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science fiction

Introducing Chronicle Worlds: Legacy Fleet

May 23, 2019 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

In the twenty-sixth century, mankind has discovered the secret of Chronicle Worlds Legacy Fleetinterstellar travel and colonized scores of worlds hundreds flight years from Earth. But in the 26th century, an alien race–a microbial collective known only as The Swarm–brutally attacked Earth and her colonies. Humanity barely survived and vowed to never let it happen again.

Now, 75 years later…it’s happening again. And Humanity has a lot to learn about the use of the word “never.” As the United Earth fleet loses its best and strongest ships to the Swarm onslaught, only the older Legacy Fleet ships and their experienced, driven commanders are up to the task of defending earth and her colonies.

This is the world of Legacy Fleet, a new anthology based on Nick Webb’s Legacy Fleet trilogy: Constitution, Warrior, and Victory, an amazingly popular  science fiction series. Into this universe comes Samuel Peralta, creator of the well-known Future Chronicles anthology series. Together, they’ve combined their writing talent and publishing experience to create a whole new treat: the Kindle World: Legacy Fleet series.

Links to this great work are here and in the sidebar. And it’s still at the launch price of .99 cents, but that won’t last forever. Enjoy!

Filed Under: Books, My projects, Publishing, Reader Advisory, Sci-Fi, Small press, Writing Tagged With: Future Chronicles, Legacy Fleet, science fiction, space opera, spaceships, speculative fiction

Introducing Chronicle Worlds: Feyland

June 29, 2016 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

Chronicle Worlds Feyland CoverImagine if you will, a world of the future. A world where rich kids are chipped to run automated houses and fly in grav-powered limos while poor kids watch their families dissolve into poor health and struggle to manage the bare necessities. The only thing that brings these groups together is the VirtuMax corporation, an entertainment giant. Its newest hit is an immersive VR high fantasy game that is both addictive and incredibly popular.

But in this world, the veil between fantasy and mundane reality is beginning to shatter and admit the resurgent realm of the Fey. And they are looking to borrow whatever they must from the mortal world to maintain their existence.

Welcome to the world of Chronicle Worlds: Feyland, the latest installment of Samuel Peralta’s insanely popular Future Chronicles anthology series, and the first of his new Chronicle Worlds titles.

Chronicle Worlds: Feyland brings stories from leading authors to the crossroads where individual imagination and gamer sensibility meets author Anthea Sharp’s USA Today best selling Feyland series of YA fantasy books.

Twelve authors contributed to this volume, and every one of them brought exceptional story telling and skills and gamer sensibilities with them into the project. A brief rundown of the work is as follows:

“MeadowRue,” by Joseph Robert Lewis takes the story of an existing Feyland character: a de facto sea hag who must deal with a human girl who has courage and honor on the brain; “The Skeptic” by Lindsay Edmunds, shows how seeking to quantify the impossible but true can bite you on the butt. “The Sword of Atui” by Eric Kent Edstrom felt like a particularly gruesome episode of Sword Art Online, complete with server hacks and apparent game master cameos. “The Huntsman and the Old Fox” by Brigid Collins reminded me of my own experience as a parent gaming with a gaggle of teens and tweens.

“Unicorn Magic,” by Roz Marshal manages to take the story of a girl’s love for her horse and make it both gripping and uplifting.

My own contribution, “The City of Iron and Light,” tells the story of Sabine Jade, a lonely teen who has no idea just how far down the rabbit hole goes…but harbors a burning need to find out.

“The Gossamer Shard” by Dave Adams, shows what the World of Tanks might be like if its players blundered into the Unseelie realm; “The Glitchy Goblin” by K.J. Colt is a dark little tale of broken promises and crushed dreams that will actually make you feel for the goblins (no small task). In comparison, “On Guard” by Deb Logan, is the essence of the short story form: compact, compelling, and utterly without wasted words.

