#I think I probably should write about the Dark Market itself someday

[pleb-the-original]

Day 21: Unicorn

(so I had a lot of time to write this due to an event but the idea did take a bit to form. I had started with the idea of a demon unicorn farmer but I wasn’t sure where to go with it until I remembered that, well, unicorns are purifiers which makes a perfect juxtaposition. then because of the narwhal thing I made the farmer a Freezie which is an ice demon. to clarify, she’s a snowy owl.) Every time I have a new customer come by, it's always the same question. “Why is a demon farming unicorn horns?” I can never blame them, honestly. To most people it probably wouldn’t make any sense. Why would such pure creatures withstand being around us monsters? That’s where our training comes in. This has always been a family business, only those of us willing to commit ourselves are given the opportunity to work with the unicorns. We have to give up any other kind of job, especially human torturing, in order for the unicorns to stand us. We’re not fully clean, thank Lucifer. We’re allowed some mild sinning thanks to the unicorns getting used to us. They’re still extremely pure which feeds into the quality of their horns. Every time I have to try and shave one down for a jar of flakes, I have to put on a gas mask. No I am not joking, I have it right here. One wrong move and suddenly my blood would become pure water which isn’t very good. That’s also why we have doctors on speed dial. We even make our own drink mixes just to keep our blood extra acidic just in case. I personally make mine out of nitric acid, gila monster venom, and a dash of drain cleaner and ice water for the boost to the soulflake. Don’t believe me. Everyone always doubts. That’s why I got these. Having a lot of blood means I can have these extras whenever I need demonstrations like this. Now normally I would use a flake but I’m feeling in a bit of a mood so I’ll get the gloves and show you a full horn. You just gotta dip it in and…there. Pure water. They always have that same look you got too. The look where they finally realize that a demon can tell the truth every once in a while. Oh no it's ok, this is how it always goes. It’s when they don’t buy anything afterwards that gets my feathers ruffled. Oh you want the full horn? That’s gonna cost you a lot. I’ll take a gallon of some nice ice water if you don’t mind. Yes really, are you new here? Of course you are. Just now other Dark Market attendants like me never ask for money, just indulge our whims. We’re still demons. I’ll just write you an I.O.U. that you can cash in whenever you get that water. Just slap the tag on and it’ll be teleported to me where the horn is. Oh no, those I didn’t make, they were one of my sister’s ideas. Now then off you go. Oh, and don’t forget to tell others to come by Qila’s Quality Corn Horns! More advice about the Dark Market, never groan at how we name our stores. Be glad mine is just alliteration, cause there’s gonna be a lot of puns the further you go.

[kensingtonbooks]

A Case for Space, and Mars by John Andrew Karr

The following is a guest blog by MARS WARS: DETONATION EVENT’s author @johnandrewkarr.

People of Earth. 

You know the phrase. 

Unless you totally eschew science fiction or science fantasy in all its forms, you know the phrase. If you have disdain for the mind-expanding genres, then you probably fall into the space and Mars haters club despite indulging in space-related technologies, i.e. satellites, portable computers, computer mice, artificial limbs, camera phones. There’s a bunch more that can be found by searching, but this link has a good starter list: https://go.nasa.gov/2Gbxecu

As for the famous Tang—for those of us in our fifth century of existence, or beyond—it was not developed for space travel, but the moon missions made it a big star.  

If you’re less seasoned, send a mindtext to your favorite search engine on the galaxynet.  

No access to galaxynet?

That’s okay—thirty years ago only a few innovators had access to linked servers that would someday grow to become the internet. 

Galaxynet is internet for the solar system. It will have satellite boosts between Earth and Mars, Earth and Jupiter’s moons, and any place we deploy large-scale space stations such as the Mars Orbiters in my Mars Wars series, part of the Rebel Base imprint from Kensington Books. 

The timeframe for Mars Wars is near-future, approximately two hundred years from now. MOS-1 and MOS-2 are host to workers and vacationers of around ten thousand people, and serve as forward operating bases to colonization. Self-sufficient, they manufacture air, water, food, clothing, energy pellets, and hydrogen propellant for its nuclear fusion engines and those of the planetary shuttles. The latter are used to fly missions to the Martian surface, or back to Lunar One or Earth. 

No story is entertaining without some form of conflict.

The conflict in Mars Wars involves two parties. Those people who want all resources for the Earth, and those who are space and Mars colonization proponents. Such a scenario will hopefully remain fiction, but glimpses can be had on a . . . less dangerous . . . scale in human societies now.   Back to current day, liberty has been taken to toss the internet into space-related tech. Mostly because Elon Musk’s Space X are creating a satellite internet that may ultimately lead to WiFi availability in the most remote crack of Earth’s continental crust. Others have also started in on similar ventures. More later on billionaires making a play for serious and profitable expansion beyond Earth.

People of Earth.  

If you’ve ever had even a slight taste of science fiction, you know the phrase. Usually its uttered by some alien who’s come to our beautiful blue planet for war, to pilfer our resources, or simply snatch a few dozen of us to make people patties, under the guise of a beneficial meet-and-greet. 

Cunning aliens. 

Isn’t it enough to reduce our scientific and engineering advances to stone tool status in comparison with alien tech?   

The Peeps of Earth phrase can also be extrapolated to encompass all humans, ever, throughout time. That’s every human born, ever. All who inhaled air, drank water, felt the planet’s mass beneath their feet, gazed up the glorious sun and stars and someday later, died. Of these billions, every single one lived their lives bound to the Earth.

Question: Besides the same relative arm strength, what do Tyrannosaurus rex and Homo sapiens have in common?

Answer: Extinction impotence. 

Even non-sci-fi types know how vulnerable we are as a species, and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it. 

By the way, the latest thinking for T-Rex is that it could actually rip a human’s arm off in an arm wrestling match, provided it could move its teeny arms side-to-side. So don’t go up to one and call it an arm-wuss or something.   

Let’s go ahead and summon one of the first things that come to mind whenever dinosaurs are evoked: asteroid. One big enough to eject millions of tons of ash and dust into the atmosphere, all but blocking out the sun and creating a perpetual ‘asteroid winter.’ A certain percentage of the population might be able to survive the apocalypse for a while, but it could take hundreds or even thousands of years for the skies to clear. 

Humans, along a huge percentage of other terrestrial and aquatic life, would most likely perish from famine, disease, and war. There’s a good chance asphyxiation has a role; immediate dispersion of breathable air erupting through the magnetosphere and lost to space. Darkness then  withers plant life en masse, along with their oxygen-creating capabilities.

