This week, Futures is pleased to welcome back Wendy Nikel, with her story Lava cake for the Apocalypse. Regular readers will remember Wendy’s previous stories The Memory Ward and Let me sleep when I die. You can find out more about Wendy’s work — and her latest novella The Continuum — at her website and by following her on Twitter. Here, she reveals the culinary inspiration for her latest tale — as ever, it pays to read the story first.

Writing Lava cake for the Apocalypse

For the past few years, I’ve been participating in an annual flash-fiction writing contest on Codex Writers Group. Each weekend, we receive various prompts that we’re to use as our inspiration for a new flash piece. This particular week, I was mulling over a couple prompts, but one in particular really got me thinking along these lines: ‘society no longer values something that we have’.

It also just so happened that I was baking that weekend. I was baking cupcakes for a guest blog for Beth Cato’s ‘Bready or Not’ feature in celebration of the publication of my time-travel novella, The Continuum. Up to my elbows in flour and frosting, I started putting the two together and writing a story that’s not just about the value of a good recipe, but also about the value of other things: the knowledge passed down from earlier generations, the farmers and labourers who provide us with the things we eat, the places in the world where these ingredients originate, and Earth itself.

This week, Futures is delighted to welcome back Alvaro Zinos-Amaro with his story A rossum’s best friend. regular readers will remember Alvaro’s previous stories for Futures, which included conversations with a black hole, the darker side of cryogenics, some very unusual shops and a caffeine-fuelled collaboration with Alex Shvartsman. You can keep up to date with Alvaro’s work at his website or by following him on Twitter. Here, he reveals the inspiration behind his latest tale — as ever it pays to read the story first.

Writing A rossum’s best friend

Not too long ago a man walked into a used bookstore, picked out a few items, and asked the clerk for help. 

“I’m looking for more titles in the Foundation series,” he said. “I read them all a long time ago but don’t remember them well and want to re-read them. Any idea what the correct order is?”

I wasn’t that man, but I happened to be in conversation with the aforementioned clerk, who, aware of my knowledge of science fiction, directed the question to me. 

I examined the customer’s selections. One of the books he had picked up was not by Asimov, but by Gregory Benford, who penned the first installment of a Foundation trilogy authorized by the Asimov estate after Asimov’s death. This suggested to me that the man intended to read all novels connected with the Foundation series in one way or another, rather than strictly the Foundation novels per se. I therefore pointed out that to read the Foundation series in its fullest sense would also mean reading the Robot series and the Empire series, since as the years wore on they all became enmeshed. We talked about this for a while, and later that day, back home, I found myself doing further research on the chronological intricacies of Asimov’s vast interlinked universe.

This, in turn, led me to start re-reading the robot short stories, attempting to do so in internal chronological order.

Two of these, in which robots are designed to provide companionship to children, got me thinking about what that might look like in reverse. I’d also recently read Octavia Butler’s stunning story Bloodchild, wherein humans have to integrate within a complex alien biological life-cycle.

After a few days the human-as-robot-companion and human-living-among-aliens themes merged in my mind and produced A rossum’s best friend.

I didn’t hide my literary tracks, by the way. The two Asimov robot stories I alluded to before were Robbie (which you may well have guessed) — and the lesser-known A boy’s best friend. Besides my story’s title, there’s a less evident tribute. Asimov typically derived his robot names from his robot model letters and numbers. Thus, in Runaround, robot SPD-13 becomes Speedy; in Liar! robot RB-34 becomes Herbie; and so on. Likewise, the name of my rossum protagonist contains within it a description of her provenance.

And for the used bookstore fiends among you — if you happen to find yourself fielding questions from inquisitive customers, beware the consequences.

This week, Futures is delighted to welcome Eric Lewis with his story Decoy. A tale of intergalactic crime and greed, Decoy offers a cautionary tale for anyone hoping to use technology for nefarious purposes. Here, Eric explains a little more about the inspiration behind his tale — as ever, it pays to read the story first.

Writing Decoy

In this story, a thief ignores the warnings of an underling, and gets his comeuppance through a low-tech trap with a high-tech façade.

Any time a new piece of technology makes its debut, there are two things you can bet on happening very soon afterwards: miniaturization and crime. And be it nuclear power, Bitcoin, or a portable ‘spatial-displacement-field generator’, certain types driven by greed and irrational exuberance often tend to leap before they look to exploit something they don’t really understand. After all, those eggheads who invented it couldn’t possibly know better! Thus there will always be unforeseen consequences, whether it’s the director of your research group keen to market a new piece of tech before studying it fully, or the interstellar thieves in Decoy.

This story is for all the eggheads in the lab who are perfectly happy to let the bosses leap first.

Death is never an easy topic to tackle. What death might mean in the future is even harder — especially if there’s a profit in it. This week’s Futures tackles the issue head on in Ted Hayden’s story These 5 books go 6 feet deep. When not pondering the criminal possibilities of a dead body, Ted writes, and you can read more of his work at his website. Here he reveals what inspired his latest tale — as ever, it pays to read the story first.

Writing These 5 books go 6 feet deep

My dad gives tours of Chicago graveyards. Last Halloween, he led a group of high-school students from tombstone to tombstone, explaining who was buried underneath and what they had done with their lives. Unfortunately, the kids didn’t care about history. They wanted ghosts. Where could they see one, now, on this tour, before they went back to their bus and returned to class? My dad explained that the cemetery was full of bodies but thin on hauntings. These dead had no interest in the present. They remained in the past.

Years earlier and thousands of miles south of Chicago, a family put their recently deceased grandmother in the living room, where I was staying at the time. The rubbery, disgustingly sweet smell of her decomposition made it impossible to sleep. The next morning, out for a tired and somewhat dazed walk, I found the grieving son burying wooden crosses in the forest. I asked why and he responded with a word I didn’t recognize. I asked again, he tried to explain, and I still didn’t understand. Eventually, he shrugged, said “Terrorists!” and went back to burying crosses.

I recently asked a friend if he would inherit his family business. He told me, in complete seriousness, that science had made such incredible advances that soon, no one would ever die. His parents would stay perfectly healthy for centuries and, if they managed to avoid the occasional careening bus and falling air-conditioning window unit, possibly forever. He would never own mum and dad’s business, but he would have their love eternally.

The prediction struck me as more hopeful than likely. Personally, I give his parents five to ten years.

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The dead don’t die. They haunt teenagers looking for kicks, demand sons perform cryptic rituals, and look down on their children from heaven.

Or they do die and we, the living, are deranged.

The former proposition strikes me as hopeful, the latter as likely. But I saw a ghost once, so my position is muddled at best.

Death is confusing. As technology evolves, I imagine it will only become more so.