Monthly Archives: July 2023

New Anthology Highlight: Love and Other Punishments

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Over the past few weeks on the blog, I’m delved into the seven short stories and novellas contained within my recently released Love and Other Punishments dystopian sci-fi anthology. This week, I draw this series to a close with the titular novella itself.

Love and Other Punishments is a dystopian romantic mystery concerning, Shaun Harrison, a bereaved insurance salesman living in a not-too-distant future fascist London. Shaun’s wife and two children were murdered, and the grief has crushed him. The killer, Christopher Chapman, was sentenced to experience being stabbed in perpetuity, within a virtual reality matrix that continually resets itself. But such high-tech attempts at making the punishment fit the crime aren’t a comfort amid Shaun’s miserable existence.

Shaun begins to believe he has repressed memories when he encounters a mysterious woman, Lara Taylor. There is something familiar about her, but Shaun can’t put his finger on it. Images of a beach return to his mind, but he can’t place them. He and Lara become romantically involved, and for the first time in years, glimmers of happiness begin to return to Shaun. However, the mystery surrounding Lara deepens. Shaun is determined to discover the truth, but sometimes, the truth is best left undiscovered.

This story was inspired by an overthink on the nature of justice, and what Britain might look like in the future if it was run by the Daily Mail reading hang ‘em and flog ‘em brigade. At the same time, it’s a love story about memory and whether sometimes ignorance is bliss. I can’t say much more than that without getting into spoilers, but this final story in the collection is one of which I am most proud.

To order a copy of the Love and Other Punishments anthology, click here (for Amazon in the US), or here (for Amazon in the UK). Digital versions are also available from Smashwords (and their various outlets) here.

New Anthology Highlight: Apocalypse 1983

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Over the next few weeks on the blog, I’m delving into the seven short stories and novellas contained within my recently released Love and Other Punishments dystopian sci-fi anthology.

This week: Apocalypse 1983

Soviet Russia, 1983. Colonel Andrei Fedorov is assigned to replace Colonel Stanislav Petrov for his shift at Serpukhov-15 bunker, monitoring the Oko nuclear strike early warning system, as Colonel Petrov is ill. Fedorov takes over this dull assignment from Colonel Komorovksy. The pair exchange remarks about the contraband Variety magazine Komorovksy had been reading, concerning the recent David Lynch-directed third instalment in the Star Wars trilogy, Revenge of the Jedi. Komorovksy departs. Federov watches, reflecting that lately, he hasn’t spent enough time with his wife and daughter. 

Then, the unthinkable happens.

The Revenge of the Jedi remarks makes clear this story takes place in a parallel universe. David Lynch really was once offered the job of directing what became Return of the Jedi (Revenge of the Jedi was the working title George Lucas later changed). A far bigger difference between this history of our universe and that of Colonel Fedorov is also about to become apparent because in our universe, Colonel Stanislav Petrov – a real figure from history – was on duty on the fateful day I describe.

This story was inspired by the real-life 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident, in which Petrov, an officer of the Soviet Air Defence Forces, chose to ignore an alarm indicating the presence of incoming American nuclear missiles. Standing orders were to alert his superiors to wait for corroborating evidence; an instruction Petrov deliberately disregarded, as he knew this would cause the button to be pushed. When no such evidence arrived, he correctly concluded the warning had been a false alarm, caused by errors in the satellite warning system.

Petrov’s instincts are widely credited for having averted a full-scale nuclear war between the USA and USSR. Furthermore, Petrov subsequently stated that had someone else been on duty that night, a nuclear strike would almost certainly have occurred, as the other duty officers did not have a civilian background, and their military mindset would have meant orders were followed to the letter. Petrov was not rewarded for his heroic actions, but he was reprimanded by his superiors for improper filing of paperwork.

The inspiration for Apocalypse 1983 was simply to imagine what might have happened had Petrov not been on duty. Thinking about how close we came to a nuclear apocalypse freezes my blood. As for the story’s place in this collection, at a brisk 2,000 words, it acts as a palate cleanser between the suspense thrills of Sweet Dreams, and the enigmatic romantic mystery of Love and Other Punishments, the final novella in the collection.

To order a copy of the Love and Other Punishments anthology, click here (for Amazon in the US), or here (for Amazon in the UK). Digital versions are also available from Smashwords (and their various outlets) here.

New Anthology Highlight: Sweet Dreams

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Over the next few weeks on the blog, I’m delving into the seven short stories and novellas contained within my recently released Love and Other Punishments dystopian sci-fi anthology.

This week: Sweet Dreams

Ali, a young journalist, investigates tech company Astral, which manufactures nightmare-suppressing nanotech for children. “Sweet Dreams” is the name of the software, which is injected into babies at birth, and is now as commonplace as routine vaccinations. A generation has grown up since parents started implanting Sweet Dreams into their children. As a result, teenagers now expect nightmares at the onset of puberty, along with other bodily changes, as the nanotech is programmed to disintegrate at that time. 

However, in a small handful of cases, the nanotech remains in operation, as nightmares are not forthcoming. Ali is one such person, as she has never had a nightmare. By contrast, her boyfriend Malcolm is an “anti-Sweet”: a child raised without Sweet Dreams nanotech by parents who had scruples about the software. Such people are a tiny minority, but with an apparent rise in suicides among those who failed to get nightmares at puberty has led to political controversy, hence Ali’s investigation into Astral. 

Murder and more murder soon follow, with Ali realising she may be in over her head in a web of paranoia, conspiracy, and cover-ups. But how high up does the conspiracy go? Who can she trust?

Themes of playing God and the dangers of mollycoddling are inherent in the subject matter, but quite honestly Sweet Dreams isn’t meant to be terribly deep. My main motivation in writing was to create a gripping tech-murder mystery novella. One thing I will add is that this absolutely and emphatically is not intended as an anti-vaccination metaphor, however much some readers may be determined to read that into it. 

That said, the prospect of putting nanotech and microchips in our brains is another matter entirely. It does alarm me when I read of people who’d be quite willing to embrace such technology without any qualms. Also, what parents do in this story, attempting in a very literal sense to protect their children from bad dreams, perhaps drew inspiration from overprotective parents I’ve encountered in real life. When they don’t let their children read scary books or see scary films (despite children’s inherent curiosity about such things), I think this can be developmentally stifling and potentially unhealthy. Then again, you’d doubtless expect nothing less than an opinion like this from a parent like me, given the nature of some of my writing (including my children’s novels). My views on such matters are well-documented.

To order a copy of the Love and Other Punishments anthology, click here (for Amazon in the US), or here (for Amazon in the UK). Digital versions are also available from Smashwords (and their various outlets) here.