"Memes of Loss and Devotion is an unforgettable, enigmatic journey that readers will not forget. Intellectual and compelling, this is commendable material." 5/5 Lit Amri for Readers' Favorite
"Darren White possesses a true talent for enthralling storytelling...these tales left a decided impact and I foresee myself pondering over them for quite some time, which, to me, is a sign of a great craftsman." 5/5 Deede
"Memes of Loss and Devotion’ is a heady, visceral trip—it will blow your mind away and choke your heart in a death-grip—and I mean that in the most positive way." 10/10 Meghan for New York Book Pundit
"What I loved most is the voice. The title evokes a feeling that carries throughout. Each story is told in a breathy, haunting way. Each story made me feel. Each story made me consider something I had never considered before." 4/5 Samantha Saboviec, Magic & Mayhem
"White does an exceptional job of capturing emotion, a notable accomplishment. I really enjoyed this collection. I highly recommend it, it's a great bargain too." 4/5 Lori L, she treads softly
"Darren White possesses a true talent for enthralling storytelling...these tales left a decided impact and I foresee myself pondering over them for quite some time, which, to me, is a sign of a great craftsman." 5/5 Deede
"Memes of Loss and Devotion’ is a heady, visceral trip—it will blow your mind away and choke your heart in a death-grip—and I mean that in the most positive way." 10/10 Meghan for New York Book Pundit
"What I loved most is the voice. The title evokes a feeling that carries throughout. Each story is told in a breathy, haunting way. Each story made me feel. Each story made me consider something I had never considered before." 4/5 Samantha Saboviec, Magic & Mayhem
"White does an exceptional job of capturing emotion, a notable accomplishment. I really enjoyed this collection. I highly recommend it, it's a great bargain too." 4/5 Lori L, she treads softly
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Promotion:
For a strictly limited period, the Amazon Kindle version of "Memes of Loss and Devotion" is available at a very special, promotional price of only $2.99c / £1.99p / €2,99c. Get it while you can! Click here to Purchase |
"Memes of Loss and Devotion"
"Memes of Loss and Devotion" is a collection of fifteen speculative short stories examining the human condition, our possible futures, our challenges as a species and our failings as sentient, supposedly intelligent beings.
"Simply brilliant." Lucinda, Goodreads
Journey to a far future where all human minds are connected not only to each other but also to benevolent Artificial Intelligences. Technology may have changed, but the human condition has not, and neither has the human heart.
"Darren is able to convey the rawest of human emotions, fear, love, sadness, and anger. Incredibly well-written, and intellectually-stimulating, reminiscent of Ray Bradbury." AEP, Amazon US
A not so random encounter in a hotel bar triggers unforeseen consequences, but just who is the hunter and who is the prey? If you thought that romance in the early 21st century is a minefield, just add advanced technology and see how much more dangerous it can get.
"A thrilling surprise find! Expertly written, thought provoking and compelling." Miss K, Amazon UK
Can love survive death? What happens when devotion unexpectedly returns from beyond the grave? A doomed love triangle is destined to end in disaster in a haunting story of passion that can never be reciprocated.
"I really, really wanted it to be good... and it delivered" 4/5 Amazon Customer "Len", Amazon US
What if men were obsolete? What if new technology meant that the human race could continue without them? How far would you go to prevent this?
Finally, a gun-toting, resourceful hero will get the girl, kill the baddies, and save the entire planet, probably...
"I would recommend this book to those who enjoy science fiction and futuristic fiction." 4/5 Erica Lovett, Goodreads
In this collection you will also witness a little girl arguing colonization morals with an elderly alien, while another girl will be 'fixed' by time travelling angels. An astronaut will be rescued (eventually) while another never will be. A deadly connection will be made. A private investigator will lose important parts of his memory on a distant moon. A future colonist never get his girl. A time machine will be abused. An alien observer will be lost. A sister's sister will find her true home.
"These aren't run of the mill stories and pose genuinely interesting and thoughtful questions about our present and future in a well written and engaging fashion." Jerome Wilson, Goodreads
See below for more information about each story, such as when I wrote it, what inspired it and what it means to me.
"Every story is as strong as the next and none were included “just because.”" Magic & Mayhem
The final list of stories is below:
"Simply brilliant." Lucinda, Goodreads
Journey to a far future where all human minds are connected not only to each other but also to benevolent Artificial Intelligences. Technology may have changed, but the human condition has not, and neither has the human heart.
"Darren is able to convey the rawest of human emotions, fear, love, sadness, and anger. Incredibly well-written, and intellectually-stimulating, reminiscent of Ray Bradbury." AEP, Amazon US
A not so random encounter in a hotel bar triggers unforeseen consequences, but just who is the hunter and who is the prey? If you thought that romance in the early 21st century is a minefield, just add advanced technology and see how much more dangerous it can get.
"A thrilling surprise find! Expertly written, thought provoking and compelling." Miss K, Amazon UK
Can love survive death? What happens when devotion unexpectedly returns from beyond the grave? A doomed love triangle is destined to end in disaster in a haunting story of passion that can never be reciprocated.
"I really, really wanted it to be good... and it delivered" 4/5 Amazon Customer "Len", Amazon US
What if men were obsolete? What if new technology meant that the human race could continue without them? How far would you go to prevent this?
Finally, a gun-toting, resourceful hero will get the girl, kill the baddies, and save the entire planet, probably...
"I would recommend this book to those who enjoy science fiction and futuristic fiction." 4/5 Erica Lovett, Goodreads
In this collection you will also witness a little girl arguing colonization morals with an elderly alien, while another girl will be 'fixed' by time travelling angels. An astronaut will be rescued (eventually) while another never will be. A deadly connection will be made. A private investigator will lose important parts of his memory on a distant moon. A future colonist never get his girl. A time machine will be abused. An alien observer will be lost. A sister's sister will find her true home.
"These aren't run of the mill stories and pose genuinely interesting and thoughtful questions about our present and future in a well written and engaging fashion." Jerome Wilson, Goodreads
See below for more information about each story, such as when I wrote it, what inspired it and what it means to me.
