Ferrell crouched huddled at at the rear corner of the vehicle’s hold while the carter loaded the last crates of fruit into the cool darkness. The hold was nearly full, and the carter shoved at the crates near the door to make space, jamming Ferrell abruptly between the chill metal wall of the hold and a large box of what smelled like oranges, twisting his ankle sharply. Ferrell stifled a yelp as tears leapt from his eyes, but the sound was covered by the scrape of the crates and the whinnying of the horses picketed out in the Grammar Courtyard.

To judge by his relieved cursing, the carter had finished his work. All was quiet for a moment until the hatch of the vehicle’s hold slammed shut, pitching Ferrell into a darkness shot through with a few pin-thin shafts of dusty light and making his heart clench with fear. It was too late to turn back now … and the price of turning back would be worse than the cost of seeing it through. Ferrell hunkered down and nervously ate a loose orange as he waited for the cityman to return and take him away from Midhurst forever.

After what seemed like hours Ferrell felt the vehicle shift slightly. Suddenly a vast mechanical roar coughed into life beyond the front wall of the hold he was jammed against, and the vehicle tipped and slopped about slightly like a canoe on choppy waters. The roar raised in pitch as if in triumph, its bassy throb reverberating in the hold, and the vehicle became steady before beginning to move. Fingers jammed in his ears, Ferrell felt a wash of elation and fear - he’d done it. He had escaped.

#

Not long afterwards, Ferrell felt the gliding motion of the vehicle slow to a halt. The machine’s roar stopped abruptly, and Ferrell’s ears rang with a high note as the vehicle settled downward with a gassy groaning noise. He’d thought it would take longer to get to the city than this - it was nearly thirty miles by the old roads, the merchants said. He decided the machine must travel far faster than the tractors the Landed used, and prepared to wait for his opportunity to slip away.

The hatch opened, and Ferrell heard the quiet grunts and puffs as someone lifted crates out of the hold. Within a few minutes light was flooding in and falling against the hold wall right next to where his feet were hidden by a crate. The sounds stopped, and Ferrell waited.

“Come on, kid, get out,” said a deep voice. The cityman! Ferrell stayed still.

“I have a schedule to keep, you know, and I think you’ll find the ride a lot more comfortable up front.” The cityman sounded amused. “I know you’re there, kid - the Gasbag has cameras. Magic eyes, y’know, so I can see if the carters try to lift my stuff. Not often I get left with something extra instead of something less.” Laughter.

“You’ll not take me back, sir? You’ll not take me back there?” asked Ferrell, still huddled away in his corner.

“What, and have the Rurals hang me for trying to steal a Saved child?” The cityman chuckled. “If I’d not wanted to carry you, I’d have got you out before I left. Now come on out of there. You’re planning to live in the big city, you better get used to facing shit you’re scared of.”

Ferrell shuffled forward on his behind and peered around the crates; the cityman was sat in the hatchway, smoking a small pipe. Ferrell carefully scrambled toward the hatchway, squeezed past the cityman’s leather-clad shoulders and stepped out onto the cracked blackstone of the old road. He turned to face the cityman, who was grinning around his pipe. The stranger held out a set of goggles much like his own.

“Come on, kid. We’re past the estate borders, but it’s another twenty miles before we get to New Southsea. Now help me get these crates back in the hold, and we’ll consider your ride paid for, OK?”

---

[ Crikey. A few weeks out of the routine, and my confidence has ebbed considerably. Need to get back into practice; this is a poor showing for about five hours of frustration. But hey - back in the saddle, right? ]

There’s been much in the way of writerly foresight from Jason Stoddard in recent months; plenty of people have been willing to suggest the novel will die (and less people are willing to contest the proposition as time goes by), but Jason is the only person that I’m aware of who is doing concrete thinking about future markets for creative writing from the POV of the writer.

Dude, where’s my market?

Additionally, he’s revived his popular metafiction theme. Popular metawhuta? In a nutshell, BoingBoing and io9 are popular metafiction … as well as proof that people are more than willing to read if you just put the right stuff in front of them. As Jason says himself:

“I’d like to see the science fiction magazines succeed. I’d like to see science fiction become more relevant. I’d like to see it come back to genre that is actively leading us forward, instead of telling us “there’s no use, we’re all going to die anyway.” Unfortunately, there’s little I can do to help the publications directly, so maybe this, in some small manner, will help point the way.

