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                          Caveat Sherlock Holmes is in the public domain, as are the works of H.P. Lovecraft and Alexander Dumas. However, freshly-created, original fiction is the copyright of the author. Note that my work adresses adult themes, and is therefore not recommended for YA or children. Copyright All textual material on this website is copyright by Mike Adamson. All artwork with the exception of the book and magazine covers is copyright by Jen Downes. |
Introduction Mike's most active area of writing has always been science fiction, with, at this time, 167 short stories, ranging from flash to novella length. Every SF trope is fair game, from time travel to robots and AI, faster than light travel to dystopian futures, space exploration to climate change, and immortality to alien contact. Stories have evolved into various streams and groupings, with the largest being Tales of the Middle Stars (see separate listing), plus two or three other major cycles. These stories are listed below under these group headings, and include links to places of publication to purchase or, occasionally, read online. This genre offers the widest range of possibilities, with a very active marketplace seeking submissions on an ongoing basis, so the lists below will expand with future updates perhaps the quickest of all (though Sherlock Holmes may take that particular accolade!). Check back for updates! by Mike Adamson One of my earliest memories is seeing the late 1960s reissue of Disney's 1954 20, 000 Leagues Under the Sea. I remember the cinema, I remember the supporting feature (Namu the Killer Whale — you got two movies for the price of a ticket in those days), and I remember the continuous sessions. Not long before, my Dad had said he would soon be bringing me a book about a submarine, and somehow even so young I at once visualised a metal hull starkly lit against a totally black ocean... It was the storybook tie-in of the movie, and just a few years ago I found a mint copy on eBay: it will be seventy years old next year! Jules Verne and Walt Disney were part of what launched me on a lifelong romance with science fiction. The late Gerry Anderson was another major influence, his 1960s children's sci-fi shows have remained part of my world to this day, and of course the 60s were the time of the first Space Program, when dreams were starting to become reality, and that meant a lot. My early conception of the future was that science, and its expression through machine technology, would mature into ever-more amazing things, that the future meant bigger, faster, cleverer, more reach, more capacity. Looking back, I see that was the natural mental orientation of being born into the society of the day, and of course, just as society changed, I grew out of it. The future became a place of threat as much as promise, as I began to understand my fellow human being, and realised that human nature goes with us on the journey, the dark side as well as the light. In that universal view, the future can be anything those in power choose to make it, and as their showing in the present is so dismal, why should the future be any better? Eventually one wakes up and realises that a smarter phone is not the gift of tomorrow, it's a gadget, nothing more. Yes, we have much greater efficiency than we had decades ago, every device we need around us is concentrated in that pocket computer we have the gall to call a phone, but did we need this device more than we needed, say, the cure for diseases? Does it matter to the person losing their loved one to a disease that they can tell their friends about it much more efficiently than they would have forty years ago? Is that suitable compensation? Personally, I would have rather had the cancer cured and used a dial phone to pass along news of a speedy recovery. But history has not unfolded like that. But the future always remains, and maybe we can make it better. This is the eternal possibility, and in that much, speculative fiction, science fiction in particular, is all about predicting what might be. Science fiction writers have forecast many a reality, from dystopian politics to hardware, to exploration and so much more. In a sense precognition is part of their brief. If they're doing it right, they're the prophets of what is to come. But as time moves along — and we're chewing through the third decade of the twenty-first c entury — one starts to sense that time is running out. Certainly the political inertia to implement the steps necessary to ameliorate climate catastrophe is a case in point, that gnawing sensation that we are all racing toward the edge of a cliff and the guy driving the bus doesn't believe in gravity. You can't get off, you can't change drivers, you can't convince the one you've got to make a turn — nothing changes, at least not for the better, That's another whole discussion, but a great many are justified in seeing some very bleak tomorrows coming, and yes, I have written of this in a long arc of stories occupying most the next century. But I'm an optimist and want the future to be okay, so dark times don't hang around forever, and beyond all that is a future that turns out to have been really worth waiting for. I would say I've explored most or all of the major science fiction tropes in my short stories. Browsing down my lists, I find time travel, immortality, personality upload, fast then light travel, alien contact, untapped powers of the mind, artificial intelligence, worlds of dream... They mix and match very nicely, too. I've often wondered what a major anthology would look like with the material arranged by subject matter. It could afford to be pretty weighty, and would of course not be straying outside the SF genre. Back in the 1980s I wrote a considerable weight of material on the theme of sentience outside