Haunting Ice

ice

PHOTO PROMPT © Jennifer Pendergast

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Twelve-year-old Isabella used to resent having to spend two-weeks in January in Dad’s frozen cabin in the middle of nowhere. Two solid weeks of cold, gray suck.

She was in the mud room getting ready to go outside so Dad and step-mom could “try to make her a baby sibling.”

“Disgusting.”

She grabbed her skates. She would never use them again after she almost fell through the ice. Billy saved her just in time. Since then, she went to the pond to talk with Billy every day. He’d fallen through when he was her age. Now he’s the pond’s ghost.

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Inheritors

bishop ring

Artist illustration of a Bishop Ring space habitat. Image Credit: Neil Blevins – 2018

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Cornell Jackson’s hands were shaking as he and Administrator Rosa Mendez were forced at gunpoint to disable the alarms on the secure wing of the Achyuta ring’s top security facility in the spinward end of Rama City.

“I want to see it for myself. You said you had the answer.” Hunter Moran had been a Major in Perumal ring’s defense force, but that was before the biospheres of the first four Bishop’s rings started dying. Now he was a terrorist. No, that wasn’t fair. Cornell felt the same panic as he did, as everyone did. After over a hundred-and-fifty years of developing the five colony rings in orbit around Alpha Mensae, their biospheres started to collapse. Excess carbon dioxide was impossible to purge, food crops were dying, and oceans and lakes on each ring were developing toxic algae growths. In less than a decade, almost all life, especially human life, would go extinct and no one knew why…well, almost.

Moran and his military coalition from the other four rings arrived two weeks ago. They had overridden the automatic meteor guard, landed their shuttles along the rim spaceports, and declared Martial Law on the last viable ring.

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The “Quantum Leap” Sequel We Might Have Had

bell

Screenshot from the video “Unsolved Mysteries Of Quantum Leap With Donald P. Bellisario”

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I know I said I was done with the current incarnation of Quantum Leap and for very good reasons. If I want to watch the franchise, I’ll stick to the original, classic Quantum Leap starring Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell.

However, I was visiting Ars Technica for an entirely different reason and came across a video called Unsolved Mysteries: Unsolved Mysteries of Quantum Leap with Donald P. Bellisario. If you didn’t know, Bellisario has created a number of terrific TV shows including the aforementioned Quantum Leap (and even is involved in it’s current expression).

The current show debuted on NBC on September 19, 2022, but this video was released on May 25, 2021, almost sixteen months before the Raymond Lee, Caitlin Bassett, and Ernie Hudson led program. What Bellisario said in the video makes it seem as if he had no knowledge that another show, a sort of sequel, would be created. Maybe he said all these things before he was approached, or maybe the Ars Technica video was made well before it was released.

The video was edited to make it appear as if the super-computer Ziggy were interviewing Bellisario, and contains some interesting if not astonishing insights. I’ll relate some of the questions and answers but you can watch the entire interview (see below) for complete details.

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My Short Story “I Don’t Want To Be Human” to be Published

spring into scifi

Screenshot from Facebook

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My science fiction short story “I Don’t Want To Be Human” has been accepted by Cloaked Press for their 2024 edition of Spring Into SciFi. I have stories published in a number of “Cloaked” anthologies over the past several years and am excited to be part of their latest project.

“I Don’t Want To Be Human” is both an atypical exploration into the “intent” of Artificial Intelligence, and turning the common trope of robots and androids wanting to be more human on its head.

Here’s a small sample of the story:

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Not a Good Place to Die

susan

PHOTO PROMPT © Susan Rouchard

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I’ve been looking for a good place to die but this isn’t it. Just some French town, another bunch of tourists, and pigeons shitting all over the street.

At least it’s warmer here than the last place I showed up. I don’t have a lot of control over what part of the planet I land or how long I stay. Sometimes nothing happens, and sometimes there’s an adventure or whatever you want to call it.

But I’m tired of the world and I want a final resting place. This isn’t it, so I guess I’ll stop by the macaron shop.

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This is NOT a Review of “Poor Things” (2023), but…

bella

Photo: Yorgos Lanthimos. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures – Emma Stone as Bella. Yeah, that’s an infant brain transplanted into a woman’s body.

