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Note on commercial and non-commercial use. some stories
This is the big list containing almost everything.
Alternatively, you may choose to see only the...
Novels: 7
Short stories: 33
Scripts: 5They are listed with recent at the top, oldest at the bottom.
Size:
In the list below I show the size of each story as 3 numbers:
kBytes : words : pagesA byte is a character or punctuation mark or space. A kbyte is about a thousand bytes. A Harry Potter sized book is about 500,000 bytes (500kb), not counting any pictures.
Words are a measure the industry uses. It will be meaningless to most people. A novel is generally considered to be more than 50,000 words.
Page count will be easiest for most people to understand, but please note that this is only an estimate, based on my own print settings. They will differ from yours, and will be more for paperback format, and even more for ereader.
Key: Some guide to the content is given with symbols.
Hover your mouse over a symbol to get a quick reminder of what the symbol represents (works in most modern web browsers).
short story book script epub ebook entry for NaNoWriMo currently writing this one unfinished...
pleasant tale thoughts in story form comedy not a happy tale extremely unpleasant I'm annoyed at something
virtual reality artificial intelligence science fiction female-female attraction sex action story
gone - a short story (15kB : 2520 words : 6 pages) [comment]
Here, I try something a bit different. If I've done it properly you won't notice. The basic story idea came to me when I was listening to Prelude to the Morphing of the Night After, by Darius Roberte (Epoch Collapse). It made me imagine an enormous alien building.
God's Purpose - a short story (15kB : 2451 words : 6 pages) [comment]
I'm atheist. This is a humorous short story about what might happen if god visited me.
The Relic - a short story (17kB : 2835 words : 6 pages) [comment]
A way to sneak some big philosophical concepts into a story... I basically destroy all religion.
The Gardener - a short story (8096kB : 1314 words : 4 pages) [comment]
Just a short piece about sexuality and tolerance.
feelings - a short story (8kB : 1333 words : 4 pages) [comment]
I'm surprised how few people understand and really embrace the ideas I present in this short piece. It is difficult for even enlightened people to remain free of prejudice. There is something fundamentally broken in human psychology.
What to do - a very short story (3kB : 598 words : 2 pages) [comment]
This is a very short story that came to me unexpectedly while I was pondering what I should be doing next.
Heterophobia - a very short (5 minute) film script (12kB : 1,315 words : 7 pages) [comment]
This was a film script I sent in to a 2019 competition for Australian screenwriters. The scripts were required to be on the topic of 'difference' and be very short -- only about five minutes long. It didn't get used. I forgot all about it until recently. The original was required to be sent as PDF. I originally wrote it in LibreOffice using a special scriptwriting template by Anikó J. Bartos & Alan C. Baird from http://9timezones.com/scr2.htm. When I reformatted it for HTML I wrote a simple 7-line CSS to do the job.
Breathe - a novel (504kB : 88,301 words : 200 pages) [comment]
Make a World for Us - a short story (11kB : 1,850 words : 4 pages) [comment]
Virtual worlds and artificial intelligence are two complementary technologies that I'm convinced will have tremendous impact on our future. Decades ago I used to maintain some virtual worlds that people would visit and enjoy socialising in. I want to do that again, now that technology is improving. One day we will be able to physically participate to the degree depicted in this story, but that's probably a fair way off in the future... decades. If you think that's unlikely, remember that less than 5 decades ago nobody on the planet had personal computers. Computers occupied entire floors of buildings, consumed many kilowatts of power, and cost millions of dollars. Now even the poorest people carry supercomputers in their pockets. Big changes can happen incredibly swiftly.
Interview - a short story (23kB : 3,952 words : 7 pages) [comment]
Artificial intelligence will partner creatively with us, to our enormous benefit.
nations - a short story (17kB : 2885 words : 7 pages) [comment]
Refugees are not who you think they are.
Meeting Leonardo - a short story (13kB : 2140 words : 5 pages) [comment]
Sharing is perhaps the greatest human value.
(By the way, I don't think time travel is possible. My description of time in the story was simply to make it sound feasible.)
Grave Words - a short story (5kB : 891 words : 3 pages) [comment]
A very short story about something I'm certain will really happen soon.
honesty - a short story (12kB : 1,946 words : 4 pages) [comment]
This is actually chapter 9 of my book Prescription. Like a number of chapters in that book, it is self-contained and can stand by itself. I often direct people to it as an example of the arguments for why religion should be taxed, so I decided to add it here to make it easier for people to access.
Recuperate - a short story (11kB : 1,785 words : 4 pages) [comment]
An encounter in the wilderness between a civilised person and a less than civilised one.
Shirlocke - a short novel (152kB : 27514 words : 48 pages) [comment]
The Meaning of Life - a short story (24kB : 4,122 words : 8 pages) [comment]
This one really is about the meaning of life. The greatest secret of all is revealed in this story. I'm not kidding.
