Close
post-featured-image

Why Are There So Many Space Fascists? John Scalzi Grades SF Civilizations

amazonsbns booksamillionsibooks2 11indiebounds

Image Place holder  of - 76Space cultures are all GREAT…right? John Scalzi, author of The Last Emperox, might have to disagree with you there. Check out his full argument below!


By John Scalzi

My book The Last Emperox comes out soon, and with it, the resolution of a story about The Interdependency, a light-years-spanning human empire featuring dozens of star systems connected by a faltering faster-than-light transport system. I’ve had some people say to me that they thought that The Interdependency would be a decent place to live—that is, except for that whole “the way we transport people and goods is disappearing and soon we’ll be stranded and doomed” thing that the books have going.

And, I guess, maybe? As the architect of that particular universe, I know where its flaws are—not even counting the doomsday scenario I put it in—and I know those flaws are significant. Like most empires, its livability is contingent on how close you are to the top of the social pyramid. I think most people think they are indeed going to be somewhere near the top, which is ambitious but isn’t how social pyramids work.

But this did get me thinking about other science-fictional civilizations—empires, federations, and what have you—and how livable they would actually be, if you were the average citizen or subject. How would they do? I’m going to grade a bunch of them now.

The Empire, from Star Wars

The movies and TV shows and all the other media don’t really spend a whole lot of time looking at The Empire from the perspective of the average person—we’re mostly dealing with rebels or bounty hunters or what have you on the fringes of day-to-day life, with a heavy dose of people who have supernatural bugs in their blood waving around laser swords. But what we can see of the workaday empire isn’t all that great: a highly stratified culture with the galactic 1% acting pretty terribly while the rest of the people scrape by in homespun clothes, moisture farming or what have you. Plus there’s always a risk that stormtroopers will use you for target practice, or the Empire will straight up vaporize your planet for abstruse political reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with you. Overall, not a great place, avoid if possible.

Grade: D

The Federation, from Star Trek

On the surface a pretty great place to live for the average citizen: It has fully automated luxury space communism where you can play around in sense-fulfilling virtual rooms and anything you want to eat will be magicked into existence by a computer that you talk to. That’s pretty great! On the flip side, however, the Federation’s very existence is threatened on a depressingly regular basis: If it’s not a civilization of assimilating cyberpunks flying around in cubes made of plumbing supplies, then it’s uplifted 20th-century spacecraft, or angry Romulans, or inscrutable cylinders that will destroy you and everyone you love if they’re not allowed to talk to whales. Honestly, who needs that kind of stress hanging over you all the damn time.

Grade: C-

The Padishah Empire, from Dune

Again, we spend most of our time hanging out with emperors, and rebel leaders who become emperors, and also emperors who become sandworms, and so on, but what we can see of the daily life of the empire is… highly variable, depending on who your local noble is. If you have someone like the Duke Atreides, eh, it’s not so bad! He rules (mostly) justly and is concerned with the welfare of his subjects, soldiers and retinue. If you have someone like the Baron Harkonnen, well, then, it kind of sucks, because he and his family are terrible people doing terrible things terribly. Do you want to roll those dice? Oh, and when Paul-Muad’ib becomes emperor, things don’t get any better, because now there’s a bunch of Freman spilling out of Arrakis to get your ass in line with the new orthodoxy. Have fun with that!

Grade: D.

The Alliance, from Firefly

This civilization is like a bullseye—not so bad for the average person near the center, deeply squidgy the further out you get, and also, the civilized veneer of the Alliance scrapes off pretty readily if you piss it off. Plus! Reavers, i.e., very angry space zombies! Which were made because the Alliance just wanted everyone to calm the hell down, and were willing to try to make that happen pharmaceutically. That’s how you get angry space zombies, people.

Grade: C-

The Colonial Union, from Old Man’s War

What, you thought I’d let myself off the hook here? Lol, no, friends. Like the Alliance, if you happen to be in the established colonies, it’s not bad at all. If you’re in a new colony, however? Expect aliens to try to scrape you and your family off that planet as soon as possible, and maybe eat you as well. This is the excuse the CU has for being on a xenophobic war footing 24/7 (and also for being basically fascist, in flavors ranging from mild to, well, not, depending on the day). But could it be that the reason the aliens all hate the CU is that the humans are just plain bigoted paranoids? Could be! Also, if you’re from Earth, they’ve mostly kept society looking like the early 21st century, which, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, is not going all that great for anyone. Maybe skip?

Grade D.

The Culture, from Iain M. Banks’ “Culture Series”

Finally, a light-year-spanning civilization that doesn’t entirely suck to live in! Sure, there are not-great parts, which Banks’ details in his Culture novels, but it’s understood that those really are the exception rather than the rule. Most everyone else actually lives in that fully automated luxury space communism that Star Trek aims for but often misses, schlepping around the stars in vast spacecraft with delightfully obscure names, which seem mostly amused by the humans that live in and among them. If I have to live in a space civilization, this is the one, please and thank you.

Grade: B.

Order Now

Placeholder of amazon -69Place holder  of bn- 56 Poster Placeholder of booksamillion- 31ibooks2 16indiebound

post-featured-image

A Fond Farewell—Series We’re Saying Goodbye to in 2020

A Fond Farewell—Series We’re Saying Goodbye to in 2020

Everything ends eventually, and that is (sadly) true for several Tor series in 2020. This year marks the conclusion of some of our flagship sagas, as well as one epic fantasy that we’re releasing in a four-month sprint (bingebingebinge)! So, if you want to make sure you’re all caught up, here’s a list of everything ending in 2020. But don’t worry, we’ve got plenty of new and ongoing series to take you well into 2020—and beyond!

Image Placeholder of - 34Heart of Black Ice– The Nicci Chronicles –Terry Goodkind 

Taken captive by their enemies, King Grieve, Lila, and Bannon are about to discover the terrifying force that threatens to bring destruction to the Old World. The Norukai, barbarian raiders and slavers, have been gathering an immense fleet among the inhospitably rocky islands that make up their home and are poised to launch their final and most deadly war.

ON SALE NOW!

 

Image Place holder  of - 85Song of the Risen God– The Coven Series – R.A. Salvatore 

The once forgotten Xoconai empire has declared war upon the humans west of the mountains, and only a small band of heroes stand in the way of the God Emperor’s grasp of power. But not all hope is lost. Far away, an ancient tomb is uncovered with the power to stop the onslaught of coming empire and, possibly, reshape the very world itself.

ON SALE NOW!

 

Poster Placeholder of - 70Servant of the Crown– Dragonslayer Trilogy – Duncan M. Hamilton 

A swordsman and a dragon make an unlikely pair as they team up to defeat the Prince Bishop. This trilogy started just a year ago, so if you haven’t gotten hooked yet, now is the time to dive in. Come for the swordplay and magic, stay for the compelling characters searching for meaning in their lives.

ON SALE: 03/10/2020

 

Place holder  of - 90The Poet King– The Harp and Ring Sequence – Ilana C. Myer 

The nation of Tamryllin has a new ruler, who proclaims himself the first Poet King despite not all in court supporting the regime change. Meanwhile, a civil war rages in a distant land, and former Court Poet Lin Amaristoth gathers allies old and new to return to Tamryllin in time to stop the coronation.

ON SALE: 03/24/2020

 

Placeholder of  -7Last Emperox – The Interdependency – John Scalzi 

The collapse of The Flow, the interstellar pathway between the planets of the Interdependency, has accelerated. Entire star systems are becoming cut off from the rest of human civilization. Emperox Grayland II has finally wrested control of her empire from her enemies, but “control” is a slippery thing, and the forces opposing her rule will make a final, desperate push to topple her from her throne.

ON SALE: 04/14/2020

 

Queen – The Sibyl’s War Series  Timothy Zahn

Nicole Hammond was just trying to survive on the streets of Philadelphia, then she and her partner Bungie were abducted by a race of mysterious moth-like aliens and taken to a strange ship called the Fyrantha.

ON SALE: 04/14/2020

 

 

The Cerulean Queen– The Nine Realms Series – Sarah Kozloff 

 The series that starts AND ends in 2020! Perfect for binging, this is an epic fantasy that’s part kick-ass Disney princess and part Game of Thrones. The exiled Princess Cerulia of Weirandale was raised in obscurity. She has no resources, no army, nothing that can help her against her enemies—except their gods.

ON SALE: 04/21/2020

 

Critical Point – The Cas Russell Series – S.L. Huang 

When a demolitions expert targets math-genius mercenary Cas Russell and her friends, the hidden conspiracy behind her past starts to reappear. The past, present, and future collide in a race to save one of her dearest friends.

ON SALE: 04/28/2020

 

 

 The Shadow Commission – The Dark Arts Trilogy – David Mack

In The Shadow Commission we jump forward almost another decade from the events in the previous Dark Arts novel, The Iron Codex. Now it’s November 1963, and Cade and Anja have been living in hiding, training new mages. But when President Kennedy is assassinated, a series of murders whose victims are all magicians forces Cade and Anja to learn how to fight back against the sinister cabal known as the Shadow Commission.

