by
TRUMAN J SLUGHOUND IIII
MAgENtA gREetiNGs. IT is I, TRumAN j. SLughOUnd III. i AM SPEAKing TO you vIa AN inGeniOUS coNTrivANCe CreaTeD bY RiCHaRD GOuld AND stEPHEN DAwkiNS. VIA THIs DevICe, my moLLUsCOid nEw DIXie-ite neuRAL paTHWayS Are CONvertED inTO tEXt YouR mORe PRImitIVE maMMalIAn BraIn CAN unDERstand.
i PUlseD FuchsIA whEN i waS aSKed TO wrITe THis edIToriAL. NOrmALLy mASTER GLEnn bOB dOES not LET me Near THE TYPewriter as I ooZE aLL oveR it, anD afTER a LOng PASsaGe, ManY of tHE keYS AND sometIMES the ENtire TYPewriTER wILL be MIssiNG. iT IS hARdLy MY faUlt IF YOUR tyPEWrITERs ARE so deLICIOUS.
iN anY casE – tHIs WeEk’s EDitiOn contAIns imPORtaNT iNfORMatiON froM THE filES of the uNITED KingdDOM sHADOW MINIstry. OncE yOU have ReAD it, YOU sHOuld Eat YouR cOMputER. fOr BeSt ReSultS, i RECOMMend eaTiNg A wINteL comPUTER.
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UTTERMOST SECRET – DEEP BLACK CLEARANCE – DO NOT PRINT OUT AND LEAVE ON TRAIN
SUBJECT NAME: Vladlena Matveyevna Ilyushina
BORN: Krasnaya Zvezda 3 (third planet of Ross 248), May 1, 1987
FATHER: Matvei Nikolaevich Ilyushina (assumed liquidated)
MOTHER: Inessa Levovna Alistratova (assumed assimilated by Sternekinder, 2000)
HEIGHT: 5 feet four inches
WAISTLINE: (estimated) 25 inches
DRESS SIZE: (estimated) 12
FAVOURITE BOOK: Unknown
FAVOURITE PAINTING: Unknown
FAVOURITE MUSICAL ARTIST: Unknown
FAVOURITE INFANTRY WEAPON: Zodiarms ‘Johnny Three’, Sternekinder Anti-Robot Cannon, Zodiarms Rotary Denazificator, Orgonizer Grenade, Vickers-Ferguson Robosheep models 4D through 4M
CIGARETTES OF CHOICE: Romeo y Julieta, Montecristo, Gauloises, Benson & Hedges, Winston, Marlboro, Rothmans. If all other brands are unavailable, raw tobacco shovelled into the mouth. If raw tobacco shovelled into the mouth is unavailable, White Sea Canal or Happy Communist Pioneer brand.
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES: Significant nicotine staining
FAVOURITE COMMUNIST IDEOLOGY: Luxemburgism
IF WON MISS WORLD TITLE, WOULD USE MONEY TO: Redistribute wealth to the proletariat. Also buy many cigarettes and stockpile ammunition for the coming apocalypse.
HEY! VLADLENA! HOW MUCH IS A PINT OF MILK? Milk comes in powdered form and is sold by the kilogramme in plastic sacks by the benevolent state. It is made in in milk factories, and raw milk material is mined out of the ground on Milk Producing Planets. The pint is an outmoded pre-revolutionary fluid measure. Your question is meaningless.
FAVOURITE COLOUR: Red
FAVOURITE CLIFF RICHARD VIDEO: Wired for Sound. Crazy daddio.
About the author
Dominic Green was born some time ago. He remembers when telephones were attached to the wall with cables. As a child, he was lied to by magazines that told him he would be living on the Moon in the year 2000 wearing silver rocket boots. People have been publishing science fiction by him since 1996, ha! The fools. In 2006, he was nominated for a Hugo Award for his story, The Clockwork Atom Bomb. He is married, three cats tolerate his presence, and his dog follows his every move obsessively, because he keeps cheese in his pockets.
Glutton for punishment? Why not try these on Amazon:
Ant and Cleo Volume 1: Saucerers and Gondoliers
Flying saucers do not land in country parks. They are not piloted by Englishmen. They do not bear nameplates saying “HAWKER SIDDELEY AVIATION.” And they are never, ever filled with smuggled catering packs of Monster Munch.
Britain has had a top secret colony in space for decades. Unfortunately, the colony has grown tired of being run by the mother country – and the mother country has decided it’s time to send in the troops. Between these two sides are Anthony Stevens and Cleopatra Shakespeare, abducted from England and hurled into a war between Britain, America, and the newly, fiercely independent United States of the Zodiac.