Pet - a short story (17kB : 2,856 words : 6 pages) [comment]
Sympathy for Pests - a short story (12kB : 1,919 words : 4 pages) [comment]
If you think the nuclear topics discussed sound like the detestable new fashion for promoting thorium reactors, you're right, I've been reading a lot about them recently.
Dragon - a short story (10kB : 1,681 words : 4 pages) [comment]
I'm supposed to be writing another story, but can't seem to get it mapped out, so I wrote this shortie hoping it would free up my writing muscles.
Companions - a short novel (225 kB : 38,867 words : 74 pages) [comment]
Skin Deep - a short story (14kB : 2,332 words : 4 pages) [comment]
I didn't put this online for a while as I had hopes of selling it to a magazine, but I'm so slack I doubt that is likely to ever happen.
I've tagged this as science fiction, but it is barely so. It is a philosophical piece which doesn't really start until it ends. I'm not happy with the last spoken line. The current one is like a placeholder. I know what I want, but haven't yet figured out how to make my character say it. One day I'll work it out and fix the last statement, completely altering the meaning of the story... again.
Quicksand Thieves - a short story (7kB : 1,140 words : 2 pages) [comment]
Everything changes, but nothing changes.An old-style science fiction story that's just a kind of snapshot from the far future.
Hmmm... Looks like I got a little something written during November after all.
The Party - a short story (30kB : 2,424 words : 4 pages) [comment]
This is a bit of an odd story. I've marked it as science fiction, but it is only barely so. It has a bit of a dreamlike quality, I know. It began life as a dream that I woke from and decided to write down. I wrote it as an entry in a short story competition. The competition imposed strict limits on the word-length for entries, so this forced the story to be considerably shorter than I would have liked. Maybe one day I'll extend it the way I'd have preferred. This should have been put up here back in April (2012) but I keep being distracted by other things.
flying - a novel (384 kB : 60,586 words : 113 pages) [comment]
Prescription - my 2010 NaNoWriMo novel (285kB : 50,400 words : 85 pages) [comment]
Selena City - (248kB : 43,725 words : 75 pages) [comment]
Adele works in security and is in love with Brenda. Unfortunately, circumstances have separated them. A leading AI expert has been abducted and Adele and her fellow security staff must track him down before something terrible happens to the City. This has accidentally brought Adele and Brenda back together again. Can their love resume? Should it? Things become further complicated when a friend of a friend arrives in the city as a refugee.
A romance/mystery set in the near future at a city under the surface of the Moon in an almost ideal society where sexuality is not an issue.
My 2007 NaNoWriMo novel. Please let me know what you think of it via the [comment] link. During November I was able to stop real life interfering with writing, but when the month ended I was suddenly buried under all the things I'd put off.
Finally finished almost a year later... well, except for the inevitable rewrites yet to come.
Closed Curve (8kB : 1,298 words : 2 pages) [comment]
I woke from a nap with the rapidly fading fragment of a dream which hinged on a strange idea. By the time I had the computer running and had begun frantically typing, the dream had mostly evaporated, but I'd managed to weave an odd tale around the bit that remained. I know it is nothing like the dream. The dream was pleasant. I can't blame the dream for this horrid story. But somehow it feels like it didn't really come from me either... it's like it invented itself.
Out at Night (1kB : 919 words : 2 pages) [comment]
This was originally written as an exercise for the writers group I was attending at the time. The main character is supposed to be my niece Sophie in the future.
Cuckoo (12kB : 1,948 words : 4 pages) [comment]
I wrote this fairly recently after a nightmare. The nightmare was quite different to this story and had an altogether darker, more disturbing plot. I might write that down some day too.
Once Bitten... (9kB : 1,466 words : 3 pages) [comment]
This unpleasant little tale occurred to me out of the blue while I was over in New Zealand for Xmas 2005. I thought I had put it up here some time back, but realised today (more than a year later) that I'd forgotten. Remedied.
Insurance (291kB : 52,000 words : 95 pages) [comment]
The future is high-tech and low-energy, where androids (intelligent, human-like robots) are willing slaves, and most people, upon dying, are reborn into virtual reality inside computers as "veeps". Rachel is in love with her android Sally, even though it is socially frowned upon for a human to love an android. They become entangled in schemes for veeps and androids to gain human status.In 2005 I completed my first NaNoWriMo. Yay! In some ways I'm really happy with this story even though it is not as well written as I'd have liked. It's about ideas and love and the near future. This story has as many cool concepts stuffed into it as I could at the time. It is mostly a happy and optimistic piece -- deliberately so. I need to rewrite some clumsy parts though. If you read it please bear in mind it was my first attempt at long form story writing, so it reads more like a collection of short stories. I'll rewrite it eventually.
