Author Archives: James Pyles

The Cure for Cancer

view from train

PHOTO PROMPT © David Stewart

I’m dying.

I’ve been riding this train to visit my children, well now, my grandchildren, for over thirty years. My dear wife Jeannie passed away six years ago, bless her. I’m the only one left of my generation and the docs say the cancer is spreading.

It’s spreading across our land as well. That old shantytown used to be a neighborhood sheltering good working men, families, children playing ball in the street.

The world’s falling apart and it doesn’t matter which party promises to bring prosperity. We are no longer represented. I pray I die before the bloodshed of revolution.

Continue reading →

Review of “Dead Beat” (2006), Book Seven in the Dresden Files Series

dead beat

© James Pyles

Yesterday, I finished book seven in Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series Dead Beat. Like the rest of the books in this collection, the title is a play on words. This time, Harry Dresden faces the threat of necromancers, users of magic of the dead.

Harry’s life gets increasingly worse with each book and sometimes I marvel that he’s still alive.

Oh, before I go on, since this book was published in 2006, there are spoilers aplenty.

Harry’s detective friend Karrin Murphy goes off to Hawaii on vacation with a man (or being) of great power who Harry doesn’t trust. By now, the readers of this series know that at some point, Harry and Murphy are going to become lovers, but currently, he’s too noble and self-righteous to object to her plans.

He’s contacted by Mavra, his deadly vampire foe, who threatens to reveal certain illegal acts Murphy committed (all performed while helping Harry) and destroy her life if Harry doesn’t find and bring her something called the “Book of Kemmler.”

As it turns out, this book holds the secret to summoning a vast number of the spirits of the dead and focusing the energy in order to turn one necromancer into basically a god.

Continue reading →

Iconic

icon grill

PHOTO PROMPT © Ted Strutz

Time traveling tourist Glinn Tanning staggered into the restaurant dressed in surplus fatigues and dragging a canvas rucksack in his right hand. It contained a couple of canisters of pepper spray and the makings of several Molotov cocktails.

“Where are the protesters?” he complained to the bored looking woman behind the counter.

“We’re closing soon,” she said. “Didn’t you see the sign?”

“Where is everyone? Isn’t this December 1st?”

“It’s the last day in January,” she said. “You’re late.”

He checked his wrist-mounted chromotron. “Damn. Eight years late. I knew I should have had this thing adjusted before I left.

Continue reading →

Podcast Promoting “Shoot the Devil 3: Martyr’s Miitia” This Friday

promo podcast

Promotional image for the “Shoot the Devil: Martyr’s Militia” podcast.

UPDATE – February 1, 2025: Here’s the public link for you to view the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/live/qIGZAddSpk4

I’ve been promoting the anthology Shoot the Devil 3: Martyr’s Militia for a number of weeks now. It features my short story “The Book of Names.”

The anthology is on sale at Amazon through this weekend (February 1 and 2) for only 99 cents. Great time to buy (and read and of course, review).

A nearly-immortal man who is currently known as Griffin has been searching for the letters and syllables that make up the Name, the one word that will banish evil from the Earth and bring a lasting peace.

He is pursued by a seemingly inexhaustible horde of demons known as “Legion” who want to stop him. Along the way, Griffin has collected the Book of Names, which includes the appellations of many demons. To say a demon’s name in its presence will destroy it.

However, on the threshold of achieving the final letters, Griffin is stopped, not only by Legion but by a woman who may hold the secret to completing his quest. Will she help him or aid his enemies, thus dooming all of humankind?

Continue reading →

Eviction Day

beach junk

PHOTO PROMPT © Mr. Binks

Eliab strolled through another collection of junk. It was only a small sample of the enormous task they were facing. They had given so-called “modern humans” 200,000 years to build a civilization harmonious with themselves and their planet.

As predicted, they failed miserably. He was of the majority opinion, but “the Big Guy” kept giving them chances. Finally, the literal weight of evidence against humanity became evident even to Him.

