Shores of Night

The monster has been with us for a long time. From the very start of stories the monster has been there; in Gilgamesh the wild man Enkidu is arguably the very first monster, though it is equally likely that he is only the first monster to have been written about. The same culture and those close to it, also gave us depictions of half man, half animal people, mostly famously as the gods of ancient Egypt. Tales of djinn and ghouls originated from the same region later on in later eras and arguably served as a crucible for myths and stories that spread across the globe. But there are stories of monsters in every part of the world, heroic traditions that paint horrors into the darkness. A natural aspect of the human psyche mythologises things we do not understand, and for most of our history the night has been the great barrier. Seen as the harbourer of evil, it was the great unknown, where the Devil and his minions dwelt. This is the root of much of the antipathy directed tow...

Brink of Disaster The 1980s began with a bang, literally. As Ronald Reagan took the stand to make his inaugural address, a shot rang out and he fell; his body vaporising. Panic spread through Washington. With the Vice President, George H Bush hastily sworn in; the White House and Pentagon began sabre rattling directed at the Kremlin. Ships were moved to strategic points in the Atlantic and Baltic; the Eagle suits and their pilot were sent to Berlin. In response, Red Army units were moved into Eastern European countries. Pro-democracy campaigns came under intense scrutiny and even threats. Poland's Solidarity engaged in clashes with the authorities, something that came to an abrupt end when the New Man, Gusar (Hussar), was deployed to crush a demonstration in 1982. The march turned into a riot, and over a hundred people died as Gusar let loose with his powers. At the height of the riot, however, something strange happened. The New Man's powers suddenly failed and he ...

On Wednesday, I got my final mark for the MA in Writing, earning a 60 for my Final Project. I have mixed feelings for about the mark, though I am sure it was the right one. I fell down on my grammar and that's annoying because I thought I had fixed everything.  Overall it means I have a Commendation, which suits me fine, I am perfectly happy with that and do wonder if the Black Bug Room is just stirring up trouble at the back of my head and making me irritated for the sake of it.   What concerns me more is where I go now. I took the job I am doing now because I felt juggling study, work, looking for work and writing was too heavy a burden to bear. I had a really bleak episode last year, on the way back from an interview at Southampton University where I actually felt so numb, emotionally, that I wondered if it was worth continuing with anything. This prompted me to take the job I am doing now as a permanent place; but I do not have much affection for it, though I am fond of...

Some history today: History: An Inauspicious Beginning Super powered beings did not appear until the 1960s. Soviet experiments at the Tunguska Incident site created the first of their 'New Men', a super powered figure who rose above the old distinctions of class, sex and other 'shackles', ready for the perfect Soviet state. By the end of the 1960s the USSR had a cadre of these figures, and the United States was in a panic. The Cold War had come close to heating up in '63 with the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Space Race had seen shots exchanged between Russian and American spacecraft, though neither side acted on these events. The appearance of the 'New Men' opened a new front, one which people were wholly unprepared for. The White House ordered an investigation into the feasibility of creating an American equivalent.  Military scientists scoured available technology without success. Everything was too big, too clunky or just didn't work. In Janua...

My name is Steve Cotterill and I will not survive the zombie apocalypse. Despite what an online test says (Play Buzz's quiz reckons I would survive for a year), and despite the fact that I know enough about zombies to survive, more than they ever seem to in zombie films anyway: the odds of my turning into zombie chow are pretty high in the unlikely case of an outbreak of a revenant pandemic. This is why. Warning, spoilers ahead. Before we go further I would like to clarify what I mean by ‘zombie apocalypse’. I am assuming a situation where the undead are everywhere, where government has been rendered pointless and the armed services are seriously hampered by their own people turning zombie. A complete breakdown in other words, with a global emphasis that means no chance overseas aid. This means I am going against the grain of a lot of the pieces I have read or seen, where it is assumed that some sort of authority remains and that with manufacturing and the army ...

The backdrop to the American Dream is a world that, despite everything, has absorbed the superhero phenomena as best it can. They have been monetised, made part of society in a fashion that benefits everyone and lets them earn a living purely as heroes. Only disaffected dreamers fall outside the so called Power Machine that makes money, pays bills and creates heroes. Not everything is roses and rainbows however. Heroism demands a high personal price; increasingly personal ethics are something out of place in the superhero world. It is not uncommon for the newly empowered to find they are literally stalked by media and business people; the lure of the superhero has not lost any of its appeal, even after thirty years of hype. Newly signed heroes are treated like debutantes, press conferences are called to introduce them to the world, footage is leaked online to show what they can do; sometimes with highly negative effects. Most of the time new hero identities are encouraged, though two ...

One of the issues I have with leaving gaming is that the ideas don't stop coming and I find it too easy to just whip up something for the hell of it. Ideas are easy after all, and I find myself thinking of one thing and then... it snowballs. Sometimes I can use what I concoct, it can be turned into fiction (that's what's sort of happening with the Dream Settings stuff I posted a few months ago). On other occasions though... nah, nothing doing: the idea is stubbornly beyond my ability to convert into prose. This is one of those... The basic setting is a superhero world where all the powers are based on things to do with aliens, be they the result of abduction, alien heritage or anything else. Some of the science works like magic, naturally, but I wanted to keep the general sense of the powers limited to a single source. The other thing I wanted to play around with was the idea of celebrity and, at the extreme opposite, the idea of an underground of super p...