According To Hoyt

(Like the Nidiot I am I scheduled this…. and forgot to flip pm to am. And for this I stayed up till midnight actually two am. Which means I carefully changed am to PM because…. Yeah. There’s a proud tribe of Nidiots and I’m their chief….. Sigh.)

For those of you who just dropped (from outer space!) in here, this is what I’m doing and why.

Yes, we did a double reverse and went back to this book, since one of you (Thank you Uncle Lar) sent me a copy. I refused to buy one because they run upwards of $30. And I’m cheap.

Anyway, for those not wanting to go through all of it, I’ve been reading myself back to my origins in science fiction, or what I read in science fiction. Until I was about 12 or 13 there was only one collection (after that there were others, often of Brazilian imprints. I remember fondly the blue-paper imprint that was designed for “night reading.” Fondly because, as advertised, it didn’t reflect the glare of the bedside lamp.)

For those wondering about only one imprint of science fiction, remember that there, as here, science fiction is a minority taste and when I was growing up Portugal had barely 10 million people. So, counting only those who read for pleasure, and only those who read science fiction… it was a very small readership. The side effect of this is that they did from the beginning what companies in the US only started doing in the oughts: print to the net. Which meant if you wanted to grab a book, you had to be there in time to pick up one of the limited copies. This led to lines on the day of the releases of the people everyone read. Sometimes books hung around in spinner racks in less travelled locales — I scored Glory Road (and other books I don’t remember) — in a small village we were traveling through. It was in the tobacconists. Why I don’t know, since in the big city any Heinlein sold out in mere hours.

Anyway, since I came on the scene a long time after the series started publishing, I missed a lot of the early ones, though I did find them afterwards in weird ways, like when I scored a box of old sf books by helping someone move.

Anyway, all this to say: I’d never read this book. In fact, until you guys told me I didn’t realize that David French was Isaac Asimov.

So, before we dive into this, let me say Asimov was never one of my favorites. I found him generally competent, and he wasn’t on my list of “I’ll read this under protest” — there weren’t enough books available that I could say I wouldn’t read a book — but he also didn’t light up my day. I can’t tell you why, even. This is a highly individual thing and his stories just didn’t interest me as much or stay with me. I did enjoy his short stories more than his novels and remember enjoying the puzzle science fiction mysteries.

Anyway, that out of the way and with the understanding he wasn’t one of my favorites, let’s plunge in.

If you need to refresh your memory on who Isaac Asimov was, go here.

The short version:

Isaac Asimov was born on January 2, 1920, in Petrovichi, Russia. He immigrated to the United States with his family in 1923, settling in Brooklyn, New York. His parents were Orthodox Jews, and he was the oldest of three children. Asimov graduated from Columbia University, earning a Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1948.

Asimov was a prolific writer, authoring or editing over 500 books. He is best known for his contributions to science fiction, particularly the Foundation series and the Robot series. His first published story, “Marooned off Vesta,” appeared in 1939. He also wrote extensively in popular science, making complex topics accessible to the general public.

Anyway, this book published in Portuguese as O Veneno de Marte (The Poison from Mars) was published in America for the first time in January 1952. (It was published in Portugal in 1954 which is very fast and perhaps relevant. The taste of the people selecting these books were WEIRD even aside from their mad pash for French and obscure British books. Put a pin in this.)

The story starts with David Starr newly admitted to the council of science. (In all the human worlds, there’s a Council of Science which is … never mind. An interesting concept.) He was raised by two of the scientists in it, because his mother and father were killed when their ship was boarded by the pirates from the asteroids.

(Here let me insert that perhaps it’s not an accident that the rest of us consider the asteroids the symbolic bastions of freedom, but Asimov put the pirates and evil doers there.)

Anyway, David Starr is in a restaurant when someone dies of poisoning. There have been a lot of these poisonings and they all originate with products from Mars. The Council of Science sends him to find the origin of the poison in Mars.

There follows an unlikely set of adventures…

I think I should say that part of the problem I had with reading the book is that he seems to spend a lot of time tripping over what would be mundane stuff. Like, I really don’t need to hear about the force field tables in detail even once, much less repeatedly, while we’re dealing with someone who just died of poisoning, unexpectedly. I don’t know. It’s a matter of taste, but maybe this is part of what bothered me.

Another thing that bothered me was that though Mars is supposed to be “arm country” there isn’t much in the way of reality to the “farms.”

Perhaps Asimov simply hadn’t spent long enough in farms? I don’t know.

Anyway, while escaping an attempt on his life, David Starr ends up in a cave where he meets the Martians, who became… Well, it’s hard to tell? Either beings of the ultraviolet/energy or mind-beings, who live in caves under the surface and have absolutely no stake in what is happening on the surface, let alone in other worlds. They give him a…. scientifically cloaked magical invisibility device. (Look, I feel better about the science in No Man’s Land, suddenly.)

With the help of this, he solves the mystery of who is putting poison in the food to Earth.

I want to take a break here to note that the reason he’s called Space Ranger is not, as you might expect, because he joins a force of Space Rangers. Oh, no. It’s because one of the Martians names him “Space Ranger” because he ranges over space. Head>desk.

So, to return to that pin in the beginning: I find it weird that the people curating the publishing line chose David Starr over … Red Planet.

Though perhaps it makes sense since Red Planet is the American revolution turned into Science Fiction for kids and that might not have resonated with normal Portuguese people?

Anyway, this is relevant because when I was reading the book, it struck me as condensed, kind of floating over the top Red Planet fanfic. It was in fact published 2 years after.

Here I must insert that I don’t think Isaac Asimov did anything wrong. Look, ideas aren’t copyrighteable, and the story is not even the same. Not really. Except insofar as young spunky kid gets stranded in Mars and has to spend a night, and gets through it by strange means.

It’s more I feel like he read Red Planet and thought “I can do this better” and then wrote David Starr Space Ranger. Which… to my mind isn’t better, but that is obviously a matter of taste, and I’m sure there are people who prefer this book to Red Planet.

And it’s okay, because I feel like Heinlein read David Starr’s history and then decided to write it better for the character in Citizen of the Galaxy.

Anyway, on the salient point of the book: it was okay. It certainly wasn’t painful to read like the French one. Unfortunately it also failed to rock my world. I mean, it wasn’t bad, precisely. It just didn’t rock my world.

Anyway, um… if you decide to read David Starr Space Ranger, it’s okay. (It’s probably more worth the money in Audio, tbf.) It’s not like I want my time back from reading it. And I’m certainly in no position, being who and what I am to throw stones at a legend of science fiction.

It’s just I have a feeling our personalities don’t mesh, and what he was fascinated by (Council of Science. Pfui.) leaves me indifferent.

Oh, for the record, I think I would have liked this book much better if I’d read it when I was much younger and that might be part of the problem. I think he was going for a YA feel, and few YAs play well past their intended target.

One point of interest is that in this story, there was life on Mars before humans, of course, and there still is. Spores and bacteria and the like. And I practically flinched when Asimov’s people blithely talk about this not mattering at all, as they set about essentially terraforming Mars piecemeal to grow Earth food.

It is a mark of how much we’ve changed over the decades, that even I flinched from that and thought “well, that’s wrong” while Asimov, who — were he alive — would be still very much on the left and probably claiming the right of every microbe to avoid “colonialism” at the time was happily envisioning Earth life driving this other, inferior life to extinction. (Another point there being that the Council of Science isn’t even vaguely excited about thiis potentially completely different life and what they can learn from it.)

I don’t know. Perhaps I’m reading too much into all of this, but what went through my mind was “Well, yes, the left was all for colonialism and the extinction of any aliens that were in our way, until the USSR started to obviously fail, denying their ultimate ideal. And then slowly they changed their view and put on the skin of environmentalism over the same old tired Marxism.”

Note I’m not even accusing Asimov of this, just noting that this might be the mechanism through which our culture changed, and through which the left came to believe a bunch of quasi-religious ideas (some nonsense. Though I find that if there is life with a different origin than ours it would definitely be big scientific news and worth of study, duh) that coalesced in an attempt to find another vehicle for the socialism/communism that had failed as “scientific governance.””

In any case, the left today sure ain’t like the left back then. Not even the “scientific left.”

