“Young Love on the Run…” by Grant Stone

This announcement is a little belated, but please go check out SpecFicNZ member Grant Stone’s short story at Strange Horizons: Young Love on the Run from the Federal Alien Administration New Mexico Division (1984).

Here’s what Grant had to say about it himself:

“My family lived in Christchurch. Every summer we’d make the trip up to Marahau, a camp at the entrance of the Abel Tasman National Park.

Far more eloquent people than I have written about the eyes of youth. All I know is the summers lasted forever, the sky was bigger than God and the air was so rich with energy I’m still running on it now. To walk barefoot on a burning road, then to sink your toes into the sand at the edge of the bluest sea – I can’t see how Heaven can be any better than being thirteen years old in 1985.

I wanted to write a story that celebrated everything I loved about the Eighties. Not the reality: the dirt and the politics and the poverty of it. But about all that music, all those movies, all that television I soaked up. And that unending sun. Live Aid and 12” Singles and Rocky 4 and Apple IIs and riding away on a luck dragon after saving the princess.

Think of it as E.T., as directed by John Hughes. I hope you like it.”

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