NEW RELEASE: MAGA 2020

I wrote two stories for MAGA 2020, and one will be coming soon, via my newsletter.

But the one that will be appearing in the anthology, out on November 8th, is "Mad Dog Moon."

If you guessed that this was going to center around Secretary of Defense, Marine General James "Mad Dog" Mattis (Ret) ... you'd be right.

The general joke around Mattis is that he is an unstoppable killing machine that will knife-hand you as soon as look at you. Perhaps sooner.

And, as one person asked ... what sort of Marine do you have to be for other marines to refer to you as "Mad Dog"?

Let's just say that it's a question I try to answer.

If I were writing a flap copy for my MAGA 2020 short, it would be "President Trump has had it with ISIS, and has sent in his ultimate weapon of mass destruction: General Mad Dog Mattis."

Funny enough, I'm told by one of my military experts that ISIS seems to be slated for demolition by the end of the year. ISIS may not even be around long enough for my short story about them being destroyed to be published. Damn it. Now I know what it was like for all of those thriller authors in 2003, when they thrashed about getting in one final Iraq is the villain stories before Saddam fell.

This is going to be fun.

Review: Monster Hunter Files

If you don't know Larry Correia's Monster Hunter International series, this would be a place to start.

Monster Hunter Files is an anthology written (mostly) by the best fantasy authors in the business


“Thistle” by Larry Correia
Owen and his team take on a new kind of monster in Arizona -- It starts as your straightforward monster killing story. Then Larry does a twist at the end of this one that makes Rod Serling proud. I didn't see it coming, but I should have.  5/5

“Small Problems” by Jim Butcher
MHI’s new janitor has to deal with some small problems -- It's Jim Butcher. Do I have to say this one was awesome?  It's like he hasn't recovered from all of his Roman legion research from Codex Alera ... while watching The Secret of NIMH.  6/5

“Darkness Under The Mountain” by Mike Kupari
Cooper takes a freelance job in Afghanistan-- The Chinese have dug too greedily and too deep... and that's a line in the story. It's almost a Monster Hunter procedural novel, with a soupcon of MCB BS. 4/5

“A Knight Of The Enchanted Forest” by Jessica Day George
(Trailer park elves versus gnomes TURF WAR!)-- A straight up comedy from the first page, with the redneck elves, meets hippies.  4/5

“The Manticore Sanction” by John C. Wright
(Cold War era British espionage with monsters) -- This one was dark. Very British. Also very Universal monster movie... the black and white version, not the new crap with Tom Cruise. This one was ... surprisingly powerful. It left a mark.  6/5.

“The Dead Yard” by Maurice Broaddus
Trip goes to Jamaica on some family business-- It was okay. It needed more meat to it. It was awkwardly paced, and over suddenly. I think it needed more room to work. 3/5

“The Bride” by Brad R. Torgersen
Franks wasn’t the only thing Benjamin Franklin cut deals with-- BWAHAHAHAHAHAAH.  This one was awesome.  Brad writes Ben Franklin perfectly. I can hear the actor from 1776 when I read the story. Also, Franklin's a badass. Though this one pissed me off ... I wanted it to run another ten pages. Dear Larry: Can Brad write the novel on the Revolutionary War history of monster hunting? Please? 5/5

“She Bitch, Killer of Kits” (a Skinwalker Crossover Tale) by Faith Hunter
Jane Yellowrock teams up with MHI -- This was okay. I honestly think that the author is more interesting than the story she wrote. Which is odd, because the inverse is usually the case. 3/5.

“Mr. Natural” by Jody Lynn Nye
an STFU mission in the 70s has to deal with plant monsters and hippies! -- Hilarious. Fun as heck.  I deduct half a point for the bunny ex machina ending. 4.5/5

“Sons Of The Father” by Quincy J. Allen
Two young brothers discover monsters are real, and kill a mess of them -- Quincy is apparently a newb author, but I couldn't tell from the story. It was very Supernatural, if they focused more on being badass than anything else.  4/5

“The Troll Factory” by Alex Shvartsman
Heather gets some help from MHI for an STFU mission into Russia -- Yeah, this was fun. A post-Siege story. It has a nice setup of a newbie hunter, and it has an awesome, awesome punchline. 5/5

“Keep Kaiju Weird” by Kim May 
A Kitsune may have already earned her PUFF exemption, but she’s not going to let some monster squish Portland -- I really enjoyed this one. I was having flashbacks to the better episodes of Grimm, though. Heh. 5/5

“The Gift” by Steve Diamond
Two of the Vatican’s Hunters from the Blessed Order of Saint Hubert the Protector on a mission in Mexico -- I wanted to like this one more. It felt like someone condensed a novel with a lot of backgroundinformation left out. Perhaps this would work betters as the first five chapters of a full novel.  4/5 stars... maybe 3.

