The war against the machines begins... err... down the pub

Some things should be sacred. Thursday nights are pub quiz night, even if it means Friday mornings are often somewhat jaded. But, I'm pleased to report, my Fridays are now bright-eyed and bushy tailed, because we are boycotting the quiz. In protest over AI.

Well, not so much AI as what happens when it's used by an idiot.

One of my personal go-to common-sense-merchants, Tim Harford, has covered the issue of how systems and humans combine, reporting that the best cocktail is one part fit-for-purpose but not bleeding edge technology, and one part switched on homo sapien. If the AI's too helpful, the human switches off. If it only provides part of the answer, we're forced to bridge the gap. And, if the human isn't switched on to start with, it doesn't really matter how good the AI is, as whatever old shite comes out will be inevitably relied on.

Like - for a tiebreak on one round, nearest wins - in what year was the third oldest Beatle born? We said 1941, our opponents 1944. The answer's 1942. We lost. 

At the time, Google's AI summary said George was the third oldest Beatle, whilst one click - a click Chris the quizmaster refused point blank to make - would have revealed the detail proving at a glance it was Paul. But if you Google it now, it's suddenly correct. But not at the time. That's an early Easter egg we missed out on.

More tellingly, a tie-break we weren't involved in was 'what was Concorde's longest non-stop flight'? Answer: 28,238 miles. 

WTF?

Think about that for just a second. Which makes it a second longer than Chris took. The circumference of the planet is less than 25,000 miles. But it was the first answer that fell out of Google, so it must be true. Even if it's patently absurd.

There's no point in taking part in a quiz where the randomising factor of Googlebollocks is just going to wind us up so, for the foreseeable, we're out of here.

There is a serious point to this churlishness, of course. Tim Harford's example of being overly-reliant on technology was Air France flight 447. Had, say, those pushing the buttons on the flight deck filled the shoes of Stanislav Petrov, who disbelieved a nuclear alert, or even Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was ready to wake the president but not until he had confirmation, we'd all be dead several times over.

I like to think they were products of an analogue, mechanical, work-it-out-for-yourself world, where people were more ready to question the half-answers clunky, wheezy, not especially powerful systems provided. There was an obvious need for humans to make up the gap. But what about now, when technology can probably think of things that technology can do that we can't? It's not as though the world's teetering on the brink of World War Three. Oh, hold on...

I fear AI may be the death of us. And, I fear, it may all be our fault.

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My Thoughts are with You. Your Thoughts are with the Authorities for Calibration Against Societal Norms

Award-nominated science fiction and slipstream author Robert Bagnall’s second anthology of twenty-four stories, variously bleak, funny, bleakly funny or – very occasionally – optimistic.

  

2084 - The Meschera Bandwidth

2084. The world remains at war.

In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.

The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.

Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.

Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.

24 0s & a 2

Twenty-four slipstream stories.  Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.
“Brilliant stories, well written!” (five stars, Amazon).

Time travel all over again

Last week, Eric Fomley, over at Shacklebound Books, brought out a second anthology of time travel drabbles, Chronos 2 (do you really want me to spell out what it's a sequel to?) Sixty-six stories of time, time travel, time zones, time manipulation, flash-forwards, space-time, time freezes, and so many other variations on the theme. My wage-slavery story 'Working Late' gets a second airing after first appearing in Black Ink's CTRL-ALT-DEL.

Why not check it out on Amazon.

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Click on the images or search on Amazon.

You're here, so surely you know how to do that?

My Thoughts are with You. Your Thoughts are with the Authorities for Calibration Against Societal Norms

Award-nominated science fiction and slipstream author Robert Bagnall’s second anthology of twenty-four stories, variously bleak, funny, bleakly funny or – very occasionally – optimistic.

  

2084 - The Meschera Bandwidth

2084. The world remains at war.

In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.

The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.

Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.

Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.

24 0s & a 2

Twenty-four slipstream stories.  Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.
“Brilliant stories, well written!” (five stars, Amazon).

Alternate alternate history

One popular storyline that keeps on giving is the ‘What if the Nazis had won' narrative. Robert Harris’ Fatherland, Philip K Dick’s Man in the High Castle, and Len Deighton’s SS-GB are three examples that pop into my mind. It makes for an interesting, if unsettling, gedankenexperiment, contemplating what day-to-day life would have been like in this alternative timeline. File the results alongside time-travel to kill Hitler as a baby stories, if there’s still room in that drawer.

