S R Algernon returns to the pages of Futures this week with his story Asymmetrical warfare. No stranger to Futures, his first tale, A time for peace, appeared in May 2013. Since then he has bolstered the planet’s defences, played with phlogiston and offered an unusual take on Christmas. This time, he offers an encounter with a noble warrior race. Here he explains how the story came about — as ever, read the story first, as this contains spoilers.

Writing Asymmetrical warfare

I wrote Asymmetrical warfare as a commentary on two conflicting roles of the military. Military service is often promoted as building character, but warfare can destroy families and scar the children and adults who are caught up in it. Our rituals of war often play down this collateral damage and portray death in combat as a sacrifice for the next generation. An alien species with no knowledge of human biology might see our war films and assume that, literally, the carnage of war gives rise to our descendants.

As some starfish can reproduce by being cut into pieces, it seemed like a viable reproductive strategy, particularly if war wounds allow for exchange of genetic material. A species that reproduces in this fashion might easily mistake our wars for courtship rituals and see our wartime narratives from a different perspective. I wrote Asymmetrical warfare to let that perspective play out and gave the character some room to draw its own conclusions when the war did not turn out as planned.

Futures this week welcomes back some old friends courtesy of writer John Frizell. We first met Ellie and her brother Jamie in John’s 2008 story Fashion. Since then, they have graced the pages of Futures several times as Ellie struggles to harness the wayward genius of her sibling —  they’ve even found their way into the Futures 2 anthology. This week’s instalment, Perfection, is no exception — although it does find Jamie in an unusually cooperative mood. Here, John reveals what inspired the latest story in the saga of their lives.

Writing Perfection

I usually remember where the inspiration for a story has come from but it’s rare to know the exact timeline of its genesis or how long it took.  Even if it is one of those stories that cooperates, and almost writes itself without the usual struggles, there is still the search for the right phrase or for the additional little twist. It’s hard to know when the process is over or how much time it actually consumed. But not for Perfection.

I caught the last 12 minutes of a Radio 4 programme about Autotune and then, a couple of hours later, set out for a midday walk on the South Downs under a clear blue sky.  A mile or so into the walk, the ‘what if’, ‘suppose that’ of plot creation started bubbling up.  The story assembled itself over the four-mile walk and as soon as I got home, I grabbed pen and paper and headed off to a coffee shop to write it down. That took almost two hours — longer than it had to think it up — and required another hour after dinner to type up the resulting scrawl and an hour the next day to clean up the final draft. From hearing the Radio 4 programme to the finished story was 25 hours.

Between the genesis of the story and its final form it managed to incorporate a lot of what I like: walking, singing (important disclaimer: neither I nor my friends at Lewes Operatic Society use Autotune) and messing about with electronics. No robot building though. Maybe next time …

You can read about Ellie and Jamie’s other exploits in Fashion, Making memories, Silence, Non-skid, Pest control and Trials. John has also written Knowledge and Reef for Futures.

This week, S B Divya makes her debut in Futures with her story The egg. Here she kindly offers some insight into the inspiration behind the tale. If you’d like to find out more about her activities, you can catch up with her on her blog. As ever, you should read the story before reading this post.

Writing The egg

The story of The egg began while I was thinking about artificial wombs and how they might reshape near-future society. Most of the discussions I’ve read on this topic are female centric, which is natural considering that women are the sole bearers of human wombs; however, the impact on men (specifically, on fathers) should also be considered. The egg focuses on what it might mean to one man in particular.

I started with the question: how might an artificial womb change men’s lives? This led to a couple more questions. What would a man do if he were in control of a pregnancy that he wasn’t sure he wanted? And, what circumstances might put him in that situation? It’s a politically charged topic so I wanted to explore it from an intimate, immediate point-of-view. The plot of The egg evolved from one possible set of answers to these questions.

The characters and their motivations came from a more personal source: my friends, Kevin and Connie. They were two of the liveliest, most fun-loving and easy-going people that I knew, and they were both under the age of 30. At the time I wrote the story, in the summer of 2013, Kevin had been ill with a rare form of cancer and was on experimental medication.

