Short stories by Philip J. Lees

These are the stories I wrote when I was writing stories, mainly during the last decade of the previous century and the first decade of this one. They are loosely grouped by category and ordered by approximate date of writing. Some I’ve listed as ‘cross-genre’ because they fit into either more than one category, or none. As noted, many of these were published, others not.

Note that many of the publications have since shut down.

Non-genre fiction

Literary fiction. Or whatever you prefer to call it.

Answer to a Prayer

 Personal beliefs clash with community need. This was published in Third Order magazine in 2007 (although the website lists it as June 12, 2014, for some reason). [Read story]

Free House

 The highbrow landlord of a rural pub tries to find a way to consolidate his customer base. [Read story]

A Song at Twilight

 A hit man gets it nearly right. Give yourself a point for each song title you spot. Published in Mysterical-E in 2005. [Read story]

Headlamps

 A Halloween story. Published in the Writers Post Journal in 2006. [Read story]

Symptoms of Forgiveness

 Life, death, and the meaning of art. [Read story]

No Fear

 A man who has, if not everything, at least one thing that everybody would like to have. [Read story]

Swimming With Sharks

 I heard somebody talking about swimming with sharks to raise money for charity, and it gave me the idea for this story. [Read story]

Crossing Over

 A story of mistaken identity. [Read story]

Mean Willie

 A habitual criminal has to deal with an unusual personal problem. [Read story]

Just a Little Bit

 This should perhaps be under the science fiction section, but given recent developments, I thought I’d put it here. An unusual kind of catfish. [Read story]

‘Traditional’ science fiction

These are more or less classical science fiction stories.

Red Dog Day

 A traditional, perhaps even old-fashioned, science fiction story with interesting aliens. This was published in Continuum Science Fiction in 2006. [Read story]

Fast Freddie and the Pilot from Mars

 A space station with a difference, partly inspired by Star Trek: Deep Space 9, but much less political. I liked the Fast Freddie character and fancied writing more stories with him as narrator. This was published in AlienSkin Magazine in 2004, and subsequently reprinted in Scifantastic magazine in 2006. [Read story]

Lucretia’s Nose

 This was published in the Writers of the Future anthology volume XVII, 2001, as a runner up in their prestigious short story competition. [Read story]

Waiting for the Blues

 Part of my prize in the Writers of the Future competition was a paid trip to Hollywood for a week-long writers’ workshop conducted by Tim Powers and Algys Budrys. During that week, all participants had to complete an original story. This was my workshop story. It was published in Future Orbits magazine in 2002. [Read story]

A Change of Approach

 An eccentric translator/interpreter has to deal with an even more eccentric alien. [Read story]

Stopover

 This story is set in the Fast Freddie universe, and he appears in the story, but he’s not the narrator this time and the mood of the story is different. Published in Oceans of the Mind in 2005. [Read story]

Fast Freddie and the Generation Ship

 Another Fast Freddie story. Set later than Stopover, as Freddie himself makes clear in a brief mention. [Read story]

The Perfect Wife

 Anyone who’s seen the Star Trek: Next Generation episode “The Perfect Mate” is going to think I stole the idea for this story from there. But I hadn’t seen that episode when I wrote the story. Really I hadn’t. Anyway, this one is quite different. [Read story]

Hard Labor

 How to deal with an inconvenient pregnancy. Published in Reality Complex magazine in 2007. [Read story]

Botman

 A whimsical robot story. It was published in Scifantastic magazine in 2005. [Read story]

Zen and the Art of Computer Programming

 What the title says. Published in Oceans of the Mind in 2004. [Read story]

That Good Night

 Reflections on the heat death of the universe. Published in Dark Energy in 2005. A very good Greek translation of this story by P. Koustas and H. Karakouda was published in Ennea, a supplement of the Eleftherotypia newspaper, in 2006. [Read story]

Zzzzzzzt!

 Special agent Don Coyote has trouble with aliens. [Read story]

Sunrise over Daedalus

 An exploration of spirit—on the Moon. [Read story]

Virtual Analysis

 A serial killer investigated using virtual reality. This was a fairly original idea at the time I wrote the story, and when it was published in the Killers anthology, edited by the late Colin Harvey, in 2008. That is perhaps why it received an Honorable Mention in Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year Anthology, a distinction shared with three other stories from the same anthology. I was very happy about that, even though I don’t think of this as a horror story. [Read story]

Shades of Blue and Green

 Some lesser known aspects of life on Mars. A story with ‘adult’ content. [Read story]

Time to Go

 The intersection of television game shows and euthanasia. [Read story]

Raising Abel

 A lighthearted tale about a time traveller with an unusual agenda. [Read story]

The Last Time I Saw Paris

 Another time travel story, but this time addressing the possibility of rewriting history. I thought I might do a series of these, as I liked the character, but so far this is the only one. [Read story]

Animal Hackers

 What is the secret of the alien virtual reality world? A group of hackers try to find out, and while doing so they gain new insight into on-line relationships. [Read story]

AGLIBOGBAL

 It bothered me for a long time that all the aliens in science fiction TV series and movies looked too much like humans (with a few laudable exceptions). Certainly, all those who were main characters and had relationships were humanoid [1], and so their canoodling involved the same kind of kissing and bodily contact that humans engage in. I thought that with real aliens, who were anatomically and culturally quite different from humans, it might be more like I describe in this story (including alien smilies).
[1] Marina Sirtis, who played Deanna Troi in Star Trek: The Next Generation, was asked about this, and she said that “as soon as we start getting non-humanoid actors auditioning for parts in the show, all that’s gonna change.”		 [Read story]

Drinking Beer Backwards

 I should probably not have written this down, but sometimes a story just has to come out, one way or another. [Read story]

Fantasy

I never really considered myself as a writer of fantasy stories, but sometimes I strayed.

