The Dam Across The Stars

I've just uploaded the first 10,000 words of my new SF tale which is called The Dam Across The Stars to the Youwriteon website.





It is a 'hard' SF story which deals with the discovery that Humankind has a limit to where it can go in the universe, and that limit is not due to the fact that we are not capable of reaching across vast distances. The thing that restricts Humankind is the discovery of an impenetrable barrier found on the extreme edge of our galaxy. We are totally enclosed from the rest of space. Commonly known as The Dam Across The Stars, its purpose is constantly debated. Is it there to keep Humankind safe from something lurking beyond its boundary?

Or, simply a cage to keep Humankind in?

Religions, cults and fanatical factions soon spring up and whole fleets of ships begin exploring the strange obstacle, for whoever finds the doorway through the dam, if there be such a thing, will potentially control it.

Casper Tuttle is a new breed of human, genetically grown to withstand the prolonged time needed to patrol the dam, he and others of his kind are given the remit of protecting it from the vast numbers that now risk life and limb to find the doorway.

Casper, killed once already whilst on duty, returns to the dam with the damaged persona of his closest friend uploaded into his Ship's computer. There they begin to unravel some of the edifice's secrets and find that someone else is also on the same path. Who will arrive at the fabled doorway first, and what will they find if it is ever opened?

If you'd like to read more then visit Youwriteon website.

Should you do so I'd appreciate any feedback :)

Book Launch at Dylan Thomas Centre

Last night (Friday 15th Sept) I attended the book launch of Rhys Hughes's

- At the Molehills of Madness -

Rhys is a prolific writer of surreal, dark fiction and has an ambition to write 1,000 stories in his lifetime. I think he's around the 400 mark at the moment.

Attending the launch, at The Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea, were a number of writers, Steve Redwood, Mike O'Driscoll, Rhys Hughes, just to mention a few.
Rhys gave us a reading of one of his short stories with the help of a few glasses of red wine and managed not to not fall off the stage and stayed coherent for most of the time :)

Music was provided by The Frictionlessman and another reading was done by Mike O'Driscoll who craftily finished the story before the ending so we would have to buy his book!

I have the pleasure of being in two anthologies with Mike, Cold Cuts 1 and Cold Cuts 2.

Chris Teague the editor and publisher from Pendragonpress was also in attendance.

From the left: Chris Teague - Rhys Hughes - Anna Lock (my wife) - Bob Lock - Steve Redwood

All in all, a good book evening. I was amazed how far Rhys managed to launch his book with his homemade mangonel, hehe...

Here he is after the first 20 glasses of wine kicked in:-

PS: For those of you following the thread from the TTA forum, sorry the nude photos of him didn't come out, they were under-exposed... I said he drank a lot of wine, didn't I?

My review of Prador Moon now on Sfcrowsnest

Neal Asher kindly did a Q&A with me on his book 'Prador Moon' which resulted in my review and the interview being published in September's issue of Sfcrowsnest (one of the biggest and best SF/SFF sites on the web) His book is definitely worth a read and if you'd like a little more information on it then follow this link:

Bob Lock's review of Prador Moon by Neal Asher