"Every story is as strong as the next and none were included “just because.”" Magic & Mayhem
The final list of stories is below:
*Note: the story Every Silver Lining Has A Cloud was the inspiration for the novel theFomlhautPlague. It appears in its original form, exactly as it inspired the novel.
"Grown up sci-fi. Closer to literature than sci-fi." G McFadden, Amazon US
Sample stories can also be viewed in the Amazon Kindle 'Look Inside' sample chapters.
"He presents a future that feels plausible and just a little unsettling. Thought provoking and readable, sometimes dark but not without humour." James Martin, Goodreads
Scroll down for more information about each story...
"Grown up sci-fi. Closer to literature than sci-fi." G McFadden, Amazon US
Sample stories can also be viewed in the Amazon Kindle 'Look Inside' sample chapters.
"He presents a future that feels plausible and just a little unsettling. Thought provoking and readable, sometimes dark but not without humour." James Martin, Goodreads
Scroll down for more information about each story...
Goodreads Book Giveaway
Memes of Loss and Devotion
by Darren White
Giveaway ends January 30, 2014.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.
"Highly readable and thought provoking these darkly sinister, scintillating stories are full of originality and striking creative imagery." Lucinda, Goodreads
"A thoroughly enjoyable read." Krishna Srinivasan, Amazon US
"An easy book to recommend." Gav, Amazon UK
Story by Story.
Synopsis & background notes on the stories that make up the collection "Memes of Loss and Devotion" (Warning: spoilers follow.)
"very, very thought provoking." Tringhenge, Amazon UK
Hope
In the far future, a man returns to his former home to retrieve the woman he loves.
I wrote Hope on a university friend’s 286 PC, using Word Perfect or Word Star, in spring 1993, when I was just 23 years old. I sat down and wrote through the night while my housemates slept. I was supposed to be writing an assignment at the time.
It virtually hasn’t changed since, apart from a bit of a polish and a technology update in 2012. I just sat down and started writing without plotting, which for me is very, very unusual, and I had no idea where the story was going.
For a long, long time, this was my favourite story. (I think at this point in time “Death Ship” holds that distinction.) The title pretty much gives away what it is about.
Seduction Games
A supposedly random encounter in a hotel leads to romance, but is there more going on here than there first seems?
This started life as a scene in my first novel “The Fomalhaut Plague” and was one of the last two stories to be written, along with “Death Ship”, sometime in winter 2012. It initially had a joke, sordid ending before I got serious about it.
In many ways, this is a correction of how I think the start of the Singularity will look like, as tech moves into our brains and advanced computing, biotech and nanotech come together and expand our intelligence and accelerate our thinking. I wanted to examine what might happen when we hand our minds and perception of reality over to artificial manipulation.
I also think that it raises quite an interesting philosophical question; if our sense of self, identity and history is based on our memories, and those memories can be modified, destroyed or even created by third parties, then where does that leave us as individuals? These may be questions that we are forced to consider later in this century.
Lastly, I always think that every seduction feels like a trick, a sordid confidence trick. You're trying to 'seal the deal' before revealing who you really are. Before you remove yourself from consideration by diverging too far from their preconceived idea of perfection. There are techniques to be deployed, 'tells' to be discovered and buttons to be pushed. I added the technology to highlight some of these. Almost all of the techniques shown have an analogue equivalent. Maybe I should write a book about these?
You can still find the original passage, in its original context in the novel “The Fomalhaut Plague” (to be released in 2017 / 2018).
"Seduction Games made me want to know more about the world it was taking place in" 4/5 Amazon Customer "Len", Amazon US
Soul Destroying
A ghost story of a love returning from beyond the grave.
Another one of my University, post break-up stories from either 1992 or 1993. This is about the breakup of a long term relationship, and is really some sort of revenge fantasy about my former girlfriend and her new boyfriend. I was obviously very angry, but these days, some twenty plus years later, I just can’t find those feelings anymore. Again it was therapy masquerading as literature. I know quite a lot of people who like this story.
I wanted it to be quite timeless, hence the policeman’s helmet and car tailfins etc. It already feels quite dated, as I wrote it more than two decades ago.
What this story is ultimately about is identity, in the respect of being a social actor. Of being someone who changes their behaviour, and maybe even appearance, in an attempt to be accepted or to fit in with peers or into a given social situation. We’re all social actors in our working lives. Some people are also actors in their personal lives.
I often, quite consciously, refer to ‘releasing the new you’ and reinventing yourself to allow new experiences into your life and new chapters to begin. This story was a realisation that I couldn’t move on without destroying the old me and fabricating a new persona in order to enable the future.
"chillingly evocative" 10/10 Meghan for New York Book Pundit
Ethnomethodology
A little girl discusses colonization morals with an elderly alien, whose planet we now share.
I’m pretty sure that the title came first. I became interested in undiscovered human tribes who make contact with the rest of civilization for the first time and how it never goes well for the lesser civilization. I wanted to show it from an alien point of view and show how a more enlightened human race could still get it wrong.
I also wrote it in the mid 1990’s to fit into the technology and continuum of ‘Hope’. I have since reworked it to fit (almost) into the wider ‘Fomalhaut’ timelines, but I have a workaround for the remaining discrepancies. I also wanted a different type of alien, but one who could still fit into a hominin niche and be used as an analogy for the human race.
While it was being edited, a plan occurred to expand it into a future novel which I’m quite excited by. In the novel we’ll see just how far the human race has ‘evolved’ (post singularity) and how God-like in capability they’ve become. It’s currently pencilled in for novel #7 (2020?), so don’t hold your breath waiting for it.
This story is about misplaced pride, about how it really does come before a fall. It’s about how a supposedly wise and enlightened human race can be tricked by over confidence in itself into making ethical mistakes.
"Ethnomethodology is my favorite. I was utterly immersed. The interesting eye-opener about this story is that we could easily understand Ny’thei’s concern and think about our ethics as human beings." 5/5 Lit Amri for Readers' Favorite
"I'm still sitting on the hill with that little girl and the elder alien, considering what it must be like for a primitive race whose wildest imaginings were made laughable by the arrival of space farers. And that’s exactly what good science fiction should do." Magic & Mayhem
Sub Rosa
A young girl’s visions of angels coincide with her parent’s separation.