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I’m sure I’ve heard about the movie Poor Things (2023) before. I guess I just wasn’t paying attention to how vile the plot was. I hadn’t given it a thought at all until I read the Bounding Into Comics article OPINION: Hollywood’s War On Men Is A War On Their Audience.

Poor Things…

is a 2023 science fantasy black comedy film directed by Yorgos Lanthimos and written by Tony McNamara. It is based on the 1992 novel by Alasdair Gray. The film stars Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Christopher Abbott, and Jerrod Carmichael.

According to Wikipedia (I know, I know), the plot goes…

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Night Justice

muddy waters

PHOTO PROMPT © Dale Rogerson

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They dragged her into the dank forest, foul water and mud clinging to her.

“You still believe that advocating for genocide is a matter of context?”

“There’s a difference between allowing hateful speech and advocating for the act of genocide.” She remained smug even as a prisoner.

He sneered. “There is no redemption for you. For the rest of your life, each night there is only the dream. Step beyond those trees. Tonight, you are Jüdin. The next, Nazi. Go.”

The woman slogged through the mud trembling with cold. There was a clearing beyond the trees and a sign. Auschwitz.

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Review of “Over Still Waters” by Ben Serna-Grey

over still waters

Cover art for “Over Still Waters” (2022)

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What am I supposed to say about Ben Serna-Grey’s very short book Over Still Waters? It was an impulse buy which I discovered when going over the recent publications of Starry Eyed Press (which has published a number of my short stories and novelettes).

Although I have it on my Kindle Fire, a paper version would contain only 48 pages, so I breezed through it last night before bed.

It tells the tale of Jaine, a music composer living in the Puget Sound area (interestingly enough, my daughter graduated from the University of Puget Sound). The story is set in the 22nd century and a century before, an event written in her family history occurred, one which involved the appearance of massive alien structures in the nearby waters. The aliens came, stayed for a while, and left.

Jaine was pregnant when she and her husband got into a car accident. Her husband was killed and she lost her unborn child. Events pick up sometime later as she has fallen into inactivity and apathy, no longer caring for the world or even her music.

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Review of “Bad Dog: Military Science Fiction Across A Holographic Multiverse” (2017)

bad dog

Cover art for Ashley Pollard’s 2017 book “Bad Dog”

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Yesterday, I finished reading Ashley R. Pollard’s book Bad Dog: Military Science Fiction Across A Holographic Multiverse. It’s book one in the Gate Walkers series.

I’m acquainted with Pollard on social media including her commenting periodically on this blog. Like so many other people I “know” on social media, I don’t remember how we connected in the first place. I was aware she was a science fiction author, so when I got the chance to buy and download this series onto my Kindle Fire, I jumped at it.

The protagonist is Sgt. Lara Tachikoma, senior NCO leading a group of Marines who go into combat wearing specialized “mech” suits called “Dogs.” The story is set in 2071 so although the Marine culture she operates in is very familiar to me (my son served in the USMC), she works for the Confederated States Marine Corps.

On board the CSN Hornet, the Marine contingent receives orders from CIA operative Anderson to rescue a group of mechanized Army soldiers who were lost in an area of Afghanistan a week ago. Also, if they just happen to encounter a strange magnetic anomaly, to investigate.

Yeah, it’s a setup.

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2023: Reviewing My Year in My Stories

2023

2023 – the year as it was.

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The new year is rapidly approaching and it’s time for me to take you back through my accomplishments of 2023. They are better than last year but not as good as the year before. Oh well.

Let’s start off with my SciFi short story “Fall of the Tower” my first tale of 2023 published in One-Way Ticket: A Science Fiction Anthology by Starry Eyed Press. I’d been trying to get some version of this story published for years and finally hit upon the right presentation.

I took the story’s title from the Biblical tale of the “Tower of Babel” found in Genesis 11:1-9. The story began with that Biblical quote, but the publisher replaced it because they do not want to represent any particular religious viewpoint. So it goes.

This was followed by my short story “The Price” featured in Fantastic Schools, Volume Six and is my second magical schools tale published for Wisecraft Publishing. I’m not a big fantasy or magic school writer, but I’m proud of the magical system and story I crafted here. There’s always a price for using magic and it’s typically blood. Sometimes it is life and even many lives.

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