Doc Sherwood
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At the Drive-In, Chapter Two
The evening’s film, as Flashtease had hinted, was not proving a hit with the audience. These days any seasoned director was in the unenviable position of having to pitch his works at a younger generation which bore no resemblance to that of his own Arcadian days, and most efforts to do so misfired disastrously. Even Joe, a stranger to the region, could tell after the first ten minutes that an intricate and involved war-drama following the progress of an ever-growing number of splinter-groups, and paying pedantic attention to which particular faction owned which particular weapons at any given point in the struggle, was not exactly going to grip girls and boys of Flashtease’s age. It occurred to our hero that this sector’s film studios were leagues behind the local music industry, for example, or indeed leagues behind he himself, in keeping up with contemporary tastes. Sure enough, early signs of unrest were beginning to appear on the canyon floor below. Through the deep blue night Joe could perceive tiny figures in tunics and bouncy underskirts exiting their starships, and there was a busy bustling motion about them suggestive not of ennui but purpose.
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
Flashthunder
Flashthunder had stayed behind after the game to gather up the spare Flashballs, principally because he was terrified of going into the changing-room where the other Mini-Flashes were. Not that he knew for absolute certain that they knew about the plans for tonight that only he and Cherry were supposed to know about, but Mini-Flash Frill had raised her little eyebrows in a most decided way while observing aloud he had his lucky red pants on. That incident alone was more than enough to fill Flashthunder with dread at the prospect of well-intentioned but horrid ribaldry in the sonic showers followed by weeks of attendant emotional anguish. Volunteering for Flashball collection duty seemed mild by comparison, even though being the only Mini-Flash in a deserted gymnasium frightened Flashthunder quite badly too.
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
Please be Waiting, Chapter Three
Sunset had arrived on that early autumn day in Nottingham. Long black shadows by now claimed the alleyways and yards, while the western sky blazed a magnificent orange-red that lit the world but from which the last of the daytime warmth was all but gone. The stars tonight would glint brighter and sharper than they had done all year, and maybe a wind would start to blow, rustling leaves that had clustered silently on their branches since spring. These first gusts of the season, presaging winter frosts to come, might even steal through ventilators into bedrooms and rattle a waste-bin liner or a sheet of paper on a dressing-table. Then sleepers would stir at the unexpected noise in the night and ponder once again all that had come to pass that day, not only its joyful celebrations but also the future that herewith began, in which The Four Heroes and the city they created would seem to have parted company at last and forevermore. For some time it had not been as it was, but henceforth no member of the quartet remained on Planet Earth, and the chill wind of tomorrow even now striking up needs must be faced without them.
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
The Four Heroes, Chapter Three
The fluxball’s southern hemisphere rolled slowly before Neetra’s upturned eyes, as might that of some moon of light bellying into the atmosphere to orbit a mere hundred or so feet above the Earth’s mantle. Our heroine had pretended to Bret far more confidence than she felt about her chances of ever coming back out of this leviathan’s guts once she was in. But there was no point getting her knickers in a twist. Duly Neetra cast out her astral form, which looked exactly like her and was wearing the same clothes, and thus entered the sphere while her physical body slumped to sleep on the pavement.
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
Lilith, Chapter One
Some musicians sat on their stage at the foot of Nottingham’s domed Town Hall and stared up together at a sky which was darker than it should have been in the middle of the day. To her backing group the golden-haired female lead-singer remarked:
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
Lilith, Chapter Three
The bleak star had become visible in Nottingham’s heavens. It filled the sky. Earthlings and Solidity were side-by-side, any fighting forgotten now as they gazed wordlessly to a man. Even the Vernderernders of Toothfire had no illusions about eliminating this threat through their usual means, so hunched on the summits of buildings like the vultures they resembled and merely watched. A hush fell across the land as preternatural night began.
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
The Four Heroes, Chapter Four
Joe and Dylan arrived at their sinister rendezvous. Behind them the circumference of Earth shone in space, while ahead stretched a ghastly cobweb whose strands were giant fungal tendrils and whose nodes the wrecks of a million battle-starships. From this obscene interconnected hugeness seethed the infernal tempest that still darkened Nottingham’s heavens, its roiling fury held for the moment in check, but which unleashed would be akin to a runaway star colliding with the planet such that no living creature could survive.
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
Lilith, Chapter Two
Neetra and Gala had scrabbled upright at the bottom of the cliff to confront each other once more across a stretch of several feet. The latter was facing the rocky slope, while Neetra’s back was to it, such that behind and above our heroine’s head the baby atop the elevation was within Gala’s line of sight.
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
The Four Heroes, Chapter One
It was like the first time they saved Nottingham. Night-black hung the firmament above, its tempestuous vaults churning to herald some deadly threat that would scream down and wreak devastation from the city’s towers to its rooftops to its streets. Yet then, uprising before these scudding realms of dark as if to split the vaporous mountainsides and scatter them over the sky, leapt The Four Heroes as one.
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
Bill Jordan's Barn
It was night-time at the crofter’s cottage where Iskira had grown up, and in this place, remote from the university by more than a hundred miles of crag and tarn and moor, nights were dark. That same dark night reigned all over the globe. Pre-Nottingham Earth was not destined to end for over a decade yet.
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
Daughters
Blaster-Track Commander wearily raised his head, not registering at first that what he had heard was the sound of the cell door opening. Suddenly several pairs of gentle hands were upon him, carefully helping his cramped strengthless body out of its miserable home these last months and onto the surface of what was no more than a remote asteroid with a hollow gored into it. The wonder of it all was compounded when Blaster-Track Commander, blinking in the starlight that had replaced the dark, saw who was in charge of the nine short-skirted Mini-Flashes surrounding him.
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
The Four Heroes, Chapter Two
“Bret Stevens, back for more!” the singer laughed in cheerful amazement, as she beheld the sole rider speeding for the square. “Here we were thinking we weren’t going to get any audience at all, and we end up playing for The Four Heroes themselves. Well, he’s going to need some fighting music, and there’s only one that’ll do!”
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
