*I was going to write something about a disagreement on methods not on principles and the things that would turn even me, but let me count the ways the last two days have sucked: injury to another member of my family; appointment with cardiologist last minute before surgery; the reroute-fairy getting hold of #1 son on his journey home so that he got home yesterday at 3 am. I have no brain. And I must do something for MGC. There might, or there might not be another post later. Meanwhile there’s the oyster and the promo post – SAH*

There once was an oyster so grand,
he wandered about in the land
but he lost track of days
in a housecleaning craze,
so the Promo Post’s later than planned.

As always, future entries can (and should!) be sent to my email. Happy reading!

Jason Dyck, AKA The Free Range Oyster

Teacher of logical positivism, and also in charge of the sheep dip

Joseph Francis Collins

The Black Hand: Arsonist

A Talent for Chemistry
Mathew Tudor had just earned his PhD and was working a dead end job when The Black Hand approached him about a life altering career change.

A New Career
He was in too deep before he learned that he’d been hired as an arsonist. He’d already sold his soul to The Black Hand and saw no way to get his freedom.

The Future
His training end with a final test—a massive arson fire so dangerous that it might kill him. With luck, skill and determination, he might just survive his time as…

The Black Hand: Arsonist

C.J. Carella

Shadowfall: Las Vegas

HELL COMES TO SIN CITY

It starts slowly. Bizarre murders. Disappearances. Suicides. Sightings of strange creatures in the night. But the strangeness soon snowballs out of control, with people turning insanely violent without warning and sinister cults growing bolder and more dangerous. Nightmares come to life and monsters walk the streets of the city. And all those events are but a prelude to something far worse. Darkness is coming to Las Vegas.

A police detective, a street gang member, an exotic dancer and a visiting tourist cross paths with a bizarre collection of occult troubleshooters trying to prevent the looming disaster. Their actions will determine whether or not Las Vegas will be destroyed by the occult forces gathering around it – and whether or not the rest of the world will follow.

Shadowfall: Las Vegas is set in the same universe as the short story Bad Vibes. It’s a horror-action novel with a dash of humor and film noir sensibilities, with a diverse and compelling cast of characters, Lovecraftian undertones and more than a few zombies.

Mary Catelli

Madeleine and the Mists

Enchanted pools, shadowy dragons, wolves that spring from the mists and vanish into them again, paths that are longer, or shorter, than they should be, given where they went… the Misty Hills were filled with marvels.

Madeleine still left the hills, years ago, to marry against her father’s will. If her husband’s family is less than welcoming, she still is glad she married him, and they have a son, two years old.

But her husband’s overlord has fallen afoul of the king. And all his men fall with him, including her husband.

She sets out, to seek the queen and try to bypass the king — and the Misty Hills.

Some things are not so easily evaded.

Also available from these fine booksellers:

• Barnes & Noble
• iTunes
• Kobo
• Inktera
• Scribd

Sean Golden

Warrior

The War Chronicles I

The Seven Gods are at war. Lirak has become a pawn in their all-consuming conflict. Born of an outsider mother, feared by superstitious villagers, resented by his own brother, Lirak must lead his people into battle against an invading malevolent horde. But first he must control the destructive forces that surge through his mind and body before they devour him.

Callan Primer

Company Daughter

The Children of Astraea Book 1

A girl. A saucepan. A plan to conquer the universe.

Aleta Dinesen doesn’t see the point of hanging around home, not when she can cook a mean paella. But her plan to conquer the universe one meal at a time runs afoul of her overprotective father, commander of a tough mercenary company. And when he puts his foot down, he’s got the firepower to back it up.

Undeterred, Aleta escapes the dreadnaught she calls home one step ahead of the gorgeous, highly disapproving Lieutenant Park, the unlucky young officer tasked with hauling her back. But the universe isn’t the safe place she thought it was. Stranded in a dangerous mining community, she clings to survival by her fingernails. Only by working with someone she can’t stand will she have a chance to escape, proving to everyone that a teenage cook can be the most dangerous force in the universe.

Well, that was fun. Yesterday’s post was one of those I wrote because I had to. It was forced on me by whatever the h*ll it is that makes me write my novels. If I hadn’t written I would become unable to write anything.

I wish whatever the h*ll that is had more sense, because… well, that was fun.

I wrote more than two thousand words so I could carefully explain my reasoning and my motives, and make people understand that this was not what I would PREFER but the only way we can deal with unpleasant reality. Also, that frankly the “let it burn” and “third party” roots have the hallmarks of a false flag operation encouraging them. Which frankly ladies and gents, I DO know about and can smell a mile off. The other side always uses them.

For my pains I was told I’m an “incrementalist” and that I respect authority and that I am mushy and that haven’t I seen that Boehner is the worst thing evah, evah, and the only choice is to start shooting.

That was fun. Have you got it out of your systems, now? Good.

Perhaps now you’ll listen.

When the kids were little Dan and I had a question guaranteed to stop them mid screaming fit (even justified ones against real injustice) “What are you going to gain by this?”

So that is our question for the various options. But first let’s examine the root of the problem and why I think you’re being led on by a false flag operation of posting sneering comments saying “I’m done.”

My main reason for thinking this is that it was in place before this vote. It was in place before the November elections. It has made comments on some blogs places I no longer venture into. It let up a little after November (had to, right?) but by December, it was back.

That’s neither a sane response, nor a response to something that just happened. It’s a campaign, all over, pushing you like cattle in one direction. We’ll examine that direction in a moment.

Look, I’m the first to admit I’d love for the Republicans to get in and to say “Excuse Me, Mr. President, what the hell do you think you’re doing with the executive orders?”

But what good would it do? His ethnicity makes him unimpeacheable. The fact we impeached Clinton makes him unimpeachable. And as we learned with Clinton impeaching a president who has no shame and whose base has no shame does NOT remove him. And yep, the press will paint us as just impeaching democrats not because they’re bottomless pits of corruption, but because we disagree with them.

Now, the latest debacle. It will tell you something even I who am a political junky don’t understand the full mechanics of the senate. BUT from my comments I glean that defeating the damn thing was never on the books. What was on the books was a nuclear option, which would force the dems to decide not to fund DHS, which they couldn’t do.

Our side is afraid of the nuclear option. Yes, it’s stupid. But our side is.

However in the end the horror would have passed, anyway.

And there’s tons of complications to that thing. It’s not like someone brought a bill saying “Do you want to approve Obama’s immigration action?” That’s not how life works. It was embedded in a DHS bill. And if you don’t fund the DHS now, you get to be blamed by Obama when his several setups for an attack pay off.

Take a deep breath and realize what you’re hearing from the press, not even on our side, where we’re influenced by how the mainstream press reports it, is not the full story. Then go investigate. Will you change your mind? I don’t know. I don’t have the time to pour into procedures and details and be sure that they had no other option. BUT if it’s that important to you that you’re considering a third party over it, then go study it. It’s the least you can do before taking such a step (and that’s just a fraction of what it would take to let it burn or go all shooty.) If you don’t do that, consider there’s a good chance you’re being played by the usual way the media reports such things.

