Tag Archives: scifi

“Tiamat Descending” Accepted into the Anthology “Spring Into SciFi”

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Cover art for the Cloaked Press anthology “Spring Into SciFi 2022”

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My SciFi short story “Tiamat Descending” has been accepted by Cloaked Press for the 2022 edition of their annual anthology Spring Into SciFi. I’ve proudly had stories published in this anthology series since 2019.

The cover displayed above will show the names of the contributors in its next iteration and the expected publication date is March 21st.

Here’s part of the official announcement on Facebook:

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69415

69415
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I suppose the number seems mysterious, but it’s born out of curiosity. I’ve written and submitted eleven short stories between December 2021 and today (February 11, 2022). One was already rejected, so I didn’t count it, but ten stories are still “in play,” still submitted and being considered.

Of those ten stories, the word count total is 69,415 words. A small novel basically.

So I thought I’d share a little bit of each of them. There’s no guarantee that any of them will be accepted for publication. But it’ll still be fun to share the first paragraph of each one in no particular order.

Story 9390

The Mahli war cruiser attacked the starship Raeb from below the system’s ecliptic plane, accelerating from behind a ring of asteroids where it was hiding to mask its waste heat. It took less than three seconds for their weapon to form a transitory miniature singularity. It distorted and then shredded major portions of the Raeb’s hull, exposing over half of the ship’s interior to space. But that would be the only shot they’d get.

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Review of Spider Robinson’s “Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon”

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

So I was having a discussion with my grandson, actually playing a game with him over the phone, and realized I needed a bar. That is, I needed a bar as one of the scenes for our game. Author Spider Robinson (apparently his given first name is a jealously guarded secret) wrote a collection of short stories in the late 1970s called Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon. I remembered reading it when it was first published and I remembered liking it, but that’s all. I had long since gotten rid of my original copy, so I bought the digital version.

After reading the first couple of short stories, I not only realized I had remembered this collection wrong, but found it was totally unsuitable for what I had in mind for the game with my grandson. I immediately set to work at creating my own “fantastical” saloon which, as of today, I also decided to incorporate in a short story I’ve just plotted out.

But that’s neither here nor there for this review.

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Book Review of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s “Children of Time”

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Cover art for “Children of Time”

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I decided to read and review Adrian Tchaikovsky’s SciFi novel Children of Time when someone on twitter called him one of the top three living science fiction writers in the world. Wow! That’s quite a testimony. I was curious if that statement was anything close to being accurate.

I asked another person on twitter what would be the best Tchaikovsky novel to start out with. He mentioned a book that is hard to get outside of the UK and then the “spider” tome I just finished.

There are three basic “voices.”

The first is Dr. Avrana Kern who is running an ambitious experiment. With Earth at the height of its technological civilization, we are terraforming exo-planets in the galaxy. Kern’s planet is to be populated with primates and then a nanovirus is supposed to be introduced that will rapidly accelerate their evolution. Another scientist is supposed to wait in stasis in an orbiting platform to periodically wake up and observe their progress.

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Book Review of Joe Haldeman’s “The Accidental Time Machine”

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Cover art for Joe Haldeman’s “The Accidental Time Machine”

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In going through my “Facebook memories” the other day, I found I’d posted a full review of Joe Haldeman’s 2008 SciFi novel The Accidental Time Machine way back in 2009. Haldeman is a highly acclaimed, award winning author, but while I enjoyed his earlier works some decades previously, this one made me decide to never read Haldeman again. Like so many other “science fiction luminaries,” not only do they disdain almost all people of faith, but in this case actively mock them. Read my views from thirteen years ago for more.

Surprise. I normally review books on actual and not fictional technology, but I came across the hardcopy version of this book at my local library and, having not read a Haldeman novel in a couple of decades, decided to revisit science fiction as one might revisit an old girlfriend. I wanted to see how much my interest in the genre and specifically Haldeman’s writing, had held up over time. I’m also kind of a sucker for time travel stories.

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My Own Copy of “Meteor Fall”

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© James Pyles

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It’s in my hands.

I’ve now got my own personal copy of the Cloaked Press anthology Meteor Fall: An Anthology of The Collective. It features two of my short stories, “Eden and the Starcat” and “The Sins of the Fathers and the Sons”

Here’s a brief description:

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Publications in 2021 and the Impending New Year

2021

© James Pyles

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I’ve noticed other indie authors doing this sort of thing, creating a graphic representation of the books and stories that were published in the past year. Sounded like an interesting idea, so I thought I’d give it a shot. I’ve already posted the graphic on social media, but thought I’d add some details for my blog readers.

Here’s a list of my publications from the beginning of 2021 to the end:

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Of Sales Rankings and Libraries

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Screenshot from Amazon

There are certain milestones that I think a lot of authors pay attention to. One of them I chronicled yesterday when I said that Time’s Abyss received 3 five-star reviews on Amazon and Ice had received it’s first five-star review.

Having also created a promotion for Ice where it can be downloaded to Kindle for free from now until Christmas created another interesting effect. It started “selling” much, much better (see image above-right). Well, it’s free and I have been telling everyone on every social media platform to which I belong about it, so why not? Still, it’s pretty satisfying.

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“Ice” is Available to Download for Free through Christmas

iceStarting midnight Pacific Time on December 21 through Christmas, my SciFi/Fantasy novella Ice will be free to download onto your kindle device. That’s right, just in time for the holidays, give yourself the gift of this unique tale of adventure on the high seas, of magic, science, and dinosaurs, or make it a present for a friend.

I first announced the release of this book at the beginning of the month and published an excerpt just a few days ago.

All that, plus I was interviewed on a podcast about “Ice”, Time’s Abyss, my two short stories published in the Meteor Fall anthology and other projects soon to come.

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