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
FROM JENNICA POUNDS (DATA REPUBLICAN) ON PRE-ORDER: Unelected.
How the NGO-Administrative Complex Seized Power—And How to Get It Back
$200 billion for Ukraine. $50 billion a year for USAID. $9 billion for resettling refugees. Meanwhile, Americans struggle to earn a living, buy a home, and start a family. The welfare state works for everyone but employed citizens trying their best to make ends meet and pay their taxes on time. Why are the world’s most generous people financially abused by their own government?
As one scandal after another breaks, there is one question that becomes harder and harder to ignore: How did the American government and a vast network of NGOs become the vehicle for funneling American middle-class wealth to the rest of the world? The surprising answer is not financial, but philosophical, the little-known yet centuries-old ideology called supranationalism. From George Soros through George W. Bush, from the 17th century Treaty of Westphalia through the rise of President Donald Trump, a clear timeline emerges for how everyday Americans became the number-one mark for a global ruling class intent on redistributing their resources. Barricading its backroom dealmaking behind federal departments, nonprofits and NGOs, and charitable foundations whose names we all know yet whose operations will still shock and horrify, this NGO-Administrative Complex has perfected the art of converting U.S. taxpayer money into instant-access welfare for the rest of the world.
This is the story of how this machine was built, how it runs, and how it can finally be dismantled.Drawing on Jennica Pounds’ receipt-backed analysis trusted by millions on X at @DataRepublican, together with page-turning narratives of New York Times best-selling author Joshua Lisec, Unelected maps the money, names the gatekeepers, and rug-pulls the unelected networks running the show from behind dated logos and sappy slogans to impoverish us all and usher in a new world order in which every American city is destined to become another Minneapolis.
FROM PAM UPHOFF: Ruin and Redemption (Chronicles of the Fall Book 21)
A collection of six related stories
The Orgy Drug was just a snickery rumor . . . until an afternoon garden party when someone spiked the punch.
In a society divided by class, and ruled by the Mentalist Elite, who even keep their wives controlled with brain chips . . . Six upper class young ladies and their maids are faced with the ruination of their reputations—and the reactions of friends and family—and they’re going to deal with it, each in their own way.
Using the cultural changes forced by the loss of Zhivvyy Provoda, the Power Plague attacks, the illegal Orgy Drug circulating widely . . . and contact with other dimensionally-able civilizations, they’re all going to make it, one way or another.
FROM RACONTEUR PRESS: Pogue Too.
Most military fiction regales the reader with fast-paced tales of strong men with sexy weapons who close with, engage, and destroy the enemy with lethal precision. What it tends to ignore, though, is the supply clerk who issues him the body armor that protects him in the fight, the intelligence shop that arms him with information, or the maintenance troops who keep the vehicles running (ideally). Because there are so many ways in which POGs (I served in the early 2000’s) support the fight, one anthology was simply not enough to convey it all, so we had to do another one.
This time, Ted Begley takes us along for the ride with a shuttle driver who has an eye for a bargain. Addison Reid shows us that sometimes a logistics officer knows what troops on the frontline really need, even better than they do, however inexplicable it may seem. An FNG (Freakin’ New Guy) and his first-line leader learn a valuable lesson about an ancient tradition in Jason Hobbs’ “Snipe Hunt.” B. K. Gibson reminds us that even if you don’t expect the unexpected, you’d better be prepared to adapt to it. Rounding out the collection, Malory demonstrates that a POG’s most underappreciated, yet critical skills are, as always, ingenuity and resourcefulness.
The authors all do a fantastic job of capturing different facets of a POG’s life, from the professionalism to the competence to the humor and everything in between. As a former Air Defense Artillery officer, many of the stories in the following pages remind me of my own troops at different times, and I sincerely hope you enjoy reading them as much as I did.
