Author: Sarah A. Hoyt

So, I realize it’s been a long long time. Mostly because I ran into a spate of books where I couldn’t find the book OR any other book by the writer or in the series, either in ebook or paper. So, I got discouraged and then … well, mom’s death (I’m still working through that. There are days) and the desensitization therapy, and you know stupid thyroid tricks, and stuff, and I got really out of the groove.

So, if you don’t remember what this is about: this is the explanation. And these are the past reviews 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

And if for some reason after reading my review (or before) you want to read it, it’s available as an ebook here: Donovan’s Brain by Curt Siodomak

First the obligatory bio (I find so much stuff in these things.)

Writer and Director. Nationality: American. Born: Kurt Siodmak in Dresden, Germany, 10 August 1902; brother of the director Robert Siodmak. Education: Attended the University of Zurich, Ph.D. 1927. Family: Married Henrietta de Perrot, 1931, one son. Career: Reporter, freelance writer, and railway engineer; 1929—first film as writer, People on Sunday; 1930—first novel published; 1934–37—writer for Gaumont-British; 1937—moved to the United States, and writer for Paramount, 1938–40, and Universal, 1940–46; 1951—first film as director, Bride of the Gorilla; 1952—formed production company with Ivan Tors.

I knew of course from the name that Siodmak was German in origin, obviously. but I didn’t know he was actually born in Germany. Nor that he only moved to the US as an adult. Every time I start feeling like the lone ranger, I run into another science fiction author who came from elsewhere altogether.

I had no idea at all he was also a director, and I know at least one of my commenters is going to yell at me for saying this but I never saw any of his books, nor do the titles ring any bells. (But I’m not a great movie person. In fact, I might be the opposite of a movie person, since I will do every other form of entertainment, including but not limited to tiddly winks than watching a movie. I usually passive watch movies, like people inhale passive smoke. Dan watches the movies, and I, being a cat, have to look up at the images now and then, while I follow the sound.)

Donovan’s Brain was published in 1942. Perhaps some of the aspects of the writing are influenced by WWII, which had to be hard to cope with, particularly for a German author in America.

Or maybe I’m refining too much on it. Or perhaps the feeling of dread and horror that filled me reading the book last night has more to do with the fact I was feeling very ill, (I have the going around thing) and read because I couldn’t sleep, I don’t know.

The book filled me with dread and depression, almost from the beginning. It is the story of Doctor Patrick Cory who is doing experiments to find out if he can keep a brain alive and improve it.

I hated the character from the moment he gains a very sick cappuchin monkey’s trust then kills him. Look, I don’t know what the author was trying to convey. And I am not a bleeding heart who is against all animal experimentation. I’m not even against primate experimentation. I recognize that things have to be tried and that we have the medical science we have thanks to experiments on animals. BUT — but — this is a very personal and visceral thing. I’d have been fine if he’d just met the animal, grabbed it and killed it while it struggled. Mind you, for a first chapter it would still be off putting. BUT not the absolute turn off of taming the animal and nurturing him, then cuddling him and killing him as he falls asleep. To me that type of thing is an absolute betrayal of trust and revolts me. Yes, euthanasia. Note, please that none of our cats go in till they’re in obvious and unbearable pain the painkillers can’t touch. And then only because I know they don’t understand their suffering. It’s not something I can explain to them. And I’m certainly not going to befriend a random sick animal and then kill him.

Sure, he wants to use the monkey’s brain to test his theories, fine. I suppose the first chapter is supposed to show us he’ll go to any lengths to do his experiments. Ah, ah ruthless, etc. I’m not sure I’m reading it properly, but if I were writing this, and wrote it that way, it would be because I meant to make this guy repulsive.

The fact that his relationship with his wife seems to be that he exploits his wife, and doesn’t really try to have a relationship with her, makes me actively dislike him even more. (And also the ninny who puts up with that treatment.)

After this there is a plane crash and somehow the doctor ends up being first responder. one of the men is lethally injured, but not dead so he kills him by removing his brain and hooking him up to his apparatus.

After that, the book rapidly devolves into a horror novel, specifically a possession novel. He tries to communicate with the brain (which is the brain of a rich man who has done some shady things) and then somehow manages to establish a telepathic connection, through which the brain ends up controlling the scientist.

They (the brain possessing the body) kill someone, and then just before he kills his wife, the despised/ignored assistant he left behind kills the brain (and himself in the process.)

The scientist then has some kind of breakdown, and ends up in the hospital, but ends up rewarded with a nice position and home, happy end all around.

I have only two problems: First it’s a horror novel and not even, really, a science fiction horror novel. All the touch stones of the story are traditional, spiritual horror. I don’t like horror, and of all horror that makes me recoil possession is absolutely the worst.