Okay, leaving that aside and keeping in mind that the “third party” and “let it burn chorus” was in place before this vote, let’s go back to the basics.

Third party. What do you expect to get by this?

It will split a party that at its best has about 50% of the vote. It has more of the population/values, but that’s not relevant. It’s the vote that matters. And the vote is influenced by rogue IRS agents and by the corrupt media too.

What is more important, HOW is your magical party going to avoid the fate of the Tea Party which got demonized with LIVs in… two years? Tops?

Yeah, the Republican brand sucks. So will any other that is not democrat. Until and unless we take down the media, that’s what we have to work with.

But beyond that – what do you expect to accomplish by saying “I will never vote for a republican again?” or “I’m going third party?”

I know what you think you can accomplish. You think the GOP will fall in line.

WHY WOULD THEY?

What you’re saying is “I’m going to keep the dems in power for the rest of our natural lives.”

You know what the unprincipled (most establishment) GOP hears when you say that? “I’d better cozy up to the left because they’re the future. Let me see what I can concede today. I sure would like to keep my job as the loyal opposition.”

Is that what you want? No? Change your tactics.

And frankly I think that’s what the false flag intended to do on all the prominent conservative blogs, give the squishes in power the idea their own hope and support are the dems. Those comments not only need to not get support, they need to be laughed at.

Have you considered instead starting a group, a campaign, a money collection, and a list (perhaps public) of people who need to be primaried, where their names are added when they step out of line?

Why not? It’s more work, but more effective. As in, compared to screaming you’re leaving, which might accomplish the other side of what you expect.

As for “let it burn”… Guys, we’re not communists. Communists have a (I think in America crazy) faith that if they let it burn what will come back is them, because they are a brutal dictatorship. When you let things burn, everytime in history, what comes back is a brutal dictatorship.

I know what you’re hoping to accomplish there, I do. You want to wipe away fifty years of school indoctrination with a really hard winter.

Guys, I lived through this. I lived through the hard times. You know what people taught to trust and believe in authority do when times are hard? Revolt? You got to be fracking kidding me. They scream for more and more help and for “Someone ought to do something.”

Eventually someone does. Humanity is disastrously prone to the man on the white horse syndrome. Pray we don’t get one here. He’d probably be from the right, yeah, which is where the communists are wrong, but right or left dictators are dictators.

And civil war… It’s something my friend Bill Reader and I often talk about. “Why hasn’t the civil cold war turned hot yet?”

Because we’re emulsified. Because there’s no distinct division. Because the tribal markers are all mixed. Last time I went to vote, I found myself sneering internally that all those women in line were voting dem for sure: middle aged, overweight, wearing colorful clothes, obviously “intellectual” workers (I lived in a college neighborhood.) And then I realized I looked just like them. Because I too am middle aged and an intellectual worker.

Civil war might come. I’m not saying it won’t. I confess in my darker times, I think of the lines in Starship Troopers “And then the veterans had had enough. Coming home from a war they weren’t allowed to win….” And if the US military took over, at least they’d give it back eventually. Almost for sure.

But war is not something that should ever be considered lightly. And I know you imagine it all as shooting government officials. But it wouldn’t be like that. All modern insurrection movements end up doing things like bombing school buses. Now it might be because they’re leftist bastards. Or it might be the logic of the situation.

But if we go that way, the chances are that 90% of the outcomes are that it will burn.

So, am I saying to go along and be good little sheeple?

You guys have to be kidding.

I’m saying we need something like the tea parties (we can even call it the same and tell the mass media to stow it.) We need to demonstrate, remonstrate, primary. People in the establishment GOP need to know we’re not going away but we don’t like them. So they can start behaving, or we’ll pull them down.

That troublesome base the media keeps pitying the GOP for? Yeah, we need to be that.

And we need to be smart about the news and smart about blogs and not accidentally lend weight to the other side by making our squishes think the left is their only hope.

And we need to work. At media, at education, at entertainment. The tide is turning, and pushing the boat in now will work.

Is it less satisfying than the other options. Oh, for sure. I too sometimes just want the grand, simple solution.

But life is never a choice between cake or death. Life is more usually a choice between shit and slightly more shit. In this case the slightly more shit is poisoned too, and leads to dying suffocated in an outhouse. But that doesn’t mean the other choice can be cake and ice cream with sprinkles.

It took them 100 years to get here. 100. We’ve been fighting for 6. I know the individualists fail to organize, but guys, can we manage ten more?

There is hope in time, even if all we can do is move them a little to the right. The GOP RINOS and squishes are by and large older than us. And as for the Dems, the truly malignant ones are OLD. Princess cheekbones is their “young” hope. They can’t dip into the younger generations, because those are fracking crazy identity warriors or very, very dumb. They’re mommy and daddy’s daughters who never questioned anything.

Why is third party or letting it burn such an almighty hurry? My grandmother had a saying, “For the bad life, short times.” War or letting it burn or third party, all mean the dems in power and really bad times. Postponing the evil day and working from inside on changing the gorram GOP and the culture for ten years won’t be pleasant. Many times you’ll wish to beat your head on concrete because it hurts less. But neither of them involves total dem control or mass death.

Ten years. Can we try that?

You see guys, I can’t let it burn. America is my heart and my soul. It burns, I burn. It goes down for the long count and it might be more merciful if I die then.

I have nowhere else to go. I stand here. It’s my last stand.

If it comes to fighting, I’ll fight. If it comes to the end, I’ll hold the idea of America in my heart and try to teach my descendants well.

But it might not have to fall, and might not have to burn.

And all it takes is a little patience, a lot of work, and more work, and more work.

It’s worth a try.

If it doesn’t work, you can always burn it later.  That option is always on the table.

Ask yourself “What do you expect to accomplish with this?” And see if the results are in line with what you want. And if not, think again.

Cromwell for obvious reasons is not one of my heroes. Nonetheless, I find myself quoting him: I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.

Lately there has been a wave of talk about leaving the GOP behind, going third party. It’s seemingly everywhere (except this blog, where the people espousing it are people who always have – hold on to that point, it will be relevant later.)

I know I responded with a twitter rant of someone who got more snippy than I would have because he said it better than I could – not the snippy part, but the point of his rant – to someone who said that two days ago. I am sorry, no offense meant. It’s just that I think you – all of you – are barking up the wrong tree and failing to see both the progress and the problems with your chosen course.

Sure, some people I respect – Chris Muir, Bill Quick, sometimes Bill Whittle – advocate that. I’m going to say they haven’t looked at facts on the ground. Or perhaps it is that they don’t have experience of real revolutions, in real life. They think that once things are in motion “of course” it will go our way.

It only does that in books. Other places we are opening the door to the overwhelming and cataclysmic possibility of disaster.

