Anything Can Happen In The Next 3,000 Words
It's always nice when you sell a trunk story - the kind that's been locked in your virtual attic for some years because it haven't found a home or because (as in this case) the market you originally wrote it for turned it down.
So I was very pleased to have 'Sundog 4', which has been lying around since 2019, accepted into Laughs in Space, an anthology of humorous sci-fi edited by Donna Scott, former Chair of the British Science Fiction Association.
It's a Gerry Anderson pastiche that mostly crams in as many references to different shows as possible, in increasingly tortuous ways. I didn't manage to get Four Feather Falls in there but pretty much everything else is represented (including Dick Spanner).
“Rex Rocket and Captain Clay, report to Commodore Hawks immediately. Repeat…”
The space station reverberated with the sound of the loudspeaker. Rex Rocket, pilot, and Captain Clay, navigator, looked up from their poker game.
Rex, one eyebrow quirked, set his Space Force cap atop his dark, curly hair and rose to his feet.
“Clay, we’re needed. Put your trousers back on and come along.”
Moving walkways conveyed them to the office of Commodore Hawks, Head of Space Force. Selena, the voiceless, telepathic alien who worked as the Commodore’s secretary, raised a hand in shy greeting. Clay returned the wave.
“She knows exactly what you’re thinking, you know,” Rex muttered to him. The navigator blushed crimson.
“Ah, Rocket; Clay.” Commodore Hawks’s transporter chair, hovering a few inches above the floor, spun to face the crew of Sundog 4. “One of Earth’s most renowned scientists, a Professor Moonflower, has been assigned to help us in our research against the alien foe. Your job is to meet the three o’clock Earth to Moon shuttle and bring the Professor back here. And to pick me up some brandy from the duty-free.”
(The call for submissions said "They do not need to be riddled with dad jokes or puns". But mine got in anyway.)
So I was very pleased to have 'Sundog 4', which has been lying around since 2019, accepted into Laughs in Space, an anthology of humorous sci-fi edited by Donna Scott, former Chair of the British Science Fiction Association.
It's a Gerry Anderson pastiche that mostly crams in as many references to different shows as possible, in increasingly tortuous ways. I didn't manage to get Four Feather Falls in there but pretty much everything else is represented (including Dick Spanner).
“Rex Rocket and Captain Clay, report to Commodore Hawks immediately. Repeat…”
The space station reverberated with the sound of the loudspeaker. Rex Rocket, pilot, and Captain Clay, navigator, looked up from their poker game.
Rex, one eyebrow quirked, set his Space Force cap atop his dark, curly hair and rose to his feet.
“Clay, we’re needed. Put your trousers back on and come along.”
Moving walkways conveyed them to the office of Commodore Hawks, Head of Space Force. Selena, the voiceless, telepathic alien who worked as the Commodore’s secretary, raised a hand in shy greeting. Clay returned the wave.
“She knows exactly what you’re thinking, you know,” Rex muttered to him. The navigator blushed crimson.
“Ah, Rocket; Clay.” Commodore Hawks’s transporter chair, hovering a few inches above the floor, spun to face the crew of Sundog 4. “One of Earth’s most renowned scientists, a Professor Moonflower, has been assigned to help us in our research against the alien foe. Your job is to meet the three o’clock Earth to Moon shuttle and bring the Professor back here. And to pick me up some brandy from the duty-free.”
(The call for submissions said "They do not need to be riddled with dad jokes or puns". But mine got in anyway.)