Screen capture of the Zombie Pirate Publishing Facebook page.
That’s the challenge from Zombie Pirate Publishing. Actually Adam and Sam have given us less time than that since according to the JavaScript counter on their main page, I’ve got (as of this writing) just a hair over 5 days and 21 hours. So far I’ve hammered out 2,180 words, but the target word count is between 12,500 and 15,000, so I’ve got a bit of work to do, including plotting the story as I go along.
Promotional image for my short story “Joey” featured in the Zombie Pirate Publishing anthology “World War Four.”
World War Four, a science fiction anthology published by Zombie Pirate Publishing, features my short story “Joey” as well as a novelette by best-selling author Neal Asher. For the next four days, the ebook is 40% off its regular price at Amazon. This is a great time to download it to your kindle device and enjoy twenty outstanding SciFi tales of the war after World War Three.
© James Pyles
I’m continuing my slow review of the stories in the Zombie Pirate Publishing SciFi anthology World War Four (which also features my short story “Joey,” but right now, that’s beside the point). Today, I highlight Rich Rurshell’s tale “Subject: Galilee.”
Much of the symbolism echoes Christian themes, but Rurshell’s story takes place in the far future. A war is raging between two corporate factions, Liberty West which uses robotic warriors called “Romans,” and Zhang Industries’ human combatants. In between them and a village of peaceful people as well as defected soldiers, is the mysterious armored and cloaked being known as Galilee. He came out of no where, possesses enormous, almost god-like abilities, reprogramming the Roman machines to serve him, his armor all but invulnerable, and seems to be the savior that the world needs, that is until both corporations decide to make him a target.
© James Pyles
I’m continuing my slow review of the stories in the Zombie Pirate Publishing SciFi anthology World War Four (which also features my short story “Joey,” but right now, that’s beside the point). This evening, as I write this, I showcase the tale of Chinese fighter pilot Chen Fan’s mission to blow up a Russian fuel depot while being pursued by his arch-nemesis, Iraninov.
It reads pretty much like a standard aerial dogfight between to fighter pilots except the aircraft are really spacecraft capable of operating in atmosphere all the way down to the deck. Fan toggles between worrying about his plane’s damage, evading Iraninov’s attacks, and his moral consciousness at the imminent death of thousands of civilians, collateral damage of his mission, the latter a strange consideration for a hardened combat veteran.
Created at the imgflip meme generator
The fine folks at Superversive SF have honored me with a Signal Boost of the Zombie Pirate Publishing anthology World War Four which features my short story “Joey.” According to Urban Dictionary, a Signal Boost is:
Posting to a community forum (mailing list, social networking site, discussion board) in hopes of getting more attention for an event or cause. This is not the primary or first announcement, but rather one of many auxiliary posts or cross-posts to communities with individuals who are likely to take interest.
Click the LINK and please pass it along. Don’t forget the previous signal boost for Magical Reality which contains my short story “The Dragon’s Family.”
Oh and yes, L. Jagi Lamplight Wright, who wrote the signal boost, was the teacher of the online writing class I took last November.
Promotional image for the short story “Growing Flowers” by James Pyles featured in “Flash Fiction Addiction”
The folks at Zombie Pirate Publishing produced 101 promotional images, one for each story/author in the Flash Fiction Addiction. This one’s mine.
Scene from the 2014 military SciFi movie “Edge of Tomorrow” starring Tom Cruise
Once again, I decided to read and review a short story from the Zombie Pirate Publishing anthology World War Four (2019). My story “Joey” is included in the anthology, and on this blog, I’ve previously reviewed three of the other short stories (for obvious reasons, I can’t review them on Amazon).
Today we visit “The Package” by Brian MacGowan. It’s a military SciFi thriller describing the conflict between the fictional Northern Free States (NFS) and the United Alliance (UA), sort of a civil war scenario as far as I can tell.
An elite team of commandos, led by Sgt. Rick Harrington invades a UA stronghold because they have intel stating that previously stolen UA encryption codes are hidden in the facility. The op is to get in, get the codes, and then evac.
The military action and heroism depicted is first-rate, but I may have missed something in the story line. The codes were initially taken by an NFS ambassador over a year ago as the story starts. Harrington’s Hellhounds quickly find two things. The first is that there’s no human resistance at all as they enter, and the second is one nearly impenetrable security door that doesn’t have any right to be there.
© James Pyles
As you can see, my copy of Zombie Pirate Publishing‘s latest anthology “Flash Fiction Addiction” arrived, which features my short story “Growing Flowers,” a little steampunkish piece I originally crafted for an online writing challenge. I just found out today that for a limited time only. Amazon is offering US customers 20% discount on paperback copies of FFA, so get ’em while they last.
© James Pyles
© James Pyles
© James Pyles
First of all, I just got my copies of the Zombie Pirate Publishing SciFi Anthology World War Four in the mail today, which features my short story “Joey.” It’s terrific to be able to hold it in my hand, even though I’ve also been reading my digital copy.
The other exciting news for this morning, is that my short story “The Recall” has just been accepted for publication by Cloaked Press for their upcoming anthology “Spring Into SciFi 2019.” No details are available yet, but I’ll post them as they come in.
Good times.
Screenshot of twitter
Image found at NASA Spaceflight.com forums
“War Pig” was written by Gregg Cunningham, a fellow contributor to the Zombie Pirate Publishing anthology World War Four(2019). After reviewing Neal Asher’s Monitor Logan and Sam Phillips’ Cold Fusion, I thought I’d round things out with Cunningham’s story.
It does have to do with the fourth world war and an interplanetary battleship called a “war hog,” only this “hog” is also capable of time travel, which makes things kind of confusing.
We start out with our protagonist and a (more or less) sapient robot named a “Floyd” on the surface of a terraformed Moon thirty years into the war. The war hog has been destroyed and it looks like Commander Redux (although the highest rank he can ever remember is Sergeant) is just trying to survive. Then, through (apparently) a series of flashbacks, we see how Redux got into this mess in the first place, especially when a younger version of himself is put on trial by an older counterpart, and then the older Redux sacrifices his life so that the younger self can steal the war hog at an earlier point in history and try to fix whatever he got wrong.