“The Case of the Ghastly Specter” by John Ringo
while studying at Oxford, Chad takes a case -- Was Ringo watching old Sherlock Holmes movies? There were moments when Chad sounds like Basil Rathbone. I might like this one better in the full novel of Sinners, as downtime in an action packed novel. But here, in this anthology, it just feels like the slow bit. The difference is jarring. It's still good, so I mark it a 4/5

“Huffman Strikes Back” by Bryan Thomas Schmidt & Julie Frost
Owen’s vacation gets interrupted for some monster revenge-- This was part comedy, park action scene. Either way, it was awesome. 5/5

“Hitler’s Dog” by Jonathan Maberry
(It is WW2 and Agent Franks really hates Nazis)-- Do I even have to make comments? It's Franks versus Nazis. But I think it needed a little more fleshing out. 4/5

16 great stories, at a little over a dollar a story. You can't beat this deal.

New Release: Lyonesse Volume 1

Those of you who might remember Silver Empire's Lyonesse short story service now have the ultimate sampler pack: Lyonesse, Volume 1, bringing you the best stories from the first run. It has psychics, time travel, gods, and sci-fi battle angels. We have a woman with the power to raise the dead. A man stranded on another world, fighting all alone for a lost cause. Zombies invading New York. Alien artifacts. Sci-Fi battle angels. Samurais fighting demons. Interplanetary detectives and lost unicorns.

Featuring the Dragon Award Finalists Kai Wai Cheah, L. Jagi Lamplighter ... and me, Declan Finn.

This collection, for the low low price of $2.99, includes the following 16 short stories:

• Four Weddings and a Funeral by L. Jagi Lamplighter
• The Dreaming Wounds by Anya Ow
• The Dragon's Teeth by David Hallquist
• Zombie Jamboree by Declan Finn
• The Artifact by Dean Abbott
• We Bury Our Own by Kai Wai Cheah
• Number 43 by Jonathan Ward
• The Last Winter by A.R. Aston
• Shini Tai by C.L. Werner
• The Case of the Unicorn by Nora M. Mulligan
• The Harsh Mistress by Mike Murphy
• St. Lucian's Star by Dawn Witzke
• A Day Without the Horned Goddess by Kieran McKiel
• In Another Life by Morgon Newquist
• Moonset by S.D. McPhail
• Mile High Murder by Declan Finn

Zombie Jamboree opens with

New York City’s first zombie on record walked onto the train platform at Queens Plaza at 6:43 in the morning. Nobody noticed the zombie for one reason: it was a fresh zombie, and thus indistinguishable from the rest of the commuters shambling onto the platform during rush hour.

Heh. Yeah. I had fun.  One review even noted, "I loved it, and I don't normally like zombie stories. A great read."

And Mile High Murder is the story of a murderer running around an airplane, stalking his prey. Very Alfred Hitchcock. 

I recommend Lyonesse Volume 1. Do try it.

Review of Discovery: one STD that isn't catching

Yes, this is our ship: The USS Pizza Cutter. 

The really short version of this review is simple: the more I look at Star Trek Discovery, the more I like The Orville.

Star Trek Discovery set the bar so low, Inhumans looked awesome in comparison, even though the pilot was weak.

Let's go into why STD isn't catching.

You have to first accept that this is before the era of Captain Kirk ... yet the ship has better technology, including holographic interfaces. And someone took the criticism of lens flares seriously: this ship is so damn dark, how does anyone see anything.  The special effects are gorgeous. They are beautiful. You can see every penny of their $10 million an episode on the screen in high-res CGI.

Pity that not a single penny went into the acting or writing.

In the beginning of the episode, we meet Captain Michelle Yeoh--who I think just showed up and read lines-- and "Michael," a woman Starfleet officer who was orphaned by a Klingon attack on a space outpost, then adopted by Spock's father, Sarek. Michael appears to be our main character, and being raised on Vulcan, she has obviously been taught to purge most of her her emotions ... leaving only "smug" or "insane" as her only remaining default positions.

