More Tomorrow: And Other Stories Read online

  ‘Michael Marshall Smith writes the kind of dreams we don’t like to talk about, but can’t get out of our minds once we’ve had them.’

  JONATHAN CARROLL

  ‘A storytelling skill which can only be described as pure genius.’

  VENUE

  ‘As genre defining as William Gibson and as relentlessly readable as Michael Crichton.’

  MAXIM

  ‘Michael Marshall Smith is one of the most accomplished and distinctive voices in British horror. If you only know his work from his novels, then prepare to be dazzled by a writer whose deceptively lucid storytelling—coupled with a distinctive narrative tone—have put him at the forefront of young authors working in the genre of imaginative fiction today.’

  FROM THE INTRODUCTION, BY STEPHEN JONES

  * * *

  MORE TOMORROW & OTHER STORIES is the definitive collection of Michael Marshall Smith’s shorter fiction and includes over two dozen of his best short stories, several new tales, and the novella ‘The Vaccinator,’ previously unavailable in the U.S. To round out the book, award winning editor Stephen Jones has written an Introduction, and Michael Marshall Smith has provided an Afterword.

  Other books by Michael Marshall Smith

  ONLY FORWARD

  SPARES

  ONE OF US

  WHEN GOD LIVED IN KENTISH TOWN

  WHAT YOU MAKE IT

  THE VACCINATOR

  CAT STORIES

  THE STRAW MEN (AS MICHAEL MARSHALL)

  MORE TOMORROW & OTHER STORIES

  copyright © 2003 by Michael Marshall Smith.

  Individual story copyrights are summarized here.

  ‘Introduction: Alias Smith & Jones’

  copyright © 2003 by Stephen Jones.

  Cover art and design copyright © 2003 by John Picacio.

  This edition copyright © 2003 by Earthling Publications.

  Interior design and layout by Paul Miller.

  FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING.

  October 2003

  Numbered hardcover edition ISBN: 0-9744203-0-1

  Traycased lettered hard cover edition ISBN: 0-9744203-1-X

  EARTHLING PUBLICATIONS

  12 Pheasant Hill Drive

  Shrewsbury, MA 01545 USA

  Email: [email protected]

  WEBSITES OF INTEREST

  Earthling Publications: http://www.earthlingpub.com

  Michael Marshall Smith: http://www.michaelmarshallsmith.com

  John Picacio: http://www.johnpicacio.com

  Stephen Jones: http://www.herebedragons.co.uk/jones

  Dedicated to the memory of my mother,

  Margaret Ruth Smith

  November 1937—November 2002

  What we all were to each other, that we are still.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to Nicholas Royle, without whose initial and continued friendship and encouragement this book wouldn’t exist; and to Stephen Jones, without whose encouragement and friendship it would be a very slim pamphlet indeed. Thanks also to Peter Crowther, Ellen Datlow, Al Sarrantonio, Bill Shafer, Richard Chizmar, Andy Cox, Stefan Dziemianowicz, David Sutton and others for providing inviting homes for some of my stories, often before they existed; and especially to Paul Miller, for building this luxury, all-modern-conveniences condo for them to share—and for doing so with such enthusiasm, creativity and, frankly, patience.

  Love and thanks to friends and family, and in particular to my father David, sister Tracey and wife Paula (who reads everything first, and is always kind); and finally to everyone out there who keeps the faith and reads short stories, and who likes tales in which things sometimes are not quite right.

  Without you…

  Contents

  Introduction: Alias Smith & Jones, by Stephen Jones

  More Tomorrow

  Being Right

  Hell Hath Enlarged Herself

  Save As…

  The Handover

  What You Make It

  Maybe Next Time

  The Book of Irrational Numbers

  When God Lived In Kentish Town

  The Man Who Drew Cats

  A Place To Stay

  The Dark Land

  To See The Sea

  Two Shot

  Last Glance Back

  They Also Serve

  Dear Alison

  To Receive Is Better

  The Munchies

  Always

  Not Waving

  Everybody Goes

  Dying

  Charms

  Open Doors

  Later

  More Bitter than Death

  A Long Walk, For The Last Time

  The Vaccinator

  Enough Pizza

  On Not Writing (An Afterword), by Michael Marshall Smith

  Introduction:

  Alias Smith & Jones

  The job of an anthology editor is often a lonely occupation.

