A Book Of Small Science Fiction (part one)

A Book Of Small Science Fiction is a little book (50 pages, 15000 words) that contains 181 short (often very short) science fiction stories, scenes, vignettes, ideas, vague thoughts, and occasionally poems, one written every day so far this year (up to June 30th).

I wrote these rather than keeping a diary this year, so there’s no continuity between tales, no structural choices in the placement of the stories. They’re all just presented in the order they were written, day after day after day.

(There’s some slight repetitions here that could probably have been condensed into one, and couple of others that would probably have been better off left on the page of my notebook entirely, but I’ve included all of them as a commitment to the project).

The second part, containing 184 small stories, will be released at the end of the year (if I manage to keep up writing one every day to an acceptable standard (which hopefully i will)).

Downlaod the pdf: A Book Of Small Science Fiction (part one)

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Notes:

1. Written between January 1st and June 30th, 2026
2. One story a day
3. There’ll be a small selection of these small science fictions posted here in a bit
4. But not any of the ones that have weird formatting
5. Because I lack the will of trying to force wordpress to cope with anything beyond standard paragraph breaks and line formatting.

The Museum Of Everyday Items

The Museum Of Everyday Items (to be renamed The Museum Of Obsolete Objects in 2066) is a small collection of common yet otherwise unremarkable artefacts from contemporary Britain. All items were collected on June 23rd, 2016, at the moment of their use. They were kept in storage until the opening of the museum on June 23rd, 2026.

Currently only available online, it awaits a permanent real world home.

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Notes:

1. I’m not 100% sure why I made this but I did
2. All the information contained within the museum is as accurate as I can ascertain
3. All the the items are now once again safely stowed in the shoeboxes in my cupboard which they call home

Tales From The Town #235: Sunday Afternoon Family Entertainment

“Look at this,” said Daniel in a general invitation to everyone around as he stood on top of the hill in the middle of nowhere and then fell down the hill, all the way from the top to the bottom, in a series of strangely inelegant rolls.

“Any idiot could do that,” Claire thought to herself, distinctly unimpressed but too hot to actually bother articulating her unimpressedness.

Ethel, who was on her best behaviour today because her birthday was approaching and she didn’t want to give anyone any excuse to not buy her all the things she was currently dreaming of them buying her, somehow stopped herself from replying to Claire’s unsaid insult, “Well why don’t you, then?”

“Because,” Claire would have replied, but she was still too hot, and also now too thirsty. “I’m not an idiot.”

“She never said you were,” Tina didn’t even say to herself, let alone the others, because she was composing a poem about something, anything, that wasn’t the hill they were standing on, or the sun they were standing beneath.

“Yeah, but she thought it,” Agnes soundlessly mouthed to herself while she unpacked the picnic and swatted imaginary flies away from the food and put plates over the glasses of juice to ward off potential wasps.

“We all thought it,” said Daniel, out loud, and out of breath, having followed up falling down the hill, all the way from top to bottom, in a series of strangely inelegant rolls, with falling up the hill, all the way from bottom to top, in a series of surprisingly elegant rolls, which everyone had missed because they were too busy bickering, or dreaming of bickering, at least, because it was too hot and too close to their birthday and too boring and there were too many flies around for them to actually bother bickering today (or at least until later, when they were no longer in the middle of nowhere, but approaching the edge of somewhere instead).

“Anway,” said Daniel. “Look at this!”

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Notes:

1. Written on May 23rd, 2026