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It was the beginning of my summer break, and as always at this time of the year, I went to stay with my grandparents for a few weeks. Gone was the boring school, the mundane chores of everyday life, gone were the never-ending lectures of my parents. I was fifteen and a little too jaunty to start giving myself, or my life, a more serious thought.

As I was lying on my back, listening to the whines and whispers of the house, I heard feet tapping on the kitchen linoleum next door. Before I could brace myself, something big and hairy fell right next to me with an ear-popping “Gooood mooorniiiing”. The irritatingly cheerful face that stared at me belonged to none other than my beloved cousin who I knew ever since I could walk. Only a few months older than me, he was “the more responsible one” as my mom used to say. Still, I loved him like a brother and at that time, and on that very day, I couldn’t picture my summer without him.

“C’mon , let’s go! Grandma’s already off to the allotment!”

“Right…what time is it?” I asked still a bit sleepy.

”Eight fifteen…and guess what?! I finally found my knife!” He said with a mix of triumph and childish happiness.

I dragged myself from the makeshift bed into the bathroom. I splashed icy cold water on my face and as I was brushing my teeth, I saw him standing by the door, fully dressed and fixing knife to his belt. Still half asleep, I changed myself into my summer shorts, put on a shirt and a pair of ragged trainers. I locked the door and we emerged from the cool house onto a hot and busy street.

Read the full story here.

A great day for sci-fi fans, at least in the UK and Ireland. A new novel by Alastair Reynolds called Terminal World gets released today. Here is a short description of the story.

Spearpoint, the last human city, is an atmosphere-piercing spire of vast size. Clinging to its skin are the zones, a series of semi-autonomous city-states, each of which enjoys a different – and rigidly enforced – level of technology. Horsetown is pre-industrial; in Neon Heights they have television and electric trains . . . Following an infiltration mission that went tragically wrong, Quillon has been living incognito, working as a pathologist in the district morgue. But when a near-dead angel drops onto his dissecting table, Quillon’s world is wrenched apart one more time, for the angel is a winged posthuman from Spearpoint’s Celestial Levels – and with the dying body comes bad news. If Quillon is to save his life, he must leave his home and journey into the cold and hostile lands beyond Spearpoint’s base, starting an exile that will take him further than he could ever imagine. But there is far more at stake than just Quillon’s own survival, for the limiting technologies of the zones are determined not by governments or police, but by the very nature of reality – and reality itself is showing worrying signs of instability.

Reynolds, probably best known for his Revelation Space novels, specialises in dark science-fiction, space operas and noir toned stories. As of 2008 he has published over thirty shorter works and nine novels. The inventions and theories described are usually based on his professional expertise with physics and astronomy gained during his involvement with the European Space Research and Technology Centre.

I particularly like his Century Rain, which is set outside the Revelation Space. It’s a noir sci-fi set set partially in the 23rd century and in 1950s Paris.

Twenty-third-century Earth is an uninhabitable wasteland overrun by rogue nanotechnology. When archaeologist Verity Auger, studying the relics of twentieth- and twenty-first-century Earth, is accused of reckless endangerment after a child in her care nearly dies, shadowy government forces within her department offer her an out in the form of a mission to retrieve information from somewhere where her knowledge of the mid-twentieth century will be useful. Not until she is well underway do they inpart that her destination is an ALS (anomalous large structure) at the end of a wormhole in which 1950s Earth, slightly changed, is preserved. At that other end of the wormhole, Wendell Floyd is a Parisian PI working a case that gets stranger and more dangerous as he and partner Custine uncover the evidence, which is precisely the information Verity must fetch. The threads come together in a race to save both Earths from extremists, in which Verity and Floyd frantically search for the significance and location of three metal spheres.

Anybody else familiar with Reynolds?

I am not a particular fan of bureaucracy and like most, I always find myself clicking the ‘Skip’ button when I get on the copyright or terms & conditions page of a document, software or any other IP.

On the other hand, as a content publisher, I have become conscious of protecting the intellectual property of the content creator (myself). My original intention with this site was to publish password protected documents to previously approved subscribers. The feedback I received suggests that such a ‘push’ model repels rather than attracts the site visitors. As a result, I decided to publish my stories and related postings as a free content that you can freely copy and distribute. To protect my IP, I simply ask you to refrain from using the content for any commercial purposes or altering it in any possible way. The full-length stories will become available as a PDF viewable document via Scribd.

It is a sleepy Sunday afternoon and the street is still and quiet, save the occasional tinkle of cutlery and sound of TV coming from the houses. Buried in my own thoughts, I walk slowly down the road and as usual subconsciously try to avoid cracks in the pavement. I look up and suddenly spot my niece on the other side as she walks up the hill, towards the direction of the park. I have spoken to her only occasionally as she is almost twenty years my junior and always away whenever I stop by.
I notice she walks briskly, reminding me of a quicksilver temperament of her late mother, but I also recognize something odd that makes me stop in my tracks. With her arms folded, pressing against her stomach and slightly bent like caught frozen in some apologetic bow, I realize that this is not the Charlotte I remember. While standing there and contemplating about what to do I notice that she unknowingly drops something small and white. Observing the unexpected, I suddenly want to shake off my pathological habit of cowardly ignorance and cross the street and pick up what appears to be a small linen handkerchief. I run after her hoping to catch her before she disappears into the park but she’s too fast and I am too embarrassed to call out.

Panting and catching my breath, I enter the park and lean against an immense tree. I unfasten my tie and with my thoughts racing far ahead of me, I wipe my forehead with the linen still clutched in my hand. I look around, waiting while my eyes slowly adjust to the shade of the park, and finally I spot her sitting on a wooden bench about a hundred feet away, near to the observation tower. Looking at the city’s bay, she appears to be mesmerized and fully consumed by the vista and completely unaware of me or other park visitors, of which there are not many. Still not sure if what I do is right, I walk cautiously towards her, like looking some invisible trap.

Read the full story here.

Lately, I embarked on a journey for the search of my creative self. This may sound a little confusing but it was exactly how I felt when I signed up for the Creative Writing course at a university in Glasgow.

Sorry, I should rephrase that – my journey really started a couple of years ago when I had a dream. In that dream was a boy who through the series of fantastic events has inadvertently become a part of the plot to change the world as we know it. The dream was so vivid and detailed; it almost reeked of the sole purpose – to re-ignite my creative thinking, to add another dimension to the otherwise ordinary life.

A lot has happened since then. I got married; I have a beautiful daughter and a different job to start with. The new circumstances have become much more demanding on my time than I ever allowed myself to imagine and like with some other things, I guess I could have just abandon the whole idea of writing and label it as superstitious. Somewhere deep inside me though, I felt the flicker of ambition growing stronger with every book, every person, every single experience I encountered.

Today, it’s not really clear if my endeavors will lead to something significant but I am sure as hell that I thoroughly enjoy being someone with more than just a job and a series of mundane choirs to live through. As selfish as this may sound, I feel a sense of satisfaction when I am away and immersed in the process of writing. Those of you who have been writing for some time know how gratifying it is to see the ideas ripe into something multidimensional and rich.

So, what are you going to see from me? It’s premature to speak about a full-length novel or something of an equal magnitude. What I can reveal is that you will get to read some short stories here, tips for new books and other similarly driven themes.

See you around!