And yeah, okay, I took had a character get his mind highjacked. I’ll just say neither the character being possessed nor the possessor were half as repulsive as this pair.

The second is that the main character didn’t die screaming, with his death detailed in excruciating and loving exactness on the page. Because by halfway through the book, I hated him with the fire of a thousand suns.

I think in the end the truth is that Siodmak (whose name drove me nuts as a little dyslexic girl in Portugal, since I confused him with Simak and no, no, no.) to my mind — and this is entirely my opinion — might have come to the US; he might even have naturalized, but in the end his mental map was that of an early 20th century — and to an extent even now — European. For a book to be good almost every personality in it must be repulsive and make the author want to drown them in a vat of lake water filled with eels.

Maybe that’s just my opinion and maybe that is also a function of my being sick and feeling out of sorts, who knows.

Interestingly, though, though I remember reading Siodmak, I don’t remember a single one of his books, and I’m almost sure I either never read Donovan’s Brain before, or gave up on it after a couple of chapters.

Anyway, that’s done. Next up, secured at great expense (used, in paper, on Amazon) Anthro, the Life Giver written by John J. Deegan.

I’ll try to get to it next week, like a normal person. If you want to follow along at home, there is ONE used copy here. And I suppose you can hit up your local used bookstores and see if they have it. (If you want to know the list I’m following, it’s here. The site will translate.)

This is the Portuguese edition of Anthro The Lifegiver is below. The Portuguese title translates to Explorers of the universe, which is pathetically generic. But considering how outre science fiction was even years later when I came along, I won’t blame them for trying to make it sound tame and reasonable.

Anyway, looking forward to it. (With my luck it will be horror again. Ah, well, it’s paper. I can always wall it if it upsets me that much.)

Yesterday on X someone said that we can never eliminate all electoral fraud. After all election fraud is an old and respected American tradition, with us from the beginning. What we need to do is eliminate the ability to make a lot of money through elected office and then–

Good news, people: As soon as we invent a perpetual motion machine, we’ll study war no more.

What? Stop staring at me. We’re as likely to invent a perpetual motion machine as to eliminate the ability to make a lot of money through elected office. Look, yeah, we can absolutely limit the opportunities for graft and corruption — and a lot more is being done towards that end than you might think. Though it’s a tricky process, and sometimes attempting to eliminate corruption, by the very fact of being a bunch of abstract rules, creates other loopholes. Humans, eh? — but we can not and will never eliminate them.

It’s the same thing with electoral fraud, of course. Completely cleaning out electoral fraud would, in point of fact, be impossible. There will always be someone who gets someone else’s grandmother to pose as their dead grandmother and vote for what they want. There will always be fake ballots, (maybe) and other ways to falsify the will of the people.

The problem is two fold, though. The first is the sheer scale of the enormities being perpetrated. Again, from the top: in a largely red area, in 2012, 1/3 of the people coming to vote — normal people, about my age, which at the time was under 50 — were told they’d already voted. And there was no way to address this. The votes were already in the system. They couldn’t find them and pull them out. Yes, they told people they could cast a “provisional” vote but that’s known as “a way to stop them yelling.” Those votes are never counted unless the margin — with the fraudulent vote already in — of victory of the final quoted votes is less than the provisional. And sometimes not even then. They’re provisional because they are pretending not to believe you, and claiming you already voted. Maybe you forgot? Maybe 1/3 the population of downtown Colorado Springs had amnesia. Alien rays? Time travel? Who knows?

Anyway, I heard from poll watchers in Denver that at least in some precincts 2/3 of the people showing up were marked as already voting. Funny thing too, it was only those registered Republican.

With all that in 2012 the Democrats “flipped” Colorado. But the fraud must have barely been enough to squeak them by because they immediately (and despite a popular vote against) voted to make the voting system “vote by mail.” And that, ladies and gentlemen is how they stole my home state. Oh, there are other dodges in there now, including the ever popular “show a bill with the address” and you can register to vote the same day. Of course, in the age of computers, we could create a bill with our address in ten minutes. And ten minutes only because the printer might be having a memgrim.

The fraud is so massive, so overpowering, that one wonders how many of the votes counted are even vaguely real. 1/2? More or less?

Let me count the ways to fraud — not an exhaustive list — Vote by mail (who knows who is filling the ballot, really?), same day registration, early voting, no ID, registering people to vote that aren’t citizens (no, truly, you don’t have to show proof of citizenship to vote), registering people to vote automatically when they get a driver’s license. Even if the people don’t vote, think of all those lovely names, addresses, etc. that no one is using. Amazing isn’t it?

So that’s the first problem with the happy slappy “There’s always been fraud. This is fine.”

The second problem is… let’s call it “a disparity of frauding.”

Yes, there has been fraud from the very beginning. There were “party machines.” The Democrat party machine and the Republican party machine. Going around canvasing habitual drunkards to vote for you by hook or crook was quite a thing on election day.