FROM M. C. A. HOGARTH: Clays Upon the Sands (The Stone Moon Trilogy
The treasured anadi who must learn what it means to choose… the mysterious chenji whose magic comes at a terrible price… the jeweler who finds that love requires facing the unknowable future… and the Claw of the empire who discovers that loyalty has limits. Clays Upon the Sands, volume 2 in the Jokka Clays series, collects seven more stories of the Jokka of Ke Bakil, an alien species with two chances to change sexes: female, neuter or male… a species where destiny and biology intertwine in ways both beautiful and heartbreaking. Whether it’s accepting an unwanted Turning, defying an empire’s cruelty, or learning that some truths can only be spoken in the dark, each Jokkad must navigate the complex currents of identity, duty, and desire.
Seven voices. Seven transformations. A world where nothing is certain but change itself. Come explore.
FROM JACOB SHARP: A Boy Against the Boxers
In the sweltering summer of 1900, fourteen-year-old Eddie Donahue calls the walled International Legation Quarter in Peking, China, his home. While his father runs a bustling silk trade, Eddie watches in awe as soldiers from America, Europe, and beyond march the streets, guarding against growing unrest outside the gates.
Dreaming of adventure beyond his errands, Eddie encounters rough-and-ready U.S. Marines and glimpses the enigmatic threat of the ‘Boxers’ – warriors bent on driving out all foreigners from China. As tensions boil over into conflict, Eddie must summon his wits and bravery to face dangers that test his family, his friendships, and his resolve.This gripping historical novel captures the Boxer Rebellion through a young boy’s eyes, blending real events with tales of courage and discovery.
FROM VAN LEDYARD: Legion of Liberty: Making Bank for Freedom!
End the Fed! — anonymous INR donor
Jesse Lomax is salvaging a news career with a temp gig shooting video at an obscure, corrupt third-tier think tank in Washington called the Institute for National Renewal. What do the rag-tag band of INR pseudo-scholars say when it’s suggested that they accept tainted money? “Tain’t enough!” they cry in unison.INR is staffed with a collection of cynical Ph.D.-level grifters, experts in political dirty tricks, and a fundraiser cougar. The “research organization” is led by the narcissistic bully R. Morrison Dixon whose patriotic posture belies his hidden, unsavory past.
Jesse, a valedictorian-level high school drop out from Erie, Pa., tells himself he can rise above the moral slime, put together a nest egg for his documentary production start-up, and blow this hated capital. He turns down a lucrative invitation to join the Fellowship of Obscure Men, INR’s skunk works for political dirty tricks and extreme partying. Jesse’s last day at INR is circled on the calendar.
But events draw him in deeper. A fundraising email minus personalized salutations but carrying the placeholder “Dear Rich Idiot,” goes out to INR’s top donors. Geneva Duke, the “luscious peach” of an intern, is scapegoated and loses her job — much to Jesse’s dismay.
Pastor Hadwin “Bud” Garnsey, INR’s director of faith outreach, goes on the lam from the law for an “indiscretion” at the Folger Library. Garnsey has the receipts on Dixon’s shady past. He shares these with investigative reporter Alan Faberman who is working on an expose of INR’s founders and connections to illegal lobbying for a Mideast pipeline. And Gladys Strumpf, a pistol-packing, wheelchair-bound board member incensed by the “Rich Idiot” email, threatens to tear up her lavish bequest to INR.
Jesse’s posture of neutrality and indifference is tested when Elmar, the thuggish pipeline executive, confronts him. Elmar is convinced that Jesse is secretly working with Faberman on the INR expose.
Geneva Duke wants her revenge. She begs Jesse to help her take down “the evil, the lies, the greed” at the heart of INR. She knows what evil looks like from her own experience, which she only hints at. When Jesse refuses to join her crusade, she goes it alone.
But Jesse can’t quite let her go. As much as he wanted to disentangle from INR, what he wants much more is Geneva.