Maybe it won’t be an asteroid for humans. Maybe it will be the very real threat of nuclear war, standard war, or disease. Dinosaurs as a species lasted millions of years. Humans have come far in a blip of comparative time, but we’re also prone to war.    

Regardless of method, both species met or will meet their ultimate end on Earth.

Is it of any consolation that astronomers will likely be able to track the instrument of our demise through space as it hurls toward us?

Question: How much does Earth care about the life that clings to it?

Answer: Every bit as much as any other rock in the universe.

Snark aside, only life cares about life. 

Obvious, yet worthy of a moment of reflection. Despite radioactive cores that provide a magnetosphere to prevent the escape of air and water to space, Earth and every other planet, moon, asteroid, comet, and yes, even the stars, are not alive. None of the aforementioned are thinkers. They have zero intelligence capability. They do not feel anything. The earth is a fantastic and sometimes terrible host of abundant life, but it lacks the capacity to acknowledge anything, and therefore has no care whether life exists or not. 

It has no care whether it exists or not.   

Grass has more regard for its life than a planet has self-awareness. The roots will grow toward moisture, the blade toward the sun.   

The life forms of Earth care—at least on some fundamental level—but not the planet itself.

Question: What is the only life form that could prevent a total extinction event? Answer: Look in the mirror.

Probably not you specifically, or me, or anyone alive right now. But perhaps our descendants, unseen over our shoulders in generation after generation on an extended scale, reaching centuries into the future. They could have some contribution toward preserving our species, or the next iteration of it.  

The obvious difference between humans and all of the extinct, single-planet-dwelling species that have come before us is that we can build upon current technologies to at least try and thwart the inevitable catastrophe.  

Humans alone—unless cockroaches or some other species survive our warring nature and evolve to our current levels—have the means to bump our potential survival rate by 100% by colonizing another planet.  

For that, the red planet is a beacon in the night sky. As with any venture into space, the mission is fraught with danger. But Mars as a cold and rocky planet is still preferable to an ice-encrusted moon of Jupiter. 

If we ever do figure out a way to kick-start the Martian cores into creating a magnetosphere, as I write of in Mars Wars, or thicken the Martian atmosphere enough to hold air and water, the potential for agriculture is there because of soil. We may need to scrape off the solar wind-pounded surface material and turn it over, but ice, with Jupiter as a backdrop, isn’t going to be kind to the roots of space tomatoes. 

Perhaps we’d even import some of the massive sandworms from Frank Herbert’s Dune to help fertilize. Everyone knows Dune is easier to reach from Mars than it is from Earth.  

To perform more space outreach, we’ve got to go faster at a sustained clip. Warp drive would be incredibly convenient, but we’ve got a huge knowledge gap between chemical rockets and light speed. If I had to choose a single category to improve immediately, it would be propulsion. It takes us too long to reach anything, and that’s just in our own backyard. 

In Mars Wars, planetary shuttles and remote orbiters make use of nuclear fusion for propulsion. It is a cleaner, more sustainable burn that can use hydrogen as a propellant. They can reach Mars in a month, as opposed to nine. Not warp speed or hyper-drive, but a big step in the right direction.

Think how far we’ve come in the preceding two centuries. Who knows where we’ll be two centuries from today, if we make concerted efforts. 

But what to do once there? Live forever inside enclosures, or take steps to terraform Mars so it is not immediately hostile to life? 

Some space advocates want to keep Mars as a planetary park, unchanged by human hands.

There is no reason to keep Mars in its current state of death. Billions of years ago, Mars once held water and therefore some form of air. There are many reasons to resurrect it. 

As seen in Mars Wars, Mars has threats beyond the frigid temps and lack of air and water. What we might find in the soil could be positive or negative, for instance. Click here: http://bit.ly/2GblvKU

Question: What about caring for the earth? Answer: The two are not mutually exclusive.

Of course we should care for the mother planet, but that doesn’t mean we can’t expand into space and Mars at the same time. Resource drainage from Earth can be limited, and life on Earth can improve with technological advances. 

Space expeditions must be commercially viable, or at least self-sustaining. NASA and other government agencies have done great pioneering work, but taxes alone cannot continually fund space exploration. We're already seeing private ventures from billionaire visionaries like Musk and Bezos and Branson attempting to bring the space flight industry into a more “mainstream” focus. Bringing rare metals back to Earth could lead to more technology bursts.

Harvesting resources from asteroids would be easier from Mars, since it’s closer to the Asteroid Belt, the farmer’s market of asteroids. A dwarf planet in the belt is blasting water vapor into space for some reason, and it may hold more water than Earth. Amazing. And available for harvesting. Asteroids can be encased in water ice. Others have ammonia ice that could be beneficial in thickening the Martian atmosphere. 

It’s a process, but water can be harvested from minerals on asteroids. Comets would take less processing time, but they’re free spirits and not clustered nicely in a band like their rocky counter parts. Formed outside our solar system, comets that can provide immediate water ice are not subject to the same relative orbiting plane as the planets and Asteroid Belt. These may be more attainable from Mars due to readiness more than location.

A couple of fun informative links to check out:

http://bit.ly/2Gbn4bK

http://bit.ly/2GbFrgH

Mars itself may have tons of water trapped in its crust, as was recently postulated in a finding on Earth. 

This has touched on a few hints about transforming Mars—terraforming it—into a habitable planet. It could take centuries, or less, or never work at all and we end up creating subterranean cities or honeycomb surface ones encapsulated in redundant plexiglass bubbles threaded with titanium strands. 

(That last part is a glimpse of the Lunar One base on the moon in Mars Wars.)    

Mars needs heat, water, and air, and we’ll move in. 

It’s not been tried by humans, but the powers of the solar system have done it. It may be possible to crash asteroids into Mars, set off a bunch of thermonuclear bombs, create vast mirror farms to reflect more sunlight, or use other methods to greenhouse the atmosphere so it can hold air and water and heat. 

There may be enough nitrates on the red planet to use for breathable air, since oxygen is the lesser component. Or maybe there’s some rip asteroids to mine for it. 

A lot to cover there, for another time. 

If Mars does become viable as a self-sustaining colony, and then network of colonies, and then perhaps the entire planet, wouldn’t it also provide relief to overpopulation on Earth?

For those who want to focus solely on Earth until the extinction event(s) strike, don’t we have a duty to future generations to begin the process of increasing survival odds? 

The universe is mind-blowingly vast. Where is the spirit to attain knowledge? To push the boundaries of what viable life can be had beyond Earth. Exploring has dangers, but it can also lead to the betterment of Homo sapiens.

