Short Fiction

A masked president prepares to speak with the leader of a rival power after forty years of silence. In "Check and Checkmate," John Smith XVI governs a federation where elections have become ceremonies and official language hides the nature of political power. His advisers wait beside a screen in an underground palace as he weighs the risks of contact across a heavily guarded division of the world. The dialogue makes public slogans and carefully managed appearances part of the story's political satire.

Another scene brings future technology into a sickroom. Old Donegal asks Martha for his heavy magnetic boots and wants to hear a rocket launch, while music and party conversation threaten to drown it out. The contrast between grand political systems and such personal attachments gives these short stories a human focus. Readers interested in imagined futures will find both arguments about authority and intimate scenes shaped by space travel.