Or — they pointed WHAT at the alien?

No, you’ll wait for that. Chill. First we’ll get to the real stuff.

On what I’m doing with this attempt to reading myself back through the one Portuguese science fiction imprint available when I was a kid, and therefore responsible for catapulting me into reading then writing this crazy stuff, you can read my inaugural post.

The Voyage of the Spaceship Beagle is what I think D. Jason Flemming calls a “Fix up” (?) ie a stitching together of four stories. Which, on the whole are pretty good star trek episodes. Which we later find it was one of the inspirations for.

Actually in reading it, I could see the series of a lot of other, later science fiction.

Anyway, these are the voyages of the Spaceship Beagle, its five year mission….

The spaceship is staffed by scientists and

In each of the stories, it meets an entity. Each entity is hard to defeat, in each entity the Nexialist on board comes through brilliantly.

The book is by A. E. Van Vogt, and while discussing the book with a friend afterwards, I found out that A.E. Van Vogt was not in fact a Dutch national translated into English, something I had in my head probably from the first time I came across his writing, and which was so deeply lodged I never questioned it.

In fact, having grown up reading him (the people who did the Portuguese imprint I’m following, the only official Portuguese imprint of science fiction had a weird fascination with Van Vogt) when I first read him in English I was disappointed and — wait for it — attributed it to his translating better into Portuguese than English.

I honestly have no idea where this came from. It’s not like there were science fiction conventions in Portugal or that science fiction, that weird sub-field of fiction that most people didn’t even know existed, had biographies of its writers aired or printed anywhere. So, where did this strange idea come from? I’m going to assume it was, like a lot of other strange ideas — such as Heinlein having three sons — the result of hearing people talk while waiting in line when there was a new and popular book release. Because Portugal didn’t have organized fandom — honestly, Portugal pretends a lot but it doesn’t have organized anything unless the culture itself has changed a lot since I lived there — but it had vibrant fan gossip network. And the only thing both faster and more inaccurate than fandom gossip is…. I don’t know. I’m fairly sure it’s faster than the speed of light. And more inaccurate than…. science fiction predictions.

Anyway, it’s entirely possible the fact he was raised Mennonite and that’s close enough to Pennsylvania Dutch for Portuguese to agglutinate it all. Or it’s entirely possibly it’s a misunderstanding I came up with all on my own. Who knows?

So, here’s a linked bio of Van Vogt — Alfred Elton? REALLY? — in case you need it, or want to review it. Not Dutch. Definitely not Dutch.

I will point out that I have a very firm idea of Van Vogt as a writer acquired when I was very young — under twenty — and that is that he throws off more interesting ideas per hundred words than any other writer in science fiction, and mostly doesn’t carry them off to their conclusion because it would be impossible.

In that sense, this novel was a disappointment. And, btw, I figured out almost as soon as I started reading it, that I had in fact read it before, but did not in any way associate it with Van Vogt.

The reasons for this are sane but also unfair. Sane because by the time I read it Star Trek was running on TV, as well as stuff like Space 1999 (yes, I do know it was lame, but I felt obligated to support it, because it was science fiction, and we weirdos had to support weirdness.) And the novel sounds like a science fiction exploration series with four episodes-of-the-week. Unfair, because this was the seventies, and of course the stuff was based on this work (and others like it.) On yet the third hand — shuddup, iz science fiction — the truth is these stories, except for the outlandishness of the extra terrestrials encountered, each of which has the potential for destroying the expedition, and all but the first having the ability to destroy humanity if not stopped, read as “generic space exploration” and even the title of the book in Portuguese — interplanetary mission — conditioned me to expect that.

Anyway, so other than that how did I like the play? It was interesting enough to qualify as a “Darn good yarn” and painless to read. The ETs are imaginative and well set out and it works well as see-problem, solve-problem science fiction.

There was a fly in the ointment. Nexialism. Grosvenor, the wonder kid, the go-to-guy for solving everything is a Nexialist, the only Nexialist on board, and his “science” is so much better than all the old traditional sciences at solving these problems.

The problem, of course, is that his science is a dessert and a floor wax. It sings, it dances and it diapers the baby. Nexialism! Is there anything it can’t do? Apparently not.

The ideas I walked away with of this very weird “science” are — Weird. Like, it is a form of what Heinlein said Friday or her boss were “general specialists” — people who could take the other sciences and integrate them — this is okay as the quirks of overachieving and not quite wired correctly geniuses, but I had trouble thinking of it as a science. To justify it he had some form of trick learning, like Heinlein’s Renshawing but more so combined with learning in your sleep. The conceit being that Nexialists could mainline all of human knowledge in a few short years and integrate the whole thing, but guys, seriously? If that were possible, why would it be a specialty? Why not do that to every human? The explanation left me baffled.

I will confess that all this “learning while you sleep” which was in vogue at the time has been “discredited” but I wonder if it really was, or which one is a lie, the learning while you sleep or the thing that assures us that just makes you tired. At some point I’ll do a deep dive into this. Today is not the day.

Anyway, Nexialism bothered me, not just at the level of making no sense whatsoever, because if it was so good why wasn’t everyone trained in it, but at the level where the man used an awful lot of hypnotism, mind control and various other things that disturb me at a gut-level, not just against the various ETs but to adjust his fellow crew of the Beagle. And while it is presented as the only way to save the ship, it made me squirm.

I also disliked the classifications of civilizations that the archeologist onboard relied on. I don’t even like that whole “hard times makes hard men” BS. I think any such view of history is severely reductive to the same point as saying “there are only two plots in science fiction” or something equally zany

Of course, in a way this was a disease of the time: both the belief that the soft disciplines like semantics and history and psychology could be made diamond hard, perfectly predictive and completely useable to control and manipulate men into a perfect SCIENTIFIC society devoid of human problems.

This whole “next stage of evolution” where we will be like gods knowing good from evil was brought home to me by stumbling, yesterday, on this episode of the Why Files. If you don’t want to watch a video, even on 2x the speed as I usually do it, it is the case of Paul Amadeus Dienach. And while I fully believe he hallucinated that while in a comma (though there are doubts the person ever existed) it is more a stew of ideas that were already in the air at the time, and which informed a lot of early science fiction. (Not believable. Among other things the world is supposed to be overpopulated.)

Now, I don’t want to make that sound like I hated the book, because I didn’t. I rolled my eyes at some of the ideas because they are very much ideas of their time. But the book is still a “good yarn” and enjoyable enough to read.

I will point out this is one of the reasons for writing a “darn good yarn” and enjoyable first and worrying about whatever the ideas are later. Because the ideas will age and shift and annoy some of the readers. But the good yarn will carry it through even if people are personally opposed to one of your tricks, like, say, mind control. The story still carries the reader through.

Now, of course, it’s entirely possible that if your ideas are super dooper humdingers you will convert the reader too. But that shouldn’t be your main purpose for writing. Your main purpose should be to tell stories. If you convert anyone, that’s secondary. And it’s more likely that whatever you did will cause them to think and change their ideas but not necessarily to what you’re selling….

If you want to sell a philosophy write pamphlets. Or blogs. If you write novels, write them for enjoyment.

And Voyage of the Spaceship Beagle was pretty enjoyable.

Now, remember They pointed WHAT? at the alien?

I want to say I am absolutely, totally against (with spikes on) changing the original words of a book because they offend the sensibilities of later readers.

HOWEVER–

The good men of the Spaship Beagle carry weapons that emit vibrations. Guess what they call them. Com’on, guess!

