Author: photog

Well, Another Time

photog OCF, photog's Corner, Science Fiction / Fantasy , ,

What is it that science fiction readers (and writers) like about the genre?  Is it that we escape the bounds of the familiar?  Does it somehow excite us more if the villain shoots a laser, or a blaster at the hero instead of a 9mm?  If the hero is driving an FTL (faster than light) cruiser instead of a BMW does that add to the interest in what he thinks to himself?  If an android or a robot murders a politician instead of an antifa terrorist, does it make the killing more psychologically significant?

Maybe it’s the sense that we can get at the heart of things if we aren’t trapped in the ordinariness of the here and now.  If the bad guys have capture not just a subway train but the whole Milky Way galaxy maybe we feel like we are dealing more with absolutes.  Stark choices cry out for decisions.  In the face of real evil, we will have clarity.

Or maybe it’s just the desire for freedom.  Advanced technology provides the writer with mechanisms that simplify and clean up the story line.  If the writer has painted himself into a corner in his narrative there’s no need to re-write the problem.  Just pull out a heaping helping of unobtanium and leap over the obstacle with perfect ease.

Of course that can lead to some cheesy results.  Probably 90+% of time travel stories fall into this category.  By the end of the story the protagonist is busy murdering a dozen temporal versions of himself on his way to reclaim his life in the here and now.  Heinlein did his “All You Zombies” short story all those years back but I’ve never gotten on board with all that jazz.

Maybe the thing I like about it as a storyteller is the way it allows you to build the story outward.  You can start with a future world that has interplanetary travel and terra-forming and then at some critical juncture an alien race possessing FTL capability can show up and upend this whole fictional world.  Or maybe it’s a species that just floats through space at galactic rotational speed but can live indefinitely in vacuum and when it reaches a new solar system it infects these new worlds and eradicates all other forms of life and then moves on to spread to the next system.  Or maybe a small black hole is drifting into the solar system and will destroy the Earth and Sun unless some new force can be brought to bear against this irresistible force of nature.  Or, or, or…

Of course, the danger is in pulling too many rabbits out of your hat.  You can’t have small black holes, cosmic plagues and FTL aliens showing up all in the same week.  At least not respectably.  The days of the cliff hanger are long past their prime and unless you’re serializing your book by the chapter, surprise technology needs to be believable and can’t be hauled on stage just in the nick of time.

The reason for this topic is that I was just considering the other day a subplot where the underground technology that my protagonist possesses could accidentally discover a space ship that was buried deep beneath the surface of the Earth hundreds of millions of years ago.  It would allow me to add new facets to the story but I’m afraid it will complicate and confuse the story too much.  I think I will leave that for a later story in the same world.  But I have to confess it’s fun to toy with what can be done with that kind of addition.  It would be amazing.

Well, another time.

08FEB2025 – Quote of the Day

photog Quote of the Day ,

Sing a song of sixpence,

A pocket full of rye;

Four and twenty blackbirds,

Baked in a pie.

When the pie was opened,

The birds began to sing;

Wasn’t that a dainty dish,

To set before the king?

The king was in his counting-house,

Counting out his money;

The queen was in the parlour,

Eating bread and honey.

The maid was in the garden,

Hanging out the clothes.

There came a little blackbird,

And snapped off her nose.

Nursery Rhymes

Guest Contributor – ArthurinCali – 07FEB2025 – In the Moment

photog ArthurinCali, Current Events, Guest Contributors, Trump , ,

The optimist in me understands that Trump’s superpower is that the Left, Media, and others constantly underestimate the man’s intelligence and act as if he is a barely functioning special ed student. This impression is amplified by the sycophant news outlets that produce slanted coverage of practically everything the man does; from his policies to even what the man decides to eat for dinner.

Those of us who follow politics closely can recall from memory the litany of dishonest accounts of the man. Remember “Very fine people” and “Injecting Bleach” are still told as gospel. This doesn’t even begin to include the rumors and tall tales reported as truth.

