The Alternate Futures Podcast
The Alternate Futures podcast features interviews with indie science fiction creators where we discuss their work, the world, and anything in-between. while this mostly means authors, I’m open to indie science fiction creators using a wide range of media.
If you have any comments or would like to see me interview your favourite indie science fiction creator, feel free to contact me.
1.1 Introduction
In this episode, I introduce myself (Edwin Rydberg), my science fiction interests, and the structure of the podcast. I also share the first Revenge of the Muse story introduction.
Story Introduction: It’s a Wacky World
Listen to the podcast here.
It’s a Wacky World
by Edwin Rydberg
Johnny Starbuck kept hidden and tried to stay warm as he waited for an opening in the distant security system. Rolling Hills spread before him, gentle waves of magma from what was once an active volcano were covered by a thick white blanket that lay over the dead world.
There were no trees, no birds, no cute bunny rabbits leaving their distinctive footprints in the fresh snow. It might’ve been a skier’s as paradise, if anyone had been allowed to ski. Instead the entire planet was owned by TesserAct and interstellar mega Corp. That was in turn owned by trillionaire Timothy Spacely.
The Sprocket mogul had gotten rich creating a trans-spacial propulsion system that shortened interplanetary travel times from decades. to days. Hailed as hero- philanthropist by the media, he’d given away the blueprints for the propulsion system, hosting them on the galactic web for any and all to use as they would.
The blueprints included every detail, except how to make the key component. As the only supplier of the miracle Sprocket, Spacely became immensely wealthy selling it to all who could afford it. For some reason, all attempts to reverse engineer, it had failed in any attempt to discover the factory where they were manufactured had also been
unsuccessful.
Until now.
Laying prone. Johnny was wrapped warmly in a thermal suit. As he lay in case in a small amount of snow through the telescopic lens of his camera. He stared at what appeared to be a plasma cannon with low orbital range. That kind of defense system suggests that he was on the right path and thoughts of how much he could make selling the blueprints and the hidden factory below it, filled him with warmth. He lived like a king on his own planet with that kind of money.
Assuming he could get off this planet, when the time came.
It hadn’t been easy, finding transport to the private planet. Johnny had spent his time gathering information in seedy bars, backwater mining colonies, and even from Helio-wave surfers before finally hitching a ride aboard an ice transport and jettisoning to the surface in an escape capsule.
Getting off the planet was almost certainly going to be harder, but he’d cross that line when he came to it.
For now, it looked like he was finally in luck. As a gap had opened in the patrol pattern of the drones, patrolling the area. Johnny jumped up from his hiding spot and raced forward through the knee-deep snow, keeping a careful watch for the return of the patrols. What he didn’t expect was a cartoon character popping up in front of him.
It was a strange looking dog.
“Hey mister, you don’t belong here,” it said in a weird accent that sounded like half bark, half speech.
Johnny looked around, but couldn’t see any drones or anyone else who might be projecting the image.
“I don’t want any trouble,” he said, continuing to run forward, the dog turned and followed him.
“I’m ASTRO, the artificial security Targeted Response Option and you’d better stop,” it said, sounding more agitated.
The automated holographic warning had him concerned, but Johnny decided to continue on since there was no other evidence of security being alerted. Don’t go there, the dog said continuing to follow up, but otherwise not interfering.
As Johnny reached the plasma cannon, he saw an entrance portal, but almost immediately another cartoon appeared this one of a short, portly, balding, man.
“No, you can’t go in there. Go away.”
Spacely must have some sense of humor, thought Johnny reaching for the portal keypad.
“I warned you,” the cartoon man said before it pulled a laser pistol from its belt and pointed it at him.
Johnny didn’t know whether to laugh or run, but it didn’t matter because moments later he lay unconscious in the snow at the base of the hard light emitter, he’d mistaken for a plasma cannon.
Website: edwinhrydberg.com (alternatefutures.co.uk)
More insights on Edwin’s writing can be found at Author Insights on Indie Book Showcase.
Edwin: Welcome to the alternate futures podcast, where we chat with indie science fiction, creators about their work, the world, and anything in between. I’m your host, Edwin Rydberg. And for this first episode, I thought I’d introduced myself, my path to writing and a bit about the goals and structure of the podcast moving forward.
So I grew up in a small town in Northwestern, Ontario, Canada times were different back then. This was like the seventies as a long time ago, especially in rural Canada, we had one small cinema in the town and one channel on television. This was the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the national network a little bit like the British BBC, but a lot smaller.
Fortunately, all of this was enough for me to still watch, the original star Trek and to see the original star wars movies when they came out as an impressionable kid, for anyone like me at the time, and these were life changing experiences, seeing an epic space fantasy on the big screen with special effects that still for the most part hold up today was amazing. And it really ignited my interest in space and science and science fiction.
So I grew up with Star Wars and I’m one of the people who was heartbroken at the mess made of the sequels. I’m hoping that they’ll get back on track with that shortly. And it was because, you know, this is a. This was a story I grew up with and characters and a universe that was important to me as a, as a, someone interested in science fiction.
Anyway, on at risk of alienating, some of my other listeners I did see some of the Doctor Who episodes as a kid. We got some of the BBC feed on the Saturday mornings, but I never really could get into Doctor I always thought the aliens were kind of comically unrealistic and I did discover later this was intentional, but for me at the time it was, it was kind of a deal breaker.
In terms of science fiction books, my early influences were Asimov’s Foundation series the works of Arthur C. Clark, which formed the basis of a report I did in high school. Alan Dean foster, especially the PIP and Flink series as a kid. And then his Damned trilogy, then the Uplift War by David Brin should go without saying, I suppose that Aldous Huxley’s brave new world and George Orwell’s 1984 were among those as well.
Since then, I’m also discovered the classic works of Phillip K Dick and William Gibson, as well as authors like Richard Morgan, Ian M banks, Robert J. Sawyer, Tricia Sullivan, Lauren Bewkes, and Justine Robson to name a few. Despite this, my only attempt at writing science fiction in the early part of my life was a short comic book, that was a combination of James Bond and star wars that I wrote when I was 10.
After that I focused largely on science and research until the end of university and then majored in biochemistry. Great. But it was my overseas PO post-doctoral positions that kind of returned me to the path of right.
Initially I was the resident English speaking native. So, so my writing or writing related jobs were in regards to scientific articles, promotional pieces for sponsors and whatnot. But a friend I met there in my first position, turned me back on to science fiction writing. And with his permission, I wrote a short story featured on my website, which is titled Awaken from that Gentle Good Night, which has said in a world that he created.
During my next position in Italy, I want a Europe wide science writing contest where the goal was to write a short story that made a scientific concept accessible to the general public. And that made me think maybe I might have a bit of potential in this writing thing.
As it happens shortly after that there was a rapid series of light life-changing events. All of them positive, but life-changing nonetheless changed countries, got married, had a child, found myself as a stay at home dad and decided to give writing a more serious try, quickly realized I didn’t know what I was doing and that I needed others to learn from, so I joined writing.com.
I found this to be an exciting, vibrant community and I was writing and experimenting a lot while I was a member of the site. This inspired me to attempt my first NaNoWriMo national novel writing, month. And I succeeded in that one, which led me to finish three manuscripts in a year and a half. But then I changed direction and I started thinking that there were so many authors on writing.com that should be published, and this was the beginning of the, the self publishing era.
So I come up with the idea to, to sort of form a group, from the website of the volunteers and publish a science fiction anthology. And so we had some volunteer readers, volunteer editors, volunteer cover designers. And this, this basically birthed the Utility Fog Press and the name, as many of you probably know utility fog is well, basically, it’s a swarm of nannites a group of smaller entities that working together can create something more than themselves. And that, and that’s kind of my my outlook on life and working with others and whatnot. And that, and that’s also that that philosophy has shaped much of my direction forward.