Dixon and his insiders are criminal goons who play rough. The “luscious peach” is headed for some real trouble. Jesse joins her crusade against evil doers at the 11th hour. But is he too late?
FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: A Fox in the Henhouse (Timelines Universe Book 2)
Delaney Wolff Fox is a spy. A cute spy. A deadly spy.
A spy you want at your back when stuff gets real.
From a palatial office in Johannesburg, to a fancy whisky bar in Sydney, Australia, to a beautiful private beach in southwest Florida, to the great and wild city of New Orleans, Captain Delaney Fox, United States Space Force Marines (Intelligence Division) finds herself beset by assassins at every turn, while first saving an alien government’s valuable artifact from the South African cartel that’s stolen it, and then being assigned to guard said artifact while it completes a world tour, on loan from that same alien government.
But like the proverbial fox in the proverbial henhouse, you can count on Delaney to complete the mission and come out with the prize, intact and in hand – even if the “farmer” isn’t all that keen about her doing so.
FROM JOHN BAILEY: The Geometry of Smoke: Archimedes, the Eastern Exchange, and the Powder That Almost Was (Not Quite Accurate, You Know…)
What if history almost changed—and no one noticed?
In this imagined rediscovered manuscript, Archimedes of Syracuse undertakes a secret journey eastward to exchange knowledge with scholars of the Qin realm. Geometry meets administration, philosophy meets engineering, and curiosity bridges civilizations separated by distance but united by mathematics.
Together, Greek and Qin thinkers approach a discovery centuries ahead of its time: the controlled power of explosive chemistry.
The knowledge is lost in a storm near Malta.
Preserved only through damaged scrolls, argumentative footnotes, missing diagrams, and a long-suffering modern translator, The Geometry of Smoke blends historical fiction, scientific imagination, and dry scholarly humor into a tale about discovery, accident, and the fragile path of human progress.
Featuring:
- Faux academic commentary
- Disappearing diagrams
- Scholars arguing across centuries
- And alien observers quietly relieved by a shipwreck
A novel for readers who enjoy history, science, and the comedy of intellect.
FROM HOLLY CHISM: Sleigh Bells and Wedding Bells (Building a Life Book 2)
Amaryllis and Chris have been in love since…forever. Even if Amaryllis didn’t realize it until Chris fell off a ladder. A year later, they’re working and planning toward a wedding. Eventually. When they get enough money built up, and can take the time to do it.
Unfortunately, Amaryllis forgot Thanksgiving. Her mother decided that since she forgot it, she could make it. And that would have been fine, if the turkey hadn’t suddenly been the worst thing ever.
Now, she’s got three weeks to plan her own wedding, and only four hundred dollars to pay for it. But she’ll manage. It’ll work.
It just has to.
BY CHARLES ALDEN SELTZER REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: 3 Ways of Lead (Annotated): A Pulp Western Omnibus
Charles Alden Seltzer was one of the first crop of western authors, a contemporary of Zane Grey and William MacLeod Raine. But he *really* hit his stride in 1921, and these three post-1921 novels prove it!
Brass Commandments
“He’s man’s size, goin’ an’ comin’. No show, no fuss; likes to play a lone hand. Cool an’ easy an’ dangerous. Two-gun. Throws ’em so fast that you can’t see ’em. Lightnin’s slow when Lannon moves his gun-hand. Dead shot; cold as an iceberg under fire.”
Such was the opinion in Bozzam City of Flash Lannon. Five years of getting an education back East might have tamed him, some, but when rustlers target his cattle, and the local law doesn’t care, Lannon nails a new law to the wall of the local post office: his brass commandments naming the five men who must leave the country — or die.
Five named men… and “one other.”
