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$2.99 eBook Sale: Medusa in the Graveyard by Emily Devenport

The ebook edition of Medusa in the Graveyard by Emily Devenport is on sale now for only $2.99! Get your copy today!

Image Placeholder of - 90About Medusa in the Graveyard:

Oichi Angelis, former Worm, along with her fellow insurgents on the generation starship Olympia, head deeper into the Charon System for the planet called Graveyard.

Ancient, sentient, alien starships wait for them—three colossi so powerful they remain aware even in self-imposed sleep. The race that made the Three are dead, but Oichi’s people were engineered with this ancient DNA.

A delegation from Olympia must journey to the heart of Graveyard and be judged by the Three. Before they’re done, they will discover that weapons are the least of what the ships have to offer.

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This sale ends 1/31/2020.

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Congratulations, You’ve Overthrown the Bastards! (Now You’re the New Bastards)

You’ve thrown a revolution! Now the real work begins.

Medusa in the Graveyard, the second book in Emily Devenport’s Medusa Cycle follows Oichi Angelis in the aftermath of her takeover of the generation starship Olympia. Below, Devenport explores what it means to overthrow a government and the potential to become the new “bastards”.


By Emily Devenport

Place holder  of - 59The Good Guys won the revolution and the Bad Guys lost, so everything the Good Guys do to fix things must work out wonderfully, right?  Because the Good Guys are smart, so they must know how to keep the lights on and the trains running on time.  But alas, winning a war, or a revolution, or an election, is not the same thing as knowing how to run a government.

Complicating your efforts are the Old Guard who know how to run things, but who also know how to gum them up.  It’s pretty easy for them to make you look bad, because you’re going to help them do that with your good intentions (which turn out to be not as feasible as you thought, and which also have unintended consequences).  Oligarchs may feel the ensuing chaos is good for them if they can manipulate banks and courts into ruling in their favor, but farmers, manufacturers, and consumers don’t like chaos, they want stability – and they vote.  This is the challenge every incoming administration faces on Earth: entrenched interests and oligarchs fight any change in the status quo, even though most citizens don’t like things as they are.  Move that situation to a generation ship, and things become  simpler in some ways, more complicated in others.

In Medusa Uploaded, a lot of the oligarchs were assassinated, which was convenient for revolutionaries trying to make the transition to clan leaders.  However, regardless of who the Old Guard may be, or in what sort of gravity well they may abide, they always have a support network of bureaucrats, officials, and technicians who actually know how to do things.  Do these folks deserve a probation period, in which the incoming administration attempts to cultivate them?  If you’re going to replace them, should you at least give them a chance to school their successors?  Make it worth their effort; reward their good work and give them input in the new administration, even if you don’t agree with their ideology.  This is how consensus is built, and though it is rarely as successful as it ought to be, it’s far better than having to re-invent the wheel every time there’s a regime change.

Unfortunately, incoming administrations rarely seem to grasp the value of conferring with the officials who are departing, whether they’re trying to get their own government running, or they’re trying to create an interim government after a war.  The results are predictable.  If you get rid of all of your “enemies,” you may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  We’ve seen this happen time and again in human history.

For example, it’s amazing how naïve the Bush administration was about their reformation of the government of Iraq – until you consider that they had just done something similar when they took over the U.S. Government.  These days, when new administrations bid farewell the previous bureaucrats, they do so with considerably more distaste than they used to; people are more polarized in their ideology.  It’s possible that Bush and his appointees ignored the extensive briefings prepared for them by outgoing officials, just as they ignored advice about not tampering with the equilibrium in the Middle East, when they blundered in to create their “flower of democracy.”  This is the sort of situation I pondered when trying to figure out what comes next for the population living on Generation Ship Olympia. 

In Medusa in the Graveyard, our heroes are finding out that assassinations don’t solve everything.  In fact, they can makes things worse.  Diplomacy, negotiations, trade agreements, regulations – those are the things that get your society running smoothly.

However, what seems like negotiations to some, plays out more like war to others.  You may believe you’ve gotten rid of all your enemies, but you’re likely to find out you’re wrong – and also that you’d better get over it and shift gears.  Olympia is moving into a solar system with well-established trade agreements; the Olympians discover that their new neighbors have treaties with their old enemies, and with other people they haven’t even met, yet.  What’s the first thing they need to do?