It was usually very local. There were cities, precincts, etc. “owned” by a machine or the other.

Then came the 20th century, the centralization of power and — more importantly — for various reasons too tedious to go into, the Democrats owning the Mass Media in all but the monetary sense.

By education, by inclination, by belief, the mass industrial information/entertainment complex were hard core leftists. Many were in fact communists, by the 20s. What this meant was not quite a conspiracy, but definitely a prospiracy.

They believed all evil of Republicans, all good of Democrats (which according to Heinlein were already taken over and skinsuited by communists by the forties, and I see no reason to doubt him.) and reported accordingly.

By the time I came to the States, a Democrat could eat babies on live television, and the news would report that it had done that reluctantly, to appease the alien overlords, so that things wouldn’t get worse.

If a Republican walked on water the news would report he/she couldn’t swim.

The result of this lopsided reporting is that the Republicans stopped having a “machine” or in fact being able to do anything even vaguely underhanded.

How do I know that? Because whenever the democrats are caught doing something horrible in the realm of fraud and try to pull the “both sides” the worst they can find for the GOP is stuff like “Someone cheated in this little election for dog catcher, in Podunk.”

And this btw is why the GOP have acquired the habit of being “beautiful losers.” It’s actually classic abuse. After a while, you believe you have no agency and you’re going to lose anyway, so you might as well get used to it.

Be kind to your GOP beautiful losers. They just haven’t realized the game has changed.

As haven’t all the black pillers out there.

Yes, we do need to do something about the fraud. And I know Trump is doing a lot, including cleaning state voter roles. It’s not showy stuff, and it’s not being widely reported, unless the left can distort it as “suppressing vote.” And they often can’t do that, because if the public looks at it at all, they realize that it’s not all made up and then– So mostly the left and the media (BIRM) ignore it, even while trying to fight it.

But more importantly, the beautiful losers of the GOP are being replaced from within by … well, by people who have had enough. You can call them MAGA if you wish, and if MAGA is understood to mean “Make America Great Again” not “Appendixes to Trump.” Most of us appreciate the president well enough, but he’s our instrument, we are not his. (This is important because if they take him away we will find someone who hurts them more.)

Is the replacement complete? No. But it has advanced farther and faster than i thought possible in the time we’ve had since last January. Chill. yes, the Republic is still in danger, but the danger lessens by the day and the people coming in are more pissed off than resigned to losing.

More importantly the informational imbalance that created all other imbalances is pretty much gone, or perhaps entirely flipped the other way. Thank G-d who works in mysterious ways for Elon Musk and X. But even places like Facebook have resigned themselves to the fact they can’t hide the truth completely. And the places that cover truth with a pillow until it stops moving? They’re dying. They’re the province of the provincial (people who are in the walled gardens of academia and such, and of the very old. That’s it.

Oh, yeah, and Academia is losing prestige and following by the day.

As for the rest? Stop howling for blood. That’s the stupidest thing you could do. If we fall into indiscriminate killing, or even arresting and punishing the innocent with the guilty, we’ll tell everyone — including the idiots who don’t pay attention — that might MAKES right. It would be the easiest way to destroy the Republic. And of snatching defeat from the jaws of the Victory that’s now assured for our side.

Yes, you are angry. We all are. When you’ve been very depressed, as the right in this country — in the world? — has been, what comes back first is anger. It’s the first real emotion to pierce through. And it’s very powerful.

But right now an indiscriminate attack will just finish destroying even the illusion of the rule of law. And the Republic — and most of us — don’t survive that. We become a Latin American banana republic at best, the Balkans at worst.

Again, remember that what you’re hearing — yes, X is free. It’s also penetrated by a lot of bots and foreigners, and foreign bots too — is not necessarily what’s happening. For instance, I found out that congress has in fact been confirming Trump appointees at a breakneck speed, which is the opposite of what I thought was happening. I am assured THROUGH PEOPLE ON THE INSIDE that yes, trials and prosecutions are proceeding apace, or at least being set up.

Consider this your public service announcement that this administration has been in power for about a year. That’s an eye-blink in politics.

And so much has already been done that it’s almost impossible to believe.

Learn to win. Stop panicking because things aren’t done in an instant and exactly as in your head. Work carefully and steadily. Yes, work on helping with cleaning the rolls, with exposing the truth that the MSM (and media in general) hides, with exposing psy-ops and nonsense.

DO NOT panic and start calling for what is sure to make us lose when victory is already in process. That’s just stupid.

Losers aren’t beautiful. They’re just losers.

And we’re winning. Let’s keep it going.

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

FROM JOHN BAILEY: The Road From Concord: April 1775 and the Birth of the American War (Historical Fiction)

April 1775.

What began as a march to seize weapons became the opening campaign of a war that would last eight years.