FROM C. CHANCY: Pearl of Fire
Bombs, fire, and murder….Caldera City. Stronghold and refuge, built by faith and elemental power in the heart of a volcano; surviving through magic, tactics, and a daring alliance with dragons. For Allen Helleson, Caldera was an escape from the lives ruined by his family’s hardline traditions; now he walks the streets as an Inspector for the Caldera Watch, defending the city other nations see as a pit of hell. For Shane Redstone, Caldera was the home she risked life and soul to defend as a Flame – until enemy curses blinded her, sending her away from the front lines forever.The war has come home again….Together they survive the first bomb. But Caldera’s enemies never stop with just one. Now a scarred yet deadly ex-soldier and a spirit-reading Inspector have to find and stop the bombers… before Wards fall, dragons die, and the caldera erupts in flame. One wrong move, and the city burns.
FROM MOE LANE: Frozen Dreams (Tom Vargas Mysteries Book 1)
This is going to be the best post-apocalyptic high urban fantasy pulp detective novel you will read today!
Cin City. The tinsel crown of the magical Kingdom of New California – and Tom Vargas’s favorite place in the whole, wide world. Sure, as a Shamus he has to Clear a lot of Cases, listen to a lot of lies, and get battered and bruised in the process, but it’s worth it. Cin City is worth it.
But when trouble shows up as a dead mage at the Castle, he’s got to work fast and smart to save his city. New California doesn’t have mages, you see. And Cin City is safe for just as long as nobody can prove otherwise.
(Note: this book has a sequel, but it is not part of an epic fantasy trilogy.)
FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Done With Mirrors.
DONE WITH MIRRORS
From Prometheus Award winner Sarah A. Hoyt comes a dazzling collection that showcases why her work has appeared in Analog, Asimov’s, and Weird Tales—and why readers can’t get enough.
Magic-soaked noir in 1920s Denver. Mirror-hopping time lords fleeing across infinite universes. Survival in John Ringo’s zombie apocalypse. Murder and mystery in the world of Darkships and Rhodes. Each story in this collection pulls you into a different world—and refuses to let go.
Previously published in acclaimed anthologies from Baen and Chris Kennedy Publishing, these nine tales span Hoyt’s most beloved universes alongside standalone adventures. Whether she’s writing in Ringo’s Black Tide Rising series, exploring her own Darkships and Rhodes worlds, or crafting speculative noir that defies categorization, Hoyt delivers the vivid storytelling and emotional resonance that has earned her a devoted following.
From rain-slicked streets where magic and murder collide to the far reaches of space-time itself, Done With Mirrors demonstrates the genre-hopping brilliance of one of speculative fiction’s most versatile voices.
Nine stories. Nine worlds. One unforgettable collection.
Contains the short stories: Honey Fall; Scrubbing Clean; Last Chance; Great Reckoning in a Small Room; Horse’s Heart; Do No Harm; Dead End Rhodes; Knights of Time; Done with Mirrors.
With an introduction by Holly Chism.
AND YOU KNOW I’M CONTRACTUALLY OBLIGATED TO DO THIS. I’LL STOP WHEN THE NEXT BOOK IN SERIES COMES OUT:
FROM SARAH A. HOYT: No Man’s Land: Volume 1 (Chronicles of Lost Elly)
Sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic.
On a lost colony world, mad geneticists thought they could eliminate inequality by making everyone hermaphrodite. They were wrong. Catastrophically wrong.
Now technology indistinguishable from magic courses through the veins of the inhabitants, making their barbaric civilization survivable—and Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Kayel Hayden, Viscount Webson, Envoy of the Star Empire—Skip to his friends— has just crash-landed through a time-space rift into the middle of it all.
Dodging assassins and plummeting from high windows was just the beginning. With a desperate king and an archmagician as his only allies, Scipio must outrun death itself while battling beasts, traitors, and infiltrators bent on finishing what the founders started: total destruction.
Two worlds. One chance. No time to lose.
Volume 1
The Ambassador Corps has rules: you cannot know everything, don’t get horizontal with the natives, don’t make promises you can’t keep.
