July 2019

The air stank of black powder, mud and the fear of men. Euron glanced up the line, toward the reassuring presence of their lightly armoured pikemen. Their long blades glinted as they turned, even in the wan sunlight that managed to penetrate the morning fog.

Euron felt an elbow in his ribs and turned. ‘Got tobacco?’ leered an ugly face, a vicious purple scar slicing through its beard.

‘Don’t be a fucking idiot, Var,’ replied. ‘You’ll blow your bloody hand off.’

Var leered at him again. ‘You can chew the shit, you know,’ he said, conversationally.

The border was flung into being seemingly overnight. A traumatic severance of previously unbroken countryside. A fortified line that seemed to rise with as much suddenness as the revolutionaries it stood against.

Our leaders were afraid, that much was certain. In the church and the town square, we heard an endless succession of proclamations. They levelled invective and rhetoric against the revolutionaries on the other side of that border. They had violated the natural order. They were leading their people to ruin. They stood in defiance of God and all that was holy. They were children who wailed and cried rather than obey their parents. They were commoners risen above their station. They were doing the work of Satan. They were in the pay of far-distant empires. They slaughtered their countrymen. They were kingkillers, priestslayers, murderous barbarians who held no life sacred.

This story is the result of a writing exercise in Adam Roberts’ Get Started in Writing Science Fiction. The challenge was “Little Red Riding Hood but the wolf is an alien!”, which I decided to twist into a goofy cyberpunk pastiche. It’s a bit longer than the intended 750 words and was written in about an hour.

She was in! The security room was dark and silent. Red slipped off her jacket and flung it over a chair.

The terminal was a big, imposing lump of metal, fitted with nine screens. Red fired them all up, then focused on the central display. Her fingers flew over the keyboard. ‘Looks like a standard setup,’ she said to herself. ‘Shouldn’t be any issues getting in.’

Earlier this year I finally dug Thimbleweed Park from my bottomless bag of acquired and unplayed videogames. For those unfamiliar, this is the crowdfunded traditionalist point-and-click adventure game from Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick, the duo who co-designed Maniac Mansion many years ago.

I found Thimbleweed Park a mixed bag. Jokes ranged from mildly amusing to flat; the setting a mixture of try-hard zany and odd, fun little ideas; characters were similarly variable. But I did enjoy some of the puzzles and it was a nice, sedate game to play over the holidays. Reviews I’ve read suggest the game’s plot coheres and its characters come to life as you move beyond the first act, so I’m optimistic I will return to it one day.

When I found the extensive library in the game’s own maniac mansion, I was reminded that I had written and submitted some books for inclusion a few years ago. And after a quarter of an hour of very old-school pixel-hunting, I’m pleased to say I’ve found all five. So here they are!

I woke one morning to find the world had changed. 

‘War,’ said my grandfather, as I walked into the kitchen. His face, already lined and thin, pinched from years of peering down at his workdesk, was grave. 

‘What?’ I said. My heart began to race. Naive as I was then, I asked myself: who would war with tiny, insignificant Ruritania? Who stood to gain from swallowing up a country of peasants and guildmen, ruled over by merchants? We traded with our neighbours, imported and exported goods from far and wide. We were friends with everyone. Or so, like any teenage fool assured in his view of the world, I believed.