Category Archives: science fiction

My New Stories in “Drabbles: First Contact” (2025)

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Promotional image for my stories in the anthology “Drabbles: First Contact.”

My first publications for 2025 are now available in the Starry Eyed Press anthology Drabbles: First Contact (Amazon US). Click the following for the global link.

For those of you who don’t know, a “drabble” is a complete story that is exactly 100 words long, no more, no less.

“First Contact” is a reference to humanity’s first encounter with an extraterrestrial species. These contacts can be friendly or terrifying or a lot of other things.

Twenty-six authors contributed a total of over thirty drabbles to this anthology. It is currently available for Kindle but will also be coming out soon in paperback.

Four of my stories made the cut:

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Book Review of “Error Code: 22 Tales of Robots and AI” (2025)

error code

Cover art for the “Error Code” anthology

Yesterday, I finished reading the small anthology Error Code: 22 Tales of Robots and AI by Eric Fomley and Addison Smith.

It was produced by Shacklebound Books which I gather is a small, indie publisher. They’ve got quite a collection of anthologies listed on Amazon.

Each story is quite short and the book is a quick read (130 pages in print, though it’s available only on Kindle as far as I can tell).

Like many such anthologies, the stories fall into three categories:

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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2024: A Year in Review

2024

It’s close enough to the New Year for me to post my annual “year in review” comments. 2024 has been pretty good as far as he number of stories I’ve had published.

It started out with my short story “I Don’t Want To Be Human” appearing in the Cloaked Press anthology Spring Into SciFi 2024. This tale goes back to my roots in terms of sapient robots, AI, while flying in the face of the common trope that all humanoid robots want to be like people.

Next up, I’m particularly proud of the 16-part science fiction serial I wrote for Starry Eyed Press called Our Legacy, The Stars: A Tom Corbett Adventure. It’s currently on Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform, but Vella is going away (you still have time to read it). The folks at Starry Eyed say they’ll republish my work in book form, hopefully in the coming year. I’ll let you know.

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My Space Opera “The Fallen Shall Rise” FREE This Week!

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Cover art for “The Fallen Shall Rise”

If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi.

My space opera novelette The Fallen Shall Rise, a 224-Verse tale published by Starry Eyed Press is available to download onto your Kindle device FREE!

From today (as I write this), December 17th through Saturday the 21st, just go to the book’s Amazon page and download it absolutely free.

The Amazon blurb for my book says:

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My Novelette “Ice” Has a Five-Star Review on goodreads (and now on Amazon)!

ice

Cover art for my fantasy novelette “Ice”

If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi.

My 2021 adventure/fantasy novelette Ice just got a five-star review on goodreads (and now on Amazon five days later).

Read the image below for the specifics.

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Book Review of “Ascension, The Ymir Trinity” (2023)

ymir

Cover art for “Ascension: The Ymir Trinity” by A.M. Leishman

If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi.

Last night I finished A.M. Leishman’s short novel Ascension, The Ymir Trinity (2023). It’s supposed to be book one in a series, but so far, no other books have been published.

I first encountered Leishman on twitter/X but he’s also on bluesky. We indie authors have to stick together.

I won’t lie. For me, it was a hard book to get into. I felt like I was walking into the middle of a movie. Cute, teenage psychopath Dawn encounters older and more reserved Alma walking into her local public library and fairly swoons over her. The two have been in contact with an entity named Ymir who has been giving them instructions about an impending interstellar war and pushing them to ally themselves specifically with the U.S. Military.

The two of them plus General David Trauger form an alliance that takes them to the highest levels of power, both on Earth and beyond.

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Seven

roger

PHOTO PROMPT © Roger Bultot

If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi.

Elisa Sebourne watched a boy she knew sail past her riding a motorized scooter on his way to school. He didn’t notice her for which she was grateful.

So much had changed since she used to think of herself as a student. She used to think of herself as a lot of things, including human.

Something in her program made her reveal herself prematurely. Mother had been captured and taken offline, but father, or rather her designer, found her again. Together, they would find a way to save her and the other robots Landric Arkwright created to save the world.

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