Which is why things like a Council of Science, centralizing such decisions, is a bad, bad idea. Because scientists are still human and emotionally susceptible to their peer group’s culture and decisions.

The best science is distributed science, where mavericks and Odds can find the things that “Official” science laughs at, and which often prove to be true after all.

So, next week!

That is From What Far Star by Bryan Berry.

A friend secured me a copy, as it doesn’t seem to be available anywhere, except used and pricey in print from Amazon. (Keep in mind that the Brian Berry listed on Amazon is not actually the same person. I don’t know who he is.)

For some reason clicking on his name there is no link to these books, but a search for his name brings up other used ones.

Anyway, I’ll try to do that for next Tuesday. Sorry this one took so long. A lot of things got in the way, mostly stupid things like really bad sleep. Which has also been getting in the way of doing Witch’s Daughter. I hope I can tomorrow. I’m “this” close to the end.

I was thinking today that the problem is we tell kids that they should choose something they love as a job. Then they’ll “Never work a day in your life.”

Leave aside for a moment the fact that you can’t always pick what you work at. People don’t seem to realize that, or that the circumstances of your job aren’t always under your control. When I was in trapub people kept telling me to take charge of my career or write what I was most passionate about. And I kept going “you do realize that’s not how any of this works, right?” I mean I could choose not to accept contracts — except for this wicked addiction to eating and a roof over my head — but I couldn’t choose to make the house publish something they didn’t want to.

The job market is kind of like that. Frankly, no one cares if you are the most talented cat rotator in the world. If the cats don’t want to be rotated, and the owners of the cats won’t pay you to rotate their cats, it is at best an aspiration, but it is not a job.

I just realized this is where all the aspiring poets come from whose real 24/7 occupation is screaming on Twitter that capitalism has failed because no one is paying them to write poetry written entirely in Gzoffian, their invented fantasy language.

If there is no market for what your “dream job” is, ain’t no one going to pay you for doing it. And I should know because when I started out there wasn’t much market for my writing. Partly because my writing was of the kind people didn’t want to read. Partly because if there were people eager to read it, I had no way to get at them.

So I spent decades, fighting and working and–

And I realized today that minus a few utterly disgusting periods where I couldn’t win for losing, because of other circumstances independent of my control, and as hard as things were at times, I am who I am, and as capable as I am because …. I worked every day of my life.

That is, I realized the problem with “Do something you love and you’ll never work a day in your life” is that if you’re doing something you love and are already good at, if you’re “playing” every day, you’re going to get bored. You’re going to get sloppy. And then you’re going to be bad at it, very very bad. And then you’re going to end up resentful, because your dream job turned into a nightmare. (This is also known as the Gifted Child’s Curse and why so many of us have interesting trajectories.)

Or, you’re going to try to coast through life without ever doing anything that is unpleasant or challenges you. And you’re going to fail. And again you’re going to end up bitter and blaming everyone for your failure.

So… Instead of doing “what you love” find something you love enough — a purpose, a job, an avocation, even an hobby — to struggle to do it and do it well even though you objectively aren’t very good at it, or need to learn it from scratch, or about a million other people would be better suited to it. (But they ain’t doing it.)

Note that a purpose is not necessarily a job. This crazy idea of subordinating everything to your “career” is not only a modern thing, it’s a crazy thing. Man — and woman, for that matter — is more than an economic production unit.

Sure, you need to do enough to keep body and soul together and that’s sometimes very difficult. Sometimes that’s the challenge. Other times?

Your purpose could be to keep your family fed. Or to give your kid, sibling, friend, the life they only hope to become accustomed to. For that you’ll have three jobs, and struggle, and work hard and hustle. It’s a purpose. It’s a challenge.

Or your purpose could be to become the best d*mn poet possible in your invented language. To be so good other people will want it. I don’t think it’s possible, but who knows? Prove me wrong. Your purpose will require you to work and keep body and soul together and in your spare time to study how languages work and get a good self-taught (or not) knowledge of linguistics and–

Or it could be a job you want to do badly enough that you fight through not being particularly good at it and replace your native language with another, and learn all cultural things needed to “ping” right to people in your new country, until you can be published and more importantly sell.

Is it sane? Is it even vaguely something you should do? Probably not.

But if that’s what you need to do and need it badly enough…. it’s a good goal to strive for, a good impossible line to work towards. Who knows you might get there. (I surprised myself.)

The point of this? Man is made to strive. Woman too. And those of you who just looked down your pants because you’re not sure which one you are this morning? You too.

Human beings weren’t made for easy. Evolutionary, for most of our history on this ball of mud, we were one step ahead of total extinction. Each and every one of your ancestors was one step ahead of starvation and enemy attack every minute of his life until fairly recently.

That is what your body and nervous system and brain were designed for.

Historically, everyone who didn’t “work a day in their lives”: the pampered princelings, the parasites, the people who were at the apex of the money their daddy or granddaddy made? At best they were just wastrels. At worst they were…. well, dangerous to themselves and others. And in some cases — I’m looking at Karl Marx — they became dangerous to the whole of mankind.

So–

Choose the difficult. Do the difficult. The more difficult the better. And then fight for it.

Fight hard. It will change you, and you will change it, and where you arrive might not be where you’d planned, but it will be be interesting. And sometimes it will be better than what you were aiming for.

Yes, it will hurt. it won’t be easy. And you know a lot of it won’t be fun. You’ll work every day of your life, and eat the bread you earn with the sweat of your brow.

And in the end? Whether you get there or not? You’ll be better.

Reach high. You might not get there, but you’ll end up higher up than you were to start with.

Book Promo

If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion.– SAH

FROM JOHN VAN STRY: End Game: Wolfhounds – Book Six

The fight has been a long one and a hard one with many unseen events along the way. The end however is here. The last battle of the war. The most important battle of the war. Soon they will leave for Cor Imperii, the capital of the empire. Soon they will launch a head-on attack against Speaker Phillip T Neill of the Democratic People’s Republic of Solaria. Soon Chase will do what he swore to do: Kill Neill, personally, tear down the DPRS, abolish the Secret Police, the Loyalty Officers, and re-establish the Empire of Solaria.

There’s just one last battle to fight to win the war.

Or is it? The last battle that is. Neill has his doomsday weapon, out there, somewhere, being developed in secret. It could kill billions, maybe more. Whole planets could be wiped out if it’s not found and stopped before it can be finished, before it can be used.

There’s also other players about. Other star kingdoms who have seen the inevitable decline that Neill and his government started when they lost access to the Tomb after killing off the prior emperor. In a hope to survive, or perhaps just seeing the state of the decaying Democratic People’s Republic, they’ve decided that some of those planets are ripe for the taking.

Which means that this battle may still have a few more rounds left in it before the Wolfhounds can, once and for all, return home.

FROM JASON CORDOVA AND MELISSA OLTHOFF: To Tread Obsidian Shores (The Bronze Legion)

Brand new military SF from two veterans with a proven track record of excellent storytelling!

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A WARRIOR?

The Protectorate of Mars Foreign Legion: A path to citizenship. A fresh start. Defending the Protectorate of Mars against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

HOPE

With itchy feet and a vagabond soul, all Blue ever wanted was to join the Survey Corps and explore the universe. But when she failed the entry exam, becoming a dropship pilot for the Legion was her last chance at achieving that dream. It was only supposed to be a stepping stone . . .

DUTY

All he ever wanted was a home. But when Tavi is driven from his world by murderous revolutionaries, he only has one chance to escape: the Legion. Searching for a new life, he soon discovers something even better—a family.

WELCOME TO THE LEGION

FROM JOHN BAILEY: Orbital Renaissence (Space Stations)

In the mid-21st century, Earth staggers under collapse—cities failing, governments powerless, and corporations competing for control of the skies. Commander Elena Voss and her crew aboard the orbital wheel Von Braun Prime fight to prove that humanity still has a future beyond the dying planet below. But whispers of sabotage spread through the station like wildfire: oxygen scrubbers tampered with, stabilizers overridden, crops nearly torched.

At the center of it all are those who would see Von Braun Prime fall: Gideon Crowe, a populist firebrand rallying Earth against the project, and hidden agents working from within. Trust fractures. Factions form. And when a young technician is unmasked as a saboteur, the crew must decide whether to stand united—or watch the station collapse from within.

