According To Hoyt

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

What is art, a man said and washed his hands….

Okay, fine, he said “what is the truth” or at least that’s an interpretation. What actually happened was a guy was asked “What is art” and said “I’ll be d*mned if I can tell you, but I know it when I see it.”

This has been made fun of by Academics, Intellectuals and other people who are formally wedded to just so stories and theory, but in the end it is the only way to identify art. Humans know art when they see it. Or hear it. Or read it. Perhaps “know it when they experience it.”

More importantly, though I — and most people — know it when we don’t see it.

First let’s start with Sarah’s beg #1: I don’t know if “art” exists anymore than I know if “talent” exists (beg #2.)

I know craft exists and I know work exists. Whether some works move me to tears because the artist was exceptionally talented and was creating art, or because the artist spent enough years practicing that he had sublime ability to craft the piece in just such a way is not only above my pay grade. It’s so far above my pay grade it’s left Earth’s near-orbit and is floating in space.

Whether it’s close-to-perfect craft or the kiss of the gods, though, I do know art when I experience it. See that “moved to tears” thing. Now, it’s not always tears, of course.

I would classify art as “remotely causing people to experience emotions by use of symbols.” Some is better than other, but all art causes an emotional response in the person experiencing it. The emotional response can be anything, but it is an emotional response. Note, the emotional response has to be what the artist intended, because a lot of “non art” in my experience causes disgust or horror or a desire to hit the person who created it with a really large shoe.

(There is a spicy and largely mentally handicapped argument that writers who use AI to do covers will also use it for their novels on Twitter. We’ll get to that another day next week. Let’s just say it makes as much sense as “artists who use AI to generate descriptions are also using it to paint for them.” — which is to say none whatsoever. Though the second is more possible in certain sub-fields. Abide in patience. It’s a side spur, and I’ll go trundling down it next week.)

An I know art when I don’t see it. Take for instance Big Tish:

The only emotions I can manage for that absurdly banal display is “Why is it taking up space?” and “Did my tax dollars finance that?” And also “Good Lord, couldn’t she have put on a dress, if she was going to be on display?”

Look, that ridiculous nonsense has set off an argument where some artists somehow have come up with the absurd conclusion the decline of art is because we don’t pay artists enough.

This is absurd, because no one is obligated to pay for anything. And people pay, willingly enough, for things they like.

That these things — Thomas Kincaid comes to mind — immediately get declared “non art” is not anyone’s fault but the critics establishment.

That some people choose to consider art only what the critics establishment says it is is I think an effect of schooling. “What is art?” “What teach says it is!”

The problem is that “teach” aka critics and professors for the last 100 years have been at war with popular taste and trying to distinguish themselves from it as a primary mission.

This has led to the uglification of public spaces and the creation of either incomprehensible or horrific “art” that evoke ONLY a sense of disgust and annoyance from the public… who of course refuse to pay for it.

This in turn lead the government to step in, with further enshitification of what is considered art.

In literature they now do Marxist Theory to prove that things no sane person would buy for sheer enjoyment or love are important and must be read and inflicted on school children, while beloved books that make their author rich must be “trash.”

This is all insanity. The tax-financed and NGO financed horrors aren’t art. They’re very expensive White Elephants that our inheritors will try to hide or turn to rubble, because this illusion of importance can only be supported by massive infusions of money coming from a large, all pervasive and out of control state. (Which no one can afford.)

Art? Art is fine and will continue being paid for. Because it evokes strong feelings. Be they joy or fear, or even just “It makes me feel funny, and I like it.”

Art is ludic enjoyment. And the public will always pinch money from their six packs to pay for what they enjoy.

And that’s what will survive.

Excuse me, I must make a point. It might not be the most popular point in the world, but it is a point that must be done.

A lot of you seem to be running with “Well, even if Soviet propaganda made us unreasonably scared of nuclear war, this is to the good because it prevented a nuclear war.”

Um…. it sure did. Or at least it prevented us from doing a first strike… Which honestly given the presidents we had those years was probably not very likely.

On the other hand, it also prevented us from using conventional warfare for real, or pretty much do anything except oppose Soviet expansionism and adventurism — which was essential to their survival since socialism is always parasitic and extreme examples, the kind we call communism are parasitic and destructive, meaning the only way to avoid complete starvation is to devour other countries — in a token way, with our troops hemmed in by ridiculous ROE and not allowed to win. Though even then, most of the time, unless the thing was in our face, we just sent the Soviets sharp worded letters. And leftist presidents? They didn’t even do that.

