The Aquarius Code (15,000 words). e-book (ISBN 1-933400-20-X) from Chippewa Publishing (read more)

When a group of tourists disappears on a visit to Stonehenge, the police suspect a publicity stunt. But Professor Henry Vaughan, head of Gnostic Theology at Oxford University, knows better. A crack has appeared in reality, and a cosmic crisis is looming! Vaughan embarks on a frantic quest, as powerful forces close in on him. He takes a vital piece of evidence -- the Aquarius Code -- from under the noses of the police, and goes on the run. With him is Ruth Totton, the only witness to what really happened. As their desperate search leads them across the ancient landscape of Britain, Vaughan and Ruth gradually learn the secret of the Aquarius code and its astonishing links to Gnostic Theology and long forgotten rituals. A fast-moving thriller in the spirit of The Da Vinci Code.

Kundalini Conspiracy (84 pages). Printed book or e-book (ISBN 1-4116-1739-8). (read more)

Strange things are going on in the town of Blastonbury, and paranormal investigator Byron Bland is determined to get to the bottom of them. UFO sightings, a sinister military experiment, a mysterious cult and a mad scientist are just the start of it. Byron finds himself embroiled in the weird world of Blastonbury's New Age subculture, and acquires a reluctant ally in the form of Jessica Peace-Lily -- a diminutive, mousy-haired young woman who turns out to be a black-belt Tantric Elemental. Between them, Byron and Jessica uncover evidence that a long-forgotten but fearsome force is at work -- a force that goes back to the time of ancient Egypt, Atlantis and the lost Indian civilization of Rama.

The Balloon Factory (2000 words). Fortean Bureau, August 2003. (online)

"It makes me angry, it does," Fripp said. "The contempt our so-called government has for its own citizens. They tell us there's no such thing as Martians, that anyone who sees flying machines is either mad or lying. Well I've seen them, and lots of local people have seen them. So there must be Martians."
This is a satire on conspiracy theories of the Roswell variety. I've always been amused by the effortless ability of true believers to turn a blind eye to the complexity of events going on in the world around them, and to shrink the facts to fit their hopes and expectations. It suddenly occurred to me that people like that may have been around a hundred years ago...

The Mythologist (2800 words). Twilight Times, January 2004. (online)

"The quotation is a hoax," I said. "It's true that a man named Petronius Arbiter really did exist -- he was a satirist in the Roman empire at the time of Nero. A lot of his writings have survived, but that simply isn't one of them. The quotation was invented -- probably not even as a deliberate hoax -- by someone trying to make a point back in the 1940s or 50s. The precise origin is obscure, but it's almost certain that the quotation didn't exist prior to that date. Yet as soon as it appeared it struck a chord in the world's collective consciousness. It cropped up more and more frequently, until now it's everywhere. Wherever there's gratuitous bureaucracy, you'll find that quotation pinned up on a noticeboard."
Another story about myths, and the way that society will grab hold of them and accept them as "Truth" if they reflect current preoccupations accurately enough!

The Gravity Engine (2700 words). Quantum Muse, July 2000. (online)

Like its sister Belgravia further south, Tyburnia was among the first districts in London to be planned on both aesthetic and functional principles. Elegant four-storey town houses, with stuccoed facades and Doric porches, lined the broad squares and avenues. It all seemed a far cry from talk of anti-gravity and inertialess motion.
An "alternative history" tale set in Victorian London in 1851, the year of the Great Exhibition. The story is told from the point of view of Robert Stephenson, the by-then middle-aged son of the famous railway pioneer. Stephenson travels across London to the Surrey Shot Tower, at the invitation of down-and-out scientist Michael Faraday. Ostracized by his peers as a result of his discredited notions about electro-magnetism, Faraday now claims to have had dramatic successes with his gravitational experiments... The story is steampunk, of course, but it's also a heartfelt satire on scientific intolerance.

