Headlines from the Starman: C.M.'s Singles, #9

By C.M. Simpson

A short, speculative short story involving a lost prince, and an invading fleet. Is the starman friend or foe? The press can't be trusted to tell the truth, and humanity's future is on the line.

• Language: English
• Publisher: C.M. Simpson
• Release date: Apr 27, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224456505

C.M. Simpson

I spent the first twenty years of my life living in different parts of Queensland and the Northern Territory. My father was a teacher who liked to travel, so he took teaching appointments in all kinds of places. I don’t think I stayed in one place for more than four years at a stretch. I wrote stories for most of that time, drawing on the different landscapes we encountered and giving a hyper-active imagination somewhere to run. Seeing so many different places gave me a lot of food for thought as I stepped into the world of adulthood and took my first full-time job, and I never stopped writing and exploring the worlds in my head. So far, I have written four collections of short stories and poetry, and a number of novels, with many more to come. I hope you have enjoyed this part of my journey.

Book preview

Author Forward

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Headlines from the Starman is one of my more experimental pieces. I started it in July 12, 2015, in the middle of the Story Match Challenge, where I was trying to match Dean Wesley Smith’s progress in writing a short story a day for a month.

I didn’t know what to write. I’d woken tired, and then ended up napping before getting in front of the keyboard, determined to write the short story for the day—or, at least, start it. I rolled on my title generator table, and came up with 66-The Starman and 73-in the Moon. Because I’d been thinking The Royal when I rolled, I decided to call it The Royal Starman in the Moon, and the story grew from there.

Along the way, it became clear that the title was all wrong. The starman was royal, and in the moon, but it was the press who were the story’s highlight. When I discovered this was a first contact story, and the press were having a field day, I changed the title to suit.

This story was started on July 12, 2015, but not finished until January 15, 2016, and it was a challenge. I don’t write literary, can’t write it to save myself, but this story borders the genre. What I wanted to explore was the way events can be distorted through a newsworthy lens, and I wanted to tell a story about first-contact and the politics bound to dance attendance to