While we were avoiding very hard offending the Soviets because after all they had the same arsenal we did or more, and they were on an hair trigger and if we said boo, they’d eliminate us.

But that’s okay, right? Because we didn’t send a first strike.

Look, this is nonsense. It’s fossilized “nukes will kill da urth” shite in the back of your brains.

Peace is lovely. War is always awful. But sometimes war is needed. Period. And peace is sometimes too costly.

Arguably the “cold” part of the cold war, that counterfeit peace, cost a lot of people all over the world. It cost the deaths of the “little wars”, the destruction of economies, wealth and ability to create and invent all over the world. It caused the deaths of American service men fighting with both legs in a sack of ROE. It cost us our overculture and academic integrity being infiltrated and corrupted by the soviets, because of course the intellectuals were so scared of the superior Soviet might (and just a little turned on, as they always are by despots) and hoping they’d been eaten last. It might in fact have cost us our country. I don’t think it will, because we’re still fighting. But except for a few lucky breaks, it could have, plunging the whole world in a morass of civilization (and population) destroying “socialism” for a while.

Is that worth it? Because we avoided the big bad nukes (largely non existent on the Soviet side. Oh, they had some, but nowhere near parity, and for a while at the beginning, they in fact had almost none) and deaths from hot war?

I don’t know. I don’t know and neither do you. And don’t go pretending you do because you can paint mind-pictures of little girls dying in nuclear explosions.

Do you know how many graves were filled all over the world by the Soviet expansionism that we allowed? I heartily advise you to read a history of Cuba since the Castros. I advise you to read the black book of communism. I don’t know if any books have been written about what the Soviets and their Cuban mercenaries did in Africa. What I know are mostly first person, eye witness accounts, but if you distill the worst of The Black Book Of Communism, then steep it in the juice of nightmares you’ll be there.

So, would it have been better if we’d realized how much stronger than the Soviets we were and had put an end to their blustery larceny and mass murder? Maybe. Or maybe, as I suggested on Monday’s post if our more “progressive” leftist presidents had realized they had the ability to remake the world to their crazier dreams, we might be in a worse position.

My husband likes to believe we’re living in the best of all possible worlds. And maybe we are. Maybe.

But here’s the thing: we don’t know. We can’t now. Even now, a lot of our thinking and still a lot of our war theory, a lot of our thought, a lot of our calculations of war and peace are polluted by the propaganda pounded into our heads.

It’s entirely possible that really, refraining from pounding the Soviet horror and letting it prance all over the world was the best result of a bad situation. Or possibly it could have been better and fewer people might have died.

But we have no way of knowing. And it’s irrational and stupid to pretend we do.

Look, to give a more recent example: perhaps locking down was the best thing that could have been done with COVID. Oh, not because the virus was terrible, but because the propaganda machine of the dems might have managed to start a civil war to set themselves up to steal the election. Maybe this is the best of all possible worlds, and it will presently rain ice-cream from a clear blue sky.

But the events happened because of massive propaganda. Not only didn’t we make the decision clear-eyed, we still don’t know what happened. And we might never know. And this burns me beyond what I can reasonably explain.

It is the same thing with the lies and pervasive propaganda by the Soviets. It caused us to do things in a way we might not even have considered if we knew the truth.

Is the result still the best?

I don’t know and neither do you.

This upsets me terribly, but not as much as people pretending that it was all worth it.

As though they could know.

Newspeak Nations: How Language Erases Struggles – by Charlie Martin

I’ve been re-reading George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” again, something I recommend anyone interested in politics or writing should do regularly. Here’s a bit that struck me today:

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who should and do know better.

Orwell, like Ayn Rand, wasn’t so much inventing a fictional world as he was fictionalizing the world he knew, enhancing it to make a point. To clarify it, Orwell wrote in the Appendix to 1984:

“The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible,…”

The thing is, we’re not dealing with Newspeak, at least in detail. Instead we are seeing people on both sides parroting phrases they’ve heard elsewhere in place of thinking about what they mean.

My maternal grandfather Bill McClintock was born in the Choctaw Nation. Now, by definition, a nation is a group of people with a shared culture, history, and identity. There’s no question that the Choctaw Nation was and is a nation.