ON SALE: 06/9/2020

 

The Unconquered City – Chronicles of Ghadid – K.A. Doore 

Seven years after the Siege — a time when the hungry dead had risen — elite assassin Illi Basbowen must find the source of the monstrous guul that travel across the dunes. How much can she sacrifice to protect everything she knows from devastation?

ON SALE: 06/16/2020

 

 

In the Kingdom of All Tomorrows – Eirlandia – Stephen R. Lawhead 

Conor mac Ardan is now clan chief of the Darini. Tara’s Hill has become a haven and refuge for all those who were made homeless by the barbarian Scálda. But when a large fleet of the Scalda’s Black Ships arrives, Conor must join Eirlandia’s lords to defeat the monsters. And so begins a final battle to win the soul of a nation.

ON SALE: 07/14/2020

 

The Last Uncharted Sky – The Risen Kingdoms Series – Curtis Craddock 

Isabelle and Jean-Claude undertake an airship expedition to recover a fabled treasure and claim a hitherto undiscovered craton for l’Empire Celeste, but the ship is sabotaged by an enemy agent and Jean-Claude is separated from the expedition. Meanwhile, a royal conspiracy threatens to undo the entire realm.

ON SALE: 08/11/2020

 

Breath by Breath – Step by Step Series – Morgan Llywelyn 

The residents of Sycamore River emerge from nuclear war caused by the Change and its effects on technology. As they try to rebuild their shattered lives, they discover the Change continues and that for some, the air has become lethally toxic.

ON SALE: 08/25/2020

 


The Hellion – Malus Domestica 
S.A. Hunt 

Robin Martine has destroyed witches all across the country, and now makes her way to the deserts of rural Texas where a dangerous gang leader wields an iron fist over his wife and daughter. Robin vows to protect these Latina women from harm, but may be underestimating how powerful Santiago Valenzuela is… and how his shapeshifting powers may pose a threat to everyone Robin holds dear.

ON SALE: 09/15/2020

post-featured-image

Sneak Peek: Otaku by Chris Kluwe

amazons bns booksamillions ibooks2 39 indiebounds

Otaku is the debut novel from former NFL player and tech enthusiast Chris Kluwe, with a story reminiscent of Ready Player One and Ender’s Game.

Ditchtown.

A city of skyscrapers, built atop the drowned bones of old Miami. A prison of steel, filled with unbelievers. A dumping ground for strays, runaways, and malcontents.

Within these towering monoliths, Ashley Akachi is a young woman trying her best to cope with a brother who’s slipping away, a mother who’s already gone, and angry young men who want her put in her place. Ditchtown, however, is not the only world Ash inhabits.

Within Infinite Game, a virtual world requiring physical perfection, Ash is Ashura the Terrible, leader of the Sunjewel Warriors, loved, feared, and watched by millions across the globe. Haptic chambers, known as hapspheres, translate their every move in the real to the digital—and the Sunjewel Warriors’ feats are legendary.

However, Ash is about to stumble upon a deadly conspiracy that will set her worlds crashing together, and in the real world, you only get to die once…

Otaku will be available on March 3, 2020. Please enjoy the following excerpt.


(a Smile like an Open Grave)

“Dragon!”

Wind screams the word with an accompanying burst of gunfire, and my head snaps over to the left. The hulking shape in the center of the room, what I thought might be rockfall or a golemtrap, is slowly unfurling a huge pair of wings, delicate purple veins undulating against the leathery skin. A long neck stretches up into the air, tapered scales running its entire length, and perched atop is the dragon’s death-cold stare. Malevolent red eyes glitter beneath thickly armored brows, and a crown of horns sweeps back from the top of its head. It opens its mouth, revealing two sets of meter-long serrated teeth, and roars, blasting sound at us like a riot suppressor.

“What do we do? What do we do?” Kiro squawks in alarm, his breath labored. It sounds like he’s hyperventilating.

“Stay relaxed. Scatter and ground it.” My voice is calm, but only from years of training. Inside, my heart feels like it’s going to burst through my chest. It’s incredibly rare to encounter a dragon, and the wipe rate against them is close to ninety percent. We’ve only fought one once before, and that was carefully planned out over an entire month. Even then, if it hadn’t been for Brand working miracles in support, we would’ve failed.

Nothing you can do now, except fight your way through. Just another encounter.

I sprint to the right, keeping away from the magma vents and maintaining my distance from the giant wyrm. Adrenaline surges, the old fight or flight instinct kicking into gear, and I flip my assault rifle up, thumbing off the safety. I focus on my sights and loose a chattering series of shots on the run, aiming for the dragon’s wings. Several impact the worm-like veins, but only open small holes—our tech weapons still weakened by the rules of Everdark. Not good. If we don’t keep the beast from getting airborne, we have no chance. We learned that the hard way last time.

“Kiro! Ranged buff, now!”

An orange glow suffuses the air around my tactical rifle, but it’s fitful and weak, like a sputtering fire. I curse under my breath—Kiro isn’t maintaining his forms properly, lessening the effect of the spell, which means I can’t afford to miss. I slide to a halt, snug the stock up to my shoulder and cheek, the movement second nature by now, and take a deep breath. Slowly exhale, pause, then gently squeeze the trigger.

Chattering barks fill the air, and my bullets slam home, tracers filling the air with bright flashes. Three of the veins I aimed for wink out, spurts of purple blood falling to the rocks below. The dragon’s right wing goes limp and ragged, unable to maintain its structural integrity. Short bursts of gunfire from the other side of the room indicate Wind and Slend following my lead, efficient as always, trusting that I can handle my side on my own. After playing for this long together, it’s almost like we can read each other’s minds. The other wing shudders and falls. Kiro cowers near one of the back walls, fumbling at the safety on his gun with one hand while trying to maintain the complicated finger motions for the spell with his other. He’s not doing a great job of accomplishing either. At his feet, his anchoring staff lies forgotten.

The dragon screams in rage, rearing up on two hind legs, thrashing its now-useless wings and sending the mist roiling. A spiked tail comes whipping across the ground, and I vault it with one hand, slapping the pebbled skin to give myself a boost over the top of its mass. Jagged tail spines whistle past my body, but I chose my gap carefully, and I land unscathed on the other side. Suddenly, the beast draws in a huge breath, chest expanding out like a balloon. Scales glow cherry red across the front of its torso.

We have ten seconds before someone gets incinerated. Another fact learned the hard way.

“Regroup at Kiro and get ready to group shield,” I yell, integrated comm channel sending my words to the others. The tail comes slashing back in my direction, and this time I tumble underneath. A spike snags my rifle strap, sending the weapon spinning away across the floor, but I use the change in momentum to roll upright and back to my feet.

Thank goodness the quick release clip worked properly, otherwise I’d be a red smear on the rocks right now.

I dash over to Kiro, huddling fearfully near a vent, the ironsights on his rifle bobbing through a shaky figure eight. He’s panting in sharp gasps, hyperventilating, hindbrain instincts exerting control. I slap him across the face.

“Kiro! Drop your gun and get ready to shield! We’ll support, but you’ve gotta initiate it!”

“I . . . it’s . . . dragon . . .” His rifle drops back against his chest and he kneels for his staff, clutching it like he’s going to be sick.

Wind and Slend run up next to me, breathing slightly heavier than normal. Slend reloads her rifle, grabbing an armor-piercing magazine from her ammo pocket and slotting it home with smooth, economical motions. Wind pulls a belt of grenades out of one of her pouches, like a magician’s trick, and straps them around her waist. She looks away from the dragon and groans, seeing the whimpering form of Kiro huddled on the ground.

“Dammit, Ash, I told you he was gonna be trouble. We’re gonna wipe for sure, and on a dragon, too. What a useless waste of time. This could’ve made us rich.”

“Shut it, Wind. He’ll come through for us. You’ll see.” I grab Kiro’s forearms, trying to get him to look at me. “Kiro. I know this is pretty heavy for your first encounter, but you have to raise a shield. Otherwise, we’re toast. We have about . . .” I quickly glance at the enraged dragon. “. . . three seconds before we’re charcoal. C’mon. I know you can do this. Focus, just like we practiced.”

A moment of silence fills the cavern, the dragon’s steam whistle intake of breath suddenly gone. I look over again, seeing the tiniest wisps of flame starting to leak out of the corners of its mouth, and swear. My hands move, seemingly of their own accord, starting the motions of a barrier, but it’s pointless. I don’t have enough specialization in applied defensive magic to keep us safe if I’m the spell anchor, and Kiro’s staff isn’t attuned to me. Wind sighs dramatically.

“Fucking newbies . . .”

A broad hand brushes me aside, interrupting my cast.

“No. I . . . I can do this. I can.”

Kiro steps in front of us, then slams his staff into the ground. A minor shockwave ripples out, tiny dust waves undulating across the floor. His hands blur into motion, creating the impossibly complex forms required to initiate a max level group shield spell, the now-unsupported staff floating gently above the ground, a solid pillar of brightening green runes crawling along its length.

