Live Last read · last published · next check
Dungeness, October 2025 ‘We stand in awe of gigantic entities massively distributed in time and space’ Timothy Morton, Being Ecological How do we imagine the future? Do we look around ourselves now and ponder where change will likely occur? Do we look to the past to see how the present emerged, spotting trends we might extrapolate into the decades to come? Do we project today’s hopes and fears on…
Two decades of weird science fiction and part of my personal Exo canon From original idea to publication, cooking up Exo took twenty-one years. Most of the writing took place in two bursts in 2018 to 2020 and in 2022 and 2023. Otherwise, I’d pick the story up in the months between working on other writing projects. Over such a long period not only did the publishing landscape change (most…
Turns out I don’t own a copy of Roadside Picnic Many books and authors influenced the writing of my first novel Exo . I’m going to talk about five of them that encouraged me to make it weird. Let’s start with the oldest book and work forward. Flatland Edwin Abbott’s Flatland from 1884 is more of a thought exercise than a tale. In fact, it was originally conceived as a satire of the rigid…
Exo cover by Michel Vrana YEAR ONE Day 11, Month 4 (Sol Standard) Tomorrow, we make planetfall. We crowd the viewing port, staring out at our old new home (Gemma winces at my paradoxes). We are too excited to speak. So few of us have had the privilege of seeing this. Neither Gemma nor I can believe we’re here. I think we both expected some last-minute hitch would delay or prevent our arrival.…
Exo cover by Michel Vrana DAY ONE Mae was out checking her traps when she found the girl. It had been a long, disappointing day. Most of the cages were empty. After consulting her map—three traps left before she was done, each a long walk, close to the Caul—she’d trudged reluctantly towards the shore. Her pack, a couple of meagre marbit carcasses hanging from it, felt heavy. Pebbles rolled under…
Exo cover by Michel Vrana DAY ZERO Seven minutes into the experiment, a slow-motion explosion rips through the lab. Empty space unfolds and five staff—four scientists and the comms officer—are instantly lost. She’s lucky, crawling out on hand and knees. Her left hand presses her left eye, holding in the blinding pain, covering that stippled void. Behind her, twisting metal groans, concrete…
Discover Dungeness, the real-life inspiration for my novel Exo.
After writing the words on the outsides of several thousand books, I’ve decided to take a shot at the insides of one.
‘But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest a little boy and his Bear will always be playing.’ – The House At Pooh Corner, A.A. Milne
‘Poetry is precise a thing as geometry’ – Gustave Flaubert