Pre-Order/Buy MARS WARS: DETONATION EVENT here→ http://bit.ly/2GbEWmN

[dweemeister]

The Breadwinner (2017)

With The Breadwinner, Irish animation film studio Cartoon Saloon has shown that its successes with The Secret of Kells (2009) and Song of the Sea (2015) were anything but flukes. Culturally and structurally, The Breadwinner – directed by Nora Twomey (co-director on Kells) in her solo directorial debut – resembles nothing like its predecessors. Twomey has departed from the familiar magics of Irish folklore, transporting the audience to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan in the days before the American invasion in late 2001. Twomey also introduces, in this adaptation of Deborah Ellis’ (a co-writer) eponymous novel, Cartoon Saloon’s first lead female protagonist (Kells revolved around Brendan, not Aisling; Song of the Sea centers on Ben, not Saoirse). All this becomes Cartoon Saloon’s most politically barbed film even if the screenplay’s structure threatens to defocus what it is trying to say. What happens to its characters – in maybe the most deeply-characterized animated film since My Life as a Zucchini (2016, Switzerland) – is not easy to watch. But don’t turn away; because even where intimidation and violence prevail, hope abides.

Eleven-year-old Parvana is the second of three children (she has an elder sister Soraya and baby brother) and the youngest daughter of father Nurullah and mother Fattema. She accompanies her father – a veteran of the Soviet-Afghan War, having lost a leg during that conflict – to a Kabul market every day, selling assorted trinkets. Long stretches of time pass before an interested shopper might stop to look at what they are selling. To fill that time, Nurullah tells Parvana stories and has her recount those stories to him. These stories are part of the tapestry binding together their family at the height of Taliban control. By bringing Parvana (close to a marrying age, according to the Taliban and segments of Afghan society) Nurullah’s public and private defiance of the Taliban’s restrictive impositions on women results in his arrest. Because women are not allowed to leave the home unaccompanied for anything, this should spell the family’s ruin as mother Fattema becomes depressed after a Taliban beating.

With a haircut and a boy’s attire, Parvana sets off to pass as a boy so she may continue to earn money for food. After a chance encounter with former schoolmate Shauzia (girls are also denied education, too) who is also making like Mulan and masquerading as a boy, Parvana has a friend that she can depend on in addition to her voice as a storyteller. For food cannot by itself sustain the soul of those living in any kind of repression. Inspired by her father’s example, Parvana will find her own storytelling voice in brightening her family’s and Shauzia’s days and reassuring herself before the darkness that lies ahead.

The violent oppression of women is not a theme associated with animated film. Here, The Breadwinner is unsparing. But the fact that The Breadwinner is animated does soften the blows for younger audiences (Ellis’ book is a children’s book). Those who say that such heavy themes are inappropriate for animation have not been paying attention to what has been occurring outside the major American animated studios in the last thirty years. Where The Breadwinner fits into this tradition is that it depicts a violent time where women are treated as beneath men, and that women’s lives – no matter if they are children or adults – are unworthy of respect. There is nothing redeeming about how such a society is structured, except for the consciences of those who know better, but are not in a position to do more. Parvana’s curious friendship with an older Taliban soldier, Razaq, notes that men speaking in ways and advocating for laws subordinating women are contributing to their own personal turmoil. That institutional subordination of women and girls to this scale still has currency in today’s world should anger anyone intolerant of injustice.

It is the cultural specificity of The Breadwinner’s setting and its imperfect characters – as opposed to thematic universality and precocious children – that helps this film achieve its remarkable pathos. For almost all of those who watch The Breadwinner, it is impossible to truly know what life was like under Taliban control, how widespread the fear of violence was, and how precious moments of respite could be. This film will help others to understand what these lived experiences were (and still are), hopefully inspiring further inquiry for those who may not know as much. Legitimate concerns about the film’s cultural sensitivity have been raised (a white Irish woman adapting a book from a white Canadian woman about Afghan women with Angelina Jolie as a producer, on paper, does not sound ideal), but Twomey makes sure that the voice cast is almost entirely of Afghan descent and even composers Jeff and Mychael Danna consulted with Afghan composers and musicians to find the right textures and instrumentation for their score.

For Parvana, her ability to read and write and her perseverance helps her survive difficult times. Her strength of character and intelligence vexes the young Taliban soldiers. This might be taken for granted by Western audiences thinking that the Taliban are no longer a threat in Afghanistan, but I suspect that such themes probably have even greater resonance in Afghanistan and across the region. Parvana’s friendship with Shauzia – who implies that her father, unlike Parvana’s, is threatening – adds the street smarts that Parvana does not have. Shauzia shares a fantasy with Parvana: wondering about what their lives could be far away from contemporary Afghanistan, they imagine seeing the ocean someday, enjoying the welcoming sands and the cool waters.

The most problematic structural (not thematic) element of The Breadwinner is the story that Parvana tells to her family and Shauzia. The Breadwinner would not be a Cartoon Saloon film without some folktales or fables, you know. In several parts, the film pauses to integrate Parvana’s tale of a young boy looking to reclaim his village’s stolen crops from the Elephant King and its army. One need not possess a literature degree to notice Parvana’s fantastical story is loosely paralleling her own life. When Parvana retreats to storytelling, these scenes negate the momentum established in the scenes prior – those attempting to find direct connections between Parvana’s tale to the film’s core narrative are only going to be unnecessarily confused. Yet, the stylistic changes between that core narrative and Parvana’s Elephant King story allow Twomey and the screenwriters to incorporate charming humor and a paper cutout style that departs from the TVPaint Animation program used in all three Cartoon Saloon films thus far.

Now, a brief note regarding how this film looks. The TVPaint Animation succeeds in Kells and Song of the Sea because those films leaned heavily into Irish folklore and the flatness of Celtic art. Without that artistic basis, The Breadwinner’s primary narrative looks like cheap Flash animation often used in animated television. Despite this, the backgrounds here are the most realistic Cartoon Saloon has ever animated. The Breadwinner, if you ignore the character designs and the fact Loving Vincent came out this year, is one of the most beautifully-animated movies of 2017.

Yet Parvana’s extended story reinforces what her father remarks early in the film: “Stories remain in our hearts even after all else is gone.” Storytelling is therapeutic for Parvana and her family, a soft gauze applied over even the deepest wounds. Inner beauty and kindness can still thrive in hardship. Though I may have expressed how scattered The Breadwinner’s narrative becomes because of Parvana’s story, Parvana’s story becomes the saving grace of the film’s final twenty minutes. When international events intervene, her story becomes a way to process what is about to happen. Without the story edited into the harrowing ending, The Breadwinner’s finale would seem even more rushed than it already is – the chaotic violence might have been even more jarring without. A third act disaster is averted – in more ways than one – thanks to Parvana.

