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As the pain receded, Simon licked his dry lips, becoming aware of his scorching thirst. “Jenny’s dead, I killed my wife long before she really died. And Ellen, she understands I never really had much choice.” His voice stuttered unexpectedly and his eyes moistened with tears. He looked up and it looked like his gaze wandered aimlessly through the small space of attic before it rested on a large rectangular object in a far corner. “I know that there, in that chest, lies the key to it all – the past and the future.”

The silence that followed caught Simon off guard. He waited for the familiar intervention of the voice but he no longer felt the presence of the doppelganger mind. The only sound he heard was of the rain drops crashing down on the iron ledge of the attic window. Suddenly, he felt the fabric of rope itching and biting into the soft flesh of his neck. He took the rope off and stepped down from the chair in a cautious manner that somehow suggested reluctance and deliberation. Now, it’s true to say that his mind was still mulling over the idea of suicide but his shuffle already hinted fortitude and decisiveness.

Read the full story here.

Unless you’ve been living in Aruba for the last couple of years, you have most probably noticed an influx of e-books and various e-readers (well, mostly in the US but Europe’s catching up). Since the release of Apple’s iPad, the race for the e-reader market has become even hotter. Amazon’s Kindle reader still rules, but Apple has really put on the pressure and Sony’s Reader is making decent efforts too. While intriguing in many aspects, I personally have no intention to make a move from the good old paper (something I may reconsider in the future) but I guess it would do no harm if we have a look at three you can buy today. I’ve played with them all.

Kindle 2

Kindle 2 is probably the most popular e-reader today, at least that’s what statistics say. Some say that Amazon has over 60% of the e-reader market just because they’ve done a great job of packaging the reader with their extensive collection of books. Although nowhere near as flashy as the iPad, the Kindle does the job of allowing you to carry a lot of books with you in an easy-to-use small device. Kindle uses the E-Ink display technology, referred to as “bi-stable”, meaning that the screen doesn’t need a refresh and instead uses light reflected from the environment. The E-Ink displays are generally better than LCDs in three main ways. First, they allow much better battery life, because they use power only when they’re changing content. Also, they are readable in bright sunlight, where the iPad screen can get washed out. And finally, they don’t have as much glare. On the other hand, LCD displays have advantages as well. They work in darkened spaces, and they allow for color and video, which the E-Ink displays currently do not. The Kindle machine is fairly easy to use and has a built-in global wireless connectivity. It is small, light-weight, and fast. You can shop the Kindle store from just about anywhere without having to rely on W-Fi access and it can hold up to 1500 books, newspapers, and PDFs. Unfortunately, Kindle is a close device that doesn’t support other e-book formats unless you go the shady, “hacking” route that Amazon doesn’t want you to know. The price of $259 isn’t too bad either and now you can get the device shipped to Europe from the US.

iPad

The iPad, which was released by Apple only a few months ago, probably provides the best looking reading experience. In typical Apple style, the iPad is beautiful – the aluminium back feels great under the finger. iPad also makes reading kind of fun, provided you don’t read for hours. In direct sunlight, you will get a good amount of reflections, but overall, the iPad’s LCD display does ok. Page turning is fast, and the iBooks application allows you to navigate and search through various books and pages very intuitively. Overall, I don’t think that there is such a big difference between the iPad and Kindle when it comes to the actual act of reading but, as we all know, Amazon is a dominating book provider and when comparing iPad’s reader app with Kindle’s, that’s where it falls short. With Kindle, once you own a book, you can re-download it on as many devices as you want (PC, iPhone, etc.) and it will also let you to take notes (if you care about that). Also, Amazon has about 450k book versus Apple’s 60k, and Amazon eBooks are getting cheaper too. On the other hand, iPad is much more than e-book reader and with its extensive offer of apps and support of various multimedia formats, it’s much more versatile device than what others currently offer. As with other Apple products, you must be willing to pay a premium price but for $499, you get a beautiful piece of hardware which is far more than a mere e-reader (media viewer/phone).

Sony Reader Daily Edition

Until very recently, one thing has been clear about Sony’s e-readers: they were the most elegant e-reading devices on the market. It’s no longer true after the release of iPad but it still is a very nicely manufactured reader. This is also Sony’s first e-reader that includes built-in 3G wireless service for accessing e-books wirelessly from Sony’s Reader Store. The Daily Edition model also has a touch-screen interface with the screen size measuring 7.1 inches diagonally, at almost exactly the same length as the Amazon’s Kindle 2. The Daily Edition e-reader uses E-Ink technology, which, as mentioned above, serves to make the letters and words on the screen look more print-like in their appearance. Like the most of the today’s touch-screen smartphones phones, this device incorporates some gesture-based commands. You can swipe your finger across the display to page forward or back. As for the content, once you access the store, Sony has a decent selection of books and periodicals to choose from. You can subscribe to electronic versions of newspapers like The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Financial Times, and several others but that said, the selection lags behind what you’ll find on the Kindle. Sony has made a great effort to catch up with Amazon in terms of the number of e-books it has available, as well as pricing. With the edition of thousands of free public domain titles from Google (which includes many pre-WWI classics), Sony boasts more than 1 million titles in its e-book store and the number continues to grow. But with the price of $350 for more or less the same functionality that Kindle offers (minus the huge selection of titles that Amazon offers), you may want to go for Kindle or pricier iPad.