After all, BoingBoing grew organically. It didn’t take millions of dollars in advertising or the combined might of a television network to launch. It occupies a space where science fiction could be.”

Right; I know this first-hand. Now that I’m running Futurismic, thoughts like this weigh heavily on me - how the hell am I going to get that site to pay for the fiction and its hosting fees (let alone make anything on top)? There’s masses of traffic out there, after all; you just have to attract it to your content.

As is probably plain from my rather bitter comment on Jason’s post, I kind of resent the fact that io9 can post 90% fluff and 10% substance and still pay the payroll; it says sad things about the state of the market for fiction, and makes me wonder if I’m barking up the wrong tree entirely.

The readers are out there, they just don’t know where the good writing is

But then I look at the OMFG-Zerg-rush!!!1 we had on Leonard Richardson’s story when Cory Doctorow gave at the thumbs-up at BoingBoing - over 7000 page views within the space of a week, and a forty-deep comment thread of people raving about how awesome the story is. Some people obviously do want to read good fiction, and really enjoy it when they do so.

Hell, look at this item I included in last week’s Friday Free Fiction round-up at Futurismic - a busy gaming and media webzine is doing what its paper equivalents say is pointless, and experimenting with publishing fiction. Fiction that they’re paying the writers for. But they can do that - they have traffic, they have budget, they have leeway. They have the opportunity to throw sh*t at the wall and see if it sticks. I really hope it does, too - more paying markets can only be a good thing, I reckon.

Orienteering

So, where do I go from here? Arguably Futurismic is way closer to the contemporary metafiction model than most other genre webzines out there, and it also has the advantage of domain longevity - it’s a brand that has lasted a while. We’ve got a strong RSS subscriber base, too, and I’m doing my best to grow it further by expanding what we offer - a new non-fiction column goes up later today, as it happens.

But how can I turn that traffic into enough dollar to pay the fiction writers, cover the server bills and possibly throw a bit of cash at my non-fiction contributors too*?

---

There are options, sure, but they’re mostly not pretty.

Text Link Ads

There’s a couple of direct text-link ad companies who would pay pretty decent money for ads on Futurismic, but they have been proven to be a fast route to a Google blacklisting as they’re essentially a way of selling on PageRank to sites who are, shall we say, “not entirely deserving of it”. Ethically, I’m unwilling to cross that particular Rubicon - sure, there’d be enough money to pay pro rates for fiction, a reasonable column fee and chuck my blog team a bone or two, but what if I ended up boosting the online profile of some hate-group or snake-oil pharma company? Not on my watch, Admiral.

Adsense

Google AdSense offers me little control over what sort of ads are displayed (how often do you see vanity press ads on genre blogs with AdSense? - too often), and I know for a fact I’ve not clicked on an AdSense box in years; I’m not going to patronise my readers by assuming that they will do something I wouldn’t. Same applies to similar contextual ad platforms; the amount of actual clicks and/or impressions we’ll get just isn’t enough to make it worthwhile without crowding out the content with a bad signal-to-noise ratio. We’re too damn niche.

Affiliate marketing

Funnelling traffic to Amazon or similar might work if we accrue more organic click through, but isn’t going to pay the bills at current traffic rates; see above, essentially.

Direct sponsorship

I’d be willing to look into this, but I have no idea how I’d go about doing it, short of a hefty barrage of very polite cold emailing to publishers. I’d also insist on a made-public declaration from both parties that there would be no preferential coverage or favouritism. Independence and transparency is crucial for credibility, AFAIC.

Alternative ad networks

The current solution, namely Project Wonderful, has everything a niche scene like genre publishing should want out of an ad brokerage system. Seriously - I really can’t overstate the potential I see in this system, not just for Futurismic but for the whole industry’s online marketing business. Total control for advertisers and publishers; fine grain locational selection; precise budgeting, flexible low-scale payment options … it ticks all my boxes. The only problem - there’s not enough advertisers of the right type using it yet.

---

That last point is a shame - I think about small press publishers with a tight budget, and I know they must want to be able to target their online ads more effectively than paying for some keywords. They want to know what sort of audience those ads are going to, what those eyeballs are used to seeing and what they think is cool - they need demographic precision.