Yeoh and Michael are called out to repair a probe. They get some odd sensor readings, and decide, "You know, our sensors can't read a thing. Something's there, and it may have screwed with our probe. Instead of calling in backup, let's send in a person in a space suit." They send Michael ... a Xenoanthropologist. Because anthropologists just do that, don't they? Once Michael is inside a deadly radioactive field and has eyes on the cloaked space station, she decides, "I have to go over there and poke it, lingering in this deadly radioactivity." Because that's exactly how radioactivity works... and that's how anthropology works -- I see something new, therefore, I must poke it.

Michael lands on the space station, encounters a Klingon, and promptly kills him.  There is no "I come in peace." There is no warning. She pretty much hits her jet pack, and runs him through on his own sword.

When Michael returns, she leaves med bay to storm the bridge, demanding that it's the Klingons, therefore we must attack them now. Because that's how first contact protocols work (In this timeline, no one has talked to a Klingon in 100 years. Vulcans just shoot first, and never ask questions. Yes, really.)

In order to get the Klingons to decloak, Michael says "Target them!!!"  Upon further study, the massive space station is really ... a glorified tomb, covered in coffins.  And she had them target it. Because all anthropologists want to blow up culture.

I'm on the side of the Klingons. Especially as Michael drops "smug" and goes to "hysterical" with a side of "Pathological hatred of Klingons to the point of dementia."

There was just so much stupid here. Michael is the usual "I'm the main character, therefore I'm always right" syndrome that you need tons of charisma to pull off without being a prick (Patrick Jayne from The Mentalist pulled it off. House didn't). But she doesn't have it. Michael has no emotion .... except for smug. Smug is the default position. And she never stops talking. She blathers on endlessly whether we want her to or not. And it may have been less painful if the dialogue didn't all sound like a stilted first draft of Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe. And I may be insulting Flash Gordon.

Space Orc, Commander Smirk, Saru,
and Captain "I'm just here for a paycheck"

And Michelle Yeoh took the script so seriously she sounded like she was trying not to laugh during the reading -- I do not call it acting. I concur with Yeoh's judgement, but it undercuts what should be serious moments.

There was one other person who bothered acting .... Saru, the one who said "Hi, on my planet, I'm prey. I'm telling you, time to RUN."

No, seriously, first rule of acting should be pretend you're invested. Second rule is "At least pretend you're getting paid." Seriously, when your visuals are mind-bogglingly gorgeous, and the actor looks at it like she's bored, the illusion is massively undermined.

Then there are the Klingons. The long-winded, preachy, Klingons who only speak in Klingon, even in private, so we are subjected to long winded, translated conversations. They are less Klingons as they are space orcs, and this is an insult to the makeup in Lord of the Rings. The Klingons here are obviously rubber suits, screwing up a history of good makeup. Really, Christopher Lloyd and Michael Dorn are laughing, saying "I hated my makeup, but God, it must suck to be those guys."

I gave up at the 40 minute mark. So, all of this is, of course, before I got to the stuff that was designed to offend me. I'm told there are gay, bisexual and other sexes all over the place, that the Klingons were supposed to be Trump supporters, that they use cussing but can't say "God" on the show.  Heck, I didn't even get far enough into the episode to see "Michael" assault her captain, take over the ship in a mutiny specifically so she could commit an act of war on the Klingons... which happened.

The acting is terrible. The writing is worse. The effects are lovely, fit for the big screen, but not the small minds we have here. This actually reminds me of a CSI episode that had an obvious Star Trek analog, and then murdered a producer who was going to remake it as a grimdark parody... only Discovery is the grimdark parody.

This is one STD that will never go viral.

Review: Torchship Pilot

The sequel to Torchship, by Karl Gallagher follows our intrepid heroes on a journey through space, and right into a war.

Due to events that happened during Torchship, the Disconnect has declared war on the Fusion--the high tech, monolithic world that makes 1984 look subtle.

Michigan Long and her Captain have been hired to do some shady missions for the Disconnect, and everything they did in Torchship have come back to help them .. or bite them on the ass.

As the description says

WAR IS BAD FOR BUSINESS: The crew of the freighter Fives Full want to enjoy the profits of their dangerous voyage, but when war breaks out they're pressed into service for missions a warship can't do. Winning the war demands pilot Michigan Long act ruthlessly . . . and may cost her her conscience and her marriage.

Despite my fears, Torchship Pilot never went into cliche territory -- Long never becomes a Captain Ahab knockoff, despite her own worries.  Three characters from the last book have character arcs, even when they're off screen. Yes, really.

Several question asked in the previous book are resolved quite handily. There are one or two points where I'm wondering "Why aren't they just doing X?"  I suspect the answer lies in book 3, which is also in my possession. 

