Stories for Grownups:
While not written for children, they are suitable for at least teens and older. No spice, rarely poison, so Sigmund Freud would be disappointed. Real science, imagined into a hopeful future. Scroll down for more details, including behind the scenes.
Obtuse Angles - a coming of age, adventure in the Pacific Ocean.
Try Angle - “Am I any good?” a free, short, sequel
Max Queue - preppers face their challenges, when New Madrid quakes again.
Pi Are Spiral - a geologist lands on a planet of trees, mud, and dangers.
Bright Side of the Equation - a student doctor, a plague, and love.
Mass Are Square - two students in subatomic physics find something unexpected.
Confounding Variables - it’s time for the spring Ren Fest, but this isn’t Earth.
Other free short stories, if you meet me at events.
Brian Garrison’s
Obtuse Angles:
A Science Fiction Tree, Novella.
Nicolas was born different and raised without leaving his Navy community, any further than he could swim. All he wanted after high school was to live a peaceful life, maybe see land once in his lifetime. But the Willow Bay Sea Colony had other plans.
/^-_ /^-_
A calm ocean surface refracted moonlight. Shifting light beams always intrigued me, random chaos and yet a pattern, like it ought to mean something, but never does. The moon-rays angled into the depths, illuminating the cloud of krill around us.
One, two… four, five, full-grown manta rays emerged from the darkness, flying circles around the drifting cloud and pressuring it into a tighter ball, for easier eating. Each of the beasts was three or four meters across, but not a threat to Maria or me. One soared especially close, looking black and white in the moonlight. A kick of my flukes and I would have been able to grab it, but neither species intruded on the other.
Watching them fly mesmerized me. Not enough to make me forget the disturbing feelings which alerted me. I could hear nothing wrong and see nothing wrong, but something bothered me. Was it the harmless mantas? Paranoia? Perhaps post-traumatic fear after the previous shark attack?
There weren't many things I feared. Jellyfish wouldn't hunt us, wouldn't intentionally hurt us. But their lack of intent wouldn't be a consolation, if we found ourselves surrounded by stinging tentacles. Killer whales, a giant squid in the night? Possible, but not likely. Sharks were the obvious answer. Had a great white passed nearby, through a blind spot, felt but not seen?
The krill cloud and attendant manta's drifted away, but they didn’t take the creepy feeling with them. Minutes later, another krill cloud moved toward us. It convulsed as if driven by something attacking it from the other side. The cloud parted and two, giant sharks thrashed toward us.
Behind the scenes:
Although not specifically written for youths, this turned out to be a teen or ‘young adult’ novel, a coming of age story.
I wrote it for fun, while writing a novel that I have since drafted but don’t like (as a first novel, it needs work). I wrote the follow up, short story as an on-line or booklet, short story; an advertisement for the novella. So, if you like the short story, please buy the novella.
Brian Garrison’s
Max Queue:
A Science Fiction Tree, Short Story.*
No one answered when I called into shattered windows, nor could I see anyone inside. A couple of people ran past the front, along the Boulevard, a few more ran the opposite way. I wanted to believe they were running to help others, but I doubted it. I didn’t like the distant sounds of glass breaking and the still ringing alarm of the pawn store. I didn’t risk checking the shop’s front door.
I flinched at the sound of a single gunshot, or something like it – not far enough away – and I looked to my wife, in the truck with the boys. She glared at me with an anger I'd seen often enough, but also an emotion I'd never seen in her before: Pale fear.
We were so naive, thinking the first quake had been “the big one.”
---!W^V^v^-v-^-.-
Max Queue is the near-future story of a family in the Ozarks. Are they prepared to survive a New Madrid earthquake?
*Is it a short story or a novella?
Well, it’s borderline. It’s long for a short story, but maybe short for a novella. ‘Novelette’ is another name for stories of this length, but it’s even more obscure than ‘novella.’ Although written for grownups, it’s similar in size to a youth’s chapter book.
Behind the scenes:
I wrote this for us, local preppers. The world might not end, but the ‘big ones’ have been predicted to return. Maybe it’s overdue. Maybe some of us should prepare for the return.