  Most of us sit in an office all day, working our way through piles of submissions that, invariably, range from the unsuitable to the incompetent. We are always looking out for the ‘next Stephen King’ or the ‘new Peter Straub’, usually without much success. It can be a depressing and thankless task, sorting the wheat from the chaff, so that when you chance upon a genuinely impressive story or discover an exciting new talent, then those are events to be dearly treasured and celebrated.

  Which is why, back in the early 1990s, when I read a short story submission from an unknown author which combined the lyricism of a young Ray Bradbury with the confident prose of a new Stephen King, I immediately snapped up the story for the anthology I was working on.

  The story was, of course, ‘The Man Who Drew Cats’, and the author (as if you haven’t already guessed), was Michael Marshall Smith.

  We were first introduced, if memory serves, by our mutual friend, author and editor Nicholas Royle. Despite our age difference, Mike and I hit it off immediately.

  With a background as a scriptwriter and performer in theatrical and radio revue comedy, he was an unlikely candidate to become a full-time horror author. However, Mike’s discovery of the works of Stephen King changed all that.

  My co-editor Dave Sutton and I bought ‘The Man Who Drew Cats’ for our paperback anthology Dark Voices 2: The Pan Book of Horror (1990). It wasn’t the first story Mike sold—Nick Royle had already bought ‘The Dark Land’ for his award-winning anthology Darklands (1992)—but it was the first story of his to be published. Our editorial acumen was justified when the story went on to win The British Fantasy Award for 1991, and Mike was presented with the award for Best Newcomer that same year. He was definitely on his way as a writer, and a consecutive British Fantasy Award for ‘The Dark Land’ only confirmed his reputation as a talent to watch out for.

  Over the next several years he turned out a stream of superior short stories that were published in a wide range of anthologies edited by myself and others. These included such now-classic tales as ‘More Bitter Than Death’, ‘Later’, ‘The Fracture’, ‘The Owner’, ‘To See the Sea’, ‘Rain Falls’, ‘To Receive is Better’ (which eventually formed the basis of his second novel), The British Fantasy Award-winning ‘More Tomorrow’, ‘Not Waving’, ‘Dear Alison’, ‘Everybody Goes’, ‘Welcome’ and ‘The Handover’, to name but a few.

  Many of his tales were regularly selected for ‘Year’s Best’ anthologies on both sides of the Atlantic. It was almost as if he could effortlessly write a notable short story to order, although several of these tales were actually fledgling efforts dating back to before his first publication. This merely served to illustrate that he always had the talent to become a first-rate writer.

  I am also lucky e
nough to count Mike and his lovely wife Paula (not forgetting their two attention-seeking felines, Spangle and Lintilla) as amongst my closest friends. They kindly asked me to read something at their wedding ceremony in London in 1998, and Paula and I (who share the same birth-date) have jointly celebrated/commiserated the passing of yet another year at numerous fantasy conventions. I have slept off countless hangovers on their floors, while Mike has sampled my homemade chilli, gumbo and barbecue, and occasionally enjoyed a close-up encounter with the bushes in my garden after a long Summer’s afternoon of partying. We have been on vacation together in such exotic locales as New Orleans and Baja, California, and we continue to swap advice and put-the-world-to-rights over a beer or two on a regular basis. In short, I couldn’t ask for better or more supportive companions and confidants.

  However, nailing my colours firmly to the mast here, I have to admit that I was not a huge fan of Mike’s first three novels, the British Fantasy Award-winning Only Forward (1994), Spares (1996) and One of Us (1998), nor the separately-published novella The Vaccinator (1999). All these books were a departure from the tone and subject matter of the stories I so admired, and in terms of ideas and execution, they were more akin to the ‘speculative fiction’ of such cross-genre writers as Michael Moorcock and M. John Harrison. As a reader, I preferred the edgier, darker tone of his shorter tales.