I can offer them that with Futurismic - 7000 views of one page over a week by people who expressly have an interest in written science fiction has to be worth something, right? - and so could a score of other sf webzines and blogs. But they don’t know it’s there yet - most internet ad platforms are aimed at traffic sources an order of magnitude larger than Futurismic.

So I guess yours truly has to go and be an evangelist on Project Wonderful’s behalf … which makes you realise just how crafty a business model they actually have!

The thesis

But I’m kind of digressing from my original point, which is that there’s definitely a market for fiction as long as you aren’t charging the reader for it directly. Jason also has things to say about how freeconomics effects you as a writer (in a nutshell: play the long game outside the box and you’ll be fine), but it’s us publishers that are caught in the middle. It’s our business model that’s dying, and hence the onus is on us to find a new one that works.

And this ain’t no violin solo, either - this is me thinking out loud, basically, but doing so in front of an audience I hope might chime in with some thoughts of their own. But to boil down my current thinking to the nugget - there’s enough money in genre publishing ad budgets to support the short fiction market in webzine form. I really believe this, and until I see concrete figures to the contrary I’m not going to abandon that belief - because webzines don’t need a lot of money beyond the fiction fees.

The problem is the book publishers are currently throwing their money at ineffective and imprecise advertising channels, and probably only because they don’t know the alternatives are there. If I can get them to a better channel that sends them actual interested buyers and exploits my currently under-used eyeball share, I’ve killed two birds with one stone and solidified the future of what I believe is a worthwhile short fiction market.

So, I have a strategy. What I don’t have are the tactics; I get the feeling the only way I’m going to find those is by getting muddy in the trenches and seeing what works. But if y’all have some advice (or have noticed the inevitable gaping hole in my tapestry of logic), my ears are wide open.

[ * Just to be perfectly clear, I was resigned to the idea that Futurismic will never pay me a red cent long before I took the plunge to take control of it. I am willing to subsidise it out of my earnings as a freelance for the foreseeable future ... which is a lot easier to say now that there actually are some freelance earnings on the horizon. But that's another post entirely; what I mean to say is "this is not a greed post". ]

OK, so I’ve been pretty bloody busy since well before the new year began, and I’ve fallen massively behind with my compiling of writing advice links.

Or rather, I haven’t. I’ve been steadily compiling them in Google Notebook (which is a great tool, especially when used with the Firefox plugin), but the emphasis is on the “piling” … there’s about twenty of the buggers sat in there, taunting me from their position of safety-in-numbers, saying “hah - no time to post us, no time to write, you suck!”

Well, I’m not having that. So let’s offload - call ‘em out by author and/or website, sergeant!

Jim “Justice” Van Pelt

[ Long-time readers will know well my admiration and respect for Uncle Jim; no one tops him for quality friendly writing advice. Most of these are from his LJ feed, but the top one is from the column he does for The Fix.]

• “Sometimes the best bump I can give my writing is to get out of the house. A retreat is great, of course, but packing up my laptop and heading to the bagel shop or library is effective too.”
• “Is there such a thing as a “great” title, or do titles begin to look great because they’re married to “great” stories?  After a while, we can’t imagine the story being titled anything else.  Which comes first?”
• “While we walked, I was reminded again of the challenge and importance of writing with the landscape where a story takes place in mind.”
• “Writing the conclusion to a story can be hard!  First off, the whole story has been leading to this last page, so the sense of responsibility to the story and to the reader is huge.”
• “At any rate, I have a bunch of mini-units to talk about aspects of short story writing.  One that we covered last night was mood or atmosphere.”
• “I become insanely sensitive to repetitiveness in my sentence patterns, and I’m convinced that every reader will see it too.  I sometimes stare at my prose in despair. So, I go to the literature I love best to wash out my ears and to let me hear the rhythms again.”
• “My stance on all writing rules, from the nuts and bolts of grammar to the other much discussed rules of fiction writing (like staying attached to only one point of view, or “show, don’t tell, which I discussed earlier in Every “Rule” Has Exceptions), is that the only rule that matters to the writer is “Does it work?”"
• “Fortunately, your body which needs the oxygen doesn’t know if the breath that produced it was made while not thinking, or if it was the result of conscious effort. Your readers won’t be able to tell the difference. You can write crap consciously or unconsciously, just as you can write effective stuff both ways.”

