The very wonderful Analog Science Fiction & Fact magazine has a section of its website called ‘The Astounding Analog Companion.’ Here you can find a vast archive of short pieces written by Analog authors going back many years. (The archive, not the authors – although both may be true in my case). These are an eclectic mix of essays on science fictional subjects. I wrote one back in August 2022 called ‘The Humble Book Reimagined.’

Sometimes the essays explore a particular theme or idea in a published story. For instance, I’ve just enjoyed Sean McMullen’s thought piece on building a planet-sized space telescope, an idea which is the centrepiece to his story “Mirrorstar” in the Nov/Dec 2024 issue of Analog which I enjoyed very much.

Anyway, to coincide with the publication of my own novelette ‘The Touchstone of Ouroboros’ in the Nov/Dec 2024 issue, you can find my musings on this piece’s origin story, called (unsurprisingly) ‘Origin Stories’ up on the site which is free to read. Here’s the odd thing. At no point in ‘The Touchstone of Ouroboros’ do any rats feature. Not a single one. Yet I can trace the origin of this story back more than ten years to something that involved a LOT of rats! A whole man-sized ball of rats, in fact.

If you’re curious, please buy a copy of Analog and read ‘The Touchstone of Ouroboros’. Then read ‘Origin Stories’ and all will become clear. Let me know what you think!