Written sometime in the mid to late 1990’s, this was a very, very conscious attempt to branch out the type of stories that I wrote.
I was heavily influenced by a 70’s short story in which a mother sees an alien ‘dismantle’ her disabled daughter in the garden only to have her disability ‘fixed’ when the alien reassembled her. Mine doesn’t quite go that far and I wanted it to be quite ambiguous as to whether the angels exist outside of the girl’s imagination. I also wanted the sci-fi element to sneak into the story late, like a Stephen King novel, to the point that you’re not sure if what you’re reading is sci-fi at all.
This story is really about how the human mind can construct alternate realities in order to process and assimilate unpalatable truths. Does the girl retreat into a fantasy, in which she is special, in order to deal with her feelings of abandonment form her absent father?
"“Sub Rosa” packs a shock at what a little girl’s angels actually are." 4/5 Erica Lovett, Goodreads
Every Silver Lining Has A Cloud
A lone crew member on a stranded star ship longs for rescue. When he spots another ship he believes that against all hope his dreams have come true.
This was originally written in 1994/95. I had an idea about the desperation of being shipwrecked in a crippled ship in interplanetary or interstellar space. Of how impossibly small the possibility of rescue would be.
It took on a life of its own during writing and didn’t quite work out the way I envisaged it. I also didn’t want a totally bleak ending (although I revisit this concept with a vengeance in “Death Ship”), and had to give it a bit of an upbeat ending.
After I wrote it I became obsessed with the people in the story – who were they, how did they come to be here, what’s their back story. I plotted it all together intending to write it up as a novel. When I graduated from University in the summer of 1996, I started writing to fill the gaps in job hunting. Just six (6!) shorts weeks later I had a job and a first draft of my first novel “The Fomalhaut Plague.”
In November 2012 I started the current massive rewrite, greatly updating the future technology and adding layers to the story that didn’t originally exist. It should come to fruition sometime in 2017 / 18.
The original meaning of this story was about loss and being lost and adrift in life. About relying on circumstance and arbitrary fate to improve your life instead of taking charge and creating it for yourself. It also about how life has the capability to snatch away hope at the last possible moment, just as triumph seems to be within your grasp.
This story appears in its entirety as a chapter in the book, although you’ll be amazed by how much it has changed, and how seamlessly it ‘slots’ into the novel which was constructed around it.
In “Memes…” the story appears in its original form, exactly as it inspired the novel, mistakes and all. I include it here partially for comparison to the novel “The Fomalhaut Plague” (which you can read when it’s released in 2017 / 18).
Connections
An ordinary life lived against a backdrop of a sinister spate of murders…
I just wanted to write a super short, punchy story where the plot kind of ‘bleeds’ out of the background noise of everyday life. I think that it might have been for a competition and I would have written it sometime in the mid to late 1990’s.
I’m not sure it’s very effective or if I really like it, but I’ve included it as a change of mood and pace to the rest of the book. It’s also an experiment in ‘guerrilla story writing’. It got a bit of an extension, believe it or not, in late 2011 / early 2012. Before that it was even shorter!
If it’s about anything, then it’s about how life can conceal a darker, hidden core. How even lives lived as mundane streams of routine can belay a hidden complexity and, in this case, danger, even if in this case the danger is entirely unwitting.
"I did genuinely like Connections" Abbie
All In The Mind
A futuristic private investigator is hired to uncover the truth behind a team of researchers who have failed to produce a working faster than light space ship drive.
David Pringle, then editor of Interzone Sci-Fi magazine, said that this story 'was too long & wouldn't hold the reader’s attention'. So I took his advice – who wouldn’t? – and cut a load of it out. It had an overly long, unnecessary opening on the moon just after the protagonist had been captured / hired. I took it out and said all of that in flashback instead. I think it now zips along and is intriguing enough to hold the reader’s attention. Hopefully, the main character devotion to solving the mystery is enough to keep the reader interested.
I had been intrigued by the idea that technology will get so small and personal that eventually it become internal, and once it becomes internal then it will work its way into minds, and once it’s in our minds then maybe it can alter our perceptions and perhaps even our memories. When Nano-scale technology and advanced super artificial intelligence merge then the gloves are off and anything is possible.
Spoilt For Choice
A man with a tragic past hides a dark secret life.
The people in this are all real and are from a furniture store that I briefly worked in pre-Uni. I even keep one of the real names in there. The main guy is real, but I have no idea if he ever did the things in this story. Everything else in there is true and some lines of dialogue are actual events.
I think when I wrote this I was far too influenced by “American Psycho” and it’s a real knock off of it. I even had to tone it down as the original version was too graphic both in terms of hard core pornography and vile, extreme, unnecessary, over the top violence. Most people hated the story in this form and it was a real turn off. If enough people ask for the original version then I might publish it on my website.
This is the first story to overtly examine the re-occurring theme of the collection - to question and challenge the nature of reality.
'Spoilt (for Choice)' the imagery was so grotesque that it made my skin crawl, a good indication of the author's ability to paint a picture with words." Abbie
Participant Observation
A man struggles to come to terms with overwhelming loss. He’s not helped by the unsettling dreams that eventually protrude into his reality.
In the late 1990's I bought, what was then the pinnacle of technology, a home DVC digital camcorder. It had 3 CCD chips and a plethora of image manipulation modes. It cost over £3,000. (Ten years later I replaced it with a similar specification camera for about £150.)
I wanted to try it out properly. So I wrote a short film which I intended to shoot it on, using my friends as the 'actors'. The screenplay was written around the various recording modes, hence the many dream sequences. My friends all moved out of London before I could film it. I don't think it's the best thing I've ever written, but it’s not the worst.
I decide to re-write it as prose initially to pad out the book, but by the end I was particularly pleased with the outcome, especially the ending.
The process by which I converted this from script to story was, in many ways, a practice for converting the movie script of "American Die" or ‘glorious’ to a novel, except on a much smaller scale. It also took ages, as I agonised over every word. Hopefully script to novel conversions will be quicker and easier. Hopefully.