They’re a lot harder to follow when assassins are hunting you, your barbarian allies could kill you for the wrong word, and death lurks around every corner.
The unwritten rule? Never identify with the natives.
Skip’s already broken that one.
Now he’s racing against time to save his new friends from slavery—or worse—while dodging energy blasts and political intrigue. One crash-landed diplomat. A world of deadly secrets. And absolutely no backup.
Some rules are meant to be broken. Others will get you killed.
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: Launch
According To Hoyt 
Already ordered Jennica’s book; reading Mirrors now; waited to buy Pogue Too until today.
Hey, y’know what you need to sit on when you go out to watch a rocket take off? Launchairs.
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“Ready for launch”?
“Launch??? I thought you said Lunch?”
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I think I remember that show existing, though I don’t think I ever saw it. By the mid 1970s, if it wasn’t Bugs Bunny/Road Runner show, I probably gave it a pass.
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It was pretty bad. And I thought that as a scifi-mad 3 year old.
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Remember, o Readers, that you can be FORCE MULTIPLIERS!
When you read books, you can rate and review them.
Even short reviews are of aid to the writer, because sheer mass helps. (And if you really can’t review, still rate.)
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One of the girls beside her threw her hands into the air, and gabbled a spell. Giles moved his hands, and a shield appeared almost on top of her. A great gout of fire sprang up, and hit the shield, and leapt into the sky. It exploded into vivid colors.
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“We’re not in this afternoon.”
“Why not, master? We have quite a bit of work to do in here.”
“We have an invitation to a special event. The king is going to attempt to ascend into the sky in his new balloon. It will be a sight to see, no matter what happens. So put the sign up and get ready to go.”
“which sign?”
“The one that proclaims we are out to launch, of course.”
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Edur’s eyes narrowed, and his hands moved. She could barely hear that words came from his moving mouth, and not at all what they said.
The children waited patiently as he slung the spell over the grass.
What, after all, could it be? thought Honor. Susan was hidden from sight.
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Danny had seen plenty of video of carrier launches, including that of the <i>USS Gerald R. Ford</i>, but he’d never gotten to see one in person — until now.
All the human officers and enlisted were already calling this spaceship the “Big E” — as much to tie it to the three aircraft carriers for which it was named as to keep from giggling at how the Kitties’ vocal tracts mangled its actual name. Still, it was a mark of how important humanity was that a warship should be named in a human language so quickly.
The last dignitary was winding down her speech. Soon the Fleet’s newest carrier to fire up its grav-plane and emerge from the drydock in which it had been built.
And then we begin its shakedown cruise. Wonder how many nasty little surprises we’ll find in the lanunchways and retrieval bay, let alone the maintenance systems on the hangar deck.
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A midshipman piloted the launch away from the dock and into the sound, the pitch black of a moonless night hiding us from prying eyes. The middie kept our speed down so any noise from the inboard was effectively muffled by the pines and cedars along the shoreline.
“Once you’re aboard the Gandalf, there will be no contact with PACOM or the National Command Authority.” Admiral Richardson raised his voice over the sound of the motor, but our middie helmsman was too far forward to overhear us. “You have full operational control of the boat and the mission. The sub’s captain has been informed. He wasn’t pleased with the situation, to say the least. Make sure you don’t waste the efforts of our nation and its allies.”
My mission depended on a host of moving pieces, from economic and political to military and diplomatic. All were to enable this submarine to get me close enough for a covert insertion and halt what seemed to be inevitable global conflict. And I would do it with the oldest weapon employed between nations, the one most feared by their leaders: assassination.
Yet with all the things that could go wrong in the next five days, one thing troubled me above all others.
“Who names a sub after a Tolkien character?”
Richardson actually laughed. That troubled me; he’s regarded as a naval genius with absolutely no sense of humor. Maybe the tension was getting to him. “It goes against a century of naval tradition,” he said. “Hell, it might even be illegal. But since she’s an off-the-books platform, we can get away with it. Like JRR’s character, the Gandalf has a knack for surviving the unsurvivable and showing up just in the nick of time.”
