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This volume of stories is best described by its introduction, written by Steven Gilligan. Note first, though, that this is a top secret publication, and if you have found this page, shame on you. It was not meant for human eyes.

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The short stories of John Greenwood – stories which constitute a genuine insurrection in science fiction and general fantasy, a revolt against those genres’ terms of reference and choice of subject matter – are collected here for the first time, and published without the author’s knowledge. Hence, of course, the publisher, not John – who would doubtless be horrified to learn of this volume’s existence – must be held liable for any errors found within the pages of this volume.

John has spent many of his years as a tortured artist, trapped in his own image of irrelevance and unimportance in terms of being a writer. Often he would write under the pseudonyms of Ben Chadwick and W D Sparrow, using these personalities as a smokescreen to protect his own literary shyness, a strange problem for a writer who might well be described, as others are in his “Revenge of the Post-Historic Skeletal Polyhedrons” (originally written as W D Sparrow), as a:

“Powerful … mind capable of the most delicate and gymnastic manoeuvres in time-navigation.”

John’s stories represent the eternal loneliness of the human soul and show him to be an author of brilliance unnoticed, not least by himself. His own under-confidence in his work has brought confusion and bemusement amongst his friends. Those who have read John’s work previously (when it was published in the seminal New Words) will already be familiar with its high stylistic quality and flights of imagination, and it is both in celebration and mourning that it is published in this volume for the first and last time. John, having read the stories he so wonderfully wrote decided that he would no longer be applying himself to creative writing. In his own words:

“I have made a more objective judgement about the stories and my own abilities.”

When I read this statement in an email from him, I was shocked and saddened by the news. It pains me to think that the world will be deprived of future stories that would have enabled readers to question their own existence (as well as John’s). I will never get to read the three novels he had planned. One was a fantasy novel (he allegedly burned the near-completed manuscript), the second was a future tale of a Taoist colony on Mars, and the third would have featured “fist-fights on the rings of Saturn”.

In one of John’s key works, “The Man Who Found a Comprehensive Answer to the Fundamental Problem of His Existence”, the answer to existence is to be found in a second-hand book which will sit forever on a shelf. The narrator of that story also writes messages and leaves them hidden in dusty library books, to be found by unknown hands in distant years. Such might well be the fate of this secret collection, its stolen words hidden to awaken the interest of readers to come.

The stories show a great variety in subject matter, but a similar interest in the human condition, in its foibles, failures, and weaknesses, as well as its possibilities.

“In Diary Entries and Exits”, we follow the narrator as he confuses reality with fantasy and we have our first introduction to Miasma Games.

“21 Reasons” is a personal manifesto about the degradation of consumer culture:

“The queue and the television are the most distinctive inventions of our civilisation. We all long to be processed.”

“A Meditation on the Intricacy of the Prison Bars” is a claustrophobic philosophical tract:

“the object of the experimental writer is not to produce works succinctly, but copiously.”

Words spoken by the demon, perhaps representing the author’s own personal Nemesis. The story gives this volume its title:

“There are now a billion flowers, flowers to fill a dozen valleys, each suitably humbled.”

Also, a telling insight is contained in the line:

“I thought of painting many pictures on pieces of A4 typing paper and covering the wall with them, but of course they would be misinterpreted.”

Interpret these however you see fit, but be aware that no interpretation will ever be the right one.

“The prison, if it was so, had been very delicately wrought.”

“Revenge of the Post-Historic Skeletal Polyhedrons” carefully informs us of alien time-travel and the true reverse-origins of life on Earth as we falsely recognise it now.

“Cleanliness” returns us to the future corporate entertainment giant, Miasma. Spencer Leonard, a star programmer working on the revolutionary Sub-Virt 2 but dismissed from the company, descends into gradual maddening obsession. This story is my personal favourite in this collection and is, in my opinion, the most atmospheric and complete. There are passages that will send shivers down your spine, and inspire you to closely watch the future of entertainment.

“The New God” is a fine piece and the last thing John ever wrote that is still in existence. Originally, it was written as a prologue to one of the sections of his planned “Taoist Colony on Mars” novel. Sadly, that novel will never be written now and “The New God” stands as an unfinished statue in an ornamental garden that does not exist.

“The Man Who Found a Comprehensive Answer to the Fundamental Problem of His Existence” (originally written under the pseudonym of Ben Chadwick) is a personal, and at times tear-jerking, account of a man who accidentally strays too far into his own past, and it calls upon the author’s own real experiences. The tone and overall feel of this story is one of anguish, but there are passages that will lift your heart as you read them:

“Outside the afternoon sun was softening the edges of things. Paul’s shadow loomed before him. The light reflecting off the streets was warm and sad, but he felt an ease in his heart that had been missing.”

There are Now a Billion Flowers is more than just the sum of its parts, it is a melancholy eulogy to a writer who never realised his full potential and never had the confidence to see his own shining talent. This self-doubt will be familiar to anyone who has ever written creatively, but for most the phase lasts but a few months and only in the most severe cases will it go on for years. John Greenwood’s patch of self-doubt has seemed to last a lifetime, and yet, since it has given rise to such provocative works of introspection as those contained within this collection, perhaps we should not complain.

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Publication: Autumn 2002

ISBN 0 9537650 7 5

Price: £5.99