FWIW, my take on the Gaza announcement is an orchestrated strategy with a plan that hasn’t been fully revealed yet. No, we aren’t going to see American boots on the ground in Gaza. (I pray we don’t) But there is something in the works behind the scenes that should play out in the coming months. I know, I know, it sounds a little too much like “Trust the Plan” thinking.

However, I have been blown away with what the incoming administration has done so far, especially after today when they threw down the gauntlet over the DOGE kid getting doxxed and attacked from the Left. Trump, JD, and Elon coming out and telling, well, the world really, that these cancelling tactics aren’t going to work was exactly what I voted for. Many of us on the Right are done with the past, watching scalps offered to the Leftist altar of morality with no chance of absolution or grace for the offenders.

“I refuse to cut one blade of grass for my enemies delight.”

The Left has long had their radicals and vanguard of folks within the Progressive coalition. Do they routinely perform purification rituals to placate and appease the Right? No.

Have a great weekend OCF

Sorry We’re Broke

photog Current Events, Trump , , ,

We live in interesting times.  And I mean that both ways.  Based on the fact that Donald Trump is performing surgery on Washington DC with a pry bar and a Sawzall there are lots of interesting facts coming out about the inner workings of the Deep State.  Apparently, most of the 30+ trillion-dollar national debt is based on various agencies including USAID using the Treasury as a credit card with no limit.  So yes, very interesting.  But then there’s the Chinese proverb that uses “interesting” times as a euphemism for disaster.  Well, we’ve got that too.  Our country is overrun with illegal aliens.  Almost all of the major cities are hotbeds of crime and poverty.  Nothing works the way it’s supposed to anymore and Joy Reid is still showing her face on television.

So, yes, there are still problems as far as the eye can see.  But it is impossible to deny that there is a change coming over our country and maybe our world.  The veil has been ripped away and it’s plain to see that people are tired of being lied to and bullied by “our betters.”  And suddenly the truth is busting out all over the place.  Even establishment hacks like Marco Rubio are talking about things that they would have been afraid to mention just a couple of years ago.  Democrats are shrieking about “our democracy” and racism but no one cares anymore.  The sacred cows are being investigated and they’re being found wanting.  Maybe fifty years ago when we had at least a budget process that was followed every year we could afford to pay for a few million dollars of subscriptions to Politico and the New York Times.  Sorry, we’re broke.  Cancel our subscriptions.  Maybe when the Soviet Union was pretending to be a world power, we could afford hundreds of billions of dollars to fund proxy wars in Ukraine or Afghanistan.  Sorry we’re broke.  Let Russia have Ukraine.  They’re the only ones who can even pronounce the names on each other’s maps.  Let them sort out their differences.  Maybe when there was blatant racial discrimination happening sixty years ago affirmative action might have been tolerated.  Sorry we’re broke.  We need everybody pulling their own weight again.  Do your best.

And all this candor is an amazing elixir.  It’s good for everything that ails you.  Giving things their true names and facing facts is the beginning of fixing all of the problems that have been created by “our betters.”  The sad thing is we can’t make them pay for all this ruin.  We’re still the ones who’ll have to do the hard work of digging ourselves out of this hole.  But the sooner we get started, the sooner we can put all of the madness behind us.  And without the DEI lies in school and everywhere else the young people will start understanding what’s real and what’s propaganda.  No more teachers telling them they’re a different “gender.”  Or girls being told they can be fire fighters or Navy Seals.  No more quota hires and no more affirmative action.  And best of all we may be seeing the end of the “girl boss,” both in the office and in superhero movies.  I can’t decide which I’m happier to see go.

So, yeah, we live in interesting times.  Trump and his band of marauders keep raising their sights and looking at bigger and bigger game.  It’s all very exciting.  Things that a year ago seemed impossible suddenly look doable.  Could a balanced budget be on the agenda for next year?  Maybe.  All the illegal aliens deported by 2026?  Sure.  Joy Reid on the unemployment line by Fourth of July?  Well, wishes can come true.