With three solid entries including The Breadwinner, Cartoon Saloon is now one of the most important animation studios currently producing animated features. Now, they have shown there are willing to look outside picturesque Irish landscapes and portray modern injustices for what they are. May there be more risk-taking in the future.

Between The Breadwinner; Osama (2003, Afghanistan); The Kiterunner (2007; Hosseini’s books are highly recommended); and other Afghan narratives, perhaps there may be a day where “Afghanistan” no longer conjures images of heartbreak, gender inequality, and warfare – that “Afghanistan” is no longer shorthand for these things. If Parvana’s spirit is any indication, there is all the reason to believe those days will arrive.

Until that time, films like The Breadwinner are a difficult sell in North America to cinema owners and audiences. With Thor: Ragnarok, Justice League, and Coco all in (thousands of more) theaters than The Breadwinner was during its November release, I understand the desire for gratification and entertainment value. A person has a right to what films they watch (some might say putting Coco in there is unfair given that it is a rare instance of a non-white narrative in Hollywood; however, being a Pixar film, it has financial and institutional advantages The Breadwinner will never reap). But the brief spells of happiness, the constant dread, the lingering pains, the resolute optimism that Parvana reveals to us is worth understanding. Because that initial understanding inspires one to seek out more stories, allowing us to realize that there are countless, voiceless Afghan women whose stories will most likely never be told, whose quiet leadership and courage may never be known.

For now, the intrepid Parvana is the focus of The Breadwinner, an affecting film to be seen and cherished – brought to life through the same qualities seen in Parvana.

My rating: 8/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.

[scribefindegil]

Songs From The Void--Track 1

[read on ao3] [listen]

Voidfish Lullaby

I awoke to the sound of singing.

I'd become used to such things over our year at the Legato Conservatory; no matter how much the builders invested in soundproofing there was still the constant background noise of students practicing their compositions or humming snatches of some piece that their Light of Creation had broadcasted out to us. The first thing I noticed about this new world was how quiet it was.

But this singing wasn't like what I'd heard at the Conservatory—the polished, perfect tones with their rich sound and strong vibrato. It was hushed, and not all of the notes were in tune, and the singer's voice was rough around the edges.

I followed the sound through the passageways of the Starblaster, navigating by feel in the dark. I had considered that perhaps after spending an entire year off the ship I would lose some of my familiarity with its layout and need the lights to see again, but no. It's too well ingrained by now. No wonder, I suppose. I've spent most of my life here on this vessel. By now, twice as many years as I spent on our home Plane.

The singing came from the kitchen, and as I approached I saw a dim, shifting light cast gentle shadows across the walls. It must have been the haze of sleep that I hadn't fully shaken off, but I didn't recognize the source of the light until I turned the corner and saw Magnus playing with the baby.

He stopped singing as soon as he saw me, and the baby dropped its duck and drew back against him, wrapping its tendrils tight around his ribcage. I stood still for a moment, letting it observe me, and slowly it climbed back down into Magnus's lap and retrieved its duck, holding it up to show me.

"Oh," Magnus said. ". . . Hello. Did I wake you?"

"I'm a light sleeper," I told him, but he apologized anyway.

"The baby keeping you up again?"

He nodded, pinching the bridge of his nose. That black eye of his that returned with each new cycle was just beginning to fade, leaving a smear of yellow-green across his cheek. He looked about ready to fall asleep right there on the floor.

"Hey, I got three straight hours tonight before it started crying!" he joked. "It's getting better!"

He yawned, and the baby poked at his mouth with its tendrils in case he was hiding a duck somewhere inside it. I couldn't help but laugh. Magnus laughed too, even as he gently batted the tendrils away. He picked up the duck and moved it around in circles in the air. The baby jellyfish floated up and followed it, humming contentedly. Magnus took advantage of its distraction to yawn again.

"Tea?" I suggested.

He looked at me as if I had just personally crested a mountaintop while riding a giant bear with the Light of Creation in my hand.

"You're a lifesaver."

I excavated the kettle, checked to make sure no one had been using it for arcane experimentation, and set it on to boil. There were even clean mugs—one from a pottery student at the Legato Conservatory who was experimenting with new glazing techniques, and one that Lup had bought for Barry at a market a few cycles back. The scientific sigils on it are beyond my knowledge, but from how much Barry laughed when she gave it to him I'm assured that whatever pun it makes is hilarious.

When we left our home planar system, we had one matched set of dishes. Exactly seven of everything, well-made and plain and white. Out of the originals I think we have one cracked salad plate left. Everything else is a mish-mash of things bought and traded and acquired over the course of dozens of worlds. We don't intend to, but we almost always end up with some kind of tangible reminder of the places we pass through.

But the baby is the first time that reminder has been a living creature. I know Magnus was afraid it wouldn't survive the reset. I was afraid, too, but when the threads pulled us all back together it was still there, and it felt like a miracle. Davenport chastised him for risking everything over a jellyfish, but Magnus ignored him. He just held it and cried.

I'm not sure any of us realized how much it would change things to have one world where we actually saved something. Especially for Magnus. He's the one who's always willing to stay and fight and die on worlds where we don't get the Light, just to buy them a few more seconds.

And now we have a refugee, a glowing baby jellyfish with a galaxy inside it that looks like nothing we've ever seen before. It might be the last one of its kind that ever exists. At least that isn't a fear that the rest of us have had to deal with, not after Cycle Four when we first found a world with people like our own. There are still humans out there, and dwarves and gnomes and elves. We may be the last from our world, but we aren't the last of all. It's cold comfort, but it's comfort all the same.

"Lucretia," said Magnus, pulling the baby back from the countertop it was trying to investigate and settling it back into his lap. "Do you think it . . . understands? Why we had to take it away from its family?"

I paused for a moment, the mugs heavy in my hand.

"It saw what was happening," I told him. "It saw the Hunger coming, and even if it didn't know what it was, it could tell that it was dangerous. I . . . it's hard to tell how much it understands. It's a baby, and its species certainly seemed intelligent but that doesn't mean their minds work like ours, and . . ." I trailed off. This wasn't what Magnus wanted to hear. It wasn't even what he was asking. Not really.

"I think it knows that you saved it," I said, and Magnus relaxed.

"And I think . . ." I continued, unsure of my phrasing, "That it understands that it has you for a family now."

The baby was curled on Magnus's lap, humming to itself as it played with one of the many ducks he had carved it. Most of them had been left behind as we fled the Hunger, but there are already more of them scattered throughout the ship. Magnus’s room is full of wood shavings. He had a block of wood and his old knife on the floor next to him, although the knife was sheathed. He never carved when the baby was nearby in case he hurt it.

He looked down at the jellyfish and smiled.