It might yet come to it that we have to do that, that we have to burn everything to the ground and hope we can rebuild eventually (perhaps centuries from now) in part of our territory, with part of our resources, with the world around us in ruins. But that is a bleak hope.

And it’s not that I don’t see your point, my friends. (I’d call you comrades, hadn’t the word become so deeply tainted.) I do.

This week has been a tough one. And the reason it’s been a tough one is not just the Republicans funding the Obama amnesty nor the “net neutrality” boondoggle where apparently even passing it won’t tell us what’s in it. Oh, no.

To me the really worrisome signs were little things, one of those private. The public one was Carney going to Amazon. It is a bad day my friends, when the most successful enterprise of our days has to hire a government stooge who brings nothing to the table except cronyism. We might have achieved peak fascism. It’s the sort of move I expect from China.

The private ones were finding out that two young ladies I used to mentor as writers back when they were in middle school – two talented, immensely gifted young women and not just in writing – had gone ivy league for, respectively, feminist studies and political “science.”

It is the mark of a society gone far off the tracks that our best and brightest are learning division and manipulation, instead of technology, creativity and the things that keep us going as a society.

And part of this is that they are good students and smart. So one assumes they picked the path that will take them furthest, the path most approved of by society.

And that’s the problem. Hold on to that thought too. I have something to say about it.

So I understand your feelings, when you say “let it all burn, we’ll rebuild.” You know I have those moments too, and this week has been bad, which is why my posts have been anodyne. When I’m circling the black pit I try not to impinge on you.

(In my case there are other reasons for that too, mostly consults for the surgery upcoming, which led me to tell my husband “How about I don’t have the surgery and we risk it?” It will interest you to know he put his foot down and said no. Sigh.)

But then I started looking at things. Really looking.

Yeah, we are in very deep trouble.

The hour is dire, the snow is deep, we’re backed into a small area and our movement is restricted. We don’t have enough food. Clothes have worn thin. (For which you might substitute the last six years have been difficult economically and the foreign situation is getting dire. Oh, and the culture sucks.) It seems like the war will go on forever. Small wonder then that, as in that bleak winter at Valley Forge, people are deserting, taking their kits, going home.

In fact, those might be the sane people, motivated by healthy self interest.

But sometimes, in society, self interest needs to take a longer view. The love we feel for our kids, our grandkids, those young people we care for, cannot blind us to the bigger picture. Or perhaps even the smaller one.

In letting it burn – what do you think will happen? If you give democrats control of the country for another 12? 20? Years, what do you think will happen?

These are people who have been taught America is the source of all problems.

It’s really hard to decide whether the current administration is full of malice or incompetence, because the answer is something else. They’re actually full of good intentions, but they’re full of love for the Earth. Citizens of the world, they call themselves, who have seen nothing of it outside of protected and pampered visits and the indoctrination of our schools.

These are people – in our own field – who write the stories about naturally enlightened and full of compassion and wisdom people in the deepest Africa, villagers with no education who spout perfect SJW points. And they believe this. It is ironic that they never bring that enlightened savage view to bear on our own rural people. No, those are rednecks who drink gin and beat paleontologists to death (Possibly because they despise trinomial designations, who knows.) In fact our least educated rural inhabitant, while having some prejudices, is far more open minded, accepting and less aggressive than what you find in other countries. I know. I grew up elsewhere. The things rural “uneducated” villagers will say in Portugal would make an SJW’s hair stand on end. And THAT’s in a nominally first world country. In Africa, where I traveled in my youth, let’s just say it’s more so.

But these people, educated in our best universities, and largely protected from reality by a tower of “learning” really believe this stuff. They believe that the rest of the world is innocent, and it’s only America and Western civilization that corrupted it.

So what they’re doing is trying in earnest to dismantle western civilization, so that happiness and flowers ensue. Yes, they’re incompetent, and we should give thanks on knees they’re incompetent and that their fantasist view of reality extends to more than their black-and-white view of the world. Otherwise we’d already be done for.

However, I beg you to believe that destruction is far easier than construction. Even deluded and incontinent children can do it. Give them long enough and they’ll not only destroy the US in all relevant senses, but they will destroy the world.

Our current administration has brought us far closer to nuclear war than we’ve been since the Soviet Union collapsed in on its corrupt self. And worse, it will be a multiparty war that will leave at best 1/3 of the world in ruins. And what they’re doing to the new generation, between indoctrination, unemployment and setting the sexes against each other doesn’t bear thinking too deeply about, lest the black pit yawns beneath our feet.

One way or another, we already have two more years of this. And that’s enough to make that snow-laden wind of despair howl around our flimsy tents.

If the world were just the US. If we didn’t have to factor on anything from outside, I’d still say “yeah, let it burn is an option.”

But is it?

Like it or not, the Pax Americana is AMERICANA. If we collapse, the world falls in on itself, and more importantly, we get truly overrun. Because we’re still relatively stable. The 7 million of Obama’s imperial amnesty won’t be but a drop in the bucket.

But, you say, Sarah, a third party can save us.

Right. Right. What third party? Which one? Shall we talk?

The people I see going all “third party” fall into two camps: socons and libertarian purists. (To which you could add a third camp of “yes.”) Oh, there are small l libertarians too. And constitutional convention people. And those who just want Obama impeached.

(Rubs forehead above nose.)

Guys, that’s not one party. That’s about a dozen contradictory movements, when all is said and done, all fighting each other.

I’d love to live in a world where the important choice is between Libertarianism and Socon. But that’s not here, that’s not now.

And if you say that all these coexist in uneasy alliance in the GOP – yeah, they do. But the “third partiers” are PURISTS. They think everyone is with them and it’s their way or the highway.

Now, it’s possible that out of all this a decent third party can coalesce. It’s even likely. A party based on strict constitutionalism and states rights.

By the elections in 16? Don’t make me laugh. By 20? Unlikely. Maybe by fifty if we’re really good. A good part of those who are interested in the third party route are libertarian in fact or feeling and it’s a byword that “the individualists failed to organize.” The Libertarian Party has existed since the seventies, and they managed to drive me out – years ago – and I’m one of your broad church, tolerant types.

This would be worse than the Libertarians (which contain in their ranks a good portion of people who support Occupy Wall Streeters and the tea party and see no contradiction) because it would be several groups who agree on only the barest principles and who are more interested on pounding each other than the enemy, because they do agree on some things, so it’s a fratricidal war.

But let’s suppose by a miracle the country holds together twenty years while the new hope emerges.

And then let’s say you manage to send your bright shining boys and girls to DC. What do you think will happen? I’ll tell you what will happen. What happens to republicans. Their offices will be penetrated, their information corrupted and they’ll become – at best – like the republicans. (At best, because remember what I said above about Libertarians who are with OWSers and the Tea Party and see no contradiction. They could flip on you.)  More so because the dems will have taken over ALL the bureaucracy.

So, how is that different from the GOP?

You know, I read all over the net, mostly in comments (and more on that later) that the GOP had gone spineless and they had funded Obama’s amnesty. So I went and looked at numbers. 1/3 of the GOP flipped. ONE THIRD.

