Mars & More

by Alastair Millar

Aliens on Earth… An expanding colony on Mars… A great starship lost in the Void… Politics and pleasure… New technologies and old concerns.

By turns comic, tragic, uplifting and disturbing, this debut collection of both published and previously unpublished short tales will immerse you in worlds of the possible future, where much has changed but much remains the same. From explorers and pioneers to scientists and manual labourers, from an augmented assassin to a femme fatale in a non-stop nightspot, the characters and stories here are sure to pique your imagination.

106 pages, Paperback

Published September 20, 2024

About the author

Alastair Millar is an archaeologist by training, a translator by trade and a flash/micro fiction writer by choice. A Briton by birth, he studied Architecture before graduating in Archaeology from the University of London (Institute of Archaeology, UCL). He has worked in the Czech Republic and former Czechoslovakia since 1991, been a permanent resident there since 1994, and in 2016 became a dual national. Married with two adult children, he enjoys good books, bad puns and travelling.

Reviews

[Etgoma Etgoma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alastair Millar's stories are always a treat. Coming across a full collection of them feels like falling into a magic rabbit hole. Having little electricity and with my gadget battery constantly in saving mode (thanks to Russian bombs), I couldn't help telling myself, "One more, just one more!" These little flash stories are witty, inspiring, deep, and incredibly addictive, like those little puzzle games on your phones. They will entice you, draw you into a world so familiar to you, ask you questions you constantly ask yourself, and then turn everything upside down, leaving you breathless! The ending is always unpredictable, but not in a cheating way, rather like a pop of a cork you're sort of expecting to pop, but still jump every time. It's science fiction, with a great deal of futuristic speculations; it seems to be far from mundane and ordinary, and yet, amazingly, through this veil of fantasy, you still see the world you know, only as if through a magnifying glass, with intense attention to detail. Every story leaves a long trail of thought behind, and it's a pleasure to pluck a bit of wisdom from every shiny gem of this collection.