Concept Sci-fi - Issue 03.pdf - Concept Sci-fi - allforjesus2001

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November 2008 Issue #3

INSIDE:

Short Stories...

- The Seventh Letter by Sean Williams

- Flotsam by Gareth L. Powell

- Every Breath You Take by Lee Gimenez

- A Stranger's Face by Ashley Hibbert

and many more! Plus...

- 88 Miles Per Hour by Andrew Males

- An interview with author Jaine Fenn

NOVEMBER 2008 ISSUE #3

WWW.CONCEPTSCIFI.COM

In This Issue

Editorial................................................................................................................................................................................3

The Seventh Letter................................................................................................................................................................4

by Sean Williams

Too Late..............................................................................................................................................................................12

by Graham Storrs

Barbarian Blood..................................................................................................................................................................21

by Pavelle Wesser

City Of Light.......................................................................................................................................................................23

by G. O. Clark

Every Breath You Take.......................................................................................................................................................24

by Lee Giminez

Echo From The Future........................................................................................................................................................29

by Terry Ray

88 Miles Per Hour...............................................................................................................................................................30

A regular column by Andrew Males

A Stranger's Face................................................................................................................................................................36

by Ashley Hibbert

An Interview with Jaine Fenn.............................................................................................................................................44

by Gary Reynolds

Flotsam...............................................................................................................................................................................47

by Gareth L. Powell

NOVEMBER 2008 ISSUE #3

WWW.CONCEPTSCIFI.COM

Editorial

Welcome to the third issue of the Concept Sci-fi E-zine.

In this issue we have two reprints. The first is 'The Seventh Letter' by Sean Williams, author of the Astropolis series and a

number of Star Wars novels. His story in this issue won the Aurealis Award for Best SF Story a couple of years ago – and

it's certainly a good one. The second reprint is 'Flotsam' by Gareth L. Powell. This story was first published in his short

story collection 'The Last Reef'.

We also have our regular column from Andrew Males who this time looks at the writing process and offers some sound

advice for people who are just starting out on writing speculative fiction. And we have an interview with sci-fi author

Jaine Fenn.

As always if you have any suggestions or comments, please email feedback@conceptscifi.com . And if you'd like to

subscribe and get future issues directly to your in-box for free, then please visit http://www.conceptscifi.com/ezine.htm . I

hope that you enjoy reading issue #3.

Gary Reynolds.

Editor.

Artwork

Sam Shishekli at www.virtualgeneration.co.uk

Fiction

Sean Williams, Lee Gimenez, Ashley Hibbert, Gareth L. Powell, Pavelle Wesser, Graham Storrs

Non-fiction

Andrew Males, Gary Reynolds

Poetry

G. O. Clark, Terry Ray

Special Thanks To

Jaine Fenn

NOVEMBER 2008 ISSUE #3

WWW.CONCEPTSCIFI.COM

The Seventh Letter

by Sean Williams

The stroke hit him like a thunderbolt in front of the whole Board. The world vanished as if a shutter had been

drawn. Later, he remembered the feel of his left hand at his temple, where a knife seemed to enter his brain and

twist, before all consciousness was snuffed out. He didn't remember the blow that left a deep, purple bruise

above his left eye, where his head struck the table so hard it would've knocked him out cold if he hadn't been

already.

Then...shadows, shapes, distant conversations. He wasn't truly aware for some time. Forever, it seemed to

him, when he could think at all. He was a puzzle in its box, with all the pieces tumbled and unlikely to fall into

place on their own.

When he returned to himself, he was flat on his back in a well-lit, white room, loomed over by an ashen-haired

woman with protuberant ears.

"What happened?" he croaked.

The woman looked pleased but not unsurprised. "Welcome back, Mr Jameson. How are you <----->?"

He blinked. "How am I what?"

"<----->, I said. Is there any pain? Can you move? I'm Doctor Harrod. We put you on <-----> within an hour

of your stroke and the scans seem mostly clear now. The devil, however, is always in the details. Can you feel

it when I do this?" The doctor lifted his hand and manipulated the joints.

He pulled it back. "Yes, I can feel it, but--"

"What?"

He didn't want to say it. He knew what a stroke was. Everyone in their 50s knew. If his mind was broken,

would it be better or worse to see the cracks?

"Talk to me, <----->. If you describe your symptoms fully, there's a chance we can see to them."

"What did you just call me?"

The doctor lost some of her bedside cheer. "Your name, Mr Jameson. I used your first name. Don't you

remember what that is?"

He shook his head, and the full force of his mortality struck him in that moment.

"Excuse me, Mr Jameson, just for a second. I will be back."

Unlike me, he feared as the doctor swept out of the room. Unlike me.

***

A battery of tests consumed the next few hours. He clearly wasn't entirely well, despite the full recovery of

his physical functions. He could sit, point, eat, and excrete to the satisfaction of the therapists summoned to

examine him. The problem was more subtle than that. He had trouble with some instructions, particularly

those specific to one side of his body--a problem of comprehension, not volition. If he couldn't understand

what was asked of him, how could he comply?

The disability was thus isolated to the speech centres of his brain, where words were formed. Even so, its

exact nature still proved stubbornly elusive. Some words were simply absent, excised from his brain with a

semantic scalpel. There seemed to be no pattern to the excision. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs were

victims, but not all nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.

His wife came to visit, flamboyant in sombre tones. She too called him by a name he could not understand,

and looked appropriately dismayed when he could not say hers.

"Oh, pumpkin. What's happened to you? Do they think you'll recover? The Board is anxious. They can't

keep the <-----> on hold forever."

He suppressed a flash of irritation. Who cared about the Board when his life had been shattered?

"Please don't call me 'pumpkin'," he said, aware of a nurse by the door. His circumstances embarrassed him

sufficiently as it was.

"Well, what am I to call you, then? You've already made it clear you won't hear your name, and you won't use

mine either."

"It's not that I won't. I can't. They don't sound like any words I've heard before." He searched for an

appropriate metaphor in his oddly truncated vocabulary. "There are times when we're not in the same country.

I'm here and you're in Paris. You speak French and I speak--"

He couldn't finish the sentence. The name he needed wasn't in his mind any more, escaped like so many other

words. There had to be a way to talk about such matters, but all too frequently he found himself road-blocked.

The expression on his wife's face was one he would come to know well, in the days ahead.

NOVEMBER 2008 ISSUE #3

Concept Sci-fi - Issue 03.pdf

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