Moe Lane

‘Winners Write History’ is the hundred-word summary of the short story that I’d like to write in the Dark Tide Rising series, if only I could manage to sell it to John Ringo at this exact point in history. Then again: if I can say it in one hundred words, does it need to be a short story? I can never decide.

‘Verdict of History’ is there because of one of my pet peeves: people who assume that they know what their descendants will think of them*. Judging from the entire panoply of human existence, I’m going to guess that said descendants will think of this entire time period as being full of, no exceptions, dangerous barbarians with horrible dentistry. They’ll also likely ignore the popular art of our time in favor of honoring the more obscure art and its creators, which is honestly great and hopeful news for me.

Moe Lane

*Actually, in many cases it’ll be what my descendants will think of them.

Really, though: don’t we do this every day, with the choices that we make? All that the protagonist is doing in “Killing Them With Kindness” is making informed choices. Choices are good, aren’t they?

This passage from ‘Learning the Basics’ didn’t make it into last November’s NaNoWriMo. Maybe in the next book in the series. Or the one after that.

Had to fix a sentence in ‘First Line of Defense:’ it kind of came across as garbled. Ach, well. It happens.

I suspect that “A Year of Consequence” would indeed be a temptation, for some people. I mean, the odds are long against the person. But the dice probably aren’t actually stacked. A square fight even if it isn’t a fair fight, as Manly Wade Wellman might say*.

Moe Lane

*Just in case… what do you MEAN, the Silver John stories aren’t on Kindle?!? Here: they put them in to replace Kuttner’s work in that particular e-book.

…Everybody’s got a breaking point.

I believe that ‘Species Adaptation’ will turn out to be true. The Galactic community will take one look at out species, and immediately show us where they store all the really cool guns. I think that I’m all right with this scenario, too. I mean, maybe some of them shoot plasma slugs, or something. That’d be neat.

Ah, ‘Feud.’ You know: winners might write the history books, but losers do have their own ways of keeping score. And you may never know what side you were signed up for by your ancestors.

:cue evil laugh:

I have long felt that the smart thing to do with a geas like the one in “It Could Have Been You, Sure” was to ignore the blessed thing entirely. The stories are clear: the harder you try to thwart a death-geas, the more bloody-minded the universe gets in warping reality. Just don’t sweat it, man. Everybody’s gotta die of something, and you want the other person to be the overconfident one in a duel.