the human condition, exploring the concept of cetaceans being our intellectual peers. I had three volumes' worth of short pieces, and a series of novels, the first three or four complete. My first ever published short story was in this cycle, a piece titled "The Island of the Sun God," published over two issues in Underwater Geographic in 1986 or so, and featuring my own paintings as illustrations. It generated some interest at the time, I believe there was some discussion at the Oceans '86 Congress, but I couldn't get an agent interested. David Brin must have had the sentient dolphins market pretty much cornered. That said, in 1994 or so, I came within a whisker of my oceanic novel Calypso, coming out from Ballantines. Betty Ballantine herself did the edits, we were all set to go — then fate took a hand, Ian Ballantine passed away and the company went through some restructuring. My novel was one of those projects which were shelved. Had I made a breakthrough thirty years ago, my career would have certainly followed a different trajectory. As a rider to this era, several of my "Ocean" short stories have appeared in print in the last few years, with the possibility of more to come. My busiest enterprise has been my SF cycle Tales of the Middle Stars, and you'll find that on a separate tab. With going on for sixty stories to date, it's easily my largest project ever, and deserving of separate treatment. On the following pages you'll find my other science fiction pieces arranged and grouped, with info on their places of publication, purchase links and so forth. In the listings below, stories are grouped according to broad themes, and their order of presentation is, roughly, their chronological order of writing. I could have alphabetised them, but there didn't seem a point! Note: "FR" = "Free Read" ... see the Free Reads page for links. Go to Tales of the Middle Stars Tales of the 21st Century: Climate, War, Fascism and Dystopias Tanks in the Snow Silver Blade #52 FR The Value of Meaningless Malaise Cosmic Crime Stories September 2022 Legacy Mythulu #2, January 2022 Meditations While Shaving Land Beyond the World FR A Lament for Marla Future Visions #3, December 2018 Etherea # 7, February 2022 Critical Need Kzine #20, January 2018 Podcast soon: Manawaker Studio Fear of the Dark Aurealis #104, September 2017 No Sleep Podcast, Season 14, Ep. 25 Cursed with Clarity Page and Spine (website discontinued) The Crime of Memory (forthcoming in The Kafka Protocol) Hunters in the Maze Unrealpolitik Future Crime Stories 9/2023 (due) Street Pirates Uprising Review, September 2017 FR The Apotheosis of Rosie Metstellar, December 2021 FR The Best of Metastellar, Year Two Apocalyptic Visions Emerging Worlds, January 2020 The Last Flight of the Grim Reaper One Way Street Forthcoming in Stupefying Stories Hellrider After The Orange: Ruin and Recovery The View from Dystopia Shelter of Daylight V.1, No. 2, July 2020 Warpaint Sci Fi Shorts Preacher Feature On submission The Wild Breed Resource Wars The Excising of Ellery The Protest Diaries Water is Thicker than Blood On submission EMPath The Long Bridge The Sweet, Sweet Pulp Bring 'em Back Dead On submission The Exploration of Space The Hard Way Home The Martian Wave 2017 Walking on Titan Aurealis #116 Forthcoming in House of Zolo R*E*X Syntax and Salt, 6/2017 FR Lockdown Sci-Fi #3 Dust Mote Mythic #8 Hostile Intent Compelling Science Fiction #10 Compelling SF First Collection Colour Therapy New Myths #44, 9/2018 FR Footprints in the Sand Meteor Man Abyss & Apex #82, 4/2022 FR Secret of the Sands Where the Darkness Begins Personal Best Patchwork Sunrise on Eris Rhapsody of the Spheres The Post-Habitable Earth AD2105 — Endtimes AD2106 — Escape Vector AD2111 — Rats Andromeda Spaceways #76 AD2115 — Call Me John AD2119 — At the Walls of the World AD2132 — Pelagus Ecotastrophe II AD2132 — Hi-Techer and the Genie AD2133 — Stormwinds AD2138 — Project Archangel AD2140 — The Long Journey of Coal AD2147 — Maggot in the Apple The Mods AD2171 — The First Day of Winter Gotta Wear Eclipse Glasses AD2179 — Flight of the Storm God Endless Apocalypse Little Blue Marble June 2021 FR Little Blue Marble 2021 AD2195 — As Above, So Below AD2220 — Solitude, in Silent Sun Little Blue Marble July 2020 FR Little Blue Marble 2020 Ocean Inward, to the Sea Forthcoming in The Pelagic Zone Sunfire and Swiftsure The Gentle Art of Ghosting Sunshine Superhighway Whispers The Moth and the Candle Dies Infaustus Gorgon's Deep Myths, Monsters, Mutations Last and First Whales Land Beyond the World, 12/21 FR Soul Mirror Robots, Androids and AI Rebirth Compelling SF Special Issue Forthcoming in AI, Robot Cogito, Ergo Sum Compelling Science Fiction #7 Forthcoming in AI, Robot No Victim, No Crime? Existential Schism A Room With a View The Road Philosopher Time Travel The Winds of Time The Chronos Chronicles The Chorochronos Archives With Scientific Detachment Temporal Fractures The Steel God Forthcoming from NewMyths Gamer's Gambit The Chorochronos Archives Alien Contact Dark Encounter Hellbound Anthology of SF Vol. 1 A Grand Succession Nebula Rift Vol. 4, No. 12, 1/2017 (out of print) Dreamlogger First Contact Forthcoming in Lockdown Sci-Fi The Devil's Bride ("Scans") Abyss & Apex #73, 1/2020 FR Naevus Uprising Review, 11/2017 FR Synth Anthology Series #4, 12/2019 The Stranger of Morden Aurealis #121, 5/2019 The Purslane Menace Unbound IV (cancelled before release) The Fate of the Dove Revelations Daily Science Fiction FR Metastellar, 4/2023 FR An Ocean of Sky A Failure of Diplomacy The Man with the Alien Aura Not Far From Roswell Horizons A Wandering Star Bones Samaritan of the Double Echo Jules Verne Pastiches The Silent Agenda 20, 000 Leagues Remembered Galaktika #388 The Visionary and the Voyager First Mission The Highest Loyalty Extraordinary Visions |
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