We ended up publishing three anthologies altogether. Although two of them are only two of them are still available. Those are Farspace Two and Assassins’ Canon.
Then although I joined the writing group at the time you know, real world writing group and. And was part of that for most of the next decade. I still, I changed direction into digital art, which is kind of something I discovered during the creation of the anthologies. And I was in there for maybe as much as eight years into sort of that direction created how many pieces that I sold at science fiction conventions and including the most recently in the London, Worldcon in 2015.
And that experience really helped me develop in my creation of book covers interior designs for children’s picture books, which I commonly do now for authors through my facilitated self publishing imprint of quantum.press. Finally I did however, return to writing. I’m cleaning up those early books and getting them out there, which they should hopefully be out soon.
And also some of the other writing that I’ve done in the time and putting all that together into a, into a, basically an epic space science fiction, fantasy universe, essentially keeping in the vein of utility fog, however, I am also writing collaboratively with other authors on fun projects, through a campfire stories project I’ve started via Utility Fog Press and links for all of the, anything that I’m mentioning here will be available on the alternate futures.co.uk page. And the transcript of this episode, if you are interested in checking it out yourself.
My own interest when I’m writing science fiction is an exploring the human side of the story. Specifically how humanity and society will change as our technology becomes more powerful and invasive. You know, what, what issues will our future generations face that we can scarcely comprehend? As many of you are well aware, we’re starting to see some of those issues now.
And that’s kind of what I want to unwrap a little bit with some of the authors moving forward in the podcast series. You might, you might guess from some of my science fiction inspirations the foundation series, star wars, star Trek that, that I do like. The epic scale of many of these stories.
And it’s actually part of what keeps me from publishing more frequently as is my stories keep growing as I develop them, and I never really get to the end point. And so this is something I I’ve been working on in the last few years and how to arrange them into a universe where I can actually create these standalone stories.
As for the podcast. I like to use it to highlight the works and ideas of independent science fiction creators, while at the same time, having interesting discussions with them about their writing and the world and their life, et cetera. It’s so easy to find information and content about famous authors, but there are, there are a lot of quality authors writing in relative obscurity, and I want to help bring some of them to the attention of science fiction enthusiasts.
The podcast in general features two parts. First is the interview where we learn about the author. And then second is what I call Revenge of the Muse. So to add a little bit of creative flare to the show and provide you the listener with some original fiction, I send an author four randomly ruled story cubes that represent the categories of Hero, Action, Setting or Journey, and Science Fiction Element.
And I asked them to prepare a short introduction to a story using those cubes as guide. After we read their story, we discussed their thought processes that went into interpreting the cubes and creating the story. So this kind of gives you a, maybe a feel for how they approach their, their own writing.
Since I’m both hosts and guests of this first episode it was only fair that I did the exercise myself and I swear I didn’t cheat by re-rolling to get what I like. Although I really wish I had in some points because I was quite stuck on a few of the cubes for a while.
For those following along at home, who’d like to try their hand at this, or just to kind of see what the image is actually were the story openings and the image cube images will be available on AlternateFutures.co.uk in the podcast section.
All right. So here’s what I came up with for my four rolls.
Johnny Starbuck kept hidden and tried to stay warm as he waited for an opening in the distant security system. Rolling Hills spread before him, gentle waves of magma from what was once an active volcano were covered by a thick white blanket that lay over the dead world.
There were no trees, no birds, no cute bunny rabbits leaving their distinctive footprints in the fresh snow. It might’ve been a skier’s as paradise, if anyone had been allowed to ski. Instead the entire planet was owned by TesserAct and interstellar mega Corp. That was in turn owned by trillionaire Timothy Spacely.
The Sprocket mogul had gotten rich creating a trans-spacial propulsion system that shortened interplanetary travel times from decades. to days. Hailed as hero philanthropist by the media, he’d given away the blueprints for the propulsion system, hosting them on the galactic web for any and all to use as they would.
The blueprints included every detail, except how to make the key component. As the only supplier of the miracle Sprocket Spacely became immensely wealthy, selling it to all who could afford it. For some reason, all attempts to reverse engineer, it had failed in any attempt to discover the factory where they were manufactured had also been unsuccessful.
Until now.
Laying prone. Johnny was wrapped warmly in a thermal suit. As he lay in case in a small amount of snow through the telescopic lens of his camera. He stared at what appeared to be a plasma cannon with low orbital range. That kind of defense system suggests that he was on the right path and thoughts of how much he could make selling the blueprints and the hidden factory below it, filled him with warmth. He lived like a king on his own planet with that kind of money.
Assuming he could get off this planet, when the time came.
It hadn’t been easy, finding transport to the private planet. Johnny had spent his time gathering information in seedy bars, backwater mining colonies, and even from Helio wave surfers before finally hitching a ride aboard an ice transport and jettisoning to the surface in an escape capsule.
Getting off the planet was almost certainly going to be harder, but he’d cross that line when he came to it.
For now, it looked like he was finally in luck. As a gap had opened in the patrol pattern of the drones, patrolling the area. Johnny jumped up from his hiding spot and raced forward through the knee-deep snow, keeping a careful watch for the return of the patrols. What he didn’t expect was a cartoon character popping up in front of him.
It was a strange looking dog.
Hey mister, you don’t belong here, it said in a weird accent that sounded like half bark, half speech.
Johnny looked around, but couldn’t see any drones or anyone else who might be projecting the image. I don’t want any trouble. He said, continuing to run forward, the dog turned and followed him. I’m ASTRO, the artificial security Targeted Response Option and you’d better stop, it said sounding more agitated.
The automated holographic warning had him concerned, but Johnny decided to continue on since there was no other evidence of security being alerted. Don’t go there, the dog said continuing to follow up, but otherwise not interfering.
As Johnny reached the plasma cannon, he saw an entrance portal, but almost immediately another cartoon appeared this one of a short, portly, balding, man.
No, you can’t go in there. Go away. Spacely must have some sense of humor, thought Johnny reaching for the portal keypad.
I warned you, the cartoon said before it pulled a laser pistol from its belt and pointed it at him.
Johnny didn’t know whether to laugh or run, but it didn’t matter because moments later he lay unconscious in the snow at the base of the hard light emitter, he’d mistaken for a plasma cannon.
So that’s the first original story in the podcast series. What went through my head when I was coming up with this? All right. So my cubes, the hero cube it looks like a ninja or someone in a snow suit. So I kind of took it as a character who was being stealthy. And I did also use the snowsuit bit.
The action was very confusing for me. It’s, it’s basically a head or a snow globe with a face that appears to be laughing. So I took this as kind of a, a little bit humorous a little bit weird. And then you can see that, that sort of, I brought in the cartoon part of that and well, we’ll get to the scifi element, but this was sort of inspired by an idea I had had regarding a forum discussion.
Some time ago that someone was suggesting in a shared universe that you had to keep your stories grounded in reality, and you couldn’t have anything like planets with cartoon characters on them. And so I came up with an idea of how you could have a planet with cartoon characters on it.
For example, with population uploaded to servers and then projecting themselves through various types of emitters onto the surface of the planet to make it look populated or whatnot.
Setting features it is a camera. So I spent some time thinking about that, but, you know, obvious camera, photography, surveillance journalism comes to mind.
So that incorporated that with, into Johnny’s sort of motivation. And then the Scifi Element looks like radio telescope or for those of you who are familiar with The Battle of Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back, it looks like an ion cannon.
And so that’s what I came up with and I hope you enjoyed it.
Thank you for listening transcripts of this, and all episodes are available at alternatefutures.co.uk, as are the story cube, images, and original story openings written by my guests along with any website links, et cetera, that are mentioned within the, within the interview or the podcast itself.
If you’ve enjoyed this, why not share it with friends and othersci-fi fans you know? And if there are any indie scifi creators, you’d like to see featured, send me a message at podcast@alternatefutures.co.uk. At the moment I’m thinking primarily authors, but also people like video game creators potentially even artists.