Luc Reid

• “Don’t Worry: The Characters Don’t Believe It Either”
• “So here’s my advice to you: if you’re serious about writing and you currently only write  every once in a while, perhaps because you really, honestly don’t have the time (or just because you like to relax), try instead–just for a month or two–writing every day.”
• “Writer’s Block: Nothing to Fear But Fear Itself”

Jay Lake

• “Having just hammered 30,000 words out of the manuscript, I can say yet again that killing your darlings is hard sport.”
• “Developmental Anatomy of a Book“

Jeff VanderMeer

• Evil Monkey’s Guide to Creative Writing: Tips for Beginners - “(1) An early sense of entitlement is deadly to development. Don’t posture and preen well before you have any right to do so. (In fact, don’t ever.) Them that do rarely develop as writers, although some of them may become widely published over time. They just never recognize they suck.”

Paolo Bacigalupi

• “After today, what I really think is that I’m a dogged writer. If I polish the turd long enough, eventually something shines. It’s really my specialty. Going after a story again and again until finally I figure out how to spin crap into gold.”
• How to write a short story - by throwing away a short story - “I wrote a novelette last week. The interesting thing about it was that I literally had no idea what I was doing.”

Neil Beynon

• “As has been alluded to a few times recently, I have been experiencing more than my fair share of writer’s block, that all pervading paralysing fear that the ideas will dry up and not a single interesting sentence will be transmitted to the page.”

Write To Done blog

[ Some of these are more focused on non-fiction, but still useful. ]

• “How to Disagree“
• “How to Write Conversationally“
• “Research Sources for Writers: A Guide to Backing up Your Words“
• “Clean Up Your Narration: Four Tips For Fiction Writers“
• “31 Ways to Find Inspiration for Your Writing“
• “Short Stories: The Art of the Start” - “While revision is important for the entire short story — you should rip it apart and massage it and mold it until you have it right — I recommend paying special attention to the first paragraph or three.”

io9

[ OMG!!!1-post-not-about-Heroes-or-Torchwood shocker! ]

• Steal This Pitch: 8 Unstoppable Rules For Writing Killer Short Stories - “Short fiction is the “garage band” of science fiction, claims Tor Books editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden, so it’s time to step on that fuzzbox and thrash as hard as you can without knocking over your mom’s weed-trimmer.”

PickTheBrain.com:

• George Orwell’s Five Rules For Effective Writing - “If you want to be understood, if you want your ideas to spread, using effective language must be your top priority. In the modern world of business and politics this is hardly ever the case.”

WordWise:

• Verb Your Enthusiasm - “… a brain-imaging study conducted at the Medical Research Council in Cambridge, England, showed that the brain’s motor cortex responds to merely reading action words like active verbs. Verbs, in other words, stimulate readers, kickstart their imagination, draw them in, compel them to think.”

Yes, some of these are hideously old. Doesn’t mean they’re any less useful, though.

Now, I’m off down the road to talk to an H P Lovecraft-inspired band called The Sword. Enjoy!

Weng-Li worked his worn knuckles along the knotted RJ45 cable stapled to the altar. The stereo played today’s freshest animantras through a sun-shot fog of Nag Champa and cheap Afghani hashish; Weng-Li altered the cadence of his chant slightly, modulating it to incorporate and celebrate the roar and clatter of the train as it passed over the shanty. All must be included in the One.

Weng-Li didn’t need to look behind him to know his client was kneeling patiently on the packed dirt in the corner of his shack as instructed. His reputation spoke for itself, and a client with sincerity would know not to disobey; just like the old gods, the new ones were not to be disrespected.

Weng-Li closed his eyes one last time, slowly lowering the mantra to a looping drone as the shafts of sun drew mandalas through his lids. The last clangorous chord of the tinny temple music faded away, replaced by the muted rattle and chatter of the shanty market in full swing. Weng-Li opened his eyes, looked down at the altar in front of him – at the small pile of grubby used dollar bills resting on a cracked china plate, and at the eviscerated circuit board of the broken DVR. His mind was clear; the paths were plain.

