Time travel offers a great topic for science fiction short stories. Time machines, paradoxes, disasters, are all rich fields offering many unique stories. But what makes a great time travel story? It’s always about something you never expected such as a butterfly crushed on a boot, or a wife’s murderer who just happens to be a time traveling senator. In one book messages sent back in time help prevent a global disaster caused by the startup of a new powerful atom smasher. (Hopefully this is fiction). What we need is a new time travel science fiction blog.

But aliens and robots truly capture our attention. People scour the internet for either aliens or robots far more than for free science fiction or science fiction short stories. Everybody wants a robot butler. Everybody wants to know if alien abductions are science fact or science fiction. Have alien robots visited the White House, has an alien ever been elected? Now that would make a great science fiction blog post. The time for science fiction is now. Aspiring writers with a science fiction stories trapped in their heads should come forward and be heard. People who have always been interested in becoming an author, but have never found the time to get started should start writing today. There are still so many science fiction stories yet to be told.

In fact it was eventually expanded into three novels — a surprise to the magazine editors that rejected it, no doubt. I was also told by one “literary critic” that there was no way to expand a story like this into a book. Fortunately HarperCollins didn’t agree.

However the three spider tales novels spun (pun intended) from this short story were still more or less an accident. When I was asked to send in three proposals for a trilogy aimed at intermediate readers, I had two good ideas — but not a third. Time was running out, so I dusted off this short story, expanded the idea, and transformed the character into a young man. I knew the editor’s wouldn’t go for it; it was a throwaway that got me the third story idea.