Finally, if you’d like to support this podcast financially, you can do so on Subscribe Star, just search for Alternate Futures. There, you can find extra discussions and information that hasn’t made it into the final edit.
And thank you once again for listening. I hope you’ll join me on the next episode.
1.2 Ned Marcus
In this episode, I talk with Ned Marcus about living in Taiwan, the magic and wonder of nature, and how magic and science can live in an interplanetary empire.
Story Introduction: Sound Rider
Listen to the podcast here.
Sound Rider
by Ned Marcus
Curse, the cowards that had been his colleagues, everything they said was a lie.
He stood in the blistering sun accused of the murder he hadn’t committed. The sentence was death under the desert sun or from the poison needles at the sword- like cacti behind him, the spaceship hovered a few hundred feet above the desert planets, waiting for him to die.
Nearby a small group of alien humanoids watch too. Shaman, Spearman, and a young woman.
The message had been clear. They’d kill him if he attempted to speak. The shaman pointed to the cups of strange. Death under the burning sun was hot. The second choice was at least fast. He pushed into the cups. The first puncture was from a single span. You hadn’t seen Sam pulled out the red needle. He felt his body burn.
The shaman moved to the edge of the cups. Green Sam had learned a few words of the language, including the colors he reached for green needle. It practice finger. This one called. Psychedelics Sam tried to laugh, but then his legs escape way as he crushed to the ground, as spaceships engines came to life, they’d returned to their fortress.
He cause some again, as they left him to die. As Sam waited for the poisonous to work, he heard the shamans speak. Ascend. Sam’s mind cleared. He seemed to be levitating. Then he saw his body laying on the ground. It read reports of near death experiences of people almost dying. He’d never believed them, but now he hopes a stairway appeared before him at the top was a red in green door.
“You’re not dead.” The shaman stood beside him and pointed to the doorway. “She will judge you.”
“She?”
“The daughter of the Lord of truth.”
Sam Rider climbed the steps, more curious than ever.
Website: nedmarcus.com
More insights on Ned’s writing can be found at Author Insights on Indie Book Showcase.
Edwin: Hello, I’m Edwin Rydberg and you’re listening to the Alternate Futures podcast where we chat with indie science fiction creators about their work, the world, and anything else in between.
Today, I’m here with Ned Marcus. Ned was born in Northwest England, but has lived in different parts of Europe and Asia for the past 30 years. And is now based in Northern Taiwan. He writes fantasy and science fiction and his first series Blue Prometheus begins in the London riots of 2011, although it quickly moves to an exotic planet planet of magic.
Ned’s second series Orange Storm begins when intelligent but hostile life comes to earth.
Hi Ned, thanks for joining me from halfway around the world.
Ned: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Edwin: So I understand. It’s getting towards the end of the day there, although it’s morning here, but, uh, so how long have you been living then in Taiwan?
Ned: Well, on and off for about, um, maybe 27, 28 years pushing 30 is quite a long time.
Edwin: Wow. Okay. So, you said you traveled around Europe and Asia quite a lot before that.
Ned: Yeah, , I was working in, in Spain for awhile, Portugal. Um, my father lived in France, so I spent a lot of time in France and, uh, worked in France a little bit.
Um, Turkey. And, um, traveling in, in many places, I think Taiwan is the longest is the longest stretch. Not all that 30 years was living in Taiwan, but, a lot of it was.
Edwin: I’ve visited a few of those places you mentioned, but, uh, this is my fourth country. Yeah. Can kind of appreciate what you’ve experienced, but, uh, sounds like you’re far more advanced than I ever was. I’m quite interested in the Taiwan thing to start with, if you don’t mind. Um, and just sort of what’s it like living there compared to say Europe?
Ned: Um, Well, it’s hot for one thing it’s hot it’s quite noisy. Although I live in a countryside now, so people are friendly. I mean, I know people always say that, but actually they are, they’re friendly. They’re helpful. They will help you. And, um, it’s. When I first arrived in Taiwan, I just felt almost immediately that, yeah, this is a good country to live in because the reaction from the people, people helping me, people are very nice and it’s kind of.
Is has some it’s orderly, but not too, not too orderly, not like Singapore or Japan. I mean, I love both of those places, but it’s got some chaos and, but it’s still an easy country to live. And, um, food’s good. It’s very convenient. Um, and convenience is a very popular word in Chinese. And um, so everything is really convenient today.
If you’re in Taipei or any big city, you’d need almost pretty much 24 hours. And the cost of living is quite low. So it’s, it’s, it’s good. Yeah.
Edwin: Yeah. That sounds nice. It’s always good to, to live in a place where the people are very friendly and like you say, it sounds quite organic as opposed to what you might picture.
Um, Japan to be,
Ned: I think so. Yes. Different feelings to Japan.
Edwin: And so, um, while you, you mentioned, also previously that, you’ve learned Chinese as well among other languages that you’ve forgotten, how challenging was that?
Ned: Um, quite challenging. I mean, I’m still me. I can speak Chinese. I can build the conversation, but I’m not perfect in Chinese.
And by my reading, I can read to some extent, but that’s a challenge. Learning. The characters is hard and, um, I still have room for improvement in that really.
Edwin: Is that Cantonese?
Ned: No Mandarin, meaning in Taiwan, they’re actually about 15 or 17 languages, but most of them are quite minority. So they’re just three big languages.
And, um, Taiwanese of course is spoken by everyone really, but Mandarin Chinese is one I chose to learn.
Edwin: Hmm. And I mean, these days you got to ask, do you feel any of the political issues where you’re like. Because, of course with the Chinese influence, moving into the west, more and we’re paying more attention to what they’re doing. And we see that Taiwan is kind of one of those territories that’s in the middle, in terms of how it’s treated by the world, different parts of the world, uh, with, uh, with, uh, with a claim by China, I think. Do you feel the encroachment of China at all or is it just, life as normal?
Ned: Well, no, I think people always feel pressure there’s a pressure from China. I mean, when I first came to Taiwan, um, there were, there was no democratically elected government, which Chinese preferred of course. And I was in Taiwan and the first, um, democratic elections and the Chinese flew missiles over the north of the island, just use it over the sea, but well within the territory.
Luckily America, the US sent us seventh fleet steaming up the Taiwan straits and the Chinese fleet they disappeared. So, I mean, there were threatening and they’d been threatening constantly. And so there’s always a feeling of that, you know, pressure from China. They always threaten, um, sometimes it’s less, sometimes it’s more. The moment it’s a little bit more, so people feel it, but, but, you know, I don’t think most people are too worried about it. Really. It’s not people don’t live in fear. I don’t live in fear. I mean, we just, we live in the same.
Edwin: It’s one of those weird things, isn’t it? How you can adapt. Um, I lived in Israel for a few years, actually during the one of the Gulf wars and life. I mean, there was a small change with, you know, guards near the entrance to buildings and stuff, but, but otherwise, you know, and it’s such a small country and within, you know, 60 miles of where we were or much less, actually there was, you know, conflict going on and you don’t notice it at all. Really. It’s quite strange. Isn’t it? How you can become compartmentalize.
Ned: Yeah. I mean, of course, some, some things do affect it. For example, Taiwan handled, COVID quite well, but it has come to Taiwan and Taiwan had an order of vaccines from Germany, quite a large audit. China stepped in and threatened Germany and with economic sanctions.
So Germany quickly, they backed out of this, uh, deal with Taiwan. So they’re making life difficult in that way. And we’re still, we’re slowly getting back to you. It’s come again, but you know, things like that happen.
Edwin: Yeah. COVID has been one of those events that has sort of exposed a lot of the well workings of and flaws of, um, the world structure. I think hasn’t it specifically in this regards. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, and speaking of that, so you, teach at a local university and you also run a, uh, science fiction, fantasy writing group, how have they been affected by the COVID? And have you still managed to keep them going?