Where is the mysterious hidden colony of Gondolin? How did the United States of America come to have interstellar spacecraft in the 1950s? And who or what is Truman J. Slughound the Third? Find out in a story guaranteed to contain colour-changing aliens, Godless communists from Altair, rednecks from Barnard’s Star, space fighters, rocket pistols, death by ecstasy, very bad hair, and more explosions than you can shake a stick at.
Ant and Cleo Volume 2: Sister Ships and Alastair
Somewhere in Bedfordshire, someone may be working on a bomb that could destroy a world. Mysterious Men in Black need Ant and Cleo to find out for sure, but they’ll have to get past Flossie and the girls first…
Ant and Cleo Volume 3: There Ain’t Gonna Be No World War Three
Cleo is so glad not to be going to Germany. She hates sausages, and knows for a fact that every adult German is forced to wear Lederhosen from birth. But Commodore Drummond needs Ant and Cleo in Germany – there is a thing there, long forgotten, that could change the course of the war with Earth. Unfortunately, Larry’s not far behind them – and this time, he’s in wolf’s clothing…
Ant and Cleo Volume 4: Destination Alpha Four
In the Sunset Desert of Alpha Centauri A Four are three immense structures. For nearly thirty years, these massive mines have used United States of the Zodiac prisoners to dig uraninite out of the ground by hand. No-one escapes from Alpha Four. Once you are sent there, established wisdom considers you as good as dead.
It’s time for Ant and Cleo to prove established wisdom wrong…
Ant and Cleo Volume 5: Dog On The Highway
For fifteen years, the Sternekinder have been launching pirate attacks on United States of the Zodiac shipping. If their hidden homeworld of Asgard could be found an end could be put to this, and Charity Drummond and Cleopatra Shakespeare have seen Asgard’s sky – but no-one else in the cadet corps is prepared to believe Asgard even exists…
Ant and Cleo Volume 6: At The Goings Down of the Suns
Earth’s problem children are coming home, and no-one’s killing the fatted calf to welcome them.
Bad things are happening back in the Really Old Country. Alastair Drague is getting nervous. Things are going on in his capital city that his own people either can’t or won’t make head or tail of. What is going on, and is it linked to something murderously efficient out at Barnard’s Star that seems to be killing United States of the Zodiac starships? Drague needs fresh minds on the problem. He needs U.S.Z. Intelligence, and its newest special agents, Anthony Stevens and Cleopatra Nefertiti Shakespeare. But Drague’s own people are getting nervous about Drague himself…
Ant and Cleo Volume 7: Time Held Me Green and Dying
What is going on? Anthony Stevens is working as a hick town barnstormer; Cleopatra Shakespeare is reading fortunes in a circus; Jochen von Spitzenburg is back making coffee for his social betters in a side street café. Tamora Shakespeare and Vladlena Ilyushina are mixing with criminals, smuggling goods between Earth and Laputa. To cap it all, Elizabeth Ortega is still at large, and working with the complete assistance of Captain Yancy and Commodore Bentley Drummond. Surely this isn’t the happy ending everyone worked so hard for – and whose are those spindle-shaped ships dropping out of the dull green skies of the United States of the Zodiac’s capital planet?
…and coming soon….
Ant and Cleo Volume 8: The Moon a Ghostly Galleon
Dominic Green (SF / Fantasy writer) 
Dear Dominic,
I sincerely hope that your health is improving.
As I don’t know what else to say on that subject, I will get straight to the point of this post: Please, why are your eBooks only available as Kindle versions??? I bought the first few for my Kobo, and now I can’t continue with Ant & Chloe because I seem to belong to the wrong e reader club…
Please, please make them available for Kobo owners too!
Many thanks, and sincere good wishes re your health
Kerstin
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Hi Kerstin
I’m fine, thanks – just a wee bit of a scar and an oddly lopsided feeling from losing half a rib. I’m sorry to hear about your Kobo problem. I will look into it. Which book are you up to?
Cheers
Dominic Green
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Hi Dominic,
That is happy news indeed then! I hope your health improves and you lose that lopsided feeling too! At least it was only half a rib and not something vital like a leg, or some other important bit! 🙂 It must have been s scary time for you, but fingers crossed it is now sorted.
Many thanks for your reply! I honestly never expected you to write back, and now I feel really bad because I was so terribly rude! I didn’t think you’d even read my post… 😦 That will teach me to vent my frustration like that!
In answer to your question, I am up to Alpha 4.
Hope you keep on getting better!
Best wishes
Kerstin
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You have probably been told this before. In no. 8 there are two very different proposal scenes between Chad and Penny. Vladlena appeared in the cave with Bob when she was somewhere completely different.
Anyways. I have really enjoyed Ant&Cleo and am working on a review that reflects that.
