Category Archives: Flash fiction

Where do they come from?

Flash fiction News Short stories No Comments

Where do you get your ideas from is a question often asked of authors, particularly speculative fiction writers. A question seldom fully answered because it’s more difficult than it appears.

“I don’t know, they sort of come to me,” is not a good answer, but true in part.

“I spent five years undercover in a cutting edge medical facility,” is also not a good answer, mainly because it’s not true. Except for when it is of course.

Here’s my answer for a story that has just been published by The Centropic Oracle as an audio piece read by a professional actor.

So, how did Happy Forever Day come about?

Firstly, I was intrigued by listening to Aubrey de Grey at a Virtual Futures event titled End Aging (https://www.virtualfutures.co.uk/salon/end-aging).

Secondly, I ran a survey to find out people’s attitudes to living forever, in particular what age they’d like to stop aging and why.

Then I mulled stuff over and wrote Happy Forever Day. I hope you enjoy the story and the way that Rob Gillespie brings it to life.

photo credit: Theo Crazzolara light Bulb via photopin (license)

Stimulate your dreams

Flash fiction Thoughts and speculation No Comments

If you’re looking for alternative bedtime stories or flashes of near-future fiction to infiltrate and steer your dreams then look no further.

In no particular order, pick the one you fancy and then take one a night or binge on the lot, the choice is yours…

  1. Everyday Stims: drugs for work, for play & establishment hypocrisy
  2. Make Me As You See Me: extreme body modification
  3. Loans for Limbs: who owns the tech in your body?
  4. I Want To Be Pure For Him: purging memories for a new lover
  5. The Never Ending Nanobot Nectar: the future of sex and drugs?
  6. Pumped Up Presidents: the descendants of Trump and Putin
  7. Effort Less: valuing work differently
  8. The Queen’s Heart: if we could converse with our organs
  9. The Potential: a surveillance butler follows your lover
  10. The Blockchain Blues: democracy muggers and micro-voting
  11. Placodermi Protection: new born babies, VR and ancient fish
  12. Modified Manhood: fertility food and the Procreators
photo credit: patrick.verstappen Strangled via photopin (license)

Inspired by Cyborg Cadavers

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Caro data vermibus
(flesh given to worms)

I’m inspired by the people I meet, the science I’m exposed to and the tech that might become, but it’s unusual for me to use art to inspire my near-future fiction. So, it was interesting to be asked to write a piece for Hallidonto’s latest exhibition – Cyborg Cadavers.

I read the blurb and pondered, studied the art and pondered and then had a few too many beers with the artist. Then, I let all that sink in and allowed a story to surface.

The result was Death Life Transfer and in the video below you can watch me reading it at the opening night of the exhibition, along with other contributors and Hallidonto himself.

The exhibition:

“Are we the fallen and in what image will be the re-imaging of our flesh.” Hallidonto 2019.

Hallidonto’s work explores these themes in an attempt to answer the complex questions that ever-evolving technology poses to humanity. In his latest work, ‘Cyborg Cadavers’ a series of nine pencil works that explore the very of concept of the body, and if we don’t choose wisely, we won’t be in a position to select the body we need or for that matter the body that is required. This poses deeper questions of we view ourselves within our technological world. Is the flesh redundant and shall we proceed with the morphological freedoms embedded within the post-humanist/ trans-humanist discourses where alteration and the evolution of body intertwined Halliidonto with other leading, artistic luminaries to explore the rise of the artificially sentient and the ascent of the cyborg. Hallidonto has curated nine speakers to respond to the work and pathos created by the artist.

You can find him at:

Website: https://hallidonto.onfabrik.com/ | Twitter: @Hallidonto
Insta: @hallidonto | Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Hallidonto/

Image: (c) Hallidonto