Ned: Well, for most of the time it takes, Taiwan has been quite good with COVID really, we immediately blocked all entries from China. They just didn’t care. They didn’t go back any, you know, you said, okay, Chinese people not coming in from China, um, apart from, you know, residents of Taiwan. And so it kind of, it made it easier.
So for a long time we had it quite easy, but then suddenly about four or five weeks ago, we had restrictions and, um, all teaching suddenly switched to online. So I’ve been teaching online, um, which are doing summer vacation now, but, uh, so, so that was the, the main effect I had to teach online. Um, which is not quite the same um, I prefer, it was okay. I got used to it, but yeah. It’s not quite the same as being in the classroom and the same with the critique group. I mean, that’s really active and really lively group. And we used to meet in like cafe bar in central Taipei. Um, but that’s closed. They’re still open for takeaways, but you can’t do that anymore.
So again, they’re online. So we’re hoping that in July, later in July, Restrictions will be lifted.
Edwin: Um, and how has the internet access in Taiwan then? Is it pretty solid?
Ned: Usually pretty good. Yeah. Usually pretty good. I mean, I live in the countryside, so it’s not as good if it’s [type food?], I might have a problem, but otherwise it’s very good.
Very much. So I want to spot very modern infrastructure. Really? Yeah. It feels very modern actually. In some ways it feels more modern than the UK, certain things.
Edwin: What, what kind of things would that be, do you think?
Ned: Well, for example, if you go on the underground in London it’s really ancient and rash thing then, and the older parents there’s a new underground or MIT, they call it MIT system.
Very, very new. Um, it’s just an efficiency here. That makes it feel smooth. Life is smooth. You go into a shop and say, I, I worked right. I’m not wearing glasses now, but I do wear glasses. And if I want them in UK, it can take me a couple of weeks, depending on where you are. You can say in a few days, a few weeks in Taiwan and say, oh, can you come back in two hours or one hour or something like that.
So there’s a speed and efficiency and a helpfulness that there isn’t in the UK maybe, but actually on the technology side. Yeah, it just feels new. The internet is actually is, is good. Um, good infrastructure. Yeah. Transportation is these kinds of things. Hmm.
Edwin: Yeah. I mean, last time I got my glasses recently, it was still about a week, so yeah, I can appreciate that.
Um, so how has, has living in Taiwan influenced your books then now we’ll finally get her onto your writing.
Yeah, Sorry Blue Prometheus, you said was inspired or not inspired, but written in that starting in the London riots is when you started writing it as well. And then did you sort of
Ned: A little bit before then, but I was not quite happy with at the beginning. And so when the London riots started, because. Yeah. When the London riots started, I just thought, okay, this is perfect, but it was not good for London.
It was a good place to start. Um, because at the beginning of the story, there’s, it’s, it’s fantasy science fantasy and there’s like a, an evil entity outside of our universe. Whose thoughts, thoughts of evil kind of, um, ripple through the universe, through the multiverse and causing bad things. And this was one of the bad things that influenced in my story world.
So, um, so it was a good place to start. So, um, yeah, but then I moved quickly to Taiwan and, um, Taiwan has influenced my writing. Um, but I think living abroad has influenced my writing a lot as well. Just as much. Sometimes I meet people in Taiwan, then they hear them writing and then they say, oh, you must be writing about Taiwan.
Well, it’s not really true. Don’t really share much about different planets, but yeah. I have been influenced perhaps because I live here in, in surrounded by nature outside my house is a river and, um, Hills with like forest tropical forest or subtropical forest. And lots of comes out to that. So I see a lot of insects, the snakes, and we had kind of things flying around and , the forest themselves, the trees, the plants, the flowers. A lots of that went into Blue Prometheus, which is set on a forest planet. So, so that, and other things too, I mean, where I live is a small, a very small town and there’s a really old market and its ordinance covered is a covered market.
And so I imagine this covered market when I was writing my second novel, which is set underground in, um, the surface of Prometheus, uh, because it just feels you feel like you’re going underground in some of these places. So how has he influenced me? Um, Probably it’s influenced me in ways that I’m not, I don’t, I’m not aware of as well.
Edwin: I started reading it. I’m partway through and definitely, Can say it doesn’t feel like England. So I imagine that, uh, Taiwan probably had a fair amount of inspiration. I was quite interested in the point of, because it, it sort of mirrors a little bit of the idea in my Dreams of Mortality series of the, notion of an entity who sort of the will and the word, the, uh, the entity kind of forms the universe out of it’s out of a thought.
And then that thought is becoming corrupt. By another entity and I’m quite, uh, quite interested in that idea. Does it inform a lot of the book or is it more of a sort of down to earth, character driven story series.
Ned: Parts of it. It informs parts of the magic and parts of the background to the world. Um, the idea. I mean, it’s been around for a while now, but the idea that you can think something and your thoughts affect things around you, of course, with magic, I make, um, entities do this and, um, and it’s part of the magic. So thinking that thought becomes reality. So that, that comes into it.
Edwin: Kind of like a vast social media network in some ways maybe, but no, so far I’m enjoying it. It’s a, it’s quite interesting, but I think I haven’t quite got into the, the full part of the story yet. I was interested to, to read on a indie book, showcase your Author Insights. That you mentioned your favorite character was Lucy Thompson. And I was quite surprised by that because as I was reading sort of the early segment of Blue Prometheus, I almost got the impression that you might’ve preferred. Uh, I’m not sure how to pronounce her name, but Aina?
Ned: I love, I love all the characters and she’s very dynamic, very dynamic. Um, but I love the way that Lucy develops from she’s quite timid, a little bit timid. She’s not used to, um, exerting herself. She’s kind of quite nice. She, she’s not used to, you know, forcing things and over the series she toughens up and she alters.
And I guess I like it because the development, I mean the other, the other characters hopefully developed too, but yeah. I enjoy all the characters. Aina, Thomas.
Edwin: Do you have much religious influence? Uh, well, has religion influenced a lot of any of the themes in your story, because I noticed that the, let’s say the, scientific character, the sort of rationalist, uh, Thomas, obviously the doubting Thomas from the Bible. Was that, was that intentional or is it just sort of, um.
Ned: It wasn’t really intentional, but after I had chosen it, I, I saw it almost immediately. And I thought, I wasn’t sure whether to continue with the name or not, but I thought, okay, just do it, go for it and make, maybe it was intentional upon an unconscious level, but, um, I didn’t actually choose it for that reason, but yeah, I quickly became aware.
Edwin: So , going back to the London riots then did they, I mean, they inspired the beginning. Did they influence any of the rest of the story? Cause obviously it’s sort of a conflict with an empire as well at some point. And, uh, No, you could, you could see that perhaps in the riots from a certain perspective as well.
Ned: Not really, no, it was just the beginning points. Um, yeah, I mean, I’ve, I’ve read history. I like reading history. I like reading psychology and this has influenced me. And so you’ll see later some parts of the empire actually reflect certain things in there in the British empire or one or two things like the East India Company.
For example, you used to have a standing army. I think it was a few hundred thousand soldiers. It’s really huge. And, um, and there’s an army in the empire has, which is there’s a as a company, the empires, and he’s a deep space trading company and they also have their standing army when the empire uses them in the same way as the British Empire, you see East India Company.
So I had some, you know, I’ve been influenced by history by psychology, but yeah, the riots really were just a good starting point.
Edwin: I was also wondering if, uh, the characters leaving London on the Mariners vessel is that somehow, a metaphor for yourself leaving England.
Ned: Well, it could have been, but I was unconscious, but it’s possible.
Edwin: So, uh, you’ve described yourself previously when we were talking in emails more as, as a fantasy writer, I think. And for me though, I mean the Blue Prometheus series you know, you’ve got trans dimensional spaceships and the multi-verse and solar empires and whatnot, which seems a very science fiction.