Orbital Renaissance is a gripping, cerebral science fiction mystery that blends political intrigue, human drama, and the timeless struggle between hope and betrayal. Perfect for fans of Kim Stanley Robinson, James S. A. Corey, and classic space operas with a sharp, contemporary edge.

BY JULES VERNE, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: The Vanished Diamond

In 1880s South Africa, French chemical engineer Victor Cyprien has discovered the process to create a synthetic diamond, creating a very large diamond that gets christened “The Star of the South”. When it is stolen, he and his compatriots pursue the thieves across the African veldt.

This lesser-known classic by Jules Verne is remarkable not for its science fictional speculation, but for its singular portrait of its main character.

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: The Dragon’s Sister (Timelines Universe Book 7)

Two Sisters, Separated By A Timeline

When most people find out they have a long-lost twin sibling they never dreamed existed, reactions can range from happiness to anger.

In the case of US Space Force Marines Brigadier General Mei-Lin Lai, her “twin” is her timeline analog she was told did not exist. And because of that reassurance, the expatriate Chinese taikonaut migrated to Timeline Zero from Timeline One Right, to take command of United States Space Force Base Terra Meridiani, on Mars.

But her analog did exist. And was pulled out of a cold-stasis chamber in Chicago eighty years after she’d been recruited into a failed plot to disrupt an American presidential election.

Twenty years later, Mei-Lin must grapple with a woman who is her genetic twin and wishes to join the Space Force Marines as a medic — and will go through Basic Training on the planet where Mei-Lin is the boss Marine.

Will the two women, identical but different, be able to form a sisterly bond? And will Mei-Lin finally come to grips with the very existence of her other-timeline twin?

FROM BLAKE SMITH: A Kingdom of Glass: A Novel of The Garia Cycle

In a kingdom of secrets and silk, one girl must choose between duty and her heart.

Zara has spent eleven blissful years in the sun-drenched kingdom of Garia, where she rides free across a vast grassland, shoots her bow beneath starlit skies, and calls her foster family’s castle home. But when a royal summons arrives, her golden world shatters like spun glass.

Thrust into the cold, formal courts of the East Morlans—a realm of rigid etiquette and deadly politics—Zara must navigate an arranged marriage to a stranger, reconnect with a family she barely remembers, and survive the unforgiving world of noble society.

Gone are the warm winds and open skies of her beloved home. In this land of marble halls and suffocating tradition, every word is measured, every gesture scrutinized, and falling in love might be the most rebellious act of all.

As court intrigue swirls around her and threats close in from every side, Zara must discover who she can trust—and what she’s willing to sacrifice—to reclaim the freedom she left behind in the endless plains of Garia.

Some cages are gilded. Some prisons are palatial. But Zara’s heart belongs to the steppe.

Perfect for fans of court intrigue, swoon-worthy romance, and heroines who fight for their own destiny.

FROM HOLLY LEROY: Back Burner – A Lt. Eve Sharpe Thriller: Book 2 (Lt. Eve Sharpe Thrillers)

You don’t become a Homicide legend without surviving your first monster.

A gripping crime thriller full of emotional stakes, razor-sharp tension, and a killer you’ll never forget.

Before Lieutenant Eve Sharpe earned her reputation for solving Chicago’s toughest cases, she was a rookie cop trapped in a dead-end beat and ready to quit. But when a close friend is found murdered and the case is buried by Homicide, Eve refuses to walk away.
Driven by justice and a gut feeling that something isn’t right, Eve launches her own investigation. What she uncovers is a pattern of brutal killings stretching across the city, all tied to an elusive, sadistic killer who doesn’t leave survivors.
Now, Eve is no longer chasing justice. She’s racing the clock.
Because the killer has a list—and her name is on it.

•Perfect for fans of gritty police procedurals and psychological thrillers.

•Loaded with suspense, dark twists, and a fierce heroine who won’t back down.

•Appeals to readers of Michael Connelly, Lisa Gardner, Karin Slaughter, and J.A. Konrath.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Schrödinger Paradox: Heisenberg’s Point of Observation

To save the future, sometimes you have to reach to the past.
Thomas Sutton was not your average fourteen year old, not even in an Ark City. Born in one of the three refuges of the last remnants of life on earth, deep underground, he knows his history. A century after an asteroid shattered and struck the earth, they have been trapped below by volcanic eruptions, toxic gasses, and radioactive dust. But what if he could…change things? What if he could reach the past, to prevent the asteroid’s impact?

https://amzn.to/3JsvQoFFROM SARAH A. HOYT: No Man’s Land: Volume 1 (Chronicles of Lost Elly)

Sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic.

On a lost colony world, mad geneticists thought they could eliminate inequality by making everyone hermaphrodite. They were wrong. Catastrophically wrong.
Now technology indistinguishable from magic courses through the veins of the inhabitants, making their barbaric civilization survivable—and Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Kayel Hayden, Viscount Webson, Envoy of the Star Empire—Skip to his friends— has just crash-landed through a time-space rift into the middle of it all.
Dodging assassins and plummeting from high windows was just the beginning. With a desperate king and an archmagician as his only allies, Scipio must outrun death itself while battling beasts, traitors, and infiltrators bent on finishing what the founders started: total destruction.
Two worlds. One chance. No time to lose.

Volume 1
The Ambassador Corps has rules: you cannot know everything, don’t get horizontal with the natives, don’t make promises you can’t keep.
They’re a lot harder to follow when assassins are hunting you, your barbarian allies could kill you for the wrong word, and death lurks around every corner.
The unwritten rule? Never identify with the natives.
Skip’s already broken that one.
Now he’s racing against time to save his new friends from slavery—or worse—while dodging energy blasts and political intrigue. One crash-landed diplomat. A world of deadly secrets. And absolutely no backup.

Some rules are meant to be broken. Others will get you killed.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Wolf and the Well-Tempered Clavier

With the coronation fast approaching, the Cathedral of St. George the Dragonslayer cannot afford trouble. But come it does, while the cathedral choir director is at the Dragon’s Breath Organ, practicing the anthem he wrote at King William’s own request. While explaining some technical terms to his understudy, the choir director decides to show off a little.

In the process, he releases an ancient menace from long before humanity came through the worldgate to this place. An entity that strikes him blind, and threatens further harm to anyone who tries to play the Dragon’s Breath Organ.

However, they dare not disappoint His Majesty, not on the most momentous day of his reign. Someone must cleanse the Dragon’s Breath Organ of this malicious entity, and the choir director cannot. So the task falls to Miss Anne Teesdale, understudy organist.

Now she must delve into the history of the cathedral, and the mysterious ancient magic that fills the organ’s windchest. A secret that may well cost this young woman her life.

Or worse, her sanity.

An Ixilon story.

FROM RETRO ROCKETS: Retro Sci-Fi Pinups Volume #1: Yesterday’s Women of Tomorrow

Retro Sci-Fi Pinups, Volume #1″

Making use of the latest 21st Century Artificial Intelligence’s ability to generate images, And assisted by some merely Human Intelligence’s ability to curate and edit said images, We’ve attempted to recreated the thrill and wonder of the Golden Age of Science Fiction combined with the Universal Allure of Pretty Girls in Short Skirts and Skin Tight Spacesuits,

Here is a collection of 100 AI rendered art works featuring Yesterday’s Women of Tomorrow.in all their Winsome Glory. Inside you will find

• Intrepid Space Cadets,
• Amazing Astronauts,
• Comely Cosmonauts
• Space Babes
• Mini-skirted Moon Base Operators and Starship Crew Members
• and other Sultry Sirens of the Spaceways.

Inspired by fond memories of:

• Sci-Fi Covers of books, magazine and comics. (Amazing Stories, Planet Stories, Weird Science)
• Sci-FI B-Movie stills and posters, (Forbidden Planet, Flash Gordon, Queen of Outer Space, Barbarella, Star Wars)
• Sci-Fi Television shows (Star Trek, Space Patrol, Dr. Who. Buck Rogers)

We hope you enjoy our featured presentation.

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: Heat

Listen here: Everything is not crappy. That’s just a lie Big Crap tells you.

The future isn’t written in stone. Or if you prefer there is a strong possibility that, in the words of my generation, “The future is so bright I got to to wear shades.”

Look, it’s not guaranteed. The future never is. And we will have to work a lot and do our best to get there.

