The Ancient was first published in Jupiter II: Europa (October 2003), the second issue of a new low-budget sf magazine from Yeovil in Somerset. Despite the story's fairly modest appearance in a small no-pay market, it did manage an Honorable Mention in Gardner Dozois' 21st "Year's Best Science Fiction" anthology.

Click here for a PDF of The Ancient or here for html.

Since childhood Rawadi, Port Director of Battuta's World, had hoped to meet an Ancient, one of the old-time slow-travellers through space whose journeys lasted centuries and whose stories were the stuff of myth, legend and popular drama. What times had they come from, what places had they seen, and what marvellous experiences would they have in the shining future they were heading towards? Sometimes Rawadi had felt he wanted to join them and travel up as well, maybe even to the end of time. But then one day he met a real Ancient. Or did he actually meet two...?

I first had an idea along these lines when I was about 17, and first wrote it out in a form recognisably related to how it ended up (though nearly twice as long) in 1983. I kept tinkering with it and kept sending it out to various paying places but no-one wanted it until Jupiter accepted it in 2003.

As well as the favourable nod from Dozois, there's a nice online review in Whispers of Wickedness : "The ‘super’ story is ‘The Ancient’ [...] so strong is the writing, I found myself having more sympathy for the main protagonist than perhaps the writer intended.  Yes, his quest is selfish, he does indeed ‘feed his memories by sucking the sympathy of the living’, but there is also something glorious in the intensity of his search. [...] The skill of the ending left me stunned."

Illustrations: the old man is an old Rotring drawing of mine from some time in the 70s, the spaceship an oil painting from the 80s (used by Jupiter VIII as a cover illustration in 2005) and "Saturn" done in Photoshop; the rings are in fact a scanned CD suitably distorted and cut up.