The two final selections, “An Artist’s Instinct,” by Andrea Luhman, and “Brea’s Tale: Passage,” by Anthea Sharp, share a mystical quality of presence. Both tell a story of a young woman struggling to transform herself into something new, but take very different approaches in the hows and whys. Read both back to back and you’ll see what I mean. In fact, you should real this entire book in order, front to back. Leave nothing out. Trust me.

But I think my favorite tale from this volume is “Tech Support” by James T. Wood. Consider: Ranjeet Nagar of Kochi, India is a young man with a strong work ethic and a family to support. He works as a tech support jock for VirtuMax, walking players of Feyland through their technical issues. Ranjeet is a compulsive puzzle solver and some of the wackier calls coming over the phone lately have got his creative juices running wild. But there are problems at work: his job is in danger of vanishing, the crazy calls describe things that cannot exist in the game, and Ranjeet cannot afford a proper VR set so he can’t even log into the game to see the weirdness for himself.

All that becomes irrelevant when Ranjeet finds a woman on the street being attacked by the same demons reported by players. Utterly disregarding his safety and prospects, Ranjeet enlists the help of a co-worker and his ex-fiance, who does have a full-D VR set and is an expert player, to track down the source of the incursions and set things right.

I think in several respects “Tech Support” is the most ambitious story in this set. It takes place entirely in India, flips the dominant theme of player vs game on its head, and manages to maintain a convincing level of engagement and suspense from the first sentence to the last.

That said–and the only thing really left to say here–is that at a launch price of .99 cents, and fifteen solid entries into the world of anthology fiction, Future Chronicles creator Samual Peralta and Feyland owner Anthea Sharp have created something genuinely new and compelling. Fans of gamerpunk, high fantasy, and science fiction will all have something to enjoy here.

Available Now

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Filed Under: Books, Free Press, Library Resources, My projects, Nerd Alert, Publishing, Reader Advisory, Sci-Fi, Small press, Writing Tagged With: anthologies, Chronicle Worlds Feyland, fantasy, Future Chronicles, gamerpunk, science fiction, shared universes, short fiction, short stories

Reader’s Advisory: Star Wars: Aftermath

September 22, 2015 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

 

Aftermath cover
Nothing ever ends
I don’t generally read Star Wars novels.

I read and loved Alan Dean Foster’s Splinter of the Mind’s Eye and Brian Daley’s Han Solo at Star’s End decades ago because they were on the book store shelves and the shiny newness of the Star Wars films sparkled and glittered like the pyramids of Giza must have when they were completed. Plus, Foster had Vader, Luke, and Leia, and Daley had Han and Chewie, and both books added so much content to what at that time was a relatively narrow storyscape with enormous potential but little realization or growth.

Nearly forty years later, we stand at the other end of the spectrum. There is a shipping container full of stories dealing with the old school characters, the new school characters, their ancestors, their descendants, and so on. But I’m not really drawn to the novels as much as I was to those first releases. The stories are wonderful, but the shiny newness has long since worn off. I need a particular hook to pull a Star Wars (or  Star Trek) novel off the shelf and devote my time to it.

There have been two recently. The first was Death Star by James Luceno, a book I have literally been waiting for decades to read. The second was Aftermath by Chuck Wendig.

Disclosure: I’m a Wendig fan. I have been since I discovered Wendig’s Terrible Minds website. I own a bunch of his books on how to improve writing. I devoured Backbirds and Mockingbird in a few hours when they were still new. Under the Empyrean Sky is waiting for me on my Kindle account for a long enough break in my schedule for me to read the silly thing. So when I heard that he was doing the official (i.e., Disney-approved) book that told what happened after Return of the Jedi ended, I was on board.

I’ve read the book. I liked it. I don’t love it the way I loved Mind’s Eye and Star’s End. But I can’t quite figure out where the Wendig hate is coming from.

I’m not going to write a whole thing on the problems that established Star Wars fans have with Wendig. Author friend Will Swardstrom has already written one of those, and it’s excellent.

Still with me? Okay, here we go.