In a way this was illuminating, because I wasn’t aware of hallucinating VIVIDLY while reading books. No, not like a movie. It’s more like an immersive hollograph. I’m there, in the middle of the action, and hearing the thoughts of the character in whose mind I am, and–

And when they pull out their vibrators and point them at the alien…

The whole scene dissolves, and I’m laughing hard enough for Dan to be alarmed. Particularly since I was reading this at night, in bed.

I think, since this is a recent ebook edition, it would be sane and well…. it would be sane for the people editing it to call them something like vibro-pistols and footnote they’d changed it from “vibrators” which has a new widespread meaning. Because now I have that image in my head. And I’ll never, ever, ever get it out. Sigh.

The book I’m reading for next week is The Man Who Sold The Moon by Robert A. Heinlein. I haven’t read it in some time, due to having been sick and stuff, so I’m looking forward to it.

The cover and title in the Portuguese collection is this:

So they somehow refrained from translating it as something like “SCAM IN THE HEAVENS”, though to be fair those wild titles are later in the series and I suspect under quite different management. They also SOMEHOW refrained from giving it a cover pulled from a psychadelic dream. Heck, to my eye, they seem to have made the guy resemble RAH and the woman has a look of Ginny. (Though perhaps that’s coincidence.)

I incidentally found out that the people doing these covers were full on (many of them surrealist) painters. I hate one of them with a burning passion and have opinions which will probably be aired tomorrow at MGC. (I like some of the others, but unfortunately they don’t work for covers in the US now. However they reveal much about what the publishers thought of science fiction readers.)

While on that, incidentally, I’ve revised my position on “I don’t want these books in paper even if you guys want to give them to me.” Look, I’d prefer to borrow them and return them to you when I’m done because we’ve been seriously cutting down on paper books (except for those I think still hypothetical grandchildren might treasure). But there are too many I’m running across that are just too expensive for me to buy for this quixotic project, and too many books that are British or weird, and I simply can’t find in ebook. This will change as we get to more recent books, but not for the early ones.

The ones I’m missing so far, some of which I suppose have no English translation:

L’univers vivant by Jimmy Guieu

Tomorrow Sometimes Comes by F. G. Rayer

David Starr : Space Ranger  Paul French, a.k.a. Isaac Asimov.

Antro The Life Giver  – Jon J. Deegan

From What Far Star by Brian Berry

The Metal Eater by Roy Sheldon

World at Bay E. C. Tubb

Again, please don’t go and buy these to send to me. But if you have them collecting dust in some backroom, email me at bookpimping at outlook dot com, and I’ll make arrangements for you to mail them to the Vegas address, from which in the fullness of time it will make it to me, and I can return it to you when I’m done with it.

Anyway, onward and upward! We’ll continue the reading project!

These are the Voyages of Reader Sarah, her five year mission to revisit all the reads that pulled her into the science fiction circus and have got her performing with the high wire elephants!

Stay tuned.

Today we thank the Lord for men who will march and die to stand between the desolation of war and home. For men who believe they were entrusted a precious legacy and will fight to preserve it.

And we pray to Him — and vow to do what we can to make it so — for leaders who hold American lives precious and don’t spend them profligately.

And we remember.

That is all.

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 PAM UPHOFF: Ivan Zima

A novella about a Master Mentalist who has lost his ability to collect the Power for the magic that keeps the True Men in control of the Three Part Alliance. He’s lost his job, his family has distanced itself from him . . .

Ivan Zima didn’t quit, he adopted his servants and got on with life. And when those kids went off to college, he adopted more kids. After all, who doesn’t need a horse-crazy teenager, a juvenile delinquent, and three cute little girls as your empire crumbles and falls?

FROM DALE COZORT: There Will Always Be An England

In the Alternate History novel, two weeks after the D-Day landings, 1944 Britain disappears, replaced by a version of Britain from the distant past, before modern humans made it to Europe. Billy Chandler, like all Allied soldiers in the Normandy bridgehead is suddenly in a desperate situation, cut off from British-based air support, reinforcements and supplies. Meanwhile, deep in the past, 1944 Britain is in its own fight for survival, isolated in a time when Neanderthals rule Europe and no humans have reached the Americas and struggling to feed itself.

The Allies in Normandy struggle to hold out against increasingly powerful German attacks, running low on food and ammunition. Meanwhile, 1944 Britain struggles to survive, a modern nation in a Stone Age world.

BY HENRY KUTTNER, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: Elak of Atlantis (Annotated): The complete classic sword & sorcery tales

Join Elak on perilous quests across the ancient world! These four classic sword-and-sorcery tales by the masterful Henry Kuttner take us to realms of wonder and terror.

Across the mystical landscapes of lost Atlantis, Elak faces down ferocious monsters, cunning foes, and alien magical arts. With his unmatched skill with a sword and unyielding will to survive, Elak battles to protect the innocent and vanquish evil in this action-packed collection.

With their unique blend of swashbuckling adventure, fantastical world-building, and Lovecraftian horror, Kuttner’s Elak tales have captivated fans of fantasy and science fiction for generations.

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

FROM C. CHANCY: Count Taka and the Vampire Brides

Welcome, traveler, to wild Tramontana!

Here you will find snowclad mountains, roaring rivers, vast caves perhaps never seen before by mortal man! Here the strong Horses of Night roam the mountainsides – perhaps you can tame one to ride with your charms. Here the shepherds call to the long-fleeced sheep, the sheep to their sweet lambs – and you can find true telemea, the softest and freshest of cheese, in the gift shop, herb-flavored, a dozen special varieties-

Eh? You’re not here for the gift shop?

Ah, the cameras, of course! Forgive me, most of the photographers we see head straight for the ski lifts. Or the whitewater. Yet there’s so much more to Tramontana! The healthy farmers bringing in the hay, the soaring churches, the wild gypsy dancers – you must dance with the gypsies – and Raven Castle! Oh, there’s a place of history… and mystery.

It held the line against the Turks, they say, and the ancient lords rooted out all manner of uncanny beings… or bargained with them. Have you heard the rumors? That Count Herodes has ruled from that castle for over a hundred years? True, I tell you, all true!

…Monsters don’t exist, eh? Well, well, take your photographs, and we’ll see!

FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Dragon’s in the Details

Six stories of dragons hiding in today’s world:
A Friend, Indeed–A little girl meets the best friend she could ask for when she finds a dragon sleeping in her wagon.
Tempest–What do you do when you find a dragon in your favorite teacup?
Clowder–These are absolutely not cats, no matter what they look like, and will take offense at your mistake.
Back Yard Birds and Other Things–If the dragon defends your chickens, you invite it to stay.
Houdini–When the pet supplier sends the wrong kind of dragon, the pet store’s got a problem.
Hoard–Not every dragon cares for gold, gems, or cash.

FROM MACKEY CHANDLER: April (April series Book 1)

April is an exceptional young lady and something of a snoop. After a chance encounter with a spy, she finds herself involved with political intrigues that stretch her abilities. There is a terrible danger she, and her friends and family, will lose the only home she has ever known, and be forced to live on the slum ball Earth below. It’s more than an almost fourteen year old should have to deal with. Fortunately she has a lot of smart friends and allies. It’s a good thing because things get very rough and dicey. They challenge the political status quo, and with a small population the only advantage they have in war is a thin technological edge. The entire “April” series is building towards a merge with the future series that starts with “Family Law”.