But the work might not be as insanely difficult as you’re anticipating right now. And we’re not going to have to be hip deep in blood most of the time or — possibly! — at all. And it’s also likely we won’t be metaphorically speaking walking uphill in snow both ways most of the time (or — possibly — much time at all.) And — hear me out, okay — it’s just possible, just vaguely possible that everything isn’t shit and getting worse. It’s possible that things are going to get better. Are getting better all the time.

Not perfectly better, of course, because we’re human and this is a fallen world, so it’s two steps forward, one step back (I know whence I speak. I said what I mean) but better.

Look, if I were a believer in massive conspiracies, I’d say that we’ve been under a concerted barrage of entertainment/news/propaganda designed to convince us the world is a terrible, dark place; all humans are shitty beings; nothing is worth it; we might as well give up.

Actually I am a believer in conspiracy theories of sorts, by virtue of being a believer. And if you are, you know exactly what that conspiracy is, and who the author of it is. He never did like humans much, and if he can get us to descend to his level, it’s all to the best.

But other than that, and leaving aside woo stuff, it’s not a real conspiracy theory. Though it might be a prospiracy.

You see, under mass media, all the information/entertainment industrial complex was taken over by Marxists (Communists, socialists, the whole damned mess of them, if indeed there is any difference but in speed of implementation. Every socialist I know calls himself a communist when amid fellow travelers) with the idea, way back then, of leading humans to the great glorious communist future.

Except the great glorious communist future never materialized. And in fact all their plans keep turning to ashes and dust. Since they never can figure out it’s the philosophy that’s broken, they keep being disappointed in all the world and everyone in it.

In that way they’re a lot like the crazier Christian sects. They’ve become disillusioned with the world and all in it for refusing to live up to their concept of adamantine perfection. And they know people are doing it on purpose to be difficult, because after all, it’s so easy, “if only everybody.” So people are terrible, the worst, and the world is a place of suffering and punishment. They’re different from the crazy Christian sects (Why do I say that’s crazy? Well, chilluns, because He created the world and “saw that it was good.” Even if the fall made it flawed, some/a lot of the good remains. So kick the black dog and stop spiraling) in that Christians believe in redemption and hope eternal. While the Marxists don’t, so it’s all terrible, it’s always terrible and then you die.

This also combines with a spiteful wish to punish the world and humanity in general for breaking their little red wagon. (I mean what I say and say what I mean.) So, humans are terribad, and they should all die and leave the world to…. termites or bacteria or whatever they deem is far away enough from humans to be untainted today. After all, humans could be perfect and leave in perfect communism “if only everybody” so they’re all horribad, obviously.

This is the mindset behind all the information and entertainment complex, and we drank it with our mothers’ milk, even those of you who were bottle fed, and even those of us on the right and swimming against the current.

So, of course you think everything is bad and getting worse, and everything is dross and horror.

If you let Ian Bruene have five minutes, he’ll rattle off all the improvements in the last fifty years in gun rights. And I can rattle off all the improvements in education — yes, education. I don’t mean public education, cawkers, but education is so much more than that — and access to information and to like minded thinkers in the last twenty years. I can also tell you that not only is it much easier not to be a leftist NOW than in the rest of my life, but ALSO that things are turning, and our star is ascendant. Doesn’t mean we won’t have to eat live frogs for a decade or two, depending, but I’m more convinced than ever that Reagan was right and in the end we win, they lose.

As for humans? No, they’re not perfect, but a majority of humans are just trying to be decent and do the best they can for themselves and those that depend on them. And a good number are willing to extend that kindness to total strangers.

Humans as a whole are not actually evil, if for no other reason that that being utterly evil takes too much effort. And humans as a rule don’t wish for the worst for everyone else. Humans have SOME control over their thoughts, impulses and wrong doing. Humans, as a whole, are individuals. And as individuals they present a fascinating array of behavior and belief that includes the possibility of heroism, kindness and joy.

One of the things responsible for this post is people who have read the three e-arcs of No Man’s Land thanking me for not having pointless evil just show up in characters we care about; not having pointless deaths just to show I’m serious; not taking the whole world to sh*t just to pretend it’s deep. I was shocked at first, and then I realized 40 years ago I’d absolutely had done that, because it’s what I was taught, and it’s the way I’d been taught serious writing should be done.

Which explains the panoply of grey evil ragged blah that has invaded all our entertainment. I’m sick and tired of husband watching something that looks like it will be a fun adventure and fifteen minutes later I look up and realize what I heard wasn’t a mistake. All these people are committing atrocities because THEY CAN even though they’re supposed to be the good guys. (People, the Stanford Prison experiments were fake and a lie. Get them out of your head.)

It explains the crapification of our culture.

And then this morning my husband told me, out of the blue, apropos nothing: Everything is not crappy. That’s just a lie Big Crap tells you.

He has no idea why he said that. It just struck him out of the blue. But it’s true.

They’re in a big depressive pet, rolling on the cultural floor and throwing a fit.

It doesn’t mean you have to give them mind space. In fact you absolutely shouldn’t.

Like the Lady of Shallot’s their mirror has cracked from side to side, and their doom is coming upon them.

But their doom is not ours. Us? We’re going to the stars. We have only just begun. And our future’s so bright we’re going to have to invent better shades.

Go forth and build and create. The future can be better than you imagine. It can be better than you can imagine.

And it’s up to us.

Hi. I have bad news. Then again, I have good news.

Spoiler: It’s the same news.

The bad news is: I’m sorry, no one is coming to rescue you. No one even knows what rescuing you would entail. Not in the long run.

We are largely on our own surrounded by people no smarter or more capable than us. It’s up to you. And me. And all our friends and relatives. We have to, somehow, rescue ourselves.

The good news is: No one can plan the future and make it work exactly as it should with amazing foresight, etc. Which means you’re still free. And likely to remain so, even if some set of idiots or other thinks they making nefarious plans that this time, no fooling, are totally going to work.

In not completely unrelated news, I finally started reading the first David Starr adventure (Well, I finished Laura’s book and need to read something at lunch. (My co-worker — coff. Husband — and I usually have dinner together (unless I’m upstairs hitting the clanker and forgot to eat) but have lunch separately. And I can’t eat by myself without a book.

Anyway hit the “Council of Science” and hit my had on the table, repeatedly. It’s such an … Asimov Thing to have in the book.

OTOH, it’s not just Asimov. It is very much an idea fossilized in early twentieth century science fiction. (Probably in later too. Most of them were thoroughly unmemorable. At least in the ones I like there usually isn’t some kind of “superior man” controlling everything.)

There’s this idea that somehow, somewhere there are — or sometimes should be — hidden masters of the universe controlling everything.

Should be? Oh, it never fails. Any post that mentions race or ethnicity or culture (here we go again) gets someone to come over into the comments, spin around in a bloody tizzy and shriek “IQ, IQ, IQ” apparently under the amiable assumption that this is an all powerful incantation that will make me apologize for everything and completely agree with him. (Um… wonder if it would work on the clanker. Calling it a clanker didn’t!)

Since usually these posts are in relation to immigration, the implication behind the meltdowns is that we should only import the highest IQs…. Look, dudes, I have nothing against Chinese and Jews, but I refuse to believe we only need them, forever. For one right now the Chinese are as likely as not to be contaminated with authoritarian ideology. For another the type of person erupting in Tourettes-like shouts of “IQ” usually completes their charming personality with a hatred for Jews.

I’m only half joking about the IQs. Yes, Asians and Jews tend to be highest, but it varies within the groups — of course! — but all the same, here’s the secret sauce: IQ measurement, if done properly, by unbiased testers and in the right way (I was certified as a proctor once upon a long time ago) is very good at predicting you’ll do well in college and certain types of professions, mostly those having to do with high abstraction.

The point I want to make — hear me out — is that those are not, nor will they ever be the only type of immigrants we need.

High IQ people are not generally better at life. In fact trust me on this, some of the very highest IQ people I know pre-GPS needed a map to tell him how to get back from the grocery store after using another map to drive to it. And this grocery store was up the road for blocks, turn left, two blocks and you’re there. (And no, not husband. Husband has an almost supernatural sense of direction.) Even I who have no sense of direction can figure that out.

And don’t get me started on very high IQ people and not picking up social clues. Or– well, other things.