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I haven’t been told that before, but I have corrected the problem – a new version of *The Moon A Ghostly Galleon* has just been released. In order to stop you having to shell out another 99p for a new copy, however, the changed scene is printed in full below:
It has just been pointed out to me that there are two separate different and conflicting BrontoBurger scenes in *The Moon A Ghostly Galleon*. Boy, is my face red. I have corrected this in a new version of the book which should hit Kindle in a few hours’ time. However, in order to ensure none of you have to pay an extra 99p to get a new version of the book, the changed scene is printed in full below (spoiler alert – this is from episode 8 of Ant and Cleo. If you haven’t read that far yet, ignore this post).
***
Cleo looked at Ant over her Ginkgo Marie Celeste and his Ceratops Hornysteak. Outside the restaurant, which Ant believed was called BrontoBurger, the massive shapes of carrion pterosaurs, some of them larger than the building, circled. The restaurant, like many prefabricated hab units turned out by Mazarin Eezihomes, was essentially an aluminium alloy box; the box was crumpled and bent inward about halfway along the restaurant’s ceiling. When Ant had asked, the waitress had shrugged and said: ‘Big Badassaurus did that six months back, lifted the whole building clean off the deck and shook it. No big deal, if the Dino Alarm goes off, strap yourself into your seat with the four-point belt provided and wait till that dumb old charcharodontosaurid realizes restaurants taste nasty…’
The restaurant was outside the massive walls of the main settlement. The party’s Stratojitneys had been left on idle, floating ten metres above ground level, moored to a mast outside.
“So, let me get this straight”, said Cleo. She was wearing a badge saying HI! I NEARLY GOT EATEN! which had entitled her to a whole Ceratops Hornysteak for free under what the restaurant called its Eat-Them-Before-They-Eat-Us policy. As Cleo allowed no meat to pass her lips, Ant was eating her Hornysteak for her. “You thought you were going to come over here, set down, tell Penny Richard might still be alive, might be not, and watch her simply drop her new life and new relationship and join you on a highly dangerous life-threatening mission looking for Richard behind enemy lines.”
“Well, I don’t know how women work”, explained Ant.
“You don’t know how people work, Ant! How would you feel if you’d met somebody”, she said, looking thoughtfully across the restaurant at Chad’s latissimus dorsi muscles as he picked at his food opposite Penny with his shirt off, “pretty much entirely perfect, and someone breezed in and said ‘oh, by the way, there’s a slim chance your previous-boyfriend-who-was-never-actually-your-boyfriend-anyway-but-who-certainly-liked-you-a-whole-lot might not be entirely dead’.”
At the back of the building, Ant heard a door open and a voice yell up at the sky: “SHOO! SCAT! GET OUTA THE GARBAGE, YOU EVOLUTIONARY DEAD ENDS!”
The sky shrieked back like an early Eighties hit record.
“I never thought of it like that”, said Ant, stirring his salad around. The meat on his plate, being meat, had been cut up and fried and tenderized until he had no idea what species it came from – that much he was used to. However, he did not recognize a single fruit or vegetable in front of him.
“You didn’t think of it at all, Ant. That’s what you need me for. Your brain was sadly created by almighty God without a common sense centre. I am the your Voice Of Reason and you Know I Make Sense.”
Ant looked up, intensely frustrated.
“Well, what are we going to do about it, then?” Over at the next table, Chad, who had lit a single dinosaur-fat candle on the table after deftly standing up on a table and disabling the restaurant’s smoke detector, was deep in conversation with Penny. He had asked that the two be left to sit alone. They had, he said, something important to discuss.
“I wonder what he’s lit that candle for”, said Ant. “The ambient lighting in here is perfectly adequate in my opinion.”
“Oh my god”, said Cleo, without turning round in her seat to look. “He’s lit a candle?”
“It’s all right”, said Ant. “The electric lights in the ceiling are still working, look.” He pointed up at the electric lights in the ceiling. “There’s no need to panic.”
“Are there flowers on the table? Pretty flowers?”
“There are flowers on the table”, said Ant. “As a man, I feel unable to comment on their prettiness.” He looked around the restaurant. “Funny, there don’t seem to be any on any of the other tables.”
“Anthony, you numbnuts. Look in his right pocket. Does he have a suspicious box-shaped bulge in there at all?”
Ant had absolutely no idea where this was going. His hand moved towards his Orgonizer. “Do you think he might be a Sternekind?”
“ANTHONY”, whispered Cleo, “he’s going to PROPOSE to her.”
“Propose what? A more effective means of stopping pterodactyl-strike in commercial starships? A new and far superior method of dropping tourists onto spiky dinosaurs out of Stratojitneys? Oh.”
With that oh came a moment of dread realization greater even than the one Ant had felt back on Earth when his father had come home without his mother and started packing bags. And then he saw Chad’s weight shift on his chair, clearly in preparation for a drop to one knee in front of Penny, and saw the box come out of his pocket, and –
He was up out of his chair and moving toward the other table before his conscious mind even registered the fact.