FROM DECLAN FINN: Fae’d To Black (Honeymoon from Hell Book 5)

THE HONEYMOON FROM HELL COMES TO AN END! THE FINAL BOOK IN THE EXPLOSIVE SERIES.

Something has been hunting Marco and Amanda before they were married. It has stalked them across the country. It sits in the dark, hiding in the shadows.

The two of them need a plan to drag the monster into the light. They need bait … and they may be it.

It’s time to hunt the darkness down, once and for all.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Margins of Mundania

A tween boy’s Christmas gift opens a world of wonder and brings joy to a whole town fallen on hard times. A young New Englander in the early Twentieth Century discovers that some parts of human history don’t bear too close examination. A literary critic in the old Soviet Union must confront his own moral cowardice.

These stories, along with a multitude of bite-sized works of flash fiction, carry you from the most prosaic of events to the moments of awe that offer glimpses of matters larger than ourselves.

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Draw One In The Dark (The Shifter Series Book 1)

Deep in the Colorado Rockies, Kyrie Smith has mastered the art of keeping secrets: like how she turns into a panther at will, or how she’s trying to solve a string of shifter murders while serving up the daily special. But she’s not the only one with something to hide.

Take her coworker Tom Ormson—your typical guy next door, if your typical guy could transform into a dragon and might have accidentally killed someone. Then there’s the lion-shifting cop investigating the murders, a guilt-ridden father, and a trio of dragon shifters hunting for something called the Pearl of Heaven.

As if navigating a world of supernatural intrigue wasn’t complicated enough, Tom’s falling for Kyrie, discovering powers that shouldn’t exist, and learning that trust is a two-way street paved with decades of secrets. In Goldport, Colorado, where the coffee’s always hot and the shifters are always watching, solving a murder might be the easiest part of Kyrie’s day.

Welcome to small-town life where everyone has something to hide—and some of those secrets have scales, claws, and a tendency to roar.

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: GRATE

There is a price for “gifts”. This is a given of fairy lore, of course, but it’s also a known thing of the human brain.

As humans our period of having our every wish catered to is limited, and frankly I think we learn early that our wishes and needs won’t be perfectly met. After all, I remember as a mother having to ignore my babies as they fussed once I knew they were clean and fed. Why would I do that? Because what they wanted was play and the limitations of my own adult world wouldn’t allow me to spend the whole day playing with them, of course.

And after the infant stage everything we do comes with effort and time to learn. Which means we learn everything is a price.

Hence, when we find something awesome that seems to be handed to us for free — be it a thing or an ability to do some things — we tend to want to know what it’s going to cost us. If we didn’t there wouldn’t be all sorts of proverbs telling us that we definitely shouldn’t look too closely at the gift. I’m particularly struck by “don’t look a gift horse in the mouth” because we all know what happened to Troy when they didn’t.

Which brings us to the Bardic Gift. I’ve been told — repeatedly — this week, by very disparate things that this is what my particular curse should be called. We’ll examine that in a minute.

I came to this post because I’m still reading The Voyage of The Spaceship Beagle. For various reasons, but mostly because the cough came back and apparently I was sleeping like fine hammered carp, it’s been heavy going. Last night I gave up and had the strong anti-histamine (more on that in a moment) syrup which knocked me out, and it’s amazing how much focused I am today.

Just in time to hit the middle story (I gather it’s three) which hinges on mind control for various purposes. This made me growl and got my hackles full up, and it took me a while to figure out why. (I mean, it’s a book. It’s not physically biting me. Heck, it’s on the kindle, and my kindle is almost tame.)

I have an intense dislike of anything that distorts my mind. I want to know that however my mind is functioning, even when under my own influence and therefore trying to dredge the depths of depression and the shoals of the seas of unwarranted despair, it’s my own. Partly because I have over a half century of checking for and adjusting for my own peculiar quirks, like depression. I know the black dog is there, I know its growl. I’m aware of its bite. I know how to muzzle it. And if I can’t I know it’s the sign of something else, like physical illness or not sleeping very well. (At this point the cough is probably allergies. I need to clean my bedroom. It’s the only place the cough persists and not coincidentally one of two rooms in the house that hasn’t been thoroughly cleaned.) But if you throw an outside factor at the mixture, I might not even be aware of it till things spin out of control. This almost happened in fact with both adderal and montelukast. The second is particularly puzzling since you’d think a brain trained to detect depression would detect depression. But this was alien, strange, unaccustomed depression. And it almost offed me.

Anyway, my aversion to pain killers and mood adjusters and yes ADD meds and asthma meds with side effects extends to almost disabling levels. Like refusing to take pain meds after surgery and therefore — apparently — prolonging the time of recovery until the doctor lassoed me and made me take meds. (On my own terms. It was more weaponized Tylenol than anything else.) Or, refusing to take the effective anti-histamine syrup, because I’m afraid it will have some effect (most anti-histamines turn off the writing) until I’m a zombie, walking into walls from coughing all night.

Now, I’m not an irrational being. Actually, I overthink everything to the point of paralysis. So my aversion is likewise not irrational.

I intensely dislike being under the influence of drugs that affect my mind, even in relatively small ways (that’s not either Adderal or Montelukast) because they affect what I still find incredibly pretentious to refer to as my “Bardic Gift”.

What the heck is a Bardic Gift? Well, I don’t know what it is to you (tovarisch.) Or even to other people possessed of (by) it. But I know how it manifests. And I suspect I know where it comes from.

The human mind is a mechanism for making sense and meaning out of chaotic reality. Some of our minds are just particularly afflicted with the need to create overarching, intricate mental machines of sense and meaning. We do it as we breathe, and it comes from such a basic level of our minds that we do this at a sub-conscious level. Literally as most of the time we’re not aware of it till the finished product presents itself with force and urgency to our conscious mind, fully finished and demanding we do the work of parturition to present it to the unsuspecting and fortunately largely uncaring world.

Fortunately? You say. Oh, heck yes, because the manifestations of this curse that I’ve identified fall on every artist, sure, but they also hit hard on the founders of cults, or creators of compelling, fully-formed, internally consistent political theories that sweep a lot of other people into the machine of sense and meaning. This is dangerous — do I need to tell you that? — because not all cults are on the side of light and, humans and reality being chaotic, almost any political theory that demands everything make internal sense and everyone fit into a niche in its vision spins more and more out of contact with reality. Such political theories fill mass graves.

Now, yes, this means that great advantage could perhaps be derived to the world in general by filling those mass graves with people like me. In theory. In very broad theory.

I’m here to tell you it doesn’t work worth a damn. And to the extent you can cause it to work it plunges the civilization engaged in it into a cycle of repeating stupidity that amounts to civilizational Alzheimers.

I suspect it happens a lot to tribal civilizations, where it’s both possible to identify such people with much greater accuracy — In a smallish group you know which family is prone to wandering around with its loincloth on its head muttering about how we must paint ducks yellow so they don’t take over the world. And you know it’s hereditary — and eliminate an entire genetic strain. I suspect they’re eliminated over and over again. (Mostly under the guise of witch-hunting.) Until the tribe … remains in the neolithic for millennia. Which is why innovation and higher achievement comes with letting the oddlings move away and do their thing. Like, you know, our improbable, amazing nation. (Yes, there’s something seriously wrong with the harp in the illustration. do you really want me to spend the rest of the day autistically fixing it, or do you want me to finish this post and go work on the novel? Right.)

