reaches the ground–some folk on a highway get caught as if machine gunned by the small meteorites. Actually, a kind of love story between two of the characters as they react to the stress of the situation in unfamiliar ways. Published in Jupiter magazine 2008
  4. Mind of Its Own–Merlin reluctantly creates a spell to please a girl. It gets out of hand. Published as the Monthly Story, British Fantasy Society October 2016
  5. Wrong Number–A man’s new phone receives a call from orbit. He has to convince the world of an impending doom, but first has to convince his wife it’s not a subterfuge for an affair. Published in 2005 by Bewildering Stories issue #165
  6. Tumbler’s Gift–a young man can unlock anything just by being close to it. Useful, but dangerous especially when a futuristic portal being jammed needs his gift. Published by Perihelion SF 2016
  7. Don’t Bite My Finger–a novice Buddhist monk has a mission to use his powers to stop an old mountain top temple from inching over a precipice and crashing into the valley on top of the monastery.  He has odd help and kind of fails and yet doesn’t. A well-known Zen koan is used in the title. As in other clever koans, it opens with an apparent absurdity, Don’t bite my finger. However, the question why then is someone pointing a finger towards someone’s face is neatly answered by the last line of the koan…I am pointing the way. Much of the story revolves around the more experienced novice instructing the very new novice with often ironic results. Published in Monk Punk anthology edited by A.J. French 2011
  8. 466Hz–I disembarked from a bus on a Spanish island and my tinnitus gave me a single note of B flat and the idea for this tale. A sound engineer gets off a bus in Mallorca and hears a single note, but everyone hears it, all over the world. It gets louder by one decibel every day. He researches with others. If it continues it would kill not just humans. New story.
  9. What Kept You? A rescue mission reaches a planet only to find the aliens either stationary or at huge speed. They find grim evidence of some of their colleagues forcing an unusual time-related aspect to their mission. Besides the plot, this story was an experiment to see how an initially obnoxious character can become a reader’s favourite. Published in Ultraverse 2004
  10. Dummies Guide to Saving Lives–Set on the ‘Spenny’: a pedestrian only suspension bridge in quaint Chester, UK near where I live. A  man tries to talk an apparent suicide attempt from jumping off a bridge, but things get turned around. Won the Café Doom story contest 2004
  11. Recursive Spam–flash short. Email spam becomes world-threatening. New story.
  12. Convolvulus–plant geneticist in the US creates a genetically-modified plant with bindweed (convolvulus) that cannot be killed, grows very fast and cannot be stopped. The premise formed my first novel written in the 1980s but started with bindweed seeds found and liberated from Jurassic-age amber. The novel was kindly read, critiqued and rejected by a publisher and in a pique of upset, I destroyed it. Later I discovered that Michael Crichton was a reader for that publisher in the 1980s. I like to think he’d read my Convolvulus, improved and expanded it to animals in his terrific Jurassic Park (1990).  Basically chapter 5 from ARIA: Abandoned Luggage. 2014
  13. Slow Crash–unlike in movies asteroids cannot be in a close cluster because gravity would pull them together, surprisingly quickly. However, there are rare circumstances of multiple force vectors that could make this happen. The actions of a solo astronaut miner set in action a slow crash of two ‘large’ asteroids.–twist, well you probably won’t see it coming. New story.
  14. Prime Meridian–a house in Chingford, on the prime meridian, zero degrees longitude, is hit by a grape-sized meteorite, every day, at the same time. In my research for this story I stayed in a Chingford hotel right on the prime meridian and walked from north to south London as near as possible to that zero degree longitude. Ironically (you’ll see), I found an aerospace company right on the line. I told the hotel owner that his establishment was likely to be the only hotel in the world on the Greenwich (Prime) Meridian, but he didn’t seem impressed! Published in The Twisted Tales anthology by Readers of Avenue Park, 2016
  15. Three Minutes–after a small explosion on a plane, a man falls out but has time to reflect on things as he nears the ground. Won the Café Doom flash challenge 2006
  16. Prodigal Sun–mathematical genius working in lab with a powerful accelerator creates a cusp in space time. New story.
  17. Accident Waiting to Happen–a heavy book high on a shelf, teeters incrementally and hopefully will fall on Manuel’s love rival in their quest to woo the librarian. Published by eFantasy Magazine 2013
  18. Battle of Trafalgar–a young woman wakes up on top of Nelson’s Column, a very tall statue in London. She can’t draw attention to her plight because she killed her psychiatrist the day before. The Editor’s pick in The Horror Zine as Her Battle of Trafalgar 2013
  19. Target Practice–An asteroid bound for Earth is deflected by a manned mission, but the rock comes back on course, and again so. This story was rejected by one magazine because they didn’t believe that in a couple of centuries time the Chinese might have more space capability than other countries, and by another for the sex in space scene (not really X-rated). Published by the more enlightened Encounters Magazine 2013
  20. Colloidal Suspension–an escape pod lands safely on a totally-liquid planet, but their craft immediately sinks, and their lifeboat starts sinking too. Published in Chaosism’s Extreme Planets anthology ed by David Conyers 2014
  21. Clockwork–a fictional day in 1617, in the life of the real Sir Francis Bacon when he finds a rope that needs to be pulled to save the planet. The style and period of this story was inspired by Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel Galileo’s Dream. Published by New Realms vol 04 #12 2016
  22. Locked Out–A mission to study at close range, a comet hitting Mercury (because Mars is so yesterday), becomes life threatening when one crew member won’t let the other back in after going outside. Published by Perihelion SF magazine April 2017
  23. The Judgment Rock–An asteroid miner, after being found guilty of illegal activity is set adrift in space inside a sentient spacesuit near an asteroid. He needs to survive and seek revenge, but mostly he has to argue with his spacesuit. Published in Estronomicon ezine by Screaming Dreams 2008
  24. In Absentia–A man thinks he has amnesia, but discovers he is the imaginary friend of a little girl. He plots to survive, but at each step needs to take another. Editor’s Pick The Horror Zine January 2010
  25. Een’s Revolt on Zadik–A prequel to the ARIA Trilogy. Crashlanded aliens on the Zadok planetary system. They try to cope with the ‘alien’ planet, but it seems only grandfather Een is in tune with the toks, who are sentient en mass but not as individual birds. The toks reappear to help Manuel in ARIA: Abandoned Luggage. Published in Science Fiction Writers Sampler 2014