But when he was born there in 1895, the Choctaw Nation was part of Indian Territory, along with the Cherokee, the Chickasaw, and the others of the Five Civilized Tribes. The Indian Territory was part of, and under the authority of, the United States. Grandfather was born in the United States, not in some country — I don’t know, Choctawland maybe.

Through a succession of decisions made by the Great White Father, Indian Territory was broken up, opened to white settlement, and eventually became part of the state of Oklahoma.

Now, by definition, a country is a defined geographic area with an independent government, and borders.

There was no country of Choctawland because while it had more or less fixed boundaries, it was wholly contained in the United States, and while there was a tribal government, it was effectively subservient to the Federal government and not really independent or sovereign at all. (Oh, there was some face-saving assertion of sovereignty, but it was subject to regular intrusions, more in sorrow than in anger.)

This linguistic distinction—nation versus country—matters. I felt it sharply when someone claimed Israel was a country long before May 14, 1948. My objection isn’t about doubting Am Yisrael, the Jewish people, who have existed for millennia, nor do I question their deep historical and spiritual connection to Judea or their right to return to their ancestral homeland. My issue is the sloppy conflation of nation with country, which muddies history and erases struggle.

To unpack this, let’s look at the Balfour Declaration:

His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

The language there is instructive—hard to beat the imperial sleight-of-hand of a British diplomat—in that it says “a national home for the Jewish people.” The phrasing is cagey, leaving room for endless interpretation, but it was declaring that Jews should have the right to enter Palestine when it was removed from Ottoman control.

What it didn’t say was that the Jewish nation was to be a Jewish country. And, under the Balfour Declaration, it wasn’t. In effect, the British were asserting their intention to create a Jewish Reservation in Palestine, just as the United States created an Indian reservation following the Removal. You remember, the “Trail of Tears.”

There followed 30 years of struggle and a revolutionary movement to establish the country, the state of Israel in the territory once called Palestine since the Romans.

Insisting that Israel had been a country since time immemorial denies the struggle that made Israel a state, and denies the ability to think about that struggle.

When someone insists Israel was a country “since time immemorial,” they’re not just wrong—they’re wielding language to erase history, much like Newspeak aimed to erase thought.

Just as the Choctaw Nation’s struggle for autonomy was buried under U.S. promises of “sovereignty,” the Jewish nation’s (Am Yisrael’s) fight for a state was no foregone conclusion but a hard-won victory against imperial odds.

To conflate nation with country is to deny those struggles, to dull our ability to think about power and resistance. Clear language isn’t just pedantry—it’s a rebellion against the fog that hides truth.

So, the short version of this is: I decided to go on a trip through how I fell in love with the science fiction genre. My voyage was facilitated by there being only one imprint of science fiction books when I was in Portugal (though there were some fly by night imprints and the occasional Brazilian translation. Also at one time this amazing collection supposed to be read by artificial light without glare. It was light blue. Lasted like 3 books, but that was when I was in my early twenties.) Anyway, it’s not absolutely certain that I real all of these books, let alone in this order. For a look at what reading science fiction in Portugal in the seventies, at least for an oddball young girl was a different experience. I gave a fuller account here.

However, there is a chance I’ve read any book of Colecção Argonauta if not owned, at least borrowed. (I had entire friendships because my friend’s parents had a shelf of science fiction books. I regret to say I was a terrible human being when in pursuit of books to read. Truth is, my parents didn’t speak to their daughter about science fiction. I could have had a safer, more socially acceptable like pot. But nooooo. It was science fiction.)

This is the first of the books I ran into that I remember reading, and of course, I remember Ray Bradbury. Ray Bradbury was one of three authors I’d buy sight unseen, look for in every shop that carried SF, and in the bookshelves of friends, casual acquaintances and teachers. (The other two were Heinlein and… Clifford Simak.)

I selected my favorites with no particular encouragement and knowing absolutely nothing about them. The reasons I liked them was that their books gave me pleasure. Later I added other favorites, and some of them are on the list of books ahead. There were also a list of other authors marked “Sometimes like” and a list of “can tolerate.”

But those three never disappointed.

They are, of course, completely different in voice and texture, but I loved them all.

