Posts by Isaac Beech

Post
Gilded Age

Speculative fiction from Shanghai – by Isaac Beech

 

She came to China in 2020, at the spring of a new nation. After college, a liberal arts sanatorium for privileged outrage during America's mad years, she dithered in a city internship for a few months before hopping the Pacific after Christmas in a half thought-out rebellion against her family's cloying helpfulness. New year's in Bangkok faded into hangovers in Angor Watt and a misjudged café-venture in Phnom Penh with a girl she met in a youth hostel. From there she traced the curve of the banana pancake trail up the coast of Vietnam, until South East Asia gave way to the country she had been avoiding and gravitating towards all along.

Haijing, this young capital of the nation's newest incarnation, was still adjusting to its new political status.

READ ON...

Isaac Beech , Thu 27 April 2017 in

Post
Halloween Land

Gate-crashing the China party – fiction by Isaac Beech

 

Seb Spatt got his first Anti-Social Behaviour Order, the infamous “Asbo”, for spitting over a railing at Alton Towers amusement park, without seeing the middle-aged lady with the perm below. It was also the first Asbo paperwork at Hampshire Constabulary where the name and the crime read the same. The next year, Seb Spatt got booked for indecent dress (long story), shoving a Streets album down his tracksuits in HMV, and buying shots for minors in a pub at 20% mark-up to cover his own poison.

When Seb Spatt got a black eye and gave a busted lip in a fight with a bouncer (long story, other guy’s fault), he didn’t bother turning up to the station for his summons. That was it. The last straw. Nothing else for it now. His only choice was clear.

Seb was going to China.

READ ON...

Isaac Beech , Fri 1 November 2013 in

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