we shall make monsters
And now free to read on Mad Scientist Journal, there's my short steam-punk(ish) story, We Shall Make Monsters*. This piece has had an interesting non-publishing history, killing every anthology and magazine it's been accepted by, so that, incredibly, some many years after it was first written, this is its first appearance anywhere. Depressingly, it's still sort of relevant to today's music scene.
Anyway, fingers crossed, Mad Scientist Journal won't succumb to any bad magic now they've taken this piece!
After the fictional accreditation, the story begins thus:
Enough time has now elapsed that I might finally reveal my part in
the whole sorry StepFor’d affair. Like the last grains of sand sliding
from one bulb of an hourglass to the next, I feel my life slipping away.
If I am to give an explanation–or perhaps some would see it as a
confession–then it should be here and it should be now, before it is too
late and the chance to do so has passed.
From the outset, I would have it known that I was not the sole
creator of “the clone bands.” However, I accept that turning the tide of
public opinion so late in the day is no easy matter and that blame will
be more easily laid at my feet–solely at my feet, if you will
forgive the pun–rather than spread among those others involved. It is
the way with the masses, and believe me, I should know the masses after I
have spent so long exploiting them.
Yet the truth remains that I was not alone in my actions; I was not
the only one responsible for what followed. My remaining hope is that
people accept this. Perhaps, in time, it will be so.
The whole of what follows will be dispassionately relayed, dictated
on my mechanical word-loom with an eye only for detail, neither
recrimination nor redemption an aim. Just the truth.
This is my testimony.
You can read the rest of it for free here.
An ebook of the Mad Scientist Journal anthology, containing We Shall Make Monsters, will be available at a later date.
* And yes, well spotted those of an eagle-eye. The title's taken from a line from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Hush now, no spoilers . . .