As British regulars march out of Boston under secret orders, Ensign Edward Hamilton believes discipline and training will quickly restore order in the rebellious countryside. Across the darkened roads of Massachusetts, Lieutenant Nathaniel Ward—farmer, veteran, and reluctant officer—answers the alarm as neighbors gather with muskets, powder horns, and resolve.

From the first shots on Lexington Green to the running battle back from Concord, the countryside itself becomes a battlefield of stone walls, forests, and narrow roads. Exhaustion, hunger, fear, and courage shape every decision. Neither side fully understands what has begun—only that there is no turning back.

When the smoke clears, thousands of militia converge on the heights around Boston. The siege begins. And two men on opposite sides realize the same truth: this war will not end quickly—and it will change them forever.

The Road From Concord is a meticulously researched historical novel that brings the opening days of the American Revolutionary War to life through the eyes of those who fought it.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Street Snacks (Liquid Diet Chronicles Book 5)

Don’t leave your empties lying in the streets, guys, jeez…

Meg Turner had a quiet six months (after the end of the monster incursion). That was because her borders were closed, but her six months of peace were up when her borders came down. While, yes, bringing her borders down allowed for a lot of postponed good things, it also allowed for an ill-considered challenge for her territory and a couple of murderers to waltz across her borders.

Oh, and an abandoned fledgling that had awakened to the night, buried in a dumpster. One that the Justices would have seen culled with most of the fledglings in the Kansas City nest. Thank goodness she’d sent Radu to rescue the ones that could recover from being brought over by cannibalistic monsters, and nobody official had paid attention to how many they’d rescued.

Between hiding an extra fledgling from the new Justice, Richmond recovering from a nasty case of PTSD, a vampire hiding his feeding on the homeless as animal attacks, and another feeding on her young vampires, Meg has her hands full.

And she’d really like to close her borders again, to avoid having to deal with all of this nonsense, please and thank you.

FROM M. C. A. HOGARTH: An Exile Amid Stars (Shieldmatron Book 2)

For nearly ten years, Surela “Rel” Silin Eddings has been plying the galactic waters on the merchant vessel Earthrise, picking up sundries for the home system from which she remains exiled… and enjoying herself despite it. How else, with a congenial crew, dozens of worlds to explore, and so many things to learn? Most days, she can even forget she’s a criminal to her own people, and that’s the way she likes it. The last thing Surela wants is a new mission… particularly one that involves haring off into the unknown reaches of space in search of an Eldritch from a House predisposed to hate her for her misdeeds. But the Empress has decided one of the Eldritch’s waywards needs to come home, and Surela’s the woman to fetch her.As usual, nothing goes as planned…

FROM JOHN BAILEY: The Quiet Zones

In near-Earth orbit, regions of space have begun swallowing signals whole. No telemetry. No data. No explanation. The agencies that monitor them call these anomalies Quiet Zones—and pretend they don’t exist.

Kurt Calder, an orbital systems analyst, notices what no one else will admit: the silence is spreading. When a classified mission disappears inside one of the Zones, Kurt is pulled into a covert investigation that forces him beyond the edge of mapped space—and into something that doesn’t communicate with words.

Inside the Quiet Zones, instruments fail but awareness sharpens. Crews report missing time, shared thoughts, and an overwhelming pressure to stop moving forward. What waits in the silence isn’t hostile in the way humanity expects—but it is not passive, and it does not intend to be ignored.

As Earth prepares to push deeper into space, Kurt must decide whether the Quiet Zones are a warning…
or the first move in a war humanity doesn’t yet realize it’s fighting.

The Quiet Zones is a tense, atmospheric science fiction mystery about expansion, control, and the danger of discovering you are not alone—and never were.

FROM ALMA T. C. BOYKIN: Of Land and Magic

Something hides under the land …
Knights guard secrets …
Three sisters watch a new world and old evil …
Stone and metal conceal a surprise. Or do they?

Four short tales of fantasy, set in places as different as central Spain and the cool valleys of Austria, to the deserts of Arizona and a city like and unlike our own.

EDITED BY RITA BEEMAN: Uncanny Valet (Raconteur Press Anthologies Book 69)

The cumulative effect of these stories is a many-shaded collection of tales that explores the idea of how a more automated world would affect actual humans, as well as the automatons, themselves. On a deeper level, one might be inspired to consider the way humans treat one another, particularly when a helper is considered of a lower station. If one is predisposed to condescend to “lesser” folk, how, then, will that same person treat a non-person?
It’s possible that a person would take greater care with an automaton for which they paid a great deal of money, rather than a mere human servant who might be instantly dismissed for no particular reason. Possibly the best idea of “Uncanny Valet” is to consider how we treat the other people and objects (like cars) in our day-to-day lives. But more than anything, we hope you will enjoy these flights of fancy.