But we do have an example of a society with writing falling into this cycle too. China became so obsessed with getting rid of everyone with the bardic gift that they have not one but several periods in which they executed grandmothers that told stories. It came back. It is a natural tendency of the human brain, just exaggerated so it can be recreated by genetic drift. And they did it again. If you study their history (not recommended if you’re a depressive) it’s like watching grandad who has forgotten his own name continuously watering the cat and giving tuna to the house plant while walking around in someone else’s underwear and muttering how he’s the center of the universe.

So, you can’t eliminate us. And we can’t stop doing what we do, for the simple reason that it’s how our brains function while they remain alive. (I have had friends be disabled by serious health events, and I myself have been battling an intersection of serious issues for 20 years now. (Yes, it is getting better, but you only see it in the bird’s eye view. This year I can do things I couldn’t last year, but I’ve been so sick I’ve done very little. Still, it’s gains.) who still have the compelling stories — or other stuff, but most of my friends do stories — show up on whatever their schedule used to be. And they drive them insane, because–) The price of the gift is to use it.

We are given for free something for which most human beings have to struggle and the price is we have to do it. (Keep this in mind. It’s important.)

There is a plurality of creatives who are consciously creative and work hard for it. Most of the time I can tell when consuming the product, and I suspect most people can. But they are also more often really successful because they can control it and shape it to “what is selling.” Those of them who know we exist (many refuse to believe we do and think we’re lying) hate us with a purple passion, because they must painstakingly assemble structures that appear fully formed and moving to us. On the other hand, they can walk away from it when it stops paying, or when the field is so embuggered that it kills your soul to stay in it.

But we can’t. Because the vision that presents itself is so enormous, so clear, so immediate and pushes so hard that the only way to stop from creating is to kill what we are. And the only way to do that — in my case — is to feed the depressive cycle until I come to as close to death in life as I can.

I suspect most people who suffer from this use a similar mechanism to damp it, because Herr Professor Jordan Peterson has stumbled on the certainty that “Creatives who stop creating start dying.” He’s correct on that. If you take nothing else from this post and you’re a creative in this way — i.e. have the bardic gift — please, I implore you, take this: Creatives who stop creating start dying. I don’t honestly care if the creations of your gift are good or not, if you can make money or not. I don’t care if you have very little time because your real life job eats your life, I beg of you to start carving out some time to create. (Oh, and if your bend is either cult leader or political leader, unless you’re fighting on the side of letting individuals be individuals and not imposing your oh so compelling vision on them, please deviate it to writing. It’s usually possible.) TO SAVE YOUR OWN LIFE AND SANITY PLEASE START CREATING, no matter how slowly. (I have reason to believe at the extreme ebb of the dampening you start sending signals that make your body ill. Yes, I know that sounds newagy, but I am also convinced that’s what I did about 20 years ago, when I was trying to walk away from writing.)

Because the price of the gift is to use it, but you can channel it, it is vital that you stay in control of your own mind, so you can channel it in the right way. What is the right way? Well, again, I don’t know about you (tovarish) but in my case I try to use it not to drive people to despair or suicide. And to stir them away from the more poisonous of compelling bardic visions that involve restructuring society towards authoritarianism. Even if the thing isn’t exactly under my control, I usually can control it enough for that. (It’s a negotiated peace. I still have to keep certain elements in, or it’s worse than denying the gift.)

I’ve heard of other gifts, non-bardic. Grandma, for instance, had a healing gift. And she had sharp warnings about what happens if you don’t use it, which I gather is exactly the same as what happens to my kind, only hard and fast and with spikes in it.

Anyway — all this amounts to — I’m really leery and will always be of anything that takes control of my mind, because however misaligned and weird it is it is mine, I know it, and I have some idea how to navigate it so it doesn’t cause harm. But giving control to someone else–

Well, now. If you knew that the someone else was perfect and wanted only the best for you it would be tempting. (This is why a religious belief is protective for my kind, again so long as you keep it within bounds. My people fall into insanity all too easily. Because we do believe there is a being who is perfect and only wants what’s best for us. And (as someone put it recently) He doesn’t dress like either Jim Jones or Mao.) But there is no such human. Even the smartest and with the best intentions aren’t fit to control others, because each of us has highly personal biases and phobias that aren’t entirely under our own control. (Which is why totalitarian societies always, inevitably, become shit-holes.)

So, you must keep your mind as free of influences you can’t account for as possible. Or I can. Though I suspect the anti-histamine is less harmful than not sleeping for a week straight.

And it’s a balance. And I must walk it. Because I got this gift for free. And I need to use it as best possible. Or it will spin out of control and eat me.

Now for those not thus afflicted who’ve been reading this with horrified fascination (LOL. Trust me, it’s worse from the inside.) you too, if you’re living in this wonderful, chaotic, ever-inventing land of ours, were given a gift.

You were given Liberty for free. And the price of the gift is to use it. Or you start dying.

Use your liberty and do not let it be unnecessarily be encroached upon or deviated. (The “necessary” is up to each of us to determine. Like the juggling of lack of sleep with anti-histamine dulling of the senses.

And use it. Use it joyously and extravagantly. To create, to innovate or (simply! Ah.) to cretae a life you want to live the way you want to live it.

As we begin this long weekend, meditate on your gifts and how best to use it.

Stay frosty. Stay free. Stay creative.

*And for those wondering: Yes, sometimes I use blog posts to convey ideas that would be best conveyed in short stories. And this post might yet be a short story at some point. It’s just right now, mid-revision I don’t have time to go walk into yet another world. But it will come I suspect. Because this is complex and intricate and yeah, best conveyed in an emotional past. However this will stave it off enough for me to stay sane while finishing the monster novel. Until then:

Sincerely, SAH*

Imagine you are atop a cliff, and must leap to another. Below you there’s a chasm.

Your only chance is to leap for it. Which means there’s a moment where you’re suspended in the air. Between peaks. You could just go down hard. Lost. Done.

All you can do is keep your jump, keep your form, keep going.

Right now the US, and to an extent the world (because buckos, if we don’t make it, they’re just as cooked) is suspended in the middle of that jump.

If we fail the chasm is deep and dark. Note I’m not saying it’s eternal. If we fall the chances of the human race going down for the long count are minimal. I believe in humans. We’re scrappy and mean, a crazy little ape that just won’t stay down. But the count can be extended without being the final long count. And it can be very dark without the sun going out.

I don’t need to detail the chasm, I think. I’ve talked about it before. This generation is seriously unprepared. People out there are getting college degrees for the diploma they can’t read and being saddled with loans for jobs that don’t exist or which, thanks to the plethora of H1B visas don’t have openings, or don’t pay what they used to pay.

Even the trade schools read as a “modified, limited hangout”. A lot of those jobs are getting eaten by improved technology and/or being paid less because of immigration of one sort or another.

In fact, when making decisions for kids, I hear desperate grandparents suggest trade schools and I think “That’s a way to calm the grandparents, in the long run it won’t mean much.”

Because it all depends on how the jump goes. And either way any training you can get now, whether ivy league or local trade school if we crash you’re going to be out of luck. It’s going to be more of what we have seen: schools, government and everything weaponized against the people they theoretically serve. … for a while.

Not as long as they think it will be, because…. whisper it with me Catastrophic Technological Change. It will take their plans down too. But what comes after, we don’t know. Except that it will take a while. And what comes after only the gods of chaos know.

Except we haven’t fallen yet. We’re in middair.