"Yeah," he said. "It has all of us."

I unearthed the chamomile tea from the back of the cupboard and placed a bag into my own mug before asking Magnus what he wanted. He deliberated for a moment, and then he laughed softly. "Do we still have any of that . . . it was black, but with the lavender?"

Some more shuffling through the perpetually unorganized tea cupboard revealed that we did. I’d given up on trying to keep it neat some dozen cycles ago.

As I finished preparing our tea, Magnus began to hum to the baby. It wasn't a tune that I knew. The jellyfish hummed back a few times before deciding that its duck was more interesting.

"What were you singing earlier?" I asked him.

He blushed. "Just trying to calm it down," he said. "Some old lullabies, you know . . ." It seemed like he was expecting me to laugh at him.

"I didn't recognize the tune," I said. "Was it from back home? Sing it to me; I'll write it down."

Magnus shrugged and his face turned redder. He still looks like such a boy even after all these years, those ridiculous sideburns not quite managing to hide the childlike roundness of his face.

"Yeah, okay," he said. "Sure. I'm . . . not a great singer. You should have heard my mom sing them. She was way better."

"That's fine."

The kettle boiling gave him a moment of respite. I poured out the water, added a splash of milk and a single sugar cube to his mug, and reached out to hand it to him.

"Keep it over there until it cools down a little?" he asked. "I don't think the baby understands hot things. It could get hurt."

I nodded and placed the mug of lavender earl gray on the table next to me. The aroma wafted though the room, combining with the scent of my chamomile. Magnus leaned back against the cabinet and breathed in deeply.

"My mom always said lavender was good for soothing babies," he said. "Of course, she was talking about human kids. Don't know how it works with magic glowing jellyfish. It probably can't even smell. Anyway . . ."

If it had been any other time, I wouldn't have asked. There are things we don't talk about. But three in the morning is a strange and impulsive time, and my mouth was quicker than my brain.

"Did you ever plan on having children, Magnus?"

He blinked. Looked at me and then looked away. Moved the baby's duck around for it to chase.

"I mean, not like this!" he said. The jovial tone felt forced.

"I'm sorry, I—"

"No." He cut me off. "No. It's okay. It just . . . I was so young when we left, you know? My whole life ahead of me. I guess I thought . . . maybe someday, but it was so far off that I didn't really think about it. And since we left . . . well . . . there've been so many other things to regret that I didn't have the time to worry about that one. I . . . would have liked to, though. I think. What about you?"

"I . . . don't know."

"Fair enough."

I sipped at my tea, still hot enough to burn the tip of my tongue.

Silence stretched out between us, only broken by the baby's occasional quiet humming. Then Magnus began to sing. "Lavender's blue, dilly dilly, lavender's green . . ."

He broke off after a couple of lines and shot me a slightly abashed smile. "The words don't really make a lot of sense."

I shrugged. "Lullabies aren't known for their lyrical complexity."

That got a laugh out of him, and he sang the rest of the song without interruption. His voice was much softer than I'd expected. I've really only heard him sing drinking songs before. And though the tone is a little wobbly, he has a pleasant voice, warm and comforting. The baby hummed back at him, but if he’d been hoping for the tune to have any kind of calming effect he must have ended up disappointed. If anything, the baby seemed to become more energetic, climbing around Magnus and chasing its duck across the room.

I stood, cradling my half-finished mug in my hands. "I'm going back to bed," I told him. "Good luck, Magnus."

He smiled sleepily. "It's okay. I think it feels safer at night, anyway. Fewer scary people around."

As I walked back to my quarters, I could hear him singing again.

After the tea and a few pages of writing, I slept late. I only woke when Barry came and knocked softly on my door to tell me breakfast was ready.

Magnus had barely moved from when I'd last seen him, but someone had brought a chair next to him and he was half-collapsed across the seat, his jacket pillowed below his head. The baby nested on his lap and kept reaching up with its tendrils, pulling on his arm until he lowered it and wrapped it around the glowing bell. As it settled the arm into place, the lights inside of it spun and began to glow more brightly.

"Listen," Magnus kept saying, stroking its bell with his other hand. "'S okay. You don't have to be scared."

"I don't know," said Taako, spinning around from the stove with a frying pan in his hands. "We're pretty scary."

Magnus glared at him, and Lup laughed and flipped the brim of her brother's hat up.

The baby hummed a high, keening note—the sound it made when it was distressed.

"Hey," Magnus whispered, curling close around the baby like he was trying to turn his whole body into a shield. "It's okay. Shhh . . . it's okay . . ."

Slowly, the mumbled words of comfort turned back into a song. A song with the same tune he'd sung the night before, but different, more hesitant words. By the time breakfast was properly set up the two of them were asleep on the floor. When Taako threatened to wake them, Lup levitated his food away from him and he had to chase it halfway across the ship. The others went out on their preliminary explorations, while I stayed behind and spent the next few hours tip-toeing around where Magnus was curled up with the baby pressed into the crook of his shoulder.

It was several days before I heard the whole song. Magnus sings it to the baby every night, and when he's out on business sometimes I hear the baby humming the tune to itself while it hugs one of its ducks. Usually, they sing it together: Magnus pacing through the Starblaster, rocking it gently like the waves on a still lake, while the baby hums along until it falls asleep in his arms.

Voidfish Lullaby

(Tune: Lavender’s Blue)

Stars are above, dilly dilly, worlds are below What we will find, dilly dilly, no one can know But I know this, dilly dilly, every world round I will make sure, dilly dilly, you’re safe and sound.

Home is behind, dilly dilly, far far away What is ahead, dilly dilly, no one can say Though you are lost, dilly dilly, you’re not alone. I’ll keep you safe, dilly dilly. I’ll be your home.

Hush now and sleep, dilly dilly, no need to fear When the day breaks, dilly dilly, I’ll still be near Worlds are below, dilly dilly, stars are above And we are here, dilly dilly, shining with love.

[ecotone99]

[NF] Autismo

Be me, 11 or so years old.

You've gotten your hands on a computer fan somehow, you're don't remember, but your father doesn't seem to care that you have it for some reason.