While one may be tempted to think with apprehension of a future of increased reliance on frightening automation and automatons, it’s important to consider that heart-warming and humorous outcomes are equally possible. Come what may, we can’t wait to see what happens.

—Rita Beeman (from the Introduction)

FROM MALORY: The Weird Map in Mr. Glimm’s Skull

In a dusty school boiler room, 12-year-old inventor Felix Jones tunes his homemade radio and unleashes a whisper from the shadows: his own name. What starts as a creepy glitch explodes into a heart-pounding adventure when Felix uncovers a hidden Russian hatch, a vanishing caretaker with a scarred past, and a buried Cold War bunker teeming with psychic experiments and deadly drones. Accompanied by his loyal friend William, Felix races against shadowy spies and an ancient entity called “Mother” that’s hungry for freedom. Secrets shatter, memories twist, and the fate of their sleepy village hangs by a wire in this pulse-racing tale of bravery, betrayal, and buried horrors. Perfect for fans of Stranger Things and Rick Riordan—will Felix crack the code or become the next victim?

EDITED BY DAVID BADURINA: Insert Coin (Raconteur Press Anthologies Book 70)

Insert Coin harkens back to retro arcades, digital adventures, and pockets full of quarters on a sweaty Saturday night with a group of friends. Looking for stories that have high adventure and real consequences? Friends surviving, very real injuries, clever moments where the big boss is conquered through wit and ingenuity. The games may be anything – space oriented, sword-and-sorcery, sports, spies, and the stakes are high.

FROM DAVE FREER: Storm-Dragon

On the treacherous Vann’s World, Skut battles a savage wind and deadly hamerkops to rescue a mysterious, telepathic creature. Fleeing a rising tide and a menacing Loor-beast, he forms an unexpected bond with the tiny, electric-charged being that sees him as its protector. As Skut navigates the perilous tidal tiers, his impulsive escape from Highpoint Station unravels into a fight for survival—both for himself and his newfound companion.

Podge is the new kid in town, trying to keep his head down. Meeting Skut is about the only bright spot in his introduction to this strange new world. The boys bond over Skut’s creature, and trying to avoid the class bullies. This is only the beginning; soon Skut finds his new friends do not ease the growing concerns of the adults around him while the town is coming under a mysterious threat. What can two boys and a tiny storm-dragon do?

FROM MEL DUNAY: Dragon’s Teeth (Hunter Healer King Book 3)

The name’s Chloe Fortebat, and I don’t understand this place at all.
Maxim and I are engaged, but there’s a problem: his late mother may be too closely related to my mother. We need answers about her past, but she abandoned me as a child, and we don’t know where she is now. Meanwhile, a candidate for Emperor was attacked by a vicious beast, and Maxim’s friend the Prime Minister is pushing him forward as a replacement. I think Maxim would be good at it, but right now, we have bigger problems. We have to find my mother, and stop the monster stalking this city. But neither the monster nor my mother may be what we expected.
My name is Dr. Maxim os Storm, and I hunt the beasts that haunt the night.
I want to marry Chloe more than anything, but first we must find her mother, who vanished years ago under suspicious circumstances. As we investigate, the questions multiply. What creature killed one man and mauled another near the Beast Garden? What is the meaning of the signet ring marked with a face that is half woman, half dragon? Why does the Prime Minister want to thrust the Imperial Crown onto my head? But Chloe’s courage never wavers, no matter what ancient horrors await us. We will find the answers we seek, and face the darkness together.
For fans of Lindsay Buroker and Patricia Briggs, here is a dual POV gaslamp fantasy with monster hunting, a slow-burn romance subplot, and a reluctant king facing his destiny. Book 3 of the Hunter Healer King Trilogy.

FROM C. CHANCY: Oni the Lonely

A grieving mountain cove doctor. A pair of wayward oni. A curse borne on the black wings of crows.

The Rivertown Shopping Village has seen a lot of strange proprietors. An oni painter on the run from a bad breakup is a new one. Maple Leaf Studio opened with blazing color, but will a haunting end Kyosai Momoji’s dream before it begins?

At the south end of Rivertown, Rain McKee delivers soap and perfume with a hint of mountain blessings, picking up her life in the wake of her grandparents’ deaths. Deaths that may have been from a firstborn curse….

Kyosai’s a firstborn, and oni attract trouble like lightning strikes. If either of them want to survive, they’ll have to face haunts, monsters, and a curse so ancient no living mortal knows its name.

The Appalachians are old; the evils lurking there, older still….

(If you want ancient folklore, modern magic, and a love story that prioritizes friendship first, this is the slow burn for you!)

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: How Much for a Perfect Holiday Dinner?

In cyberspace, dreams can come true — but sometimes it’s easier said than done.