This is another story that questions reality.
Life Chances
For a brave, hardy colonist, there’s a less than ideal outcome to a ‘suspended animation’ voyage to a distant star.
I’m afraid that I remember absolutely nothing about the inspiration or writing of this story. It would have been sometime between 1992 and 2000, probably around 1996-1998, but beyond that nothing.
I seem to remember wanting to show how life can be so cruel as to crush even an eternal optimist. That his self-professed luck is his ultimate downfall. I think this was a metaphor for how some people can be so battered by life, that then end up living it in a reclusive state, cut off from the others around them, and utterly unable to connect in any meaningful way. It is quite easy to be completely alone in a room full of people.
"memorable" 10/10 Meghan for New York Book Pundit
False Positive
Following the brutal murder of his ex-girlfriend and her new love, the prime suspect produces the perfect alibi.
The definitive revenge fantasy. This is an evil, twisted little tale that I’m quite embarrassed about now. I hope that the four real people in it never read it – although I’m sure that one of them will – and if they do then they do not take it as a threat. I don’t harbour grudges and can no longer even find these feelings from over twenty years ago.
I think that the title came first then I had to weave a story around it. I like the quieter moments and there are some great character introspective passages. I also like the idea of committing a crime and then being your own alibi.
The entire ending came in Sept 2013, post editing, after the story was supposedly finished. I just realised that it contained a gapping plot hole and went back and corrected it.
It’s a dark fantasy of horrific torture and murder most horrid. Or is it? Or is this the fantasy? Did he have nothing to do with the murders? Did they even happen in the way he imagines them?
Is he yet another innocent victim of the brutal murder? Is he guilty of nothing more than his own twisted devotion to a revenge fantasy that he can’t give up on, even when death robs him of the ability to enact it?
Ourselves Alone
A twin, or is she a triplet, comes to terms with a seething sibling rivalry that threatens everything and everyone.
This was originally called “My Sister’s Sister”, and was based on a twin that I used to work in the very early 90’s. The part in the story where the young man mistakes her more attractive and confident sister for her, actually embarrassingly happened to me. I really, really hope she never reads this.
This was originally written in the mid 90’s. Back then I was prophesising about technology that has since come true, such as tablet computers, advanced smartphones, flat screen displays, NFC payment, broadband connectivity etc. When I initially went back to the story in 2011/12, I had it to make it less about this now everyday technology that was no longer futuristic. Actual technology had also surpassed some of the things that the story contained, in just twenty years!
It was also about what everyone at the birth of the World Wide Web, thought that the future of the internet might look like, a sort of William Gibson-esque virtual landscape to be traversed and navigated through.
But of course, now those scenes just elicit feelings of a future nostalgia, a remembrance for a future that never was, and that died sometime in our past. But then, who knows what future generations might do with ultra-realistic, immersive virtual realities that are indistinguishable from actual reality. Also, who knows what might happen when people can chose any life they want, and be anyone they want to be, and when actual reality is just another version of reality, and possible not a very interesting one at that. Already, younger people have an acronym for this – IRL – In Real Life.
This story was a problem child for a while and no one seemed to like it. I just didn’t have a real ending to it. The message was in the journey and not the destination. So, in late summer 2013, while on a family holiday, I added the new ending.
A common motif in my stories is getting the reader firmly set up in a reality before whipping it away from them. Nowhere does this happen more than in this story. In many ways the story is about identity, and how identity is often a product of circumstance.
For a long time I’ve been fascinated by twins. They are the ultimate real life experiment into Nature vs. Nurture. Or at least they should be. Identical twins have identical genomes and should be identical people with identical personalities. But this isn’t what we find. In studies into identical twins separated at birth, often to be raised in pole opposite environments, we find as many cases where the twins are different as we find cases where they have developed to look or behave identically.
Even where identical twins grow up together in exactly the same environment, with exactly the same experiences, we find that they can be different people, with different body shapes and even develop different, often genetically inherited, diseases. This seems to suggest that the key to personality is nether nature or nurture. It also points towards the influence of epigenetic factors.
So, this story not only asks questions about nature vs. nurture, it also examines how it would feel to life in a world with another you. Is there space to develop your own distinct personality when there’s someone in your life who is exactly you? In this respect, it’s also about identity. It also touches on social acting and the question of whether circumstance and / or money change who you are. Do you need money to buy yourself an identity? Throw in sibling rivalry and fear of under achievement and you have most of the elements of the story.
One other thing I have to mention is the title. If you didn’t know it already then it comes from Sinn Fein, the Irish republican political party, whose Irish name is often mistranslated as "ourselves alone". It just seemed to be too beautiful a phrase to pass up on.
More than any other story this questions the nature of reality, but it does in a knowing way. The protagonist is well aware that she has access to multiple realities and doesn't care which one is the original, genuine reality. I'm much more interested in the concept that our preconception of reality may be either incorrect, manipulated by others, or even an illusion. This is a theme, along with the accompanying generated paranoia, that runs through all of my work.
Ultimately though, I suspect that I only really left this story in the book because I’m quite proud of the technological prophecies I made in the early 90’s.
"'Ourselves Alone' prompted thought about technology's role in our perception of reality..." 4/5 Erica Lovett, Goodreads
22T
A scientist has been taken hostage by a man determined to halt her research into human reproduction without the need for men.
Written in the mid 1990’s, this story was inspired by two things:
1. The Valerie Jean Solanas quote at the beginning from her ultra-feminist SCUM (Society For Cutting Up Men) manifesto.
2. A New Scientist magazine article about the possibility of fertilizing human eggs without sperm and producing a viable embryo.
I basically put the two together and wanted to write a story about what might happen if this technology ever existed. Would men resist it? Fight it even? Who would use it? Would women try to eliminate men as Valerie implored?
I really enjoyed writing this and I still enjoy reading it. The initial layer of subtext is about subverting stereotypes and dispelling preconceptions, but this story does it in a very obvious way, in an attempt to surprise. There are further depths to be explored though.
