Overdue … an Anthology of Science Fiction

Join a world where the extraction of blue-gold is simply the means to an end. Join another where lizards are so thick underfoot they get squashed ... but who finally get revenge. And witness the beginning of the end - or is the the end of the beginning? Only Zark the chief librarian of the Central Cosmos Library knows, but he's too busy writing the BIG ONE to really notice what his assistant Snark is really up to with 'Earth and how to do it'. Malcolm Twigg has been writing in some form or other for most of his adult life, much of it in local government circles where he put a bit more of the 'creative' element to writing minutes of meetings than was actually warranted. However, it kept the madness away.He discovered science fiction at a very early age and started writing his first novel at the age of 18. He promptly consigned it to the bin and concentrated instead on reading stories by the legendary greats of Science Fiction who actually knew how to write, such as Fred Pohl and Algis Budrys. Both of those authors and many others he was later to meet when a short story he submitted for the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future contest got him into the finals of the contest, and a trip to Florida to boot.A short time earlier, a novel had won the Peter Pook Humorous Novel competition in England (To Hell with the Harp!) and was published through Emissary Publishing (he was a second place winner the previous year). In that same year he had a small collection of science fiction stories published in Chapbook format by Piper's Ash and was also actively publishing in small press genre magazines and well as writing mainstream feature articles for various magazines.Shortly after he attended the L. Ron Hubbard event, he was made redundant from local government and what should have turned into a burgeoning writing career took a bit of a left turn when he was (fortuitously) offered a position as launch editor for a local county magazine (Cornwall Life), followed by another magazine (Young at Heart) building upon a series of freelance articles published in Devon Life.Under his unfailing leadership, both of those new titles folded within a few months (a fate that, alarmingly, befell a number of genre magazines as soon as they had published contributions from him). However, he was kept on as Chief Writer for Devon Life, went on to successfully launch Cornwall Life again and then Wiltshire Magazine, taking an already extant Wiltshire magazine head on and winning.This second career left little time to pursue the more creative element however, leaving a number of unfinished works on the back burner for ten years or so, despite only working (ostensibly) part time.He retired last year and started researching his family history. As always suspected, his wife seems to have married beneath her. Whereas her family history (purportedly) includes the D