Tag Archives: aliens

Reminder: My short story “The Last Oasis of Mars” Appears in “High Tower Magazine” on Friday!

The Dazzler

© James Pyles

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Just a reminder, my steampunk, pulp fiction short story “The Last Oasis of Mars” will be featured in the premiere issue of High Tower Magazine on Friday, June 14th. If you click the link before then, there’s not much to see. Click Subscribe to subscribe to the new periodical. Clicking No, thanks takes you to more information. So far only the About page has any real content. After all, it’s just getting off the ground.

Speaking of which, here’s a short sample of my wee missive:

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Movie Review: “Arrival” (2016)

arrival

Promotional image for the 2016 film “Arrival.”

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I watched Arrival (2016) starring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner last night. I’m doing some research for a short story I’m writing and trying to talk to aliens is a big part of it.

The original novel and screenplay were written by Ted Chiang, whose name I recognized because I recently reviewed his short story anthology Exhalation. I didn’t like it very much, and I enjoyed the movie a lot better.

I should say I even recognized the name of director Denis Villeneuve and, having looked him up, realized it was from his work on Blade Runner 2049 (2017).

The movie isn’t fast paced at all, which makes sense if it’s written by Chiang. He has the sort of mind that loves solving puzzles and delving into intellectual mysteries, but not so much a lot of explosions and car (or spaceship) chases.

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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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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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Lights and Life

lights

PHOTO PROMPT © Liz Young

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“It’s about time you showed up.” Constanzie tried to sound annoyed but she was too happy to see them. She expected to search throughout this section of the galaxy for them, but they were hiding on the first planet she visited.

“My husband’s going to be very happy I found you. He’s been examining the fossils you’ve left behind for years.” Con thought wistfully about the quirky xeno-paleontologist she’d fallen in love with. “He’ll win a Nobel.”

Standing in the remote grassy field, she adjusted her recorder. “This won’t hurt a bit. I just need to take a few readings.”

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Book Review of “Pushing Ice” (2005)

pushing ice

Photo Credit: James Pyles

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It’s been over five years since I read and reviewed one of Alastair Reynolds’ books so I guess reviewing Pushing Ice is long overdue.

I actually keep a list of books I want to read. Which books I read and when depends somewhat on whether or not I can find them in my local public library system. I mean chances are, I’ll only read the book once (so many books, so little time), so I can hardly afford to buy them all (one wonders how people afford to buy all of the brand new SciFi books being put out just to be able to vote on them for the Hugos, Nebulas, or other much vaunted awards?).

This book started off slowly. I didn’t expect that. After all, in the beginning of the tale, humanity has moved out into the solar system, so much so, that they’re mining comets for ice (water). Then, to everyone’s shock, one of Saturn’s moons Janus breaks orbit and starts accelerating toward interstellar space. Turns out it wasn’t a moon at all but some sort of alien scout or observation post.

The people with all the money, the United Economic Entities (UEE) offers the closest ice mining ship, the Rockhopper, commanded by Bella Lind, a lot of money if it will chase, catch up to, and study Janus for the few days they can before the moon outruns them. After much angst and voting, they agree to. But that’s not the beginning of the story.

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The Galaxy Coloring Book

coloring

PHOTO PROMPT © Jennifer Pendergast

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I stoked the fireplace while contemplating the unusual coloring book I bought at the Flea Market last Sunday. I was referred to the vendor rather mysteriously. She suggested that I would find this particular book especially interesting.

I thought I’d reserved my “coloring between the lines” behavior for playing with my grandchildren, but this wasn’t a child’s plaything.

I had retired from my career in astronomy years back, but my childhood fascination with the universe never left me. If I colored the lines according to instructions, Earth’s gateway to a people and their far distant star would finally become known.

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My Book “The Aliens” Has Been Accepted Into the Starry Eyed Press Series “Galactic Treks”

featured author

Promotional image for the “Galactic Treks” series from Starry Eyed Press

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I’ve had a number of my works published by Starry Eyed Press before, but this one is different. A little while ago, they announced an open submission of a series called “Galactic Treks” The title is on purpose.

The general theme is “space opera,” but the word count can be anything from 5,000 up through novel length.

Wow. To be able to plot a story without worrying about exceeding a word count.

But that’s not all. Here are the specifics:

It should come as no surprise to hear that Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek franchise is one of the most endearing and enduring pieces of quality space opera in the world.

There was even a time, many years ago, when anybody was allowed to write a Star Trek novel and submit it to Simon and Shuster for review!

Sadly, those days are long gone and Paramount would prefer to work only with authors and writing staffs of their choosing in developing Star Trek novels, comics, episodes and films.

So where does that leave the rest of us aspiring Trek writers? We’re glad you asked.

The Galactic Treks line is your time to shine. We’re seeking novels, shorts and series that center on space exploration, optimism, a protagonist or a crew as members of something bigger (a fleet perhaps), and an emphasis on thinking one’s way to final resolve over simply blowing everything up.

So write a “Star Trek-type” story without literally writing Star Trek.

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Book Review of “Progress Report” by Roman Lando

progress report

Cover art for the novel “Progress Report”

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Author Roman Lando contacted me not too long ago and asked if I’d be willing to review his science fiction novel Progress Report. I said I was willing and he sent me a file compatible with my old Kindle Fire.

I was in the middle of another book at the time, but finally got a chance to dig into “Progress” starting a few days ago. In print form, it would be only 239 pages, so not a long read.

In broad strokes, the first and last third of the book is an action, adventure, techno-thriller involving an unlikely hero (patterned very much after the author) who is working with an alien and a covert agent to stop other aliens from starting World War III.

Unfortunately, in the middle third, there was a very long, expositional data dump along with a great deal of pseudo-science and psuedo-philosophy that took most of my interest away. Everything is told from the journal entries of the protagonist “Art” and Art is extremely “wordy.”

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“Spring Info SciFi 2022 Edition” is Here!

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My personal copy of Spring Into SciFi, 2022 Edition arrived in the mail today. It features my science fiction short story “Tiamat Descending.”

The “blurb” for my story says:

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