Short Stories & Vignettes
A New Stroke: Why Australian crawl is on its last laps (2018 - 2021)
Up-and-coming swimmer Bada Choi, along with his unorthodox support team, is poised to disrupt the entire sport of freestyle swimming. We investigate Bada, the minds behind his success, and the novel machine-learning code that has enabled it.
A Vanished City (2020)
Illustration by Sam van Vliet
The superb city of Aresen stands in the highlands of Isol, set inland from the harbours that feed it. A stream of airship traffic shuffles about the multi-towered citadel of the skyport. Skyscrapers of glittering crystal and steel and stone line parkways teeming with exotic plants and sessile tentacled animals, appendages drifting lazily.
Image by CSIRO
Hired to design a logo for an astronomy research group, graphic designer Olivia Suen meets radio astronomer Arzu Rostami. They keep each other company during Arzu’s late-night observing run, and learn much more about each other than they expected.
In Haber, cake decoration takes place during the ceremony, artistically incorporating events and symbols important to the couple. Lesha is the cake artist at a divorce ceremony where a clash of cultures results in disaster.
Fourth Year Blues (2018 - 2021)
Week 3, Monday: Produce a spreadsheet of your grades for the semester to calculate a running mark. Fiddle with the pending assignment marks to determine the minimum required for a distinction. Reason that Excel is an important workplace skill and that this is not a waste of time. Suppress the anxiety of looming assignments.
Background gods (2018 - 2020)
From the perspective of a self-improving AI as it expands to take over the world, and the galaxy.
The world is flat (2018)
‘The world is flat. God made it that way.’
Granddad says this all the time, so we buy tickets to space.
Some kind of trout (2018)
The alien fish was minding her own business when a fissure opened in the ice above her, and she was sucked unceremoniously upward.
Intro to House-Ape Studies (2017)
![By T. Michael Keesey (Zanclean skull Uploaded by FunkMonk) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ardi.jpg)
By T. Michael Keesey (Zanclean skull Uploaded by FunkMonk) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Ten million years after human extinction, a new species looks back on our fossils. Appeared in Issue #10 of The Quarry!
North Richmond Street (2017)
North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when, after a daily seven-hour stretch of tedium, they finally let us loose.
Skink (2017)
A sentence or two about a lizard.
Cappuccino (2017)
Caffeinated microfiction.
Valley (2017)
The rain was falling, but it wasn’t a sad rain. It was a rain of cleansing.
Mount Othrys struck through the eye of a hurricane, swirling with the violence of the gods’ war.
Empty Nest (2016)
A (mostly) biographical tribute to memory and place.
Dubious Honour (2016)
The Tulisan War: Stormfronts (2015)
An oral history-style interview from a great interstellar conflict.
The Planet Eater (2015)
The Planet Eater swung around the yellow star and closed in on his prey. An asteroid bounced off his long, worm-like body as he swept into the inner system.
Appeared in Grapeshot Volume 10 Issue 1: X.
Audio version available on YouTube.
The Ambiguous Fish (2015)
A microfictive palaeontologist's lament.
Copyright (Short Story Collection - 2012)
In a future in which restrictive copyright law dominates society, and the megacorporations dictate what is permitted, people struggle to find new ways to survive.
Private Display (2012)
Some crime fiction.
Broken Hill Sunset (2011)
A somewhat abstract descriptive vignette written from the Living Desert Sculptures, just out of Broken Hill.
Not to Be (2011)
A dark, post-apocalyptic short story written in the style of Cormac McCarthy's The Road.
Pitcher in the Hive (2011)
A thing that uses Catcher in the Rye as a jump-off point.
Final Lover (2011)
More apocalyptic fiction, this one from the point of view of Death.
Chains (2011)
Something about an afterlife.
Artificial Rapture (2011)
A bit of apocalyptic fiction.
Ocean Ghosts (2010)
When I wrote this I thought it was all very minimal and artistic.
Lament for a Star (2010)
A piece from the perspective of the sun.
Colours (2010)
Here's a thing I wrote to express how I felt at the time. As rough as it is, it stands out to me in that respect.
Blots (2010)
This started out with some free association about ink stains.
Seeing in the Dark (2010)
Something I wrote for entry into a writing course.
Stalked (2009)
A little horror-ish story from back in high school.
Black Cat's City (2009)
An adaptation of the Japanese fairy-tale Schippeitaro.
Queen of Fire (2007)
Illustration by Jo-Anne Ridgway
I remember writing this in some kind of special writing workshop for primary school students (p. 20).
The Ants (2006)
An early short story about some ants.