Kevin and Connie’s situation shaped the heart of The egg. Unlike many couples of their age, they weren’t looking forward to a long and happy life with children. Not that having children is necessary for a fulfilling life — it certainly isn’t — but I felt a wrongness in their being deprived of the choice. An artificial womb would restore that for a couple like Kevin and Connie, as well as for many others who have trouble with pregnancy. These feelings wove together with the earlier ideas, and the outcome was this story.

In a twist of fate, I found out that Nature was accepting this story two days after I attended Kevin’s memorial service. He died on 17 October 2014. I hope that this story serves as a small tribute to his life.

Today is a special day for Futures as we’re being visited by the Galaxy’s greatest hero, Simon Clash. We are fortunate that James Aquilone managed to get hold of an extract from Clash’s life story enabling us to see the hero in action. When James isn’t chasing after galactic heroes, you can usually catch up with him at his website. James kindly took a moment to reveal how he managed to scoop this exclusive with Simon Clash (warning this contains spoilers, so you’ll want to read about Clash’s exploits first).

Writing Simon Clash: the Galaxy’s greatest hero

As much as I love Star Wars, the 1980 Flash Gordon movie has always occupied a more special place in my geeky heart. After I saw it in the theatre, I stayed and watched it again. And for many years, I made sure I saw it every time it aired on television. Maybe it was the Queen music or maybe it was Max von Sydow’s bald head that resonated with me. But most likely it was the fact that Flash Gordon was more fun than Star Wars.

So when I started writing the space opera that would turn into Simon Clash: the Galaxy’s greatest hero, I knew I wanted it to be fun.

I also wanted to play with the plot that the two movies shared. Luke and Han’s mission is to save Princess Leia, just as Flash’s is to save Dale Arden. That trope is as old as storytelling itself, which makes it the perfect target for subversion.

My inspirations for Simon Clash himself were a couple of wacky TV shows I watched as a kid: Get Smart and Inspector Gadget. Maxwell Smart and Gadget, both played by Don Adams, were bumbling, idiotic, oblivious characters. They were heroes who really weren’t heroes at all, and I’ve always found that funny and endearing.

There were two other things I wanted to do with the story.

One was to create a weapon as awesome as the lightsabre (one can hope, right?). Simon Clash’s sonic wand was based on Green Lantern’s power ring, which can create just about anything the superhero needs. And now that I think about it, the wand is also similar to Inspector Gadget’s ability to whip out an endless array of gadgets when necessary or not.

The other thing was to name a space opera character after my favourite Pixies song, Velouria. And regarding that, I can say I was 100% successful!

There are a few other things that inspired Simon Clash: the Galaxy’s greatest hero as well as Easter eggs, but I’ll leave those for the readers to discover.

This month, Futures in Nature Physics sees the welcome return of Alvaro Zinos-Amaro with his story The black hole and the entropy collector. Thus far, as well as coffee, Alvaro has written Futures tales about mysterious shops and the perils of cryogenics. This time he takes on, as the title suggests, a black hole. When he’s not lurking at the event horizon, details of what Alvaro is up to can be found at his blog. Here he reveals the inspiration for his latest story.

Writing The black hole and the entropy collector

I’m blaming Alex Shvartsman for this one.

I came up with this story’s premise when I was casting about  for humorous ideas for Alex’s UFO anthology series. As sometimes happens, though, my first stab at turning the idea into a story didn’t quite work — my original draft was much longer than the story’s current version, and featured a third character and related subplot, neither of which fully gelled.

Once I realized the issue, I removed the extraneous character, trimming down the wordcount significantly, and everything else fell into place. What remained, and was now visible without obstruction, was my initial core concept, a far-out physics retelling of one my favourite fables, The scorpion and the frog.  Since Alex had introduced me to Nature Futures and our collaboration, Coffee in end times, had been published here, it seemed only fitting that the new story should land at Nature and complete the cycle.

Note: I like to place little ‘Easter eggs’ in my stories, and this one seems to have been loaded up with more than the usual share, including a reference to Seinfeld, one to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and two to stand-up comedian George Carlin.