I’m very pleased to say that I’ve just had a longish short story with this title accepted by Asimov’s SF magazine. I don’t yet know when it will appear in print, but I couldn’t have wished for a better home for it. ‘The Girl from Eden’ is a sequel to my Eden trilogy, or maybe postscript would be a better word. It’s about a young woman called Trueheart who is a character in the third book, Daughter of Eden. In fact, she’s one of the five women around whom that book revolves: Angie, Mary, Starlight, Gaia, Trueheart. The story itself stands alone perfectly well, but even its premise would be a spoiler if you haven’t got round to reading the books. Myself, I’m not that bothered about spoilers, but if you don’t like them and want to read the books, you’d need to read all three of them before starting this story! This story means a lot to me, for reasons which I only partly understand myself. A great deal of emotion went into it. More so than any other story I can think of. Oh and it can also be read as a postcript to America City. But I won’t explain why.
In the anthology To the Stars and Back: Stories in Honour of Eric Brown, (see post), edited by Ian Whates, from Newcon Press, published May 2024.
In the Ballard-themed anthology, Reports from the Deep End, edited by Maxim Jakubowski and Rick McGrath, from Titan Press. Published 7th November, 2023. Reprinted in Best of British Science Fiction 2023, edited by Donna Scott, from NewCon Press, 2024.
Jointly written by Tony Ballantyne and myself, and based on an original idea of Tony’s. Published in Shoreline of Infinity 19, Nov 2020.
In the anthology, Once Upon a Parsec, edited by David Gullen and published by Newcon Press in June 2019. Reprinted in The Best of British SF 2019, edited by Donna Scott and published by Newcon Press, 2020.
Published as a chapbook as part of my guest of honour contribution for Novacon 48, in Nottingham.
Included in the collection 2001: an Odyssey in Words, edited by Ian Whates and Tom Hunter, published by Newcon Press, July 2018.
Published by Audible as part of Jali, a new collection of original audio SF stories, April 2018. Read by Clare Corbett.
My collection Spring Tide contains 21 stories which aren’t listed separately on this page, as they are all original to the collection: Cellar // The End of Time // Love // The Lake // Creation // Transients // The Kite // The Steps // Frozen Flame // Still Life // Dear // Rage // Roundabout // Ooze // Newmarket // The Great Sphere // The Gates of Eden // The Man who Swallowed Himself // Aphrodite // Spring Tide // Sky ‘The Man who Swallowed Himself’ is reprinted in Stories of Hope and Wonder from Newcon Press, 2020.
Published as my guest of honour contribution to the Dortcon convention programme, 2015. (Dortmund, Germany).
Published in In the Empty Places, edited by Iain Maloney (December, 2014)
Published in Solaris Rising 3, edited by Ian Whates. (August, 2014)
Published in Asimov’s, December, 2012. (Collected in The Peacock Cloak from Newcon Press)
Published in Asimov’s, July 2011. Review: Humans have colonized Lutania, where Stephen works as a data analyst for the Agency. He’s an antisocial fellow who rudely avoids his co-workers and prefers the company of the simple settlers in their farming villages. His three-year gig on Lutania is nearing its end, when he’ll be transmitted back to Earth. This process necessarily involves the loss of all memories accumulated during the last 29 days before transmission. Agency rules prohibit employees from working after their Day 40, a stricture that Stephen resents and fears, for reasons he doesn’t quite articulate to himself. Or perhaps that he can’t remember. Stephen seems to have a secret from himself. A character study of a person who lives on the fringes of normality, or perhaps further off. He has a strong aversion to the indigenes, who seem to be able to read minds; can they see the secret he keeps hidden from himself? There are some oddly idyllic scenes when he enjoys himself alone in the native Lutanian forests, but this is not where he chooses to take his enforced vacation. A very subtle horror story. I wish the premise were more credible. Lois Tilton, Locus Reprint: Terror at the Crossroads: Tales of Horror, Delusion, and the Unknown, edited by Emily Hockaday and Jackie Sherbow (Collected in The Peacock Cloak from Newcon Press)
Published in Asimov’s, Jan 2011. (Collected in The Peacock Cloak from Newcon Press)
Published in Postscripts anthology #22/23, ‘The Company He Keeps’, edited by Pete Crowther and Nick Gevers, 2010. Reviews: Jacob Stone is the nominal captain and sole crew member of an interstellar cargo ship that is so totally automated his job is mainly to sit alone and wait for emergencies that never happen. The job pays well because few people can tolerate the prolonged isolation, but Jacob is a misanthrope and a miser who lives only to accumulate wealth. On one stopover he encounters another solitary ship captain, a young man with a brighter future than his own. Jacob is jealous and brags about the passengers he is carrying in his cargo hold, a group of aliens on a religious pilgrimage who travel in a kind of “dry sleep” from which they are rehydrated at the end of the journey. They were transparent too, and hard and fragile. But these were little people nearly half a metre tall, people that resembled human beings, with hands and feet and little faces. And they weren’t really empty shells either, even if they looked that way. Jacob continues on his journey, but now he has become obsessed with the little aliens, helpless in their dehydrated stasis; he comes to hate them just because of the way the other man admired them. The title refers to Jacob and the shriveled state of his heart, a man who cares for nothing but himself and not even himself very much. It is the banal and casual nature of his evil that makes this one effective horror. Lois Tilton, Locus. (Collected in The Peacock Cloak from Newcon Press)
Published in Conflicts anthology, edited by Ian Whates, Newcon Press 2010. (Collected in The Peacock Cloak from Newcon Press) Free audio version here, narrated by Scott Barclay.
Published in Asimov’s, June 2010. Reviews: Virtual reality. Fabbro created an idyllic world and copies of himself to live in it, but the copies eventually began to get ideas of their own, and ambitions. Finally, after rebellions and wars, Fabbro has entered the world he made and Tawus has come to confront him, to justify himself. “I used to think about you looking in from outside,” he said. “When we had wars, when we were industrializing and getting people off the land, all of those difficult times. I used to imagine you judging me, clucking your tongue, shaking your head. But you try and bring progress to a world without any adverse consequences for anyone. You just try it.” There is more here than virtual reality. Tawus embodies the contradictions between determinism and free will, between progress and stagnation. This is the retelling of a much older story of creation and rebellion. RECOMMENDED. Lois Tilton, Locus Reprints: Year’s Best Science fiction # 28, edited by Gardner Dozois Esli Magazine (Russian translation) See illustration here. Audio version, read by George Hrab on Starship Sofa here. (Collected in The Peacock Cloak from Newcon Press)
Published in Postscripts anthology #19, ‘Enemy of the Good’, edited by Peter Crowther and Nick Gevers, 2009. (Collected in The Peacock Cloak from Newcon Press)
Published in Interzone, March-April 2010. (The issue also includes a guest editorial by the author, which comments on the story.) (Collected in The Peacock Cloak from Newcon Press)