Jaygee grew up longing for the holiday dinners he saw in media portrayals. With his dysfunctional upbringing behind him and success within his grasp, he discovers a game where he can have the holiday dinner he dreamed of.

But realizing it proves harder than anticipated — and has unexpected consequences. Jaygee has some hard decisions to make, and sometimes you can’t go back home again.

FROM CHRISTOPHER WOERNER: Big Beautiful Book

Coverage of current events building up to Trump 2.0 and the first half-year of his work. Not even covering everything, just hitting as much as I could. As much criticism as I have of the current administration, this is still what we voted for. Just watching the left go hysterical is worth the effort. Even more amazing is that this coverage ended in July so, other than the B-side which is a humorous look at the government shutdown last fall, I didn’t even get around to covering what’s happened since. There’s a lot more where this came from and we still have three and a half years to go.

BY CLEVE F. ADAMS, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: Too Fair To Die (Annotated): The classic hard-boiled pulp noir

Cherchez la femme, they told McBride. Find the woman. He hit the trail in the suburbs of L.A., and wound up in the heart of Montana; in the heart of a bitter, bullet-baited gubernatorial election; in the heart of the one woman he would have given his life to put behind bars.

• This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new introduction giving the book historical and genre context.

NOMINATED FOR THE PROMETHEUS, 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: tangible

I’m not going to speak cogently about the taking of Venezuela’s dictator. Or rather–

Look, there is vestigial unease about messing with other governments, yes, but think on it, they were messing with us big time. By adding and abetting Jihadis, Chicoms and Putin;s lackeys, by serving as a hiding place for every potential nasty who wanted to take a bite at us. And oh, yeah, by flooding us with the contents of their prisons, except those who ere in for political dissent.

Just because they were fighting an undeclared war, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fight back.

Someone on Twitter was whining about how the “anti-war” right has disappeared. Meh. I don’t know that I was ever anti-war. I’m anti-endless-war that kills America’s sons and daughters. This raid, which took out a bad actor in the night and killed no Americans? I think the only people against it are self-identifying as villains.

And I’m not going to coherent on it. As many of you know I had family in Venezuela, and I believe I still have some. (Look, with my parents’ generation dying there are fewer and fewer channels of communication.) This one is PERSONAL.

Sic semper tyrannis

I’ve been crying at the videos of the celebrating Venezuelans, and laughing at the memes. There are a lot of memes. And so, without further ado, here is your Emergency, Special Edition Meme Post.
Echo in Venezuela! But with USA know-how and ability!

How many times, precisely, do I have to tell you the same thing, over and over and over again?

Eschew the black pill. Refuse doomerism.

You know exactly where the black pill has been and you d*mn well know that doomerism fights on the enemy’s side.

One of the things I will absolutely never understand — not even vaguely — is how everyone seems to have rewritten in their heads the fact that it was proven that the guy named after Spanish fountains has no real American following. (I mean, there must be a few hundred, not counting FBI agents, because of course there will be a few of those too. We’re a very large country and as the Good Book says “the chowderheads thou shalt always have with you) and it’s all foreign and bots, and the inevitable foreign bots.

And yeah, sure Turning Point invited the increasingly insane Tucker Carlson, but people the organization is — after all — the legacy of a man who was distinguished by TALKING TO EVERYONE. Of course they let Tucker talk. You expected them not to? And at any rate, the best way to expose the lunatics is to let them babble. ALWAYS WAS.

Yes, yes, the mass media continues pounding the drum about the fracturing of the right. And the bots and foreigners and foreign bots are pitching fits on social media, but seriously…

Guys, there is no great upsurge of groyperism in the country. Not even a little bit. All this is storm und drang online. It’s not real. It never was.

It’s a psyops.

The bitterly funny point in all this is that it’s not even a psy-ops aimed at you. It’s a psyops aimed at Jewish donors to democrat causes, who decisively closed their purses after 10/7 and some of which dared donate to the GOP. This whole operation is designed to convince them that the GOP is more Anti-Semitic than the profoundly Anti-Semitic left and get them to resume supporting the “least of two evils.” (It ain’t.)

The problem is that the right is profoundly naive when it comes to these things, and were raised and nursed on the idea that the left were these amazing planners. Starting with the USSR which…. wasn’t and moving on down to the present left.

I keep hearing people saying “They planned all this” and “this was all part of their plan” and most of it is as much their plan as it was my cat’s plan to fall from the chair while licking himself. They’re very good at “I meant to do that” and the right, being more rational is even better at rationalizing their actions.

Part of it is that the right can’t figure out why the left would do so much crazy shit, like try to destabilize the family, unless it were part of their plan to give the government greater power.

The truth is that the left does things like destabilize the family because they didn’t like their families. it is as easy as that. There is no real grand plan. There never was. Yes, the side effect is to give more power to the government. Sort of. Though honestly, mostly, it just causes chaos.