You're holding it out of the side of the Truck and it's spinning at an insanely high speed. You love the sound of the "whirrrrrrrRRRRRR^RRRRRRRRR^rrrrrrr" that revs up as you change the angle of entry into the feedback do-nothing electric turbine you invented

You've loved planes ever since your mom helped you make one out of hot glue and cardboard with her when you were 4 years old. You modeled it after something she found on the internet probably, and you flew it down the stairs but it dived because we used too much glue (I'm hard on things, she probably wanted to compensate but didn't know about the rocket science of center of gravity vs center of pressure/propulsion.) You wish you understood why the plane didn't fly like a plane

You see a fly TRAPPED on the dash of the truck because it won't risk flight in this turbulence. you don't know why but you can't imagine what it's like to be a fly since your mom got you a book about flies and other insects that you loved because insects scare you but the pretty book told you which ones are scary and which ones just look scary, so it's okay. Mom is gone now, but she told you lots before Dad started yelling at you every day. It's going to be okay, he tells you that he loves you. You don't have to be scared of the medicines, just look them up on wikipedia and try to understand. Someday you'll realize it wasn't okay and you'll cry even more, but that's okay. right?

The fly is only alive for like 4 days. Sometimes people call it a fly, if there's a bunch of them it's called flies and all you know is that they're bad for food. You don't want them on your food, for some weird reason. The book didn't tell me about that.

I can't see the fly's whole life, but I can imagine it, mostly because the book talked a lot about flies because that makes sense when you see so many flies, that's what you'd want to know about the most so that's what people know the most about.

It's boring to be a fly. You just go, "OH SHIT I'M ALIVE BETTER FIND FOOD", then you master the food thing and you go "F*** B**** GET MONEY" and then you die, like that's the whole thing and it takes like 4 days. No time for questions.

*3.5 years later*

A psychologist with a funny last name sits across from you at a hexagonal picnic bench under a gazebo at the end of a red hexagonal cinder block trail in the courtyard of a nursing home where the smell of cleaning products reminds you of the stuff in the hospital when you watched your dad dying.

He tells you that you're very smart and you should believe in yourself, and that he wants you to understand your own psychology so that you have an understanding of what's going wrong and you can short-circuit the thought into another thought about how that doesn't matter or it's okay, you can just keep going.

But all you want to talk about is what that fly thought about time, you don't know why. What you don't know is WHY. HOW? WHAT? 4 days. You'd rather distract yourself than continue crying and telling a stranger about all the ways and things and times that make you suicidal.

"there's an INDY gene in those flies" he says. "You flip one gene (set/expression/phoneme?) from dominant to recessive and they live for 8 days instead of 4."

You sit there, dumbfounded.

Autismo part II: Redux

be me, 10 years later (24 years old)

You realize that concurrency is not A, but *THE* mental capacity solution to a reduction in time.

You listened to a set of books for fun on the drive to and from your University while you were living with your grandmother, a 45 minuted drive. First, Too Big To Fail, Andrew Sorkin's exhaustive journalistic account of the collateralized-debt-obligation (CDO) securities leverage and insurance, then bubbling and pop-type failure leading up to the week's events in 2008 that cause Lehman, Bear Stern, AIG, and (bank of america, maybe?) into liquidation positions.

You illegally ripped the CDs, not your CDOs, because you're poor. Except you're cash poor because you have $383,000 but your uncle in control hates his life and thinks that's why he works hard. He's a manufacturing infrastructure engineer with a 2 year degree, and that was hard.

So he wants you to hate your life until you get a job too, because that means you'll make a lot of money and be an engineer or something probably. But you already got a job. He made you. He told you that you only get to spend $10 a week on things you don't need unless you get a job and make the money yourself. You like computers and Jobs at the local theme park hurt your back. No good reason, they just want you to stand there to use a computer that you could totally use while sitting down because you're at the end of a buffet and you don't have to touch or move any food.

That job, your love of computers, your family all seem to make you happier and it also makes you ate life even more. At church on Sunday, the Pastor rips into you personally "PORNOGRAPHY IS THE DEVIL", "THINKING ABOUT OTHER THINGS AS IF THEY ARE MORE INTERESTING THAN GOD IS THE DEVIL", "SCIENCE IS EVIL", "PEOPLE WHO QUESTION GOD ARE WORSHIPING SATAN" he shouts through complex analogies that are aimed to keep you from hearing the actual fascism in the words. You're just the idiot savant kid sitting in the back running all of the audio equipment the entire time.

I tried to tell the pastor that he could put the sermons on a format of more dense form like a hard drive in a computer, and back it up to another hard drive, but every few weeks an 8 GB SD card would fill up and we'd just use a new one. THAT'S WRITE, WRITE ONCE, CATALOG DATA IN FLASH STORAGE LIKE A FUCKING NINTENDO, THIS MAN LIVED IN THE DARK AGES IN 2013. Oh, but the kid in the back thinking about how to jail break his iPhone and download the Golden Master release of the first iOS with multitasking, yeah, he's worshiping SATAN by not listening to you repeat the same fear mongering over and over.

Don't get me wrong, I believe in God now, my God, not yours, let's not talk about it right now. Yes, pornography is bad, but not why you think, it's because it's actually bad, like, a psychologist can prove it to you. No, thinking about other things isn't the devil, but thinking about how to make a thing or improve on a thing to make yourself like God, well that is, and I'm looking at you Mark Zuckerberg. Science isn't evil, it's an effort to understand things from first principles that sometimes leads to atomic bombs, that just means that we shouldn't make or use atomic bombs, not "DURR SCIENCE DA DEVIL". And those people questioning God are called lost sheep, great job welcoming them into your church pastor.

Anyway, you got the CDs ripped onto your Android phone and turned in the audio book CDs in time and deleted your copy because you knew there were internet services for libraries to do that and your library just doesn't have one yet. I probably should have told them about that. Your android phone sorted the numbered tracks generated by windows with a slightly out of order algorithm by comparison

You realize numbers are sorted differently by the alphabetic sorting in the file system on an android Samsung Galaxy S3, apparently. I was getting a degree in computer science but couldn't tell this was the case until the end of the book was not the end of the book, the end of the book played and then the book kept playing. The problem is that windows sees "track 1"->"track 2" and Linux (the heart of Android) sees "track 1"->"track 10"->"track 11"->...->"track 2"->"track 20", so it was mostly in order, until the end of the book was track 2 because it wasn't 19 apparently. Stupid fucking sorting algorithms, let's all just agree on standards! Oh wait, you just ignored the RFCs? cool. Let's just use CDs and listen to nothing but the CDs so we can get the audiobooks back on time, I'm not re-writing the Android Kernel. Bon voyage, NPR and news about the baboon running for president!

Then, A biography of Nietzsche by who know which author. His Uber-Mensche (super man) idea of how mankind was rebuilding itself in the imagined image of his "Gods" hardens your heart and doesn't make sense. The idea that you would even want to try sickens you. You just want to understand, not own the world. Screw owning anything, you wanna make things, help people, be someone.

Then, the most audacious pick you could because PBS Space Time on YouTube showed you that you can understand the physics without knowing the math, a book on how string theory works by a guy who actually works on that stuff, way out there past the words and into the Greek symbols for things I don't understand.