Torchship and Torchship Pilot are really one book. They read continuously, and book 2 takes place only days after book 1. Torchship Pilot, however, is one novel, and is treated as such, instead of a series of tales, as in Torchship. The reason they're not one book is simple: it would be too dang long.

The science is still rock solid, and it may have gotten better from the first book, which is a cute trick.

Five out of five. Read it.

ANNOUNCEMENT: MAGA 2020 AND BEYOND

Just when you thought life couldn't get any stranger...

The trump anthology is coming.

Nope, not even slightly joking here.

As you can see, the title is MAGA: 2020 and Beyond, from Superversive Press. It's mostly scifi / fantasy, with some essays thrown in. 

It's due out on November 8, 2017.

Personally, I think this works on multiple levels of strange. All of the stories in here reflect a positive future brought about merely by Trump being elected. Though from what I can see, they range from semi-serious breakdowns of Trump's stated policies leading to a utopia, to stories where one of Trump's cabinet is a werewolf. So, yeah, I would say there's a bit of satire in there.

Frankly, if you're interested in something other than the standard "TRUMP IS TEH EVIL AND TEH STUPID AND TEH CRIMINALZ MASTERMIND" chanting from the media and various and sundry celebrities ... or if you're interested in an over-the-top comedy about how utterly brilliant and golden the future will be because of the Great Pumpkin President, then yeah, I think this will work for you either way.

So, we have a foreword by Milo Yiannopoulos, author of Dangerous,

We have a short story by best-selling author Brad Torgersen.

We have the usual thought-provoking essays by John C. Wright.

We have Gab.ai founder Andrew Torba.

The flap copy is...

Generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth. This was the moment - this was the time - when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves, and our highest ideals.

This was the moment we elected Donald J. Trump as President of the United States of America.

MAGA 2020 & Beyond tells the tales of a prosperous future where evil is defeated, the border wall is built, society has righted itself, space exploration is common and world peace has been attained. These aren’t just fantastical stories of a far-fetched future, they are stories of a future that can be obtained.

Lead Editor: Scott Rhinehart

Cover by: Dawn Witzke

Forward by: Milo Yiannopoulos

Essays by: John C. Wright and Andrew Torba

Authors include:

Best-Seller Brad Torgersen

Dragon Award Nominees
Jon Del Arroz
Declan Finn
Marina Fontaine
Daniel Humphreys
L. Jagi Lamplighter

Paul Alan Piatt
Arlan Andrews Sr.
Tamara Wilhite
Sandor Novak
Monalisa Foster
Elaine Arias
Chris Donahue
Justin Robinson
Richard B. Atkinson III
Scott Rinehart
Christine Chase
Dawn Witzke
Scott Bell

And you can preorder it right here.

Enjoy.

A PIUS MAN, ONLY $0.99, NOW TO OCTOBER

So, book one of my epic thriller trilogy, A Pius Man: A Holy Thriller, will be only $0.99 from this minute, until 11AM Eastern on Wenesday, October 4.

For those of you who don't recall what A Pius Man is about, the flap copy reads as follows.

Ahem.

Murder in the Vatican!

As the head of Vatican security, Giovanni Figlia must protect a new, African Pope who courts controversy every other day. The Pope’s latest project is to make Pius XII, “Hitler’s Pope,” a saint. Things haven’t gotten better since the Pope employed American mercenary Sean Ryan.

Then a body fell onto the Vatican doorstep.

Mercenaries, spies, beautiful women, international intrigue and ancient secrets – The Pius Trilogy has it all!

I won't be pretentious and say that this is my masterpiece. If I knew what I was doing, it probably would have capped a 12-novel series, and included everyone from Merle Kraft (from Love at First Bite) and almost everyone in the cast would have appeared in other novels as bit players. But it does have a love story, a spy story, an action adventure novel, a murder mystery, a techno-thriller, geopolitical war gaming, and the cast of the Lord of the Rings... Okay, that last part is a bit of an exaggeration.  Though one of my goals was go make it look like every Catholic conspiracy cliche ever... and then take them and turn them on their head.

I remember once doing an entire blog post where I was debating whether or not A Pius Man was pulpy. Jon del Arroz replied with "Dude, you had a bomb on page 5. Of course it's pulp."

Heh. Okay then.

Though as I look at the page for Pius, I see that people who viewed it also viewed: Forbidden Thoughts, and Carnage and Culture. Heh. That's some ... interesting company to be in.

