Book Promo
If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion.– SAH
BY ROBERT J. HORTON, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: Three Riders (Annotated): a pulp western omnibus
iktaPOP Media proudly presents three classic westerns by pulp author Robert J. Horton!
Rider o’ the Stars
When he was hired on to the Diamond H Ranch, the stranger gave his name as Dane. After seeing his skill with rope and gun folks started calling him “Lightning Dane”.
Was he a gunman? An outlaw? Why was he here? Nobody knew except Dane himself. And he wasn’t talking.
The Prairie Shrine
Annalee Bronson and her mother left everything behind when her father died, setting out to homestead in the prairielands of Montana. But being from the east, they simply don’t have the experience to cope with all the circumstances they find themselves caught up in.
Luckily, prairie poet and loafer Andy Sawtelle and mysterious gunman Silent Scott are more than willing to lend a helping hand.
The Man of the Desert
It starts with a stampede, and never lets up from there!
- This iktaPOP Media omnibus includes introductions by indie editor and author D. Jason Fleming putting the book into historical and genre context.
FROM L. DOUGLAS GARRETT: Remember How It Began (Remember The Trade Book 3)
Remember How It Began is the first volume in a pair of linked stories. It details the opening missions of the most complex operation The Project had ever attempted, how they did it and the price the agents paid along the way.
The Project had been in The Trade for five years, as mercenaries and spies fighting in the sideshows and forgotten theatres of the Cold War. Things changed over those years. Opponents changed. Circumstances changed. And the lives of the intelligence agents, the “Disposable People” of The Project, had changed.
Gary Keith had become an essential part of The Project. He was one of the linchpin men around whom The Project built teams of agents and operators. When a dirty job had to get done right, he got the call. The problem was, he was so good at being bad because he’d been David Cox: shameless, ruthless and entirely willing to be deadly and manipulative to get the job done.
FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Law of Magical Contagion
The capper to Siobhan Miller’s terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day was a dog, tied to the stop sign. She hates dogs. She’s terrified of dogs, and that was a big dog. Looking sad and lonely, tied to a stop sign. That was not okay. She was the only one around, so she took him home. Only to find that he wasn’t a dog, but one of the Good People, under a curse. And there were more of them.
And they were all after her. And all she had was the dog (who wasn’t a dog) to help keep her from being taken away from all she’s ever known. Because that dog? He and his twin sister are family that she didn’t know she had, and their appearance has upended everything she’s ever known about herself. Including that she was human to begin with. She has a lot of questions.
Starting with curses, and how and why they sometimes spread.
FROM MACKEY CHANDLER: Fair Trade: An Alien Invasion Story
Most of my writing is in a series people seem to enjoy but there is a constant small crowd who say: I’d really like your take on an alien invasion story. Well this is for them. The bulk of the aliens come to Earth stories assume their vast superiority, sometimes invincibility. Sometimes they suddenly appear on the white house lawn dictating terms. I have yet to see one with them appearing at the Kremlin or Canberra which seems rather parochial. Other times they are so advanced they quarantine the Earth or Solar System without discussion because we are such barbarian slime-balls. They may alternately be impossible to talk to and attack without mercy. All these assume they come with a plan and the means to carry it out. Our own age of exploration showed things happen much less orderly. Islands and natives were happened upon while seeking someplace else or even because a storm or miscalculation left the ship lost. In that case there is no plan but survival with the assets at hand. As with any game remember that turnabout is fair play.
FROM ROBERT A. HOYT: Almost Curable
Almost Curable’s fourteen short stories take you on a journey to equal few others. There are fantasies, like a long-dormant guardian waking to save a lost boy; or a luckless medieval princess finding her destiny; or even an angel helping a tech nerd fight off the devil, and then there are nightmares, from a steampunk adventure in which the characters have to face a literal dragon, and where dark elf ancestry can brand you for life. Or a land of living sugar slowly losing its fight with evil.