Still holding the holy note in his throat, Weng-Li stretched out his hand and reached into his toolbox.

---

[ With apologies to Jeff Noon for the blatant theft of the title ... but then again, it's his fault I write sf anyway, so there's your divine justice, I guess.

This is a tweaked and polished version of the sketch I produced during our Friday Flash Fiction workshop at Eastercon, in case you were wondering. More of a vignette than a story, I guess, but there you go.]

Well, I’m not quite ready, to be truthful - but when am I ever?

But readiness be damned - it’s Easter weekend, and I’m off to Orbital in the wee small hours of tomorrow morning for a weekend of geeking the hell out about science fiction. wh00t! [image by jurvetson]

After last year’s shortcomings, I’m not going to make any promises about regular liveblogging that I can’t keep. But I shall attempt a few updates from the scene regardless, and those of you who’re hip to the stuff all the cool kids are doing can follow me on Twitter, if you use it or have an RSS reader.

A major feature of the weekend for me will obviously be the formal launch of ILLUMINATIONS, which will be (I hope) a proud moment.

In the interim, I should point out that copies of ILLUMINATIONS in both print and digital form can be ordered from the Odd Two Out website rightfreakingnow - the print edition is GB£6.99, and the PDF digital copy is yours for an unspecified amount, though we suggest GB£2 as a nice child-saving donation size.

Of course, digital copies and print copies of ILLUMINATIONS bought from the website won’t come personally autographed by the rakishly handsome editor, will they, eh?

Eastercon means there probably won’t be any Friday Flash from me tomorrow, so apologies in advance if you’re looking forward to it. That said, we may get something out of the workshop we’re running, so never say never.

There will be an FPB … but it will likely be brief, as it’s going to be hard enough sparing the time to do the free fiction round-up at Futurismic. And the rumour is there’ll be a mass celebration of The Friday Curry involving a hefty chunk of the Third Row Fandom crew.

My crazy rock’n'roll lifestyle, eh?

See you at Eastercon if you’re going. Otherwise, adios amigos!

A chap called J F Lewis is guest-posting at Scalzi’s Whatever today. He claims he’s written a totally new take on the modern vampire novel, but looking at the cover art supplied (which isn’t merely cheesy as all hell but also looks like a bad eighties hair-metal album cover) reminds me why I instinctively recoil from the thought of going near this genre as a reader, new take or not.

This is why book marketing is such a fascinating subject. Yes, I’m aware that many readers would have a similar reaction to the covers of books (and albums) I love dearly. No, I’m not being elitist. This is just another example of why genre fiction is like rock music.

Emmeline’s throat was raw, and the acid stench of her own vomit steaming in the gutter made her retch again, without results. Angus stood off to the side smoking a cigarette and trying to look like he wasn’t nervous. A few yards away, the thing’s corpse was decomposing rapidly on the sun-dappled tarmac of the road.

“First time’s always the hardest,” said Angus, grinding out his fag with his boot heel.

Emmeline coughed a weak little laugh. “Oh, that’s reassuring,” she said. “Great news. Maybe after a while I’ll actually start to enjoy killing things.”

“You don’t want that to happen,” said Angus, giving the corpse a wide berth as he walked toward her.

“Oh? Why not?”

Angus passed the rifle back to her. “How d’you think they got like that in the first place?”

Odd Two Out Publishing is extremely proud to present:

ILLUMINATIONS: The Friday Flash Fiction Anthology

ISBN 978-0-9558662-0-3

---

ILLUMINATIONS is a new anthology from small press Odd Two Out Publishing showcasing original, cutting edge short fiction from eight up-and-coming young British writers.

When British author Gareth L Powell started adding short weekly pieces of flash fiction to his website back in July 2007, he didn’t expect anyone else to take much notice.

But soon there were seven other writers doing likewise - Paul Graham Raven, Gareth D Jones, Martin McGrath, Dan Pawley, Justin Pickard, Neil Beynon, and Shaun C Green. Together, they have become known as the Friday Flash Fictioneers.

Flash fiction stories are complete short stories told in fewer than 1,000 words. Quoting from his introduction to the anthology, Gareth L Powell says:

“Adhering to this restricted format can be a valuable exercise for a writer. It’s often a lot trickier than it looks. You have to make every word count. Every thing in the story has to be doing something because there just isn’t room for extraneous waffle.”

