Stories from the Microbial World

This collection of short stories invites you to enter the fascinating world of microorganisms.

Microbes live on our skin, keep ecosystems healthy, fight pollution and turn waste into resources. Some of the plots unfold close to our everyday lives, some in the wonderland of tiny heroes, and some take us into an imaginative future.

Meet Willow as she is chased by a morphing pile of slime, Mikey who stops showering, Anna who masters the appetite for shit at the sewage plant, Sophie who turns into a tree, Mike Robe who arrives for his interview in a petri dish, Amanda who survives a flood to find a world within our world instead of sorrows, Tim who changes careers on his friends’ toilet, and many more.

This anthology has been created as part of the Green Stories project. Most of the stories are from the ‘Microbes to the Rescue!’ short story competition, sponsored by the UKRI funded Environmental Biotechnology Network (EBNet) or the ‘Clean vs Green’ short story competition, supported by the University of Southampton.