I consider myself to be a (mild) feminist. I hope that comes across in this story, despite the narrative. I wanted to shine a light on the male paranoia of competent women who can replace them. The sort of men who put women down, disadvantage them and are prejudice against them just to keep themselves in an undeserved position of false superiority.
Also this story raises a very interesting question – do those missing 1,392 genes in a male chromosome 23 exist purely to give the female her reproductive capabilities, or do they rob the male of female characteristics, such as warmth, empathy, nurturing and emotional intelligence?
Are all of the failings of the human race in general, and men specifically – aggression, war, butchery, cruelty, greed, megalomania – are they all contained in that incomplete female chromosome? Of course, those traits aren’t exclusively male, but would humanity be better if men no longer existed?
"I did genuinely like 22T" Abbie
Death Ship
A one man killing machine protects the woman he loves from a hoard of aliens on board a giant star ship bound for the stars. Or does he?
This started as an idea for two completely separate stories. One was a mild exposé of the lazy clichés and standards of science fiction that had become accepted as a truth of the future – such as warp drives, giant star ships, space marines, form changing aliens, artificial gravity and the utterly bankrupt idea of the square jawed hero.
Initially, my idea was to write this first story completely straight, as if I meant every word and didn’t know how ridiculous the situations and characters were. Although, in the end I couldn’t resist poking gently fun at the situation. Then it would be denounced as a completely Walter MItty-esque fantasy from an incompetent, low ranking, wreck of a man. (There’s still a few references to Walter Mitty in there.) In this way, all of those standards of science fiction would be condemned as the ridiculous lie that they are.
The other story was another attempt at the themes of “Every Silver Lining Has A Cloud” – being trapped in the endless ocean of interplanetary space without hope. I’d always though that this situation was an apt analogy with the loss, futility and lack of control that many people feel about their lives. A sense of being a control-less victim at the hand of life’s random circumstances.
It occurred to me that this second story was the perfect way to point out how irritating and lazy the clichés and failings of the first story are. That I could more effectively point out the inadequacies by juxtaposing them against an ultra-realistic, hard sci-fi story. By ramming the inconvenient truths of actual space travel into the face of the reader, I could draw stark attention to the fantasy of accepted space opera sci-fi.
I also wanted the exact opposite of a square-jawed, military hero and used the high achieving female astronaut Monika Phillips. Although, obviously she was every bit as military as Dick, but in a much more realistic way. In many ways, her thoughts and actions are far more heroic than Dick’s obvious actions.
Just like Thurbur, I wanted to explore dignity. The nature of it, the importance of it, the fragility of it and what remains when it is cruelly stripped away. What remains of the human psyche when all remnants of status and comfort are removed?
I also have this vague idea about writing a gentle black comedy about the (mis)adventures of space marine Dick. Is anyone interested in reading that?
And so, the collection comes full circle and in many ways ends where it began, with a story about hope. I purposely 'bookended' the collection with stories of hope, except that the story 'Hope' was written 22 years before 'Death Ship' in 2012/13. It says something about how my outlook on life has changed that once I wrote about hope as a myriad of possibilities, a celebratory 'anything can happen', 'everything is possible', 'whole life ahead of you' concept. Then just over two decades later, the 'hope' I write about is the hope that you can choose how and when to end it all, and that you still retain some modicum of influence over your ultimate destiny.
My outlook on life seems to have narrowed considerable in those intervening decades and cynicism and world weariness have imperceptibly crept in and replaced youthful optimism (naivety even?). But I defy anyone to struggle into the foothills of middle age and not be a different person from the ideaistic youth who began that journey.
Time to write that comedy, perhaps?
"all of the stories are intelligent, thought-provoking pieces that are worth the price of the book" 4/5 Amazon Customer "Len", Amazon US
Synopsis & background notes on the stories that make up the collection "Memes of Loss and Devotion" (Warning: spoilers follow.)
"very, very thought provoking." Tringhenge, Amazon UK
Hope
In the far future, a man returns to his former home to retrieve the woman he loves.
I wrote Hope on a university friend’s 286 PC, using Word Perfect or Word Star, in spring 1993, when I was just 23 years old. I sat down and wrote through the night while my housemates slept. I was supposed to be writing an assignment at the time.
It virtually hasn’t changed since, apart from a bit of a polish and a technology update in 2012. I just sat down and started writing without plotting, which for me is very, very unusual, and I had no idea where the story was going.
For a long, long time, this was my favourite story. (I think at this point in time “Death Ship” holds that distinction.) The title pretty much gives away what it is about.
Seduction Games
A supposedly random encounter in a hotel leads to romance, but is there more going on here than there first seems?
This started life as a scene in my first novel “The Fomalhaut Plague” and was one of the last two stories to be written, along with “Death Ship”, sometime in winter 2012. It initially had a joke, sordid ending before I got serious about it.
In many ways, this is a correction of how I think the start of the Singularity will look like, as tech moves into our brains and advanced computing, biotech and nanotech come together and expand our intelligence and accelerate our thinking. I wanted to examine what might happen when we hand our minds and perception of reality over to artificial manipulation.
I also think that it raises quite an interesting philosophical question; if our sense of self, identity and history is based on our memories, and those memories can be modified, destroyed or even created by third parties, then where does that leave us as individuals? These may be questions that we are forced to consider later in this century.
Lastly, I always think that every seduction feels like a trick, a sordid confidence trick. You're trying to 'seal the deal' before revealing who you really are. Before you remove yourself from consideration by diverging too far from their preconceived idea of perfection. There are techniques to be deployed, 'tells' to be discovered and buttons to be pushed. I added the technology to highlight some of these. Almost all of the techniques shown have an analogue equivalent. Maybe I should write a book about these?
You can still find the original passage, in its original context in the novel “The Fomalhaut Plague” (to be released in 2017 / 2018).
"Seduction Games made me want to know more about the world it was taking place in" 4/5 Amazon Customer "Len", Amazon US
Soul Destroying
A ghost story of a love returning from beyond the grave.