Flowers of the Future (1700 words). Bewildering Stories issue 61, September 2003. (online)

"On February 1st 2003 a returning spaceship bursts into flame and plummets to Earth. At the same time, the brave men and women of the free world are preparing for the last stand in the War on Terror... So begins Melvyn Pettle’s chilling vision of a future just forty short years away..."
I've always had a fondness for British SF novels of the 1960's -- novels by writers such as Brian Aldiss, John Brunner and J G Ballard. However, this fondness is tempered by an irritation at the way these writers often projected their blinkered 60s politics onto what to them was the future, but is now the present (or even the past). It occurred to me that even if one of these writers could have seen the world of 2003 as it really turned out, they still would have twisted it to their own agenda...

The Call of Cool-O: Philip K Dick meets H P Lovecraft (2300 words). PhilipKDick.com, December 2000. (online)

Information is being beamed into my head, Hank Wilcox thought grimly. By some vast, timeless, impersonal entity. He speeded his pace, then, as he moved along the sidewalk clutching the small paper-wrapped package...
Apart from being two of my favorite authors, what do PKD and HPL have in common? Well, they both scraped a living by writing for the bottom end of the literary market, and both died before receiving establishment recognition. And despite their different writing styles and imagery, there are definite parallels between their world-views. Dick's novels are founded on his life-long interest in Gnosticism - the idea of a demented and/or evil demi-god usurping a benign but no-longer-present true God, both having come to Earth from the stars. There's an obvious echo here of Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos (as used by HPL himself, I mean - not the warm and cozy version of some of his later imitators). It was this observation that inspired me to attempt a re-telling of "The Call of Cthulhu" in the style of PKD.

Secrets of the Green God (1400 words). Nuketown, June 2000. (online)

The creature had four arms and three eyes, and it was green. Surrounded by the relics of past centuries, it stood motionless, frozen in its cosmic dance of creation and destruction... Arthur beckoned the sales assistant. "That Indian figurine," he said. "I'll take it."
"A fine choice," the assistant said, unlocking the display case. "You're a collector?"
"No, not really," Arthur said. "But it reminds me of home. It reminds me of Earth."
I produced this deliberately contrived opening hook in 1988, as one of the exercises at a creative writing course I attended. This short story is my only real attempt at hard SF.

Loss of Power (2300 words). Quantum Muse, June 2000. (online)

"The Rhinegold"... the beginning of the great story. A loveless man, renouncing love in favor of supreme power. The symbolism was precise. Replacing the natural with the unnatural, changing nature's rules to beat nature's system, the essence of all human endeavor...
Originally written in 1980, heavily revised in 1988, and finally published on the Web in 2000. A near-future story about a rich recluse living a virtual reality existence as King Ludwig II of Bavaria, who in turn is immersed in the fantasy world of Wagner's operas... until there's a power failure. My take on Schopenhauer's philosophy.

The Day the Myths Came True (1700 words). PhilipKDick.com, August 2000. (online)

Parts of the universe had been put together badly. Betraying poor workmanship. To give the system its due, most of the universe worked just fine, but a few corners were distinctly sub-standard in quality. Cracks began to show; surface appearances started to peel; things didn't work the way they were intended to. That's how it was with the Earth.
Another early story, or rather a cobbling-together of three early stories - all written between 1975 and 1980, when I was unashamedly trying to be Philip K Dick. I don't think the story captures Dick's style as effectively as my other PhilipKDick.com story ("The Call of Cool-O" - see above).

Planet of Evil (2000 words). Bewildering Stories issue 48, June 2003. (online)

The origin of the short story that follows is something of a mystery. It appears to have been written at great speed circa 1950 by a now-forgotten hack writer who was desperately trying to meet a deadline. Indeed, some experts believe that the story was written so quickly that it momentarily exceeded the speed of light, causing it to break out of its local space-time continuum and spontaneously reappear in cyberspace 50 years later...
This was one of the first stories I ever wrote, back in 1977. It was intended as a pastiche of the archetypal "bad" science fiction story, and I've always been very fond of it. However, it was more than a quarter of a century before I decided to try and get it published, and I found the ideal place in Bewildering Stories. They even added some artwork -- my first ever illustrated story!

Copyright © 2006 Andrew May