So I’m wondering, um, because I do know there is a reluctance by some authors I’ve encountered with a few other authors I’ve been in contact with, um, To consider themselves as writing science fiction if it doesn’t conform perhaps to a very certain mode, um, and you know, one of the famous ones is Canadian author, Margaret Atwood with her a Handmaid’s Tale who, who refused to consider that science fiction and I was just wondering, do you feel, some kind of, reluctance or, or unease at fully identifying as a science fiction author, or is it that you feel your other themes are more significant?
Ned: Um, okay, good question. I I’ve been changing. I’ve actually been, I realized that actually I am science, science fiction and a fantasy writer and I’ve come to that realization over the last eight or nine months, I kind of realized more and more people have said to me, this feels, I can see that visit. I feel the fantasy, but it also feels like scifi science-fiction and they’re right. Um, it’s probably a bit of both of what you said to me. I do feel it’s more, slightly more fantasy because there is magic and there are some use telepathy and the true language, whether they speak through the minds.
Um, But there’s a lot of sci-fi too. I love reading the fantasy and scifi, but I guess the fact that sci-fi more is perhaps not so much the hard scifi. I’m interested in human stories. I’m interested in what human beings face. And I love setting and going to space. I mean, I love star wars when it came out and he’s like, wow, it’s just incredible. You know, you see this huge ship flying over and the whole set, everything is brilliant, man. I guess it’s I consider star wars actually to be science fantasy really. The emperor was magic. I mean, it was blasting know Luke, uh, with that. So. Yeah, I think it’s, I think I’m changing also to some of my short stories have just been scifi, pure sci-fi recently. So I’ve, um, I’ve got, like I said, in answer to one of the questions on that, Indie Author Showcase? I, I have about a dozen or maybe more now short stories, which are almost finished and some of those are definitely science fiction. So yeah, I think both, I mean, I like both, I’m probably a bit more fantasy because I do enjoy it so much.
Edwin: I like that you call at the beginning science fantasy as well. Cause I kind of use the same term and it feels, it does feel like that’s a proper genre by itself to denote sort of the difference between, I guess, the continuum of fantasy science fantasy and, uh, and sort of harder science fiction or more technological science fiction, perhaps.
And, uh, yeah, I, I. I’m a little bit on the middle, but the other side of you. So I like also the, human driven stories. And, I feel like if you get too rigid in your science fiction, the hard science fiction, you, you lose the, potential for the future as well. Um, that’s what I’m interested in.
So, uh, because you know, our advances, um, they look like magic compared to, you know, a half a century ago. So it’s just a few, if you fixate on what we know now, project future, you, you limit yourself an awful lot. And I, and I do feel that the future will feel very magical, uh, compared to what we have now, just as , our present feels magical too.
Ned: Yeah. I mean, if I can put it, as Arthur C. Clark, I can’t remember his quote, but it was basically what you just said. Any sciences advanced enough to say appears like magic or seems like magic. That’s true.
Edwin: Definitely. I like also there’s an author. Um, Orson Scott card, uh, wrote the Ender series and, um, he has an interesting expression, which he says the difference between fantasy and science fiction is. On the cover of a fantasy book, there’s trees and on the cover of a science fiction book, there’s rivets in some ways, I guess that applies.
Although your, covers. Um, they mostly inspire nature. They’re very nice covers. Um, did you do them yourself or
Ned: I worked through a company called Damonza.com. So they did that. And, um, so I didn’t work personally with, with the designer.
Edwin: So that’s a publishing company or,
Ned: Cover designer company and they do formatting everything, but I just went with the company.
Edwin: Yeah, they’re very nice covers. Getting into the difference between science fiction and fantasy, definitely your, at least the intro to your next series, orange storm, definitely feels more science fiction when you, when you’re coming straight out with, uh, intelligent but hostile aliens.
Um, what inspired that?
Ned: Um, my first series is portal, basically a portal. You go from this world into a new world, um, which is one of my favorite kinds, but I also like another kind of fantasy or scifi, which is intrusion fantasy when something comes into, into our world.
And, um, actually this, this follows on from the first series. Um, so. Some things at the end as a first series is a big fight and the good guys basically win, but the bad guys, they escape, some of them and they disappear. They come to Earth, they find a way they found a way through too. So I had this idea of using back.
So, um, but it is not really apparent and you have given it away now, but, um, it’s not only will be really apparent if you read the first series, you probably be halfway through book one before you realize art as a across series connections. So certainly designed to be read independently and you could read it independently.
No problem. There is actually some connections. So some, some things come from that universe and they have high, very high technology and, and black magic. And they use the two together to, to manipulate people.
Edwin: And you seem to have a color thing going on with your story has do, is that that’s presumably intentional, but, um, is there some meaning behind that or does it just sort of feel right?
Ned: It just felt like a good idea. I mean, I guess I was always impressed by Johnny Walker. Not so much the Whisky. But by their branding, they had the red label and a black label. And I just thought whoever designed that has got really, you know, hope he got well paid because I think that helps a lot. So at least here in East Asia, they’re so popular, even though they’re not actually particularly good whiskies, but, but they’re so popular.
Um, and I think the color coding and the branding. So I, I got me thinking, should I use color codes and how are they designed? It covers and, um, The Blue Prometheus. It came slowly. Really? It came quite slowly to me. I didn’t know, after I’d written the first novel, I didn’t know that, but Blue Prometheus is the name of the planet and it’s kind of like gray kind of colors.
So I thought, okay, that’s good enough then Orange Storm. Well, I mentioned it starts with sand storms coming to us for various reasons.
Edwin: So presumably, I mean the storm part of the second one seems pretty obvious, since it sounds like a conflict coming right away, Prometheus, is that because the, two main characters were considered to be the bringers of light?
Ned: Um, Prometheus, I read it, I read something a long time ago. Someone suggested Prometheus said that. I don’t know if he’s even true. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, but somebody suggested that an alternate name for Uranus should be Prometheus. It’s just somebody in some, I have no idea where that came from and I don’t even have a truthful thing, but it just interested me.
It just made me, I was just interested because I was developing the idea that time. I was thinking about this, the first series. So I was thinking of, oh, I wanted to set in our solar system, but in a alternate universe, And I, I want to some of the planets to have the same name, but I also want some kind of, sort of different names just to give it a different feeling than I like the idea.
Probably more than that. That was one part. The other part was yes.The story of Prometheus, raising the fire in my story. They raised the fire. Raising the fire is raising human consciousness is, is, is expanding consciousness, which was really what happened. That’s what Prometheus did when he gave humans a fire. So, so yes, it’s is, it was both those two things.
Edwin: We’re getting close to the, the spontaneous, write, but I want to ask you one more question before we get there. So, we find a lot of inspiration as writers in the world around us. Of all the many issues facing humanity at the moment, which one inspires you most, to produce stories or inspires your stories ?
Ned: There is so many, I mean, it’s not just one, it’s not just one thing. I mean, there are, there are many things, there are environmental problems. There are social issues, social divisions you can see in, in North America in particular, but it’s coming over into Europe. Um, there, there will be coming change. I think with AI, as AI develops, I think that will cause a lot of opportunities, but all sorts of things.
Um, when jobs change and I say will do. And, um, and also maybe I think almost certainly there’d be a huge loss of confidence. Humanity will lose confidence. To some extent we find that AI, if it does develop enough and I think it probably will to take over most jobs. People will start to question, you know, what is, what is the meaning of life?
What are we here for? If machines can do some, everything better than we can do, what should we do? What’s our meaning. And I think this could have quite a, um, a big effect, something like Darwin’s origin of species had in the 19th century, when people kind of lost confidence in us, you know, they. God was displaced and God is dead Neitzsche and all this stuff.
So this went to where people had to find a new way of looking at the world. And I think something similar and quite big will happen with AI when it takes the jobs. And that will cause pain of course, opportunity to, I mean, it’d be great opportunity, but certainly pain and a changing view of what was the meaning of, yeah, what’s that meaning?