“Next thing you’ll be telling me is that it has a magic ring as the power source.”
The admiral’s demeanor turned serious, every bit humorless as his reputation. “There’s more I need to tell you.”
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The carrier shuddered as low-powered grav drivers pushed the torpedoes out of the tubes. A cloud of icons surrounded the Selene as torpedoes drifted out into their launch positions.
He could imagine the loading sequence as new torpedoes were fed into their launch cells. Airlock door open, load torpedo. Powerful pumps pulling out the air, then the hatch right up against the launch tube opened and the torpedo being loaded. Final checks, inside hatch closed, and the armored shutter over the grav driver slammed open for just a moment as the driver fired, throwing the torpedo out.
Then the ballet begins again, loading and firing a new torpedo every minute. In theory, the rate of fire could be faster, but there was time. Time to do the launch right. Time to plot the optimal trajectories for each torpedo. Time to make sure that there was not a single hanger queen in the tubs.
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She could barely make out the new legs, and how Rosalind stood, shakily, ready to leap off into the forest.
“Rosalind?” she said. But surely, even in this gloom, she could tell that the other woman had become a deer.
“Elisanna?” said the deer. Both Rosalind’s voice, and not hers.
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Doctor David Cambridge spotted his wife alighting from Finlandia’s liberty launch with a younger man. Apparently, the waitress from the nearby diner spotted them, too, as she looked quite jealous. “David!” sang Caroline, hugging her husband. “Meet my shipmate Able Spacefarer Tristam!”
“Pleased to meet you, Sir,” said Farer Tristam.
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Farer Tristam introduced his girlfriend Cherry (the diner waitress) to David and Caroline. “And did you know Commander Cambridge is a plank owner?”
“What’s a plank owner?” asked Cherry.
“Oh, that just means I’m an old timer,” laughter Caroline. “I was part of the original crew when Finlandia was launched.”
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“laughed Caroline.”
Another example of editing after you hit the “send” button.
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Thanks for sharing Pogue Too!
It’s my first short story I’ve gotten published, so it’s cool to see something I’m in here!
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The leaves rustled again.
For a moment, she saw the girl’s face among them, her expression very solemn.
Then she was gone.
At least she had remained long enough to hear the message. And she wouldn’t have shown herself except if she intended to deliver it.
Heaven willing. Lenore sighed.
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(Part 1/2)
“So how are you going to solve the hydrogen problem?” asked Valery softly.
The Apollo missions and others had made it clear the Moon has lots of very useful elements. On the other hand, also not so much of some other elements, even ones more essential than merely useful.
“In the long run, the same way we’re going to solve the carbon problem. A good-sized million-ton or so carbonaceous chondrite ought to do; and well before that, we ought to be able to grab dumptrucks full of regolith of the same stuff. Of course, it would be nice to have had even one single real asteroid probe or sample-return mission to confirm it; but given what’s fallen to Earth all by itself…” Alex smiled and shrugged her familiar shrug.
Aleksandra Irina Izbezic could have said heavy cargo ship or even nuclear-pulse dumptruck instead. But the habits of already-long years weren’t easy to break, especially with no reason for it and more than a little reason to continue.
Even in the steel-armored depths of a thirty-meter (no, hundred-foot) deep habitat. About the only place left on Earth where Bosnians could be, well, free Bosnians, and not just semi-stateless perma-refugees. (And, of course, the UN was busy mucking that up too. Law of the Sea Treaty, LOST.)
Cousin Valery Vadim Izbezic, who’d grown up with her in Sarajevo back when there had been a Bosnia, chuckled. “I meant more the short run. You know, once we unwrap our Big New Surprise, it’ll likely be a bit hard to order back to Earth for more. Especially in the largish quantities required.”
