Speculative Fiction
Rob has also written speculative fiction under the name of Tom Conoboy. This work mostly dates from the 2000s, when he was a member of Alex Keegan's Bootcamp, an online writing group. Some of these speculative fiction stories are among the first that Rob had published.
These stories are available on Kindle. Click below for details.
The King of Pathos
Helios Halyard was the King of Pathos, twenty-three-years undefeated world champion of freeform sadness. The merest twitch of his trademark moustache, the lift of a mournful eyebrow, could leave his audience keening in mass lamentation. Miss La-Lang, genetically conditioned to retain the body of a seven-year-old, had been by his heartbroken side throughout, fluttering her eyelashes and flashing a doleful smile at anyone who could bear its melancholy.
So it was that their defeat to Deifenberger Dein and his incredible shrinking daughter in a downstate dressage event was wholly unexpected. News spread across America. It was, experts concluded, final proof of the desensitisation of the nation.
The age of innocent pathos was over.
The King of Pathos charts the fragmentation of civilisation, its descent into brutality, the loss of innocence. An alternate USA comes under the thrall of Deify Dein, a powerful and charismatic leader, bent on melding the country to reflect his own debauched image. The forces of order and chaos collide to catastrophic effect, creating a deadly battle between harmony and havoc, peace and passion, illusion and intoxication.
What will survive the storm?
Phoenix On the Orange River and Other Stories
Once, on a moonlit road, quiet and warm, Death trundled by with a handcart bearing the belongings of my father. I was kissing a woman at the time, Magenta de Rosa, full-bosomed and fifty, energetic, lying beneath the shade of a hackberry tree with the smell of oranges and almonds like perfume in the air.
Phoenix On the Orange River
Families reunite in birth or death. Stilted and awkward, they affect an intimacy which doesn’t exist, assume a mantle of detached deference. It is difficult to know how much the participants believe their own evasions. David made breakfast for his sister and mother, setting the table with a flourish which suggested he saw it as an act of atonement.
Stakes
I became invisible – literally so – on the day I dissected the body of my lover Quijana in the certain hope that I would find her soul. No more than a second after doing so I realised that, even if her soul were there, it could never reside in the same dimension as me.
Zoroman’s Cave
‘No offence, lads and lady, but I never thought my last night on this earth would be spent with the four of you.’
The State We’re In
‘At the best estimate, I would say that around ten am on Thursday you will start to feel quite ill. Not long after that you will feel very ill. And then, I’m afraid, it will all be over.’
And The Jasmine Orchestra Played West End Blues
Five pieces of speculative fiction which each discourse on life and death, hope, love, loss.
Beauty.
Worth.