The problem is that the left can’t imagine second level effects, let alone third level effects. They believe that what they want will come true, because they want it. That’s it.

That is not the mind of grand planners.

Yes, they do puerile stuff like this operation “let’s convince the right to fall apart” though honestly, I think actually that was started by people abroad, who have better ability to plan (and less understanding of Americans.)

The point here is that you need to calm down. You need to calm down, and you need to stop dooming and blackpilling.

And you need to stop demanding trials, etc. etc. etc.

Look, seriously, yes, we need trials, but right now, and until it all is exposed first, what will happen if we go to trials is “it’s all the same. the right is engaged in revenge politics, just like the left.”

We have to be patient. And work.

Right now, what we need to work on is exposing and combating vote fraud, including how stupid and ridiculous vote by mail is.

We need to expose and combat this, or we’ll never be able to do the rest.

Other than that? Spit out the black pill, and possess your soul in patience.

I know it’s hard. I’m #teamheadsonpikes, remember? It’s very hard.

But nonethless we must learn to work and be patient. And spitting out the black pill.

Slid into 2026 in my family room, in my ratty jeans and old t-shirt, with younger son and wife singing songs from Kpop Demon Hunters and the cats looking difficult.

Yes, this year there’s an election coming up, and that always makes me nervous.

Yes, there’s unrest in Iran: pray for them.

Yes, we’re getting a year older, but each year takes us a year away from 2020.

It’s going to be a good year. We’ll make sure of it!

Go forth make 2026 an extraordinary year, you amazing people!

Years ago, at one of the darkest moments, a friend in the Austen fandom gave me a motto in a quote from George S. Paton. The quote is: Success is how high you bounce when you hit the bottom.

It’s one of the things I had pinned to my board, and which kept me going when it seemed like I’d hit the bottom, and then there was another bottom underneath.

I wasn’t sure I believed it. Or at least I didn’t believe there could be bouncing, and there could be success. Look, after a while you lose sight of where you hoped to go. After a while things get lost in the shuffle.

But it turns out it was right, anyway.

It was only after losing my career, my beloved home state, the familiar places, the things I loved and all my certainties about the world and life in general (in 2020) that I had the courage to write the book I’d been avoiding for the last … forty plus years.

And it worked. How high will it bounce? I don’t know. Jury still out. But it did give me a bounce anyway. It gave me hope back.

Perhaps the country too needed to hit bottom. Which we did in the four years of autopen. Let’s hope we bounce all the way to the stars.

My friend Charlie Martin says “You can’t recover for someone else.” And that’s of course, true. Whatever is holding you back, whether real or not, whether self-inflicted or not, you have to fight it on your own. I can’t fight it for you. No one can.

What I can do is give you hope. People have hit bottom before, and then bounced really high. And maybe it will happen again. Maybe it will happen for you.

You won’t know till you hit bottom. And start bouncing.

This coming year: remember to bounce. Bounce to the stars!

I have word that No Man’s Land — Vol 1, Vol 2, Vol 3 — is an official Prometheus Award Nominee!

Mind you, I’ll be excited if it makes to finalist, since it’s a very long book, if for no other reason.

I expect the award will go to Laura Montgomery’s excellent PLANTING LIFE: Shut the Kingdom

Or perhaps to Dave Freer’s Storm Dragon

But honestly, it’s an amazing honor to just be nominated alongside these excellent books.

If you wish to vote for your favorite, remember you can become a member of the Libertarian Futurist Society and make your voice heard.

Or just wish us luck!

I’m angry and sad, and I don’t know what to do with any of it.

So let me share so you too can also be angry and sad:

The thing is, if you think it’s just the Somalis, or JUST the daycare fraud… You’re air-dreaming.

Look, as I many times remind people, I come from what is technically an European country, and yet… What is considered fraud here is just the way you do business there. All the way down.

America, as dirty as we’ve gotten, is REMARKABLY clean. Oh, never as clean as we’d like it to be or think it is. Never was.

To an extent fraud is inherent to humanity. Stopping fraud would require “If only everyone” and as we know there has been no time in the history of ever when everyone did the same thing at once. If tomorrow someone invented a shot that allows you to live disease free forever, about 2/3 of the people or more would refuse to take it.

However, most countries and most cultures are so choked with fraud they achieve nothing. To an extent, for a shining moment the US was not so stopped up by fraud and that allowed us to push humanity forward a massive amount. Fraud was still there, from the party machines to the federal contractors, but it wasn’t so pervasive that nothing else happened.

And then–

Well, it was baked into the centralization of power, wasn’t it? The more money there is somewhere — and there’s a ton of money in our federal government. Really a sh*tton of money — the more the fraud will grow.

But then all of this was incrementalized by…. mass migration.