Brian Garrison’s
Pi Are Spiral:
A Science Fiction Tree, Short Story.
My place in camp was near the south edge. Far from the inner safety reserved for more important elves, and where Annabelle, our spaceship, lay crashed on her side.
***
"Pi Are Spiral" is a short story set in the early days of colonizing a future world. It's a story of survival, future tech, and ancient methods of defense.
Behind the scenes:
This is a prequel to the first novel I drafted from start to finish. The novel has first-novel-problems, but I hope to fix it, some day.
Also:
A real disk jockey from Seattle (who once lived in the Space Needle) moved to the Ozarks to become a farmer. (I don’t know why.) He taught me a joke.
An Ozark hillbilly was proud of his son, the first of the family to go to college. When the son returned home, the father bragged to his best friend about his son. He told his son, “Say some’in smart.”
Caught off guard, the son blurted out the first thing that came to mind, “PI R squared.”
The father got all red in the face, cussed, and said, “Everyone knows pie are round. Cake are square.”
Thus, my disk jockey, farmer, neighbor continues to inspire me, with my story names.
Brian Garrison’s
Bright Side of the Equation:
A Science Fiction Tree, Short Story.
Doc may have hedged the truth, from time to time. But he was twenty-three years old before he outright lied. Having done that, he quickly progressed to embezzlement and plotting insurance fraud.
0 – 0 = 0 + 0
A nurse said, “Hey you can’t go in there!” But the isolation door was already closing.
Gazel looked up and I failed at not reacting. She burst into tears. I hurried to the bed and hugged her.
Without entering the nurse said through a portal, “You know you just bought yourself a month of quarantine?”
Quarantine was excessive, but expected. Tears and hugging had a low likelihood of infecting me. I nodded without looking back. A month locked up with Gazel was the bright side of the equation to me.
Behind the scenes:
I wrote this pre-COVID, based on my experiences during the previous pandemic: AIDS. I presumed the reaction to a future plague would be the same. Boy, was I wrong. Although, COVID was ‘just weird’ in that it killed smell and taste. Things would have been different, if it made puss drain out of noses and tongues seep blood instead.
Brian Garrison’s
Mass Are Squared:
A Science Fiction Tree, Short Story.
Something obvious, but never done, might have unexpected results. It ought to be a simple experiment, except it's not working, and maybe that's a good thing.
oo 8 oo
Behind the scenes:
The fun part of science is that we understand things, until experimental results prove we didn’t understand at all. People often criticize science, because we say something is true, and later find we were wrong all along. So, we can’t be trusted, right?
Well, I think it shows we can be trusted. When we find we are wrong, we (eventually) change to accept the new understanding. I wrote this to explore one way we might be wrong, and how a couple of college students might find something unexpected.
By the way, when the Hubble Space Telescope got fixed, a scientist insisted on doing something ‘obviously worthless.’ The Hubble Deep Field was called a waste of 140 hours of observation time. It had unexpected results and became a famous, landmark in astronomy.
Brian Garrison’s
Confounding Variable:
A Science Fiction Tree, Short Story.
Mayor Darius chided mother, “It’s probably just a wolf-pack, sniffing the wards.”
Mother denied it was wolves, but she could only say it was “something different this time.”
______.~~^~^^
Behind the scenes:
This short story was inspired by fall Renaissance Festivals. It’s clearly sword and sorcery fantasy, and yet it fits within my overall imagined future. With utmost respect to the awarded and knighted Clark, whose third law is: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” I wondered, what if a colony, when we’re colonizing other worlds, would find it easier to think of their advanced tech as magic?
And Others:
I have other short stories, that I made into booklets and gave away in the past. They’re too small for Amazon publishing. Maybe I’ll keep making them. Probably to sell in-person, for a few quarters each. Maybe I’ll compile them into a story collection…
A prequel to my recently drafted novels about colonizing the Moon’s south pole.
Steam punk, Mississippi river boat inspired, colonist on another world, Victorian writing style, and a dragon.
X-prize inspired, test piloting of an experimental aircraft / spaceship.