Another War

by Simon Morden

It starts with a an old manor house is surrounded by an impenetrable bubble, and all that lives within it seems to wither and die. Investigating, the Army find two men inside the men who vanished some 100 years ago but who have now reappeared, and as young as the day they disappeared. There are rumours of a machine which could puncture the dimensions, allowing man to travel beyond the bounds of the Earth ... and for other things to travel here. Another day, another war.

Genres: Horror, Fiction

131 pages, Paperback

First published May 30, 2005

About the author

Aka S.J. Morden
Dr. Simon Morden, B.Sc. (Hons., Sheffield) Ph.D (Newcastle) is a bona fide rocket scientist, having degrees in geology and planetary geophysics. Unfortunately, that sort of thing doesn’t exactly prepare a person for the big wide world of work: he’s been a school caretaker, admin assistant, and PA to a financial advisor. He’s now employed as a part-time teaching assistant at a Gateshead primary school, which he combines with his duties as a house-husband, attempting to keep a crumbling pile of Edwardian masonry upright, wrangling his two children and providing warm places to sleep for the family cats.

His not-so-secret identity as journeyman writer started when he sold the short story Bell, Book and Candle to an anthology, and a chaotic mix of science fiction, fantasy and horror followed. Heart came out to critical acclaim, and Another War was shortlisted for a World Fantasy Award, but with The Lost Art, things suddenly got serious. Contracts. Agents. Deadlines. Responsibility. Scary stuff. The Lost Art was subsequently a finalist for the Catalyst Award for best teen fiction.

As well as a writer, he’s been the editor of the British Science Fiction Association's writers’ magazine Focus, a judge for the Arthur C Clarke awards, and is a regular speaker at the Greenbelt Arts Festival on matters of faith and fiction. In 2009, he was in the winning team for the Rolls Royce Science Prize.

Reviews

[Emmalyn Renato · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nominated for the World Fantasy award in 2006. A mash-up of urban military science fiction, invading aliens and advanced technology. Not sure why this novella was nominated for a fantasy award (unless the aliens are considered to be some variant of Lovecraftian horror), when it felt like science fiction all the way through to me.

[Martin Willoughby · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting and exciting novella. Time travel and alien octopii.

[Charles Dee Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fun short novel by the 2011 winner of the Philip K. Dick award. Tropes from Steven Spielberg movies mix with the British inflection of a Quatermass film to tell a Lovecraftian tale of a English country house that reappears after vanishing eighty years ago. Some of the original in habitants are still inside, but they have brought with them swarms of very unpleasant, squiddy creatures. The story is non-stop action for 130 brief pages. I heard theme music and saw The End scroll across my field of vision at the as characters bid their final farewells.

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked and enjoyed this book but I did feel that it was too short. It left too many loose ends after the finale as well as too many unanswered questions which you expected to get some backstory for and which I felt he could have worked on more. It read like the middle section of a much larger novel with all of the action sequences condensed into it. Which, I have to say was fun, but ultimately dissatisfying.

[Simon Exton · Rating 2 out of 5]

OK, but badly needed both editing and expanding. It suffered from the Novella curse of trying to tell a novel-length story in a fraction of the words. The characters were little more than stereotypes and at times it was difficult to remember which was which because they were so similar. The prose was repetitive and the whole Alternate-World thing just didn't work. There were some nice ideas, though, and I'd think about reading a full-length novel if he ever published one.

[Eleanor With Cats · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first half was both incredibly creepy and really well done. Then after Dickson leaves, it basically changes to find weapons, kill the enemy, although there was some nice description of exactly where the soldiers get placed. (But no explanation of why Thacker didn't contact the soldiers on the doors other than the front and the kitchen!)

[Lushr · Rating 3 out of 5]

Morden consistently writes interesting characters in amazing situations which become great adventures. However this one is shorter than most.

This is a novella, I only realised this when I had only 50 pages to go, so I quickly realised the story was coming to a final climax and that would be it.

Still worth the read.

[Stacey Douglas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grim sci-fi/horror story well done by Morden, but I feel like I've read/seen this story - or versions of it - before. Still, an interesting tale that makes you want to see what happens next. Homage to HG Wells.