I’ve made my own small contribution to the oeuvre with The King of China’s Mirror, published in Shoreline of Infinity 34. My setting was a vague pre-internet post-war, when Greyhound buses still had corrugated aluminium sides. There’s no obvious resistance movement, and no sense of an army of occupation. They’ve integrated and assimilated, them into America as much as American into them. My Nazis are already more about getting your bins collected than book-burnings and pogroms.

In building my world, I may have been channelling a bit of British history, in that whilst there was resistance following the Norman Conquest, within fifty years we hadn't become part of France - rather, the Normans had become English and we'd started seven hundred years of fighting the cheese-eating surrender monkeys. I've found that aspect of history both fascinating and rarely discussed.

And, although it’s never said in my story, they’re probably distancing themselves from their recent history, how they got to where they are. That was then, this is nineteen-fifty, sixty, seventy-something. In the real world, we commemorate the Holocaust, but allied acts - which you could call either war crimes or justified military actions with disproportionate civilian casualties - such as Dresden, or the fire-bombing of Tokyo, are rarely thought of as being in the same category, even if they're of an utterly different scale (to quote Marlon Brando, 'it's not an ouch contest'). However, had the Axis powers won, I suspect Dresden, Tokyo and the like would have shuffled up the queue as warnings from history.

History is, after all, written by the winners. 

Then, walking around the magnificent Palma Cathedral last autumn, I realised we had an actual example of this in action. The gold, the art, the finery - all built on the rape of continents, the massacre of people, in the name of a credo that sets itself up as right, noble, and justified, and was prepared to impose its vision through superior firepower if needs be. If you weren't with them, you weren't even human. Their actions in South America in particular, but elsewhere too, are a matter of record. The Pope has openly spoken of and apologised for genocide.  

I’ve struggled to put figures on how many indigenous people were killed in the New World in the name of the Catholic Church, but online discussion suggests it makes the Holocaust look like small beer. Let's say it as it is: the Catholic Church was as morally repugnant as the Nazis.

But we have nothing like the same visceral reaction to those actions. Is it because of the passage of time? (In my story You Will Know us by our Trail of Dead. That and T-Shirt Sales, a PR executive tries to reposition the Waffen-SS alongside pirates as a children’s fancy dress staple given both are now aspects of history and those guys raped and murdered too.) Or is it as simple the effect of history being written by the winning team, and what doesn't get actively written into history slides from our collective memory? 

I appreciate the counter arguments. Why shouldn’t the passage of time - and change in morals - make a difference? What's the difference between not allowing history to erode a wrong and bearing a grudge against people long dead? How do you unpick history, anyway? Tribes have fought each other since time immemorial, and Catholic Spain in the New World, or the East India Company in South Asia, are just more recent chapters in an epic tome about one bloke punching another for a piece of land or a cow. We’re still at it, just now oil or economic influence is more important than lebensraum, and methods have evolved from lining your troops up on the border, recent Ukrainian throwbacks notwithstanding.

But, as with the real Norman example, and my imagined Nazis, Catholic invader and Latin invaded have become one. The descendants of the survivors of Catholic horrors are now proud Catholic themselves, crucifixes around their necks, just as we British rapidly became one with our Norman overlords. To me, this is possibly the most fascinating aspect: how quickly the vanquished make the best of a bad situation and join the winning team.

Of course, the Catholic Church has rebranded; it's not all about coming over to the dark side. I like Pope Frank a lot and wish him well. But it would have been the same with the victorious Nazis - in time. It took the Catholics centuries in South America to be the good guys. 2025 may still have been too early if the Nazis won (the children of those who fought, like me, are now dying out, so that link with history is weakening). But, I suggest, eventually, this alternate history would have added up to a swastika in the logo of the municipal bin lorries and a cheery, unthinking Heil to your neighbours each morning.

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2084 - The Meschera Bandwidth

2084. The world remains at war.

In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.

The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.

Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.

Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.

24 0s & a 2

Twenty-four slipstream stories.  Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.

End of year report - Part 2

So, to the second half of the year which, for me, started in August with regular customers JayHenge taking steampunk tale 'Inktomi and the Skyship', first run by Wyldblood in 2022, for their anthology The Apparatus Almanac. JayHenge work slowly but produce large collections; this one is still accepting submissions, hence don't expect publication any time soon.

Then nada until October, but, like buses... First (and it happened on the first), 100-Foot Crow take my drabble 'Dominoes Tumbling'.

Then three hits in three days. Graveside Press come in for 'Doctor Herzog's Collection', my L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Competition finalist from 2017, for their Tiny Terrors strand. Ten-thousand-word stories are hard to place; having been a near miss several times, it's good that this has finally found a home. No news on a publication date yet, though.