You can look his bio up, if you need refreshing. I’ll give my non-bio impressions of Ray Bradbury. He reads as wonderfully in English as in Portuguese translation (that’s rare. Though Heinlein does too. The texture of both is remarkably consistent in both languages. Again, very rare.)

Ray Bradbury is the kind of writer you read not only for his thoughts — though they’re often quite incisive or even surprising (a quality you want in science fiction) — but for the dream-like, poetic quality of his language. (Or at least I do.) He is a writer you can get drunk on. I knew enough to know he was more acceptable to high fallutin’ literature teachers and professors than my other vices. So when I needed to convert bunch of them to allow me to write papers about science fiction or include science fiction in the school library, it was Bradbury I handed them.

He’s also the graveyard of newbies. I haven’t been in a lot of writers’ groups, but in almost every one of them, there was a kid who came in who wanted to write like Bradbury, and mostly was writing very bad Bradbury pastiche.

The reason for this, of course, is that Bradbury has the bardic gift. No, hear me out. It is a condition of mind, perhaps of being touched by the divine or eternity, which makes you a little unmoored in time and a lot attuned to language and a sort of dream state that evokes deeper truths beyond what they actually think they’re writing.

No, of course I can’t tell you that objectively, but it is the internal explanation I’ve come up with for how Bradbury did what he did. And it helps understand his books at a deeper level and beyond the mere plain storytelling.

Yes you can take me to take a hike on that. And I can tell you “Fight me.”

Which brings us to The Martian Chronicles.

https://amzn.to/3GQQvRWThe Martian Chronicles

(This edition, which yes, has my associate’s link which means I win a tiny commission at no cost to you comes with an introduction by the author.)

I know it was the first Bradbury I read, because I expected something completely different when I first read it. I was I think 12 or maybe 13, and I remember reading it in Summer, because I remember reading it on the terrace, atop of my parent’s garage. And I remember I expected something very different. You see, the spine said Science Fiction, so I expected … well, calculations, and how to build a rocket, and the detailed colonization story.

What I got instead glossed over the exact measurements and the calculations and went straight into … well…. fantasy. Or at least more fantasy than what I expected.

And yet, it grabbed me right up and transported me into a world that was impossible, and which yet I completely believed. I’m not going to say short story by short story, and of course this is a novel composed of short stories.

I no longer remember how I felt about it at 12 other than “I like” but I know how I feel about it now. First of all, obviously, I enjoyed the book. Now a bit of deeper analysis.

The things he gets incredibly right:

1- this quasi-dreaming fantasy feel might be the best way to narrate the encounter between two cultures so alien to each other as humans and (this story’s) Martians.

2- He doesn’t make the Martians into noble savages and the humans into crude invaders. In fact in the very first stories, the Martians come across as pretty awful.

3- He gives us humans good and bad and makes us root for them.

4- the xenophobic idiot is the bad guy.

5- well, he’s BRADBURY. The worst story in this is better than anything I’ve ever written. He suggests things he never says, and we’ll get into that in a moment.

The things he gets wrong — in my opinion! —

1- he partakes of the belief in the nuclear war fear mongering propaganda which was quite normal in this place and time and honestly he probably couldn’t have been published without it.

2- This one is utterly baffling but I finally figured it out by noodling: He has all the new colonists abandon Mars to go back to Earth when war broke out. This broke me out of a it for a day or so, and I had to walk around to process it.

You see, I couldn’t understand it, because I am me, and I belong to my generation. Years and years, growing up I heard how the Earth was just going to break out in nukes all over, and after that it would be unlivable.

If my generation had gotten away and be in Mars for twenty years, and war broke out on Earth, and it were the kind of war where everything completely falls apart and will not be habitable for a long time? Hey, we’re staying on Mars, perhaps toasting the explosions in the night sky.

But this is not what Bradbury’s experience was. He was born in 1920, so he would have grown up on stories of immigrants in America abandoning everything to go back and to Europe and fight for the countries they left behind. And he probably saw it again in WWII, at least among the British immigrants.

Other than that, as I said, I greatly enjoyed the book, probably as much, maybe more than I did when I was a teen.

There is one hinted at thing that I think struck me the first time. I think so because at some other time, I read Dark They Were And Golden Eyed, and I agglutinated to this novel so i was convinced it would be in it.

Why did I think that. Well, of course, in DTWAGE the humans who have immigrated to Mars become the Martians we saw at the end of beginning of the Martian Chronicles.