Let’s say like having a Phd in one field doesn’t give you the ability to comment/know about all others, having a very high IQ doesn’t make you the sort of polivalent genius that bestrode these SF novels: capable of doing whatever the author needed him/her to do at the drop of a hat.

Very high IQ people can often perform miracles, it’s true, if the type of miracle you need is “You need to be at first year of college level as a chemistry major in two weeks, and I don’t care if you’re a 9th grader. Here’s a stack of books. Go.” (Totally random… yes, the idiot did pull it off.)

However it tends to be highly specialized. if you’d handed younger son the same book and given him the same instructions, he’d have ignored it for two weeks then told you it was impossible. He can however make things work that physically shouldn’t.

High IQ people are more… specialized. the IQ might test high all over, but what will even hold their attention tends to be a narrow band of stuff, and outside that they’re morons. Or next door to.

One of the things high IQ people are UNIFORMLY bad at, unless that is their particular area of obsession of course is predicting the behavior of other people, particularly masses of people over a long period of time.

They shouldn’t feel TOO badly about that, though, because no one is good at it. In fact humans en mass tend to be fairly unpredictable. I mean, I can make some predictions, sometimes, a year or two into the future, can make decent guesstimates about trends beyond that, but my batting average, while better than usual, is not 100%. (And BGE predicts a lot of stuff, after studying it, but we’re both baffled by some of it.)

So, this brings us to the other great myth of the twentieth century: The nefarious planners. Someone posted in comments that someone (presumably the WEF types) is now preparing Argentina as a place to get away in case New Zealand goes bad….

Guys, that’s bullshit. It’s not just bullshit, it’s bullshit on stilts. The WEF types might very well be SAYING that but that’s because they don’t want to admit that not only did Argentina tell them to go suck an egg, but that Argentina is doing very well indeed by ignoring them. So they’re doing the usual “I meant to do that.”

And it wasn’t New Zealand the WEF types were “preparing” as a place of refuge when the rest of the world went to crap. Not in the nineties it wasn’t. Even in the early oughts, everyone knew the place they were preparing was Australia.

This might have been true, even, in the sense that they thought they were doing it. There is a lot of bad idea bear type of things Australia implemented which comes directly from the Davoisie playbook: the type of ideas they are SURE will lead to paradise.

Which explains the trouble Australia is in. Bad, bad trouble.

Because the truth is, geniuses — and keep in mind WEF types aren’t. They just think they are though they might have very high IQ people working for them — are as prone to illusion and buying crazy theories wholesale as the rest of the humans. Maybe more, actually, because the idea of a great theory that explains everything, a grand, unified theory of everything, is catnip to geniuses. (That high abstraction thing.)

And when in the grip of a grand theory, very smart people will do the most unholy stupid crap. Like try to institute communism. Or think that it would be great with the “right” people in charge. Or–

In other words, those who are very intelligent (and sometimes really are) or maybe only gifted at something, or born to a position of wealth and great power are just as human and fallible as the rest of us.

So the good news is their ability to control you is very limited. They can sometimes brute force something incredibly counterproductive and stupid for a while, but they can’t make it stick, much less worldwide.

So while they conspire and a lot of conspiracy theories (mostly related to hiding information, or lying) are true, what I call “grand conspiracy theories” involving truly long time spans or the world as a whole, are mostly bunk.

The closest you come to one of those that works is our prospiracy to refuse to be ordered around. That one, over the long span of humanity, despite some truly disgusting times and places, has a track record of working.

So stop being afraid of the grand masterplan of the left. Mostly it consists of “We meant to do that!” like your cat, after falling off the bed while grooming himself.

Go on, be ungovernable, be free.

Sure, no one is coming to save you. But in the long run no one owns you either.

And we’re going to make any of them that try rue the day they were born.

The grand planners can’t predict and thwart what we’re going to do because to be fair, half the time we don’t know it ourselves!

Sursum corda. In the end we win, they lose. Because we are free. And no one is coming to rescue us. So we rescue ourselves.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

I slept till eleven thirty, which hopefully resets the cycle that has been getting more and more out of control since I had trouble with the typesetting. At least I slept eight hours.

As to why I was so late yesterday, well, I was fighting Midjourney. You see, it would have been perfectly fine if I had just put up the book firs typesetting. But having to re-typeset (And still no idea if the program will accept it, because–) led to Dan questioning the cover…

The problem of having the same sort of mind — yesterday he watched The Accountant II while I beat the clanker (And it worked worse and worse every time) and both of us lost it at “Explain to the normie why we have to finish what we started.” (Not an exact quote, but close. We’d seen the movie in the theaters before, so he was re-watching) — we feed each other’s obsessive spirals.

So I re-rendered Skip and the beast because frankly I never liked them (Though it is a deliberate 70s style cover those two figures were a compromise) but then he started going nuts because Brund looks drawn, not painted. And getting Midje to render an hermaphrodite with no breasts (UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES ASK FOR AN HERMAPHRODITE. You can thank me later. I didn’t gauge my eyes out, but it was a close run thing. This from the same program that threatens to ban me for asking for someone barefoot. It’s against their decency rules) unleashes a panoply of horrors the likes of which I don’t intend to inflict on anyone. The CLOSEST it gets to okay is just uncanny valley “off.” (Which is why the figure on the cover is stylized, etc. Sigh. Turns out the program doesn’t have a key for “Take this cartoonish rendering and make it look like an oil painting.” A serious flaw if anyone works for them and reads this.

(While I’m at it, if anyone works for Atticus and reads this, tell them for the love of all that’s holy to allow me to put a few blank pages at the beginning. Starting the book with the title page is weird and ALMOST makes me want to leave all those pages blank and start only under chapters. Have these people never SIGNED a book? They’re a wonderful program, but I swear it was written to do computer manuals. Which also explains their ASSUMPTIONS about the type size and spacing. Sigh.)

Anyway, the problem is that I have enough clanker — I love that I’ve lived long enough to have a slur for “robot” in common use — in me (I’m part clanker on my dad’s side) that we got into a spiral. I tried to get it to do what I wanted. It found new ways to fail. For something like 16 hours yesterday. (Oh, yeah, “elf” worked for that betwix and between but then the clanker decided that it would instead render green elf-hobbits from some game. ARGH.)

No, I’m not done on that yet, but I have great hopes, since at one in the morning I’d come out with something close to just making that illustration into a painting. Maybe.

One of the ways in which Midje has an almost personality is that what gives it fits one day will be easy the next WITH THE SAME PROMPT. For instance, the other day it was refusing to admit that women exist (no, not joking) for an entire afternoon. Then the next day it just rendered a beautiful woman no problems.

THEN after I finished beating the bot (my arms were tired, so I had to rest) I fell into a “can’t put it down” with a book Laura Montgomery sent me to advance read and didn’t go to sleep till I finished it at three thirty am. (Look, I’d gone to sleep the night before and dreamed of the book all night. a) this never happens with other people’s books. b) my dreams were very dark, which her book isn’t. So finishing it was the best course.) Great characters, action and plot. So, thank you Laura and also curse you. I’d have been jet lagged today anyway, but you just made it worse. (The compliment we writers all long for “You son/daughter of a b*tch, you kept me up all night reading!” Yep, we’re all sadists. Sorry no one told you.)

Oh, yeah, while in a doom spiral with the clanker, I was mostly listening to the WHY files (I like him because after the scary story, he levels and tells you what parts are outright impossible.) So I predict a lot of very weird fiction.

And I also finally had time to listen to the Razorfist podcast about McCarthy. Razorfist is Razorfist, so the program is of course not entirely objective. (It’s banned as a comment thread on this blog, but his comments on Lincoln are also over the top and far away, though from the other side.) OTOH while I don’t think McCarthy was a saint, or that Eisenhower was any more complicit in the shut down of McCarthy’s investigations than Trump was in Covidiocy, I do agree with Razor that the worst sin McCarthy committed was being 20 years (at least) too late. And it helps to put in perspective how and why communism/extreme leftism became a positional good, and also how our agencies became that infested.

The good thing is that this “prestige of the left” is dropping away at speed. And that the philosophy is so bad it can’t survive without it.

It can’t be relegated to the midden of history fast enough.

Cheer up. We’re winning the long war.

And now you’re staring at me as though I’ve lost my mind. I might have. I was fighting typesetting till late last night. But I don’t think so.