The Galactic Empire’s new and improved Death Star is gone, the Imperial Fleet is scattered across the galaxy, and Darth Vader and his master, Emperor Palpatine, are dead as well. The celebrations across Coruscant are in full force, and as one determined crowd of citizens manages to topple the statue of the emperor outside the senate, others pick up pieces of debris and start chucking them at nearby police. The incident escalates into a riot, police give way to stormtroopers, and the real shooting begins.

The empire is dead. Long live the empire.

Wedge Antilles jumps his starhopper into the Akiva system, followed and captured by Admiral Rae Sloane. Sloane has other ships with her Star Destroyer task force, including the Ravager, the last Super Star Destroyer in operating condition. Sloane’s plan is to gather other high-ranking imperials–politicians, bankers, merchants, and officers–to her, and band together to form the backbone of the new and improved Galactic Empire.

But a lot is happening on Akiva. Bounty Hunter Jas Emari is looking to fulfill contracts on the same banker that Sloane is working on. Ex-Imperial Loyalty Officer Sinjir Rath Velus is looking to keep his head down–he’s painfully aware that his side lost–but neither of them can avoid Akiva’s worst loan shark, Surat Nuat. Rebel fighter pilot Norra Wexley is finally home after three years of battle–including the over Endor–to gather her son, Temmin, and escape to calmer placed. But Temmin has plans of his own which do not include leaving the planet he calls home. And Surat Nuat has plans of his own for Temmin and they don’t include Norra or her new friends.

Wedge is missed and Admiral “It’s a Trap!” Ackbar knows where he was last seen. While Akiva’s surface lends itself to politics, gang wars, treachery, wild high-speed escapes, and acts bravery, the space above it becomes the point of contention between Sloane’s and Ackbar’s space fleets.

Meanwhile, hell breaks loose throughout the galaxy as survivors of the decades-long civil war realize that the conflict hasn’t ended for them as much as it has entered a new phase. A longer and more dangerous phase. The imperials struggle to maintain a semblance of control as the politicians on Coruscant tries to re-establish the senate and turn the New Republic into an official galactic government.

Aftermath is a rare book in that it openly and immediately acknowledges that the Empire and the New Republic are really two sides of the same coin. Empire and republic are two words that refer to roughly the same thing: power and organization. The connotations are abstract: rule by force, versus rule by self-determination. Control itself is beyond question. But the films, old and new, gloss over the infrastructure, the nuts and bolts that keep the galaxy revolving on its axis except when our heroes blunder into them. It’s easy to assume that the Star Wars universe begins and ends with awesome space battles. It’s a lot more work to imagine the millions of pilots, engineers, miners, industrialists, bankers, soldiers, laborers, etc., whose time, energy and investment made those space battles possible or influenced their outcome. And we all knew the rebels would win because that was the story the George Lucas wanted to tell. Wendig’s narrative is far more ambiguous.

The frame that’s used here is almost apocalyptic: the people in charge are are dead, but the machine cranks on. All the trappings of the official economy are still in order. The factories build parts for ships and weapons that still come off assembly lines, letters of credit still clear banks, construction firms still lobby for contracts, and the legerdemain of politics continues unabated. Below that is the shadow economy, composed of bounty hunters, mercenaries, information brokers, pirates, informants, and outright criminals. The thing that Wendig remembers is that both sides needed all these elements to keep their part of the conflict alive. In that respect, little has changed except the stakes and the players.

Beyond that, Aftermath is very much the first work of an extended story. Wendig is setting up future conflict and continuity, showing us the shape of his story arc, and this arc is wide indeed. It has many moving parts, all of which carry considerable history with them as they appear on stage.

I’m looking forward to seeing what he does with it.

 

Filed Under: Books, Reader Advisory, Sci-Fi, Writing Tagged With: Reader's Advisory, science fiction, Star Wars

Reader’s Advisory: The Immortality Chronicles

September 4, 2015 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

It’s a deceptively simple bit of wordcraft: you take the word “mortal,” stick a two letter prefix on it, and you get a word which raises a dizzying variety of possibility. Mortality is every bit as metaphysical a concept as the human race has managed to conceive. What is it to be alive? What does it mean to die? And what does it really mean to be immortal?