There are cautionary tales, like the one of the fully automated bio grocery store, or the one about AI watching your children.
And then then there are stories we don’t know what to do with — and doubt you will either — such as the one about the zombie dinosaur who is too cute to put down.
Enjoy a journey of adventure and wonder through these amazing stories.
FROM MARY CATELLI: Enchantments And Dragons
A wizard must produce justice enough to satisfy a dragon. A young man tries to rob a tiger’s lair. An enchantress tries to keep a court safe while they ignore the perils of misusing her magic. A lady finds that court intrigues can spread even to the countryside. And more tales. Includes “Over the Sea To Me,” “Dragonfire and Time”, “The Maze, the Manor, and the Unicorn”, “The White Menagerie”, “The Dragon’s Cottage,” “Jewel of the Tiger,” and “The Sword Breaks.”
FROM BLAKE SMITH: Test of Valor
Alain de Kerauille wants to be a knight more than anything in the world, to win as many jousting tournaments as he can, become wealthy and famous, and gain the hand of the fair lady Emma. As a squire in a noble household, he’s well on his way to success, and when he’s chosen to joust in a celebratory tournament, all of his dreams seem within his grasp. Until his rivalry with a fellow squire reaches the boiling point, threatening to destroy everything Alain has worked for and send his future crashing down around him.
FROM KAREN MYERS: Mistress of Animals: A Lost Wizard’s Tale
Book 2 of The Chained Adept.
AN ERRANT CHILD WITH DISASTROUS POWERS AND NO ONE TO STAND IN HER WAY.
Penrys, the wizard with a chain and an unknown past, is drafted to find out what has happened to an entire clan of the nomadic Zannib. Nothing but their empty tents remain, abandoned on the autumn steppe with their herds.
This wasn’t a detour she’d planned on making, but there’s little choice. Winter is coming, and hundreds are missing.
The locals don’t trust her, but that’s nothing new. The question is, can she trust herself, when she discovers what her life might have been? Assuming, of course, that the price of so many dead was worth paying for it.
FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: City of Blinding Light
The Columbian Exposition has transformed Chicago into a vision of the bright shining future. However, the electric lights that turn night to day bring no joy to Kitty Hawthorne, and not just because they are the work of her employer’s chief rival. Now Edison wants her to abandon her investigation of Tesla’s alternating current system and look into a mysterious newcomer. Who is Samuel Gillian, who devises calculating machinery as easily as he builds flying machines?
FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Noah’s Boy (The Shifter Series Book 3)
Transform into a shape-shifting dragon? Complicated. Run a successful diner? Even harder. Fall in love? Now that’s really testing Tom Ormson’s self-control.
Between managing a temperamental new fryer and his budding romance with fellow shifter Kyrie Smith, Tom’s plate is already full. But when a vengeful sabre-tooth tiger stalks into town and an ancient dragon starts playing matchmaker, his carefully balanced life threatens to spiral out of control. Add in a string of mysterious murders at the local amusement park, and a lovestruck ex-triad dragon with country music aspirations, and Tom’s having the week from hell—literally.
Now Kyrie’s been kidnapped, and Tom must race against time to save her while keeping his inner dragon in check. Because eating the bad guys? Definitely bad for business.
Welcome to Noah, Colorado, where the supernatural meets the everyday, and young love comes with teeth, claws, and the occasional bout of spontaneous combustion.
Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.
So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.
We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.
If you have questions, feel free to ask.
Your writing prompt this week is: Zany
According To Hoyt 
“Zany? They’re calling me that? I prefer to call myself wacky!”
“Zany, Wacky? What’s the difference?”
Showing his teeth, he replied “I prefer wacky”.
“What about crazy” his friend grinning back replied.
“I’ll accept crazy from you. Of course, what does it say about you that you’re my friend?”
“Good Point!”