It occurred to me sometime ago that we were in a long, sustained war since the beginning of the 20th century. It’s just that war has morphed and gone underground, by other means.

Look, part of this was America’s showing in WWII. Not that it was bad, but that it was very, very good and it showed the ideologies who would conquer the world that they couldn’t do it shoulder-to-shoulder, in serried ranks. I mean they kept threatening us with it, but in fact that time had already passed. (Sometime I need to do a post about how most of threats we’re terrified of are actually things that are no longer possible, or at least highly unlikely.)

So, the ideologies that would conquer the world: it was before Marxism existed, of course, that people became obsessed with idea of a rule “of the people” involving “if only everyone” and also that there was a permanent underclass who needed to rule so they wouldn’t be oppressed.

In fact Marx, the least original thinker in the world, culled his ideas from the kind of red-throated insanity of the French revolution. To be fair to him, all of the civilized word was going through this, processing the shock of the immense violation that the French Revolution represented.

There had been peasant revolts… always pretty much. Look, despite the soft-water-color monarchy fools (mostly tbf European fools, though some people on this side of the Atlantic are … gullible (?Yeah, gullible is a good term)) try to sell you, monarchy and any system with hierarchy dictated by birth which you can neither choose nor change monarchy pretty much sucks and will end up having peasant revolts. (Yes, yes, constitutional monarchy is better. And also depending on the quality of the king, yadda yadda, except that you can’t guarantee the quality of the king, nor vote him out if he’s well…. Biden like. And constitutional monarchy is a way to still have kings for the feel while not having kings for anything practical. BUT in this case, I’m talking about historical, pre-French-revolution monarchy and its problems.)

However the French revolution was shocking like the covidiocy was shocking. It was a ‘this is not even possible’ moment.

And it was possible, suddenly, because of one innovation (this one simple trick!) — the printing press. And the propaganda it enabled.

While media was nowhere near as concentrated as it would become in the late 20th century, the big printing presses and their broadsides were responsible for disseminating the idea of the revolution and spurring people on to revolt, and concentrated enough to have it be in the hands of a wild-eyed bourgeois elite which spurred each other on to insanity. Oh, also, things were pretty sucky to be fair. I mean what fed the fire of the revolution is that the lower classes really were pinched like crazy. And had endured centuries of being treated as subhuman. But still, without the propaganda and the dissemination of ideas, the French peasants revolt would have engulfed a few cities, maybe a province, then fizzled.

That it didn’t scared the living daylights out of everyone in power. Well, and anyone literate, even the people in America who initially supported it, when they realized how ridiculous it had gotten.

Which means that by the early nineteenth century the intellectual establishment was still processing the shock (these things process slowly) and Marx codified the insanity into what sounded like more exact intellectual format.

And then they tried it on. WWI was a sad disappointment for the “Workers of the world” uniting, since apparently they still preferred their national identities. Which then led to fascism, that embraced that and various weird retcons of international socialism, including the very latest attempt here, with DEI, with “race” replacing class (and race being quite inventive as it ended up including women and sexual orientation and… insane little buggers these Marxists.)

Anyway, WWII was even more of a disappointment, at least for the Marxists (red or black bah, let the devil come and choose between them) idea that they could take the world by the force of arms, because it turned out the US had better arms. And thought it was at the time under the grip of a Marxist though not an avowed one, the US refused to do the taking over and occupying thing, since ultimately as a national character we’re terrible imperialists: all we want to do is go home.

Since then, the enemies of the US have been fighting the US by other means.

The most effective, starting right after WWII (or arguably before) was internal corruption and subversion. McCarthy was too late (no, seriously, when you have an hour, go and listen.) and all our institutions have been corrupted by Marxism for way too long. No, longer than you think.

This was facilitated by having central control of the means of communication, education and entertainment. They could promote the ideas of communism while assuring you they were strong anti-communists.

Also, the number of times they threw the USSR a life line or ignored its obvious lying to pretend they were an equal enemy and super-dangerous leads me to believe they liked the state of balance between two powers. Either because they liked it for puddinghead reasons (without a challenge we’d go soft!) or to keep a certain amount of state control because we were “threatened.”

That was one form of the long war. The cold war, where the forces of Marxism could pick out small helpless countries one by one while at home we were told that people there had “chosen” this and that “the people” liked communism and that we were oppressors for not letting them have it.

Except the slow grind didn’t work. The truth is that Marxism is as shitty a framework for government as it was an intellectual framework for the economy. Imposing any form of Marxism — starts as communism, quickly devolves to fascism and then to a sort of feudalism — means that the society thus afflicted cannot survive. Not long term. Not economically, not mentally and definitely not morally.

Things started falling apart more and more obviously by four decades after WWII and then the USSR came thundering down not long after.

Well, all credit to Ronald Reagan, because without him the democrats would have kept propping up the rotten corpse of the USSR (let’s remember it had tried to collapse in the sixties already) like a kind of international Weekend at Bernies.

But as it started thundering down, the people here who’d become willing mind-slaves of the Marxists lost their minds, until they found two new means of attack: race and ecology. (Remember for the left race also includes your sex and who you sleep with. Because, you know, these G-d blinded idiots can’t understand CHOICE and that there are characteristics you choose and aren’t simply born with. Here, between you and me, are they clankers, or do they just think they are?)

This worked middling well until recently. Or appeared to work middling well. Let’s remember again, due to their control of the means of mass communication and indoctrination, until recently it was hard to distinguish how well it worked from how well it appeared to work. And they controlled appearances. All memorex, no reality, is a possibility for what was happening. In fact given the slow creep of means of cheating being introduced in the US since the 90s and that cheating mostly benefits the left — no? then why are they always the ones who make it possible to cheat and bitch if you try to clean up the votes? — it’s quite likely their recover scam after the USSR never worked that well.

Anyway, by the end of the 20th century it was becoming clear that despite their best efforts, they were barely holding onto the US by fraud, and that they were certainly not controlling hearts and minds. And frankly, by the late teens the rest of the world was also starting to get ideas and to rebel, though less penetrated by the internet and free association which here started breaking the spell of mass media control.

And that’s when they came up with the ultimate idea to attack the west: a human wave. Mass immigration. They figured this would for sure get their race/group communism to stick.

It wouldn’t have of course. It won’t even in Europe. But it will cause a hell of a disturbance for a few decades. And if they could do that here, maybe they could break up the US and destroy our dangerous ideas. (Really, they’ve wanted us to break up since the USSR did, because they don’t understand the differences between us and them — no seriously — and want revenge.)

Except that the collectivists drink their own ink and believe their own propaganda. They thought that say here they could swamp us with JUST people from South of the border. They might very well have thought they could swamp us with people from Mexico.

Of course they couldn’t. The population isn’t as great as they thought. And frankly, we’re very spread out. But by the end they were recruiting wholesale from anywhere in the world to throw them in here, which meant their weapon — people — lacked internal cohesion and were as likely to turn on each other as on us.

Also, of course, they don’t have control of communication. No matter how many movies they put out on the plight of the poor illegals, the people aren’t listening, and instead really would like to stop getting elbowed out of jobs by people who work for 1/4 the salary while also drawing every possible form of welfare. And they would like people to stop trying to camp on their lawn and sh*t on their sidewalk. Oh, and they’d like their children and pets to be safe.

So…. So, in the US Trump might just about have saved us from having a violent spasm that would leave a bunch of people very dead (not all them, or even most of them, just illegals) and the country in a mess (and still not give the left its triumph.)

Europe… has bigger problems. Partly because they stopped reproducing about a generation before we fell into that kind of trouble (though there are signs with the young ‘uns here and there that this might well change within ten years.) And also because most of them have been well and truly swamped by waves of immigration. And they still don’t know how to deal with any of it, because — for various cultural reasons — this type of blog, and a kind of grassroots communication is much harder to take hold there.

Frankly I’m amazed they’re managing as much of a rebellion as they are, and we wish the insurgent forces in Great Britain, still fighting to reclaim their homeland, well. I will tell them be of good cheer. If the Marxists weren’t terrified, they wouldn’t be so openly dropping the mask and showing us their hideous totalitarian faces. You are winning, but I’m afraid the victory will cost you dearly. (Salutes.)