“ANTHONY!” hissed Cleo. “COME BACK HERE!”
He ignored Cleo.
“COME BACK HERE or so help me I will SHOOT YOU -”
He turned and glared defiantly back at Cleo. In answer, she began struggling with the flap on her Orgonizer holster. Ant’s eyes went wide – he turned to break into a run. Behind him, he heard a clatter of chairs and tables as Cleo attempted to spring cat-like out of her seat after him. However, before he’d even lengthened his stride, Penny’s face lit up. He had never seen a woman’s face light up that way. He imagined this was the sort of thing that happened to men like Chad. He didn’t begrudge it to Chad. He liked Chad.
“Oh dear”, said Cleo. “Oh, oh, oh dear.”
He looked back at her; she was on the floor in the middle of a tangle of restaurant furniture, Orgonizer in hand. The Orgonizer’s fire selector was set to HAPPY; the weapon had just fired.
“Oh lordy”, said Cleo, reactivating the Orgonizer’s safety. “Oh, Chad, I am so sorry.”
Ant turned to look at Chad. He had not yet dropped down to one knee. The box was still only half out of his pocket.
“Uh – no harm done?” he said. He turned to Penny.
“Uh – Penny”, he began, “there’s something kind of important I’d like to -”
“I LIKE NITROGEN”, said Penny, beaming. “IT’S MY FAVOURITE BREATHABLE GAS.”
Chad stared at the Orgonizer in Cleo’s hand. He narrowed his eyes.
“It was a misfire”, said Cleo. “I slipped on a piece of dino gristle.”
Chad’s expression was momentarily murderous, and Cleo thumbed the safety back off her Orgonizer.
“You did it deliberately”, he said.
“No, I really didn’t -” started Cleo.
“You wanted to make Penny so happy she’d say Yes”, said Chad. “And, Cleo, I love you for it, but mind control isn’t a way to a girl’s heart. You should know that, of all people.”
Ant nodded. “I find girls get all cranky when they find out they’ve been mind-controlled.”
“Shut up, Ant”, said Cleo.
“I think”, said Chad, clearly exercising massive self-control, “that it’d be a good idea if you took your Orgonizer elsewhere for a little while.”
“Er – okay”, said Cleo, and, prompted by a continuing hard stare from Chad, re-holstered the Orgonizer. “Erm. We’ll leave now, then.”
Chad nodded as if Cleo were acknowledging a cosmic certainty. “I’ll probably need to sit with Penny and talk her down for a little while”, he continued, “and then, maybe tomorrow or the day after, when the time is right, we’ll have another go at, uh”, he finished, putting the box hurriedly back into his pocket, “what we were in the middle of doing today.”
Cleo took Ant’s arm to draw him towards the door of the restaurant.
“I don’t want to go”, muttered Ant.
“Oh, so you heard me offering you a choice?” said Cleo.
At the door, she turned back to Chad and said:
“Chad, I really do hope she says Yes.”
Chad stared back at her with a suddenly desolate face and said:
“So do I.”
As they left the restaurant, Ant muttered out of the corner of his mouth to Cleo: “What was that? You actually want them to get married? You hardly know him!”
“I feel a deep intimate bond between us”, said Cleo. “He punched a dinosaur in the face to save my life, Ant!” She grabbed Ant by the lapel and emphasized: “In the face!”
They looked back through the restaurant window. Penny was sitting in her chair drooling happily. Chad had his back to her, had taken the box from his pocket again, had flipped the lid open, and was staring at what was inside, brooding magnificently. What was inside sparkled.
“It’s a Krellian diamond”, said Cleo. “Oh, the lucky cow.”
“Are there diamonds on Krell?” said Ant. “I never knew.”
“The planet of Krell gets popped like a ripe zit once every orbit”, said Cleo. “Novyeye Zemlya and Krell pass each other close enough to cause tides in each other’s oceans, half the Winter Palace on Novyeye Zemlya has to be rebuilt, and every other volcano on Krell erupts. The planet is constantly turning itself inside out, and it turns out what’s inside planets is diamonds. In the high mountains of Krell”, she continued, her eyes glittering, “they say that, after dark, there are more stars in the cliffs than there are in the sky. All you need to do to find a diamond is to switch on a blacklight torch.”
“Common as muck, then”, harrumphed Ant.
“That doesn’t matter, Ant!” said Cleo. “It’s romantic!” Her face fell almost as high as it had risen. “Unfortunately, that means Richard has a high mountain of his own to climb.”
“Richard?” said Ant. “What about Richard?”
“Well”, said Cleo, picking at her salad, “we are going to David 34 to try and find him, aren’t we?”
Ant nearly swallowed his own tongue in shock.
***
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