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Crowds gathered at the roadside, and soon formed a wall of gawking bystanders. She smiled and waved as best she could. Most wore bright colors, some bore garlands, others waved banners more or less bright.
One even juggled balls.
That one made her smile in earnest, but the castle approached.
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”What? Your book is a western, and Zane Grey was one of the most successful writers of westerns in history. I would have thought you’d be happy we referred to him on your cover.”
I stared. It would be counterproductive to my writing career to throttle this minion of my publisher, but I was sorely tempted just to significantly improve the average intelligence of the human gene pool. He had to be somebody’s cousin to keep this job with the IQ of a sea sponge, so I had to tread even a little carefully.
”Look, I would be ecstatic to be compared to Zane Grey, but that’s not what this says.” I pointed to the front cover of the art proof, trying to keep a calm instructive demeanor. “‘A New Zaney Western’ is not a reference to Zane Grey.”
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I got a smile out of the short story collection offering by Robert A. Hoyt. Chip off the old block following in Mom’s footsteps.
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He’s been professionally published for 21 years. (since 13.) But that whole professional education put a crimp on his writing.
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As for zany …
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“I can go get Yanna,” said one little boy. “She’s our hedge wizard.”
“Vanni!” said an old woman. “Don’t go playing the zany before the archmage herself!”
“Go get her,” said Scholastica.
Vanni ran off down the hill. Scholastica gave them all a quelling glare. At least they only muttered.
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I knew that things were going to get Interesting when two of the Nixes got into a tiff. Anyone else, there would’ve been fisticuffs, and it would’ve been settled.
Instead, both of them just got these little smirks on their faces and went real quiet. Like the sort of quiet that means Trouble when you’ve got little kids.
And then the pranks began. All very carefully aimed, so none of us became collateral damage. But all absurdly ridiculous, and very specifically aimed at the other Nix’s ability to take a joke.
Not surprising for a people whose harshest insults attack not one’s parentage nor one’s toileting habits, but one’s sense of humor or lack thereof.
Needless to say, all the rest of us breathed a sigh of relief when the Children of Mischief shook hands and made up.
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People had gathered to gawk. Marvelous men and wondrous women, mostly. The peasants might glance up, but then they hurried inside, away from this portentous sign.
“They’re just flying about!” said Quentin. “I wish they would attack! At least it would be over with!”
“Where have you been?” said Olivia.
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Nomination time:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/23180618-august-2025
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OT, but I had to post this today….
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What’s this I read today, about Simak having written Westerns? Where are they and how can I buy them?
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A lot of pulp writers wrote any genre they could.
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It was money
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Well, yeah. At those pay rates, you sold to anything and were glad they had to keep the covers apart somehow.
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Okay… apparently there’s a series called The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford Simak, and there’s 14 ebooks’ worth of it. And the westerns are in it.
Argh, it’s been out for ten years, without me reading any of those volumes. I had no idea.
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I found a list of those Simak westerns but the list didn’t mention where you could find them. [Wink]
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Sigh.
I have a nice, complicated pun involving the name Otto Skorzeny, as it rhymes with ‘zany’. But I must forbear. The late SS Obersturmbannfuhrer Was Not A Nice Man.
I didn’t realize I had a limit there.
Oh, well. It’s a lovely day in this part of Oregon. I think I’ll go work in the yard.
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It’s not a hard limit.
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Well, let’s leave Otto to his fate. But FM’s time travelers have inspired …
A thunderstorm covers England from Wiltshire to Surrey, driving towards London with great fury.
At the Globe, in Southwark, the flashes and noise disturb a performance of The Tempest. Attendees look up at the sky, and whispers pass among them. The watchers in the pit at the foot of the stage begin to filter out of the theatre; on their way, each picks up a peculiarly pointed hat that trails a long copper chain on the ground behind.
The oddly-accoutered audience members begin to disperse along the swampy lanes and alleys.
Ben Franklin, a hundred years in the future with his kite and key, had nothing on these heroes! Historians of Shakespearean Theatre know these people as the groundlings, saving their homes from lightning strikes.