  Of course, I was in a very small minority. These books were both critical and commercial successes around the world, published in numerous countries and translated into more than fourteen languages.

  It is therefore perhaps all the more ironic that the first of his novels I actually finished and enjoyed immensely was published under the obviously transparent pseudonym of ‘Michael Marshall’ (I don’t intended to go into detail here about the stupidity of publishers’ marketing departments!). The Straw Men (2002) is a phenomenally intense psycho-thriller, involving a frantic search for a secret society of serial killers. For me, it was a return to everything I had admired in the short stories, but plotted and written by an author who had refined his craft after more than a decade of professional publication.

  I think that The Straw Men would make a marvellous movie or television mini-series, but Mike’s own brushes with the entertainment industry have, to date, been less auspicious than his talent has deserved.

  Spares was repeatedly optioned by Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks SKG (the director eventually decided to make the disappointing Minority Report instead), while One of Us has been optioned by DiNovi Pictures and Heyday Films for Warner Bros. and currently seems to be consigned to Script Development Hell.

  As a screenwriter himself, Mike has been attached to various high-concept projects such as adaptations of Clive Barker’s Weaveworld, Robert E. Howard’s Solomon Kane and Peter O’Donnell’s Modesty Blaise, all of which apparently continue to languish on the desks of talent-blind production executives.

  In the late 1990s, Mike and I teamed up to create a media development partnership under the somewhat obvious nomenclature of Smith & Jones. The brainstorming meetings in Soho pubs were certainly fun, and we also enjoyed the pitch sessions in Hollywood with such studios as Miramax, Warner Bros. and Universal. However, in the end, we apparently had more faith in our ideas than the men-in-suits did. Which is still of great regret to both of us, as we came up with some really remarkable and original genre concepts during a frenetic five-year period of intense creativity. Not least of these was a Hellraiser sequel that actually retained the integrity and imagination of the original and which disappeared into a black hole somewhere on Harvey Weinstein’s desk.

  However, Mike and I have continued to work together on smaller creative projects, mostly involving publishing and graphic design, and our innate ability to communicate with each other on an almost instinctive level has resulted in some worthwhile collaborations, usually followed by a few beers in the pub afterwards.

  Previous selections of Mike’s short stories have been collected in Britain in the promotional bookstore give-away When God Lived in Kentish Town (1998), which is now a fabulously rare edition amongst collectors of the author’s work, and What You Make It (1999), a representative compilation of Mike’s first decade as a writer.

  Although Earthling Publications previously put out Mike’s attractive three-story sampler Cat Stories in a printing of just 350 copies in 2001, More Tomorrow & Other Stories marks yet another milestone for this stylish young imprint. The substantial volume you now hold in your hands is a superb gathering of the author’s very best stories (several of which may be unfamiliar to American readers), along with four brand-new tales that are appearing here for the very first time. If you only know Mike’s work from his novels, then prepare to be dazzled by a writer whose deceptively lucid storytelling coupled with a distinctive narrative tone have put him at the forefront of young authors working in the genre of imaginative fiction today.

  Throughout the 1990s, Michael Marshall Smith was one of the most accomplished and distinctive new voices in British horror. Today he has matured into one of our finest novelists and a best-selling author whose work commands the attention of publishers and filmmakers all over the world.

  This is how it should be. The ever-upward trajectory of his career is not only richly deserved, but is a fitting testimony to his hard work and commitment to a field of literature he both knows and loves.

  And I hope that, in some small measure, I have contributed to that success. I’m still sitting in that same office, still pouring through those piles of submissions. However, there is just one difference these days—now I’m looking for the ‘new Michael Marshall Smith’.

  And believe me, that’s one hell of a label for any writer to live up to, as you’ll discover for yourself in the exceptional stories of fantasy and horror that follow…

  Stephen Jones

  London, May 2003

  More Tomorrow

  I got a new job a couple of weeks ago. It’s pretty much the same as my old job, but at a nicer company. What I do is troubleshoot computers and their software—and yes, I know that sounds dull. People tell me so all the time. Not in words, exactly, but in their glassy smiles and their awkward ‘let’s be nice to the geek’ demeanor.

