Doc Sherwood
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Diptych
Petunia for days on end had been striving hard to sunbathe her heartbreak away. The suburban planetoid she called home had all but dipped to shadowside, meaning the sun-lounger on which she reclined was subject only to the very last traces of the condition for which it was named. That was why Petunia thought at first the dusky slanting beams must be playing tricks on her eyes, but when she pulled herself up into a sitting stance and peeped blinking over the rims of her sunglasses she found she really did recognise the crimson-coloured interplanetary racer parked opposite in the lane. Her astonishment jumped about ten petuns at once, and her heart began to beat. For there standing by the gate were Flashtease and Joe.
By Doc Sherwood2 years ago in Fiction
Thundering Across the Stars, Chapter One
Blackly the fortress loomed before what looked at first glance like a full moon, until the seething agitations racing without cease round its white circumference betrayed it for a spatial disruption. All else was red sky falling away to surrounding scrubby jungle of the same garish shade, whose glistering fleshy sheen shaded to a night-dark interior. Though the planet was supposed to be devoid of fauna, something ominously large-sounding bawled from out of these depths.
By Doc Sherwood2 years ago in Fiction
Thundering Across the Stars, Chapter Four
Even here it held true that bullies would do well to pick on those their own size. Though Flashthunder’s sinister suitor howled horribly under the renewed bombardment and flailed its free hand in a fury, none of this could keep its vegetable vastness from catching alight. Joe saw they were finally making inroads, but even so it wouldn’t do to drag things out. Contamination was still embroiled in his death-race and Flashthunder more at risk than ever, for the fires had spread to the monster’s other fist and were licking at the frame to which he was bound, charring away the thin organic braces so only metal uprights remained. These even now were slipping apart, and in mere minutes would slide out from underneath Flashthunder and leave him in free-fall. Flashtease jumped up and ran to the rooftop elevator.
By Doc Sherwood2 years ago in Fiction
Thundering Across the Stars, Chapter Three
Over the brow of the chasm it came. Thomthar and Thragg gazed on it aghast, a grotesque giant made from millions of enmeshed blood-red vines. It dragged squiggly fingers along the ground on either side of shuffling tendril-toes, and about its face the creepers converged in a mockery of lips and eye-sockets behind which was nothing but hollow crimson shade. Here was the product of Antroar’s foul tampering, born of perverted science hybridized with the alien plantlife of which he was lord. Since its genesis this botanical behemoth had struck up a baying that routinely trembled the undergrowth, and now it gave voice to its loudest ululation yet as line-of-sight confirmed what its other strange senses were telling it. Exposed on a skewer in the scented open air was a morsel to trip the defining instincts of predators far higher up the intellectual scale.
By Doc Sherwood2 years ago in Fiction
Thundering Across the Stars, Chapter Two
Most of the galaxy’s old warlords, including Antroar, lacked direction in an era of peace. They had joined the Solidity, because there at least they’d known where they stood, but the Alliance had proved a bitter disappointment and the general feeling among warlords was one of anger that such promising potential despots as Toothfire and The Flash Club should have sold out. Antroar in the aftermath of his return from Earth had been investigating avenues whereby he might recoup former glories when he’d stumbled on records of the experiment which created Contamination, and in the process acquainted himself with several of the latter’s fellow victims who were likewise at a loose end. Together they had stripped down the old laboratory complex and ferried its equipment to the pocket-dimension for some experiments of their own. Contamination on discovering this had given chase, even though the crisis that sent him in search of his old contemporaries had since been and gone, for there were answers he sought as well as a threat to the galaxy to be overcome.
By Doc Sherwood2 years ago in Fiction
Convention
Raquel Welch in her fur bikini towered arm-in-arm with the cosmic character-actor Rulan Oa’Lumb, while elsewhere the latter’s frequent costar Lotham Pemris was juxtaposed alongside Jaws. Beneath such cardboard giants as these, heads belonging mostly to Mini-Flashes navigated lesser islands bearing movie memorabilia from two different galaxies, or ventured through cavemouths in the conference centre’s bulkhead walls whence glowed screenings of the known and the never-before-seen. Joe, on a stage for musical entertainment which was otherwise deserted, took up the microphone.
By Doc Sherwood2 years ago in Fiction
The Flash Club Galactic Wildlife Revue
Joe called an emergency conference at once. He’d never known Mini-Flashes to riot, but one thing he did know was that in this galaxy you could afford to rule nothing out. This programme from the past that the boys were so noisily demanding couldn’t be the one our hero sought – he could see already it was far too widely and vividly remembered for that. None of which helped Joe to any revelation on what his event’s most requested show so far might be.
By Doc Sherwood2 years ago in Fiction
Creating Some Content
Grindopolis was equatorial, but the climes to which Neetra and Joe’s interplanetary teleport brought them would on Earth have been somewhere in the darkest South Pacific. Waves blasted themselves white against a coastline of sheer basalt cliffs, while volcanoes grumbled redly in the distance. All Nereynis would have been thus before the world so much as froze, and the universe itself was still cooling. Lingering vestiges of sunset hung on a sky of luminous black.
By Doc Sherwood2 years ago in Fiction
4-H-N
The first sun of Grindotron was still some hours from appearing above the horizon, and in the general grey of 4-H-N’s room the tiny square ink-bottle sitting on the nightstand looked blacker even than something black had any right to look. 4-H-N supposed that was not surprising, given what she knew of its contents.
By Doc Sherwood2 years ago in Fiction