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The True Zany Story of the breakdown in relations between the UK and the US.
Once upon a time, no shit, there I was, down with my homies in the Barrio, sipping our RC Colas and Gin. The following was relayed to me there.
My sources in the intelligence community, who are anonymous, and most certainly are not a mysterious six-fingered albino maiden, nor a dusty manuscript that I found in an antiques store in Prague, gave me this completely reliable and authenticated information.
Then Prince Charles had ordered Gerald Bull to help the Arabs build better artillery, so that they could more effectively kill Jews.
Otto Skorzeny killed Bull for the Mossad, a fact that does not involve the US, nor implicate the US.
However, young Keir’s mother’s best friend happened to overhear a CIA agent bragging about being behind the incident, and told Charles, who swore every UK national involved to complete secrecy. So young Keir grew up hating the Jews, for the sake of Charles.
Totally happened to me in Vietnam, for sure, you betcha, and if they have not died they are living still.
(In all seriousness, the one element that I have heard claimed true is the conspiracy theory that Skorzeny killed Bull, and that he did so for the Mossad.)
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Bob and his security detail, Fred, sat in the back of the tavern, both pretending to drink the quite awful liquid they served here as “ale” from his dirty mug. At the front of the room a slightly better dressed, and only slightly cleaner than the crowd average, man wearing a truly large hat was holding forth, gesturing grandly. He also noted a slightly scruffy fellow, with a trimmed pointed beard, off to his right at another table in the back, scribbling notes.
Bob struggled a bit in the noisy room, even with his AI assisted hearing implants, to understand what was being said through the heavy period accent, which to his fairly well time-travelled ear sounded like a zany cross between what would be spoken in the antebellum Southern U.S. states by their upper crust, and early 20th Century cockney.
“I thank you, good people.—There shall be no money: all shall eat and drink on my score; and I will apparel them all in one livery, that they may agree like brothers and worship me their lord.”
Bob decided the fellow was running for some sort of office, running a confidence scam, or planning a coup, or something else equally disreputable given his prodigious promises. Though he could not think of a reason to do anything along those lines in such a public space as a public house. Closer to the back of the room another much more scruffy man, wearing truly filthy clothes under some sort of leather apron, was commenting loudly to a huddle of others on everything the dandy upfront said, to roars of laughter.
“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the haitcharr,” said the scruffy man.
Over their datalink Bill subvocalised to Fred. “What’s a ‘haitcharr’?“
Fred lifted his mug to hide his grin. His reply popped up in Fred’s head up display on his datalink contact lenses as text. “It’s H.R. – Human Resources. They’re not any more popular here than in our time.”
“Hmph,” Fred said out loud, “not ‘Lawyers’?” careful to correctly mimic the accent. The scribbler he’d noticed earlier turned his head sharply toward Bob, obviously hearing him over the din in the room, raising his eyebrows and then rapidly scribbling out what he’d written and writing again.
“Who’s the note taker,” he subvocalized to Fred, “and why aren’t these folks accusing him of being a royal spy like they did poor Emillus last week. Emil barely made it back to the safe house alive, and had to get sent back uptime.”
“Him? That’s just Will. They all know him so they trust him. He’s famous for lurking around taverns scribbling away, and nobody’s ever caught the gibbet for anything he was around to see. He’s some sort of performer, I think.”
”Will…” Bob glanced quickly again at the scribbler, hiding his glance with fumblingly getting some coins from his belt purse. That beard was right, and if he squinted maybe the nose, but otherwise he looked nothing like the statues and other artwork uptime. Hmph. He’d have to try and get approval to catch a performance over on the disreputable theater side of the Thames. That would be something to remember.
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She started. Then she forced her breath in and out. Don’t let your wits wander, Violetta, she told herself. You are not playing a capering fool before the royal court. It was black, like the wolf.