And she smiled, again but different and… wolfishly. “I was thinking, as the old Soviet-era saying used to put it, that quantity has a quality all its own. We’re already making syngas from OTEC electricity and seawater and CO2 — so we can send up heavyships full of liquid methane, and given the density of liquid hydrogen, even bigger ones full of that. Say in the hundred-thousand-ton class, or a few times that. Always remember, the Freiherr proved that bigger is actually easier, with… Up Drive.”
They’d called it the Ulam Drive, because Stanislaw Ulam had come up with the idea, back in the 40s, and (more importantly) because nobody else seemed ever to have said that. But, even deep in the heart of one of the gaggle of mid-ocean habitats that was (but don’t ever say it) New Bosnia, there was some instinct to obfuscate. (Like back in the day, “oralloy” not high-enriched uranium; “copper” not plutonium.) So, say “the Freiherr” in place of plain “Freeman Dyson.” And, her sea-gray eyes were sparkling.
And his own brown eyes sparkled in return. “Yes, but however are you going to launch such a leviathan? As in, get it up to operating altitude; as in, the square-cube law is still not your friend.” (The thrust of a rocket is mass-flow times exhaust velocity, not m times a but m-dot times v. And the mass flow is simply gas density times speed of sound at the ‘throat’ times throat area. The bigger you just scale up a rocket, the lower its natural acceleration has to be, all other things equal.) He frowned.
“Are you just going to start off your Bang-Bang with a Big Boom?” His deft hands mimed an underwater H-bomb explosion, and the ‘bubble’ it would make breaking the surface. “Sounds a bit… chancy to me. Rather hard to test, or pre-verify, too.”
“As a last fallback that might work. But remember, we have high-strength, high-temperature Type IV superconductors to work with. My pet name for this one is ‘Five Weeks in a Balloon.'” She smiled, at a memory of reading classic Verne in French, in a childhood Sarajevo long since passed away.
“That’s a really huge balloon, Alex. Made of what, filled with what?” His mind was already guessing semi-quantitatively at how much hydrogen?
“Filled with hot air. Very very hot air. And, remember what I just reminded you of; hot-enough air conducts electricity, and in a magnetic field…” Aleksandra smiled over open-spread hands. “So nothing material.”
And suddenly Valery could see it. She was aiming to raise a ‘hoop’ of current-carrying wire miles in the air, set off a (pure fusion) H-bomb underneath, and use the fireball as a mammoth balloon to lift the fractional-million-ton heavy cargo ship to a similar altitude, where it could drop a (probably much less impressive) pure-fusion bomb underneath its pusher plate and climb the long ladder to orbit. (A parking orbit, for only long enough to synchronize a second big translunar-injection burn, with all the many ships of its flock.)
And his hands silently mimed all that. “But, what raises your mag-loop?”
“Magnetism. If you plate the sea with a superconductor grid, and it can be a pretty coarse ground-plane-like grid of cables held up by big buoys, the old familiar Meissner Effect will make a virtual ‘image’ loop underneath it of the opposite polarity and repel the loop upwards. Mag-lev, starting as you ramp up the current and ‘inflate’ the loop in the first place. Stable.
“And before you ask what happens to the ‘balloon’ when the fireball starts to cool and de-ionize and leak through the magnetic confinement, there’s very little reason you can’t just set off another explosion to reheat it. After all, an Ulam drive requires you to set off repeated explosions every few seconds or so reliably in the first place. Soon enough, you’ll be high enough to start the real drive, and then you’re on your way.
“And the big point is, we should be able to actually do that fairly fast. No complicated research programs, only applying what we already know. Type IV superconductors are well characterized against radiation effects, for instance, not that you don’t already know. We have the time.” She met his eyes directly. “Maybe not a lot of excess; but we do have the time.”