Immortality Chronicles Cover
Who Wants to Live Forever?

Samuel Peralta decided to find out. His latest addition to his Future Chronicles series is out today, titled (no surprise) The Immortality Chronicles. It’s a staggeringly diverse collection of short works about the concept of life-without-death.

Many of these stories focus on an individual who’s rendered non-dying, but some apply the concept more broadly: D.K. Cassidy’s “Room 42,” and Thomas Robbins’ “Eternity Today” are riffs on the entire human race’s sudden conversion to undying status. E.E. Giorgi’s heart-wrenching story “The House on the Cliff” tells of a man made immortal by means of his own cancer cells. “Legacy,” by David Bruns, describes a driven CEO’s effort to live forever by replacing himself with bionic parts over the course of centuries. “Rememorations,” by Paul B. Kohler limits his protagonist’s immortal status to his ability to pay for it–and his willingness to forget pieces of his past. And John Gregory Hancock’s “The Antares Cigar Shoppe” stood out for the old school A.E. Van Vogt vibe that it brought to the table.

But the award for Most Unintentionally Horrifying Story About Immortality has to go to Gareth Foy, who penned “The Essence of Jaime’s Father.” This piece manages to be the most abstract yet gut-wrenching bit of work in this volume, and I’m not entirely sure how Foy pulled it off. I’m not even sure he intended to do this. All I know is that this story opened up a pit of despair in my soul that I generally only feel when engaged in Facebook discussions about religion and foreign policy.

In a nutshell,  Jaime is a young man experiencing the beginning of Earth’ death throes, as the sun expands to swallow the inner solar system. Science has bought the Earth a few extra thousand years, but red giants are inevitable and physics is a harsh mistress.  His father, however, has an answer: convert humanity to beings of pure energy and let them wander the universe until time itself grinds to a halt. Jaime and billions of others are looking forward to this, but Jaime’s father has decided not to go through with the transition. Not because he’s afraid of his project’s implications, but because he feels the need to stay behind to let those who fear a permanent existence know that death is still possible in that state. Eventually we learn that Jaime’s old man has already done this countless times, and has lived through countless versions of the universe.

That’s where I started freaking out. Of the great stories in this collection, Foy’s is the only one that addresses the utter tedium of watching the universe roll out, expand, breed life, destroy life, and collapse, over and over again. Worse, every time the cycle resets, it’s the same universe unrolling in the same way, right down to the people who are born (and die), and the order in which they appear and vanish back to the dust whence they came. It’s like being trapped in a drive-in movie theater with the same four double-features forever. Sure, it’ll take a while to memorize every line of every film, but eventually you’re going to want to slit your wrists, except you can’t because you’re made of pure energy.  (It works out in the end, but…Gah!)

The collection is available on Amazon and the proceeds go to First Book, a not-for-profit that has supplied over 130 million books to kids in the U.S. and Canada. As a librarian, I can think of no higher cause. And if you’re on Facebook, you can click here for an invite to the Immortality Chronicles launch party which starts tonight at 5.30pm EST.

 
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Filed Under: Books, Publishing, Reader Advisory, Sci-Fi, Science, Small press, Writing Tagged With: fiction, fucutre chronicles, immortality chronicles, science fiction

And Now, A Singularity!

August 25, 2015 by Jon Frater 1 Comment

Singularity 2

 

Legacy Human CoverThe Legacy Human by Susan Kay Quinn

What would you give to live forever? Seventeen-year-old Elijah Brighton wants to become an ascender—a post-Singularity human/machine hybrid—after all, they’re smarter, more enlightened, more compassionate, and above all, achingly beautiful. But Eli is a legacy human, preserved and cherished for his unaltered genetic code, just like the rainforest he paints. When a fugue state possesses him and creates great art, Eli miraculously lands a sponsor for the creative Olympics. If he could just master the fugue, he could take the gold and win the right to ascend, bringing everything he’s yearned for within reach… including his beautiful ascender patron. But once Eli arrives at the Games, he finds the ascenders are playing games of their own. Everything he knows about the ascenders and the legacies they keep starts to unravel… until he’s running for his life and wondering who he truly is.