Her thoughts finally caught up to her plight. The snake was black, like the wolf and the swan. And apparently, far more subtle.
She looked about, and saw something else black.
“Sonia!” she called.
Sonia started and hurried over. “You are the first I’ve seen!”
“When did you come in the order?”
“Fourth.” She scowled. “Why are you holding onto the hedge?”
“A trick.”
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“Places, everybody!” yelled Clem. “Them Martian tourists are on their way. Delbert, you man the still. Let’s give ‘em a good show!”
“Oh MUST we?” moaned Delbert. “All this to sell a little whiskey?”
“That’s what we’re paid for,” said Clem. “Now git busy and start ensuing some zany hijinks!”
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“Zany hijinks!” fumed Delbert to himself. “I studied to be a scientist, but I wind up entertaining tourists by acting like a moonshiner! All I wanted was a little dignity, but dignity doesn’t pay, I guess.”
Wincing, Delbert ignited the pyrotechnic in his straw hat and emitted a well-practiced yelp.
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Zany sounds to me like the name for a personal wiki of some sort. Perhaps an IDE built by putting Redmine in Tauri, and maybe belting on Scintilla, intended for use in creative writing. (Yeah, apparently what passes for my muse in software engineering has a serious drug problem. Or else I am simply ignorant, lazy, and incompetent. (Editor: no reason those have to be mutually exclusive. ))
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Most writers of time-travel stories seem to refer to the future as ‘uptime’ — which doesn’t make sense to me. If they’re using the analogy of time as a river, shouldn’t the future be ‘downtime’ because that’s where you wind up if you just drift with the current? ‘Uptime’ should be the direction that requires something special, such as a time machine.
In addition, events ‘upstream’ affect things ‘downstream’ but not the other way around, unless you block the flow and it backs up.
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They want to think of themselves as ascending, not descending.
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“I came across an odd little book of literary critique the other day. It purported to analyze the reasons why some people actually enjoy overly ornate and flowery language in stories.”
“Really? What is the title and author?”
“ ‘Readers of the Purple Page’ by Zany Grey.”
Exactly 50 words. And all carp gratefully acknowledged. ;-)
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Aims the carp cannon….
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(Part 1/2)
Elaine thought, I know that look. “Ollie, you surely must know you can’t hide it when you’re up to something. It’s never anything bad, rarely even mischievous; but still some sort of thing that the little boy in you knows other people won’t necessarily be too happy to find out about. Like when a cat acts a bit too nonchalant, and about everything.”
Oleg Volkov smiled, and it was that sort of smile, too. Warmly… devious.
“Only just dropped off a little paperwork, Elena. Nothing expensive, not anything I can’t take back easily and cheaply either. Simply speculative, one my inner sense of smell sniffs will most likely be good for us both.”
Information, yes indeed. Much of it, surely not.
“Come on, I’m not going to tug on this sketchy tooth all night. Give.”
“Turned in a pre-application to the Eta Carinae probe. Obviously not to go all the 7,000-odd light years there, of course; they’d never let you try that if you were insane enough to ask. But they do have rotating crews on six-month deployments, taking care of the machinery and all. Since it’s a teleport-drive ship, of course. So, they’re always looking for people.”
Elaine Farnsworth Volkov’s eyes… just about crossed, at that.
(The “luminal teleporter” did move objects from Point A to Point B quite well; atom by atom or molecule by molecule easiest, but complete complex objects with barely more trouble. But it had some limitations. It worked always at the speed of light, no slower or faster; and turning anything into a speed-of-light particle meant sourcing the corresponding momentum, m times c, a recoil of 30 ton-seconds for every gram sent or received.
So, if you had a ship you wanted to accelerate? Tossing mass back and forth turned out to be one of the easiest ways to do that, rather than rockets. Thus, the so-called “teleport drive” trick. Supplies and crew rotation, or any otherwise-useful cargo, was pretty much gravy on top of that steak.
