The story behind the story: Atoms For Peace

Atoms for Peace is now up on Big Pulp. Much to my delight, they’ve got a separate section set aside for the series, under the catch-all name Applied Science.
As some of you may remember, I’ve been working on my fifties-set SF novel, The Brain From Outer Space for a while now. Somewhere along the way, I got the idea of turning the first chapter into a short story, Applied Science, which I eventually sold to Big Pulp. They then suggested that I do a whole series in the same setting—a fifties where alien invasions, giant mutants and mad scientists are part of daily life—and I jumped at the chance.
Among the plot ideas they threw out for possible was stories was the very first “rogue science” case. That seemed like a good place to start to me, so I began sketching the story of how former OSI agent Gwen Montgomery—one of Brain‘s protagonists—found a half-man, half-lizard lying dead on the streets of Greenwich Village, began investigating and discovered nuclear radiation has much nastier effects than the government’s been letting on.
In the real world, of course, the government did indeed suppress reports about radiation’s side-effects; in a world where the side-effects include giant ants and other kaijin, the public will be a lot less forgiving.
The biggest problem with the story was that it was close to 7,000 words and I was supposed to be shooting for 5,000; a great deal of trimming, even though it meant cutting out some useful background information, followed. It turned out the trimming didn’t hurt anything, though it did change a couple of character details (a romance subplot got dropped, but the story did OK without it).
Later this month, the second story, Claws That Catch, will go online. The third one is going through rewrite hell, but it’ll get where it needs to be. Now that I have a deadline, I don’t have much choice, do I? 🙂