Right, what's the remit? "Space Ramble, adventures of a different stile". Oh great, a pun in the bloody title. What do I have to do... "You are Captain Norris Norris of the Starship Insignificant, the slightly wayward, less PC than average captain sent well away from Earth to do daring deeds and spread the starbucks propaganda just as far away as you can." Who comes up with this crap? Here goes...

Captain's log, stardate 12345.6789, about ten past two. Have just finished producing the captain's log. Three flushes. Nice. The ship's on course to the Eee-baa-ecky-thoomp quarter, to host negotiations between the hostile Yorkshire exiles and... well... everybody, really.

Why is it always a quarter or a quadrant in space. Why not a triangle, sphere or dodecahedron? It's infinite fer chrissakes!

Got some time to kill. Nothing much happening. Think I'll try to roger the ensign.

Cue some big spacewarp mega beast thing trying to eat the ship...? Hello, ship to God? We're here you know! We've been floating around this crappy bit of space for weeks now and haven't seen any action. How come you keep giving that pompous twat Picard all the fun? Can't we have a bit of action around here?

I mean, c'mon, we've been burning all up and down Romulan space, shooting up Cardaci... Carda.. ca, those weird things with ropey necks. We've even nailed a bloody Klingon to the starboard bloody bow. Nothing! Not a sniff! I've even taken to calling cotton buds "Q tips" and sticking them where Q-tips don't belong just to try to rattle the god things, but DO THEY BLOODY CARE?

Won't somebody please just notice us?

That's it, I'm not writing another bloody Space Ramble spin-off. Never again! I've had it with space opera. I wrote bits of Babylon 5 fer chrissakes... ok admittedly those bits were cut from the series, but they did end up in The 5 Babylons, the "alternative" version.

Hmm. Random Apartment wants fantasy novels again. Time to crank out another thing with horses and wenches and vaguely telepathic sorcerers... what about telepathic wenches on electric sorcerer horses?

The knights of Argotron bore down on the soldier as he pounded over the arid, dusty loam, perspiration flecking his leathery, sunburnt hide. The soldier clutched his notched, damaged broadsword in desperation as he loped onwards, his pace diminishing in the superincumbent sun that beat down on his domelike skull.

Glad I got that thesaurus for Christmas. MMmm big thesaurus <drool>.

       "You'll never take me alive, you tergiversate knaves!" The soldier bellowed with gruff, masculine tones.
       "We only have to apprehend you, alive is optional!" the lead night bellowed back, voice flecked with evil...

electric sorcerer horses? Really?

Meanwhile the horse was jacked into the matrix, soaring above a city of technicolour ozone neon brandy like a devil's chrome phoenix. He cast his warez into the AI's defences and plunged into the heart of the First Notional Bank of Jizzland. This horse was the uberhacker of all Jizzland, the hypercomputer collective orgasm of a million sentient quadrapeds.

I've read Gibson, I know you love this shit! Ha!

Flibberdejibbet the horse punched deck with his Sushi mk 3 MeGaBrAyNE zooming through the onion-skin layers of the 'net over to Japan and had some fun with the Mitsubishi core AI. He sent giant net ants to attack the core. It was always fun to watch a giant effigy of a popular 20th century author spraying Nippon at the base of the AI's column.

Spot the reference... if the author concerned is going to be pedantic in EVERY book he writes, at least get it right. How did that bastard get published and not me?

Flibberdejibbet was never happier than when he was jacked into the net. God knows, if he wasn't then he might actually realise he was a horse... worse, one on some pisspoor stage 2 planet being ridden and whipped by some barely-evolved ape. When he was jacked into the net, meat didn't matter.

He was, however, rather surprised when Aldritch the Knight of Argotron got drunk that time and jacked into his horse...

Bugger... showing my true colours here. Back to the day job.

LEWIS HAMILTON RAN OVER MY CAT! Turn to page 4 for more details, yes, that's the page next to the tits.