In my opinion, they need to get trade started.  Everything else springs from that.  To illustrate why, I need only refer to the disastrous trade policy of the Trump administration.  I suspect it will go down in history as a classic example of how not to negotiate with partners.  If Oichi and her cohorts decided to slap tariffs on goods coming into Olympia, and those tariffs made it impossible for Olympian soy farmers to compete in the new market, she might find herself on the wrong side of an airlock.

Many people voted for Trump because he was the guy who said the right things about manufacturing and mining jobs.  If he had made those remarks on Olympia, he would have been expected to follow through with them.  The fact that he hasn’t, casts light on a problem in government – the empty campaign promise.  In a country the size of the United States, you can get away with those shenanigans for quite a long time.  On a generation ship like Olympia, the failure to follow through can cost lives.  Your promises have to be realistic, especially if your citizens suffered under the old regime with little or no say in the decisions that affect their families.

If that’s the case, how do you please people who have been restricted their whole lives?

By making some concessions.  Give them something they want, with an indication that things could continue to improve if everyone works together.  Make sure you deliver on that promise, and be realistic when you observe the results.  What is sustainable?  What creates opportunities for all of your citizens, instead of just a select few?

True, you may ultimately discover that you need to make deals with some of those old bastards, after all.  That’s the toughest lesson of all – that the Bad Guys believed they were the Good Guys.

So what does that make you?

If you want to be one of the Good Guys, you better keep asking yourself that question.

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New Releases: 7/23

New Releases

Happy New Releases Day! Here’s what went on sale today.

Medusa in the Graveyard by Emily Devenport

Poster Placeholder of - 97Oichi Angelis, former Worm, along with her fellow insurgents on the generation starship Olympia, head deeper into the Charon System for the planet called Graveyard.

Ancient, sentient, alien starships wait for them—three colossi so powerful they remain aware even in self-imposed sleep. The race that made the Three are dead, but Oichi’s people were engineered with this ancient DNA.

A delegation from Olympia must journey to the heart of Graveyard and be judged by the Three. Before they’re done, they will discover that weapons are the least of what the ships have to offer.

NEW IN PAPERBACK

Luna: Wolf Moon by Ian McDonald

Placeholder of  -4A Dragon is dead.

Corta Helio, one of the five family corporations that rule the Moon, has fallen. Its riches are divided up among its many enemies, its survivors scattered. Eighteen months have passed .

The remaining Helio children, Lucasinho and Luna, are under the protection of the powerful Asamoahs, while Robson, still reeling from witnessing his parent’s violent deaths, is now a ward–virtually a hostage– of Mackenzie Metals. And the last appointed heir, Lucas, has vanished of the surface of the moon.

Only Lady Sun, dowager of Taiyang, suspects that Lucas Corta is not dead, and more to the point—that he is still a major player in the game. After all, Lucas always was the Schemer, and even in death, he would go to any lengths to take back everything and build a new Corta Helio, more powerful than before. But Corta Helio needs allies, and to find them, the fleeing son undertakes an audacious, impossible journey–to Earth.

In an unstable lunar environment, the shifting loyalties and political machinations of each family reach the zenith of their most fertile plots as outright war erupts.

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Music Uploaded: A Playlist for Medusa Uploaded

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Ever wish you had a music database in your head, where you could listen to whatever you wanted to, never having to worry about sharing a set of headphones with someone? If you answered yes to any of the above, then you’re sure to be jealous of Oichi in Medusa Uploaded who’s got one implanted – even though it’s technically forbidden technology. 

Emily Devenport’s interweaving of music (and movies!) throughout the plotline serve to enhance characterizations and ground this futuristic story in both past and present playlists. What constitutes an oldie centuries in the future? 

Oichi’s list is sure to give you some beautiful new orchestral music, a country classic, and some notable Broadway tunes to read along with. What would your brain’s music database look like? (and no, we don’t mean your Spotify library)

video soruce

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$2.99 Ebook Deal: Medusa Uploaded by Emily Devenport

Image Place holder  of - 42The ebook edition of Medusa Uploaded by Emily Devenport is on sale now for only $2.99! This offer will only last for a limited time, so order your copy today before the sequel, Medusa in the Graveyard becomes available on July 23.

About Medusa Uploaded: 

My name is Oichi Angelis, and I am a worm.

They see me every day. They consider me harmless. And that’s the trick, isn’t it?

A generation starship can hide many secrets. When an Executive clan suspects Oichi of insurgency and discreetly shoves her out an airlock, one of those secrets finds and rescues her.

Officially dead, Oichi begins to rebalance power one assassination at a time and uncovers the shocking truth behind the generation starship and the Executive clans.

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This sale ends August 1.