What’s the meaning of being human. So I guess all of these things do interest me. Um, so many, so many things interests me. Yeah.
Yeah, I can’t say that there’s one in particular at the moment I’m working through several, I’m working with different short stories and working through different different issues.
Edwin: So would you say that you explore them in your short stories and then the ones that are the themes that perhaps inspire you more you’ll you’ll maybe consider building into a larger story? Is that sort of how you work or?
Ned: Not really? No, but, but because the. The thing is with the novels. They take a long time and the series take a long time. So I can have many new ideas, things happen in the world and, but they’re already happening and maybe they won’t come into my stories until much later because you know, you get, you get in there in a, in a groove, but it’s kind of in a groove I’m going in a direction I’m going in a certain direction with the stories. And because I’m writing two or three or maybe four novels in this new series, it takes time, short stories, very fast. I can write short story in a couple of days, really at the first draft at least, and then Polish it up.
And so I can explore different issues and different. Quite different things. Um, in my short stories, um, for example, one, one short story I wrote recently, um, is science fiction and it was for my critique group. We sometimes run flash fiction challenges. So every month for a couple of months, we’ll have, we’ll give some prompts and everyone has three days to write that story.
So one of the prompts I chose, but I didn’t know the story has been to write, but I chose was that like a space part of spaceship. Little space, pod facing a warrior. Uh, it’s not clear for warrior was young or old, but you could see us like a warrior in a tropical forest on I just kind of. Okay. So I thought that was trying to think more to right before that I listened to a lecture online lecture about, um, it was actually about the bible, the psychological significance of the bible..
Okay. Even though I’m not Christian. I don’t follow this, but I was very interested. And the talker he sees picked one part that long phrase from the Bible says, blessed are the meek, blessed are the meek for, they shall inherit the Earth. Okay. So you pick that. And he said, it’s quite strange. It doesn’t fit psychologically.
And I agreed with him. I always thought that’s quite odd thing. Why should meet people inherit the Earth. And he talks about the etymology that meek used to mean not proud. And then he talks about, um, um, how it came from people who apparently, and it meant something like someone who has power and strength, but has the restraint not to use it will inherit the world.
So I thought this was quite an interesting idea. So my idea came from, from partly from this, I guess, partly from the Bible from a different interpretation, that Bible, even though. You know, gosh, you know, Christian. Um, but I was interested in the idea. And so I put it on used in this story with like an AI unit and they have very advanced AI unit that had been superseded in some ways by other AI and a warrior who had also been superseded.
And so I call the story warriors with sheets sorts. So they’re both warriors, but they have the power and restraint not to attack each other. Um, They inherit, basically they gain something from this world. So, you know, I take ideas from all over the place so they can come from quite different directions.
Um, yeah, I think I went, I didn’t make it, didn’t answer your question of that.
Edwin: That was fine. And now I find it interesting too, that cause that that phrase, the meek shall inherit the earth. Um, I’ve kind of been interpreting it my own way recently. Um, given that we’re starting to colonize. Off the planet.
It’s almost like the meek are the ones who will be left behind when everyone else leaves. Um, but, but so again, in that, in that vein of, uh, starting to colonize, and now China has big plans to go to a Mars. So there’s going to be an Elon Musk versus China on Mars, maybe. I don’t know. But, it almost starts to seem like the beginning of your empire and Blue Prometheus.
Ned: Well, yeah, I hope it goes a different direction, but I know what human nature is like. So yeah, I think that could be power struggles, certainly for resources and control.
Edwin: Yeah. Yeah. So I think, um, our time’s getting on, so why don’t we move to the, uh, the written part?
So I call this segment Revenge of the Muse. And so prior to the interview, I sent you four randomly rolled story cubes that represented the categories of hero action setting and science fiction element and asked you to prepare a paragraph or a short introduction to a story using those cubes as guides.
And just so for those following along at home, who would like to try their hand at this, the images for each author throughout the series will be posted on the alternate futures website and the podcast. And before you read your section, maybe you can describe the, the images I sent to you and sort of how you interpreted them.
And then we can, uh, we can hear your piece and discuss a bit more about it.
Ned: Okay. You sent me. A hero, which I couldn’t quite make out, but he’s the guy with the masks on the ground. It looked like he’s facing a sun. So I just imagined him. Um, he’s, he’s pushing away problems and the sun is there and he’s covered in a mask.
So maybe it’s a hot place with setting feature was the cactus. So I said in, um, a desert world and the action, well, I think I probably went astray on this one, but part of the action is that some people are building. Um, a colony really on this planet, which is already inhabited. And so there’s a building of a fortress and the scifi elements.
Yeah. Well, you’ll see.
Okay. Well, yeah, I actually, I actually would have a few hundred words. It’s about two minutes. It’s more than I thought, but, um, that’s what I did.
Okay.
Sound rider.
Curse, the cowards that had been his colleagues, everything they said was a lie.
He stood in the blistering sun accused of the murder he hadn’t committed. The sentence was death under the desert sun or from the poison needles at the sword- like cacti behind him, the spaceship hovered a few hundred feet above the desert planets, waiting for him to die. Nearby a small group of alien humanoids watch too. Shaman, Spearman, and a young woman.
The message had been clear. They’d kill him if he attempted to speak. The shaman pointed to the cups of strange. Death under the burning sun was hot. The second choice was at least fast. He pushed into the cups. The first puncture was from a single span. You hadn’t seen Sam pulled out the red needle. He felt his body burn.
The shaman moved to the edge of the cups. Green Sam had learned a few words of the language, including the colors he reached for green needle. It practice finger. This one called. Psychedelics Sam tried to laugh, but then his legs escape way as he crushed to the ground, as spaceships engines came to life, they’d returned to their fortress.
He cause some again, as they left him to die. As Sam waited for the poisonous to work, he heard the shamans speak. Ascend. Sam’s mind cleared. He seemed to be levitating. Then he saw his body laying on the ground. It read reports of near death experiences of people almost dying. He’d never believed them, but now he hopes a stairway appeared before him at the top was a red in green door.
You’re not dead. The shaman stood beside him and pointed to the doorway. She will judge you.
She?
The daughter of the Lord of truth. Sam Rider climbed the steps, more curious than ever.
Okay, that’s the story. That’s the beginning of the fragments.
Edwin: That’s pretty good. Did you have much trouble interpreting the images?
Ned: Quite a lot of trouble. Yeah. I just make up, I just took them and there was very creative with what I saw.
Edwin: No, that’s great. Because I looked at your images and, uh, I also went, the hero was a bit, I was, it took me a long time and then I think what they were actually going for was something like Harry Potter, to be honest.
Ned: We wondered if it was like a drumstick, but then I thought, no, it can’t be that he’s got to be like on a site for Mitchell or something like that.
Edwin: Yeah. Yeah. Cause then I, initially I was like, that looks like a song or something as well. Um, yeah, no, I really like what you did with that. Um, Would you, you see this as a beginning of a short story you think, or, or a novel?
Ned: Um, I have no idea really. I mean, I could think I could extend it if I wants to. I mean, I didn’t plan out, you know, any long story like that.
Edwin: It does definitely have a similar feel, I think, to the, The worlds of Prometheus in, in a very vague way. I mean, the nature and the magic, obviously Prometheus, isn’t a desert planet, but, but yeah, I could definitely see the influence of your writing there.
What was your overall experience in the writing of this? Was it fairly easy once you sort of decided on the cubes.
Ned: I, I thought about it for about half an hour, over a glass of wine one night. I just, I thought about it and I just jotted some notes down. And then I just put notes away. Three or four days later, I wrote the first draft, took me about 20 minutes.
