Mixed Nuggets

By Frej Wasastjerna

A collection of seven short, mainly idea-centered, science fiction, fantasy and mainstream stories, many of them light entertainment but some darker, with the following themes:
- An author, desperate to be published, tries occult means.
- Aliens investigate the treasures of an abandoned Earth.
- A newspaper needs more truth.
- A small slip-up in Heaven gets corrected.
- A favorite theme in speculations about time travel has been going back and killing the Führer when he was young. Maybe somebody did?
- A widower thinks about the last weeks of his marriage.
- What do dragons like most?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Frej Wasastjerna
• Release date: Jul 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9789529308422

Frej Wasastjerna

I'm currently retired after having worked at VTT, the Technical Research Centre of Finland, as a senior research scientist. I write fantasy, science fiction and other stuff, mostly in English but a little in Swedish and Finnish (and one silly little poem in German). Free samples are available at my website.

Book preview

MIXED NUGGETS

Fantasy, science fiction and mainstream stories

by Frej Wasastjerna

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 Frej Wasastjerna

ISBN 978-952-93-0842-2

Smashwords Edition License Notes:

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment. You are welcome to share it with friends and relatives but may not create derivative works, re-sell it or give it away to strangers. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Characters and incidents are the products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual persons or events is entirely coincidental.

The cover was prepared by the author using Inkscape and the following pictures from Wikimedia Commons:

Rob Lavinsky/iRocks.com photos, Wikimedia Commons license CC BY-SA 3.0:

Calcite-Galena-elm56c.jpg

Chondrodite-Magnetite-37952.jpg

Magnetite-usa51d.jpg

Reno Chris, public domain:

Cassiterite09.jpg

Stringer156nugget.jpg

Alchemist-hp:

Lead_electrolytic_and_1cm3_cube, Free Art license

Wolframite from Portugal.jpg, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Germany

benjamint444, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported:

Magnetite444.jpg

Jonathan Zander (Digon3), Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported:

NatCopper.jpg

Andreas Früh, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported:

Sphalerite4.jpg

DanielCD, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported:

Hematite.jpg

Other acknowledgments:

Many people, too numerous to list here, have helped by critiquing the stories. My thanks to all of them.

Kevin McLaughlin suggested that I use Smashwords, so he deserves special thanks for that.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Last Resort

The Correction

Legacy

The True Story of a Newspaper

A Quiet Evening

Changing Things

Sweetmeats

Other works by Frej Wasastjerna

LAST RESORT

Dear Editor,

I spread some glue on the rear side of my latest rejection slip and pressed it into place.

There. Now I had papered all my walls with rejection slips. There wasn’t a square centimeter left over. The walls of the bedroom, the den, the kitchen, the living room, the toilet, even the garage, were fully covered.

And not a single acceptance. It was time to try something radical.

I had seen this coming quite a while ago, so I had begun perusing the most valuable property I had inherited from my father – the only known surviving copy of the Necronomicon. My father had obtained it on an expedition to darkest Massachusetts. Every time I asked how he had got it, he would get a haunted look in his eyes and change the subject.

Most of the spells were useless, because they required ingredients that were hard or impossible to obtain. Take dragon’s blood, for instance. Where do you find a dragon?

Or virgin’s blood. OK, virgins probably exist even nowadays, but you can’t go around asking people if they’re virgins, and if so, whether they’re willing to donate some blood. I had a lot of trouble convincing the authorities