Which is the reason that everything right now is in suspension. The current generation is caught between the current thing and what comes after.

What comes after? We don’t know. We know right now there are people trying really hard to remove obstacles and improve the chances our foot lands on the next peak. That the catastrophic technological changes, as it dissolves the present creates a future worth living in. That we have a shot. We, the US, western civilization, humans.

But it’s impossible to know exactly how we land, if we land, etc. because there are many things in the air with us. Mostly because–

Look, our economy has been hampered, played with, messed around since Wilson at least, and likely before. Sure, sure, the tech favored what happened, the hyper centralization of things, but there were still choices made that hinged not on the tech, but on the ideas in people’s heads. Centralized was considered better. Top down more efficient. And the cult of the expert led us into the hands of some very strange theoreticians.

It’s like a stream whose course has been deviated by dams. As you remove the dams, you get the river flowing back to its course.

Except in this case, it’s not the same river. Not anymore. Because tech has changed. People have changed. And no, not for the worst. I know. I can hear you people out there. I swear to bob assuming your ancestors were idiots and young people are dumber than you were is the immutable sin of mankind.

No, the young aren’t dumber than you were. They’re undeniably worse educated, in terms of formal education, but they are in many ways more used to change, to learning on their own, to finding their own paths than we were. Partly because we didn’t give them what they needed, and they’ve been finding their path. Partly because… well, we didn’t have acess to the firehose of information the new tech provides.

So what comes next? Who knows. You can’t tell the shape of things to come when they’re still not here. I can make guesses. I’m pretty good at guessing. And five years out I might make some accurate guesses. 20? 30? No.

Someone talked about how if you bring your A game neither AI nor anything else can stop you. They’re not wrong. But here’s the thing, your A game might not have the course you would play it on yet.

Look, when I was eleven I knew I wanted to be journalist. I wanted to find out the truth. I wanted to write about it. (I also wanted to write fiction, but that wouldn’t pay enough to live off of in Portugal.) So … well, when I investigated the possibility I found my politics (weird and European as they were) locked me out of the profession, because I wasn’t communist nor could I condone communism. Even if it called itself socialism and put on a funny wig.

So that was done, right? Except that now, forty years later that is precisely what I do, both here — let’s call it editorials — and at instapundit — let’s call it the night desk.

Could I have guessed at the shape of what I do now? Heck, guys I couldn’t have guessed 20 years ago when I started this blog on livejournal where it would take me, both good and bad.

Part of this is that we’re in a time of high change. Not in a time when you can prepare your kids for a future that might not be like the present but will be pretty close. And change is likely to accelerate as we remove the dams and trammels on the flow of tech, of economics, of invention.

Until recently I thought we were about to be shoved off the cliff, and we’d fall and then have to trust luck and spirit to make it back up fast enough that it wasn’t all lost.

Right now though, we’ve jumped. We’re up in the air, and our foot almost touches the next cliff.

All I can say is right now there’s hope.

The generation coming up, the generation caught in pretty bad positions? They’re the generations in between the ordered world of the past and what comes next.

What can we do?

Don’t give up on them. Don’t give up on removing the obstacles to freedom. Don’t give up on tech change.

And if you can, influence things in the direction of hope, of possibility, of innovation, of human liberty.

The way the wind blows might affect our jump only a little. But anything to give us a better chance.

Throw your heart into it, and throw yourself forward.

AI Thievery and the End of Humanity by Ing

AI technology came seemingly out of nowhere just a hot minute ago, and suddenly it’s everywhere—and it seems like it’s either the end of the world or a dawning utopia depending on who you listen to.

A family member sent me this article the other day, and it got me thinking about how people on both sides of the AI debate are getting it wrong. And also at least a little bit right. Perspective: My books were used without permission to train AI models. What now? [URL: https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2025/05/03/ai-engines-used-my-books-without-permission/%5D

As the title suggests, the author is not a fan. And for good reason.

It’s a simple fact that that at least some of the organizations that are making and training AI models didn’t ask permission to use any of the material they trained their large language models on. Most of it, they arguably didn’t have to. It was on the internet because it was intended for public consumption.

However, some portion of it WASN’T intended for free public consumption. People pirated books written by the author of the article above (along with many others), and the LLMs scraped the contents of entire pirated archives along with everything else. Which means they illegally used vast amounts of material. But because digital materials and copyright are somewhat abstract and the brobdingagian scale of the theft boggles the mind, very few people can be made to care.

What should be done?

The organizations that trained AI models on that material need to make it right by paying royalties and/or licensing fees for what they illegally copied. And if they won’t voluntarily make it right by paying royalties and licensing fees for what they illegally copied, then they should pay steep penalties on top of it.

How to do it, I don’t know. But the burden should be on them, not their victims. And it should hurt. If it puts some of the companies developing AI or even all of them out of business, well, tough titties. I don’t think it will, but if it does, fine. They should’ve thought about the consequences before they stole all that stuff. 

But the people who have been injured here, and AI opponents in general, aren’t helping themselves by framing its emergence as some kind of technopocalypse. They’re throwing around phrases like ”making people stupid and making truth irrelevant” and talking about limits and guardrails, but the horse isn’t even on the track. The horse has left the barn, the chickens have flown the coop, and neither protest nor wishful thinking will reverse the event. AI is not going away.

You could bankrupt every company that’s currently working on it, and somebody else would still pick it up and start it up again, because it’s VALUABLE. People can make money off it. Big businesses can make big money. Smaller businesses can make smaller money. All sorts of individuals and organizations all over the place can can make their lives easier and do more work with less time and effort. Or, yes, “create” some cool thing despite having zero talent and no desire to develop the craft (see: me, visual art).

It’s unfortunate that the writer of the article I linked above highlights a legitimate problem—thievery on a grand scale—and then descends into hysteria. (Calling it AI doesn’t help. Artificial it is, intelligent it ain’t. Large language models—LLMs—are just a mass-marketable form of machine learning, which is a concept that has been in use for a long time.) This new technology isn’t going to destroy culture itself or the human mind any more than the printing press, computers, the internet, or the Industrial Revolution could. 

But those things did irreversibly alter our cultures and way we interact with the world. And this technology is developing with far greater speed.

It reminds me of something broadcast news legend Edward R. Murrow said back in the 1960s, when people were starting to wonder what the recent advent of computers would do to society: “The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings, and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem, of what to say and how to say it.”

LLMs (I hate calling it AI) are a heck of a technology, in that they actually CAN, to some extent, remove the old problem what to say and how to say it…but unless they evolve into something else entirely, they can’t absolve you of the need to consider whether you SHOULD say it. The “oldest problem in the relations between human beings” will remain, and that’s the gap of understanding.

The problems inherent in figuring out what you believe and who and what you can trust are about to be compounded at speed. Again.

So, as our poor wronged author asks above, what now?

Well, we do need to impose consequences for the thievery that occurred during LLM development. That’s a Herculean task by itself, and I have no ideas on how it ought to be accomplished, but I don’t think fearmongering is going to make it any easier.

And if you’re worried about where this technology is going to take us, so am I.

We should probably all be at least a little bit worried about that. If you’re not uneasy about some of the uses people will try to put it to—especially the ones in various governments, with their talk of “guardrails” and “misinformation”—you’re not paying attention. (If you haven’t yet, check out what Marc Andreesen told Ross Douthat after the 2024 election, especially the part about what the Biden junta wanted to do with the AI industry: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/17/opinion/marc-andreessen-trump-silicon-valley.html.)