“Get in support positions!” My voice is halfway between a yell and a cheer.

Good job, Kiro. I knew you could do it.

Wind and Slend take positions to either side. I run behind Kiro, completing the diamond formation, and prepare for impact. Above us, a massive fireball descends.

Kiro finishes the final hand gesture and crosses his wrists in front of him. We all copy him, bracing one foot behind our bodies. Beams of light flash from us to the staff, and then a shimmering blue wall flashes into existence, between us and the descending torrent of flame. A millisecond later, it hits like a crashing tsunami.

Raw force slams into my arms, the sheer power of the dragon’s fire eliciting an involuntary grunt. Straining, I push back against the brutal pressure, keeping my section of the shield firm. My shoulders and core muscles quiver beneath the stress, and I scream out in defiance.

Magic in the Game is reflected by three elements—physical dexterity to create the proper forms; raw strength proportional to the level of the spell being cast; and the force of will to endure the pain for as long as it takes. A max rank shield spell will withstand anything, as long as our flesh doesn’t give way. If it does, if we fail to hold the appropriate form against the requisite burden, then the spell crumples, along with our bodies. In situations where a max rank shield spell is required, that means a wipe.

In front of me, the other three push out as well, muscles bulging. Tears are leaking from the corners of Kiro’s eyes. As the anchor, he’s bearing the brunt of the attack, an onslaught of crushing weight trying to smear him into the ground, and if we weren’t sharing the load, the dragonflame would’ve breached the shield almost instantly. Even the strongest Gamer in the world isn’t strong enough to withstand close to a ton of pressure.

Incandescent heat spreads across the pale blue of our barrier, a half-dome covering our braced forms. Rock melts and flows in a circle around us, but the shield stays intact, keeping us safe in our tiny island. Sweat pours from my brow, but I ignore it. If I didn’t want to push myself, I would’ve stayed in Candyland. Finally, mercifully, the fire ends, the smothering weight falling away.

“Wind, Slend, draw its attention. I’m going for the tail. Kiro, move! Don’t stand in the fire!”

We split apart once more, Kiro narrowly avoiding a magma eruption at his feet by diving out of the way. Hissing superheated rock shoots into the air behind him, a deadly fountain barely missing his leather boots. It cools and solidifies into a new layer on the ground. I shake my head at his narrow escape.

You gotta pay attention to environmentals, Kiro. That’s how most parties wipe.

I notice glowing cracks beneath my feet and sidestep a magma eruption of my own, then turn my attention back to the dragon.

The creature is fully mobile now—twenty tons of murderous muscle atop four dextrous limbs, each equipped with an opposable digit and talons the size of a scimitar. Of course there’s also the prehensile tail covered in needle tipped spines, and the flamethrower system in its throat. Dragons don’t mess around. Murderous red eyes track my movements, singling me out as the most dangerous target.

I dodge a casual swipe from its claws, waiting for Slend and Wind to get into position. Once they distract it, I should have a free run at the tail. Killing a dragon is a matter of taking away its weapons, one at a time, in a very specific order—wings, tail, claws, throat; gradually wearing it down until all threats are neutralized, with no room for error.

Slend bellows at the creature, taunting it to attack her, and it spins in place, surprisingly agile for such a large beast. She waves her axe at it, drawing its attention. To her side, I can see Wind pull the pin on a flashbang from her grenade belt. The flashbang won’t really hurt the dragon, but it’ll confuse it for the bare moment I need to sever the nerves at the base of its tail. My blade slides into my hand naturally as breathing, the worn leather grip comforting in my palm. It’s nothing special, just a fifty centimeter piece of metal designed to cut what I want it to cut, but the sharpened steel is an extension of myself, a familiarity earned from years of practice.

Slend blocks a claw swipe, using her axe to beat the scaled mass of the dragon’s paw to the side. Behind her, Wind cocks her arm back and throws the flashbang, alert for the opening. The dragon smiles like an open grave.

My eyes narrow. Dragons don’t normally . . .

Shit.

“It’s a dev! We’re being featured!”

Glowing golden runes appear on the walls, cutting away the steam and turning the cavern into a massive arena. Fast paced music bursts into the air, heavy on the guitar riffs and choral melodies, a thrumming bass line syncopating like a heartbeat. Another rune, this one electric blue, appears above the dragon’s head—the sigil of whichever dev has taken over the program that normally runs the monster’s reactions. In this case, the twisting lines let me know that it’s Hammer. I grimace. He and I have history, and he’s been itching to take me down.

Of all the top tier devs in Infinite Game, Hammer’s the best, and he hates letting players win. Especially with an audience. Judging by the runes on the walls, there’s at least a million viewers tuning in for the showdown. We must be the first guild to make it this far after the new patch, and I’m sure GameCore has been hyping this on the global ’Net since we started the run. I’ve been running my personal stream, of course, but that’s a drop in the ocean compared to the attention GameCore commands. Ashura vs. Hammer, come one come all, get your tickets at the door. I know without looking that a jade green sigil is floating over my head, the swirling frozen explosion of my guild tag. The SunJewel Warriors.

Fighting devs is always a risky proposition, because they never react like the normally programmed responses in an encounter. It can be a lot of fun in social events, because then you really feel like you’re interacting with living beings, but in the combat events it creates a dangerous unpredictability. Even worse, devs are the ones who design program behaviors, so they know the best way to subvert everything a player’s learned about a specific encounter. The good ones have a nasty habit of studying previous strats the leaderboard groups use, so they’re prepared to counter everything we normally do. The best ones, like Hammer, have an uncanny ability to get inside a non-human skin, and make it do something unexpected.

Lightning quick, Hammer flicks his tail and bats the grenade directly back at Wind, causing it to detonate in front of her face, a move no dragon’s ever pulled before. Stunned, she falls to her knees, hands blindly groping through the air. Ignoring Slend’s taunts, the dragon swipes Wind with an open palm, slamming her furred body into the cavern wall in a cloud of dust and flying rocks, then grinds its taloned hand in a circular motion against the wall. A bloodied pile of meat slowly slides to the floor, the once agile fox now roadkill.

“Fucker! That hurt! Fucking fuck, I hate fighting devs. Watch the tail, Ash.” I hurdle the whipping tail once again, Wind’s high-pitched voice sounding in my head like the voice of a disembodied phantom. Which, essentially, is what she now is.

Dying during an encounter ghosts a player for as long as the encounter persists—able to relay information to teammates, but unable to physically interact with anything. Some games fade the screen to black and mute communications, so the dead player can’t call anything out, but in Infinite Game, the devs figure if you lose somebody in endgame, you’re going to need all the help you can get.

I dodge a crushing stomp from one of the dragon’s back legs and flick my blade out, aiming for the tendon controlling its foot. Metal sinks in deep, but not enough to fully sever the iron-like tissue. It’s enough to injure that foot, though, and Hammer roars in fury. I spend the next several seconds weaving between claws and tail whips, contorting my body through impossible poses—katas learned from Mom long ago, practiced religiously every day, like dryburb prayer sessions. Hammer’s head darts down away from me, adder-quick, and magma erupts in the background. More runes appear, the music increasing in volume.

“Slend, try and get it off me!”

“Can’t, boss. Got et. Fucker’s fast.”

“. . . Shit. What’s Kiro doing?” I backflip over the tail, slicing through scales and nerves in a blurring strike. The last third goes limp, but I’m not close enough to get the upper nerve clusters that control the whole length of the tail. Hammer roars and spins again, trying to impale me with concentrated lances of flame from the dragon’s mouth. I quickly dodge, bobbing and weaving across the rocky floor, molten puddles congealing behind me.

“. . . I’m dead too.” Kiro’s voice is glum. “Was trying to shield Slend, and I forgot to watch the floor. Magma eruption.”

“Fucking newbies,” Wind says, exasperated. “Well, Ash, looks like you get to one vee one a dragon. Something that’s literally impossible. Have fun with that. Oh, and there’s only about five million people watching now, so you’re doubly fucked. Hammer’s gonna get paid.”

“Great,” I groan.

“Why don’t you just bail, Ash?” Kiro asks softly. “You’ll only drop a couple places. It’s a lot safer than trying to take a dev. Besides, there’s no way you can beat a dragon by yourself.”

“The hell I’m running from a fight, Kiro, and the hell I’m letting Mikelas’ group of boardshits win this season,” I snarl. “Not gonna happen. Don’t distract me.”

A petulant sigh is his only response.

In front of me, Hammer rears up, planning to flatten me beneath the dragon’s bulk, and I sprint forward, aiming between its massive hind legs. His shadow starts descending, and I push my muscles even harder, hoping I don’t tear a hamstring. Luckily, my body accedes to my demands, and I dart out from beneath the crushing weight, blade flickering from side to side. This time, I get both tendons cleanly, crippling Hammer’s movement. The dragon’s torso comes crashing down, causing the ground to shake.

