Category: Books

Reminder: If you’re not reading Sword Interval, you are probably making a poor life choice.

I dunno. Maybe there’s a good reason not to read a webcomic about monster hunters with guns in a world about to have a supernatural apocalypse. I can theoretically see why people might not feel like they’d be into that, but when such a theory comes into contact with the awesomeness that is Sword Interval it’s theory that has to give way. This is just a freaking solid webcomic, people. Benjamin Fleuter has a particular talent for worldbuilding; today’s comic in particular does “show, don’t tell” ,marvelously well. Check it out.

Moe Lane

PS: Also check out the dude’s Patreon. A buck a month is a small price to pay towards keeping this comic going. I certainly think so.

Looks like school’s open tomorrow!

I’ve had at least one of them home all day for a week. Between the trip, the vomiting, the holiday, the enforced day off, and the let’s-close-the-school-because-of-the-roads it’s been, ah, somewhat fraught.  But tomorrow they go back. For the whole day.  I could maybe write some more things.  I’ve got an idea for one that might fly with the revived Amazing Stories magazine. I just need some quiet time to work on it.

Ah, the wonders of vacations. At least, when you have kids.  And they’re good kids, too!

The Way It Went Down (Delta Green Kickstarter reward) now available.

One of the rewards for the Delta Green Kickstarter was The Way It Went Down, which is a collection of 33 short-short stories by Dennis Detwiller written in the Delta Green Cthulhu Mythos universe. Three bucks, candy if you’re a Delta Green enthusiast like myself.  I personally got distracted by the book and have been steadily chewing away at it for the last hour or so; your own mileage may vary, but if you were in on the Delta Green Kickstarter I think that you’d be getting it for free anyway.

So check it out.

Book of the Week: The Square Deal (Car Warriors #1).

A buddy on Twitter reminded me of David Drake’s The Square Deal (Car Warriors #1), which is indeed set in the Car Wars universe — and I don’t know why I’m on a Car Wars kick this week, either. I just… am?  It happens, sometimes. Anyway, I’ve never actually read it but the reviews are pretty solid and, well, David Drake, right? Given that it’s six bucks, just how much worse off am I for grabbing it?

And so, adieu to whatever I picked while I was on vacation.  I gotta get a proper laptop for traveling. Or even an updated Chromebook.

Book of the Week: Fahrenheit 451.

Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is not necessarily the Absolutely Important Work that it’s been portrayed — as I’ve noted earlier, I have a higher opinion of people than Bradbury did — but it does have some interesting things to say about censorship.  Particularly to people who don’t realize that they’re being censorious.  Plus, you can get all his books on Kindle now.

Will get around to updating the sidebar tomorrow. Chromebook, bedtime, and beer all conspire against me. So it goes — no, wait, that’s Vonnegut.

Mysterion is open for submissions.

Mysterion is looking for “original Christian-themed speculative fiction stories of up to 8,000 words” (their submissions guidelines says that they’ll take reprints, though).  If you’ve got one of those, I sincerely suggest that you submit it before the January 31st deadline.  90% of success is just showing up, and all that.

Moe Lane

PS: As it happens, I had a story about Catholic priest monster strike teams, so yeah, I submitted something.

In the Mail: Dark State.

Come, I will conceal nothing from you: part of the amusement value in reading Charlie Stross is in seeing him struggle manfully to get out of the hole that his typically overconfident (and typically off-kilter) predictions of the future has gotten him into.  Stross is an excellent writer, so he can typically can give it the old college try, and I can’t wait for the next Laundry novel, given that it was written in response to a particularly horrifying (for him) double-whammy by objective reality. As I think that I’ve noted in the past, reading Stross these days is like reading Lovecraft’s The Horror at Red Hook; I understand that he’s legitimately terrified, but it’s at things that simply don’t scare me in the same way, or sometimes at all. Continue reading In the Mail: Dark State.

Book of the Week: “With The Lightnings.”

Truth be told, With The Lightnings — David Drake’s first entry in the Leary-Mundy space opera series — is available for free.  But it’s still a fun series, not least because Drake has no intention of producing a happy-shiny spacefaring culture that has learned to get beyond those things that divide us and all the other anodyne proclamations. Nope! Leary and Mundy work for a star nation that can be rather obnoxious at times, amazingly culturally chauvinistic, and often cheerfully indifferent to corruption and the two don’t try to do anything about that. And why should they care about the way this might come across to their distant ancestors (i.e., us)? We’re practically barbarians ourselves!  I don’t know if I’d want to read nothing else besides this series, but it usually serves as a decent bracer.

And so, adieu to Silverlock.

In The E-Mail: David Drake’s ‘Though Hell Should Bar The Way.’

Though Hell Should Bar The Way is David Drake’s latest entry in the Leary/Mundy series; it’s also an EARC, because as usual Baen is wise to assume that I’m willing to pay hardcover prices to read certain books a few months early. For those unfamiliar with the setting: space navy combat in a far-future where the heroes are much nicer than the star nation that they work for, which is likewise much nicer than the other star nations out there, and David Drake is unsentimental generally when it comes to politics and statecraft.  It’s all very pre-Reform Act England mixed with the Roman Republic, and quite entertaining. Hence my buying it in EARC form.