As for the worry about AI taking away people’s jobs, it probably will take some jobs from some people. New technologies tend to do that. The company I work for uses machines to do all the soldering humans once did, almost all of the placement of parts on printed circuit boards, and almost all of the previously tedious, painstaking, and error-prone inspection processes. Yet humans still have jobs in those factories—jobs that are a lot more humane than factory work used to be. New technologies tend to do that, too. (I once was a human doing soldering by hand on a production line, and man, am I ever glad we’ve got robots to do it now.) 

I used to scoff at the possibility of AI taking my job (I played with some early versions of ChatGPT in 2020, and they were pathetic), but now it looks like there might be a real chance that it could. If not the entire job, at least the part of it I enjoy the most, which is putting words together to convey valuable information to other people. 

It can’t yet. But a lot of people want it to. Earlier this year, I got a freelance writing gig from a university I used to work for because they tried to have ChatGPT do a particular writing job last year—and they got slop. Grammatically correct, but slop. They used it, but they also realized the product needed human discernment and creativity, so this year they ponied up the money to pay a human. But what if next year’s budget doesn’t have the money? What if they try AI again and the result is actually good enough?

My day job may be resistant to takeover, as it requires both specific technical knowledge (not very much, but some) and creativity (arguably not a lot, but some). But it’s not out of the question that as AI models improve, they might be capable of synthesizing technical information, a campaign guide, and the appropriate vocabulary well enough to get an effective marketing message across. And there’s 90% of my job, lost to automation. I wouldn’t like it, but I really couldn’t blame anyone for making that decision.

So, again…what now?

For now, I’m approaching this the way I approach most innovations: cautiously. I have less than zero trust in Big Tech (they’ve earned it), so I’m shunning all the AI “enhancements” to my consumer products, which have always worked perfectly well without it. (Are there any that work better with it? I seriously doubt it.) And I’m slowly and somewhat reluctantly experimenting with ways LLMs can save me time or make certain things easier—mostly at work, where there are IT and security professionals who have approved certain apps and where I stand to gain or lose the most monetarily by knowing (or not knowing) what the technology can do. And where, if a certain Big Tech behemoth screws anybody over for its own profit, it’s not me personally. 

I might end up crafting prompts and editing a machine’s output for a living, which would make me feel sad, but I guess I could deal. I was a kick-ass copy editor in my day and I still have some skills that a computer can’t develop. Yet.

In conclusion, while the advent of AI and LLMs presents significant ethical and practical challenges, it is crucial to approach these developments with a balanced perspective. The unauthorized use of copyrighted materials for training AI models is a serious issue that demands accountability and restitution. However, framing AI as an existential threat to humanity may hinder constructive dialogue and solutions. Instead, we should focus on implementing robust regulations and ethical standards to ensure fair use and protect intellectual property. As AI continues to evolve, it is essential to remain vigilant and adaptive, leveraging its benefits while mitigating its risks. Ultimately, the future of AI will depend on our collective ability to navigate its complexities with wisdom and foresight.

(Final note and disclosure: I fed the rest of this essay to Copilot and told it to write a conclusion for me. Haha! Never let it be said that I can’t adapt! Also, “implementing robust regulations”? Pshaw! I hope you realized that wasn’t me talking. It just now occurred to me that I might’ve got better results by telling Copilot to emulate my writing style (could it? I dunno), but maybe its best that I didn’t. Don’t want to give it any ideas about usurping my role as the thinker in this relationship.)

*This is Sarah. Unfortunately my work too was pirated to train LLMs. Am I on the warpath about it? No. Am I pissed? Yes. Because the LLMs belonged to small, scrappy companies like Meta and such. So, why am I not on the warpath? Well, because humans get my books to train new writers all the time. So they owe me the price… of a copy. I’m pissed because it’s paltry of them to balk me of $4.99. But it’s not like it would change my life. Eh. – SAH.*

Do I HAVE to put up my “AI is going to destroy the novel market” decorations already? I still have my “AI is going to ruin science decorations” up.

Some X-brainiac last week — same brainiac who keeps banging the little drum for “you’re all contributing to the death of culture by not paying enough to artists” (Buyers and sellers, how does that work, even?) — said if a writer used AI for covers, obviously he/she was also using it for novels and “their entire catalogue is suspect.”

Head. Desk. Repeat. See that dent? That’s how many times head went against desk.

This is the sort of argument that’s so wrong it would need to be several miles towards “right” to be merely “Wrong.”

First, notice novel writers using AI for covers. Most of us — with a few notable exceptions, and those people do their own covers — are not artists. Even those like me who took 3 years of art, are not at the level where drawing a cover from scratch is feasible time-wise. I could do it, but it would take me almost as long to do as to write the novel. It’s simply not feasible, from a business point of view.

Second, again always with a few exceptions who are artists and writers and who go extra on the covers, while covers can be works of art, they don’t NEED to be. While people pay attention to covers, they treat it more as a billboard for advertising the novel. The cover in itself doesn’t need to be achingly beautiful or filled with soul searching, or whatever. Sure, if it is, it’s to the good, but if it’s the most beautiful, artistic cover you’ve ever seen and doesn’t signal genre, subgenre and pacing of novel correctly? It fails as a cover.

Would most of us still pay top dollar for a great artist if we could afford it? We definitely would. But the problem is even I — who earn semi-decently — can’t afford that.

Also, the artists I can afford will likely use AI to the same extent I do. Keep in mind every single cover takes at least three and sometimes as many as 10 pieces of render “stitched together” and then having the lighting, etc. fixed, and often the whole is overpainted. it’s just that takes a week, not the year it would take me to paint a cover.

Anyway, does this mean that my novels are “suspicious”. (We’ll leave for later a friend’s opinion that AI is going to overtake the indie market in a tsunami of crap.) Meanwhile let’s discuss my catalogue, most of which has been out for over 10 years.

First let’s get something out of the way: My husband says they advertise AI that can “write novels.” This might be true. The AI might even be able to write novels, who knows. What it doesn’t do, if the state of the art I see in Jane Austen fanfic is accurate, is write DECENT novels. It can’t follow a line of experience and emotion. Someone forgives someone else, then starts looking for an apology AGAIN over and over and over. The best thing about those novels are the reviews.

But let’s suppose some LLM can write a coherent, enjoyable novel? Does this mean I’m going to use it to write my novels?

Why on EARTH would I? I want to write my novels. I mean, I came here to write novels and chew gum, and I’m all out of gum.

No, seriously. The best instance of AI written novels would still need extensive edits. That’s the part I don’t like to do. It would be like when I paid someone to watch my kids so I could clean the house. Completely the wrong way around.

However, let’s suppose AI can write a novel, and a decent passable novel.

So, what is the problem? There are more novels to read, right?

Okay, I can hear the Reeing from here. Please, keep it down to a dull roar.

Objection number one: But the stories will be soulless, and people will be churning them out a million an hour. Right?

Maybe. But if they are soulless, and — let’s face it, Artificial Intelligence is just a Large Language Model — they do tend to be prejudiced towards a certain uniformity and non-originality, then why are you bothered that people will churn them out by the hundreds? There might be some problems with search, mind, but people will rapidly learn to route around AI novels. In JAFF reading the first couple of pages will do. Or the comments. (Oh, the comments.)

Look, there are tons of soulless novels being written by alleged humans. They dot every i and cross every t of the “thing to say” and “the in thing”. They don’t seem to be doing great, honestly, judging by the ever diminishing print runs.