It was a deep and moonless night and the town was asleep. Like an invisible serpent, the stench of fish and rotten seaweed slithered through the narrow cobbled streets and dark alleys. Was it not for a few rats skulking in the shadows, one could think the town has been long deserted.

In one of the murky alleyways connecting the town’s square with its Market district stood a house. Once grandiose, the building was now in a pitiful state. Its sandstone walls were grey with thick layers of dust and dirt, and a large part of its left wing was sank underground, like dragged down by some invisible force. On the wall, illuminated by a faint flicker of a solitary gas lamp, was a rusted metal plate that read Zentral Wasserwerk und Registratur 12A (Central Waterstation and Filing 12A).

Upon entering through the heavy wooden door, the building opened into a wide atrium. In its centre stood a windowless grey structure of solid concrete, anchored to the ground by four thick steel ropes like some strange ship. Walking inside, one could easily get lost in a labyrinth of small offices and interweaving corridors built around a large open space area. There, like a lone buoy in the sea of desks, sat a man.

Read the full story here.

It was the beginning of my summer break, and as always at this time of the year, I went to stay with my grandparents for a few weeks. Gone was the boring school, the mundane chores of everyday life, gone were the never-ending lectures of my parents. I was fifteen and a little too jaunty to start giving myself, or my life, a more serious thought.

As I was lying on my back, listening to the whines and whispers of the house, I heard feet tapping on the kitchen linoleum next door. Before I could brace myself, something big and hairy fell right next to me with an ear-popping “Gooood mooorniiiing”. The irritatingly cheerful face that stared at me belonged to none other than my beloved cousin who I knew ever since I could walk. Only a few months older than me, he was “the more responsible one” as my mom used to say. Still, I loved him like a brother and at that time, and on that very day, I couldn’t picture my summer without him.

“C’mon , let’s go! Grandma’s already off to the allotment!”

“Right…what time is it?” I asked still a bit sleepy.

”Eight fifteen…and guess what?! I finally found my knife!” He said with a mix of triumph and childish happiness.

I dragged myself from the makeshift bed into the bathroom. I splashed icy cold water on my face and as I was brushing my teeth, I saw him standing by the door, fully dressed and fixing knife to his belt. Still half asleep, I changed myself into my summer shorts, put on a shirt and a pair of ragged trainers. I locked the door and we emerged from the cool house onto a hot and busy street.

Read the full story here.

A great day for sci-fi fans, at least in the UK and Ireland. A new novel by Alastair Reynolds called Terminal World gets released today. Here is a short description of the story.

Spearpoint, the last human city, is an atmosphere-piercing spire of vast size. Clinging to its skin are the zones, a series of semi-autonomous city-states, each of which enjoys a different – and rigidly enforced – level of technology. Horsetown is pre-industrial; in Neon Heights they have television and electric trains . . . Following an infiltration mission that went tragically wrong, Quillon has been living incognito, working as a pathologist in the district morgue. But when a near-dead angel drops onto his dissecting table, Quillon’s world is wrenched apart one more time, for the angel is a winged posthuman from Spearpoint’s Celestial Levels – and with the dying body comes bad news. If Quillon is to save his life, he must leave his home and journey into the cold and hostile lands beyond Spearpoint’s base, starting an exile that will take him further than he could ever imagine. But there is far more at stake than just Quillon’s own survival, for the limiting technologies of the zones are determined not by governments or police, but by the very nature of reality – and reality itself is showing worrying signs of instability.

Reynolds, probably best known for his Revelation Space novels, specialises in dark science-fiction, space operas and noir toned stories. As of 2008 he has published over thirty shorter works and nine novels. The inventions and theories described are usually based on his professional expertise with physics and astronomy gained during his involvement with the European Space Research and Technology Centre.

I particularly like his Century Rain, which is set outside the Revelation Space. It’s a noir sci-fi set set partially in the 23rd century and in 1950s Paris.