The last of them had been evicted, resettled on thousands of primitive worlds to continue the experiment. Now Eliab’s team would have to spend millennia reclaiming Earth for productive use.

Continue reading →

Book Review: “A Scanner Darkly” (1977) by Philip K. Dick

scanner darkly

© James Pyles

Philip K. Dick’s 1977 novel A Scanner Darkly is about drug addition and the physical, mental, and legal consequences it brings about. The character Bob Arctor/Fred is prey, predator, and victim.

The book is also autobiographical since it (through fiction) chronicles Dick’s own experiences with addiction and the drug culture in the 1970s.

I’m not much of a fan of Dick’s writing. Oh, I’ve read his “big hits” including The Man in The High Castle and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? but I felt the stories didn’t live up to the hype. I know I’m probably in the minority with that opinion, but so be it.

For my money, “Scanner” is Dick’s best novel. It’s not just the writing or the story. It’s how Dick took a destroyed part of his life and turned it into something, not only useful, but reorganized and creative. I really admire him for that. I think most of us wish we could do that with the parts of our lives we see as “damaged” or (Heaven help us) “destroyed.”

Continue reading →

Tunnel Visions

dales-tunnels

PHOTO PROMPT © Dale Rogerson

Hill always came to places like this when he couldn’t sleep. He needed the dreams but without sleep, there were only visions.

In his visions, he’s alone usually by choice. People made too much noise. When he couldn’t sleep, it was because his own brain made too much noise and because he couldn’t let go of the world’s noise.

This one was better lit than most. It was quiet, but a little cold. He heard his footsteps on crumbling concrete. It was like a science fiction dystopia.

At the end of the tunnel, could he rest in a better world?

Continue reading →

Book Review: “The Warship – Rise of the Jain, Book Two” (2019)

warship

© James Pyles

A few nights ago, I finished Neal Asher’s 2019 novel The Warship: Rise of the Jain, Book Two. I read and reviewed the first book in this trilogy a little over a year ago. That’s really too long a space between these volumes.

As with most of Asher’s novels (and there are plenty of them), the action takes place in the “Polity” universe (basically the Earth/human domain of space) and involves the primary protagonist the Prador, but they’re not the “big bads” in this story.

As with every one of Asher’s books I’ve read so far, one of the main challenges is keeping track of the numerous individual characters, their races and other things (the Spatterjay Virus for instance) that distinguishes one person/group from another.

This trilogy focuses on a species called the Jain or rather their technology and a number of mysteries that surround them.

Asher’s great at misdirection, so the Jain don’t necessarily occupy center stage through most of the scenes, even if the reader is led to believe they do.

Continue reading →

Baboons and the Aliens

robbie

PHOTO PROMPT © Robbie Cheadle

The zoo was closed which was what Chen was counting on. Right before he was “let go” from the IT department, he installed a backdoor into their security system letting him bypass the gate locks and alarms.

Even knowing he was alone, he looked left and right as the snow fell on him and the pool of baboons. The time traveler from the future whispered into the brain implant he had given Chen and he passed along the news to his friends.

“An alien probe will destroy Earth three-hundred years from now unless we take you back to answer them.”

Continue reading →

A Boy and His Racoon

tree

PHOTO PROMPT © Lisa Fox

“Oops.” Twenty-year-old Calvin Weiss wiped a clump of dark hair out of his eyes with one hand while balancing his grandfather’s mystic tome in the other. “That isn’t what I wanted.”

“I keep telling you Cal, it’s long-A on the umlaut and short-A on the tilde. Geez, will you ever get it right? The pudgy racoon reached into Cal’s backpack sitting near the discolored tree trunk and pulled out another beer. Popping the tab, he took a swallow. “That’s better.”

“Not better for me, Tubby. I was supposed to summon the wood Fae out of this tree, not dye it.”

Continue reading →