Without breaking stride, I plant my sword in the side of Hammer’s tail, and use it to swing myself on top of his armored hindquarters, searching for the weak juncture between plates. A quick thrust and twist, and the rest of the tail goes limp. Hammer bellows, shaking his body, throwing me off, but I convert my fall into a dive and spring upright, spinning to face the angry beast rolling around on the floor. Even more runes pop into existence, the walls now almost completely covered with curving glyphs. The music increases in intensity.

“Just another encounter,” I whisper, heart thudding in my chest in time with the mantra. “Just another encounter.”

Wind lets out a low whistle. “Holy shit, Ash. Not only did you outrun a bodyslam, you turned it into a tail crit. You should’ve been dead, there.”

“‘Aten’t dead yet,’” I mutter, thinking of one of my few heroines. “What’s it look like damage-wise?”

“Closer to even,” Wind responds, her voice rising with excitement. “Mobility’s gone, bleeding heavy from the wings. Flame breath’s still in play, but you should be able to dodge that.” Her voice goes even higher. “No one’s ever soloed a dragon before. Especially not one controlled by a dev. The viewrate is skyrocketing. You pull this off, and we’re rich. Fuck, we’re already rich from the split, even if you wipe.”

“It’s not over,” I say, spinning my blade absentmindedly. “That was the easy part. Hammer wants to get paid, too. He’s gonna back himself into the exit and make me come to him. It’s what I would do.”

As I say the words, Hammer does exactly that, pushing the wounded rear of the dragon into a notch in the cavern walls, talons digging deep furrows in the cooled lava floor. He props his head on his front legs, like a dog resting on a carpet, and stares at me. Waiting. A grin snakes across the crocodile face, revealing long yellow teeth stained with blood, and a pointed tongue licks scaly lips.

“Feeling lonely, Ashura?” The dragon’s voice sounds like crumbling bone, Hammer relishing the moment, playing to the crowd. “It’s only half your progression if you give up now. You’ll still be top three, top five at worst. Save yourself the humiliation of a full wipe. It’s the smart thing to do.”

“And let you knock us out of first? Go back to Candyland, Hammer. That’s more your pace.”

I know how to play to the crowd too. More glyphs burn into existence, news of the encounter viraling across the ’Net like a plague, socials close to crashing under the commentary.

“Besides, when I kill you, we’ll clinch the ladder for this season. Dragons are worth triple, not even counting the dev bonus.”

“When you kill me, Ashura?”

Hammer laughs, long and low. My mind races, trying to think of a viable strategy against a monster twenty times my size. I have a vortex grenade in my inventory, but that’ll kill me just as quickly as Hammer in an enclosed space like this, and we don’t get the win if the entire party’s dead. My rifle’s too far away to reach cleanly, and Hammer will be expecting that. I still have my blade, trusty tool for so long, but—

“Ash! Look out!”

“Don’t distract her, newbie!”

Kiro’s voice is shrill in my head, Wind’s admonition slightly less piercing, but I’m already moving, deeply ingrained instincts slamming my body into motion.

Smoldering orange-yellow cracks appear beneath the back third of the room, centered where I was just standing. Magma vents shriek and hiss, belching more hot rock into the air, and I leap forward, desperately trying to clear the edge of the fractured lines. My feet barely make it out of the danger zone before a full third of the room explodes into lava, massive geysers shooting from the floor. Heat sears my back—nothing damaging, but uncomfortable all the same.

Diving forward, I tumble once, then push off the ground with my right foot and arm, cartwheeling to the left. A taloned hand slams into the space I just vacated, cratering the rock again and again, always a bare instant behind. I manage to get a couple attacks in on Hammer’s paws, but the shallow cuts don’t do much more than irritate him. Finally, I create enough room to back out of the threat space directly in front of the dragon.

“Not bad,” Hammer says conversationally, “but how long can you keep it up? Your body has to be getting tired. Wipe timer’s counting down, too.”

Unfortunately, he’s right. Another lava eruption behind me punctuates his statement. It’s closer than the previous one, lessening the amount of available maneuvering area, and more are on the way. Devs don’t let you dick around in an encounter forever. My sides ache from oxygen debt, my muscles are on fire, and the whole chamber is going to be full of boiling magma pretty soon. I have to end this quickly, but how . . . ?

Hammer yawns, exposing the wet pinkness of the dragon’s throat.

“Looks like I win this one, Ashura. A pity. You’ve been worthy prey.”

That’s when it hits me. The passageway leading in—of course. No one’s tried it before, because it’s a horrible idea, but it makes sense within the Game’s logic. There’re always clues to the encounter, for those who pay attention, and there’s always more than one way to win. Successfully pulling it off, though, is going to require some finesse, and no small amount of luck.

Time to play Jonah. The gummies are gonna love this.

“Slend,” I subvocalize on our private channel. “When the dragon ate you, where were you positioned?”

“Underneath chest. Claws don’t reach. Uses mouth.”

“Perfect. Any tells when it came down?”

“Black eyes. Shark eyes.”

“Got it. Kiro?”

“Yeah?”

“Be quiet. Don’t distract me.”

Another angry huff.

Lava erupts again, bare centimeters from my spine. Time to move. Above and around, the cavern walls are almost pure gold, glyphs covering us in a dome of brilliance, millions upon millions ignoring whatever grips them in the real, instead watching me in the spotlight. The twinge of nerves and adrenaline hitting my stomach is like the purest high in the world, banishing all sensation of pain. If I make this work . . .

I reverse the sword’s grip in my hand, setting the blade back along the length of my forearm, dull side in, chisel point almost touching my elbow. A lone stringed instrument sustains a high note, the entire cavern seeming to hold its breath. My hamstrings and calves tense, muscles coiling, and then, almost unthinkingly, I’m in motion, feet gliding over the rocky ground. My mind falls into the dreamlike state of full combat, at one with my body, reactions coming before my brain even has time to craft a response.

Hammer attacks, swiping with one clawed hand, but he’s not fast enough to do more than ruffle my hair with the wind of its passing, talons brushing past my face scant millimeters away. I continue my sprint, then roll to the side, avoiding a swing from his other hand. That one passes by my feet, slicing a thin layer from the bottom of one boot, a sliver of my sole. I plant my left foot and push myself back upright, running directly toward the copper-green chest of the dragon, momentarily left open by Hammer’s lunging sweeps. Lava bursts behind me, but it’s a distant thunder in my ears. Flame lances blast the ground, cratering explosions nearly lighting me on fire, but the shifting movement pattern I’ve adopted helps me avoid a direct hit.

It’s like running a hundred meter sprint through hell.

The last lance explodes behind me, and I stagger to a halt directly beneath the dragon’s chest, breathing hard. A towering head stares down at me, nearly twenty meters up, swaying back and forth on a supple neck. With a sudden rush, scaly arms slam down behind me, blocking off any retreat. Hammer chuckles.

“Impressive, but now there’s nowhere left to run, is there?”

Blood spattered lips peel back to reveal stained fangs once more.

“I will relish this moment. The mighty Ashura, finally brought low, your reign atop the leaderboards ended. Any last words?”

I smile tiredly, adrenaline high gone, lactic acid burning my legs and arms, cramps threatening to seize my limbs, but my blade steady in my hand.

“Yeah. Eat me, Hammer.”

Double rows of teeth shine in the blinding light of glyphs surrounding us.

“With pleasure.”

A nictating membrane slides over the dragon’s eyes, turning them the dead black of a burnt out viewscreen. I summon up the last of my reserves, willing my body to obey me one last time, fighting through the toxic byproducts of my own muscles.

“Ash!”

Kiro’s voice sounds in my head simultaneously with the dragon’s strike, but I can only focus on one thing right now, and it has to be the descending maw. Time slows, the gaping mouth growing larger and larger in my field of vision. I suck in a deep breath, lungs pressed to bursting against my chest. Right before the rows of teeth seem ready to close on my upper body, I jump, arms extended above me, pushing with every ounce of strength I possess, my own lips pressed tight.

The warm wetness of the dragon’s throat engulfs me, closing around my body like a fleshy glove, pressing in from all directions. I feel teeth snap beneath my feet, but Hammer is too slow. With a snarl, I plunge my sword into his ridged gullet and pull myself deeper into the fetid tunnel.

Hot air swirls around me, the noxious fumes stinging my eyes, but I keep going, stabbing the blade in again and again, kicking my feet for purchase, holding my breath to avoid being poisoned. Acid burns along my exposed flesh, corrosive digestive juices breaking down my skin, but I wall the pain away. I can feel the dragon spasm and shake, Hammer frantically trying to dislodge me from his throat, but I go deeper, worming my way forward. Frozen breath hammers my lungs, carbon dioxide starting to build up to dangerous levels, and finally I feel an opening in front of my outstretched hand. Silently, I thank the hours spent learning the anatomy of creatures that live only in imagination.

Not much time left before you suffocate. Stomach’s in front, which means the heart should be . . . there.