Two thirds held firm. And this on a matter that has emotional appeal to politicians if not to the people on the ground. You see, they are convinced if they vote against it it will drive Latinos away from the GOP. It’s what the media and their corrupted offices tell them. It’s the “smart” opinion, as opposed to all us rubes on the ground.

And two thirds held firm.

You’d think it would be a moment to celebrate. You know, ten years ago half of them or more would have caved. But we’ve been working on taking over the GOP. And it has effects.

It seems to me what we should be doing is celebrating that two thirds held firm, and taking notes of the cavers to primary them.

It’s obvious Boehner is being blackmailed or otherwise manipulated. Good Lord, the left has done that throughout Europe, why would here be any different? Maybe that’s why the crying. He knew he’d have to cave.

So primary him. Remove him. Elect men who will say “publish and be damned.” Get someone in the presidency who AT THE VERY LEAST doesn’t hate the US. I’m not sure about Christie because malignant narcissism is malignant narcissism. But even Jeb Bush (and guys I’m the last person to support him, okay? To be blunt I don’t LIKE him.) would be better than a president who actively hates us (though he might just think he’s a “citizen of the world”.) Particularly if new gains are made in 16 (and this is likely) he would have a legislature at his back, controlling him somewhat.

But let’s not be bleak. We might out-push the establishment GOP (and btw men ten years older than I are or more are what we call RINOS.  It’s a generational thing.  Remember that command and control used to be “scientific” and remember Nixon was a statist) and nominate Walker or Cruz or even Perry. And then we’d have a president who can keep the 1/3 (or less by then) of RINOS in check.

The Winter is cold, and we’re surrounded by enemies, and unfortunately the culture assigns social value to our enemies’ propaganda, which is why they’re capturing our best and brightest and why politicians surrounded by “smart” staff cave.

But like the patriots in the war of independence were saved by the French, several trends are going our way.

Technology is freeing people from the fortress of doom the left and Soviet agit prop built around our vital institutions: there are new ways to get news, new ways to get entertainment, and the homeschooling movement grows by leaps and bounds. Also, their demonstrable and obvious incompetence and the horrors they’re precipitating around the world are starting to break through the wall of glitz the palace eunuchs mainstream media has built around the Low Information Voters.

The future is ours, if we can stay the course.

Yep, the dying liberal establishment is going to throw everything they can at us. It is their only chance. At this point, I must note that the “let’s go third party” comments are far thicker at other conservative/libertarian blogs. Why aren’t they here? Don’t know. I know I banned certain IPs, mainly ones that poured out a stream of Marxist propaganda in more than one voice, if you know what I mean.

A false flag operation? Well, what do you think? Hilary is imploding before their very eyes. Their last hope is to divide us. After all divide and conquer is ALWAYS their way. Is it paranoia to note this is ALWAYS their modus operandi?

They’ve got nothing. Their model, the USSR, collapsed ugly. Their policies are failing. Making conservatives go third party(s) is their ONLY chance.

Are you going to LET them?

For a hundred years, they’ve patiently been working. They took over one of the major parties. They took over education. They took over the mass media and entertainment and the arts. They had a whole wall of coordinated messages and it all imploded. Clinton? Don’t make me laugh. Should they manage to elect her, her disastrous incompetence will be obvious. Bill Clinton only had a patina of glitz because there was no internet, no dissident voices. Now? Pah.

Net Neutrality? Bah. Six months. Like their attempts at gun grabbing being squelched by 3-d printing and horse sense, give our bright boys six months and net neutrality will be circumvented. Built around, built under, ignored.

Their only hope is division in our ranks.

I say we don’t give it to them. I say we keep taking over the GOP. We’ve been at this for what? Optimistically 20 years. Not a fraction of their (at least) 100.

Yeah, we’ll eat live eels sometimes. Like, say, we couldn’t counter the veto on the Keystone pipeline. However the people claiming that as another reason to defect CAN’T be even “I’ll hold my nose and vote republican” people. NONE of the GOP defected on that. Not one. And some democrats defected to the GOP side. It is not a sign to despair, but a sign of hope.

As for those other democrats? The stooges of a long-dead system? Putin’s best buds? Yeah. We’re coming for them too.

And then, once we’ve pulled our ship off the rocks, once we’ve made the dems into a wreck, or alternately into an American party again, THEN we can have a grand fight Libertarians against Socons. I’m looking forward to it! I’ll be seventy or so, and if I run like my family, a little old lady scary beyond all reason.

But right now? Right now people are trying to destroy us, and our civilization and world.

In the end we win, they lose. Reality is on our side. But the “end” can be a long ways away.

The question is, are you going to cave into their games and let them destroy a third of the world and send civilization into the dark for hundreds of years or not?

I vote not. I understand your impulse.

But this is no time to get wobbly. Keep Calm and Keep Taking Over the GOP.

They’re corrupt bastards, but we’re stuck with them, until we pick them off one by one. And we already have our sort in their ranks.

Steady as she goes. We’ll win this.

 

 

 

 

Big Red-Cedar Sanderson

 

Sometimes when you go back and re-read a book you can see the bones. Both my First Reader and I loved anything by Jim Kjelgaard when we were growing up – the wonders of public libraries, that childhoods separated by 20 years could supply the same books to be read and adored. I brought home copies of Big Red and Irish Red from a recent used-bookstore foray, and while I was making a stack on the bed of to-read books, he came in and saw Big Red. His eyes lit up, and he wordlessly snagged it out of the pile. I laughed, talked to him for a minute about the children’s book(s) I’ve been contemplating writing (for my mother and son, which is funny but really works). He went back to the office, I curled up with Agatha Christie and my sore throat (I binge-read when I’m not feeling well) and forgot about it.

In the morning, though, he waved the book at me. “You know, I have remembered why I liked this so much as a boy.”

It turns out that, much like myself, he’d grown up knowing people who lived like the main character in the book and his father do. Odd jobs, hunting, fishing, trapping… it seems an idyllic existence to a child of a certain age and temperament. Both of us, it turned out, had tried our hands at trapping. Him for mink and muskrat, me for ermine and fox in the Alaskan wilderness. We never had much luck, and wet boots from slipping in the creek weren’t exactly fun, but there was a connection to the land we shared.

It seems to be a lost thing, now. Where once you could find folks who didn’t hold with a regular job, who could exist with the work of their two hands and the plenty of the land, now… Now, if you find someone living homeless, it’s likely under a bridge and with drug problems. We neither of us have our rose-colored glasses on when it comes to looking at the past. There were miserable existences that centered around finding enough to eat, and heat in the winter. I well know the effort you can pour into making enough wood for the stove happen, not to mention the garden and hunting for the family’s meat. It’s not easy.