  It’s a strange phenomenon, the whole ‘computer people are losers’ mentality. All round the world, at desks in every office and every building, people are using computers. Day in, day out. Every now and then, these machines go wrong. They’re bound to: they’re complex systems, like a human body, or society. When someone gets hurt, you call in a doctor. When a riot breaks out, it’s the police that—for once—you want to see on your doorstep. It’s their job to sort it out. Similarly, if your word processor starts dumping files or your hard disk goes non-linear, it’s someone like me you need. Someone who actually understands the magic box which sits on your desk, and can make it all lovely again.

  But do we get any thanks, any kudos for being the emergency services of the late twentieth century?

  Do we fuck.

  I can understand this to a degree. There are enough hard-line nerds and social zero geeks around to make it seem like a losing way of life. But there are plenty of pretty basic earthlings doing all the other jobs too, and no-one expects them to turn up for work in a pinwheel hat and a T-shirt saying ‘Programmers do it recursively’. For the record, I play reasonable blues guitar, I’ve been out with a girl and have worked undercover for the CIA. The last bit isn’t true, of course, but you get the general idea.

  Up until recently I worked for a computer company, which I’ll admit was full of very perfunctory human beings. When people started passing around jokes that were written in C++, I decided it was time to move on. One of the advantages of knowing about computers is that unemployment isn’t going to be a problem until the damn things start fixing themselves, and so I called a few contacts, posted a new CV up on my web site and within twenty-four hours had four opportunities to choose from. Most of them were other computer businesses, which I was kind of keen to a
void, and in the end I decided to have a crack at a company called the VCA. I put on my pin-wheel hat, rubbed pizza on my shirt, and strolled along for an interview.

  The VCA, it transpired, was a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting effective business communication. The suave but shifty chief executive who interviewed me seemed a little vague as to what this actually entailed, and in the end I let it go. The company was situated in tidy new offices right in the centre of town, and seemed to be doing good trade at whatever it was they did. The reason they needed someone like me was they wanted to upgrade their system—computers, software and all. It was a months’ contract work, at a very decent rate, and I said yes without a second thought.

  Morehead, the guy in charge, took me for a gloating tour round the office. It looked the same as they always do, only emptier, because everyone was out at lunch. Then I settled down with their spreadsheet-basher to go find out what kind of system they could afford. His name was Cremmer, and he wasn’t out at lunch because he was clearly one of those people who see working nine-hour days as worthy of some form of admiration. Personally I view it as worthy of pity, at most. He seemed amiable enough, in a curly-haired, irritating sort of way, and within half an hour we’d thrashed out the necessary. I made some calls, arranged to come back in a few days, and spent the rest of the afternoon helping build a hospital in Rwanda. Well actually I spent it listening to loud music and catching up on my Internet newsgroups, but I could have done the other had I been so inclined.

  The Internet is one of those things that everyone’s heard of without necessarily having any real idea of what it means—or how it works. It’s actually pretty simple. A while back a group of universities and government organisations experimented with linking up their computers so they could share resources, send little messages and play Star Trek games with each other. There was also a military connection, and so the servers were linked in such a way that the system could take a hit somewhere and reroute information accordingly. After a time this network started to take on a momentum of its own, with everyone from Pentagon heavies to pin-wheeling wireheads taking it upon themselves to find new ways of connecting things up and making more information available. Just about every computer on the planet is now connected, and if you’ve got a modem and a phone line, you can get on there too. What you find almost qualifies as a parallel universe. There are thousands of pieces of software, probably billions of text files by now. You can check the records of the New York Public Library, book a plane flight or a hotel room, download a picture of the far side of Jupiter, and monitor how many cans of Dr Pepper there are in soda machines in the computer science labs of American universities. Chances are you already have. It all used to be fairly chaotically organised, but now there are systems that span the net as a whole. One of these is the web, of course, which everyone’s heard of, the dotcoms and wwws and ‘enter your credit card details here’. Another is the newsgroups.