The same day, Story Unlikely, who had already taken 'Snake' to podcast, decide they'll print it as well. The pod is here - good to know someone out there liked it - no news on the words-on-a-screen publication as yet.

Then, two days later, Legiron Press take my Dartmoor-set eldritch comedy 'Too Few Surnames' for their twenty-fourth anthology, Monster. That just missed their Halloween publication date, but given they took it less than a fortnight beforehand, that it's out at all is a minor miracle.

...but it may explain why they didn't ask for any exclusivity period in the contract, enabling me to sell it (for buttons, admittedly) a mere fifteen days later to Three Coin Theatre for Liminal Tales, an evening of performed story readings at London's Water Rats on 12th January. The trailer's here - I think my story is the only one not to be read by its author, being in the far more secure hands of actor Esme Pitman.

The same November day I also get my 70s-set story 'Tip of the Tongue' accepted by Tales to Terrify, only to wake up to the fact that they don't pay for flashes when the contract arrives. As I only write for money - fame optional - I withdraw as quickly and with as much dignity as possible, promising to pay closer attention to the fine print on submission pages. Yes, reader, I was that time waster.

One last acceptance of the year, and a nice one to end on, as it's the return of Steve Capone, this time for sleep depravation horror story 'Second Amendment' for Whisper House's second anthology, Dread Mondays. That makes it 22 for the year.

And three days later it was Christmas.

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You're here, so surely you know how to do that?

2084 - The Meschera Bandwidth

2084. The world remains at war.

In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.

The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.

Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.

Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.

24 0s & a 2

Twenty-four slipstream stories.  Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.

End of year report - Part 1

Having tried over the last few years to submit a story a day, and having both missed and overshot that target, for the second year running I've managed the magic 365 submissions. It was a target I screamed towards like Bodie in a Capri for much of the year, to the extent that I've only sent out four efforts in the second half of December in order to skid to a halt, Professionals-style, on that totally arbitrary and meaningless figure.

But, before we begin, some bad (taste in the mouth) news.

My last acceptance of 2023 was a story for a Nirvana-themed horror anthology from Book Slayer, to be called Negative Creep. It got as far as signed contracts and advanced reader copies going out for review. Then... nothing. The project froze, like a mosquito in sap, but with less chance of a Spielbergian reanimation. 

I've had projects which haven't come to fruition - shit happens - but not when ARCs have gone out and reviews been posted. And I've usually heard from the publisher, not from others via social media. But in this case they've just left everyone, thirty writers, hanging - not a single word of apology or explanation. Just a black hole.

As well as being utterly fucking unprofessional, it leaves authors confused as to whether we can shop our stories around again, or are they now lost in some Schrodinger's cat publishing netherworld? Have they, in any legal sense, been published or not?! So, please understand when I send out this short and heartfelt message to publisher, Roxie Voorhees, on behalf of all those affected: YOU UNMITIGATED CUNT.

Rant over.

January 2024. First sale of the year: Sci-Fi shorts taking my weird reflection on consumerism, 'Auntie'. And, had I known they'd use this image, I'd have tweaked the team of lawyers in the story to suit.

January also saw that most-rare phenomenon of two acceptances on the same day, although it was possibly not that odd as they were both for Shacklebound anthologies. Drabble 'Heaven or Hell' appeared in Drabbledark III in March, available from Amazon. The other, a reprint of another drabble, 'Working Late', is slated to see the light of day in Chronos 2 early next year.

Just one sale in February, a flash, the snappily titled 'God’s Gift to His Creation, and the Price We had to Pay for It', in Extrasensory Overload from Angry Gable Press. I've just finished reading it, and liked it.

March was a good month. First came news that 'Thus with a Kiss I Die', my Shakespeare-tinged body-swapping corporate-versus-academia longish short story first published by Aurealis would get a second burst of the limelight in Best of British Science Fiction 2023, my fifth appearance in the series.

This was tempered later in the year with the news that BoBSF would be on hiatus next year. I hope to see it return in 2026, maybe less-confusingly titled Best of British Science Fiction 2026? Best of British to editor Donna Scott and her Slab Press projects if she's reading this.

Late March saw 'Formula 719 - A Cure for Ennui', a black comedy about the counter-productivity of relying on technology to get us out of the holes we dig for ourselves (to me) or straight sci-fi (to, seemingly, everyone else) made it into the British Science Fiction Association's Fission #4.

