Bewildering Stories welcomes...

David Pilling

David works at the Tate Gallery and Archive, in London. He’s been writing fiction and non-fiction for the past three years and has published in many regional and national publications in the U.K. He prefers history and science fiction.

“Shunned” is a very curious scenario. Hasan, an assassin for hire, is recruited to poison a nobleman. He succeeds a bit too well and is banned by his clan, the Shunned. The Shunned, in their turn, are also outcasts. They are victims of a war with mysterious Southerners and live in a ghetto. A group of very strange scientists from Earth recuit Hasan as a cultural agent provocateur: he is given a book of eclectic moral aphorisms and sent out as a missionary to change the world.

The scenario raises a host of questions, such as: what caused the war with the Southerners? Why are the Shunned outcasts? How do the scientists know about Hasan? Why are the scientists such an odd — indeed, funny — lot? Why have they had so little success in their previous attempts to seed the world with missionaries?

“Shunned” promises to be the opening chapter in a short novel!

David Pilling’s bio sketch can be found here.

Welcome to Bewildering Stories, David. We hope to hear from you again soon and often!