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Spree Killers and Serial Killers: A Conversation

Why are we so fascinated with fictional murder?

Maybe it’s our collective love of morbid humor, mysteries, assassins and most of all, real stakes. Whatever the reason, the fact remains: we love reading about killers. And thankfully, there are authors out there who love writing about them!

With Candice Fox’s new mystery Redemption Point this spring and Emily Devenport’s intense SF sequel Medusa in the Graveyard coming this summer, we thought it was high time to revisit their fascinating conversation on killers real and fictional.


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Candice Fox is the author of Crimson Lake (and its sequel Redemption Point!), a thriller set in Queensland Australia whose heroes have both been accused of terrible crimes. Emily Devenport is the author of Medusa Uploaded(and its sequel Medusa In the Graveyard!), a science fiction tale of a woman correcting the social order on a generation ship—one murder at a time. So of course, we asked them to discuss some of the most intriguing types of killers: serial killers and spree killers!

Candice Fox: I’m going to put it out there: I think it’s harder to be a serial killer than a spree killer. Think about it. These guys (and yes, we’re primarily talking about guys with both spree and serial killers) are attempting the inconceivable—they want to accommodate their sadistic fantasies within their normal, everyday lives.

Emily Devenport: The serial killer can think circles around the spree killer.

Place holder  of - 78Granted, this may be mostly hype. In fiction, serial killers are guys like Hannibal Lector—super smart, fearless, able to wage both psychological and physical war. Those fictional monsters are practically demigods. In real life, there have been some very smart serial killers, but few of them rise to the level of Francis Dolarhyde (from Red Dragon). I suspect most serial killers are successful because they’re so focused and single minded in their killing, while the rest of us are just trying to live our lives. They see opportunities to kill where we see opportunities to mow the lawn, visit the laundromat, or pick up a gallon of milk. They tend to watch for opportunities and plan carefully. And that’s what makes them so dangerous.

Candice Fox: But someone like Dennis Rader (BTK) managed, for seventeen years, to terrorize a city with his killing games while at the same time maintaining the appearance of a (relatively) normal family. How do you do that? You pretend. You develop incredible skills of deception. You learn how to hide your trophies in your picture-perfect, suburban home, and you smile for photos when your mind is filled with evil. Rader knocked off a whole family one morning while they were sitting down to breakfast and wasn’t even late for work. That’s gotta be tough, and it’s why sometimes serial killers do stupid things to get themselves caught. It’s probably because they’re exhausted.

Emily Devenport: Spree killers are people who have come unraveled. They tend to be young people with a poor grasp of consequences, and they also tend to be couples. Their spree generally begins because of some triggering event, and then they’re killing her parents and stealing the family car, killing his uncle for the cash, killing the gas station attendant because the uncle didn’t have enough cash, robbing the till, then driving to Vegas because they think they’re going to win a million dollars playing blackjack. They can end up hurting a lot of people, because they may not seem dangerous until they’re waving the gun in your face. But I think they’re easier to get away from, because they haven’t planned everything out. If you can think fast, you may be able to get out of their way.

Candice Fox: Most spree killers plans for an ending—either in a shootout with police, or by taking their own lives, and they’re usually successful in that. They only have to keep their secret as long as they plan for the act.

Emily Devenport: If a serial killer targets you, you’re in big trouble. That guy might be somewhat disorganized, someone who goes after a victim because of opportunity, but even under those circumstances he probably has good reason to feel confident you can’t get away, because he’s got the handcuffs, and the chloroform, and/or the secret, reinforced cellar he’s excavated for just this occasion. If I was going to be targeted by one or the other, I’d have to say I’d prefer the spree killer. They’re less likely to have a hypo full of etorphine handy.

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New Releases: 5/1/18

Happy New Release day! Here’s what went on sale today.

A Dog’s Way Home by W. Bruce Cameron

Image Placeholder of - 78 Lucas Ray is shocked when an adorable puppy jumps out of an abandoned building and into his arms. Though the apartment he shares with his mother, a disabled veteran, doesn’t allow dogs, Lucas can’t resist taking Bella home.

Bella is inexplicably drawn to Lucas, even if she doesn’t understand the necessity of games like No Barks. As it becomes more difficult to hide her from the neighbors, Lucas begins to sneak Bella into the VA where he works. There, Bella brings joy and comfort where it is needed most.