Eating I-90

 A silly story about a dragon. Published in the Writers Post Journal in 2005. [Read story]

Duets

 I’ve listed this under Fantasy, but it could be classed as Science Fiction, depending on how the reader interprets the mechanism involved in persuasion. Published in Shimmer magazine in 2006. [Read story]

Anti-fairytales

The first four of these were all published together in the Writers Post Journal in 2006, which is why they all have the same illustration. I liked it so much I contacted the artist and bought the original, which now hangs on my wall. You can click on the image to see a larger version.

The Wolf and the Granny

 It’s dangerous out there … [Read story]

The Emperor and his Tailor

 All is vanity … [Read story]

The Princess Takes her Lumps

 Nobody’s perfect … [Read story]

The Plain Chick

 A happy ending … [Read story]

The Troll and the Witch

 This story was written later than the others, but falls in the same category. [Read story]

Other fantasy stories

Love in the Valley of Giant Flowers

 This was published in Eloquent Stories, in December 2005. [Read story]

Everything Included

 The local English language newspaper where I used to live in Crete asked me for a story. At that time, some of the hotels in the area were running ‘inclusive’ deals, where people would pay in advance and then everything they consumed during their holiday would be free—as long as they stayed in the hotel. This story is about that. [Read story]

Dr. Roger’s Magic Box

 I decided to try and write a story in the second person, rather than the usual third or first (i.e. “you” are the protagonist). This was the result. This is a different Roger from the previous story. The name is just a coincidence. [Read story]

What You Wish For

 The coexistence of alternate realities. A fantasy story? Or a science fiction story? You decide. [Read story]

In Jules’ Taverna

 A drunken fantasy? Or not? [Read story]

Myfanwy

 A ‘traditional’ fantasy story. Written for a competition, was shortlisted, but didn’t win. [Read story]

Greek stories

Stories set in Greece, or with some Greek connection, explicit or implied.

Barba Yannis’ Summer Tenant

 The first short story I ever wrote. It was published by Gatto Publishing in their electronic Short Stories anthology, in 2005. [Read story]

Mr Sifakis’ Second Job

 This won the first prize in the Athens News summer short story competition in 1998, but has not been published elsewhere. [Read story]

Torus

 While I was living in Crete, one day the carcass of a bull washed up on to the beach, not far from where I lived. I was reminded of the myth of Theseus, King of Athens, in which a “bull from the sea” was supposed to be a harbinger of disaster. [Read story]

Silia

 A love story that takes place on an ancient Greek vase. Published in Short Attention Span Mysteries, Kerlak Enterprises, 2005. [Read story]

Sand

 A holiday romance leads to unexpected developments. Published in Electric Velocipede in 2006. [Read story]

Night Fires Glowing

 Another kind of romance—sort of. [Read story]

Grounds for Murder

 The darker side of Greek village life—based on some real events. This was published in Futures Mystery Anthology Magazine in 2007. [Read story]

My Son

 This story is based on events during and following the Greek civil war, in the aftermath of WWII. However, I know that, sadly, there are many other countries in the world where it could equally well be set. [Read story]

Walking to Georgia

 People must sometimes find their own ways of grieving. [Read story]

Owl in the Rain

 Another village story. Published in Islet magazine in 2010. [Read story]

Cross-genre stories

These are a mixture of genres, mainly crime and science fiction, or occasionally humour.

Time in the World

 Hijinks aboard a super airship. This was published in Futures Mystery Anthology Magazine in 2005. [Read story]

Between Times

 I wrote this in 2002 for a competition that was looking for stories about alien lesbian vampires. Then I missed the deadline for the competition. So I was stuck with an alien lesbian vampire story. Eventually, I sold it to Mysterical-E in 2005. [Read story]

Cole’s Law

 An urban legend turns into reality. This was published in Futures Mystery Anthology Magazine in 2006. [Read story]

Body Politic

 A secret agent gains a new personality, with unexpected consequences. Published in Oceans of the Mind in 2006. [Read story]

The Santa Caper

 A spoof noir Christmas detective story. See how many names of detectives you can find hidden in the text. Published in Mouth Full of Bullets Mystery Magazine in December 2007. [Read story]

The Faerie Hogweed

 Not so much a story as an entry in a questionable botanical textbook. Published in A Field Guide to Surreal Botany in August 2008. This was also translated into Chinese and was on the web for a while, but it’s gone now. [Read story]

Miscellaneous stories

Stories that don’t fit into any other category.

Being Dead

 This is a weird one and was never published. [Read story]

Cheesecake

 An odd thing, more of a vignette than a story. A miniature horror psychodrama. Not published. [Read story]

The Alchemist’s Assistant

 Published in NFG magazine in response to a request for stories of precisely 69 words. [Read story]

Anniversary

 Another specific word count, this time 287, for stories inspired by a photo. This won first prize in the online Writer2Writer Contest in 2005. [Read story]

Scotch Missed

 A feghoot. Flash fiction published in Flashshot in 2006. [Read story]