The reason this made perfect sense to me is a story in the middle of The Martian Chronicles, in which a Martian Youth headed to a party in one of his cities crosses time-paths with a young Earth colonist headed for a party in one of his cities.

They argue over which of them is in the future of the other. And you get this sense of vertigo, like they don’t know and neither do you. And of course, DTWAGE ties a bow in that, so maybe they are both right.

Anyway, highly enjoyable and evocative and it gave me a little chance to enjoy the same magic I experienced when I first read it.

Next week, well… next week is complicated.

Next up is Tomorrow Sometimes Comes, by F. G. Reyer. The book can be obtained from Amazon, but in paper and for $30. And since I have no memory of it at all, I don’t want to take the plunge. The next book after that is even worse. Its the first book of the Lucky Starr series, and it runs into the hundreds of dollars.

With your permission — right? — I’m going to skip these two and advance right into this beauty:

Since you probably are looking at it and going “er… what?” … well, this is The Voyage of the Spaceship Beagle by A.E. Van Vogt. (And again, I earn a small commission if you buy it through that link.)

I have mixed feelings about it. I’m fairly sure I never read it, because having read about the voyages of the Beagle in my early teens, I’d have remembered this. And I used to love A. E. Van Vogt. While not making it into the top three, he was solidly in the second tier, with such people as Poul Anderson.

However, I’ve tried to read him in English, and I haven’t been able to get into any of them. (Which, I grant you, were some of his later, more psychadelic works.)

All I can say is I’m going to try it, and we’re going to see! See you next week for our next installment of Reading The Future of the Past.

I have finished Martian Chronicles, and will give you a review tomorrow.

There are a couple of big flaws in the book, but not enough to outweigh the fact it is a bardic masterpiece in a 100 ways.

The other flaw, which I will discuss tomorrow is understandable and it’s just “the limits of a person in his/her time.” but this one…. This one sticks out like a sore thumb, because it doesn’t feel organic to the story.

Yes, of course I’m talking about the anti-nuclear-war propaganda. The “nukes are going to end the world and life as we know it.”

It might have been truly his feelings. Of course, it might. Again the “man of his time, in his time” thing, and in his time, when he wrote the book the propaganda and the fear mongering of “we’re all going to dieeeeeee” was so total and so present in everything that it was impossible to think it might be… well, paid for by the enemy. Which, yes, we now know it was.

But somehow it doesn’t feel organic. It feels like something that was inserted because at the time to publish in science fiction, you must “put in the bit against nukes” or they’d never publish you.

This, you know, is the problem with any centralized industry, much less one that is supposedly dealing in “art” or at least in expression of art-like products.

I could write chapter and verse on it, but of course there was nothing doing at the time. production facilities, distribution facilities, concentration of publishing in a few companies with large offices, (though not as gigantic as they would become) mostly in big cities, all militated to making publishing part of what the immortal Sabrina Chase calls “The entertainment industrial complex.” Which, of course, was staffed by people who’d attended the best colleges and all “knew” the same things.

What they “knew” at that time is that nuclear war would end life on Earth as we know it, including a lot of utterly senseless bs like the nuclear winter, all of it propagated by the USSR the same way the anti-war demonstrations, etc. in W’s presidency were all propagated by communist fronts. (Probably mostly Chinese financed. A lot of things are these days. Might have been Russian, though. They might have had a few pence left over from their anti-fossil-fuel efforts. Oh, heck, who am I kidding, it was probably the commies in USAID.)

But they “knew” it and were filled with urgency to propagate the danger, and therefore any book talking about the future must include at least a reference to the dangers of nuclear war, or nuclear energy or something.

Everyone, from Heinlein on was doing “urgent” stuff about the dangers of nuclear war, though most of Heinlein’s truly scare-writings were in short stories and essays. The novels just sort of waved at it.

We can argue, and will in the comments, I suspect about how real the risk of nuclear war; how real the USSR’s nukes were, how functional most of the nukes around the world (maybe even ours) are now. (Incidentally and interestingly, the last time I was at the Cosmosphere, there was noticeably a lot more cheering for “international” cooperation in space (bah) and in the cold war exhibit the quote from Khrushchev and a notable absence of the plaque saying they actually didn’t have “anything” but these large metal tubes they drove around the country to give us the impression they had more missiles than we did. If I’d known there would be revisions, I’d have taken pictures. Also, I wonder why. Ah, well, humans.)