And, before you could use a teleporter to or from anywhere, you had to get a terminal on both ends, “the old fashioned way” by some means or other.)
She breathed in and out; as slowly, smoothly, invisibly as she could.
“And your zany snap inspiration is to leave me here taking care of things for you, while you run off into the void to a fractional-c longshot ship? Six long months at the very very least, stretched out by time dilation to closer to a year, I’ll bet. Then, of course, however many months or years it takes to get there at light speed as a ‘transition particle’ — plus the same or maybe even longer back. Did you… bother to ask about that?”
It was all too easy, done all too instantly, to picture what that would be like, left here to play chateleine to a nonexistent castle. Years or worse of it, of “fitting in” as a new empty-nester, alone in a society of people who were turning out, more and more, to be simply settlers instead of true pioneers (like most of the Martians still were). Her eyes flicked to that impressive work of needlepoint on the wall, a three-panel, well, icon for anyone like her or Oleg or his mother.
Who’d made it for her own husband, now long dead of an accident on Mars, then (with considerable resistance at first) given it to Elaine. Because of what Natalya Faddeyevna Volkovna saw as their shared deep similarity.
(“Up the Long Ladder” read the words in Russian Cyrillic printing, more or less; in bright colors that hadn’t faded at all over a score of years. It was nothing less than her retelling of the Kardashev scale, done mostly in Cyrillic-handwriting embroidery. With a blue-green airy Mars, a bright and spotted Daz-Bog-some sun, a glint-glittering galaxy, for illumination.)
But Elaine was starting to perceive a certain familiarity to this idea and its presentation. What it reminded her of… was of coming here to Blake’s Purchase, a few years after they were married on Mars, before Cynthia and Dexter were ever even a torrid gleam in either of their eyes.
Or even… the dizzy months leading up to his proposal, back in Wyoming.
(It still struck her as some retro-SF-TV cliche. “I married a Martian.” If also the single best decision she’d ever, ever, ever made.)
Now as then, the hair was starting to stand up a little on the back of her neck, the figurative butterflies were starting to flit in her belly. Even with that context, though, she’d never have expected him to… go down on one knee? Here in Blakeside’s ninety-percent gravity, two and a half times what she’d once been used to on Mars. “Oleg? What in… talk to me, then.”
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(Part 2/2)
“Never have I thought to leave you here alone in this, patiently doing all the hard work of maintaining a house and a holding, while I flew merrily off at the speed of light in the twinkling of an eye for me. Instead have I seen you, dutifully and doggedly if also gracefully, do just that while our children grew into magnificent brave far-seeing people, while I dived deep into the making of goods and deeds and money and reputation, and all the varied else that we four needed, that we two enjoy.
“Now we’ve brought to being two of the finest people I’ve ever met, even in my own not-so-objective judgment; and I can see it in you, sometimes even each successive day. You’re settling here, Elaine; not just settling down to a life, not just settling a raw-ish partly-new world, but letting yourself settle for something less than you really, deeply want.
“The old Tsarist days, the old Soviet days, the old oligarchic days, were left behind on Earth with Old Russia. Mars is new world, and we Russians are new there, too. No longer resigned, just resilient. Settling used to be something of an art form combined with a national pastime; but we’re not that way any more on Mars, and you were never melancholy Russian, at all!
“And doubly all that goes, on a world like this one, so far away from Mars!”
His hands sought hers; and she let him find them easily and swiftly.
“Come away with me, Elena; come to a ship hurtling through the void to a star brighter and more amazing than almost any there is. Come with me to that place, for just a little while; then come back, not here, but to Far Cotswold, only a little aside the eta-Cari probe’s path. Only seven light months from the probe, once our hitch is done.
“I say ours not to presume but to promise; I’ll not do this without you, my dearest of dears, just as I’ll not fail to do this with you. As it was once before, on a starry night outside of Townsend, Montana… my life is yours to steer, now, dearest bright one. So you take our ship’s wheel.”