You can’t simultaneously say that AI written novels will be very bad, and that they will steal all our jobs.

Making a lot of money as a writer is never a big chance. But if you miss it, it’s not likely to be because of AI.

Maybe in the future AI will write with the verve and passion of a Dumas and challenging ideas of Heinlein, but — looks meaningfully at midjourney, which is the best of the lot imho — it won’t be the near future. And I suspect it will have as much trouble with emotions as with hands. (For the same reason. Most artists/writers have problems with that area, too.)

Until then, it can write beginner novels, or highly formulaic novels. With a ton of editing. Novelists will be fine. We compete with better every day from Eastern European authors who also seem to churn them out by the dozen.

In fact, what my friend was complaining about with indie being overwhelmed by a tsunami of AI is the same old argument as the tsunami of crap.

Was there a tsunami of crap published. Well, kind of. Except most people realize it’s still a lot of work, even just getting a cover on it and publishing it. But up front there were a million deep-trunk novels published, and they were wretched. (Around 2012 Dan used to do dramatic readings of the worst he found. My favorite was the one that explained what a robot was. And an alien. And…. Like he’d just invented science fiction or something.)

But again, those didn’t overwhelm anything. They didn’t find readers, and sank without a trace. When a book has one review, and it’s one star…. well. Again we’ll be fine.

Is anyone still reeing? Oh, yeah, that guy in the back is reeing about plagiarism. To him I’ll say “be your age.”

Plagiarism has a very exact definition, and LLMs are not engaging in it. (Unlike ivy league college presidents.)

Look, there are a couple of people out there who have bestselling novels taking the general idea of one of mine. In one case, it’s probably coincidence, in the other we shared an agent, and it probably came up in a talk with her, particularly since I refused to do what he wanted with the book.

So, I can sue and take all her money, right?

No. When you hear of J. K. Rowling paying someone 100k because this person also had a character named Harry Potter and had sent her the manuscript, it’s not plagiarism. it’s someone very rich paying a nuisance to go away.

Ideas aren’t copyrightable. Character names aren’t copyrightable. Heck, even plot lines aren’t copyrightable.

Do you know what plagiarism is? Taking large CHUNKS OF TEXT. The LLMs don’t do that, or not in any provable way. I mean, some of the sentences are banal and everyone uses them, but a sentence of two ALSO doesn’t rise to the level of plagiarism.

So no. The LLMs are not committing plagiarism.

They are in fact taking plot lines and ideas, but you can rest easy. Because having seen people run brainstorming experiments, nine out of ten of the ideas they give you are “movie of the week” or a recent tv-series.

You have nothing to worry about.

And by you I mean YOU. You who are actually trying to write what you love in the best way you can. YOU have nothing to worry about.

The precious mavens of churned out politically correct prose? My husband gives me to understand they could be replaced to advantage by a small perl script, no AI needed.

But that’s not your concern. Your concern is your novels.

No artist who is highly original, no writer who is highly original, probably no musician who is highly original needs to worry.

Except with competing with themselves. They do need to worry about that. And it will be a b*tch.

AI? I’m mildly worried about people assuming/running on the idea it is actually sentient. But only mildly.

Yes, they want to entrust medical diagnostics to AI. You know guys, highly distracted, extremely overworked doctor vs. AI. It’s going to be gruesome either way, and sometimes the AI gets the hands right. By a miracle!

AI is in fact a fad. Oh, not the real technology. That’s still buggy as all get out, and will need to have the bugs shaken out. And will. And it is very promising.

But the things/ideas/capabilities people attribute to AI? That’s a fad.

Remember the Radio Flyer? Little red wagon for kids. Nothing Radio about it. But Radio was the new, new thing. So everyone did it. There was also a time when Atomic as the in things and everything was atomic.

AI is like that now. Everything is “AI” even when it isn’t.

So, chill. Let things shake out. Neither Radio nor Atomic finished us off. And this won’t either.

All I want (for Christmas) is for King Harv to put out the Radio Atomic AI coffee! I’ll not only buy a few lbs. I’ll buy mugs and T-shirts with the description!

Now forget AI and go do what you do. And do it well. AI will hold no fears for you.

This is a review of King Harv’s Bengal Tiger High Caffeine coffee.

*Full disclosure: King Harv’s Imperial coffees sends me coffee now and then. They don’t require (or even hint) I should review them in return. My guess is they send them to e in hopes it will fuel writing.

I, on the other hand, feel obliged to do a review of my favorites in hopes they’ll roast some more excellent coffee. – SAH*

It is a little known fact that when William Blake penned:

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forest of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

Despite the odd spelling, he was talking about King Harv’s Bengal Tiger coffee. You see, he’d built a time machine in a fit of romantic inspiration, and managed to travel in time to acquire King Harv’s Bengal Tiger. However, on his return the machine broke.

Since he’s not built it according to rational principles but only poetic inspiration, he could not build it again.

Instead, he was forced to remember it only, through long nights when he’d rather be working, but found himself asleep.

Ahem……

Come with me, through these lovely spring woods. We’ll hike until we come to a log cabin. You can smell that inside it someone is baking bread, but you’re not ready to face people. Instead, you sit down on a fallen log and open your bag of homemade trail mix, heavy on premium dark chocolate, fresh toasted pecans and Brazil nuts, and chunks of date and fig.

This is the sense of King Harv’s Bengal coffee, that mix of tastes and smells, and the sense of coming home, tired after a long walk, only to be revived by the marvelous extra jolt of caffeine.

It has scents of chocolate and oak, with notes of date and fig.

If you drink it neat, you’ll experience early intense notes of fresh brown bread and damp weathered wood, growing in intensity in the aftertaste. There’s also faint nut flavor most similar to Brazil nut and a faint note of tawny port, which may be the dried fruit and wood notes syncretizing.

Now add a little bit of cream. Cream only. Chocolate is now very prominent in the front, presenting not unlike a really high quality chocolate ice cream, giving way gradually to the woodier notes,and getting less sweet and more earthy as it evolves. Late arriving there’s a hint of red wine but still very buried in this preparation.

Now let’s try whole milk only. Aged wood– like the scent of walking into an old pub or a building with a lot of exposed wood beams. Then the nutty flavor distinguishes itself more as being similar to Brazil nut and blends into the prevailing wood flavor. What was probably the bread character now presents more like rich earth, with a faint scent of leaf mold and petrichor like the scent after a rain.

Sugar only makes the early flavor very reminiscent of aged wood. The late evolution briefly resolves into dried fruit, then settles back into aged wood. There is also s very, very faint floral note discernible in the background throughout the evolution.

Milk and sugar is probably the preparation that best balances the flavors of chocolate, aged fruit, and wood in my opinion, presenting as discrete notes in that order. The buried floral note was most prominent in this preparation for me, by which I mean it went from a 1/10 intensity to a 2/10.

With cream and sugar, depending on how heavily you lean into it it really reinforces the impression of chocolate ice cream. The wood flavor is still present but now the tanins are getting stepped on a little by the sugar, even if you use a light hand and take it JUST past the point where it’s perceptibly sweet as I did.

As expected the sugar brings the fruit notes more to the fore, with a flavor resembling sherry or another dessert wine presenting more prominently and earlier in the flavor profile. That said, at first blush I took this as part of the chocolate note, as the two blend into each other.