I pointed out on twitter the other day that while I don’t think we should totally shut of immigration, except temporarily, I DO think we should UTTERLY stop chain migration and “family migration”. Yes, because I’m cruel. Why else?

No, on the serious side, because those two are a gateway to mass migration and mass migration means never having to assimilate. As much as I wanted to assimilate, if instead of being pitchforked into the country with my American born and raised (whose family had been here since the 1600s (and a branch before)) husband I’d come with my entire extended family, I probably would never have acculturated. There would be mom’s judgement and dad’s judgment, and what the cousins would say, and it would rapidly turn into “us against how the Americans do it.” And acculturating meant breaking with your family. (It does mean that anyway, to a great extent, as much as I still love them. I’m not of them and they fail to get me.) Something most people don’t want to EVER do.

Doesn’t mean assimilation doesn’t happen. eventually the vast masses of Irish and Italian became largely American, but it takes three generations to do that. And some stuff remains, always.

Which is why for a while at least — until we get our culture to stop simping for everyone else — and maybe forever we need to cut off chain migration. And family reunification should ONLY be done… Well, a couple can come through together. A citizen (which means years of wait for citizenship) can bring in his wife/her husband. BUT children over say 6 years of age? One at a time. Because it requires the last one being a citizen to bring another. One for one. Don’t like it? Don’t immigrate. And parents? ONLY IN EXTREME PROVABLE NEED.

Also of course, yes, this wouldn’t apply to refugees, but we do need to establish who is an actual refugee — hint, refugees don’t go back on vacations to the place the fled from — and even in those cases, we should disperse them, using the nuclear family as a unit. “You can’t settle in NYC. I don’t care if all your cousins are there. You are assigned…. Arizona.”

Yes, this is more authoritarian than we’d tolerate, but it’s for GUESTS, not citizens.

Why? Well, beyond the fact that I think we desperately need assimilation? Because we need to break up the fraud mentality from other countries.

Again, if you think that’s just Somalis! Every country bordering the Mediterranean has this problem, and don’t get me started on Africa. JUST DON’T. Or India. Or any other place that’s been invaded multiple times. You work around the authorities, and there’s no inherent respect for the rule of law. PERIOD.

Which leads to stuff like this.

We’re back to the DOGE question “What if all our debt (and a bit besides) is just fraud?”

As we all know I’m the philosophical persuasion that Taxation is THEFT. All taxation. Because it’s taken under threat of force, and because it’s not moral for a group to do something an individual can’t do.

But there are purposes for which I — and not just me! — would willingly donate if not the same close to the same amount we pay in taxes. For me, the things to which I’d gleefully donate to protect our borders, space exploration, biological research (to the extent I think government should do those last two, which is none, but you know, I’d still donate to that.)

There are things to which, if not a government, a large enough enterprise-control is needed as a force multiplier.

Pouring it down the rat hole of democrat corruption is not one of those.

And it’s mostly democrat corruption. No, not because the GOP is Simon pure — I’d bet you there’ 50% of them on the China payroll! — but because the GOP is in the crosshairs of the MSM and for the last 100 years if one of them so much as farted in church, he’d be taken down in the media. Meanwhile, the left? Oh, dear. by the mid 20th century I’m not even sure the live boy or dead girl in bed thing applied. They could do what they wanted. And did.

Combine this with the fact that might be derived from it, but then again might be inherent to the dems, that they have no understanding of second — let alone third — order consequences and believing that what they want to happen is what will happen, and they turned “Diversity is our strength” into a through of dirty money, in which they’ve been wallowing like pigs. (Because if you don’t think they get a kickback from all of this.)

And this, ladies, gentlemen and those who just looked in their pants to figure out which, and those who are just as puzzled after looking in their pants: THIS is why they’re fighting so hard.

This is why they defend every “Maryland dad” and are sobbing in their soy lattes over the bombed drug boats.

It’s not the empathy for the poor suffering criminals — when did the left have empathy anyway? Talk to them about people genuinely being abused and if you’re lucky you’ll get “they deserved it because their ancestors–” — it’s the sadness over the decreasing stream of sweet sweet dirty money.

And I don’t know how and I don’t even know how to start, but that spigot needs to stop and needs to stop right now.

It would be bad enough to let the epitaph of mankind be: “We gave up the stars for welfare.”

This is what the left has been trying to talk us into for years, with stuff like “We shouldn’t go to other worlds until we learn to take care of this one” or “while there are poor on Earth” or any other bilge. (Bilge because this is like saying “You can’t go to college until you defeat your auto-immune.” The two aren’t related.)

BUT–

BUT–

“We gave up the stars for fraud”?

I don’t know if in the vast universe there is anyone to read our epitaph, but I firmly believe we owe it to ourselves not to let it be that.

Let’s clean up. Let’s do it now.