Survival on Earth is sometimes difficult: survival on an exo-system is largely a matter of chance, no matter how prepared a team may be. Sometimes it is just a matter of time before the exo-system wins. In this anthology, four different stories present four very different perceptions of exploratory ventures on other worlds.In 'For What We Are About To Receive", a castaway could really have done with his Man Friday. In 'Troubled Waters' a hardened veteran of the spaceways is humbled by an infant Korlatchian. 'Swamp Fever' shows the danger of complacency whilst 'Closing Gambit' is a paintball game given added – and deadly – impetus. Malcolm Twigg has been writing in some form or other for most of his adult life, much of it in local government circles where he put a bit more of the 'creative' element to writing minutes of meetings than was actually warranted. However, it kept the madness away.He discovered science fiction at a very early age and started writing his first novel at the age of 18. He promptly consigned it to the bin and concentrated instead on reading stories by the legendary greats of Science Fiction who actually knew how to write, such as Fred Pohl and Algis Budrys. Both of those authors and many others he was later to meet when a short story he submitted for the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future contest got him into the finals of the contest, and a trip to Florida to boot.A short time earlier, a novel had won the Peter Pook Humorous Novel competition in England (To Hell with the Harp!) and was published through Emissary Publishing (he was a second place winner the previous year). In that same year he had a small collection of science fiction stories published in Chapbook format by Piper's Ash and was also actively publishing in small press genre magazines and well as writing mainstream feature articles for various magazines.Shortly after he attended the L. Ron Hubbard event, he was made redundant from local government and what should have turned into a burgeoning writing career took a bit of a left turn when he was (fortuitously) offered a position as launch editor for a local county magazine (Cornwall Life), followed by another magazine (Young at Heart) building upon a series of freelance articles published in Devon Life.Under his unfailing leadership, both of those new titles folded within a few months (a fate that, alarmingly, befell a number of genre magazines as soon as they had published contributions from him). However, he was kept on as Chief Writer for Devon Life, went on to successfully launch Cornwall Life again and then Wiltshire Magazine, taking an already extant Wiltshire magazine head on and winning.This second career left little time to pursue the more creative element however, leaving a number of unfinished works on the back burner for ten years or so, despite only working (ostensibly) part time.He retired last year and started researching his family history. As always suspected, his wife seems to have married beneath her. Whereas her family history (purportedly) includes the Duke...