07FEB2025 – Quote of the Day

photog Quote of the Day ,

Oranges and lemons,

Say the bells of St. Clement’s.

You owe me five farthings,

Say the bells of St. Martin’s.

When will you pay me?

Say the bells at Old Bailey.

When I grow rich,

Say the bells at Shoreditch.

When will that be?

Say the bells of Stepney.

I do not know,

Says the great bell at Bow.

Here comes a candle to light you to bed,

And here comes a chopper to chop off your head!

Chip chop chip chop the last man is dead.

Nursery Rhymes

 

Update by Ed Brault

Missing the second line:
“Two sticks and an apple,
say the bells of Whitechapel”

At least that’s how I learned it, about 70 years ago…
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rel=”nofollow ugc”>Whitechapel_St._Mary’s_Church_after_the_fire_1880.jpg (382×500)

Fingers Crossed

photog Current Events, My Fiction, photog's Corner, Science Fiction / Fantasy , , ,

I’ve been following a minor drama going on between some science fiction authors about a new publisher called Ark Press.  Most of the controversy centers around whether this new publisher is being funded by billionaire Peter Thiel and whether he originally was trying to buy another publisher Baen Books.  Baen is almost the only science fiction publisher that isn’t horribly woke.  So, from my point of view, both Baen and Ark are both the best fit for publishers I would submit my Sniper novel to.  And that’s not to say I think either one would be a slam dunk to buy my book.  But I think they are the only traditional publishing choices that are even possible.

Eventually I found a YouTube video where the main editor of Ark Press (D.J. Butler) answers a bunch of questions about Ark Press and some misinformation about the relationship between Ark and Baen.

It’s quite long and probably not that interesting to anyone who’s not writing a non-woke science fiction novel.  But I was very excited to find out there are two possible publishers I can offer my book to.

But the more generally interesting thing about Ark Press is that someone like Thiel who is a pretty heavy hitter, is getting involved in publishing conservative science fiction books.  This is exactly what I’ve been bloviating about for ten years.  This is what Andrew Breitbart was talking about way back.  Culture is upstream of politics and we are completely shut out of the culture because the institutions (book publishers, record companies, movie studios) are 99% controlled by the Left.  Literally 99%.

Hearing that someone with extremely deep pockets is dipping his toes in genre publishing is miraculous.    It’s as if all the howling I’ve done in the wilderness wasn’t in vain.  And then there is the synergism.  Peter Thiel was the guy who turned JD Vance onto the Trump train.  And he’s an old friend of Elon Musk.  The two of them were start-up partners on PayPal.  If Thiel were to persuade Musk that some of his books were very popular with young adults maybe as a lark Musk might buy some broken down movie studio like Paramount or Warner Brothers for a song and strip it down like he did Twitter and make some movies that people actually want to see.  Just imagine.

As you can probably tell I’m pretty excited about all this stuff.  Of course, it will probably lead nowhere if the people running Ark and Baen can’t recognize the obvious genius displayed in my Sniper story.  But right now, it’s fun thinking about it both from a personal angle and from the larger considerations of the wider culture.  I mean, come on!  Every boy in America used to be a science fiction/fantasy fan.  Star Wars, Star Trek, The Lord of the Rings, Marvel, DC, you name it.  It took Disney and the girl bosses they hired a whole generation to kill that excitement with the awful female-centric drivel that currently passes for science fiction/fantasy.  It’s as obvious as daylight that if publishers and movie studios produced what boys used to pay to read and watch, boys would pay to read and watch it again.

So here we are.  At the dawn of a new golden age of science fiction publishing.  It can’t be a coincidence that it is happening just as Donald Trump has declared the beginning of the American “Golden Age.”  Well, I haven’t been using any booze or drugs so maybe there is a reasonable chance that some of this may resemble reality.  If not, it was fun thinking about.  Fingers crossed.