The Friday Flash Fictioneers come from diverse walks of life – musicians, office workers, freelance journalists, students, magazine editors – and this new anthology collects together the best of their weekly output.

Edited by Paul Graham Raven, the pieces range from mainstream literature to far-out speculation; from horror to humour; from outright fantasy to straight-faced space opera.

All the stories in ILLUMINATIONS are published under a Creative Commons licence that permits them to be reproduced in the public domain as long as no profit is made in the process.

Copies of ILLUMINATIONS: The Flash Fiction Anthology will be available to order for £6.99 from Odd Two Out Publishing, or from the authors themselves. All profits from the sale of ILLUMINATIONS will be donated to the NSPCC.

Alternatively, The Fictioneers will be running a flash fiction workshop as part of Orbital 2008, the British Science Fiction convention held at the Raddisson Hotel, Heathrow over the Easter weekend. Convention-goers are invited to come along to quiz the team and have a go at writing their own extremely short fiction.

---

[ OK, with the official press release done, I can confess: yes, this is the oft-alluded-to soopa-seekrit project I've been working on recently! LOOKATWHATWEDID!

I'm incredibly chuffed we got it nailed in time for Eastercon, and I'm fit-to-shit that my name's on the cover - not just as author, but as editor too - and in such fine company.

It's been a massive learning experience, not to mention a bizarre mixture of creative fun and hair-tearing frustration, and I shall be talking about some of the things I picked up on the journey in weeks to come.

In fact, let's be honest - it's going to be almost impossible to get me to shut up about it. I hope you'll be understanding ... and I hope you'll buy a copy! It's for charity, y'know! ]

Yes.

Yes, I can.

I have been spending money I don’t have on things that make loud noises.

You may tell me this is unwise. You may tell me this will not endear me to my neighbours. You will be ignored on both counts, oh yes.

---

Writing about music:

Work continues apace at The Dreaded Press; this week’s recommended listen is I Am The Golden Gate Bridge by Creature With The Atom Brain.

Scuzzy whacked-out junkie rock’n'roll with a big helping of weird - think Butthole Surfers on a bong-binge.

Writing about books:

Still ploughing through the Book of the New Sun, meaning I’m falling behind on the Great Baroque Cycle Reading Project (not to mention other titles to be reviewed).

Some sort of concerted binge effort may have to occur this weekend; I’ve already had to concede that if I continue analysing the book as I read it, it’ll be well after Eastercon before I finish.

There’s just too much symbolism, and I’m getting hung up on trying to decode it all. Time to treat it like a normal* reader, I think.

Writing about other stuff:

In addition to today’s Friday Flash piece, I sent another one (a New Southsea story, as it happens) off to a magazine called Pseudonym.

It’s not a paying market, nor a science fiction market, but it’s one of those labour-of-love arty/designy type of magazines run by a friend of a friend, and they asked really nicely for something, and they said I could send fiction rather than non-fiction, so … I figured why not.

I quite like the resulting story, and will probably post it here in weeks to come.

Futurismic:

I’ve been really chuffed with the responses to “Uxo, Bomb Dog”, and with the resulting traffic at Futurismic.

I’m also pleased to have discovered Project Wonderful, an ad network that lives up to its name and which will be discussed in greater detail here some time soon.

Books and magazines seen:

Just the one this week: Murky Depths #3 has arrived, like some spectre of guilt intent on reminding me that (surprise surprise) I still haven’t read the first two.

Still, things should settle down at the end of the month**, so I can get some backlog-clearing done on the reading front.

Coda:

This week has been mercifully relaxed by comparison to the last. While the above may not seem a catalogue of triumph on the achievements front, I’m quietly happy with the fact that I’ve done everything that needed doing.

I’ve also succeeded in getting up early every day - which really does wonders for the old productivity, with the side effect of making you almost physically incapable of typing by 10pm.

The universe giveth, the universe taketh away … still, I feel like I’m making progress with things, and that’s good enough for me, thank you very much.

