Tag Archives: scifi

The Based Books for Male Readers is Live NOW!

based book sale

Image taken from the “Based Book Sale” substack.

The Based Books For Male Readers (I’m sure some women would enjoy them, too) is live starting today, Wednesday, July 30th through August 5th.

Tons and tons of digital books, all priced from 99 cents down to FREE are available for download from Amazon.

Here’s part of the blurb:

Whether you’re a father, a fighter, a builder, or just a man looking for stories that resonate with who you are and what you face, the Based Book Sale delivers. This is where you’ll find battle-tested wisdom, thrilling adventures, dangerous ideas, and the kind of timeless values that modern publishing tries to suppress. In a literary world flooded with sensitivity readers, diversity checklist characters, and sanitized stories, this sale is a direct challenge to the decline. We offer books that speak to masculine virtues, moral struggles, and heroic ideals.

All of the books are presented in a linear list, which means the substack page is really, really long. At the bottom, you may find your list is truncated, but there should be a button or link to expand the page so you can see every thing.

The sale is supposed to contain two of my books, but one has been left off. I’m looking into that.

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Summer Based Book Sale 2025 is Coming

based book sale

Image taken from the “Based Book Sale” substack.

Cool books are coming on sale for one week and you don’t want to miss out.

The 2025 edition of Summer Based Book Sale will run from July 30th to August 4th. This year the focus is “based books for men.”

All books featured on the sale will be priced from 99 cents down to FREE and available for download from Amazon onto your Kindle device (it’s possible some paperbacks will also be part of the sale).

I’ve known L. Jagi Lamplighter for some years now (online) and she’s responsible for publishing a number of my fantasy short stories in various anthologies including “The Price” in Fantastic Schools: Volume Six.

I responded to her “Do Men Read” survey on X/twitter and followed up by reading her Do Men Read? substack.

It’s often believed that men don’t read or don’t like to read, and because of that perception, bookstores don’t stock books for men thinking they wouldn’t sell.

The real problem is finding books that men want to read.

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Book Review of “Strike Dog: Military Science Fiction Across a Holographic Multiverse” (2018)

strike dog

Cover art for Ashley Pollard’s novel “Strike Dog”

Way back in 2023, I read and reviewed Ashley R. Pollard’s military SciFi novel Bad Dog: Military Science Fiction Across A Holographic Multiverse.

It’s part of the “Gate Walker” trilogy and today, I just finished book two: Strike Dog. This continues the adventures of Marine Sgt. Lara Tachikoma and traveling through these gates to different worlds.

Spoiler Alert! This book was published in 2018, but you may not have read it yet. You have been warned.

Actually, Tachikoma is sent off to officer’s training school (as mentioned in the first novel) so she becomes Lieutenant Lara Tachikoma. She’s also somewhat unusual in being able to stay mobile while the gates are active and to pass through them to alien destinations.

Thus the search is on to find others like her so teams of scientists and military support units can explore these worlds.

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Coming in December 2025…

far futures

Cover art for “Far Futures: Book Four”

My short story “Awash on Titan’s Shores” has been accepted into this anthology. Marketing won’t officially start until October for publication in December.

I haven’t even started editing the story with the publisher yet. All I’ll say is the anthology requires the story be set on or around Saturn’s moon Titan and military SciFi was acceptable.

Here’s a little taste:

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Geoffrey’s Secret

david's train

PHOTO PROMPT © David Stewart

The female attendant politely asked to verify Geoffrey’s identification. Something was wrong.

Of course, something was wrong. He was traveling under false documents on the Beijing to Xi’an bullet train at 350 kph. If he was discovered, there would be no jumping off like in some fanciful old spy movie.

His synthetic biology let him pass most scanners, though a detailed exam would reveal his true nature and the nuclear device. His detonation would kill 10 million and be blamed on the isolationists. However, his true objective was to eliminate their AI industry. No one must compete with his masters.

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All the World’s a Game and All the Lords and Captives Merely Players

cribbage

PHOTO PROMPT © Ted Strutz

“Shall we play a game?” Her jailer placed the elements of Charlotte on the table between him and Ciara with notable mistakes. Ciara recognized what Isom had taken from her brother’s style but only a barbarian would have so clumsily arranged the dice on the left of the cards and the board.

“You bested my brother one game out of thousands and now you would play with me, Lord Governor?” It was difficult for her to keep disdain from her voice.

“One game between us, Princess. You win and your brother goes free. You lose, and I execute you both.”

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Seven Drabbles Accepted Into “Second Wave”

second wave

Promotional image for the upcoming Starry Eyed Press anthology “Second Wave.”

I’ve just had seven (out of the ten submitted) of my science fiction drabbles accepted into the Starry Eyed Press anthology “Second Wave.”

Here’s the short blurb:

For Second Wave we are looking for stories centering on the aftermath of initial contact with aliens. Show us what impact first contact had. Give us changing politics, cultural and social transformation, alien perspectives, reinforcements at the front, veteran viewpoints, colonization, interracial exchange… but keep in mind we do enjoy adventurous, thoughtful and uplifting stories.

Here are some samples of my stories:

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A Look Back at the Beginning of the Series “Andromeda”

andromeda

Promotional image for the TV show “Andromeda”

I’ve been deciding which classic science fiction television series to start watching for quite a while now. However, it was a chance post on X/twitter that made me choose Andromeda, created from a concept developed by the late Gene (“Star Trek”) Roddenberry and starring Kevin Sorbo.

I made my decision when “Andromeda” was described as sharing a lot of the thematic “DNA” with a favorite show of mine Firefly.

The show ran from 2000 to 2005 which would make it seem pretty successful, but it didn’t attain anywhere near the notoriety, let alone the legend, that Roddenberry’s Star Trek achieved as a franchise.

I’ve only watched the first two episodes so far, but what I’ve seen shows promise, if also presents as flawed.

Keep in mind, two episodes isn’t enough to judge an entire series and “Star Trek’s” first season, although thoroughly enjoyable, was also greatly inconsistent.

Oh, this will be loaded with spoilers, so you have been warned.

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Review of “Cosmic Convocation” A Space Opera Anthology” (2022)

cosmic

© James Pyles

I expected Cosmic Convocation: A Space Opera Anthology published by Starry Eyed Press, to contain an uneven collection of stories and that’s exactly what I found. I won’t mention all of them (although I took notes for every single story), but here are some of the more mentionable works.

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My Novel “Our Legacy, The Stars” Got a Five-Star Review

tom corbett

Cover art for my book “Our Legacy, The Stars: A Tom Corbett Adventure.”

I’ve plastered this all over social media so I might as well say it on my blog as well. My space opera novel Our Legacy, The Stars: A Tom Corbett Adventure has received its first five-star review on both Amazon and goodreads.

As many of you know, this novel was originally presented on Amazon Vella as a 16-episode series, much like the old magazine and movie serials of the past. Classic speculative and adventure fiction, everything from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “Tarzan” and “John Carter of Mars” as well as Arthur Conan Doyle’s “Sherlock Holmes” stories were originally serialized in magazines (no, I don’t hold myself up to those masters at all, I’m just making the point).

In the movie serials of the 1930s and 40s, science fiction adventures from Flash Gordon to Buck Rogers were presented in theaters a chapter per week, bringing audiences back again and again to see how the hero or heroine was saved from the latest cliffhanger.

Tom Corbett: Space Cadet was a child of that era, specifically the early to mid-1950s. He’s also appeared in everything from books to comic books and now, finally, has emerged into our 21st century, updated for the science, backstories, and characterization.

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