Books

It is 2023. Scientist David Proctor is run­ning for his life. On his trail is Saskia Brandt, a detect­ive with the European FIB. She has ques­tions. Questions about a bomb that exploded back in 2003. But someone is hunt­ing her too. The clues are in the shattered memor­ies of her pre­vi­ous life.

In 1947 a Santiago-bound plane crashes into the Andes minutes after con­firm­ing its land­ing time.

In 2003 a pas­sen­ger plane nose­dives into the Bavarian National Forest dur­ing a routine flight.

Although sep­ar­ated by more than 50 years, these tra­gedies are linked by seven let­ters:

S, T, E, N, D, E, C.

’99: A big rock called the Moon is about to move in front of the sun. On Earth — in Cornwall — Andy Carrick is try­ing to hold down a sum­mer job before leav­ing for uni­ver­sity.

The crimp in Andy’s plan arrives in breath­tak­ing form: Penelope Brown, heir­ess to the Brown’s Ice-Cream empire. Before long, Andy finds him­self in the sur­pris­ingly dan­ger­ous role of ice-cream man.

A son, a daugh­ter, a twin brother, a stranger. These four short stor­ies explore the mean­ing of absence for each. Author Ian Hocking is best known for his sci­ence fic­tion nov­els. With these lit­er­ary shorts, he looks again at iden­tity, isol­a­tion, and how we make sense of the world when left behind.

A Moment in Berlin: Runner up in the Radio Ryedale Prize for Short Fiction.
Afterlife: First pub­lished in Fragment Magazine.
Jubilee: First pub­lished in Aesthetica.
Missing Person: Published here for the first time.