But there’s an allure to it. To going out and getting it yourself, doing what needs to be done, and not worrying about a boss, or regulations, or… One of my favorite books on a similar theme and written in a similar time period is Gene Stratton Porter’s The Harvester. It’s not about farming, but a man who cultivates medicinal herbs and sells them to companies back-East who use them in medicines. By the standards of the day, he makes good money with the delicate niche harvest he cultivates. And the book is a sweet romance, if rather improbable when viewed through modern eyes. I still really love it.

Neither book rings as true now as it did then, for several reasons. We are further from the ages we were then, having grown from child to looking at ‘old’ with wary eyes. We are further from the Land than we were, and at that, I am closer than most, as I will still forage for wild things to eat when practical, not out of need, but because I enjoy it. When I discovered we had wild onions in our yard, for instance, I was overjoyed (I’d never lived where there were wild alliums before). But how many modern Americans would even entertain this as a possibility?

Another thing that has changed is attitudes towards sex. The First Reader remembered the main character to be perhaps 12-14 years old, and was slightly incredulous on re-reading and discovering the lad in the book to be 17. Seventeen, and not in the slightest interested in girls, his world revolved around a dog. It would stretch credibility in a modern novel, yes. The Harvester is about grown adults, who are all tension and blushes over a kiss. Sweet… and so far we have come from that time and place.

But no matter how much distance there is between our fondness then-and-now, the books are still worth reading. I plan to give the Kjelgaard books to my son when we’ve read them, to hopefully inspire another generation. And as we read them, we look back, and remember ourselves as we once were. There is still a lot of value in the old stories, they capture a picture of what once was an ideal. We shouldn’t entirely lose sight of that.

 

I’ve been cleaning the attic at the other house. This means I’ve been stumbling on caches of stuff my kids just put up there to avoid really cleaning. I.e. when I said “clean your room” they’d run upstairs and stuff papers in the spare room. There, all clean. (Sigh.)

It’s a bit like an archeological dig. You find things you never expected, things you expected but didn’t know where there precisely, and then things that make you shake your head and say “you were there all the time.”

What I mean is, you go through life changing, right? I mean I know both my political orientation and my reading interests, not to mention my writing interests have changed drastically since even my early thirties (when I was a Libertarian with a capital L and no compromises. Before that I was more European.)

Even then there were certain facets of continuity. For instance even in my younger, waffling days, I always hated communism for the abomination it was. Having read Gulag Archipelago and been forced to study Marx in all courses in school for three years, I really had no illusions about the emotional/psychological mechanics of communism.

I just sometimes didn’t recognize early stage communism, or the dangers of other authoritarian regimes, particularly anti-communist ones.

But I can look back and think “Wow, I was someone else.” And then…

But we were talking about my kids.

I’ve mentioned here before that younger son found his “vocation” and his interest in school when he was thirteen and we went to a presentation at the natural history museum, and he got REALLY interested in space science.

I never thought he paid any attention before.

But I found an exercise from when he was 8 and he says his favorite things in life are fried chicken (hey, I make good fried chicken), comic books, and the space wing of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

I never noticed his interest before, possibly because we also had to drag him away from the dinosaur wing (he takes after me.)

But it was a moment of recognition, a moment of “oh, there you were all along.”

The same thing with stumbling on a drawing from Kindergarten from Robert with a cat (wearing glasses) named Tom. This was years before he even thought of writing Cat’s Paw.

And weirdly there is the fact I often can’t tell whose exercise book/composition book/fragment of story/picture I’m looking at. And neither can they. Now if you’d asked me, I’d have said that my kids are different as night and day, but apparently the continuity is there.

(Or to quote older son “Well, mom, it’s a kindergartner with an incredible vocabulary who, nonetheless, confuses m and w. We can’t say anything but that he’s yours for sure.”)

What I mean, other than bragging about the boys (semi-bragging. Man, before ten did they creative-spell. And sometimes creative-word) is that there is a continuity to you even when you don’t see it.

It reminded me of talking to my best childhood friend, 4? 5? Years ago (too long. She divorced, my life got crazy. I lost touch. And now I don’t even know how to get in touch with her.)

This was at a time I was fighting agents trying to push me in a literary direction (over a fun direction, I mean.)

And she said “Oh, yeah, I can see how you’d hate that, of course.”

Now, people who knew me later and met the more airs-adopting me thought I wanted to be literary, or even to join academia. But Isabel who knew me in elementary (she was my desk mate) saw the continuity. (The short tale is that literary is easy for me to do, and at some point you’ll do anything to break in. Easy to read and fun is much harder. I’m still working on it, okay?)

So, you know the thing about never forgetting which voice is yours? We all have to put on masks to survive (these days, often political masks. I came to realizing it wasn’t worth it, but to each his situation and judgment) but never forget who you really are.

Because in the end, one way or another, who you really are, what you really love and what you really believe, at the heart of it, have a way of surfacing.

And you’ll never get far running from yourself.

Sorry this is late. I’m now on that stage of rewrite/revision in Through Fire where I don’t fully sleep. Or rather, I sleep to half dreams of wandering around the novel seeing what needs to change. I sleep, but I don’t stop working.

This is actually all good, since the changes I figured out tonight solidify character and strengthen the story, taking away some of the “random happens” bit I didn’t like about the end.

But it means I sleep later, because I keep waking in the middle of the night and going “oh, that.” And “Yeah, that would work better.”

So lately I’ve been thinking – partly through an exchange of emails with a friend – about story and message.

She interpreted my post on “everybody wants to change the world” as calling for just entertainment in stories.

It was and it wasn’t that. It would be the height of hypocrisy for the author of the Darkship series to say there shouldn’t be messages in stories.

But part of it is that I doubt the effectiveness of overt messages in stories. I don’t scruple to say I was raised by Heinlein, nor that I wasn’t the only one. The man might have had no biological kids, but he has sons and daughters all over the world, including me.

But then we have to look at how he raised me. Remember I came at Heinlein through (mostly) the later books because most of the Juveniles (Door Into Summer and Have Spacesuit Will Travel excepted) were either not translated to Portuguese or no longer available when I came along.

And yet, what I took from his books was not the obvious messages: “Though art God” or the bedhopping or multiple marriages as the natural way to live. (Oh, for a while, but that was the spirit of the times, too, being the late seventies.) What I took from the books were not so much the messages as “the way to be.”

By creating characters that were tough, questioning, strong, and, most of all, useful, he made me want to be that way. I took as my model (being touched in the upper works) the broken caryatid, not just for characters but for what a human being should be, lifting whatever the burden without complaining.

Now, it takes a certain type of personality to teach at that level. I’ve seen it in some teachers, too, who, regardless of whether they teach you history or English, really give you a model you aspire to being.

The left, being daft, thinks this has to do with the character/teacher looking like you. They think only black people can model to black children. This is part of their insanity with “there must be so many characters of tan per book.” And also with promoting incompetent teachers to positions of power, because they have a certain ancestry or skin color.

But it doesn’t work that way. It’s more subtle. It’s more about being who you are in such a strong and convincing way and making the characteristics you have or approve of so admirable that people want to follow them.