Then, I moved to Colorado because I wanted to smoke weed without fearing my record and harassment by the police, and a door opened because tech is a booming market, even in the back room of rinky dink flower shops in a small farming town where you live.

Autismo part II: Redux

be me, 10 years later (24 years old)

You realize that concurrency is not A, but *THE* mental capacity solution to a reduction in time.

You listened to a set of books for fun on the drive to and from your University while you were living with your grandmother, a 45 minuted drive. First, Too Big To Fail, Andrew Sorkin's exhaustive journalistic account of the collateralized-debt-obligation (CDO) securities leverage and insurance, then bubbling and pop-type failure leading up to the week's events in 2008 that cause Lehman, Bear Stern, AIG, and (bank of america, maybe?) into liquidation positions.

You illegally ripped the CDs, not your CDOs, because you're poor. Except you're cash poor because you have $383,000 but your uncle in control hates his life and thinks that's why he works hard. He's a manufacturing infrastructure engineer with a 2 year degree, and that was hard.

So he wants you to hate your life until you get a job too, because that means you'll make a lot of money and be an engineer or something probably. But you already got a job. He made you. He told you that you only get to spend $10 a week on things you don't need unless you get a job and make the money yourself. You like computers and Jobs at the local theme park hurt your back. No good reason, they just want you to stand there to use a computer that you could totally use while sitting down because you're at the end of a buffet and you don't have to touch or move any food.

That job, your love of computers, your family all seem to make you happier and it also makes you ate life even more. At church on Sunday, the Pastor rips into you personally "PORNOGRAPHY IS THE DEVIL", "THINKING ABOUT OTHER THINGS AS IF THEY ARE MORE INTERESTING THAN GOD IS THE DEVIL", "SCIENCE IS EVIL", "PEOPLE WHO QUESTION GOD ARE WORSHIPING SATAN" he shouts through complex analogies that are aimed to keep you from hearing the actual fascism in the words. You're just the idiot savant kid sitting in the back running all of the audio equipment the entire time.

I tried to tell the pastor that he could put the sermons on a format of more dense form like a hard drive in a computer, and back it up to another hard drive, but every few weeks an 8 GB SD card would fill up and we'd just use a new one. THAT'S WRITE, WRITE ONCE, CATALOG DATA IN FLASH STORAGE LIKE A FUCKING NINTENDO, THIS MAN LIVED IN THE DARK AGES IN 2013. Oh, but the kid in the back thinking about how to jail break his iPhone and download the Golden Master release of the first iOS with multitasking, yeah, he's worshiping SATAN by not listening to you repeat the same fear mongering over and over.

Don't get me wrong, I believe in God now, my God, not yours, let's not talk about it right now. Yes, pornography is bad, but not why you think, it's because it's actually bad, like, a psychologist can prove it to you. No, thinking about other things isn't the devil, but thinking about how to make a thing or improve on a thing to make yourself like God, well that is, and I'm looking at you Mark Zuckerberg. Science isn't evil, it's an effort to understand things from first principles that sometimes leads to atomic bombs, that just means that we shouldn't make or use atomic bombs, not "DURR SCIENCE DA DEVIL". And those people questioning God are called lost sheep, great job welcoming them into your church pastor.

Anyway, you got the CDs ripped onto your Android phone and turned in the audio book CDs in time and deleted your copy because you knew there were internet services for libraries to do that and your library just doesn't have one yet. I probably should have told them about that. Your android phone sorted the numbered tracks generated by windows with a slightly out of order algorithm by comparison

You realize numbers are sorted differently by the alphabetic sorting in the file system on an android Samsung Galaxy S3, apparently. I was getting a degree in computer science but couldn't tell this was the case until the end of the book was not the end of the book, the end of the book played and then the book kept playing. The problem is that windows sees "track 1"->"track 2" and Linux (the heart of Android) sees "track 1"->"track 10"->"track 11"->...->"track 2"->"track 20", so it was mostly in order, until the end of the book was track 2 because it wasn't 19 apparently. Stupid fucking sorting algorithms, let's all just agree on standards! Oh wait, you just ignored the RFCs? cool. Let's just use CDs and listen to nothing but the CDs so we can get the audiobooks back on time, I'm not re-writing the Android Kernel. Bon voyage, NPR and news about the baboon running for president!

Then, A biography of Nietzsche by who know which author. His Uber-Mensche (super man) idea of how mankind was rebuilding itself in the imagined image of his "Gods" hardens your heart and doesn't make sense. The idea that you would even want to try sickens you. You just want to understand, not own the world. Screw owning anything, you wanna make things, help people, be someone.

Then, the most audacious pick you could because PBS Space Time on YouTube showed you that you can understand the physics without knowing the math, a book on how string theory works by a guy who actually works on that stuff, way out there past the words and into the Greek symbols for things I don't understand.

Then, I moved to Colorado because I wanted to smoke weed without fearing my record and harassment by the police, and a door opened because tech is a booming market, even in the back room of rinky dink flower shops in a small farming town where you live.

submitted by /u/AspiENTP [link] [comments] via Blogger https://ift.tt/3c3XwuQ

[swipestream]

An Interview with Brian Niemeier, Part II

Brian Niemeier is a best-selling science fiction author and a John W. Campbell Award for Best New ‘Writer finalist. His second book, Souldancer, won the first ever Dragon Award for Best Horror Novel. He chose to pursue a writing career despite formal training in history and theology. His journey toward publication began at the behest of his long-suffering gaming group, who tactfully pointed out that he seemed to enjoy telling stories more than planning and adjudicating games.

Released this week, Brian’s newest book, The Ophian Rising, concludes his groundbreaking Soul Cycle series. Recently, I sat down with Brian to discuss The Ophian Rising, the rest of the Soul Cycle, and more. Part I of our interview focused on the Soul Cycle. Let’s now find out what is next.

*     *     *      *      *

Returning to how layered your storytelling is and the wide sweep of authors and works that you’ve mentioned as influences, what authors have been most influential to your storytelling?

Frank Herbert. I’ve mentioned before that I read and fell in love with Dune in high school. In fact, it saved my love of reading from being smothered.

Also, Neil Gaiman. I loved the Sandman in its original comic run, loved Good Omens that he did with Sir Terry Pratchett. Neverwhere was okay. I really haven’t liked a lot of his solo stuff since but Sandman was a big influence.

Kevin J. Anderson’s and Timothy Zahn’s Star Wars novels from the mid to late 90s. The Thrawn Trilogy, Jedi Academy, and Dark Saber.

During one of our previous interactions online, you mentioned the importance of reading to an author’s development. What are you currently reading right now?

