Nova Scotia Vol 2 anthology, edited by Neil Williamson and Andrew J. Wilson, is now available for pre-order! It celebrates the depth and breadth of Scotland's dazzling science fiction and fantasy landscape from its haunted islands to its transformed cities and everything in between. Jenni Coutts created the gorgeous cover art.
You can order the book on its own, or buy the bundle anthology deal - both from the Luna store.
Today we'd like to introduce you to Jon Courtenay Grimwood and the story "Me, And Not Me".
About the author:
Jon Courtenay Grimwood, was born in Malta and christened in the upturned bell of a ship. He grew up in the Far East, Britain and Scandinavia. He’s written for national newspapers, is a two-time winner of the BSFA Award for Best Novel, and was shortlisted for Le Prix Montesquieu 2015. His work has been translated into numerous languages. He's currently researching a PhD in memoir and memory at St Andrews, and is married to the broadcaster and novelist Sam Baker.
Jon on the story:
I blame Leuchars station. In particular, I blame it for being cold and windswept, dark and bleak. Although no colder or windswept than you'd expect when waiting for a late train in winter.
Originally I'd been planning to offer Nova Scotia Vol 2 an academic paper, purportedly for presentation at a conference in a counter factual 22nd century St Andrews; where Bonnie Prince Charlie long ago succeeded in driving the Hanoverian usurper from the throne, Catholicism is the state religion, and St Andrews is...
Well, St Andrews.
But as I was waiting, in a howling wind, on Platform 1 of Leuchars station, and thinking how typical it was that St Andrews had nothing quite as vulgarly useful as its own railway station, I had a flash - not exactly back, more sideways - to a night boat pulling up to an island where the university now stood. And it occurred to me, I should be grateful no one has yet dug a moat around the place. And that was it...
My conference paper, which was to be a counter-factual, in which Bonnie Prince Charlie fails to take the throne, skulks around the isles avoiding capture, and eventually flees; which was to be presented to a disbelieving audience, who know this isn't what happened, and feel it unlikely it ever could, vanished like a tipping point that wasn't. Replaced instantly by knowledge of who it was getting off that boat.
(The man who would have been giving the conference paper I was no longer writing, but who was about to find himself enmeshed in a possible murder instead.)
Every novel I write, and most of my short stories, begin with a visual image that, once seen, can't be shaken. And so this became a 22nd Century alternate-world locked room mystery. Although, it's obviously really about now as much as a future then, because everything we ever write comes out of and belongs to the time in which it's written. If you like it, thank you. If you don't, blame Leuchars Station.
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