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(Part 2/2)
“Before the wonderful, compassionate United Nations declares our mid-sea mini-colony an illegal stateless non-state and requires us to sign up with some country or other. Just like anyone in space has to do, under their Outer Space Treaty.” His voice was strong, if not bitter.
There was no Bosnia; it was a part of Greater Serbia now. The big pure-fusion H-bomb Valery had delivered to Belgrade buried in the innards of a tankerful of smuggled gasoline, had not changed that; although it had made their big illicit plutonium production reactor right under the petro-contraband facility pretty obvious, while obscuring the pure-fusion nature of their device entirely. (“Too bad they had a big accident, eh?”)
Just as using deep-dea temperature differences, and room-temperature heat superconductors, to generate ‘green’ (cough!) electricity on a near-TW scale had, in the end, brought far more national cupidity and scheming than honest simple business custom for ‘sea-gas.’ Refugees are welcome; but a wild freedom-loving bunch of successful ex-refugees… not so much.
“Just as the Moon Treaty forbids any signatory to extract and use lunar resources for anything but supporting a ‘research base’ — well, devil take that and the horse it rode in on.” Alex’s voice was merrily grim. “Here’s to the Bosnian Lunar Free State never signing any such horseturd.”
They were, she and he had long-ago realized, going to get one shot to leap off the springboard of the (designed) failure of their mid-ocean refuge. If it was the last place on Earth any such techno-state might be welcome?
The conclusion was obvious. And as ever before, Someone Somehow seemed to smooth a path laid out before them, and cast lamplight onto the trail…
Not a Scottish Rising. Not a Japanese Rising of The Last Samurai. A real and literal and effective Rising. Looking forward not back.
“Okay, that’s about the last point on my mini-agenda, Alex. If you have a detail-able plan to do all that… that’s a wrap. Oh, what were you going to call your big ships?”
They’d already settled on a short-list for the passenger ships. Names to conjure with, or to weep over, either one or both. Sarajevo. Srebrenica. Mostar. On and on, easily, to the point she could not even name them silently to herself without tears in her eyes. But one day…
And these she could say with a smile. “Great Sky River for the very first of the big LH2 ships, but of course, we’ll want and need some decent bit of redundancy. How about Eliavagar, the mother of waters in the old Norse creation myth, for the second?”
“Full of ‘yeasty venom’ and all. I like that. Let’s drink to it.”
“You know about me and wine, cousin Valery. In vino veritas, with sharp teeth and claws.” It wasn’t that Aleksandra was a lush, far from it. But history had proved booze and loss brought her… inspiration. Maybe often ‘gateway invention’ and, almost always, in detail enough to work.
The pure-fusion ‘Izbezic configuration’ that had started it all. And so very many other ideas, hers and others’, synergizing… right on up to now. “Here, Aleksandra. One short shot of brandy each, then back to work. You make the toast.” She couldn’t well argue with that.
And she had to misquote it, to do it; but she had to say it anyway. “Long live freedom and devil take the ideologues. To the Bosnian Lunar Free State, and all her non-Bosnian friends and relations, soon to be.”
Yet before she took that drink, she said something else. In the American Sign Language she’d learned to talk to her deaf sister, back before the snipers had… well, history is also what you make. A SF-literary reference and a historical allusion in one. If too hazardous to quite say out loud.
Orion shall rise.
To which, also, they drank. (Based on some pre-existing setting and characters from far back.)
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Obama’s legacy is the Temu Cold War.
The 2010s on is a very compressed Hollywood remake of the Cold War, but with very much less subtle writing, and Temu production values.
Team USA just beat the Soviets at the Olympics in Hockey. But, they are Temu soviets, and we have to try to get Greenland as a replacement for the radar network coverage that we can no longer rely on within Norad.
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frenz
The European Union is pretty much simply the Aggressor Nation. The professionals and academics who thought it was at all a good idea that made sense are pretty much equivalent to the Circle Trigon Party.
Esperanto is literally something that was fashionable with the supranationalists.
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