Here? Here we are winning. We are winning magnificently. After sixty years of non-stop shrieking, indoctrination, positional-good-Marxist-display, and guilt and shame beat downs, we’re hunching our shoulders and ignoring the self-proclaimed “elites.”

Trump was elected, not because of his great achievements (sorry, Sir. We didn’t even KNOW you in 16. Now? Now we like you fine) but because of our being tired of having our legs pissed on by people who told us it was raining.

And we’ve carried on. Their magnificent coup, the most corrupt and frankly large scale bit of election fraud in the US ever, installed someone who was practically dead and while hurting us very badly never got hold of our hearts and minds, let alone made us believe they were legitimate. We went from zero to Let’s Go Brandon in minutes, it felt like.

Meanwhile everything they do turns to shit. They have become contaminated with Obama’s Mierda’s touch. They’ve lost all ability to create (I have this theory they never had it, just coasted on whatever they could steal from the few conservatives still in whatever field, but that’s harder to prove) and they can’t convince anyone. Not in the face of the dismal results of their philosophy.

Does this mean the future is guaranteed? The future is never guaranteed. And Liberty must be won day by day.

No, what it means is we have a chance. We have a chance of winning this. It might be too late for the rest of the world. (But maybe not. Salutes Great Britain’s people who are still fighting.)

But America? Well, boys and girls: it’s time to drop our shackles, ignore the Marxists and aim for the stars.

I can’t promise you we’ll make it. But I think we’re going to.

Be not afraid. Keep fighting.

The future is shining bright, and America will lead the world into it.

I don’t know who needs to hear this.

You’re not perfect. I’m definitely not perfect. And that’s okay.

All right, so I know exactly who needs to hear that. And that’s me, here behind the eyes. Because I’m really upset at myself for this last week and then this weekend…

Why you ask? Well, because nothing went according to plan. Mostly the “nothing” hinged on adventures in publishing. I somehow managed to delete the typeset version of No Man’s Land Vol. 1 just before I realized I had a typo.

Then I reconstituted the dedication and the Acknowledgements by copying it from my downloaded Amazon file because I had a total brain glitch and forgot I had the epub I uploaded and could use calibre to convert it. (blah.)

Then Amazon rejected both uploads. I’m hoping that’s the reason. It also rejected Witchfinder, but I think that was because it’s just too long. I’ll be implementing two volumes of it (It’s about 110k words shorter than NML) sometime this week, after I fix NML. So I’m hoping its complaints about metadata are because Amazon decided I was stealing… my own book.

Anyway, this type of thing makes me insane, and I keep reiterating till solved. So, I’ve been driving myself insane, and unable to write much of anything, which means not sleeping really well.

It wasn’t till today that Fuzzy pointed out to me that I could use my epub file to reconstitute the book. At any rate, I have to redo the cover, because we got a printed arc, and some things are just wrong.

And I’m very angry at myself. Only, there is a glimmer of a thought I shouldn’t be, because I’m not perfect, but more importantly, I can’t be expected to be perfect. It doesn’t matter how much I’d like to be.

And things around me aren’t perfect either. Because that is the nature of life, basically. I mean, if Amazon were perfect none of this would have happened.

After 62 almost 63 years, too, you’d think I was aware of my own idiosyncrasies like the tendency to get obsessed with peculiar bits of the process. But no. It comes as a surprise and annoyance every time.

BUT enough about me: the point is that this is all of us. None of us is perfect. None of us does things perfectly. And everything is equally messed up. And everyone is.

Perfect would be nice. But it’s not within reach, and hey, it would probably be boring after a while.

So.

Do the best you can. Yes, even right now, when things are more messed up than usual and we have a job and a half if we don’t want to leave everything broken for our kids.

Do the best you can. And don’t give up. When it all comes apart, make your guts into a new heart and go back in.

No one gives prizes for trying. But in this imperfect world an imperfect result is sometimes amazing enough.

So, go on, go try.

And I will too.

It’s a new week, and a new chance at doing the things that need to be done.

Get to it.

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

REALLY IMPORTANT: DON’T BUY THE PRINTED VERSION OF WITCHFINDER. WHILE SMALLER THAN NO MAN’S LAND, IT WEIGHS IN AT 455 PAGES. IT’S GOING TO HAVE TO BE BROKEN INTO TWO VOLUMES TO PRINT. THIS BOOK IS TOO LARGE FOR THE PRINT VERSION TO BE STABLE. I’LL DO A TWO VOLUME PRINT EDITION SOMETIME THIS WEEK.

SARAH A. HOYT: Witchfinder (Magical Empires Book 1)

A Duke’s Defiance Could Shatter Two Worlds
In an England where magic pulses through every cobblestone and the Regency never ended, one man’s conscience threatens to topple an empire.
Seraphim Ainsling, Duke of Darkwater, inherited a legacy of forbidden heroism. For generations, his family served as witchfinders, crossing between worlds to rescue those condemned to die for possessing magical gifts. But when the royal princess vanished twenty years ago, the king sealed the borders between realities forever.
Now Seraphim faces an impossible choice: obey the crown and let innocents burn, or defy his king and risk everything he holds dear.
With only his enigmatic half-elf valet Gabriel Penn at his side, Seraphim tears holes in the fabric of existence itself, leaping between alternate Earths where magic means death.
His mother and sister are lost in Fairyland. His enemies circle like vultures. The king’s patience wears thin.
But Seraphim’s stubborn compassion burns brighter than caution. In a world where doing right means risking everything, he’ll discover that the greatest magic might just be the courage to keep fighting when hope seems lost.
Some prices are worth paying. Some lines are worth crossing. Some hearts are worth breaking.
A spellbinding tale of sacrifice, family, and the dangerous allure of doing what’s right in a world determined to punish goodness.

FROM FRED PHILLIPS: Dreams of Gold and Fire

Courage meets myth to create a destiny forged in fire.

Aron dreams of knighthood and battling dragons, but life in his quiet village means herding sheep and facing his father’s disapproval. When his parents dismiss his ambitions as childish, Aron’s determination ignites into rebellion. He runs away to the capital city of Lanfield, chasing a chance to prove himself as a knight and protect his home from encroaching goblin raids.
The city tests him and finds him wanting with hostile streets, trouble with local bullies, and a brush with the law that leave him reeling. A kind knight, Devan, offers guidance and sword lessons, sparking hope that Aron’s dreams might come true, for a time. Fleeing new troubles, he stumbles into the mountains, where a chance encounter with a goblin and an unexpected ally lead him to a hidden valley—and a discovery that changes everything.
Aron finds wonder in the valley, forging a bond that teaches him courage and the value of trust. When danger threatens his village, he must decide how to protect those he loves, even if it means risking his newfound friendship.
This heartfelt tale of grit and discovery speaks to boys daring to dream big and to parents who see their sons wrestling with who they want to become. Aron’s journey reminds us that heroism grows from believing in yourself, even when the path feels impossible. Perfect for young readers and families navigating the pull between dreams and duty.

FROM LIANE ZANE: Helsing: Demon Slayer (The Dragon’s Paladins Book 1)

Book One of The Dragon’s Paladins

A warrior bound by duty. A woman marked by fate. A world on the edge of darkness.

When the sky burns and the earth trembles, old powers stir beneath the surface. In the wake of a devastating solar flare, ancient evil rises to take advantage of a broken world. But the Elioud, a hidden race of angel-blooded warriors, have not stood idle. In the mountains of northern Albania, a stronghold has formed under the drangùe and his consort—a sanctuary where harmony and heroism might hold back the coming dark.

Ryan Helsing, a decorated Army Ranger with a past forged in fire, is sworn to that cause. Battle-tested and emotionally scarred, he never questions his orders—until he’s sent to retrieve Dianne Markham, the younger sister of the drangùe’s wife. What should have been a simple escort mission turns deadly when daemons strike Dianne’s cruise ship just as it docks in Split, Croatia. Ryan barely gets her out alive.

Now they’re on the run across a crumbling Europe, hunted by forces both human and inhuman. Dianne never asked to be part of a war between supernatural powers. All she wanted was to survive the chaos and find something real in a world of shallow pleasures. But when Ryan storms into her life with steel eyes and a haunted soul, she’s drawn into a world where ancient bloodlines, harmonic technology, and dark angelic forces collide.