Another one of my University, post break-up stories from either 1992 or 1993. This is about the breakup of a long term relationship, and is really some sort of revenge fantasy about my former girlfriend and her new boyfriend. I was obviously very angry, but these days, some twenty plus years later, I just can’t find those feelings anymore. Again it was therapy masquerading as literature. I know quite a lot of people who like this story.
I wanted it to be quite timeless, hence the policeman’s helmet and car tailfins etc. It already feels quite dated, as I wrote it more than two decades ago.
What this story is ultimately about is identity, in the respect of being a social actor. Of being someone who changes their behaviour, and maybe even appearance, in an attempt to be accepted or to fit in with peers or into a given social situation. We’re all social actors in our working lives. Some people are also actors in their personal lives.
I often, quite consciously, refer to ‘releasing the new you’ and reinventing yourself to allow new experiences into your life and new chapters to begin. This story was a realisation that I couldn’t move on without destroying the old me and fabricating a new persona in order to enable the future.
"chillingly evocative" 10/10 Meghan for New York Book Pundit
Ethnomethodology
A little girl discusses colonization morals with an elderly alien, whose planet we now share.
I’m pretty sure that the title came first. I became interested in undiscovered human tribes who make contact with the rest of civilization for the first time and how it never goes well for the lesser civilization. I wanted to show it from an alien point of view and show how a more enlightened human race could still get it wrong.
I also wrote it in the mid 1990’s to fit into the technology and continuum of ‘Hope’. I have since reworked it to fit (almost) into the wider ‘Fomalhaut’ timelines, but I have a workaround for the remaining discrepancies. I also wanted a different type of alien, but one who could still fit into a hominin niche and be used as an analogy for the human race.
While it was being edited, a plan occurred to expand it into a future novel which I’m quite excited by. In the novel we’ll see just how far the human race has ‘evolved’ (post singularity) and how God-like in capability they’ve become. It’s currently pencilled in for novel #7 (2020?), so don’t hold your breath waiting for it.
This story is about misplaced pride, about how it really does come before a fall. It’s about how a supposedly wise and enlightened human race can be tricked by over confidence in itself into making ethical mistakes.
"Ethnomethodology is my favorite. I was utterly immersed. The interesting eye-opener about this story is that we could easily understand Ny’thei’s concern and think about our ethics as human beings." 5/5 Lit Amri for Readers' Favorite
"I'm still sitting on the hill with that little girl and the elder alien, considering what it must be like for a primitive race whose wildest imaginings were made laughable by the arrival of space farers. And that’s exactly what good science fiction should do." Magic & Mayhem
Sub Rosa
A young girl’s visions of angels coincide with her parent’s separation.
Written sometime in the mid to late 1990’s, this was a very, very conscious attempt to branch out the type of stories that I wrote.
I was heavily influenced by a 70’s short story in which a mother sees an alien ‘dismantle’ her disabled daughter in the garden only to have her disability ‘fixed’ when the alien reassembled her. Mine doesn’t quite go that far and I wanted it to be quite ambiguous as to whether the angels exist outside of the girl’s imagination. I also wanted the sci-fi element to sneak into the story late, like a Stephen King novel, to the point that you’re not sure if what you’re reading is sci-fi at all.
This story is really about how the human mind can construct alternate realities in order to process and assimilate unpalatable truths. Does the girl retreat into a fantasy, in which she is special, in order to deal with her feelings of abandonment form her absent father?
"“Sub Rosa” packs a shock at what a little girl’s angels actually are." 4/5 Erica Lovett, Goodreads
Every Silver Lining Has A Cloud
A lone crew member on a stranded star ship longs for rescue. When he spots another ship he believes that against all hope his dreams have come true.
This was originally written in 1994/95. I had an idea about the desperation of being shipwrecked in a crippled ship in interplanetary or interstellar space. Of how impossibly small the possibility of rescue would be.
It took on a life of its own during writing and didn’t quite work out the way I envisaged it. I also didn’t want a totally bleak ending (although I revisit this concept with a vengeance in “Death Ship”), and had to give it a bit of an upbeat ending.
After I wrote it I became obsessed with the people in the story – who were they, how did they come to be here, what’s their back story. I plotted it all together intending to write it up as a novel. When I graduated from University in the summer of 1996, I started writing to fill the gaps in job hunting. Just six (6!) shorts weeks later I had a job and a first draft of my first novel “The Fomalhaut Plague.”
In November 2012 I started the current massive rewrite, greatly updating the future technology and adding layers to the story that didn’t originally exist. It should come to fruition sometime in 2017 / 18.
The original meaning of this story was about loss and being lost and adrift in life. About relying on circumstance and arbitrary fate to improve your life instead of taking charge and creating it for yourself. It also about how life has the capability to snatch away hope at the last possible moment, just as triumph seems to be within your grasp.
This story appears in its entirety as a chapter in the book, although you’ll be amazed by how much it has changed, and how seamlessly it ‘slots’ into the novel which was constructed around it.
In “Memes…” the story appears in its original form, exactly as it inspired the novel, mistakes and all. I include it here partially for comparison to the novel “The Fomalhaut Plague” (which you can read when it’s released in 2017 / 18).
Connections
An ordinary life lived against a backdrop of a sinister spate of murders…
I just wanted to write a super short, punchy story where the plot kind of ‘bleeds’ out of the background noise of everyday life. I think that it might have been for a competition and I would have written it sometime in the mid to late 1990’s.
I’m not sure it’s very effective or if I really like it, but I’ve included it as a change of mood and pace to the rest of the book. It’s also an experiment in ‘guerrilla story writing’. It got a bit of an extension, believe it or not, in late 2011 / early 2012. Before that it was even shorter!
If it’s about anything, then it’s about how life can conceal a darker, hidden core. How even lives lived as mundane streams of routine can belay a hidden complexity and, in this case, danger, even if in this case the danger is entirely unwitting.
"I did genuinely like Connections" Abbie
All In The Mind
A futuristic private investigator is hired to uncover the truth behind a team of researchers who have failed to produce a working faster than light space ship drive.