What we can’t argue though is that the study on the “nuclear winter” was falsified, the idea that it would sterilize the ruin the land forever has been proven nonsense, and while — doubtless — a nuclear war would have been horrible (would still be horrible, if there are still more than a few functional missiles around the world) and wrecked the world for a while, but it would not be the end of the world for by any means.

And coming across stuff that might as well be underlined and highlighted “propaganda to make the US give up right now and get rid of all its nukes and quietly surrender” drives me incoherent.

But, you’ll say, perhaps that propaganda, while it didn’t make us give up our nukes and surrender to the Soviets (thank heavens we elected Ronald Reagan, people!) did it perhaps do a good job in preventing us from going head to head with the Soviets and destroying a lot of things?

Shrug. I don’t know. And neither do you. We don’t have a parallel world to run that experiment on and observe. (And now I have a plot idea!) but here’s the thing: yes, it prevented a lot of destruction. It also created a lot of destruction, because for fear of a head on confrontation we let the USSR stomp all over the world accruing mountains of corpses, misery and ruined futures in Europe, Africa and Asia.

More or less destruction than a nuclear war would have caused? Well, again, I’m out of a parallel world to run the experiment on, but depending on how real and what maintenance they had (kicks imaginary spaceship. “Russian Technology!”) it is arguable and in fact QUITE likely that we got more damage from letting the commies stomp all over the world, for fear of a nuclear war.

Heck, considering the parlous state or our art, culture, history and everything infiltrated by the covert and not so covert Marxism and hatred of our own country… a nuke might have been less damaging. (Stop shouting, and think, really think about how much cr*p we allowed the USSR and for that matter Russia and China to do by treating them as equals.)

OTOH it could be argued, and if I had a parallel world to run tests on (what if our world is where tests are run?) that having the “progressive” establishment know the US was the only super power would be very bad indeed. Would you trust LBJ or for that matter even JFK to not go completely nuts if he knew no one could oppose whatever crazy ideas they came up with. (No, I’m not going to forgive JFK for USAID!)

So, other than the crying need for a world to run tests on is this all about.

Propaganda. In hindsight it is absolutely starkly clear how much we were propagandized and how many lies were in it.

The same can be said for the covidiocy, though a lot of people remain under that panic. Just like, for that matter, there’s a lot of panic still about nuclear war. and a lot of it is hangover of that propaganda.

Propaganda, particularly that pervasive, takes a long long time to work through a society.

Cold war kids, who voted Reagan in, didn’t know that a nuclear war wouldn’t destroy the world either. We were just so tired. Our entire lives we’d been told the hammer might fall at any minute. And honestly we didn’t care anymore. We just wanted to have a chance to win, and let the hammers fall where they may.

And again, even now, not all of us are past the after effects of the propaganda. The trauma comes roaring back every time Putin stomps.

So– remember we didn’t die. Remember that the propaganda melted away when challenged.

And remember how real propaganda can seem, and how it can fool the best of us: scientists, geniuses, artists, poets, even divinely inspired bards like Bradbury. There is no shame in falling for the propaganda, but–

But we must do our best to get at the truth, and mitigate poisonous propaganda. Because in and of itself, it can create as much destruction as any nuke.

Nowadays with a more decentralized information regime, there is a much better chance to get at the truth.

And we — both the cold war kids, those who came after, and the newly minted Covid kids — must always, always, always dig to get at the truth.

Before the lies detonate and destroy our entire world.

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 DAN MELSON: Bubbles Of Creation (Connected Realms Book 3)

It’s fascinating at the junction of universes – until one of them starts throwing shockwaves!

Alexan and Petra have settled into an idyllic life as Jarl and Frue of Ygg, each satisfying their respective divine curses. But Siluria next door starts generating massive shockwaves, unable to absorb the energy being generated by the scourgings every seven days. Worse, Siluria is home to the warlike diligar, who are likely to launch an invasion as their home is ravaged.

It’s hard to unravel a puzzle the size of several universes. Alexan has only just begun to solve it when one of his experiments poisons an enigmatic divinity far greater than himself or Petra.

But mistakes can also provide opportunities.