And, two days later, Imagitopia said they'd run 'Devil Ray at the Doorway', previously published by Medusa Tales, as a podcast. They're currently on hiatus, but promise to be back and to run the stories already picked.

April saw another brace of acceptances across a handful of days. On the 11th, Parsec Ink took half (yes, half) of my story Charabanc for their Hospitium anthology, part of the Triangulation strand. Editors Greg Clumpner and Brandon Ketchum may have had the help of the Devil someplace as it was on sale by early July.

And, on the 13th, 'The Other Brother Grimm', about the one you've never heard of, was taken by Mystery and Horror LLC for my second appearance in their Strangely Funny series. It's yet to appear.

May saw another two acceptances.  Firstly, 'Sérénade Mélancolique in A Flat', a dark piece, more atmosphere than horror story, that I wrote thirty or so years ago, hidden in a virtual drawer ever since, was picked up by Dark Holme's Nightmare Narratives for a song (see what I did there?). The website's since disappeared, and I've made my punning title hard to Google, so the only evidence that it was ever published is probably this blog. Ooops.

And then, on my birthday, Whisper House Press took my flash, 'One, Two, Three' for their Costs of Living anthology. I'm slightly confused about timelines, as I've had my e-book copy for a while, reviews are appearing online, and my video interview was done in early autumn, but everything says a September 2025 release date. Having met him on screen, I like the chief Whisperer Steve Capone and what he's trying to do, and wish him and Whisper House Press well.

In June, I managed to get my name on the front page of the Grinder twice at the same time, with acceptances two days running. Firstly, Wyld Flash came back for some repeat business, running my ambient flash 'We Are All Made of Stars' the following month.  Then, the next day, Donna Scott's Slab Press came in for 'The Trouble with Vacations', previously only available as an Overcast podcast, for its Laughs in Space collection. That was published in August.

And, finally as far as the first six months goes, Illustrated Worlds took one of my favourite stories, 'Faivish the Imbecile', first published in 2021 by The Quiet Reader. I haven't heard a peep from them since, but their website suggests they're still active. I assume I'm in a queue. How British...

So, fourteen acceptances in the first six months. Find out in part two how the second half of the year went.

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Click on the images or search on Amazon.

You're here, so surely you know how to do that?

2084 - The Meschera Bandwidth

2084. The world remains at war.

In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.

The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.

Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.

Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.

24 0s & a 2

Twenty-four slipstream stories.  Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.

Now you can work from home at anything!

Yes, we’ve now reached such a state of joined-up interconnectedness that you can now do any job, absolutely any job whatsoever, from anywhere, anywhere you damn well please. Here I am, working hard at signing punters’ copies of PS Publishing’s marvellous Shadowplays anthology, sans bookshop, sans books… and sans punters!

Shame that in this new utopia we have to rely on Royal Mail, though…

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Click on the images or search on Amazon.

You're here, so surely you know how to do that?

My Thoughts are with You. Your Thoughts are with the Authorities for Calibration Against Societal Norms.

Award-nominated science fiction and slipstream author Robert Bagnall’s second anthology of twenty-four stories, variously bleak, funny, bleakly funny or – very occasionally – optimistic.

  

2084 - The Meschera Bandwidth

2084. The world remains at war.

In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.

The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.

Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.

Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.

24 0s & a 2

Twenty-four slipstream stories.  Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.
“Brilliant stories, well written!” (five stars, Amazon).

Get yerself to that there London Town

I only wrote a matter of days ago that those good people at Liminal Tales would be doing a performed reading of my story 'Too Few Surnames' "sometime in 2025". 

Well, turns out 'sometime' means January 12th, at London's Water Rats on Grey's Inn Road. If you're in the Big Smoke, wondering what to do in the grey days of winter, get yourself along. I hope you have a blast.

And, for those who missed it, here's last year's performed reading of one of my stories, 'The Ultimate Vegan Curry', by British Columbia's Delta Literary Arts Society.

#

Click on the images or search on Amazon.

You're here, so surely you know how to do that?

My Thoughts are with You. Your Thoughts are with the Authorities for Calibration Against Societal Norms.

Award-nominated science fiction and slipstream author Robert Bagnall’s second anthology of twenty-four stories, variously bleak, funny, bleakly funny or – very occasionally – optimistic.

  

2084 - The Meschera Bandwidth

2084. The world remains at war.

In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.

The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.

Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.

Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.

24 0s & a 2

Twenty-four slipstream stories.  Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.
“Brilliant stories, well written!” (five stars, Amazon).