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Isolation story: (14) The Land of Grunts and Squeaks

Something happens which means that people can no longer relate to one another as they used to do, and have to find new ways of communicating.

The stories I’ve been collecting together here all deal with isolation of some kind or other, but this one is surely the closest analogue of the isolation we’re currently experiencing.

This story was written for a recent anthology called Once Upon a Parsec, published by Newcon Press, and edited by David Gullen, who had the brilliant idea of ‘fairytales told by aliens’ as a theme. Do check it out. There are stories by Jaine Fenn, Una McCormack, Kim Lakin-Smith, Paul Di Filippo, Adrian Tchaikovsky and many others.

My thanks to Ian Whates of Newcon Press for permission to use the story here.

Isolation story: (13) We Could Be Sisters

One of my best stories.

The character Jessica Ferne previously appeared in the story ‘The Turing Test’ which I included as the third of these ‘isolation stories’.

The artist, Julian Smart, also appears as the major character in another story of mine, ‘Creation’, which is in my collection, Spring Tide.

I like stories that link together. Tammy also appeared in two other stories. One was called ‘Tammy Pendant’ – I incorporated it into my novel Marcher. It caused a minor controversy when it was published in Asimov’s SF in 2004, and contributed to the magazine being withdrawn from school libraries in one of the Midwestern states, I forget which. The other story with Tammy in it was called ‘Poppyfields’ and is included in my Peacock Cloak collection.

‘We Could Be Sisters’ also first appeared in Asimov’s in 2004, and is included in my first short story collection, The Turing Test.

Isolation story: (12) The Famous Cave Paintings on Isolus 9

It’s got a somewhat preposterous space-opera-y setting (a writer with his own private starship!) but this story is very definitely about isolation. It’s even there in the title.

The character Clancy originally appeared in another story, collected in The Turing Test, called ‘The Marriage of Sky and Sea.’ He’s also the narrator of a story called ‘Monsters’.

This story was first published by Postscripts in 2009 (in anthology #19, Enemy of the Good), and subsequently included in my second collection, The Peacock Cloak.

Isolation story: (11) Karel’s Prayer

I can’t imagine anything that would make me feel more isolated than being completely in the power of enemies who meant me harm.

This story was first published in Interzone in 2006 and is included in my first collection, The Turing Test.

Isolation story: (10) The End of Time

What you get here is the entire history of the universe, an explanation for the Fermi paradox, and a debate about the purpose of life. Say what you like about my stories, they deal with the big questions.

You also get isolation of the most extreme kind.

This story comes from my Spring Tide collection (which I’d very much like more people to read). Most of the stories in the book are more-or-less realist stories with contemporary settings, and none is science fiction – but ‘The End of the Time’ is the one that comes closest.

Isolation story: (9) The Perimeter

The isolation in this case consists, for two of the characters, in being among the last real human beings left in London, and, for one character, in discovering that they are…

Well, read the story.

This story, another personal favourite of mine, first appeared in Asimov’s SF in 2005 and was collected in The Turing Test.

Isolation story: (8) To Become a Warrior

Finding it hard to concentrate on new work at the moment, I’m taking a ridiculous amount of care over my choice of these isolation stories, and the sequence I present them in! If you want the full effect, scroll down and start at (1) and read through them in order.

‘To Become a Warrior’ appeared in Interzone in 2002, and was included in Gardner Dozois’s Year’s Best anthology for that year. I never included it in one of my own short story collections because I used it instead as an element of my novel Marcher.

Towards the turn of this century I became aware that there was a reaction on the way against liberal, secular, technocratic modernity (and I was right!) This was reflected in my first novel, The Holy Machine, as well as in the group of short stories which became Marcher.

This version of To Become a Warrior, which I posted on this site a couple of years ago, has a different ending from the one originally published. I felt that was more appropriate in the world as it now was. (In the novel, which deals with parallel time lines, there are three different endings to the story, as Carl makes three different choices.)

I am myself a former social worker. A ‘deskie’ in the terms of this story.

Isolation stories: (7) Aphrodite

This is another of my personal favourites and comes from my most recent collection, Spring Tide. Since the two characters only meet very briefly in the middle of the story I think it qualifies as an isolation story. Being alone isn’t always bad.

Like ‘The Kite’ (story 4), it contains no science fictional elements whatever, except perhaps that in both cases I try to come at familiar places on Earth as if they were on an alien planet.

My beautiful granddaughter is called Aphrodite, as it happens, but she is only one, and this was written two or three years before she was born.

Isolation stories: (6) The Desiccated Man

A kind of horror story with an SF setting. Originally published by Postscripts in 2010 and subsequently collected in The Peacock Cloak. The idea of ‘tardies’ came from a real-life creature.

Isolation stories: (5) Dark Eden

No, not the novel, but the short story of the same name that was the prequel to the novel: the story of how people first came to live on the planet Eden. This story first appeared in Asimov’s SF in 2006, and was subsequently included in my collection, The Turing Test. (It isn’t the first story I wrote set in Eden, that was ‘The Circle of Stones’ which was published in Interzone in 1992, 20 years before the novel Dark Eden).

This is not the most brilliantly written of my stories, to be honest. (I think the previous story, ‘The Kite’, is about as good as I’m capable of.) But it has proved very productive, since this story is referred to throughout the Eden novels, right up to the final line of the final book.

Anyway, you don’t get much more isolated than the characters in this story.

PS: The Ballantyne effect is named after my good friend Tony Ballantyne, who suggested it.