- Published in:
- Escape Pod
- Publication date:
- 20th May 2010
Thargus and Brian was written during my final week at Clarion. For those who don’t know what Clarion is, it’s a six-week, intensive speculative fiction writers workshop for approx. twenty graduates. Read. Critique. Write.
Repeat.
Forty-two times. A story a week is a typical pace for most Clarionites.
And with all the readings, games, dinners, water-fights, cross-dressing parties etc etc. that’s only half of it!
As you can imagine you get pretty knackered. Now, I’m a serious speculative fiction writer. My work reflects contemporary political issues, the human heart in conflict with itself, the pitfalls of future technology. I don’t do dungeons and dragons, little green men, or Duke Nukem style heroes–and if I did you can be sure they would be subtle metaphors for our times. Ahem. However, by the sixth week of Clarion when my diet had become 80% energy drinks, I could barely summon the strength to get out of bed, never mind invent realistic, complex science-fictional scenarios. What the hell, I thought. I’ll write a short humourous first contact story, try and learn something, and then trunk it.
And that’s pretty much what happened. Sick of the aliens will destroy/farm/cuddle us tropes, Thargus and Brian was my attempt at inverting the usual cliched Hollywood plotlines of Independence Day etc. It remained languishing in bottom-drawer shame for three years, until one day I pulled it out, and had a quick read through. Surprisingly, in its stoner humour and twisted conventions, I thought it had something. Heart. I sent it to Escape Pod and they bought it.