Book Three of Connected Realms

FROM CAROLINE FURLONG: Theophany

Ten years ago the Savients took over Niban, forcing the independent inhabitants into poverty and despair. Bass White saw the careless cruelty of the Savients kill his mother and his father. When a resistance cell is discovered in his city bloc, the Savients seek to make everyone pay.

With his wife Amie, Bass races into the caverns to escape the Savients’ brutal enforcers: the Atrasai. The couple barely make it to the limits of known territory outside their underground city, however, before the Atrasai catch up with them. It would take a miracle to save them…

…or a combat medic robot.

Join Bass and Amie in this sci-fi story of healing, hope, and wonder. After a decade of fear and pain, even a little light can bring out the best in man and machine. But will the best be enough to heal?

FROM J. MANFRED WEICHSEL: The Calydonian Boar Hunt

King Oeneus has just been given the secret of wine by the god Dionysus. Unable to hold his liquor, the drunken monarch forgets to honor Artemis at the harvest festival. In revenge, the angry goddess sends a crazed wild boar to ravage the kingdom with burning breath and razor-sharp tusks. Nothing can stop it.

The befuddled king, desperate to save his land, calls upon the greatest heroes of Greece to hunt the beast. Meleager, the king’s son, reluctantly finds himself leading a group of men he doesn’t respect or trust.

Soon the party of mighty mythical heroes is on the trail of the fearsome monster – but one of them is a heroine! Atalanta is a huntress to match Artemis herself, and quickly wins the heart of Meleager, despite the objections of the others.

Will one of the men make the kill, or will they be humiliated when the prize goes to a woman? Will Prince Meleager woo and win Atalanta, or will the gods intervene? Who will die and who will survive in this tale of loves and even greater lusts in ancient Greece?

A rip-roaring tale of jealousy and foul play, a family at war with itself and a battle of the sexes – told in Weichsel’s unique, no-holds-barred style. A pulse-pounding adventure that will appeal to fans of fantasy and horror, a wild ride through the weirder corners of Greek mythology. Strap on your sandals, grab your spear, and get ready to hunt the wildest boar of them all.

FROM JOHN DAVID MARTIN: The Lost Sword and Other Stories: A Collection of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Alternate History

Jared Thorne: A para-human detective and his dryad wife hunting for a legendary lost sword in a multi-dimensional city.
Eysteinn Bjarnarson: A descendant of the viking who settled North America fighting to win the love of the town beauty. His only opposition? A monster of Indigenous Canadian legend and…her father.
Captain Faust of the North American Marine Corps: A descendant of one Dr. Johannes Faust who learns some deals are heriditary. But can they be re-written?
Milo “Wolfkiller” Patel: A teenage bullrider on an alien world facing the challenge of his young career.
Pawel and Tamar: Newlywed asteroid miners whose wedding cruise from the trans-Martian orbit out to the belt turns deadly.
These are the characters whose stories I have faithfully recorded for you here.

FROM JESSICA MEIGS: The Becoming (The Becoming Series Book 1)

The Michaluk Virus is loose.
It will take all of Cade’s skills to survive it.

A deadly virus has escaped the CDC in Atlanta, and Cade Alton is blindsided when it reaches Memphis and strikes down the heart of her family in a frenzy of blood and terror. Forced to dredge up military skills she hasn’t used in years, Cade teams up with her best friend in order to survive the onslaught and escape the city.

But fleeing Memphis doesn’t mean the end of her troubles. As the virus continues its relentless spread across the Southeastern United States, she finds herself surrounded by virtual strangers who have banded together for survival. And not everyone is getting along.

When the virus reaches their Mississippi safe house and they’re forced to flee, Cade is faced with a difficult choice: accompany her best friend back to Memphis in a search for his wife, or travel with the others to rescue a survivor trapped in Biloxi. No matter which she chooses, the options will have deep repercussions not only on her life, but on the group’s very survival.

If you love survivor-focused post-apocalyptic stories in the vein of the Rot & Ruin Series by Jonathan Maberry or Mira Grant’s Feed Series, then you’ll want to take a bite out of Jessica Meigs’ The Becoming!

Pick up your copy of The Becoming and start the epic tale of survival today!

FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Last Pendragon (Legends Book 1)

“The last thing I expected when I went to grieve in the mountains was to get chased by werewolves, kidnapped by a dragon, or meet a legend. But that was exactly what happened.”–Sara Hawke

Sara Hawke, a highly-educated former PhD candidate in Linguistics, is plunged into a situation that strains her skepticism: first she meets a pack of werewolves while camping on the night of the full moon, then she’s rescued by a man the werewolves seemed to fear. Her rescuer then decides that she’ll be good company until he decides to let her go. Then he tells her that she has the potential to be a sorceress, and offers to teach her.

Along the way, she learns that legends aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be, and are occasionally more than they seem…

FROM KAREN MYERS: Tales of Annwn – A Virginian in Elfland (The Hounds of Annwn Story Collections Book 1)

A Collection of Five Short Stories from The Hounds of Annwn.

The Call – A very young Rhian discovers her beast-sense and, with it, the call of a lost hound.

It’s not safe in the woods where cries for help can attract unwelcome attention, but two youngsters discover their courage in the teeth of necessity.

Under the Bough – Angharad hasn’t lived with anyone for hundreds of years, but now she is ready to tie the knot with George Talbot Traherne, the human who has entered the fae otherworld to serve as huntsman for the Wild Hunt. As soon as she can make up her mind, anyway.

George has been swept away by his new job and the people he has met, and by none more so than Angharad. But how can she value the short life of a human? And what will happen to her after he’s gone?

Night Hunt – When George Talbot Traherne goes night hunting for fox in Virginia, he learns about unworthy men from the old-timers drinking moonshine around the fire and makes his own choices.

Who could have anticipated that the same impulse that won him his old bluetick coonhound would lead him to his new wife and the hounds of Annwn? Every choice has a cost, he realizes, but never a regret.

Cariad – Luhedoc is off with his adopted nephew Benitoe to fetch horses for the Golden Cockerel Inn. He’s been reunited with his beloved Maëlys at last, but how can he fit into her capable life as an innkeeper? What use is he to her now, after all these years?

Luhedoc needs to relearn an important lesson about confidence.

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Bowl of Red (The Shifter Series Book 4)

Dragon shifter Tom Ormson wanted two things: to serve killer souvlaki at his Colorado diner and enjoy married life with his pregnant panther-shifter wife. Instead, he got unwanted psi powers and a dragon triad syndicate demanding his leadership.

When Kyrie’s grandfather is found murdered, police officer Rafiel—Tom and Kyrie’s closest friend—must solve the case while being pulled into a power struggle for lion clan leadership. With all shifter clans in turmoil, separating allies from suspects becomes a deadly game.

The suspect list grows wilder by the minute: murderous chicken shifters, a skull-collecting otter who teaches art history, a Minotaur delivery man, chaos-causing spider monkeys, and an alligator shifter who might be a double agent. Meanwhile, Rafiel’s dragon girlfriend visiting town might get caught in the crossfire.

In Goldport, Colorado, the special of the day comes with a side of shapeshifter chaos. Just don’t ask about the capybara incident.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Sound of One Child Crying

Who is the child Reza can hear crying every time she goes to the new addition to the Royal Library? Her boss insists there is no child, that it is nothing more than her uncanny sensitivity to the unseen world making a nuisance of itself.

Worse, searching for answers gets her angry rebukes about respect for the dead. The further Reza goes, the more certain she becomes that someone is hiding an ugly secret.

It’s a secret that traces back two generations, to a dark period in this land’s history. A time most people would prefer to forget, not caring that denial doesn’t make a problem go away.

The truth may set you free, but not without a price. And Reza fears that death itself might turn out to be an easier price than the one demanded of her.

FROM CHRISTOPHER WOERNER: 202504 Here Comes the Judge

Collection of current events and various thoughts from April 2025. Things are getting messier and we’re all just trying to hold on. This is my attempt to keep track of what’s going on and why. Whatever court of law we’re headed towards, we’re all defendants and don’t even understand all the charges. Can we trust the judge to do the right thing?

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: JEALOUS

From Holly the Assistant

Well, it’s been that sort of day all around these parts. Everyone’s fine. There were checkups and shipments and pollen and just . . . it was very much a Friday. (Ok, with the pollen, fine might be pushing it, but everyone’s alive and breathing, which is not Nature’s fault: she tried.)

So, please amuse yourselves, or not, with what might be on the other side of that door. And there will be memes tomorrow, bet your bottom dollar there’ll be meming.