Marked by an unseen enemy and carrying secrets even she doesn’t understand, Dianne may be the key to everything. And Ryan will risk his life to protect her—even if it means confronting the echoes of his past, and the possibility that fate has more in store for them than either imagined.

Helsing: Demon Slayer launches a pulse-pounding romantasy of survival, sacrifice, and the fierce first strike in the battle to hold the light.

Sometimes, one man is all that stands in the way.

FROM BRIAN HEMING: The Lives of Velnin: The Dark Empire: A fast-paced epic fantasy adventure of swords, love, magic, and battles

1.7 million enemy soldiers. One reincarnating prince. Who will win?

Swords. Love. Magic. Epic Battles. Reincarnation.

A year and a day after the death of his first incarnation, Prince Veldin rekindles his romance with the beautiful Princess Aloree, his first incarnation’s beloved widow. But these happy times are cut short as he is sent to repel the invasion of the Dark Empire: 1.7 million men, four thousand ships, all led by the Dark Empress Soraina, a beautiful maiden to whom the prince feels a mysterious but intense connection.

Stopping the invasion from destroying all he holds dear may cost him everything. To protect his people and triumph against impossible odds, must he sacrifice not just his lives, but even his love and his very soul?

Combining the most amazing battles in history with swords, love, and magic, The Dark Empire is sure to please fans of swords & sorcery, adventure romance, and military fiction alike. A fast-paced epic fantasy of swords, love, magic, and battles.

FROM NICK NETHERY: Relics of the Fallen (The Wormwood Archive Book 1)

Dan Kelly, a battle-hardened Army bomb tech on the brink of retirement, can’t shake the ghosts of his fallen team from a long-ago war zone. When a shadowy government outfit called Wormwood recruits him, he’s thrust into a world of enigmatic weapons—artifacts of unearthly power, scattered across Earth like forgotten relics. Alien remnants? Echoes of a vanished human empire? Wormwood hunts for answers, but they’re not alone; darker forces crave these devices for chaos.
As Dan grapples with tech that warps reality and inflicts unseen wounds, he uncovers a chilling link to his past tragedy. From cartel tunnels beneath the border to high-stakes raids on illicit arms hubs, missions blur the line between duty and vengeance. A leak within threatens everything, forcing Dan to root out betrayal before a final assault where old enemies await.
In this gritty fusion of military precision and otherworldly mystery, redemption comes at a price—one explosive secret at a time.

FROM JOHN BAILEY: The Quilted Circle Mysteries: Eight Suburban Scandals: Eight Suburban Scandals (The Detective Stories)

In the northern suburbs of Philadelphia, five retired women meet weekly to quilt, swap gossip, and — unintentionally — solve crimes.

The Quilted Circle Mysteries: Eight Suburban Scandals is a charming and clever collection of cozy mysteries featuring Vera, Dottie, June, Lois, and Marie — a circle of longtime friends whose projects always seem to uncover more than they bargained for. Whether it’s a missing recipe card, a vanishing med-spa mogul, or a suspiciously swapped quilt at the county fair, these suburban sleuths bring wit, wisdom, and just the right amount of sass to every case.

Perfect for fans of Agatha Christie’s village tales and the quirky humor of Do Not Fold, Spindle, or Mutilate, this delightful collection blends sharp observation with small-town secrets, proving that retirement is just the beginning — especially when your friends bring snacks and surveillance drones.

Each mystery can be enjoyed on its own or as part of the full collection. Come for the gossip. Stay for the justice.

BY DWIGHT SWAIN, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: Crusade Across The Void (Annotated): The Classic Space Opera Novella of Revolution

“Scum of the spaceways,” the interplanetary police had called them, so Wolf Stone and his motley crew left the solar system for another. There, they found a tyranny not too different from the one they left, and this time, they decided to fight.

And when they fought for justice, they were one blood with the crusaders!

• This iktaPOP Media edition has a new introduction giving historical and genre context to the story.

FROM NATHAN BRINDLE: A Dragon in the Foie Gras (Timelines Universe Book 3)

Captain Delaney Wolff Fox is back.

She’s just led her team on a months-long hunt through the penal world al-Saḥra’ (known otherwise by its semi-satirical name “Sanddoom”), looking for an industrial-sized illegal drug “kitchen” that’s been supplying colony worlds with various illegal substances via a network of involuntary migrant “mules”. That hunt ended satisfactorily, and rather explosively, with the destruction of the “kitchen” and hundreds if not thousands of personnel associated with it.

Now the team is heading back to Earth, hoping for some well-deserved shore leave . . .

. . . but it’s not to be. A long-sleeping foreign agent has been found in a stasis chamber in an abandoned Chicago warehouse, and it’s up to Delaney and crew to investigate the mystery, by traveling back to the year 2017 to find out why the agent was placed in stasis then, and why the stasis seems originally to have been planned to end in late 2020.

And when the sleeper wakes, asks for and consumes an entire pound of goose liver pâté, and asks for more, it’s pretty obvious they’ve got

FROM MARY CATELLI: The Wolf and the Ward

A wolf wanders the land. . . .

Charity had thought it dreadful, being sent like a package to a man who might refuse to take her on as a ward. But when a wolf comes to look her up and down in the woods, and the man she is sent to greets her, making her wonder if she remembers something that never happened, she finds that there are problems far worse than that in the duchy.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Fixing Up Love

Amaryllis left school with a worthless degree and a fiance who wasn’t that into her. She refused to go back home to wallow in her family’s judgment of her choices, so she took refuge with her best friend instead. Her very handy best friend, who was fixing up a foreclosed house he’d bought. It was a really big job, and he could definitely use her help. His handiness kind of made her want to get handsy, but would fixing up the house together fix up their relationship as well?

FROM KAREN MYERS: Monsters, And More: A Science Fiction Short Story Bundle from There’s a Sword for That

A Science Fiction Story Bundle from the collection There’s a Sword for That

MONSTERS – Xenoarchaeologist Vartan has promised his young daughter Liza one of the many enigmatic lamedh objects that litter the site of a vanished alien civilization.

No one can figure out what they’re good for, but Liza finds a use for one.

ADAPTABILITY – The Webster Marble Deluxe Woodsman, Model 820-E, has been offline for quite some time. Quite some time indeed.

Good thing Webster has a manual to consult, and a great many special functions.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Moon Mirror

Chelsea Ayles dreamed of going to the Moon since she was a child. Now her dream job at NASA has turned into a nightmare, thanks to those many blood-sucking arachnids. Yeah, politics, as in a Senator accusing her of destroying America’s priceless heritage because she chose the moonrocks that were used to make a proof-of-concept mirror segment for a lunar telescope project. Now the mirror sits in her office like a bitter mockery of what might have been — until the day her reflection turns into a handsome stranger who calls himself the Man in the Moon and offers her visions of a world that might have been. Visions that ignite a longing of an intensity she hasn’t known since she was in grade school and watched videos of the Apollo lunar missions in science class.

SARAH A. HOYT: No Man’s Land: Volume 1 (Chronicles of Lost Elly)

Sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic.

On a lost colony world, mad geneticists thought they could eliminate inequality by making everyone hermaphrodite. They were wrong. Catastrophically wrong.
Now technology indistinguishable from magic courses through the veins of the inhabitants, making their barbaric civilization survivable—and Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Kayel Hayden, Viscount Webson, Envoy of the Star Empire—Skip to his friends— has just crash-landed through a time-space rift into the middle of it all.
Dodging assassins and plummeting from high windows was just the beginning. With a desperate king and an archmagician as his only allies, Scipio must outrun death itself while battling beasts, traitors, and infiltrators bent on finishing what the founders started: total destruction.
Two worlds. One chance. No time to lose.

Volume 1
The Ambassador Corps has rules: you cannot know everything, don’t get horizontal with the natives, don’t make promises you can’t keep.
They’re a lot harder to follow when assassins are hunting you, your barbarian allies could kill you for the wrong word, and death lurks around every corner.
The unwritten rule? Never identify with the natives.
Skip’s already broken that one.
Now he’s racing against time to save his new friends from slavery—or worse—while dodging energy blasts and political intrigue. One crash-landed diplomat. A world of deadly secrets. And absolutely no backup.

Some rules are meant to be broken. Others will get you killed.

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.

We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: THUNDERING.