And she could see the alternative, in detail, as she had before. Only now with Oleg instead of without him — and wonderful as his presence made it as his absence would’ve made it gray and empty, many places — it was no sort of paradise. Blake’s World had been a frontier in many ways; now it already was, like water in the depths of Hellas Basin at sunset, getting itself poised to freeze solid for the night, already coated with its first haze of ice.
Busybodies, shiny-new must-do’s and don’ts. Regulations. Taxes. (Spit!)
And she literally shivered, with that touch of frost. Colder to her, then, there in that way, than the Mars she’d known (its typical nights colder than dry ice in Earthly air, even near the equator in summer!) had ever in all her experience been.
Mare had never, ever even once tried to freeze her soul; Blake’s Purchase was already getting it done, bit by tiny, stealthy bit. Once again Oleg was right.
Elaine Volkov squeezed her husband’s hands. Glanced away from him, to the faithful triptych icon of a big future on the wall, found his eyes again.
“Maybe you didn’t hear it, or even about it later; but there’s something Natalya said to me, when I went to Mars with you to meet them in person, instead of by that minutes-long exchange of video-clips that passes for a live conversation between the planets even at their very closest. It took her a while, not so much to ‘warm up to me’ but to plumb my depths fully and to her liking, to see for herself exactly who and what I was.
“‘Do you know what the word ‘planet’ said in its original Greek? It means just ‘wanderer’ — stars moving as the true, ‘fixed’ stars do not. Well, I do not think I mistake myself to identify you as one of those, in the way a person is. There are those, even here on Mars, who come to ‘settle’ and to stay; not only to send down roots, but to be here and stay for-always.”
Her voice wasn’t accented like Natalya’s; but the cadences were there.
“‘You, and Oleg, and I and Dmitri Alexeevich, while he lived… we are the planetary sort, in that old sense. We like to settle for a while, sure and indeed; but there is a deep wandering in us also. Too deep to long deny.
“‘If I may dare to tamper with the immortal words of the old schoolteacher Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, peace eternal be unto him — Mars has been the cradle of our family, mine and Dmitri’s, as it has been the cradle of your and Oleg’s marriage, too.
“‘But one can not stay in the cradle forever,’ and one ought not linger in the cradle too long, either. Mars has been very good indeed to me, and to mine, my dear marriage-adopted daughter. But this new, far-off world they call Blake’s Purchase… wandering there might be just what you two need.’
“And she pointed to.. that three-fold map of all our future she’d made. And said simply, ‘Keep your feet on the long, long ladder, Elaine my darling, and every once in a fair while, let it please you to take one more step upward’ — and grabbed me close.
“Yes, Oleg, I will go wandering with you; and find out what this new world they’ve been pleased to call Far Cotswold is really, truly like.”
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“Fūgawarina.”
“What, that puffer fish you guys like to eat?” I plopped down next to Emi on the overstuffed couch at karaoke club in Shibuya. I was sweating like a horse after my rendition of “Don’t Stop Believing.”
“No, Jimu-san. Not fugu. Fūgawarina.” Emi looked at me earnestly as she sipped her bubble tea. I couldn’t get her to drink anything stronger than caffeine while she was on the clock as my translator. “Your antics on stage while you sing. Fūgawarina. How you say? Zany?”
Forget zany, I’d pull a rabbit out of my backside if necessary. My company was trying to partner with the top Japanese AI developer, and apparently developing a good personal relationship was key to building trust in a business relationship. Fine by me – I love whiskey, karaoke, and dirty jokes, all which got me in tighter with these guys from NJC, much to Emi’s chagrin. Nihon Jinkō Chinō, known in the West as Japan AI, had the best native artificial intelligence software in the world, not that large-language model crap. Shoot, I’d do ballet dressed like a sumo wrestler while singing their national anthem if it got them to buy our new zetta-FLOP quantum CPU.
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