Twenty-third-century Earth is an uninhabitable wasteland overrun by rogue nanotechnology. When archaeologist Verity Auger, studying the relics of twentieth- and twenty-first-century Earth, is accused of reckless endangerment after a child in her care nearly dies, shadowy government forces within her department offer her an out in the form of a mission to retrieve information from somewhere where her knowledge of the mid-twentieth century will be useful. Not until she is well underway do they inpart that her destination is an ALS (anomalous large structure) at the end of a wormhole in which 1950s Earth, slightly changed, is preserved. At that other end of the wormhole, Wendell Floyd is a Parisian PI working a case that gets stranger and more dangerous as he and partner Custine uncover the evidence, which is precisely the information Verity must fetch. The threads come together in a race to save both Earths from extremists, in which Verity and Floyd frantically search for the significance and location of three metal spheres.

Anybody else familiar with Reynolds?

I am not a particular fan of bureaucracy and like most, I always find myself clicking the ‘Skip’ button when I get on the copyright or terms & conditions page of a document, software or any other IP.

On the other hand, as a content publisher, I have become conscious of protecting the intellectual property of the content creator (myself). My original intention with this site was to publish password protected documents to previously approved subscribers. The feedback I received suggests that such a ‘push’ model repels rather than attracts the site visitors. As a result, I decided to publish my stories and related postings as a free content that you can freely copy and distribute. To protect my IP, I simply ask you to refrain from using the content for any commercial purposes or altering it in any possible way. The full-length stories will become available as a PDF viewable document via Scribd.

It is a sleepy Sunday afternoon and the street is still and quiet, save the occasional tinkle of cutlery and sound of TV coming from the houses. Buried in my own thoughts, I walk slowly down the road and as usual subconsciously try to avoid cracks in the pavement. I look up and suddenly spot my niece on the other side as she walks up the hill, towards the direction of the park. I have spoken to her only occasionally as she is almost twenty years my junior and always away whenever I stop by.
I notice she walks briskly, reminding me of a quicksilver temperament of her late mother, but I also recognize something odd that makes me stop in my tracks. With her arms folded, pressing against her stomach and slightly bent like caught frozen in some apologetic bow, I realize that this is not the Charlotte I remember. While standing there and contemplating about what to do I notice that she unknowingly drops something small and white. Observing the unexpected, I suddenly want to shake off my pathological habit of cowardly ignorance and cross the street and pick up what appears to be a small linen handkerchief. I run after her hoping to catch her before she disappears into the park but she’s too fast and I am too embarrassed to call out.

Panting and catching my breath, I enter the park and lean against an immense tree. I unfasten my tie and with my thoughts racing far ahead of me, I wipe my forehead with the linen still clutched in my hand. I look around, waiting while my eyes slowly adjust to the shade of the park, and finally I spot her sitting on a wooden bench about a hundred feet away, near to the observation tower. Looking at the city’s bay, she appears to be mesmerized and fully consumed by the vista and completely unaware of me or other park visitors, of which there are not many. Still not sure if what I do is right, I walk cautiously towards her, like looking some invisible trap.

Read the full story here.

Lately, I embarked on a journey for the search of my creative self. This may sound a little confusing but it was exactly how I felt when I signed up for the Creative Writing course at a university in Glasgow.

Sorry, I should rephrase that – my journey really started a couple of years ago when I had a dream. In that dream was a boy who through the series of fantastic events has inadvertently become a part of the plot to change the world as we know it. The dream was so vivid and detailed; it almost reeked of the sole purpose – to re-ignite my creative thinking, to add another dimension to the otherwise ordinary life.

A lot has happened since then. I got married; I have a beautiful daughter and a different job to start with. The new circumstances have become much more demanding on my time than I ever allowed myself to imagine and like with some other things, I guess I could have just abandon the whole idea of writing and label it as superstitious. Somewhere deep inside me though, I felt the flicker of ambition growing stronger with every book, every person, every single experience I encountered.

Today, it’s not really clear if my endeavors will lead to something significant but I am sure as hell that I thoroughly enjoy being someone with more than just a job and a series of mundane choirs to live through. As selfish as this may sound, I feel a sense of satisfaction when I am away and immersed in the process of writing. Those of you who have been writing for some time know how gratifying it is to see the ideas ripe into something multidimensional and rich.

So, what are you going to see from me? It’s premature to speak about a full-length novel or something of an equal magnitude. What I can reveal is that you will get to read some short stories here, tips for new books and other similarly driven themes.

See you around!

I remember my first book very well. It was a collection of Russian fairy tales with beautiful hand-painted illustrations that literally brought the little hairy creatures to life; a small reminiscence on my childhood in Moscow. But I guess the very first book that I actually remember reading instead of drooling over was Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer, which has become a true inspiration for my childhood adventures – much to the delight of my parents!

Very recently, I found a 1^st edition of this little book (published in 1881) on eBay for €60, a bargain considering its tremendous sentimental value but not sure my better half is too thrilled with the prospect. I should probably reveal to her how close I was, at one stage of my post-adolescent life, to get a tattoo of E. W. Kemble’s magnificent Huckleberry Finn on my elbow.

What’s the first book you remember reading and what impact did it have on your life?