Which is what Heinlein did.

I’m not going to say his other messages failed completely. Red Planet when I got my hands on it, in my late twenties, convinced me of the wrongness of gun control. And If This Goes On still gets me to shiver a little at the idea of populist theocracy.

What I’m saying, though, is that the most effective messages weren’t openly delivered and might not have been consciously delivered.

He changed an entire generation and not just in pushing them towards science and space (which I’m sure was deliberate) but in making them men and women who rationally examine the world and don’t blindly trust government.

Which incidentally is why the feminists, being dependent on people “group thinking” and behaving like widgets hate him and try to steer people away from him. They’re not even sure what causes that effect, but they know they don’t like it.

Now, did he know he was delivering that message? Probably. He was a man of strong principles and ideas of what was morality and what moral behavior meant.

But those weren’t the main theme/messages of his books, and they weren’t openly delivered.

And they’d never – and this is important – have made it to my (or other Heinlein’s Children’s subconscious) if they’d been the whole of the package.

Yeah, I know he gave mini lectures in the middle of his books, but they were done in voice for the character, and they made sense in the book. And they didn’t take over the book to the point of making the characters puppets.

Instead, the mini-lectures, usually wrapped around some practical event or occasion, were an integral part of the character’s personality and learning.

So, they were absorbed because we already liked the characters.

Now, instead, if you subordinate everything to the message and just yell at me from the beginning that this is so, and I should accept it, and break your entire universe to carry water for that macro-message, you’ll never succeed, because people don’t work that way. Particularly if you’re insulting some of them for characteristics they can’t do anything about – like being male, or white for instance – and telling them they’re guilty of crimes they never committed. The book will get closed, unread, and your message will not make it anywhere.

So, your overt attempts to change the world will fail.

It’s like the problem of intercontinental ballistic missiles. I understand even if Iran should build the bomb, it will be pretty hard (though not impossible) to hit us because their delivery methods are not anywhere near there (unless they buy from Russia.)

You can have the bomb but not the missile itself that will deliver the bomb.

So, while I find the bombs of the left weak sauce, being not so much speaking truth to power as power speaking at you in the same voice it has spoken (to me and most of the generations after mine, even in the US) since kindergarten, so that they are at best a wet firecracker, if you don’t deliver them in the compelling medium of a novel, through characters so admirable people want to imitate them, you’re not going to do anything. The bomb is going to explode amid your circle and get you the amen chorus, and that’s it.

But perfect that delivery, and even the incidental payload, the things that road along and you didn’t know, might make a big difference in the life of many people you don’t even know.

So, do we all write to change the world? I don’t know. I suspect not explicitly. Oh, sure, we all put some overt message in our stories: the ones at the center of our being, sometimes.

But mostly I think writers – people who think in narrative – write to make sense of the world. (It’s not the first time I absorb/deal with a major life shock through a series of stories, and I know my husband dealt with his brother’s death through a year of short stories.)

Reality is chaotic and often events seem not to have a cause. We write to unite the raveled threads of cause and effect so they make sense to us.

And we write science fiction to warn or enjoy about how those causes and effects, projected to the future, can change the course of history. This is important, because it makes people more than puppets of events – it gives them the rational power to think through things (at least properly done) and might influence current events (like turning me against gun control.)

But it is the sense we make of the world, the compelling logic of our story that will change things: not the sandwich board, not the soap box, and certainly not running around the world trying to shut down everyone who disagrees with us and ensure the field is an echo of our ideas.

We could do all that, and, without a compelling vision, a compelling logic and an absorbing story it would be for nothing.

People get preached at all the time, from church to commercials. They’ve developed high levels of anti-message immunity.

Which is why messages must come with stories and it must make them follow both the logic and the feelings of the author.

To change the culture and the world.

Wars and Rumors of Wars – David Pascoe

The world – and I say this with qualified reservation – seems to be going to hell. I mean, I’m not sure it’s time to strip down and wear a sandwich board reading, “the END is NIGH,” but there’s some badness going on, pretty much across the planet.

A prominent leader in popular opposition to everybody’s second favorite Vlad (I mean, how can you hate a tsar, premier, president who hunts tigers shirtless? Except for that whole Ukraine thing. And the Georgia thing. Also, the whole NKVD thing…) was shot and killed just outside the Kremlin, Saturday. Vlad said the murder had all the marking of a contract hit, and then cast significant looks at other prominent opposition leaders.

ISIS/L keeps beheading people, in Libya, this time (which suggests a name change could be in the offing), though some folks have gotten a bit tired of it. And not just Egypt, but Assyrian Christians in Iraq and in Syria are fighting back against the barbarian horde. More power to ’em.

Bibi Netanyahu is on his way here to give a speech to Congress on why, exactly, a nuclear powered Iran is, just maybe, not the greatest neighbor Israel could have in the next, oh, forever. The White House thinks that’s just fascist talk, man, and couldn’t they just chill out a bit so this super nifty agreement thing can get hammered out without the buzz vibe getting harshed? I am a bit curious why El Presidente Supremo is so desperate to secure a favorable relationship with one of our most ardent adversaries in the Middle East. Especially when the White House has such a complicated position on just what’s going on in that part of the world.

Speaking of that wretched hive of scum and villainy, the present regime appears to have pushed the “independent” FCC into adopting a controversial body of regulation to ensure Net Neutrality, a term that seems to mean different things to different people. To some, nothing much is going to come of this. To them, I would ask why, then, we needed a vote along party-lines to emplace regulations to ensure nothing happens. To others, those at the FCC have just perjured their immortal souls for temporal gain, and we’re the ones who will ultimately pay for it.

The thing is, none of this is exactly new. The barbarian hordes have stormed the gates of civilization time and again, while Nero fiddles and Rome burns (don’t think too hard about the non-connection, or any questionable historicity. It’s almost 0300, and my cortex isn’t doing the heavy lifting anymore). History isn’t repeating itself, but it sure seems to be rhyming. That said, is there a Charles Martel to hammer this chaotic new century into something lasting? Who knows; that’s what makes living in the present so much fun. For a given value thereof.

What we do have is hope. And a whole lot of it. For all the regulators tighten their grasp (the more mumble-systems will slip through their fingers?) they really don’t understand what they’re doing, or just what it is they’re fiddling with. And every time someone in power has attempted to quash free speech and enterprise with legal (and sometimes violent) action, us clever apes go around ’em. There was a brief discussion in the comments just the other day. I expect something interesting would happen almost immediately. Of course, that’s assuming the courts don’t toss out the new regulations. Again.

And then there’s this, wherein there are links galore to people doing fascinating things with easily obtainable devices. Devices that aren’t regulated, at least not yet (and what kind of intrusion would be required to regulate hydraulic presses and lathes?). There’s enough knowledge and opportunity out there to outlast several lifetimes (though I have hopes), and the best thing we can do to fight the would-be oppressors is use it. Grab hold with both hands, as the ride’s just going to get more exciting.

