Novellas
Gilbert and Edgar on Mars, PS Publishing, 2009
G.K. Chesterton, fantastical novelist, literary journalist, paradoxical poet and prolific short story writer penned more than a hundred books in his lifetime as well as countless articles and essays on every subject under the sun – but only now can his travels across the face of the red planet be revealed.
Gilbert and Edgar on Mars recounts Chesterton’s astounding adventures on Mars, his meeting with Edgar Rice Burroughs and his treatment at the hands of the Six Philosophers.
Why was Chesterton whisked away from planet Earth – and will he ever return?
I love the work of Chesterton, and this is a light-hearted homage to the great man.
Starship Fall, NewCon Press, 2009
Starship Fall is the follow up novella to Starship Summer, quiet stories set on the backwater colony world of Chalcedony, Delta Pavonis !V.
David Conway leads a quiet life on the beachside resort of Magenta Bay, but all that is about to change. First he meets holo star Cartlotta Chakravorti-Luna, who regrets the lost loves of her past and the ebbing of her popularity and dreams of learning what the future mihgt hold. Then Conway’s alien friend Kee heads inland to take part in the Ashentay bone-smoking ritual, with potentially fatal consequences. What follows is the story of the convoluted tragedy which entangles Conway and his friends.
Starship Winter, the third in the series, will follow.
Starship Summer, PS Publishing, 2007
David Conway leaves Earth and settles on the backwater planet of Chalcedony, Delta Pavonis IV, in search of a quiet life away from the haunting reminders of his past. Living aboard a derelict spaceship in the quiet coastal community of Magenta Bay, he meets artist Matt Sommers, beachcomber Maddie Chamberlain and ex-starship pilot Hawksworth, and things seem about as perfect as he could hope… until he discovers that his ship is haunted by an alien spectre.
What follows will change Conway and his friends – and the future of humankind’s destiny in space – for ever.
To read Peter Hamilton’s introduction click the image.
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Revenge, Barrington Stoke, 2007
Dan’s got everything – and everything to lose.
Dan Radford has it all. He a big-name pro-footballer with a big house, fast cars, cash – and a drink problem.
When the star striker is dragged into a nightmare world of violence, kidnap, and blackmail, Dan makes a dangerous an enemy – an enemy who is out for revenge.
Revenge is the first novella I’ve written specifically for the adult reluctant reader market – a fast-paced, contemporary story for 18 to 30 year olds.
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The Extraordinary Voyage of Jules Verne, PS Publishing, 2005
Three years ago I had the idea for the Jules Verne anthology, to commemorate the centenary of his death in 1905. In the course of reading a lot of Verne’s novels and stories, and a couple of books about his life, the idea for this novella came to me.
Verne features as the central character, and we follow him through time – from Paris in the 1800s, back to the Cretaceous, and eventually into the far future. It’s an unabashed homage to his work, featuring many of his ideas – a headlong adventure full of all the usual Vernian tropes, plus a few things he never got round to writing about – like time travel and aliens.
To read Ian Watson’s introduction to this novella, click the image.
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Approaching Omega, Telos Publishing, 2005
I wrote Approaching Omega originally as a twenty thousand word novella for Interzone, where it was due to appear some time in 2004. However, due to the editorial change at that magazine, the new editor rejected the novella. I approached Telos to see if they would be interested in bringing it out as a stand-alone title. They were, but only if I added a few thousand words, which I did, with the insertion of a prologue, a coda, and a section in the middle of the story.
Approaching Omega is set aboard a vast starship carrying five thousand colonists in cold sleep, and a maintenance crew of five. The crew is awoken every thousand years or so to carry out checks and repairs and to oversee the well-being of the sleepers. However, early on in the mission they are awoken to find that the ship has been damaged and many of the colonists lost. This is only the start of the horror…
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A Writer’s Life, PS Publishing, 2001
Peter Crowther commissioned A Writer’s Life in 2000 for his PS Publishing novella series. It took a lot of thinking about, perhaps because it was very different to the kind of thing I’d been writing to date. I knew I wanted to write about a vanished writer, an old, haunted house, a first person narrator who was also a novelist, and the failing relationship I was then undergoing. Once all the elements came together, the book wrote itself in a week. As for classification… Horror, SF, Fantasy? I’ll leave that one for you to decide.
A note on the cover. The jacket is by the photographer Julian Flynn and features the ghostly image of my niece Maddie and, on the back cover, my good friend and fellow writer, the late Chris Burgess. It’s a brilliantly evocative piece of artwork and one which I think superbly captures the atmosphere of the story.