The Legacy Human is the first in Susan Kaye Quinn’s new young adult science fiction series that explores the intersection of mind, body, and soul in a post-Singularity world… and how technology will challenge us to remember what it means to be human.

Amazon

Praise for The Legacy Human

“This book is Hunger Games (without the violence or controversy) meets Divergent.”

“This story is so intense I felt I couldn’t get a proper breath.”

“Science fiction with philosophical depth!”

 

 

Duality BridgeThe Duality Bridge

What does it mean to be human? Elijah Brighton is the face of the Human Resistance Movement. He’s the Olympic-level painter who refused an offer of immortality from the ascenders—the human/machine hybrids who run the world—in solidarity with the legacy humans who will never get a chance to live forever. Too bad it’s all a complicated web of lies. Worse, Eli’s not even entirely human. Few know about the ascenders’ genetic experiments that left him… different. Fewer know about the unearthly fugue state that creates his transcendent art—as well as a bridge that lets him speak to the dead. But the Resistance is the one place he can hide from the ascender who knows everything the fugue can do. Because if Marcus finds him, he’ll either use Eli for his own nefarious purposes… or destroy him once and for all. The Duality Bridge is the second book in the Singularity series and the sequel to The Legacy Human. This thrilling new young adult science fiction series explores the intersection of mind, body, and soul in a post-Singularity world.

Amazon

 

SusanAuthor Susan Kay Quinn

Susan Kaye Quinn is the author of the Singularity Series, the bestselling Mindjack Trilogy, and the Debt Collector serial, as well as other speculative fiction novels and short stories. Her work has appeared in the Synchronic anthology, the Telepath Chronicles, the AI Chronicles, and has been optioned for Virtual Reality by Immersive Entertainment. Former rocket scientist, now she invents mind powers, dabbles in steampunk, and dreams of the Singularity. Mostly she sits around in her PJs in awe that she gets to write full time.

Website * Facebook * Twitter

 

legacy human

 

$25 Blog Tour giveaway

$25 Blog Tour Giveaway

$25 Amazon eGift Card or Paypal Cash

Ends 9/6/15

Open only to those who can legally enter, receive and use an Amazon.com eGift Card or Paypal Cash. Winning Entry will be verified prior to prize being awarded. No purchase necessary. You must be 18 or older to enter or have your parent enter for you. The winner will be chosen by rafflecopter and announced here as well as emailed and will have 48 hours to respond or a new winner will be chosen. This giveaway is in no way associated with Facebook, Twitter, Rafflecopter or any other entity unless otherwise specified. The number of eligible entries received determines the odds of winning. Giveaway was organized by Kathy from I Am A Reader and sponsored by the author. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED BY LAW.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Filed Under: Books, Nerd Alert, News & Announcements, Publishing, Reader Advisory, Sci-Fi, Small press, Writing Tagged With: Indy Publishing, science fiction, Singularity, writing

Last Chance for WEIRD Things

May 20, 2015 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

Remember last week when I told you about the Apocalypse Weird fund raiser?

Of course you do. You came here and read about it. Maybe you even clicked on the campaign link and donated. And you did these things because you care about brave new ideas in the world of fiction and about my willingness to be part of it.

So here we are, with 13 hours to go before Indiegogo closes the campaign, tallies up the numbers and your change to be part of something new and awesome disappears.

But . . .

If the campaign makes its goal, then Indiegogo will keep the clock running. That’s added time to donate in exchange for outstanding perks, a heartfelt “Thank you!”, and maybe some mention of the project and books to friends who like to read books about the world ending in wacky and outlandish ways.