David Pringle, then editor of Interzone Sci-Fi magazine, said that this story 'was too long & wouldn't hold the reader’s attention'. So I took his advice – who wouldn’t? – and cut a load of it out. It had an overly long, unnecessary opening on the moon just after the protagonist had been captured / hired. I took it out and said all of that in flashback instead. I think it now zips along and is intriguing enough to hold the reader’s attention. Hopefully, the main character devotion to solving the mystery is enough to keep the reader interested.
I had been intrigued by the idea that technology will get so small and personal that eventually it become internal, and once it becomes internal then it will work its way into minds, and once it’s in our minds then maybe it can alter our perceptions and perhaps even our memories. When Nano-scale technology and advanced super artificial intelligence merge then the gloves are off and anything is possible.
Spoilt For Choice
A man with a tragic past hides a dark secret life.
The people in this are all real and are from a furniture store that I briefly worked in pre-Uni. I even keep one of the real names in there. The main guy is real, but I have no idea if he ever did the things in this story. Everything else in there is true and some lines of dialogue are actual events.
I think when I wrote this I was far too influenced by “American Psycho” and it’s a real knock off of it. I even had to tone it down as the original version was too graphic both in terms of hard core pornography and vile, extreme, unnecessary, over the top violence. Most people hated the story in this form and it was a real turn off. If enough people ask for the original version then I might publish it on my website.
This is the first story to overtly examine the re-occurring theme of the collection - to question and challenge the nature of reality.
'Spoilt (for Choice)' the imagery was so grotesque that it made my skin crawl, a good indication of the author's ability to paint a picture with words." Abbie
Participant Observation
A man struggles to come to terms with overwhelming loss. He’s not helped by the unsettling dreams that eventually protrude into his reality.
In the late 1990's I bought, what was then the pinnacle of technology, a home DVC digital camcorder. It had 3 CCD chips and a plethora of image manipulation modes. It cost over £3,000. (Ten years later I replaced it with a similar specification camera for about £150.)
I wanted to try it out properly. So I wrote a short film which I intended to shoot it on, using my friends as the 'actors'. The screenplay was written around the various recording modes, hence the many dream sequences. My friends all moved out of London before I could film it. I don't think it's the best thing I've ever written, but it’s not the worst.
I decide to re-write it as prose initially to pad out the book, but by the end I was particularly pleased with the outcome, especially the ending.
The process by which I converted this from script to story was, in many ways, a practice for converting the movie script of "American Die" or ‘glorious’ to a novel, except on a much smaller scale. It also took ages, as I agonised over every word. Hopefully script to novel conversions will be quicker and easier. Hopefully.
This is another story that questions reality.
Life Chances
For a brave, hardy colonist, there’s a less than ideal outcome to a ‘suspended animation’ voyage to a distant star.
I’m afraid that I remember absolutely nothing about the inspiration or writing of this story. It would have been sometime between 1992 and 2000, probably around 1996-1998, but beyond that nothing.
I seem to remember wanting to show how life can be so cruel as to crush even an eternal optimist. That his self-professed luck is his ultimate downfall. I think this was a metaphor for how some people can be so battered by life, that then end up living it in a reclusive state, cut off from the others around them, and utterly unable to connect in any meaningful way. It is quite easy to be completely alone in a room full of people.
"memorable" 10/10 Meghan for New York Book Pundit
False Positive
Following the brutal murder of his ex-girlfriend and her new love, the prime suspect produces the perfect alibi.
The definitive revenge fantasy. This is an evil, twisted little tale that I’m quite embarrassed about now. I hope that the four real people in it never read it – although I’m sure that one of them will – and if they do then they do not take it as a threat. I don’t harbour grudges and can no longer even find these feelings from over twenty years ago.
I think that the title came first then I had to weave a story around it. I like the quieter moments and there are some great character introspective passages. I also like the idea of committing a crime and then being your own alibi.
The entire ending came in Sept 2013, post editing, after the story was supposedly finished. I just realised that it contained a gapping plot hole and went back and corrected it.
It’s a dark fantasy of horrific torture and murder most horrid. Or is it? Or is this the fantasy? Did he have nothing to do with the murders? Did they even happen in the way he imagines them?
Is he yet another innocent victim of the brutal murder? Is he guilty of nothing more than his own twisted devotion to a revenge fantasy that he can’t give up on, even when death robs him of the ability to enact it?
Ourselves Alone
A twin, or is she a triplet, comes to terms with a seething sibling rivalry that threatens everything and everyone.
This was originally called “My Sister’s Sister”, and was based on a twin that I used to work in the very early 90’s. The part in the story where the young man mistakes her more attractive and confident sister for her, actually embarrassingly happened to me. I really, really hope she never reads this.
This was originally written in the mid 90’s. Back then I was prophesising about technology that has since come true, such as tablet computers, advanced smartphones, flat screen displays, NFC payment, broadband connectivity etc. When I initially went back to the story in 2011/12, I had it to make it less about this now everyday technology that was no longer futuristic. Actual technology had also surpassed some of the things that the story contained, in just twenty years!
It was also about what everyone at the birth of the World Wide Web, thought that the future of the internet might look like, a sort of William Gibson-esque virtual landscape to be traversed and navigated through.
But of course, now those scenes just elicit feelings of a future nostalgia, a remembrance for a future that never was, and that died sometime in our past. But then, who knows what future generations might do with ultra-realistic, immersive virtual realities that are indistinguishable from actual reality. Also, who knows what might happen when people can chose any life they want, and be anyone they want to be, and when actual reality is just another version of reality, and possible not a very interesting one at that. Already, younger people have an acronym for this – IRL – In Real Life.
This story was a problem child for a while and no one seemed to like it. I just didn’t have a real ending to it. The message was in the journey and not the destination. So, in late summer 2013, while on a family holiday, I added the new ending.
A common motif in my stories is getting the reader firmly set up in a reality before whipping it away from them. Nowhere does this happen more than in this story. In many ways the story is about identity, and how identity is often a product of circumstance.
For a long time I’ve been fascinated by twins. They are the ultimate real life experiment into Nature vs. Nurture. Or at least they should be. Identical twins have identical genomes and should be identical people with identical personalities. But this isn’t what we find. In studies into identical twins separated at birth, often to be raised in pole opposite environments, we find as many cases where the twins are different as we find cases where they have developed to look or behave identically.