Anyway, the book is up from now until October 4th for only $0.99.  If you were waiting for a price drop, this is your chance.

APM will be on sale for $0.99 through Wednesday, October 4.

NEW TV Review: The Orville

My standard policy on TV shows is to give them three episodes... unless they do something to really drop the ball, and / or piss me off.

The Orville has had three episodes.

So, what do I think?

I have no idea.

Really, I don't know what to do with this one. I think I like it. Then they do something strange and off-putting.

The Orville opens with Ed Mercer (played by writer / producer Seth MacFarlane) walking in on his wife (played by Agent of SHIELD's Adrienne Palicki) with an alien in their bed. Given the writer, I expected a gag. A joke. Something over the top and insane...

Mercer turns around, gets in his vehicle, and flies off. It strikes me as being fairly realistic.

The next scene is a year later. Mercer's career has been derailed ever since his wife cheated on him. But, hey, they've got an expanding fleet, they need captains, here's your ship, don't screw it up.

Then his ex-wife becomes his second in command. (Does that makes her his Ex-O? .... Yes, I'm sorry. But the joke was right there)

I was expecting it to be a variation on Ringo's A Ship Called Francis. But ... nope.

Granted, we have a lot of strangeness. Junior security officer Alara (Halston Sage) is this tiny little slip of a thing ... from a heavy gravity world, so she hits above her weight class. There's an all-male species, a racist cyberman, and a sarcastic chief medical officer who might be out of the McCoy school of medicine (played by 24 and Deep Space 9's Penny Johnson Gerald). And a drunk pilot.

We get halfway through the first episode, and it looks like simple set up, and ha ha, this is going to be funny / awkward... Then their first mission, a milk run, turns into a running shootout. Talk about narrative whiplash. We have some funny humor (including an alien that looks like Schlock), one awkward moment that I don't think is supposed to be funny, and then we're in the middle of a run and gun?

The solution to the action bits are actually quite well executed, as well as entertaining, and, dare I say it, even intelligent.

End of episode one, we get the sense that we might have a cliche that I don't see too often: "Your ex still loves you."

Episode two just opens with one of the most awkward sequences I've seen in a while... and then it becomes an actual episode in the first five minutes. I'm sorry, we're going to go straight into the plot? Huh? The resulting episode involved a junior officer having to take over the bridge, and do the captain's job. It's mostly a straight-faced episode. Things that could be played for laughs, aren't. The plot of the episode is Rod Serling (People are the Same All Over). The solution is both innovative and hilarious.

I will give the acting a lot of credit here. The drunken pilot is played relatively straight -- he's not a fall down drunk, or doing a drunken "Hic!" every few minutes. Palicki has decided she wants a career, and Agents of SHIELD didn't provide nearly enough acting range for her.

Then there's episode 3, the Transgender episode. Which is the one that surprised me. The all-male species crewman has ... a daughter. Immediately, he demands the procedure to swap her gender. The doctor says "Hell no." The Captain says, "I'm not ordering the doctor to do anything." When said crewman calls for a ship from his homeworld, the Captain is pissed for the chain of command being violated.

There is some discussion about trans issues, but while they don't smother your face in what stance the show wants you to take, it's very clear that the show has a side. The solution is ... very Babylon 5. Captain Kirk can show X species that their culture is wrong, but that doesn't mean X will be happy and thank him over it.

I was surprised. Seriously, what do they want to do with this show?

The biggest drawback to this show is the ... humor, I think. I honestly don't know if they're supposed to be funny bits of business, or just awkward. Almost all three episodes have had this awkward moment in there that is so narratively jarring, it's hard to get a firm grasp of what this show wants to be when it grows up. The only time we even have a solid musical cue is when they have an action sequence. For that, I will give the music department props.

This show has a lot of promise, and a lot of potential to grow... But it's a scifi show on Fox, so before we hold out too much hope, let's see if it lasts long enough to find its footing.

A review of Torchship, by Karl Gallagher

I'm behind in my reviewing. 

You know why? Because everything is digital, and I prefer hard copy. (Sorry Marina. With any luck, I'll have The Product reviewed before 2017 is over).

Because I've had a lot dumped on me.

Because this was my month off, and this was the month that every anthology and novel that's up for editing has decided to pick this month to have a chat. (Tales of Once and Future King? Check. MAGA? Check.)

So, yeah, I'm a little slow.

Today, we present Torchship by Karl K. Gallagher

Imagine, if you will, a Firefly that did not suck.... and that it is written by David Weber, before Weber's world became Game of Starships with 500 characters you can't remember. 