So this is it, The Big Push. As I write this the campaign is 66% funded. Another $3,421 puts us over the edge and allows the process to continue, giving you access to perks long after the clock stops as well as many more months of outstanding books.

But for now, the clock is ticking . . .

 

awcountdown
Donation Clock of Doom Awaits!

 

[books_custom size=”150″ type=”random” custom_sort=”publisher” custom_sort_value=”Wonderment Media Incorporated”]

Filed Under: Books, My projects, Nerd Alert, Sci-Fi, Small press, Writing Tagged With: Apocalypse Weird, crowdfunding, science fiction

You Can Have WEIRD Things

May 13, 2015 by Jon Frater 1 Comment

(I know, I owe you a post about imagining the “death of the library.” But this is a big deal.)

I recently got into a Facebook thread with a former (now grown up) student over e-book pricing decisions. She’s an avid reader but refuses to buy any e-book that’s more than a dollar or two in price. It was nothing against the authors, or the books themselves, she explained. She just didn’t see why she should ever pay more than that for a book. Neither did her friends.

It’s a fair point, especially if all you’ve ever known about the experience of acquiring books is looking at price lists on Amazon and clicking a button. From the producer’s side of the transaction, it’s more complicated.

There’s the author, who creates a labor of love until the minute someone decides to click that yellow button that says “Buy”. There’s the editor, who toils over the manuscript to make it readable. Some editors will carve out whole chunks of text to achieve that, others will simply correct the grammar, spacing, and spelling, but the effort is the same.

There is the cover artist who brings a point of story from inside the pages of the manuscript into blazing life.

The point, as Kevin G. Summers makes clear here, is that books cost money to make. Considerable amounts of money. In the case of indie publishing, everyone except the author makes money, at least until he or she sells enough copies to recover the costs of the book in question. Speaking as someone who has just started down this road, it’s a steep learning curve.

Indy authors Nick Cole and Michael Bunker, and ThirdScribe creator Rob McClellan have made a thing, called Apocalypse Weird. I’ve mentioned it on Facebook and Twitter, and I’ve reviewed a bunch of the books they’ve released.

aw8-1024x785

To be blunt, they need money to keep the ball rolling, and have built an Indiegogo project to raise it. Three greats ways of donating stand out:

First, just drop a buck into the bucket. It makes no dent in your budget and still helps us out.

Second, you can drop a fiver into the bucket and get a neat perk.

Third–and my favorite option–$20 buys you the first eight AW novels, which have been getting rave reviews across the board for months. Or, for the same $20, you can pre-order the next eight AW novels in the series, which are sure to be every bit as good.

Sixteen outstanding works of End of the World fiction for $40. It doesn’t get better than that.

Actually–it does get better. There are plenty of awesome perks to choose from. But, the sale ends in 8 days, so check out the fund raiser to donate now!

[books_custom size=”150″ type=”random” custom_sort=”publisher” custom_sort_value=”Wonderment Media Incorporated”]

Filed Under: Books, Free Press, Library Resources, Publishing, Reader Advisory, Sci-Fi, Writing Tagged With: Apocalypse Weird, fiction, publishing, science fiction

Reader Advisory: AW: Medium Talent

April 14, 2015 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

 
Confession time: I just finished Forbes West’s addition to the AW universe, Medium Talent, and oh, does my head hurt. West has a Hemmingway thing going on, and it’s grizzly, ugly, and stressful to read. Forget the facts, the iceberg theory of writing, the Kilimanjaro stuff, or the Spanish civil war. Hell, forget about the old guy alone in the cabin with the shotgun on his lap. Forget all that, because if you don’t, you head will hurt, too.

Medium Talent is the tale of Key West survivors of a world-spanning hurricane three years earlier; the Supply Org (the AW version of FEMA) is the last bit of government around, which gives aid and comfort to the fortress fleet of the rich and powerful, while the denizens of the Florida Keys and most other places scratch what they can out of crappy local economies. Danger is ever present: if it’s not the Supply Org shaking you down, it’s the playboys on their armored yachts, or the sea monsters, or the zombies, or local thugs, or even the infected who are warehoused in the Depository.