Anty-sense (11kB : 1,665 words : 4 pages) [comment]
I started this story a while ago, but got stuck part way through. I knew how it had to end, and I knew the general theme of the story, but I was caught up on a proof which I felt was needed in the story. In the end I realised I didn't need it after all. It doesn't depend upon it, so I implied it. I'm still not entirely sure it was the right thing to do. One day I might fix that and give it the proof it wants.
Guardian Angel (12kB : 1,970 words : 4 pages) [comment]
This was just an exercise, but I'm quite happy the way this story turned out even though it is simple and is an action piece.
Lessons in Reversal (5kB : 773 words : 2 pages) [comment]
A very short piece. It actually happened, though not quite the way I've depicted of course. And I was about twice Rebecca's age.
The Controller (10kB : 1,674 words : 3 pages) [comment]
This was a dream. When I awoke I wrote it down as quickly as I could before it evaporated. Even so, I lost the original thing that I'd done that I'd had to fix in the dream, so in writing this I avoided it by saying it was too embarrassing. Other than that the story is pretty-much as the dream was. I don't recall ever having a dream this complex before, nor one with such internal self-consistency. I did add the thoughts on altered time streams though, because swapping streams appeared completely natural in the dream, and it was only in the retelling that I realised I was telling the story from two points of view (the me who is caught and the me who escapes), which I needed to reconcile.
A Loving Soul (30kB : 3,390 words : 13 pages) [comment]
This is one of the scripts I submitted to twoTwisted. It didn't get picked up. Nevertheless I'm quite proud of it and like to think it would have been rejected because of the controversial stuff anyway. This story basically wrote itself. Halfway through it took a direction I didn't want and I was thinking, "No, don't do that," but was powerless to stop the characters. At the end I was annoyed because the story wound up in a way that didn't suit me, so I went back and scrapped everything from about halfway through (a very painful thing to do). After changing the bit where everything had started off in the wrong direction, I was still worried that it would be hard to force the story to go the way I wanted, but to my relief the characters took hold again and wrote it the way I'd originally intended, with a nice extra bit I hadn't planned on as well. I felt like just an onlooker.
Love Honour and Obey (28kB : 3,546 words : 13 pages) [comment]
Another of the scripts I submitted to twoTwisted that didn't get picked up. I think it is the best of the ones I sent. I don't feel like I should take much credit for it though because I feel like the characters in the story wrote it. It was the weirdest feeling. The story just appeared on my screen. I had a fairly simple idea to start with, that robots and androids will never be a danger to humans, but was a bit stumped as to how to turn it into a story. I even rang my Mum because I couldn't think of a way to do it. But when I sat down to write, it just fell out onto the screen. The strangest thing is it developed a whole lot of cool subtexts during the writing that I hadn't originally planned.
The Killer (27kB : 3,973 words : 11 pages) [comment]
Yet another script sent to twoTwisted. I'm not sure whether I like this one or not. I like the idea behind it though. I originally didn't want to spell out the ending in the final line, but my family convinced me that it needed it. Still not 100% certain.
Medusa (7kB : 1,289 words : 3 pages) [comment]
I've always felt the Medusa legend got it horribly wrong. I think this is more likely to be what actually happened.This was originally written in 2003, then tightened up and generally improved with the kind help of ElaineB, FranW, and JRosestar in 2010.
Hell (11kB + 27kB image : 1,883 words : 4 pages) [comment]
Hopefully this will eventually become a work of VR Fiction. It was printed in the second Spaced Out anthology. Not a very good story, in my opinion, but serves to illustrate that even the wonderful VR future I dream of can be misused.
Grace (14kB : 2,146 words : 6 pages) [comment]
I like the idea behind this story because it shows why all religion would be extremely insulting to any sane god if such a being existed.I'd hoped this would become a work of VR fiction. It is printed in the second Spaced Out anthology.
Grace3 (28kB : 3700 words : 11 pages) is a better version with 3 simultaneous threads. [comment]
Grace, versión en Español - A wonderful friend has translated Grace into Spanish. Unfortunately, as an atheist living in a predominantly Christian country, she declines to be directly credited for her work because of prejudice from "good Christians". I've lost contact with her recently, but if you want someone to translate to Spanish, let me know I might still be able to find her.
Virtual Confinement (8kB : 1,159 words : 3 pages) [comment]
An oldie, but rather proud of this. Was also in the first Spaced Out anthology.
Restaurant Nightmare (5kB : 819 words : 2 pages) [comment]
When I awoke I realised its humorous potential. It is really just a fragment, as dreams tend to be.
Starry Dream (12kB : 1,975 words : 4 pages) [comment]
This was actually a dream which I wrote down when I awoke. Originally written ages ago, reworked more recently. Always felt it should be expanded upon... maybe one day.