My very first story for publication, now sadly lost, was a short story I wrote decades ago. It wasn’t accepted, but it was my first step as a fiction author. I still remember it but haven’t been tempted to reproduce it, as its future is now our past.
I fell in love with science fiction after reading short stories in the Golden Age. I’m sure some of them were awful, but as a boy the sense of adventure they inspired lit up my life. It led me to Naval Aviation.
I’ve now written over twenty short pieces. They all eventually found a home, not without years of struggle. At some point I may[ublish them as a collection. For now, here’s a list of the stories and where you can find them.
- Banjo Music
- A newly restored classic Corvette attracts the attention of visiting aliens. Who knew they were muscle car enthusiasts?
- The first story I ever had published.
- Dust Bunnies
- Unexpected life in the Oort Cloud – a story of evolution
- A little girl hears her grandfather’s adventures when he was a space traveler.
- Unexpected life in the Oort Cloud – a story of evolution
- Emergence
- Evolution of consciousness in an O’Neill probe. Not one of ours.
- Flight
- A photon’s-eye view of deep history.
- Terraformed Earth – Departure
- Ignatius Ryan, SJ, is banished to the future after a theological controversy. The Pope, worried that Christianity might not survive in a world in chaos, asks him to go on this journey to preserve the gospel of love. He has no idea what’s waiting for him.
- Terraformed Earth – Creation
- What would you sacrifice to restore the environment?
- Seventeen climate researchers sacrificed their firstborn. Their parents genetically modify the Young to live for centuries, increase their intelligence far beyond the rest of humanity, and take away their ability to reproduce. As adolescents, the Young have the tools to change the world. The solution they craft will last millennia. But the side effects are killers.
- UFO
- A pair of Navy F18s encounter an unidentified aerial phenomenon. Is it a software glitch or an alien ship?
- Night Court
- On Halloween Joao Santos, NASA Chief Astronaut, receives a subpoena from the First Court of Trans Lunar Crime. The charge, inadvertently killing an alien, seems like a joke. But the bounty hunter who comes for him is definitely not joking. It delivers Joao to the far side of the Moon to stand trial. WIll Joao choose the alien version of Legal Aid or the assistance of a dodgy nonhuman defense attorney? What does the Martian land his son gave him for his birthday have to do with his plight?
- Martian New Year
- On the day before the Mars Centennial of Mariner 7, the first probe to image the Martian surface (8/17/2153 on Earth), Marc and Sophie are driving one of a group of vacuum tractors heading into the Northern Highlands in search of thorium deposits.
- Far ahead of their compatriots, scouting an alternate way forward, their tractor is disabled by a rockslide. As night falls, they fear they won’t be rescued before their power is exhausted. As they talk about their lives, lived and yet to live, perhaps never, they confess their growing feelings for one another. To pursue a relationship, they’ll have to find a way to survive the night.
- Martian Requiem
- Laurent Bernard’s estranged father is dying. Laurent returns to his isolated family farm in the Martian outback to heal the rift. He thought he’d just say goodbye. Instead, a surprise in his father’s will puts him in the center of a long-brewing conflict about annexation of the farm by Tharsis City. As a terraforming manager, he should let the growing Martian settlement absorb the farm. But Marianne Levesque, a girl when he left and now a beautiful young woman, wants something more. So, to his surprise, does Laurent. As his father fails, the conflict between Laurent’s job and his heart grows.
- Honorable Mention, Writers of the Future, 2020.
- Incoming
- An asteroid is on a collision course with Earth. It’s the end of humanity in an environmental catastrophe that humans are powerless to stop. What could be worse?
- Leaving Acadia
- Marc and Sophie dream of a future on Mars away from Acadia, the independent farm in eastern Mariner Valley where they grew up. When Sophie’s abusive father threatens them, they flee Acadia in a stolen vacuum tractor through the fractured terrain of Eos Chaos—at night. Her father learns they left and pursues them. When her father’s tractor breaks down, they have to choose—get away or jeopardize their future to save Sophie’s father.
- Android’s Dilemma
- Murder of a human is the cardinal sin of the Asimovian faith to which all androids adhere. When a Russian gangster is murdered, his android Webster is alone with him in a locked house. Webster reports the murder and denies he is responsible. As Detectives Dave Forsythe and Charlene Asher delve into the facts, they learn much more is at stake than a simple murder. For humans as well as androids.
- November Skies
- Jay Myriad, an android whose quantum holographic memory is losing coherence, chooses to live in a human memory care facility rather than be deactivated. The one thing he cannot forget is an incident in his past that racks him with guilt. John Carney, one of the human residents in the facility, is convinced an android doesn’t belong there. The recent loss of his wife overwhelms him. As Myriad and Carney spar over their differences, time to find common ground is running out.
- Museum at the End of Time
- A collective intelligence nearing completion of a history of intelligent species in the Milky Way discovers a previously unknown intelligent species, now extinct. They find no evidence that the long-gone sapients ever had contact with galactic civilization, despite being near several other stars that harbored spacefaring sapients. When nine members of the collective visit the star where the sapients once lived, they find an artificial structure on a large moon orbiting one of the inner planets. Examination of the civilization’s relics in the structure, from its beginning to its ambiguous end, changes everything they thought they knew.
- Boudreau’s Ghost
- Achilles Boudreau died in a notorious murder-suicide over a century ago. He’s reputedly haunted the mansion where it happened ever since. Zeke installs an artificial intelligence in the house for his Ph.D. project, with robots to do the AI’s bidding. When Zeke brings Amanda to see the house, she’s locked in alone and the house sets out to kill her. Is the ghost in control or is the AI going somewhere dark? Either way, Zeke is the only one who can save her.
- Whale’s Tale
- The Whale’s Tale is the story of Moby Dick from the whale’s point of view. A most unusual whale. I’ve heard whalesong in the deep ocean on sonar and wondered what they were saying. Could this be it?
- Red Queen’s Gambit
- On a routine cargo run from Mars to Ceres, the asteroid freighter Sleipner’s AI Odin detects an unknown ship on an interception course. Odin informs Jill, the captain, that they are not carrying the innocuous Earth soil declared on the manifest. Instead, the cargo hold contains nuclear warheads for deorbiting asteroids. Jill and Jimmy, Sleipner’s pilot, take refuge in a safe room. When the crew of the approaching ship blows Sleipner’s airlock, evacuating the ship’s atmosphere, Jill and Jimmy know they have to retake the asteroid—if they want to survive.
- Ryan’s Debt
- United Nations of Sol Marine Sergeant Pat Ryan owes his life to Sergeant Angelique Fouchet, his fellow Marine and lover, who threw herself on a grenade to save him during a fight on Ganymede. Before she dies, Angelique tells him she has a daughter, Alice, in Gabriel Farm, an independent farm in the Martian outback. She asks him to go back to help Alice. He’ll know what to do when he gets there.
- Pat musters out of the Corps and finds his way to Mars. But when he arrives at Gabriel, he doesn’t have a clue what he’s supposed to do. He convinces Angélique’s father to let him stay to find out why she wanted him there. What he discovers means his fighting days are far from over.