Right now, I am going back to fill in my Larry Correia collection. I have my copy in paperback of Monster Hunter Vendetta right here and I’m about a third of the way through.

Have you read Son of the Black Sword yet?

Yes. I took an interesting approach to Larry’s work, which is kind of unintentional. I’ve read the first installment of each of his series. So I’ve read Monster Hunter International, Hard Magic, and Son of the Black Sword, so now I’m reading the second book in each one. Hopefully by the time I’m done with Spellbound, House of Assassins will be out.

You are also an editor. Can you describe some of the challenges compared to writing?

Sure. In terms of the challenges, editing is a whole different animal. When you’re just composing original prose, the field is wide open. You know that you have this huge blank canvas that you can put anything you want on there, so you’re really free of restrictions. You can always come back and revise it later.

Editing is a far more technical process. It differs from proofreading in that I mainly provide three services, which is line, copy, and content or development editing. I don’t do what your junior high English teacher does. I’m not going through with the red pen and pointing out, “Well, this is a comma splice. This is ‘it’s’ not ‘its’ so it should have an apostrophe. You want to use ‘whom’ instead of ‘who’ here because it’s in the object.” I mean, if I find those mistakes I will correct them, but mainly I am the last line of defense between the readers and an unsaleable book. I’m there to give suggestions that, if followed, will make your book professional and make it saleable.

The questions I ask myself are: Is this prose easy to read and understand? Is it readable? Do the mood, tone, and themes that the author wants to get across come through clearly? Is the plot advanced? Is every page, paragraph, and sentence doing at least two things? Like advancing character, advancing plot, conveying mood and tone, developing a theme? Is this book structured correctly? Do the pinches and turns and climaxes and, you know, the peaks and valleys come at dramatically appropriate moments to maximize the audience’s emotional impact? Those are just a few of the challenges and, of course, so is doing all of that without killing the author’s voice.

I’ve always got to be on guard to make sure that I���m not editing this book into a book that I would write. It’s got to still be the author’s book because the author is still the ultimate authority. The author can take all of my notes and say, “Go pound sand. I’m not going to take any of this advice.” It’s the author’s call. So I’ve got to make sure that at the end of the day, even if he does take all of my advice, it’s still his book, not mine.

Can you mention some of the books you’ve worked on?

Of the books that have hit the market, I edited Justin Knight’s second book. I’m looking through my list of stuff I’ve edited to make sure I get the title right. That one underwent a title change– that was Praxis.

I also edited a short story for JD Cowan, who you may be familiar with, called “In the Eyes of the Demon”, and, just recently released, Vigil by Russell Newquist.

What’s your next project?

Well. I’ve done my passion project. I’ve done the Soul Cycle, and in terms of indie authors, it was a success. It exceeded my expectations. I was hoping to break even on it and I’ve actually been able to earn a living through that, sometimes supplementing it with the editing. It’s been critically acclaimed, it has gotten some great reviews, so I’m pleased. Well done, good and faithful Soul Cycle. Thanks to all the readers who supported it.

Now that we’ve got the more complex, layered, I don’t to say inaccessible story, but there is a curve you’ve got a surmount to get into Nethereal. I think you’d agree it’s kind of a tough nut to crack. You have to figure out how to approach it. I chalk that up to, one, being the first book in a series that tells a rather complex story, and that’s just how the story is. I mean, I simplified that thing as much as I could. And two, Nethereal is the midpoint of the whole saga.

I do at some point plan to go back and do a four book prequel trilogy that explores the life and times of Almeth Elocine and his rise and fall. We see him in the prologue of Souldancer and he shows up one more time in that book. Then he shows up a couple times in The Secret Kings near the end. Really, as has been hinted, everything is really his fault. The Guild itself, the purge of the Gen and other non-human races, and their defeat. It’s kind of all on him, which will be made clear. Nethereal is very much the echo of what he did before he got to Kairos at the beginning of Souldancer. I think he’s my most compelling character. You’ll get to see a bit more of him in The Ophian Rising. He’ll actually get to see him take the field and do stuff this time, so there’s a little tidbit for you. We’re going to examine him, but that’s not my next immediate project

So again, we’ve done the heavy stuff, we’ve done the more literary stuff, and you guys have been good. It’s time to give you a treat:

The next project is giant robots.

Let’s have some fun. Let’s get in our giant mecha and let’s blow up some space colonies. Let’s shoot the big laser straight down the middle of the approaching squad of enemy mechs and just watch them blossom in sequence into Christmas lights.

Like Macross or Gundam?

Remember when Nick Cole and Jason Anspach first launched Galaxy’s Edge? Before they had the title, they just called it #StarWarsNotStarWars. This is #GundamNotGundam. I say Gundam all the way. I mean, I like what I’ve seen of Macross, but I’m a Gundam fanboy. I love it so and I’ve got to be really careful because Bandai is super uptight even more than Disney about protecting their IP. I will probably not be able to use #GundamNotGundam in marketing. I’ve already got five books outlined for it.

There has already has been a short story published in that universe It’s called “Anacyclosis”.

Is that the story hosted on Sci Phi Journal?

Correct. So anybody who wants a foretaste of what’s coming next can go check that out. There’s quite a bit of the lore of that series contained in that story. It’s a good jumping on point.

Earlier this summer, you released a novella, “The Hymn of the Pearl”. Could you tell us a bit about it?

Anyone who signs up for my newsletter–which you can do through my website Kairos at BrianNiemeier.com–gets a free copy of my first novella “The Hymn of the Pearl” for free. It’s been described as a sort of historical fiction but in a version of Late Antiquity that never was. There are two competing magic systems practiced by two competing orders of priests. It deals with the fate of humans and gods and how they can’t be created or destroyed, just moved around. There’s a redemption story. There’s an attempt to start a war. It’s good, clean, wholesome fun.

Is this a setup for a future project or is it self-contained?

Right now, its self-contained. I do have ideas where I might go with it. There’s enough demand for an entire series. I have had people who’ve read it saying how much they want a sequel, but just as many have told me, “No, no, this is perfect as it is. I wouldn’t want to see you cheapen this with a sequel. I wouldn’t want to see you water it down.”

Let’s just say that there might be a sequel to “The Hymn of the Pearl” someday, but it’s on the back burner. I’m going to focus on my mecha series next.

*     *     *      *      *

Thanks again to Brian Niemeier for his time and for writing the genre-bending Soul Cycle series.

You can get the final book of the award-winning Soul Cycle today, and complete your collection by picking up the other captivating books in this supernatural space adventure series.

An Interview with Brian Niemeier, Part II published first on http://ift.tt/2zdiasi