The inspirations and origins for our stories.
Tris Matthews’s story “When the Last Friend is Gone” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 16 November 2018. I did cognitive science at university and became fascinated with what consciousness and cognition are, how they emerge in animals, how we will achieve this in robots, and the possibilities this will open, such as the solution to currently unimaginable questions and the shift to a hive mind society with utterly different desires and goals. Along the …
Filip Wiltgren’s story “A House on the Volga” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 9 November 2018. “A House on the Volga” came by as part of the Codex Writers Workshop “Weekend Warrior” flash fiction challenge. The challenge is simple: on Friday, you get a set of prompts. By Sunday, you need to submit your story (big nods to Warrior admin Vylar Kaftan and all the great people partaking in the challenge.) The prompt was …
Evan Marcroft’s story “The Little G-d of Łódź” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 2 November 2018. This story came out of two weird bellies. It was born initially out of a long-standing fascination with the difference between a good ending and a happy ending. A happy ending, in my definition, is one where conflicts are resolved in a way that is satisfying to the reader. The prince slays the dragon, the robot wins his …
Jonathan Laidlow’s story “The Astronaut Tier” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 26 October 2018. “The Astronaut Tier” began life as a story called “Flailing”, written for a challenge on the sffworld forums in 2015 with the theme of “surprises in desolate places”. I remember I immediately had the image of a blighted Britain, but it took a little longer to find the main theme of the story, which was the Mars One project – …
Gregory Kane’s story “Twins” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 19 October 2018. The inspiration for “Twins” came from a discussion with my Biology students about Dolly the sheep. She made headlines in the late 1990s when scientists cloned her using a process called somatic cell nuclear transfer. Basically, DNA was taken from a body cell in a living sheep, placed in an empty egg cell and carried to term by a surrogate. Many students …
Michael Gardner’s story “Nana Naoko’s Garden” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 12 October 2018. My own Nana is a fantastic gardener. The garden she had when I was a kid was amazing. A huge, sprawling garden filled with trees, shrubs, flowers and neatly manicured lawns. It had so many elements that seemed magical, including a fernery along the back of her house, a small bridge and goldfish pond, vegetable patches that my Papa tended …
