Category: Books

Assault on Malstorm Base – Chapter 1.

Assault on Malstorm Base C1 – Google Docs

I want to start putting up snippets from this book on this website, because I’m trying to write  said book and everything — but if I want people to follow along, you’re going to at least need the first chapter.  Chapter 2, by the way, is undoubtedly going to be this month’s Patreon ‘short story.’ I figure that they won’t mind.

Free flash fiction at my Patreon!

Called The Lilies on the Table.  It was written for some magazine’s monthly theme, and if I had realized before I had written it that they weren’t going to give the professional courtesy of a rejection notice then frankly I wouldn’t have written it.  There’s such a thing as common politeness.  but, hey: their loss is your gain.

As always: tell your friends.

Book of the Week: A Just Determination.

A Just Determination is the first in Jack Campbell’s ‘JAG in Space’ series, and I held out for as long as I could. I really and truly did.  But eventually I was going to succumb.

I’ll update the sidebar tomorrow.  Bad Internet connection here.  Like, really bad. This post has had it blow up three times already.

RIP, Tom Wolfe.

Tom Wolfe was 87, and one of the best writers of my time. Everybody’s going to be talking about The Right Stuff or his later works, but I always had a fondness for From Bauhaus to Our House. Wolfe made modern architecture fascinating; or, rather, he helped people understand why it was fascinating.  Which is what nonfiction is supposed to do.

My prayers and good wishes to his family and loved ones.

Book of the Week: “The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.”

This is one of the speculative choices: Neal Stephenson’s and Nicole Galland’s “The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.” is one of those that I’ve been meaning to read, and I finally decided to bite the bullet. It’s supposed to be weird, post-whatever, and very… Neal Stephenson. I’ll let you know what I think of it.

And so, adieu to Uncharted.

Marvel thinking of introducing Ms. Marvel after introducing Captain Marvel.

I have no idea if Ms. Marvel is going to be introduced in whatever Captain Marvel movie Marvel uses to reunite Mar-vell with Captain Marvel, assuming of course that Mar-Vell survives the upcoming Captain Marvel movie that Marvel’s releasing this year.  After all, Marvel having Mar-Vell die nobly will certainly help establish Captain Marvel’s heroic stature, but Marvel might want to keep him around for the next phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  Also left unsaid is whether Captain Marvel starts her Marvel movie as Ms. Marvel; if Captain Marvel does, then Marvel can have her become Captain Marvel when and if Mar-Vell sacrifices himself, thus allowing Ms. Marvel to become, well, Ms. Marvel because the name’s now free.

:pause:

And then there’s the Shazam movie.  Which has nothing to do with Sinbad. …Yeah, sorry about that.

Moe Lane

PS: I’d rather see Squirrel Girl first, obviously.

Book of the Week: Uncharted.

Uncharted is the first in the new Arcane America series by Kevin J Anderson and Sarah Hoyt, and it has proven to be most diverting.  As you might have guessed, it’s alternate history fantasy (magic returns in 1759 and promptly cuts off America from Europe), set in the early 1800s and telling of a somewhat different Lewis and Clark Expedition. I look forward to the upcoming books in the series, although I suspect that they’re going to be somewhat more violent than the inhabitants might suspect. Can’t say why without spoilers.

And so, adieu to Stark’s War.

…Wait. I have linked to Randall Garrett’s review in verse of The Caves of Steel, right?

Oh, good, I have.  But the old link’s dead.  Well, this one isn’t.

I have no proof as to what tune Randall Garrett wrote his verse review of The Caves of Steel to, but I use “She’ll Be Comin’ Around the Mountain When She Comes.”  It fits Garrett’s rhyme scheme, which sometimes seems designed pretty explicitly to piss off people who weren’t as good at writing light verse as he was.  Which is to say, virtually everybody who writes light verse. That man was a maddeningly good author.