Into this sub-tropical hell hole we meet Wendy Wicker, captain of the Medium Talent, who presents herself as a smuggler, artist, wife, adopted mother, and incredibly violent borderline sociopath. Somehow she is all these things, and yet, truly none of them. Trying to give you a linear picture of this distinctly non-linear world and story would be a hopeless gesture, but I can tell you the Wendy is far more complicated than she seems, she does meet Hemmingway back in 1934 Key West, and deep down she really does want to save the world. Or at least her little corner of it.

Anyway, the Hemmingway thing has its advantages; it creates a fascinating thread through a rollicking world that alternately confuses and makes perfect sense. It gets weird, but that’s sort of the name of the game, isn’t it?

Get The Book

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Filed Under: Books, Reader Advisory, Sci-Fi, Small press, Writing Tagged With: Apocalypse Weird, Key West, science fiction

Reader’s Advisory: AW: Phoenix Lights

March 31, 2015 by Jon Frater 1 Comment

Ezra Pound famously told writers to “make it new” even while others told them there was nothing new under the sun. Eric Tozzi has managed to do both with the latest addition to the Apocalypse Weird universe, the novel Phoenix Lights.

The title of the book is taken from the 1997 UFO sighting over Phoenix, Arizona and Tozzi uses this background as a springboard for his own world-shattering rendition of an alien invasion. In the text, super-secret lab resident Gage Slater is at odds with his sister, Kris, who deals with an apparent alien abduction by creating a UFO Busters show. In search of what? We don’t know–and neither does Kris or her crew, really–but in the end it doesn’t matter, as the aliens arrives in a massive city-sized ship and find them (and everyone else) first.

Gage and Kris re-connect in the ruins of Sedona, Arizona as they come across a blind musician named April Vargas, who has her own past and problems: in a world of literal blindness, she is able to see for the first time in her life, for a limited time. A much worse problem arives in the form of Vincent, who clearly knows more than he’s saying and has no one’s best interests at heart except his own.

Tozzi has set up a unique sandbox for the AW setting. Even though we get the standard setup of 88, Black Hand minions, and a band of survivors braving the end of everything, the story never seems hackneyed nor the events unnecessary. The action pulls us along on a road trip from hell and never lets up as we find out more about the aliens’ objectives and their reasons for arriving. There’s just enough real life setting to make the wackier potions of the drama seem like they could be possible, which is what good fiction does.

Bottom line is that Tozzi knows how to tell a good story and this book is too darned short. I’m waiting for his next installment and I’m curious to see if anyone will pick up the mantle of a second tier book in this particular setting. (We can hope.) In the meantime, we can buy this book and tell others about it. It’s that good.

 

Get The Book

 

[book size=”150″ slug=”apocalypse-weird-phoenix-lights” desc=”0″ purchase=”0″ notereviews=”0″ excerpt=”0″]

 

Filed Under: Books, Reader Advisory, Sci-Fi, Small press Tagged With: Aliens, Apocalypse Weird, Arizona, science fiction, UFO

Reader Advisory: Reversal

February 23, 2015 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

Have you ever had one of those days where things go wrong, and then instead of straightening out, they just  go wronger and wronger until everything you know is just completely screwed up? Sasha has one of those. She’s the heroine in Reversal, Jennifer Ellis’s contribution to the Apocalypse Weird universe. And boy, does she have problems.

Sasha Wood, a twenty-something meteorologist, has just landed her dream job as a research assistant at the International Polar Research Station. There are the usual pitfalls of dealing with new situations: co-workers who run the gamut from friendly to hostile, the painful isolation of living at the top of the world, and the weird fact that climate change seems to be, well, reversing itself. Her workplace crush on Soren Anderson, the station’s caretaker and survival expert, does not help. But after six months of dealing with the hostile environment, she feels that she’s managed well enough.

