Genre mash-ups, take two

 Last week I finished the first of the three stories that I'm writing for anthology calls.  The dragon in space story will be winging its way into the editor's inbox later today.  This week I've moved on to the second story.

I started my draft before double-checking the exact submission requirements. I was going along the lines of an alien artefact which judged people. Then I re-read the submission requirements, and saw that it had to be about a piece of art that was magical in some way.

So it was back to the drawing board for the story.  But I only have three weeks left before all the deadlines and I have a third story to write before then, so I didn't want to start from scratch with a completely new idea.

Cue another genre mash-up.  Instead of my object being a mysterious alien artefact which nobody knows the origins of, it becomes a piece of furniture with strange powers.  In my original draft I have an alien throne married to some kind of advanced alien MRI scanner.  I liked that idea, so I kept the story outline of an SF setting.  The action takes place on a frontier world where a homophonic misogynist has decided that he wants to crown himself king.  But the planet is part of a Starunion which outlawed monarchs a century ago, so they've sent a hit squad to take him out.

I figured that while the squad was hanging around waiting for the chance to do this pretender in the rest of the team could occupy themselves by investigating a mysterious temple.  It's the only still intact building in the old city.

Now I've made the throne seem ordinary. To all appearances it's a beautifully decorated gold object.  The magic in it is only discovered when the bad guy sits on it.

The story has ended up very dark, and I'm not sure I could describe what kind of magic the throne has.  But because I've put it into a science fictional setting it gives me the chance to cheat.  There's an Arthur C Clarke law which goes: "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."  It was the perfect thing to put into my story to justify the mash-up.

It might end up not being what the editor wanted for this anthology, but I had fun writing the story and it was an interesting challenge to switch the premise completely about.