There’s been no gig-going this past week, but I’m off to Brighton tomorrow night to see the superb stoner-bluesmen Dead Meadow supported by local wig-out psych-rockers You’re Smiling Now But We’ll All Turn Into Demons, which promises to be a great night out … provided there are no embarrassing invisible guestlist incidents, of course, so fingers crossed.

But those are bridges to be crossed when arrived at; the current span stands between my empty stomach and The Friday Curry Of Self-congratulation And Righteousness, and so I shall step forth on the path to culinary adventure!

Have a great weekend, folks. Hasta luego.

---

[ * For 'normal', substitute 'sensible'. ]

[ ** How many times have we heard this one before? ]

The food tastes no different to the flash-frozen irradiated crap I’ve been eating for the last twelve months. I don’t know what I expected; it’s not as if they were going to give me a special treat or anything. That would just have shaved from the bottom line.

I’ve got about half an hour, the mission doctor said. It’s almost funny; he used the exact same dead-pan serious tone the brain specialist back home used when he told me I had two years. Almost two years ago. I thought I’d be more scared the closer I got, but it doesn’t work that way. At least, it hasn’t for me.

I start to suit up for the last time, and at the same time I start counting off seconds. I’m almost ready to put the helmet on when Doctor Morton’s voice comes over the link. Ten minutes forty-three - he spoke as soon as he saw me move for the suit, allowing for the round trip of the laser carrier.

“Er - what are you doing with the suit, Rogers?”

“Thought I’d wear it out on the surface one last time, doc,” I say. “We’ve become pretty close, me and this suit. Can’t think of a better friend to be with at a time like this. Well, none that are near enough. Might be nice to have you here, but I guess that’s out of the question, right?”

I’ve got another ten minutes before he can reply, and the last twelve months have shown they’re too professional to discuss me with the line open, let alone harangue me without waiting for my replies. They can see me on video in sync with my voice, though, so they know what I’m doing. I fix the helmet to my suit and perform the checklists, then I cycle myself through the little pod’s airlock one last time.

It’s coming up for sunset; the sun’s burning faint and red just above the mountains on the horizon, and there’s very little dust. Pretty good weather, all things considered. I make my way in bounding steps to the edge of the cliff, and I sit myself on the roughly square block of umber rock that I have taken to referring to - in the privacy of my own skull, and purely facetiously - as my throne.

Mike Rogers - First King Of Mars.

It’s not much of a kingdom, to be fair. Mars is like a long holiday in a foreign country; everything’s thrilling and new for the first few weeks, but after a few months you become as accustomed to the routine as you would back home.

Still, no regrets. I’ve not lost any time I would have had otherwise - that lump in my brain is due to make an end of me real soon. I’ve made my mark on history; the Neil Armstrong of my generation. And I know Kathy and Emma will be provided for for the rest of their lives, because that was my condition for coming - the one bit of the contract I got to stipulate.

My count reaches ten forty-two for a second time, and here comes Morton’s passionless voice again.

“The contract says twelve months before cessation, Rogers. You gain nothing by going outside. We saw you eat the food; just relax and let the toxin do its work.”

I laugh. “Contract tells me when I have to die, doc, but it doesn’t say anything about where. I should know, I’ve read the damned thing through enough times. Now shut up and let a man die in peace, will you?”

It’s feeling even less scary the nearer I get. Maybe that’s the toxin working, I’m not sure. I am starting to feel a little sleepy, but then it’s near to my scheduled time for lights-out anyway, so that could just be the conditioning. The valley stretches away in front of me, its walls layered with grades and shades and levels of colour, like the terracotta swatch card Kathy got for the kitchen in our first apartment. And it reminds me of Arizona, that time we went when I was little. So many reds, so much dust. Arizona was much hotter than this, though, wasn’t it Mom?

“God bless you, Rogers,” comes Mom’s voice. No, not Mom, the doc. Morton’s voice. Musta dropped the count there. Damned theist doctor.

Sun’s going down. Like the mountains are burning; looks real pretty.

Guess it’s bedtime now.

G’night, Mom.

---

[ * Apologies to Jason Stoddard for the title. Space-news geeks may well guess that this story was inspired by the Lone Eagle Mars mission idea; and yes, I'm aware that the plan doesn't call for the guy to die alone, but I thought I could make a story out of a situation where it did. ]