*Yes, two blasts from the past today.  I have a head cold and I’m trying to finish a book.  Right now, though, I’m going to go back to bed and sleep a bit more.  It’s just a head cold, but it’s making me feel miserable.*

There’s this disturbing trend I’ve observed recently – okay, the last thirty years.

It’s part of what I was talking about yesterday, in a way. For a book to be considered serious, or introspective or relevant, it has to attack the past or western culture or civilization or tech or… humanity.

Not that there is anything wrong with attacking these, mind, to an extent. And they used to be shockers and a very good way to attract attention immediately. And I’m not saying the mindlessly chauvinistic “our people, right or wrong” was much better. For instance, the cowboy-and-Indian trope became really tired after a while.

I’m just saying that these days, by default what you hear is against-whatever-the-dominant-culture is.

I first realized this when I was studying for my final exam in American culture in college. The book changed opinions and contradicted itself but it was ALWAYS against the winners and against whatever ended up being the status quo. So, the book was against the North of the US, because the North… won. Even though it had before been against slavery. It was very much against modern US and raged against… embalming practices for three or four pages. (Because they divorce us from the Earth. Just SILLY stuff.)

And then I started noting this trend in everything, including fiction. Think about it. Who is to blame in any drama: the US; the successful; the British; the Europeans; the… humans.

Years ago when Discovery Channel put out its “future evolution” series, my kids and I were glued to the screen. We’re the family for whom the Denver Museum of Nature And Science is home away from home, the place we will visit if we have an afternoon free, the place where we have watched lectures and movies. I refer to it as “molesting dinos” and it’s usually my way to celebrate finishing a book.

So we were glued to the TV. Except that after the beginning, I realized the way it was going, and I started predicting it. Instead of taking a “what might humans become” the people who wrote this went down a path where first humans and then everything VAGUELY related to humans became successively extinct, till the only warm-blooded survivor was a bird, and then that too became extinct. In the end, tree-dwelling SQUIDS inherited the Earth.

Yes, you DID read that right. Tree. Dwelling. SQUIDS.

The contortions were capricious and often absurd, but you could predict where it was going.

It’s been a while since we had cable, but I understand there was a very popular series called “Life After US” about what would happen to the works of humans if we were suddenly extinct. And people watched it, fascinated and – from the tones of posts about it – a little wistful.

This is when you must step back and go “What is wrong with us?” “Is this a sickness of the soul?”

The answer? Yes and no.

Part of it, of course, is wanting to shock, wanting to revolutionize, wanting to be innovative… in safe ways – in (dare we say it?) politically correct ways. It’s easy and approved of to attack: males, America, western civ, humans.

People who select works at publishers and studios and all that are often liberal arts graduates and they come from this curious world where they still think the establishment is circa 1950s and that they’re telling something new and wonderful.

Part of it is, of course, that we do see problems in our own culture, in our own society, in our own species. Of course we do. We are an introspective culture. We examine our consciences, we find ourselves lacking, we try to improve. This is, in general a good thing – though perhaps a little perspective is also in order.

Part of it is politeness/sensitivity to other cultures, mingled with the consciousness our ancestors were often wrong. We’ve been taught the crimes of colonizers in various lands and most of those colonizers (and colonized, at least for most of us) were our ancestors. We’re conscious we’re big and others are smaller. It’s a peculiar form of noblesse oblige. We don’t want to trample others by pointing out faults in other cultures or other species. I understand this, because I learned to drive in my thirties and lived in a mountain town with lots of foot traffic downtown. I was excruciatingly careful driving through there, because I could crush a pedestrian and not notice. This is why we tend to turn our flagellation upon ourselves.

And part of it is sicker/darker. I notice this tendency every time we discuss a great figure of the past, from George Washington to Heinlein – as different as they are. I call it “counting coup.” George Washington? Well, he was slave owner. And he had wooden teeth. And Lincoln? Well, he was very ill, and besides, he was probably gay and in the closet. Heinlein? Despite all his efforts at including – for his time – minorities and giving women starring roles, he must have been closet racist and sexist, donchaknow? Because he doesn’t fit OUR superior notions of inclusiveness.

What is going on here – besides tearing at our own past, and thereby continuing the self-flagellation – is being able to prove we are “superior” to these high achievers. We might do nothing and achieve nothing, but we are superior beings because we’re more moral than they are.
Individually, none of these trends is really bad – or at least not for those of us who grew up with the opposite tradition.

Oh, the constant and predictable chest-beating becomes boring. At least it does for me. Maybe it doesn’t for other people?

But think of (grin) the children. They have no perspective. All they hear is how their country, their culture, their SPECIES is evil. How things would be so much better without us… How things would – ultimately – be much better if… THEY hadn’t been born.

It’s not healthy. It’s vaguely disgusting. And the best it can do is engender the MOTHER of all backlashes and bring about a cultural chauvinism the likes of which you’ve never seen. The worse… well, one of the other cultures we don’t criticize because they’re small and we’re big becomes the norm.

And before you cheer them on, let me put this in perspective: Western civ has committed crimes. ALL human cultures throughout history have committed crimes. Slavery? Since the dawn of time. Exploitation? Since the dawn of time. Murder? War? Genocide? Yep, and yep, and yep. And many of those cultures STILL do all of those things and don’t feel in the slightest bit guilty, mostly because we handily and frequently blame OURSELVES for their behavior and they get our books, our TV series and our movies.

Such as it is, the West has brought the greatest freedom, prosperity and security to the greatest population.

Yes, there were crimes committed, but a lot of them were the result of a clash of world views – tribalism met the state. Look, it’s not that Native Americans or Africans lived in a state of innocence and harmony with nature. If you believe that, you need to study history and put down Jean Jacques Rosseau. And get out of your mom’s basement. And take the Star Trek posters off the wall. And the Avatar poster, too, while you’re at it.

To the extent the native were innocent and helpless, it was because of their mental furniture. What gave colonizers the edge was not their weapons or civilization (Oh, come on, back then, there wasn’t that much of a distance.) It was their mental furniture. To wit, they had overcome tribalism and organized on a large scale. Most of the colonized (excepting some small empires) hadn’t. So they would attack in ways that worked in tribal warfare: exterminate a village or an outpost. And the reaction of the colonizers (who by the way also didn’t understand the difference in mental furniture and therefore thought this made the native peoples’ “bestial” or “evil) was to exterminate all of a tribe or a federation of tribes. And it worked because westerners were united as a MUCH larger group. Which made them stronger. Western civilization started overcoming tribalism with the Romans. That was the real innovation.

If you think that we’re rich because of those acts, you must study economics. It doesn’t work that way. If anything those acts made all of us worse off. We’re way past any wealth we could plunder off others. We’ve created wealth. The whole world lives better than it did five hundred years ago.

And if you’re going to tell me the fact that all humans are flawed proves that we’re a bad species, you’ll have to tell me: As opposed to what? Dolphins are serial rapists. Chimps commit murder. Rats… Every species we examine has our sins, but none of our redeeming qualities.