Then the arctic literally explodes as meteors rain down, blasting open methane pockets in the permafrost. Planes streak overhead to crash into nearby mountains while an apparently worldwide episode of mass blindness causes panic all over the globe and wreaks havoc inside the research station. Sasha and her co-workers manage to cope in the face of ice storms, but at the loss of half her team to the elements. As if that’s not enough, there are strange fog banks rising up from the methane craters which twist time and space to create passageways between the arctic and antarctic circles. To add to the fun, the magnetic poles are wonky, all communications with the outside world are down, and the only voice Sasha can get on the radio is a crazy woman who chatters about the imminent arrival of The Dragon. We won’t even discuss the supposedly dead volcano that’s violently erupting in the south pole.

If all this sounds confusing, it’s because confusion is the name of the game in Reversal. Jennifer Ellis has created a scenario that manages to be both claustrophobic and agoraphobic simultaneously. As we follow Sasha through her attempts to make sense of what’s going on around her, Ellis gives us small pieces of a massive puzzle one by one and trusts her readers to put them together in their heads. Some of Sasha’s co-workers are Black Hands either by design or last minute recruitment, and allies and enemies appear from the wastelands and disappear right back into them. (The penguins are relatively benign but the polar bears are literally out for blood.) There is one fixed point in the narrative: when the member of the 88 who goes by the name “Paul” (short for “Pollution”) lets her know that the world is ending and she has a chance to work for him. She refuses and navigates Hell on Ice in an attempt to save her life and Soren’s. As Ellis describes it, think The Thing meets The Core.

There are times when the narrative bogs down between the snowmobile chases and the blind treks through ice blizzards, especially as we’re constantly trying to figure who is working for which side (and I would have liked more polar bears). There are a few details that never get resolved–is the Dragon real or not, and where the heck is he, was one of my personal nitpicks–but the final result is a thoroughly enjoyable romp through Ellis’s environmental nightmares.

 

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The Apocalypse Arrives and It’s Weird

February 23, 2015 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

 
Today sees the launch of an ambitious new series from Nick Cole  and Michael Bunker, titled Apocalypse Weird. The concept is simple: the end of the world is very f-ing nigh and you have front row seats. Five novels drop today and join The Red King, Cole’s previously released work in this ‘verse: The Dark Knight by Nick Cole; Reversal, by Jennifer Ellis; The Serenity Strain by Chris Pourteau; Immunity, by E. E. Giorgi; and Texocalypse Now by Nick Cole and Michael Bunker.

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While shared universe series aren’t new (remember Bill Fawcett’s The Fleet? How about David Drake’s Crisis of Empire?), what makes the AW ‘verse unique is the fact that Cole and Bunker have  partnered with Rob McClellan’s ThirdScribe outfit to open the field to any and all contributors. So-called “Tier 3” authors are considered purveyors of AW fanfic. The stories are non-canonical, but they are also open to anyone who wants to publish them using the ThirdScribe platform. Readers vote on their favorite stories and well-received contributions get both the attention they deserve and perhaps a bit more.

The rules of the series are straightforward: in the not-too-distant-future (or past) a demonic mafia known as “The 88” have decided that they can’t sit around waiting for mankind to doom itself forever. Their solution: give homo sapiens a big push into the abyss. Their foot soldiers in this work are human servants known as “The Black Hand.” As civilization crashes and burns, individual actors, perpetrators, and survivors share talents, stories, actions, and supplies to manage their own little corners of the devastation. It’s up to each author to mix and match the mayhem according to his or her tastes and writing style. The results are brilliant, fresh, and exciting.

I’ve read Reversal and The Dark Night, and I’ll be posting reviews of those later today. But all five books are now up for grabs (and linked above). If what I’ve seen so far is any indication, this is the best apocalypse to come along in years.

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Filed Under: Books, Free Press, My projects, Sci-Fi, Writing Tagged With: Apocalypse Weird, fan fiction, fantasy, fiction, science fiction, shared universe

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