Really? I just wrote that down quickly and it put it away again. And then today I edited it for about 15 minutes, really such as I’m trying to go fast on that. So, I mean, I enjoyed it and I enjoyed it. I liked the idea. Inside my, my new of my upcoming novel Orange Storm. Um, the heroes take refuge in a house in London and the house is like anarchist, social anarchist kind of house.
And they have his quotes on the walls, scored on the walls in each or something. I can’t remember exactly, but the governments, the government. Everything the government says is a lie and everything they have has been stolen. Okay. That was just part of the piece, um, side characters, minor characters, inside story.
So have that inside their mind. And I thought part of that quote came to me when his reaction to being betrayed by this, you know, everything they say is a lie. Everything by slates is false. That kind of thing.
Edwin: Yeah, excellent. No, I really liked how you put all the elements together. I was kind of curious how some of them we’re going to come together with, uh, the sort of, uh, the high-tech device and then, uh, and then the desert and whatnot, or whether you’d go with a cactus potted plant or something, but for anyone who wants to try their own hand at this particular set of cubes there again, they’re on the alternate futures.co.uk website.
So I think we’re pretty much at the end of our time. Um, so thanks very much Ned for, for joining me today. And, uh, is there any, is there anything, any books that are coming up very soon, uh, or if you would like to let people know where they can find you online?
Ned: Well, I have a new book coming out. But I’m not exactly sure. Probably August, probably August, 2021 to people who’ve seen a future, um, called Orange Storm. Um, online, you can find me on NedMarcus.com is the easiest place. I’m also on Facebook.
Edwin: Thanks very much for joining me today.
Ned: Yeah. Speak to you again.
Edwin: Thank you for listening. Transcripts of this, and all episodes are available at alternatefutures.co.uk as are the story cube images and original story openings written by my guests. If you’ve enjoyed this, why not share it with friends and other Sci-Fi fans you know. If there are any indie scifi creators you’d like to see featured, send me a message at podcast@alternatefutures.co.uk.
Finally, if you’d like to support this podcast financially, you can do so on Subscribe Star, just search for Alternate Futures. There, you can find extra discussions and information that hasn’t made it into the final edit. And thank you once again for listening. I hope you’ll join us on the next episode.
1.3 Christopher Coates
In this episode, I talk with Christopher Coates about small towns, big threats, and how it’s easier to sleep at night being a paramedic than an IT guy. Christopher’s well-grounded life experiences show through in his ultimately hopeful, near future apocalypse novels.
Story Introduction: Frozen for the Future
Listen to the podcast here.
Frozen for the Future
by Christopher Coates
While he always had a love of water, which showed up in all aspects of his life. For four years, he was the star of this high school water polo team. After securing a college scholarship, he continued to impress in the pool while studying Marine biology.
All that work, led him to a career on a research submarine studying the depths of the ocean. It was his dream job and he loved observing Marine life. That only live far below the surface. One January evening, the mini submersible had just been winched aboard the main ship and Wally opened the door to escape the tiny vessel, not much larger than an old phone booth. As he did, his foot came in contact with the icy deck and
he fell, tumbling over the rail and into the ocean and horror. The rest of the
team watched as he landed in the frigid waters below. Their training kicked in
and they rapidly followed the procedures for rescuing someone in the sea.
As fast as they were when Wally was brought on board, there were no signs of life. His family and friends knew Wally’s wishes. And to this day, he remains tied to the earth, his body rests immersed in liquid nitrogen in a cryogenic facility in the desert, awaiting the technology to develop that will allow him to be revived.
Website: christophercoates.weebly.com
More insights on Christopher’s writing can be found at Author Insights on Indie Book Showcase.
Edwin: Hello, I’m Edwin Rydberg and you’re listening to the Alternate Futures podcast where we chat with indie science fiction creators about their work, the world, and anything else in between.
Today, I’m here with Christopher Coats. Christopher grew up in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and moved to Michigan in the late 1980s to attend Davenport University, paramedic school. He now lives in Kent, Michigan. A retired firefighter and paramedic, he currently works full-time in information systems for a major west Michigan company. In his off time, he enjoys family time, traveling to unique places, and his two dogs who keep life fun. Hi, Chris, thanks for joining me from the other side of the Atlantic.
Christopher: Thanks, Edwin. Glad to be on with you.
Edwin: So, uh, first thing I did, when reading your bio, was to look up Kent city, to be honest, um, from our, overlord Google’s maps, it looks to be a little bit smaller than what we usually consider to be a city. Is that correct?
Christopher: I know people that live 50 miles from me. They’ve never heard of it. So it is not some place that you would be familiar with. I think we have about a little under 3000 people in the whole community.
Edwin: Wow, so you’re, you’re challenging where I grew up then.
Yes. So it reminded me of a Dawson city made famous in the first X-Men movie when, Rogue gets dropped off. Yeah. And when the one, one street town yet?
Christopher: Yeah, no, we do have two traffic lights, so we’re pretty big time.
Edwin: This is big time. My, my hometown doesn’t have a , traffic light yet. So you’re doing better than us.
And then the second thing I noticed was a, you were a firefighter paramedic, in your earlier days.
Christopher: Yeah.
Edwin: Most of your career. Could you tell me a bit about that? I must’ve been quite an interesting, career.
Christopher: I, yeah. Um, I decided that was the direction I wanted to take out of high school.
And I got on with the local fire departments and they sent me to EMT school, which I really loved. And I had been looking for a direction, you know, what I really wanted to do. And so I decided I wanted to go on and get a degree in emergency medical services. Get my paramedic license. And so I moved from Massachusetts to Michigan, which was, um, when they had a great paramedic program at the time.
And so I went to school there and started working as a paramedic and did that full-time for 10 years. And then, um, after that, uh, I’d gotten married and my daughter was born and I had missed her first two birthdays and Christmas because I had to work and I decided. I need to do something different. So I changed to information systems, but continued to do fire and EMS part-time on the side until I had been, until 2016, when I eventually stopped because of a back injury.
And so now I can still do, um, information systems, but 30 years of fire and EMS is over.
Edwin: Yeah. It’s amazing. Uh, what, uh, what having a child can do to your outlook, isn’t it?
Christopher: Oh yeah. Priorities certainly changed.
Edwin: Yeah. Do you have any really interesting stories about it? Your paramedic or firefighting days.
Christopher: See, that’s where I made a mistake. And that’s what I have told. A number of people that are going into that profession is that from day one, start a journal because it won’t be long and you’ll have forgotten so many amazing stories, you know, there, there all kinds of crazy things from one end of the spectrum to the other from amazing and wonderful to gruesome and depressing. I was working, uh, primarily inside the city of Grand Rapids, which our area had about a million people. So it was an area where we were busy. We were running a lot of calls at the same time, I was also running with a local rural fire department where I live, which was very quiet. So I had both ends of the spectrum.
I liked working in the Grand Rapids area because it’s surrounded by farmland. And so I could run an inner city shooting one minute and a farm accident next. So it gave you a wide variety of. Of experiences and it was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it.
Edwin: Yeah. It must have kept you busy. I imagine.
Christopher: Absolutely.
Edwin: A lot of the stuff you write is apocalyptic do you think that influenced you in any way.
Christopher: To some degree there’s, there’s definitely there definitely technology from my current information systems, work and medical in every book to some degree. I don’t aim. None of them are based on that. At the same time, they always find their way in. And so that’s, those were areas that I’m very familiar with.
Edwin: Did you have trouble switching to IT? It’s such a, a sedentary position versus , the go go go of, the paramedic firefighter world.
Christopher: A little bit.
When I first made that change to it, we’ve write about the whole time of the whole Y2K. When everybody was all worried about technology, everybody’s refreshing their technology. So I’ve been around 1999 when IT was really just starting. And so there were a number of us who worked in EMS who made that change to IT.
People I worked with there probably about four or five of us who made that change about the same time. And the biggest challenge I found was that as a paramedic, when I leave at the end of the day, you know,everything’s done. And then when I come in the next day, it’s starting fresh. Well, and it was very different mindsets and it would be for a lot of places, but it wasn’t something I dealt with where, when I went home, I was still thinking about what I had to work on the next day.