Ban This Book by Alan Gratz

Poster Placeholder of - 73 In Ban This Book by Alan Gratz, a fourth grader fights back when From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg is challenged by a well-meaning parent and taken off the shelves of her school library. Amy Anne is shy and soft-spoken, but don’t mess with her when it comes to her favorite book in the whole world. Amy Anne and her lieutenants wage a battle for the books that will make you laugh and pump your fists as they start a secret banned books locker library, make up ridiculous reasons to ban every single book in the library to make a point, and take a stand against censorship.

Medusa Uploaded by Emily Devenport

Image Place holder  of - 37 My name is Oichi Angelis, and I am a worm.

A generation starship can hide many secrets. When an Executive clan suspects Oichi of insurgency and discreetly shoves her out an airlock, one of those secrets finds and rescues her. Officially dead, Oichi begins to rebalance power one assassination at a time and uncovers the shocking truth behind the generation starship and the Executive clans.

The Military Science of Star Wars by George Beahm

Placeholder of  -41 The first ever in-depth analysis of the tactics and equipment used by the heroes and villains of the Star Wars universe has arrived! Spanning all of the films, this comprehensive book goes in to detail about the various guerrilla tactics of the Rebel Alliance and the awe-inspiring might of the Grand Army of the Republic and Darth Vader’s Empire.

Including detailed examples from Earth’s military history, bestselling author George Beahm illustrates how a merciless empire managed to subdue a galaxy with the application of overwhelming force and technology, and how a ragtag group of rebels could cobble together enough of a punch to topple a seemingly-unbeatable enemy.

 

NEW FROM TOR.COM

Black Helicopters by Caitlin R. Kiernan

Place holder  of - 2 Just as the Signalman stood and faced the void in Agents of Dreamland, so it falls to Ptolema, a chess piece in her agency’s world-spanning game, to unravel what has become tangled and unknowable.

Something strange is happening on the shores of New England. Something stranger still is happening to the world itself, chaos unleashed, rational explanation slipped loose from the moorings of the known.

NEW IN PAPERBACK

And Into the Fire by Robert Gleason

Give Your Heart to the Hawks by Win Blevins

Gone to Dust by Matt Goldman

King Rat by China Mieville

Pawn by Timothy Zahn

Tiassa by Steven Brust

NEW IN MANGA

Arifureta: From Commonplace to World’s Strongest (Light Novel) Vol. 2 Story by Ryo Shirakome; Art by Takaya-ki

If It’s for My Daughter, I’d Even Defeat a Demon Lord Vol. 1 Story by Chirolu, Art by Hota

Lord Marksman and Vanadis Vol. 7 Story by Tsukasa Kawaguchi; Art by Nobuhiko Yanai

Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid Vol. 6 Story and art by coolkyousinnjya

Nameless Asterism Vol. 2 Story and art by Kina Kobayashi

Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs Vol. 1 

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Revenge is a Dish Best Served Sci-Fi

Place holder  of - 24 Written by Emily Devenport

The point of mystery fiction is to see that actions have consequences. The point of science fiction is to change your perspective. Yet, the two genres have a lot in common, and they can both be useful to storytellers trying to illuminate the human condition.

A good mystery writer is going to get you to understand that justice usually doesn’t prevail. There’s damage, and good people try to cope with it. Some of the bad people have good qualities (which is what makes them so dangerous), and some good people have faults (which is what makes them so interesting). The imbalance seeks to find a new equilibrium, for better or for worse.

Science fiction addresses that truth with some odd permutations. Technology, time/space travel, alien psychology that truly is alien, create new cultures, settings, and political systems. But the characters still try to solve problems, and that’s the human interface. We’re the hunter-gatherers of the galaxy. If we meet other hunter-gatherers, we may learn a lot from them. If we meet people who aren’t wired that way at all, we may learn more. And that’s where the conflict gets interesting, because even among different human cultures, people who appear to be friends may not be. People who appear to be enemies may be allies, or at least frenemies. And aliens may not even perceive time the same way we do. Perhaps in their view, what goes around doesn’t come around. It happens all at once.

I’d like to tell you I had all of that in mind when I wrote Medusa Uploaded. Instead, my character, Oichi, showed up in one of my dreams. She was in a tough spot, but she also had a lot of useful attributes—and a powerful friend: Medusa. I could see that revenge wasn’t their motivation, but I admit—it was mine. Like any god, I had selfish impulses when I set my avatars in motion. I wanted revenge on the people who oppressed them, because these folks represented the same people who oppress the people in the world where I live—their greed, their rigid thinking, and their willingness to toss people away as if they were trash.

