Harry's Blog

I'm working on a new science fiction story and have decided that I'm going to post it here in episodic form. While ultimately my goal for the various books I've started and not finished is regular publishing - I think some episode tales here online is in the best tradition of novel writing.

I also think it's a good way of being encouraged to release the next part. Today though I'm not going to start with a full chapter. Instead I thought I'd bring you the opening page of an as-yet untitled new work. I hope it whets your appetite for more.

The following serves as the story's opening and I'm sure, the ideal blurb for the back cover...

For the human race the truth that it was alone in the universe was not an easy one to assimilate. The pioneering spirit that had lead the people of Earth to expand their horizons across the oceans of their home world and then outwards into the void was not driven merely by imperial lust, but also a need to understand the universe, to explore and in part to find others like them.

And now four hundred years since the first man set foot on a world other than the one he was born on no sign of intelligent life had been discovered. There were no remains of vast civilizations, no signals from distant worlds and no little green men. The galaxy was a cold and dark place with only the occasional temperate haven where mankind could start anew.

Or so mankind thought.

As the human race began to bring its own warmth to the cold galaxy, as its colonies shone like bright beacons in the dark of night offering safe harbours to those who travelled vast interstellar distances powers that did not fear the cold and the dark took notice. Mankind's bright lights and warmth brought only pain. With no more malice than a man would feel in destroying a nest of ants, the denizens of the cold and dark yearned for the eradication of this infestation of mankind. Ancient creatures that should have remained forgotten and nameless awoke from their slumber and fixed their hungry eyes on the delicate lanterns of mankind.