Two quick cuts, my blade’s keen edge slicing an opening in the striated esophagus lining, and I reach through to feel the pulsating wetness of the dragon’s heart, a thickly muscled mass almost as big as a child. Another slash opens it up, hot blood gushing out in torrential spurts. The sword’s handle grows slick in my hands, Hammer’s thrashing death rattles nearly jarring it loose, but the comforting grip doesn’t fail. It never has.

I keep cutting and pushing my way forward, metal sliding through muscle, then fat, then finally skin, oxygen deprivation spots flashing against my eyelids, and suddenly I’m sliding wetly from a slit in the dragon’s belly—a shockingly violent birth.

The brimstone air of the cavern fills my lungs. It’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever tasted. Sobbing, laughing, shuddering, I stagger to my feet and howl victory at the overwhelming glyphic light, brandishing my sword like a talisman, dragon blood streaming down my arms and face, bathing my body in a gory shroud. I am scalded, burnt, not quite whole, yet wholly alive. Magma explodes around me, triumphant horns making the very air shake, and though I can’t hear the roar behind the glyphs, I know that it’s there nonetheless.

Just another encounter.

 

Copyright © 2020 by Chris Kluwe

Pre-Order Your Copy

Image Place holder  of amazon- 50 Poster Placeholder of bn- 5 Placeholder of booksamillion -71 ibooks2 71 indiebound

post-featured-image

The Best or Worst-Timed Title Ever?

The Consuming Fire is close at hand! So we’re revisiting John Scalzi’s 2017 post “The Best or Worst-Timed Title Ever?” on Book 1, The Collapsing Empire.

 

Image Placeholder of - 29Written by John Scalzi

So here in 2017, when you have a book coming out called The Collapsing Empire, you get a lot of rueful smiles and knowing nods and statements like “so, writing non-fiction now, are we?” and “a little on the nose, isn’t it?” and you just have to sort of grin and nod, because, well, yeah, actually the title does seem a bit on the nose. It’s either the best-timed title in the history of science fiction or the worst-timed. I suppose I’ll find out when it goes out into the stores.

The irony is, to the extent that Earth plays a role at all in the development of the book itself, it’s not the modern-day planet that inspired the book, it was the Earth as it was five hundred or so years ago.

The basic concept of The Collapsing Empire is that there’s a far-flung interstellar mercantile empire, whose systems are connected through a feature of the universe called “The Flow”–a sort of extra-dimensional river the courses over standard-issue space-time and lets spaceships essentially float from one planetary system to another at what looks like faster-than-light speeds (it’s more complicated than that, because it’s always more complicated than that, this is science fiction. But that’s the basic idea).

“The Flow” is a natural feature of the universe, and the mechanics of it aren’t particularly well understood. What is well-known are the practical aspects of it—where to get into it, where to get out of it, how long it takes to go from one planetary system to the next. The people in the novel (mostly) know that it works, but not how it works. Which is fine on a day-to-day basis, but it’s really bad for planning for the future.

When I was first kicking around the concept of “The Flow,” I was looking for a way to describe it to myself (if I want you all to understand it, I have to understand it first), and after a couple of weeks of wrestling with it, the metaphor I came up with was: Ocean currents. The oceans of Earth have these immense engines in them, huge rivers of water within water, which cycle around and around, pulling water and air—and ships!—along with them. It was these ocean currents that helped open the North American continent to European exploration, exploitation, and trade—which, depending who you are, was either a good thing or a bad thing, or some combo thereof (but inasmuch as I literally would not be here if it didn’t exist, I’m mostly grateful for).

So, what would have happened to that exploration, exploitation, and trade in an age of sail power if—for some reason not well understood by the humans at the time—those ocean currents just…went away?

Well, a lot of things would have happened. Most of them, I suspect, not especially good (for Europeans, anyway).

And with that I had an understanding of what my future society—one entirely reliant on a feature of the universe it didn’t really understand—would be up against if “The Flow” also just…went away. A lot of things would happen. Most of them not especially good.

For the characters in the book, I mean. For you, the reader? Well. They’re going to be really interesting.

No nods to modern-day Earth required.

Probably.

Order Your Copy

ibooks2 53

Follow John Scalzi on Twitter, on Facebook, and on his blog, Whatever.

post-featured-image

How can we make technology that frees us, rather than enslaves us?

Poster Placeholder of - 16Written by Cory Doctorow

In the Foundation series, Isaac Asimov posited three rules to protect humans from robots. As our own technology advances exponentially every day, how can will we make technology that frees us, rather than enslaving us?

Let us begin by cleaving this problem into two pieces, only one of which I am qualified to address:

  1.  How can we make technology that works well?
  2.  How can we make technology that fails well?

I only know about #2.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics is a thing. Security—like all forms of experimentally derived knowledge—is a process, not a product. Computers with no known flaws are not flawless: their flaws just have not yet been discovered and reported.

Computers have metastasized. Software is eating the world. Your toaster, pacemaker, car, tractor, insulin pump and thermostat are (or soon will be) computers in fancy cases that have the power to inflict enormous pain and harm upon your person and life. It is correct to view software as a nexus of control for solving your problems. When books become digital objects, publishers attempt to solve their problems by controlling the both the code embedded in the ebooks themselves and the devices that can play them back.

But those problems aren’t your problems. The fact that some publishers don’t like the used book market and perceive an opportunity to kill it by using software to keep people from giving away, selling, or lending digital books doesn’t mean you benefit when they attempt it. Their security from used books is your insecurity of not getting to read used books.

What the entertainment companies started, the rest of the world has cottoned onto. Today, a startling variety of technologies use digital countermeasures to control their owners: insulin pumps stop you from reading your coronary telemetry except by manufacturer-authorized doctors with paid-up software licenses. GM stops you from visiting independent mechanics who diagnose your engine with unauthorized tools and repair it with third-party replacement parts. Voting machine vendors stop independent researchers from validating their products.

This only works if you can’t replace the software the manufacturer specifies with software from someone else—say, a competitor of the manufacturer—that gives you back the freedom the software has taken away. That’s because the computer the software is running on is a general purpose computer: that’s the only kind of computer we know how to build, and it can run any program that can be expressed in symbolic language.

A computer that won’t obey you—a DVD player that won’t play an out-of-region disc; a phone that won’t accept apps that come from third-party app stores—isn’t a computer that’s incapable of obeying you. That computer can readily do all the things on the forbidden list. It just refuses to do them.

This is what controlling people with their computers means: designing disobedient computers that view their owners as adversaries, that obfuscate their operations from those owners, that prefer the orders they get from distant third parties to the policies set by the person holding the computer, having paid for it.

It’s hard to keep people from changing the software on computers they own—even software that’s designed to hide from its owner and refuse to shut down can eventually be located and neutralized. If you let skilled adversaries play with a computer whose software is skulking in the operating system’s shadows, the skilled adversary will eventually find its spider hole and flush it out and kill it with extreme prejudice. Then that expert will tell everyone else how to do it with their computers.

So it was that in 1998, the US Congress enacted the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), whose Section 1201 makes it a serious crime to figure out how the computers you own work and tell other people what you’ve learned. Under DMCA 1201, it’s a potential felony (punishable by a 5 year sentence and a $500,000 fine for a first offense) to weaken or bypass a system that restricts access to a copyrighted work.

Every device with software in it has a copyrighted work in it—software is a copyrighted work. Manufacturers who want to force their customers to use their property in ways beneficial to the manufacturer (and not the device’s owner) can configure those devices so that using them in any other way involves tampering with a copyright lock, which makes using your computer in the way you want into a potential felony.

That’s why John Deere tractors are designed so that getting them fixed by non-authorized repair people requires breaking a copyright lock; thus Deere can force farmers to pay $230, plus $130/hour for simple service calls. The farmers are just the start: add a vision-system to a toaster and it can prevent you from using third-party bread, and make disabling the bread-enforcement system into a felony.

As software metastasizes into every category of goods, an entertainment industry law from the late XXth Cen is turning into an existential threat to human liberty: we are being Huxleyed into the Full Orwell.

That’s for starters. But security is a process, not a product. You can only make a device secure by continuously prodding at it, looking for its defects, and repairing them before they are exploited by your adversary.

DMCA 1201 is now the leading reason that security researchers fail to disclose the vulnerabilities they discover. Once a device has a copyright-protecting lock on it, reporting that device’s defects makes you potentially liable to bowel-watering criminal and civil penalties. In 2015, security researchers told the US Copyright Office that they are sitting on potentially lethal bugs in insulin pumps and cars, on bugs in thermostats and voting machines, in entertainment consoles whose unblinking eyes and ever-listening ears witness our most intimate moments.

By providing an incentive to companies to add copyright locks to their systems, we’ve also given them a veto over who can reveal that they have sold us defective and dangerous products. Companies don’t view this as a bug in their digital monopolization strategy: it is a feature.

Isaac Asimov started from the presumption that we’d make positronic brains with a set of fixed characteristic and that this design would be inviolable for millennia, and then wrote several books’ worth of stories about which unchanging rules these positronic brains should follow. He was wrong.

