Perfect Circles — Simon Kewin

Collected short stories, 1999 - 2011

The fantasy short stories from Spell Circles, the SF short stories from Eccentric Orbits and the mainstream stories from Life Cycles, collected together in one super-collection.

Desperate magic worked in the face of terrible danger. An old house with a hidden secret. An interview with a zombie. A woman allergic to the twenty-first century. A necromancer with evil written all over his face. Literally.

An astronaut alone in the void of deep space. An alien starship capable of destroying all creation. A DNA Detective in search of the genetic code of The Beatles. A terrorist explosion trapped inside a bubble of space/time. A new life-form found in the quantum echoes of the void.

Tilting at windmills in the twenty-first century. A dying woman's surprising final wish. The unlikely connections between a Manchester woman and a 17th century Renaissance man. A chance encounter on a motorway. A woman allergic to the modern world.

Perfect Circles contains seventy-three stories originally published between 1999 and 2011. Stories range from the very, very short up to novella length.


Full Contents
The Standing Stones of Erelong * Straight to Hull * Museum Beetles * Trompe-l'oeil * Midnight in the Room of Clocks * The Ghost Train * A Sorcerous Mist * Birth (Moth)er * The Magister's Clock * A Zombie Walked Into A Bar * Meteorolgy for Beginners * Just Desserts * Guitar Heroes * Angels * Earthworks * Cernunnos * Bones are Rising to the Surface * Scarecrows * KeyQuest * Trick or Treat * The One Thousand One Hundred and Eleven Gates to Faerie * The Summoning * Lucky Numbers * Saved! * The Great Forbidding * Vampyre Slayer * Lost in a Good Book

Terahertz * wolF emiT * The Armageddon Machine * rho-m10 * 22nd Century Genie * A Loop * Good Vibrations * Ten Million Years * Holy Mountains * Not Better Than One * Remembrance Day * Second War of the Worlds * The Thirteenth Labour * An Explosive Relationship * The Long Walk * Time Dilation * Live From The Continuing Explosion

Seek Alternative Route * The Lost Art of Conversation * She'd Always Loved to Travel * Bees * Dan Quixote * Known to the Defendant * Titania * GSOH * The Flying Incredulo * The Square on the Hypotenuse * Sunken Bells * Introductions * The Question * Warning * Body of Work * The Heart of a Much Younger Man * A Good Drying Day * Black Beetles * Flotsam * Last Words * Metal Recycling Here * Human Statue * The Wind Singing in the Wires * Pieces of her Mind * The Great Melody * Skydiving * Ultima Thule * The Flamingo Dancer * The Gatekeeper * Life Cycles * Perfect Circles