Iced, which is not my normal preparation, but since we’re getting towards summer and some people on the discord group were going on and on (and on) about iced coffee: iced brings out the wood flavor more intensely than any other preparation– really the only one of these where it presented as outright smoky. So if that’s your jam, go for it.

Favorite preparation: milk and sugar, but I’m biased as that’s my usual. However, I think it’s the preparation that shows off the widest range of flavors at once and rounds off the edges of the earthy flavors here without erasing them. Second favorite is a tie between cream only and milk only. The cream really gives a remarkably strong chocolate flavor. Milk only gives a somewhat more muted wood impression in comparison but I think it gives the best view into the earthy flavors and lets you resolve and appreciate their nuance best without any one becoming overpowering.

Fans of espresso and very dark coffee will want to try it on ice.

And while trying it, pity poor William Blake, stranded in his time, without another chance at the wonderful richness — and invaluable caffeine content — of King Harv’s Bengal Tiger.

Toast him with a cup as you go on your way.

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

*Sorry, I was kidnapped by an autistic obsession with learning to use midjourney editing and it wouldn’t let me go. So this is unholy late, and tomorrow’s post will be late too. Sigh. I hate it when my brain does this. – SAH*

FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Passing of the Age

Once, gods and Titans went to war because humanity existed and the Titans…didn’t like that. Will, the blacksmith’s apprentice, was born long after the war’s bitter, destructive, last gasp. It left the land scarred, leaving behind the Wastes, a massive pit in the landscape, dug by poisoned magic. The old world was lost in the ashes, and survivors were left with so little that any who didn’t pull their weight (or had something someone powerful wanted) were exiled to starve in the Wastes.

Just. Like. Will.

Cast out to the Wastes because his father remarried and his stepmother had wanted her children to inherit, he turned to his master, the smith. The smith, who had held Will back to keep using his labor for free, refused to go against the rest of the village, angry though he was to lose Will’s labor. In lieu of the honestly-earned status of journeyman that would have protected Will from exile, his master gave him a bag of grave goods: a hammer (but not a good one), tongs (that were rusting to pieces), and a file (more than half worn out). And two small coins to pay the ferryman when he reached the river dividing life from death.

Will entered the wastes with the clothes on his back, inadequate grave goods, and determination to live through it, in spite of his village. And a mission given him by the Land, and by the god of the wild places, to take the knife he made with his grave goods to the very center of the Wastes. There, he will find his destiny.

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 M. D. BONCHER: Dreams Within Dreams (Tales From the Dream Nebula Book 1)

Enter a world with no stars… no sun… no moon… no Earth. Only “the Dream”…

“An imaginative, action-packed tale that reads like a vision. If you like a bit of cyberthriller in your sci-fi… you’ll enjoy this one.”

– Kerry Nietz. Award winning author of “The Dark Trench Saga” & “Amish Vampires From Outer Space”

Winston Harper is a sky trucker down on his luck. Years of numbing his past trauma has whittled away his reputation. Blacklisted and back to the wall, Winston’s only hope of survival is a no-questions-asked contract offering pay high enough to make him forget his own name. What could possibly go wrong? When the client changes the deal and imperial security crashes the party, he’s on the run caught between the empire and a rebellion. Hauling ten containers of contraband cargo, and guided by a mysterious femme fatale who holds all the cards, death may be the better way out…

Set in a post-apocalyptic future where the lines between technology and biology have become blurred, humanity survives on the remains of the solar system scattered about in a sky of endless twilight, ruled by an alien entity. Follow Winston Harper as he becomes entangled in the struggle against the cosmic empire and potentially, the secrets of humanity’s lost past… and perhaps its future?

“Dreams Within Dreams” is the first novel in a rollicking retro-futuristic Sci-Fi serial merging cyberpunk and old school pulp adventure with a touch of neo-noir intrigue. It’s “Flash Gordon” meets “Smokey and the Bandit” meets “The Matrix” meets “Talespin”.

FROM STEVE WHAN: The Time Between Towers: A Diaolou Mystery

Four friends. One impossible tower. A challenge that will test everything they know—and everything they are.

When Maya, Liam, Zara, and Dylan stumble upon a mysterious structure deep in a Maple Ridge forest, they don’t know that they’re about to enter the challenge of a lifetime. The daiolou—an impossible blend of ancient Chinese architecture and futuristic engineering—isn’t just a building. It’s a living puzzle that will push them to their limits.

Trapped inside a structure that seems to change with every step, the friends must use their unique skills to survive. Maya’s photography. Liam’s engineering prowess. Zara’s mathematical genius. Dylan’s encyclopedic knowledge. Each room presents a new challenge that demands their best—and threatens to expose their deepest fears.

As the puzzles grow more complex and the stakes rise, they’ll discover that the greatest challenge isn’t solving the tower’s mysteries—it’s trusting each other when everything seems designed to tear them apart. Some challenges can’t be solved alone. Some prizes aren’t what they seem.

FROM DECLAN FINN: Wyverns Never Die (Honeymoon from Hell Book 3)

THE SEQUEL TO THE DRAGON AWARD NOMINATED “LOVE AT FIRST BITE” CONTINUES!

Marco and Amanda have been hounded from Chicago to San Francisco by all the forces of Hell. Surely, Wyvern Con science fiction and fantasy convention in Atlanta would be safe? Who would dare attack a convention the size of a small city?

Everyone.

Before the newlyweds even arrive, they are nearly killed by Chinese assassins. The local vampire nest has turned on them. Cyber-zombies have been unleashed on the streets.

Somebody has been playing a game with Marco and Amanda. But this is one honeymoon couple that like to play chess. And now, it’s time for their gambit to commence.

FROM ANNA FERREIRA: The Root of All Evil

When murder comes to Stockton, it brings long-buried secrets in its wake…

Kate Bereton leads a busy but unexciting life as the clergyman’s only daughter in a small Dorsetshire village. She’s grateful for the break in routine heralded by the arrival of her stepmother’s latest guests, but when Kate discovers a dead body in the parsonage one morning, she finds herself in much more danger than she could have ever anticipated. Terrified and desperate, she turns to the local magistrate for help. Mr. Reddington is eager to aid his dear friend Miss Bereton, but can they discover the murderer before it’s too late, and the secrets of the past are forgotten forever?

With a dash of romance and a generous helping of mystery, The Root of All Evil is a charming whodunit that will delight fans of Jane Austen and Agatha Christie alike.

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: A Few Good Men

Ladies and Gentlemen, we declare the revolution!

He spent 14 years in solitary. Now he’ll ignite a revolution.
Born a prince among Earth’s fifty tyrants, Lucius Keeva emerges from imprisonment with a fractured mind and a deadly purpose. When assassins hunt him, fate delivers him to the USAians—secret keepers of America’s forgotten beliefs.

For 500 years, this underground faith has preserved the Constitution while awaiting their prophesied leader. In Luce’s madness, they recognize their messiah.

Now the son of tyranny becomes liberty’s champion. As the USAians rise from the shadows, their weapons of war finally unleashed, a broken mind and a fallen prince prove the perfect weapon against an unbreakable regime.

One madman. One ancient faith. One last chance to restore the republic from legend.

A FEW GOOD MEN —where belief becomes the ultimate revolutionary tactic.

AND FROM THE NON-LITERARY HUNS

MURPHIC INDUSTRIES: Miniatures! Random decorations! Widgets!

Morrigan’s Mercantile! Shiny, Sharp, and Stylish…

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: PIPE