Designing computers to treat their owners as untrustworthy adversaries, unfit to reconfigure them or know their defects, is a far more dangerous proposition than merely having computers with bad software. Asimov was interested in how computers work. He should have been paying attention to how they fail.

The failure mode of prohibiting the owners of computers from changing which programs they run, and of knowing whether those computers are secure, is that those computers are now designed to control their owners, rather than being controlled by them.

This is the key difference between computers that liberate and computers that enslave.

Asimov had three laws. I propose two:

  1.  Computers should obey their owners
  2. It should always be legal to tell the truth about computers and their security

Neither of these laws is without potential for mischief. I could write a hundred stories about how they could go wrong. But the harms of following these rules are far worse than the harms of deliberately setting computers to control the people they are meant to serve.

I charge you to be hard-liners for these rules. If they aren’t calling you unreasonable, a puritan, a fanatic for these rules, you’re not trying hard enough.

The future is riding on it.

Order Your Copy

Poster Placeholder of amazon- 36 Image Placeholder of bn- 77 Image Place holder  of booksamillion- 33 ibooks2 82 indiebound powells

Follow Cory Doctorow on Twitter, on his website, and on the blog Boing Boing.

post-featured-image

The Best or Worst-Timed Title Ever?

Image Place holder  of - 57Written by John Scalzi

So here in 2017, when you have a book coming out called The Collapsing Empire, you get a lot of rueful smiles and knowing nods and statements like “so, writing non-fiction now, are we?” and “a little on the nose, isn’t it?” and you just have to sort of grin and nod, because, well, yeah, actually the title does seem a bit on the nose. It’s either the best-timed title in the history of science fiction or the worst-timed. I suppose I’ll find out when it goes out into the stores.

The irony is, to the extent that Earth plays a role at all in the development of the book itself, it’s not the modern-day planet that inspired the book, it was the Earth as it was five hundred or so years ago.

The basic concept of The Collapsing Empire is that there’s a far-flung interstellar mercantile empire, whose systems are connected through a feature of the universe called “The Flow”–a sort of extra-dimensional river the courses over standard-issue space-time and lets spaceships essentially float from one planetary system to another at what looks like faster-than-light speeds (it’s more complicated than that, because it’s always more complicated than that, this is science fiction. But that’s the basic idea).

“The Flow” is a natural feature of the universe, and the mechanics of it aren’t particularly well understood. What is well-known are the practical aspects of it—where to get into it, where to get out of it, how long it takes to go from one planetary system to the next. The people in the novel (mostly) know that it works, but not how it works. Which is fine on a day-to-day basis, but it’s really bad for planning for the future.

When I was first kicking around the concept of “The Flow,” I was looking for a way to describe it to myself (if I want you all to understand it, I have to understand it first), and after a couple of weeks of wrestling with it, the metaphor I came up with was: Ocean currents. The oceans of Earth have these immense engines in them, huge rivers of water within water, which cycle around and around, pulling water and air—and ships!—along with them. It was these ocean currents that helped open the North American continent to European exploration, exploitation, and trade—which, depending who you are, was either a good thing or a bad thing, or some combo thereof (but inasmuch as I literally would not be here if it didn’t exist, I’m mostly grateful for).

So, what would have happened to that exploration, exploitation, and trade in an age of sail power if—for some reason not well understood by the humans at the time—those ocean currents just…went away?

Well, a lot of things would have happened. Most of them, I suspect, not especially good (for Europeans, anyway).

And with that I had an understanding of what my future society—one entirely reliant on a feature of the universe it didn’t really understand—would be up against if “The Flow” also just…went away. A lot of things would happen. Most of them not especially good.

For the characters in the book, I mean. For you, the reader? Well. They’re going to be really interesting.

No nods to modern-day Earth required.

Probably.

Order Your Copy

ibooks2 92

Follow John Scalzi on Twitter, on Facebook, and on his blog, Whatever.

post-featured-image

Paperback Spotlight: Willful Child by Steven Erikson

Image Place holder  of amazon- 14 Placeholder of bn -97 Poster Placeholder of booksamillion- 57 ibooks2 76 indiebound-1 powells-1

Willful Child by Steven EriksonThese are the voyages of the starship A.S.F. Willful Child. Its ongoing mission: to seek out strange new worlds on which to plant the Terran flag, to subjugate and if necessary obliterate new life-forms, to boldly blow the…

And so we join the not-terribly-bright but exceedingly cock-sure Captain Hadrian Sawback and his motley crew on board the Starship Willful Child for a series of devil-may-care, near-calamitous and downright chaotic adventures through ‘the infinite vastness of interstellar space.’

The New York Times bestselling author of the acclaimed Malazan Book of the Fallen sequence has taken his lifelong passion for Star Trek and transformed it into a smart, inventive, and hugely entertaining spoof on the whole mankind-exploring-space-for-the-good-of-all-species-but-trashing-stuff-with-a-lot-of-high-tech-gadgets-along-the-way, overblown adventure. The result is an SF novel that deftly parodies the genre while also paying fond homage to it.

The paperback edition of Willful Child will become available August 30th. Please enjoy this excerpt.

ONE

Oh, a century or so later … everyone ready? Good.

“SPACE … it’s fucking big.

“These are the voyages of the starship Willful Child. Its ongoing mission: to seek out strange new worlds on which to plant the Terran flag, to subjugate and if necessary obliterate new life-forms, to boldly blow the—”

“Captain?”

Hadrian spun in his chair. “Ah, my first commander, I presume.”

The woman standing before him saluted. “Halley Sin-Dour, sir, reporting for duty.”

“Welcome aboard!”

“Thank you, sir. The ranking bridge officers are awaiting review, sir.”

“Are they now? Excellent.” Hadrian Alan Sawback rose from behind his desk. He smoothed out his uniform.

“Captain? You do not seem to be attired in regulation uniform. The official dress for Terran Space Fleet, captain’s rank—”

“Ah, but whose ship is this, 2IC?”

She blinked. “You command this ASF vessel, sir.”

“Precisely.” Hadrian adjusted the shirt once again. “This is polyester.”

“Excuse me—poly what?”

“Now,” said Hadrian, “do lead onward. To the bridge! We should get these formalities done with. I want to be on our way as soon as possible.”

“Of course, sir,” said Sin-Dour. “I understand. The inaugural voyage of a new ship and a new crew…”

Hadrian swung one leg to clear the back of the chair and then stepped round the desk. “Newly commissioned captain, too. It is indeed a clean slate. Our lives begin today, in fact. Everything else was mere preparation. Today, Sin-Dour, the glory begins.”

“Sir, I was wondering. You were speaking when I entered this, uh, office.”

“Private log.”

She studied him and he in turn studied her.

She was tall, dark-skinned, with straight black hair that he suspected curled for the last dozen centimeters of its considerable length—although that was all bound up in clips and whatnot, in keeping with regulations. Full-bodied and absurdly beautiful, she held herself stoically, her expression reserved and rigidly impersonal. As was the case with Hadrian, this was her first posting off-planet. Fresh, young, and innocent.

While he, of course, weathered her careful examination with the usual aplomb. Hadrian was as tall as she was, fit, handsome, fair-haired, artificially tanned but not to excess, with a winning smile that held barely a hint of lasciviousness.

“Was it a quote, sir?”

“More or less. Remember television?”

“No.”

Another moment of silent regard passed, perhaps somewhat more strained than the previous one, and then she swung round and faced the portal. It opened.

“Captain on the bridge!” she announced in a deep, full-throated voice that rolled out, came back, and landed in Hadrian’s groin. He paused, drew a deep breath, and then stepped onto the bridge. Screens, blinking lights, monitors, toggles, more blinking lights. Swivel seats at various stations and dead centre, on a raised platform, the captain’s chair, facing the main screen.

His ranking bridge officers were arrayed before him in a line facing him. Hands behind his back, Hadrian moved to the beginning of the line to his right.

The officer before him was about a meter and a half in height—which in itself was unusual in this day of optimization—wide-shouldered and slightly bowlegged. His crew cut revealed a skull that was mostly flat above a low, bony forehead. His small, slit eyes, dark brown or perhaps even black, were set deep and fixed straight ahead. The face surrounding them was honey-colored, high-cheeked, and wide. His very thin mustache and spiked beard were both black and perfectly trimmed.

The man spoke. “Lieutenant DeFrank, Buck. Chief engineer and science officer, Guild Number 23167-26, first class, in good standing with the Church of Science.”

“Welcome aboard, Lieutenant,” Hadrian said, nodding. “I understand that you served aboard the AFS Undeniably Exculpable.”

“Yes, sir.”

“That is a Contact-class ship, yes?”

“Yes, sir, it is. Or rather, was. Lost during the Misanthari Debate, Year Eleven, in the White Zone.”

“The risk of ignoring the rules,” Hadrian said.

“Sir?”

“Never park in the White Zone.”

The chief engineer’s brow made a gnarled fist, evincing confusion. Then he said, “I was one of twenty-two survivors, sir.”

Hadrian nodded. “It would have been unusual, don’t you think, had you numbered among the crew members lost.”

