Before you have a look at the stories which I've made available here, you may like to know something about my literary background. Back in my primary school I used to get full marks in the spelling tests all the time. Sad to say my spelling has probly goten wurse sins then. In my next school we had reading periods at the end of the days and I was one of the very few children who would happily read for the duration of said period without making a sound. I actually started to write stories based on TV shows I was watching at the time when I finished work early in class. This was when I was about 9 years old.

The first story I remember well is a Rudyard Kipling tale about a mongoose's battle with some cobras; my father used to read it to me as a bedtime story. Then there's the Talking Parcel by Gerald Durrell, and various Roald Dahl books. Another author writing when I was young was Nicholas Fisk who wrote the like of Starstormers, about a group of kids who make their own rickety spaceship out of a hunk of rock and set out to travel to their parents who are stationed on a distant outpost. I was also reading the C. S. Lewis Narnia series and other childrens' fantasy series. Enid Blyton didn't hold my attention for long...

You may see a certain pattern developing here! As I aged, I looked for other science fiction writers to read. The one I fixed on was Dr Isaac Asimov (now deceased), who first popularised robots in science fiction and whose Asimovian laws of robot behaviour are often followed by other authors and the writers of Star Trek and more recently the Psi Cop Bester in Babylon 5 who telepathically imposes "an Asimov" to prevent someone from harming him, and to prevent his allowing someone else to harm him. What attracted me to Asimov was that he started out in the '50s by writing short stories for the US fantasy magazines of the time. Unfortunately there were no equivalent magazines in '80s Britain that I knew of at the time, so my short stories were confined to creative English assignments where no restrictions were imposed. I have been amused by the recent spate of "oh no massive asteroid about to hit Earth" films, as I wrote a story along those lines years ago.

Having been a devout Asimov follower, I dabbled in Arthur C Clarke's Rama series and Greg Bear's Eon and Eternity, having a chuckle at Douglas Adams' classics along the way. My most recent reading includes the works of Iain Banks and Iain M Banks, fiction and SF respectively, from the same pen. His Culture novels are brilliant SF, and his names for ships are terrific. I've also met the man and he very kindly wished me good luck with my own efforts. Only polite I suppose! I'm also catching up on the Pratchett, Terry phenomenon, and I've bought the odd Anne McAffrey novel about dragons and singing ships.

The stories presented here have seen light in the Durham University publications of ON Magazine with original artwork (well, I call it artwork, but some would beg to differ!) by myself and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Society's magazine Star 69. Retribution is so long it had to be serialised on both occasions! Anyway, I hope you have the time to take a look at the stories. Aftermath is the most recently written piece (dates from 2000) but is derivative, although there's a puzzle to be solved in relation to it! Out of Time was written after Retribution but is much shorter and more fantasy than science fiction. All opinions welcome. Enjoy.

Andy Thomas

All works of fiction presented here are copyright of the author and may not be reproduced except for private use without the author's prior explicit consent.

Last updated 31 January 2002