Heinlein said it was important to be FOR humanity because we’re human. Beavers might be admirable, but we’re not beavers. He was right. But beyond all that, we’re the only species that tries self-perfecting. We exist – as Pratchett said – at the place where rising ape meets falling angel, but as far as I know, we’re the only species reaching upward. (Of course, we wouldn’t know if there are others and again, we have to assume we are it. The others have flaws too.)

We are part of the world and in it. To love the other animals of the Earth – or the hypothetical alien – and hate us is strange. Are we not animals? Are we not of the Earth? And who the heck can compete with sentients who exist only in the story teller’s imagination.

By all means, let’s protect the weaker. Let’s shelter the little. But let’s not beat ourselves because we’re bigger and stronger. Let’s USE our powers for good instead.

Am I saying that you shouldn’t tell these stories then?

No, I’m not. I would never repress anyone’s right to create, or anyone’s opinion. But I’m asking you to think. I’m asking you to pause and go “The west is bad… as opposed to? Humans are bad… as opposed to?” And tell your kids that, ask them those questions.

And then, perhaps, every now and then, try to imagine a story from the contrary view point. Just to wake things up. And to keep others thinking.

 

*Below is the Saturday book promo post from the peripatetic mollusc.  Meanwhile — this is Sarah! — I posted about Nimoy’s death yesterday at Otherwhere Gazette.  Link here, if you’re curious.- SAH*

Prepare yourselves, for the end is nigh! Well, the end of the month anyway. To celebrate. we have lovely books for you! New releases from our AtH community, now with extra privilege and no trigger warnings! Please, if you enjoy the books you find here, make sure you leave reviews and recommend them to others. If not, constructive criticism in a private channel is generally appreciated, so our friends and virtual neighbors can better hone their craft. A quick note for prospective submitters: all I need is a link to the book on each outlet it’s available from (e.g. Amazon, Kobo, etc.) and I’ll get everything I need there. A little thank you note heaping praise and adulation on me is unfailingly appreciated, of course. So are large sums of cash, but you should probably send those to Our Beloved Hostess instead; I’d just spend them on shell wax… As always, future entries can (and should!) be sent to my email. Happy reading!

Jason Dyck, AKA The Free Range Oyster

Chief Assistant to the Assistant Chief

Peter Grant

Stand Against The Storm

The Maxwell Saga Book 4

When duty and honor collide…

An emergency recall to his ship short-circuits Senior Lieutenant Steve Maxwell’s plan to get rid of a long-standing personal burden. Instead, he finds himself dumped into a war zone on a peacekeeping mission hundreds of light years away. He doesn’t have enough people, equipment or information. Left in the dark, he has to rely on uncertain allies with their own agenda.

Even worse, it’s not the Fleet’s war, so he’s not allowed to shoot back – much less shoot first. Neither side is observing civilized rules of engagement. The bodies are piling up.

Steve’s been ordered not to act… but there are times when cold, hard reality trumps orders.

Vilhelm Bergsøe & Dwight R. Decker

Flying Fish “Prometheus”

A Fantasy of the Future

A long-lost story of 19th Century science fiction in the Jules Verne style, FLYING FISH “PROMETHEUS” is a humorous adventure set in a future that never was. Though written in 1869 and published in Denmark in 1870, the story was first translated into English in 2010 for publication in a steampunk anthology. It is now presented here with an accompanying historical essay as well as translator’s notes giving the story’s background for the modern reader. It’s a long way from Denmark to Panama, and anything can happen on a flight aboard an airship modelled after a flying fish, from utter disaster to a touch of romance! Even after 145 years, Vilhelm Bergsøe’s flight of fancy is still fresh and funny!

Laura Montgomery

Manx Prize

In the second half of the twenty-first century, when Charlotte Fisher was just thirteen, orbital debris took its first large-scale human casualties from an orbiting tourist habitat. Haunted by visions of destruction and her father’s anguish, as a young engineer Charlotte follows in his footsteps and determines to win a prize offered by a consortium of satellite and orbitat operators for the first successful de-orbiting of space junk. Her employer backs these efforts until the reentry of a piece of debris kills two people, and she and her team are spun off to shield the parent company from liability. With limited resources, a finite budget and the unwanted gift of a lawyer who, regardless of his appeal, she doesn’t need, she must face a competitor who cheats, a collusive regulator, and the temptations dangled by the strange and alluring friends of a powerful seastead.

Henry Vogel

Scout’s Honor

A Planetary Romance

When Terran Scout David Rice climbs from the wreckage of his starship’s escape pod, he finds himself transported from the space age to the steam age in the blink of an eye. Drawn to the sounds of fighting, David immediately throws himself into a desperate battle against overwhelming odds to save the life of a beautiful young princess.

Now, marooned without hope of rescue, David is swept into a world of steam-powered airships, treacherous pirates, brutal savages, bloodthirsty monsters, royal machinations, and plots within plots, where matters of strength and honor are most often settled with the clash of swords. As he struggles to learn the strange ways of this new world and who he can trust, one thing becomes clear to him: he must put aside his growing feelings for Her Highness and do everything in his power to return her to her family, even though this means giving her up to the prince she’s pledged to marry.

Told in a relentlessly fast-paced and breathless style, SCOUT’S HONOR is an exciting modern homage to the classic tales of planetary romance made famous by writers such as Edgar Rice Burroughs and Leigh Brackett, as well as the cliffhanger-driven energy of the early science fiction movie serials. If you like your heroes unabashedly heroic, your heroines feisty and true, and your plots filled with dangers, twists, turns, and double-crosses upon triple-crosses, you’ll enjoy SCOUT’S HONOR.

Scout’s Oath

A Planetary Romance

When duty and honor collide…

After crash-landing on the lost colony world of Aashla, Terran Scout David Rice rescued Princess Callan, kidnapped heir to the throne of Mordan. In fighting his way across half the planet to see her home safely, he won her love, and then her hand in marriage. Now David and Callan want nothing more than to settled down and live happily ever after…

But a man can’t do what David has done without making powerful enemies, and his enemies want revenge!

Told in the form of a lead-in novella and a novel, SCOUT’S OATH opens with the story of a young thief who risks his life to bring David and Callan a warning that starts them on a desperate race against time to find and rescue her parents. Then, to stop the outbreak of planet-wide war, David must surrender to King Rat, ruler of the tunnels beneath the city-state of Beloren, and it falls to Callan to pull together a band of unlikely heroes and organize his rescue. Can an old pirate, a young thief, a crusty doctor, and a daring airship pilot help Callan do the impossible?

SCOUT’S OATH is an exciting modern homage to the classic tales of planetary romance made famous by writers such as Edgar Rice Burroughs and Leigh Brackett. If you like your heroes unabashedly heroic, your heroines feisty and true, and your plots filled with dangers and twists at every turn, you’ll enjoy SCOUT’S OATH.