“Yes, sir.”

“So, you were lucky, Lieutenant, which I count to be a good thing, especially when it comes to my chief engineer.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I prefer survivors. As I’m sure you do, as well.” He smiled and then added, “What do you know? We already have something in common. Very good.”

Hadrian moved on to the next officer.

The man before him was Varekan. Back in the twentieth century—long before the Pulse and the Gift of the Benefactors—there had been a spate of extraterrestrial kidnappings, conducted by an as-yet-unidentified alien species, in which humans had been transplanted to a number of suitable planets in some kind of seeding program gone awry. The aliens’ strategy had been flawed from the start, as their human-sampling methods inadvertently selected for loners, misfits, the psychologically imbalanced, and a disproportionate number of long-distance truck drivers. The seeding of one planet, Varek-6, had created a quasi-functional human civilization with only modest genetic tweaks to accommodate higher gravity (1.21), frigid climate, and monthlong nights. The psychological profile of the resulting culture was just within acceptable guidelines for the Affiliation.

Physically, the man standing before him was short and wide. He was dressed in standard Varekan garb: tanned hide shirt from some native caribou-like ungulate, a collar of horn teeth, baggy hide leggings, felted boots, and a faded black baseball cap. His Space Fleet bars were marked by beadwork, rather nicely done.

He bore the usual Varekan expression on his broad, flat features: existential angst. Varekans viewed all animation as shameful and embarrassing; considered any displays of emotion as weakness; and held that anything but utter nihilism was a waste of time.

“Lieutenant Galk, combat specialist,” the man said around something in his mouth that bulged one cheek.

Hadrian nodded. “I trust you have already examined the combat command cupola, Lieutenant.”

“No, sir.”

“No?”

“I have utmost confidence in its state-of-the-art mundanity, sir.”

“‘Mundanity’? Is that even a word, Lieutenant?”

“Its entry in Dictionary of Common Varek, sir, runs to thirty pages.”

“Thirty pages?”

“Connotative variations, sir. The Varekan elaborated on Common Terran during their century of isolation, albeit selectively.”

“Ah, right. The Dark Side of the Dictionary.”

“Precisely, sir.”

“Are you well?”

“Under the circumstances, sir.”

“Excellent. Welcome aboard, Lieutenant.”

“If you say so, sir.”

Hadrian moved on to the next officer in line, a woman wearing Affiliation attire with appalling precision, not a crease out of place. Her face was heart-shaped, her eyes oversized and intensely blue, posing a nice contrast to her short, dark brown hair, and porcelain skin. “Ah, Adjutant, we meet again.”

“This surprises you, sir?”

“I’m not one to invoke the Yeager philosophy of droll understatement, Adjutant.” Hadrian raised his voice slightly, to ensure that all on the bridge could hear him. “I am a captain of the Old School. As you will all soon discover. We are about to set out into the infinite vastness of interstellar space. A place of wonder, of risk. A place fraught with the unknown, with potential enemies lurking in every shadow, every gas cloud, every asteroid field or partial accretion of proto-planetary rubble. Hostile planets, hostile aliens. Hostile aliens on hostile planets. And out there, in that unending cavalcade of danger, I intend to enjoy myself. Am I understood, Adjutant?”

The woman’s eyes had widened during his speech, a detail that pleased him. “Sir, forgive me. I spoke out of confusion, since you personally interviewed and then selected me from the available adjutant roster on the Ring.”

“Indeed I did. Now, for the sake of your fellow crew members, do please identify yourself.”

“Adjutant Lorrin Tighe, chief of security, ACP contact liaison in high standing with the Church of Science, rated to serve all Engage-class vessels of the Terran Space Fleet, such as the Willful Child.”

“Very good, Adjutant. I look forward to our working together to ensure ongoing cooperation between Terran Space Fleet and the Affiliation. After all, we’re in this bed together, sweaty tangled sheets and all, aren’t we?”

Those lovely eyes widened even further.

Smiling, Hadrian stepped over to the next officer, and looked down.

The first alien species to join the Affiliation, the Belkri averaged a meter in height during their middle stage—a period of somewhere around fifty years when the Belkri were sociable enough (and small enough) to engage with other species. Round, perched on three legs, and sporting six arms—these arms projecting from the middle and spaced evenly around the torso’s circumference, with each arm bearing six joints and hands with six fingers and three thumbs—the creature before him had tilted its eye cluster—atop the spherical body—upward to meet his gaze. Mouth and speech organs could configure as needed and, for sake of the mostly Terran crew, were now formed just below the eye cluster. In a voice like the squeezing of an overinflated beach ball, the Belkri said, “In Terran tongue, I am named Printlip. Medical doctor, surgeon, rank of commander, chief medical officer rated for the following class of Terran vessels: Contact, Engage, Initiate. Belkri exoassignment Cycle One, Initiate.”

In Printlip’s file, the gender designation was listed as Indeterminate, which, Hadrian now reflected, was probably a blessing, since the alien wore no clothing beyond footwear that resembled Dutch clogs. Its skin was smooth and looked stretched, mauve in color fading to pink at the poles. The eyes—at least a dozen of them and the color of washed-out blood—wavered on their thin stalks like anemones in a tidal pool.

During the Belkri’s speech it had visibly deflated, and upon its conclusion there was the thin, wheezing sound of reinflation.

“Doctor,” said Hadrian, “welcome aboard. Are you satisfied with the configuration of sickbay? Are the raised walkways of sufficient height alongside the examination beds, diagnosis feeds, biotracking sensors? Are the analysis pods set to bilingual display? How is the lighting, floor traction, suction drains, decontamination units? Have you met your medics and nurses?”

“Sir,” Printlip whistled, “sickbay is now fully reconfigured. Raised mobile walkways function as expected and are of sufficient height alongside examination beds, diagnosis feeds, biotracking sensors. Analysis pods are properly set to bilingual displays. Lighting commands responsive. Floor traction optimal. Suction drains functional. Decontamination units within spec range. Medics and nurses are hrrrlelluloop…”

Hadrian studied the deflated, misshapen sack lying on the floor at his feet. “Excellent,” he said, nodding as he moved on.

“Lieutenant Jocelyn Sticks, sir. Navigation, helm, screens.”

“That is a lovely perfume you are wearing, Lieutenant. Do I detect patchouli and frankincense?”

“Uhm, maybe, sir. I’m like, I don’t know.”

He smiled at her, studying her round, pretty face and expressive eyes. “Is the Willful Child your first off-planet assignment, Lieutenant?”

“Yes, sir. Like, it’s all very exciting. You know? Exciting!”

“Indeed it is, Helm, indeed it is.” He wondered, briefly as he stepped to the last officer on deck, if his selecting certain bridge officers on the basis of their file photos was perhaps somewhat careless. But then, the task of ship pilots was hardly taxing. Besides, from his position in the command chair, she would have to twist her upper body round to address him. He was looking forward to that.

The last man snapped a perfect salute and said, “Lieutenant James ‘Jimmy’ Eden, communications. First off-planet posting. Honored to be serving under you, Captain.”

“I’m sure you are. Thank you, Lieutenant. If I recall from your file, you were in the last Terran Olympics, is that correct?”

“Yes, sir! High-g beach volleyball, sir. We came in fourth.”

“Well, I can see that kept you in shape.”

“Indeed sir. I have volunteered for all surface assignments, sir.”

“So I noted. But as I am sure you understand, we are about to receive combat marines, marking the debut of interservice cooperation in Terran Space Fleet. Also, the role of ship-to-surface communications is essential when we have people on the ground, on a potentially hostile planet. Accordingly, I expect you to be planted in your seat at comms during such excursions. And, in keeping with my desire to assure myself of your readiness in such circumstances, I am double-shifting you on the duty roster for the next seventy-two hours.”

“Of course, sir!”

“Now then, best man the phones, eh? We are about to de-lock and get under way.”

“Yes, sir!”

Comms was always a problematic specialty, as no cadet in their right mind would ever want to end up on a starship as little more than a teleoperator. From Eden’s file, Hadrian knew the man had barely scraped into the Academy on intelligence and aptitude tests. But then, an athlete out of the medals didn’t have much to look forward to in the way of future prospects, much less a career. Jimmy Eden counted himself lucky, no doubt. But the likelihood of assigning the overmuscled, gung-ho, bright-eyed, all-too-handsome-in-that-square-jawed-manly-way officer to the glamour of surface missions—and potentially upstaging Hadrian (who intended to lead every one of those missions and to hell with fleet regulations, brick-brained marines, and all the rest) was as remote as finding an advanced civilization of spacefaring insects in a ship’s bilge dump.

Striding to his command chair, Hadrian swung round to face his officers and said, “Welcome to the inaugural voyage of the AFS Willful Child. Our ongoing mission is going to be hairy, fraught, and on occasion insanely dangerous, and when it comes to all of that, I’m your man. I mean to get you through it all—no one dies on my watch. Now, to your stations. Sin-Dour, take the science station. Comms, inform Ring Command we’re ready to de-lock.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Helm, prime thrusters. Prepare for decoupling. We’ll smoke later.”