Even where identical twins grow up together in exactly the same environment, with exactly the same experiences, we find that they can be different people, with different body shapes and even develop different, often genetically inherited, diseases. This seems to suggest that the key to personality is nether nature or nurture. It also points towards the influence of epigenetic factors.
So, this story not only asks questions about nature vs. nurture, it also examines how it would feel to life in a world with another you. Is there space to develop your own distinct personality when there’s someone in your life who is exactly you? In this respect, it’s also about identity. It also touches on social acting and the question of whether circumstance and / or money change who you are. Do you need money to buy yourself an identity? Throw in sibling rivalry and fear of under achievement and you have most of the elements of the story.
One other thing I have to mention is the title. If you didn’t know it already then it comes from Sinn Fein, the Irish republican political party, whose Irish name is often mistranslated as "ourselves alone". It just seemed to be too beautiful a phrase to pass up on.
More than any other story this questions the nature of reality, but it does in a knowing way. The protagonist is well aware that she has access to multiple realities and doesn't care which one is the original, genuine reality. I'm much more interested in the concept that our preconception of reality may be either incorrect, manipulated by others, or even an illusion. This is a theme, along with the accompanying generated paranoia, that runs through all of my work.
Ultimately though, I suspect that I only really left this story in the book because I’m quite proud of the technological prophecies I made in the early 90’s.
"'Ourselves Alone' prompted thought about technology's role in our perception of reality..." 4/5 Erica Lovett, Goodreads
22T
A scientist has been taken hostage by a man determined to halt her research into human reproduction without the need for men.
Written in the mid 1990’s, this story was inspired by two things:
1. The Valerie Jean Solanas quote at the beginning from her ultra-feminist SCUM (Society For Cutting Up Men) manifesto.
2. A New Scientist magazine article about the possibility of fertilizing human eggs without sperm and producing a viable embryo.
I basically put the two together and wanted to write a story about what might happen if this technology ever existed. Would men resist it? Fight it even? Who would use it? Would women try to eliminate men as Valerie implored?
I really enjoyed writing this and I still enjoy reading it. The initial layer of subtext is about subverting stereotypes and dispelling preconceptions, but this story does it in a very obvious way, in an attempt to surprise. There are further depths to be explored though.
I consider myself to be a (mild) feminist. I hope that comes across in this story, despite the narrative. I wanted to shine a light on the male paranoia of competent women who can replace them. The sort of men who put women down, disadvantage them and are prejudice against them just to keep themselves in an undeserved position of false superiority.
Also this story raises a very interesting question – do those missing 1,392 genes in a male chromosome 23 exist purely to give the female her reproductive capabilities, or do they rob the male of female characteristics, such as warmth, empathy, nurturing and emotional intelligence?
Are all of the failings of the human race in general, and men specifically – aggression, war, butchery, cruelty, greed, megalomania – are they all contained in that incomplete female chromosome? Of course, those traits aren’t exclusively male, but would humanity be better if men no longer existed?
"I did genuinely like 22T" Abbie
Death Ship
A one man killing machine protects the woman he loves from a hoard of aliens on board a giant star ship bound for the stars. Or does he?
This started as an idea for two completely separate stories. One was a mild exposé of the lazy clichés and standards of science fiction that had become accepted as a truth of the future – such as warp drives, giant star ships, space marines, form changing aliens, artificial gravity and the utterly bankrupt idea of the square jawed hero.
Initially, my idea was to write this first story completely straight, as if I meant every word and didn’t know how ridiculous the situations and characters were. Although, in the end I couldn’t resist poking gently fun at the situation. Then it would be denounced as a completely Walter MItty-esque fantasy from an incompetent, low ranking, wreck of a man. (There’s still a few references to Walter Mitty in there.) In this way, all of those standards of science fiction would be condemned as the ridiculous lie that they are.
The other story was another attempt at the themes of “Every Silver Lining Has A Cloud” – being trapped in the endless ocean of interplanetary space without hope. I’d always though that this situation was an apt analogy with the loss, futility and lack of control that many people feel about their lives. A sense of being a control-less victim at the hand of life’s random circumstances.
It occurred to me that this second story was the perfect way to point out how irritating and lazy the clichés and failings of the first story are. That I could more effectively point out the inadequacies by juxtaposing them against an ultra-realistic, hard sci-fi story. By ramming the inconvenient truths of actual space travel into the face of the reader, I could draw stark attention to the fantasy of accepted space opera sci-fi.
I also wanted the exact opposite of a square-jawed, military hero and used the high achieving female astronaut Monika Phillips. Although, obviously she was every bit as military as Dick, but in a much more realistic way. In many ways, her thoughts and actions are far more heroic than Dick’s obvious actions.
Just like Thurbur, I wanted to explore dignity. The nature of it, the importance of it, the fragility of it and what remains when it is cruelly stripped away. What remains of the human psyche when all remnants of status and comfort are removed?
I also have this vague idea about writing a gentle black comedy about the (mis)adventures of space marine Dick. Is anyone interested in reading that?
And so, the collection comes full circle and in many ways ends where it began, with a story about hope. I purposely 'bookended' the collection with stories of hope, except that the story 'Hope' was written 22 years before 'Death Ship' in 2012/13. It says something about how my outlook on life has changed that once I wrote about hope as a myriad of possibilities, a celebratory 'anything can happen', 'everything is possible', 'whole life ahead of you' concept. Then just over two decades later, the 'hope' I write about is the hope that you can choose how and when to end it all, and that you still retain some modicum of influence over your ultimate destiny.
My outlook on life seems to have narrowed considerable in those intervening decades and cynicism and world weariness have imperceptibly crept in and replaced youthful optimism (naivety even?). But I defy anyone to struggle into the foothills of middle age and not be a different person from the ideaistic youth who began that journey.
Time to write that comedy, perhaps?
"all of the stories are intelligent, thought-provoking pieces that are worth the price of the book" 4/5 Amazon Customer "Len", Amazon US