A captain who’ll take any job if there’s enough money in it.

A pilot with an agenda of her own.

And a mechanic with an eye on the pilot.

The crew of the Fives Full are just trying to make enough money to keep themselves in the black while avoiding the attention of a government so paranoid it’s repealed Moore’s Law. They’re not looking for adventure in the stars . . . but they’re not going to back down just because something got in their way.

We cover five missions / stories, but they all build on each other. The opening deals with a bunch of tourists ... which turns into a cat and mouse chase among asteroids, a shoot out, and some additional SCIENCE! 

Events that take place during #1 lead to the next mission with Terraformers ... called "Kitty Chow." Yes, really. Trust me, you won't see this coming.

"Kitty Chow" leads to several bits of business in the next arc of stories, with Pilgrims, the Treasure of the Sierra Madre .... IN SPACE ... and then Hitchhikers. How do you have hitchhikers in space? Heh heh heh.

There are several interludes that take place in between the missions of the torch ship in question, and they both add to the narrative, and provides some exposition. This is important, since there is little in the way of exposition here. There is just enough data here to get you through the story, but nothing else. "The Fusion worlds" are paranoid about technology, because the AIs revolted. Why did the AI revolt? No idea. We don't need to know. We just need to know that they dislike humans. 

But dang, this was fun. Granted, we don't have the scene-chewing, over the top characters from Firefly, but we also don't have their angsty BS. The crew of the Fives Full are ... generally well-adjusted individuals. The story doesn't leave you wanting, but it does leave you with a desire to know more about the world, and what happens next to our heroes.

On the one hand, I would say that this is hard SF -- our heroes plot courses with slide rules, we have terraforming (right now, it's mostly done by Israel), AIs, genetic engineering and using elements for fuel. I think the only thing that isn't merely an extension of current technology is translating through space via various and sundry portals. But this man has planets listed with their gravity well intensity. Who does that? Answer: an MIT grad with an engineering degree.

However, to say that this is hard SF would be terribly mislabeling it. Much of hard SF is so techy, you'd be hard pressed to find character or culture among the people and places. Here? Here, there is something for everybody. There are multiple systems of government, from an auctionocracy (yes, they auction off seats, it's half the tax income for the year) to representative government, et al. The cultures are clear, and unique, and varied all over the place. It's a wonderful array of stuff here, and it's obvious that Karl has put in plenty of time contemplating ... everything. 

One problem I have with this particular novel: why are they broken up into short stories instead of chapters? It reads continuously. Also, the opening few pages (less than five) are disorienting. They do feed into the story, and any confusion from the opening is resolved by the end, so no worries there. It may make it a little difficult for some people to get into the novel initially. Don't worry about it, just push through the first five page (okay, more like page 5, 6, and 7) and you're good.

Is it Superversive? Hell yes. That's the easy part. Is it Pulpy? Well, that's according. You see, there's a romance going on here, a spy story, a thought problem story, with multiple types of adversaries -- the ever present man versus nature of hard vacuum, man versus man, man versus self, and man versus society. 

Anyway, I'd recommend it. I'm going to work on the sequel next. But while I do that, read through Torchship now.

Arresting Merlin in Tales of the Once and Future King

When I started working on my short story for Tales of the Once and Future King, I decided to use one particular factoid I first heard in an episode of Babylon 5 called A Late Delivery from Avalon: Some Arthur myths say that Merlin aged backwards. He knew the future by remembering the future.

If that were the case, it makes sense that Merlin would have to age backwards at a rate of speed so slow that no one would visibly notice.

So how long would it take for Merlin to hit childhood?

Better yet, if Merlin survived into the post-Arthurian world, how would he spend his time?

To answer the first question, I ignored the math. It was just easier to make Merlin 10 years old in 2016.

As for how he would spend his time? That's even easier: he'd be fighting whatever supernatural creatures just happen to pop up. It would be easiest to hide out in big population centers. I happen to live in New York City, so the setting was easy enough.

So, why not have Merlin try to kill a fae Mayor of New York with a wrought iron flamingo?

Yes, really.

While it was tempting to begin with attempted assault with a deadly flamingo, I wanted to jump forward to the police station where Merlin is being processed. Because while assault with a deadly flamingo is entertaining, I want to see how a simple uniformed officer tries to fill out that police report. Hilarity ensues.

Yes, it really is as funny as you think it would be.

Arresting Merlin is just one of the collection in Tales of the Once and Future King.

You can purchase it for preorder today.

Enjoy.