Buck DeFrank spoke from the engineer station. “Antimatter containment optimal. Surge engines ready, Captain.”

Hadrian sat down in the command chair and faced the forward viewer. “If anything but optimal, Buck, we’d be spacedust, but thank you.”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

“No problem,” Hadrian replied. “It’s all very exciting, isn’t it? Don’t worry, we’ll shake things out soon enough, and I look forward to your panicked cries from engineering level.”

“Panicked cries, sir?”

Jimmy Eden swung round in his seat at comms. “Ring Command acknowledges, Captain. Good to go.”

“De-locking complete,” Helm reported.

Hadrian studied the forward viewer, which presented a colorful wallpaper of a Hawaiian sunset. “Someone turn on the hull cameras, please, Ahead View. Helm, maneuvering thrusters. Take us out.”

Copyright © 2014 by Steven Erikson

Buy Willful Child here:

Image Placeholder of amazon- 56 Image Placeholder of bn- 61 Image Placeholder of booksamillion- 80 ibooks2 41 indiebound powells

post-featured-image

In Which We Greet Death with a Kiss While Wearing Break-bad Mechsuits

Indomitable by W.C. Bauers

Written by W.C. Bauers

From Indomitable:

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right? At best that was a hollowed-out truth. What failed to kill you still exacted its own pound of flesh, and not even sleep offered an escape. The nightmares were definitely getting worse.

Surely there was a gaping hole in her heart that must have turned black by now. Perhaps all that remained of it was a deathly hollow, carved out by the worst kind of flesh eater. Survivor’s guilt.

Death and Mechsuited Marines. Nothing wreaks havoc like them. Indomitable is as much about the one as it is the other. My protagonist, a young Marine named Promise, has a habit of storming into trouble. With the help of a plucky AI assist, she cuts a wide swath. Death’s her second shadow. But the fallout haunts her. And the pain slowly fades.   

Charles Dickens christened death “Our Mutual Friend.” It has certainly been for me. I’ve buried a sister and a daughter, all the grands, and a cousin of mine named Jack. Death reaped each of them at inconvenient times. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye. Absence has sure made a poor bedfellow.

Promise is no stranger to loss either. Her full name suggests as much and, for good or bad, it’s a bit on the nose. Promise. Paen. I’ve caught flak for her name. Flak flak (like the shells thrown by the German Flugabwehrkanone, or anti-aircraft cannon). When I named her I was playing with words, sure. But I also meant to convey something deeper…that life is dualistic…both tragic and hope-filled, like yin and yang. We will all be wounded by something and probably by many somethings in this life. Many someones too. Loss is unavoidable. Death has a habit of being on the nose too. But life is always ahead. Hope is out front, out there. It has to be.  

Promise first came to me at age seventeen. Orphaned. Jaded. Congenial like a rusty bayonet. She was mad at the universe. She enlisted to start over, to slake the pain, and to maybe dish out some cold-served retribution as a mechsuited Marine. But war had other plans. It kept taking the people she loved from her. The pain only grew worse and to continue she had to turn and face it. What Promise didn’t anticipate was that she’d learn, while pivoting toward mortality, to care again and to let the women and men she served with scale her walls. Turns out death’s sting is not something to be shouldered like a rucksack, on a solitary march through life’s tempest. Death is our mutual friend. We’re meant to greet the reaper together.   

Sometimes we write for our lives. For me that’s involved marring my love (truth be told my guilty pleasure) for military fiction and mil-speced battle scenes with a need to draw out the deep waters of my soul. I had to crank the well-wheel to find out what was down there. Up came a traumatized young woman who talked with her deceased mother on a regular basis, a centuries-old, semi-automatic GLOCK named Janie, a suit of interlocking armor that begs for a 3D printed cosplay, and a veritable band and of sisters and brothers as real as any family.

Up came the reaper too. He likes to howl and gnash his teeth. But I’ve seen the fear in his hollow point eyes. He has a spot at the table, over there, where he sulks while I share a meal with friends. The food is good. The company, better. Reap sulks because death doesn’t frighten me so much anymore.

Buy Indomitable from:

Place holder  of amazon- 77 Image Placeholder of bn- 91 Image Placeholder of booksamillion- 26 ibooks2 53 indiebound powells

Don’t forget to follow W.C. Bauers on Twitter!

post-featured-image

The Power of a Great Time Travel Story

The Power of a Great Time Travel Story

ibooks2 9

Time-Travelers-AlmanacWritten by Ann VanderMeer

Fiction is to the grown man what play is to the child; it is there that he changes the atmosphere and tenor of his life. —Robert Louis Stevenson

A few months ago I was interviewed on BBC4 Radio along with Dr. Ronald Mallett, a physicist from the University of Connecticut. Our subject was time travel. Some might find it odd that a fiction editor promoting a new anthology would be appearing on a show with a noted scientist to talk honestly about time travel. But Dr. Mallett isn’t just any scientist. His life was changed completely after encountering The Time Machine by H. G. Wells.

Prior to the interview I had spent several months completely engrossed in the subject. Time travel stories exhibit an astonishing variety. The very conundrum of time travel—Can you actually change the past or future? What happens if you meet yourself in the past?—has resulted in a number of amazing stories. Time machines may be the most popular vehicle for such travel, but hidden doors, mutations, or rips in the space-time continuum can also send travelers hurtling into unexpected moments of history—or into the future. And not all time travelers go willingly.

Then I read Dr. Mallet’s book, Time Traveler: A Scientist’s Personal Mission to Make Time Travel a Reality. When Mallett was ten years old, his father passed away suddenly of a heart attack. Greatly affected, he lost himself in reading, a pastime his father strongly encouraged, and discovered The Time Machine. Motivated by a powerful desire to see his father again, and maybe even prevent his death at the all-too-early age of thirty-three, Mallett dreamed that he could build his own time machine. As he has said, “My fundamental goal in life has always been to build a time machine” (quoted from the YouTube video, “Dr. Mallett Builds a Time Machine”).

As we talked in the interview, it struck me that reading a science fiction story so deeply shaped his future and set him on this journey. Often stories are influenced by real life, but in this case, a story that was over 100 years old not only gave hope to a young boy, but eventually led him to become part of a team of scientists trying to create a real, working time machine.

I was happy to discover that all of Dr. Mallet’s classic favorite time travel stories were in The Time Traveler’s Almanac. And he shared with me that he found many new stories in the anthology that he enjoyed.

Some of the best time travel stories, indeed the best science fiction stories, are about the connections that people make with each other through science. Reaching into the past to better understand history, sending a message or warning to prior generations or just having the opportunity for a do-over. For more than a century, readers have been enthralled by time travel stories. Whether adventurous, cautionary, or thrilling, these imaginative what-if tales transport us to other worlds.

Today, time travel is as familiar a concept to readers as space travel. Such stories are more popular than ever, including such recent bestsellers as Stephen King’s 11/22/63, Charles Yu’s How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, and Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife attest. The resurgence of iconic TV series like “Doctor Who” has fed into this trend. Time travel also has been popular with teens ever since the publication of such classics as Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, extending to the present-day and such popular youth novels as When You Reach Me by Newberry winner Rebecca Stead. Meanwhile, movies like The Terminator, Back to the Future, Looper, Time Bandits, Donnie Darko, and Safety Not Guaranteed have shown the cinematic range of such tales.

The power of a great time travel story is that not only can it change the reader, as we see with Dr. Mallett, it can also change the course of the world.

ibooks2 36

* This post originally appeared in the March 17, 2014 newsletter.

post-featured-image

Time Salvager eBook is Now on Sale for $2.99

nook-1 ebooks.com-1 google play-1 ibooks2 85 kindle-1 kobo-1

Time Salvager by Wesley ChuThe ebook edition of Wesley Chu’s Time Siege is on sale for only $2.99!*

About Time Salvager: In a future when Earth is a toxic, abandoned world and humanity has spread into the outer solar system to survive, the tightly controlled use of time travel holds the key maintaining a fragile existence among the other planets and their moons. James Griffin-Mars is a chronman–a convicted criminal recruited for his unique psychological makeup to undertake the most dangerous job there is: missions into Earth’s past to recover resources and treasure without altering the timeline. Most chronmen never reach old age, and James is reaching his breaking point.

On a final mission that is to secure his retirement, James meets an intriguing woman from a previous century, scientist Elise Kim, who is fated to die during the destruction of an oceanic rig. Against his training and his common sense, James brings her back to the future with him, saving her life, but turning them both into fugitives. Remaining free means losing themselves in the wild and poisonous wastes of Earth, and discovering what hope may yet remain for humanity’s home world.

Buy Time Salvager today:

nook ebooks.com Place holder  of google play- 57 ibooks2 80 kindle kobo

Sale ends July 29th

The owner of this website has made a commitment to accessibility and inclusion, please report any problems that you encounter using the contact form on this website. This site uses the WP ADA Compliance Check plugin to enhance accessibility.