In real life, people who battle that sort of injustice are political activists, or journalists, or doctors—the sort of people who fight fair. We all know how that tends to end up. Not that these folks don’t do lasting good—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. changed the world. But they’re looking at the big picture; ordinary people tend to fall by the wayside. Sometimes you just want to see Spider-man sock Dr. Doom right in the kisser (in such a way that doesn’t get you sued for defamation of character). That’s why characters like Jeff Lindsay’s Dexter are so popular. He isn’t restrained by compassion. He only worries about getting caught, and because he’s killing bad guys, he reinforces our delusion that the ends justify the means.

Oichi isn’t as pitiless as Dexter, but she’s close enough for government work. Her talents and her circumstances make her the perfect instrument of my revenge—possibly of yours, too.

So let’s enjoy some nice, cold sci-fi revenge. We’ve earned it.

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Follow Emily Devenport on Twitter and on her website.

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5 Science Fiction Tales of Revenge

Revenge is a dish best served cold—as cold as space, in fact. Maybe that’s one of the reasons revenge pairs so well with science fiction. Are you looking for a tale of vengeance in the cold, hard vacuum of space? We have some suggestions for you:

Medusa Uploaded by Emily Devenport

Placeholder of  -37 Generation ships often seem to breed discontent and violence—take a large population, force them into a limited space, include the class barriers humanity just can’t seem to let go, and you have the perfect recipe for depraved acts—and the revenge that inevitably follows. In Emily Devenport’s sci-fi novel Medusa Uploaded, Oichi is one of the downtrodden, who is tossed out an airlock on suspicion of insurgency. Luckily, she’s rescued by a secret presence on the ship. And now that she’s officially dead, it’s time to fix the imbalance of power—one assassination at a time.

The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester

Place holder  of - 44 This classic 1950s novel has been called a science fiction retelling of one of the greatest revenge tales of all time: The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. A poor, uneducated man is abandoned by the company that employs him, left stranded as the only survivor of an attack in deep space. Improbably, the man, Gully Foyle, survives, amasses a fortune, and educates himself all in order to pursue his singular goal: revenge against the company that wronged him, Presteign. Of course, nothing is that simple, and Gully’s journey includes many twists and turns. Is he the hero, or the villain? No one, especially Gully himself, can be entirely certain.

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

Poster Placeholder of - 91 In Ann Leckie’s Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novel, great spaceships of the Radch Empire use artificial intelligence to control ancillaries, human bodies that can move and interact with people while containing the knowledge of the ship that controls them. When her ship, the Justice of Toren, is destroyed, Breq is the sole surviving ancillary. In her fragile body, Breq goes on a quest across the Empire, seeking vengeance for her own destruction.

Killing Gravity by Corey J. White

Image Placeholder of - 89 Mariam Xi is a dangerous woman—a deadly voidwitch, a genetically-manipulated psychic super-soldier with a high body count. She escaped MEPHISTO, the group that experimented on her and made her into the weapon she is today, but soon enough, her past is going to catch up with her. When that finally happens, MEPHISTO better watch out. There are very, very few things in the universe more dangerous than an angry voidwitch.
 
 
Dune by Frank Herbert

Image Place holder  of - 45 There are many, many, many themes in Frank Herbert’s Dune—among them ecology, empires, gender dynamics, and more. And, of course, revenge. When the Emperor and the Harkonnens kill Paul’s father, Duke Leto, Paul and his surviving family must flee and join the Fremen in the desert. Later, when Paul Muad’Dib has the chance to remove the emperor and take his place, he does it not just to become one of the most powerful people in the universe, but also to take revenge for his father’s death.

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Revealing the Cover for Medusa Uploaded

Revenge is a dish best served cold—like in the cold vacuum of space. And next year’s brand new sci-fi thriller from Emily Devenport dishes up plenty of revenge with a side of vicious power games onboard a generational starship. So we couldn’t be more excited to share the cover Devenport’s Medusa Uploaded, complete with art by Sam Weber and a killer quote from Annalee Newitz.

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About Medusa Uploaded: The Executives control Oichi’s senses, her voice, her life. Until the day they kill her.

An executive clan gives the order to shoot Oichi out of an airlock on suspicion of being an insurgent. A sentient AI, a Medusa unit, rescues Oichi and begins to teach her the truth—the Executives are not who they think they are. Oichi, officially dead and now bonded to the Medusa unit, sees a chance to make a better life for everyone on board.

As she sets things right one assassination at a time, Oichi becomes the very insurgent the Executives feared, and in the process uncovers the shocking truth behind the generation starship that is their home.

Medusa Uploaded will be available May 1, 2018.

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