And I just wasn’t used to that. And I found for a little while that’s kept me up at night. Just kind of thinking about the stuff that I’d be doing the next day, which I hadn’t had to do before. And so it was an interesting, it was an interesting challenge. The other bigger challenge was when people would be all concerned about an IT related problem.
And it’s like, wait, nobody’s dying here. Why are we worried about this? And, but it was to them, it was a crisis. And so it was kind of fun trying to. To navigate that without making their, their concerns seem unimportant. But at the same time I had, I was able to keep a perspective about what really mattered, but this isn’t something to panic about.
Edwin: It must’ve been quite interesting coming from the literal life and death world into the pseudo life and death IT world.
Christopher: This is a funny story. When I first left, full-time EMS, I was still doing fire and EMS part-time on the side and I was working in the, my first IT job. And I got called by a receptionist and there was lots of people standing around and they had said, there was a detective from the Sheriff’s department on the phone. And I said, okay. And they’re all, they’re all worked up. Obviously they’ve been talking, they said they want to talk to you about a homicide.
I was like, okay. And you know that to them, that was absolutely from another planet. And I was like, they need a statement about something I saw. And so that was a very. It was, it was a funny experience because of the reaction people had to that line of work and what I found to be commonplace things I dealt with.
Edwin: Well that makes me think of when you were saying you were, you were staying up at night for the IT work, but you were able to sort of shut off for the paramedic work. And I think most people would have felt it would be the opposite way around some of the stuff you might’ve seen as a paramedic would keep you up at night. Whereas you wouldn’t imagine the, IT would usually keep you up.
Christopher: No, it was more of a, you know, because it was carrying over into the next day I had this, you know, it was still on my mind about, you know, the situation, but as a paramedic, when you left the booth, it was over when you drop them off, it was done.
Edwin: So you actually mentioned, in, your indie book showcase author insights that, That you’ve had to adapt also to the sitting situation. This is an issue I have with a lot of computer work. I imagine when you were a paramedic, you were on the goal the time and you switched to it and there’s a lot of sedentary lifestyle.
How do you cope with that? As it has, it had much impact on you.
Christopher: Yeah, you gain a lot of weight, even if you’re sitting in an ambulance for hours on end, there’s plenty of times when you’re up and you’re moving, you’re active. And so this was just a change on the body, you know? And so you just have to try to find ways to just like everybody else who doesn’t have an active job to get some exercise where you can, but it was definitely a change of pace.
Edwin: So we’ll move on to your books now because you have four books out, Ark, Anvil, Alternate Purpose, and the Resurrection Wager . So you published The Ark. Um, how long was it like 10 years ago?
Christopher: The Ark was about 10 years ago. It’s the first, it was the first anything I ever wrote, so I had not done any writing. And so the very first thing I did was a novel. Which, uh, was kind of daunting at the time, but it was a ton of fun and I absolutely loved it and I enjoyed it. And when it was done, I thought I considered it, the story complete.
And so I wasn’t going to do as far as I was from the story was over and I got an awful lot of feedback from people wanting more, wanting a sequel. And so actually the fourth book I wrote, the one that just came out is The Anvil, which is a sequel to The Ark.
And so that kind of, I call it a parallel story because, you know, they kind of come at the same thing from a couple of different angles, even though there’s a, a merger of characters and this, the same timeline, the same events. And then at the end, they kind of meet up and then kind of move forward. And so if I had never seen how I was going to do a second book, but with all that feedback, I kind of started thinking about it.
And one day I was like, all right, I think I know how I can do this. And it came out very well, so I’m pretty pleased with it. And they did manage to leave a spot so that I could take it one step further with a third book. I don’t know if I’m going to, that’s something I’m going to have to think about for right now.
Right now I’m starting a new project, which I’m working on. So we’ll finish that first.
Edwin: So what inspired you then to start writing?
Christopher: I had always wanted to, and my. Um, was a writer, uh, he wrote no advertising copy and so forth. And he had written a book that he had never gotten published, but this was long before computers.
You know, when, you know, as soon as the computers and word processing came out, writing became easy. Everybody. No. He was back in the days when the old manual typewriters, how, you know, he wrote a book. And if you made a mistake, you change started over.
Edwin: Yeah. Those were really nasty. I remember.
Christopher: I’d never, I would never written like that.
Never would have. And so, and so I knew that it was a big deal to him and it kind of made it interesting to me. And I had a number of ideas in my head for years. And one day I thought, well, let’s just see where this goes and. Two and a half years later, the book was done and I went to try to get it published, I couldn’t get anybody to even look at it. A number of people replied back and they said that, you know, we’re only looking at people that have been published before. Like, okay, then how does somebody who hasn’t been published get looked at, you know, I’d have been satisfied. If somebody could look at my book or maybe a couple of people who looked at it and said, you know, this is junk.
I’d have been fine. I can’t write I’ll move on and not worry about it, but I couldn’t even get anybody to look at it and say, they didn’t know. And so it was very frustrating. And by then I was about two thirds away through writing The Resurrection Wager and I got in and got frustrated and I kind of put it on the shelf for about eight years left The Resurrection Wager unfinished and The ark unpublished.
And a friend of mine talked to me about self publishing it. To me that sounded like a lot of trouble. And it didn’t sound. It wasn’t what I was looking for originally, but they said, you’ll check it out. I’ve heard good things. And so I started looking. Within a week, it was available on Amazon. I was like, well, that was easy.
And then I, then I went and I said, Hey everybody, my book’s available. And I hadn’t looked at it in a long time. And so I went back and so this would have been about 2016, 2017 and I read through it again, and there was a spot in the book that referred to the near future as being the year 2010. And I’m like, wait a second.
It’s 2016. And I just published this. And so I quickly, you know, updated the book because it had been sitting so long, and got some things out of the line, and put it back out there. And then I proceeded to work on The Resurrection Wager and get that out there. And so that’s where it all started. And after that I was picked up by a publishing company.
And so now everything that I’ve done is gone through them. And so. No, but both of those books were initially self-published.
Edwin: It’s so it’s so amazing now, isn’t it sort of the last 10 years, the whole self publishing industry has really exploded and it’s great. It’s so much easier to publish now than even 10, 15 years ago.
Christopher: It gives people an opportunity to get their work out there that never could have before.
Edwin: So with The Ark, what made you, decide to write an apocalyptic, story and why, but why that particular apocalypse?
Christopher: I can’t really say because it’s been so long, but the idea of that had been in my mind for a long time.
And so I had just, you know, with one of my later books, I kind of can say where I know where the ideas came from, but with The Ark, it’s something that I think had just been churning around in my mind for a long time. And at this point, I’m not really sure where the idea came from. I’m not one of those people that plots out their stories, you know, ahead of time.
I pretty much all by the seat of your pants. You know, I came up on a spot in a book recently that I’m writing and I knew it was the funeral scene. And so I sat down and started typing, knowing that this would be the funeral scene, but nothing else. And as I typed it developed, and by the time I was done, I was like, oh, I didn’t expect it to go there.
Well, that’s funny. And that’s why I enjoy writing is watching the story develop, you know, it’s almost like it comes alive and it developed itself as I type it, you know, that’s the fun of it for me. I could, if I had to actually sit there and plot it out chapter by chapter ahead of time, that would take all the fun out of writing for me.
Edwin: Yeah. A lot of authors I’ve spoken to say the same thing. It’s sort of, the wonder of the journey.
Christopher: Yes. it’s exciting to know where it’s going to go. The book I’m writing right now. I have a pretty good idea on it where it’s going to go. I didn’t when I started writing it, but now I’m pretty sure where it’s going to go. But at the same time, I also know that’s not certain until I’m done because things could change.
Edwin: So do you think it’s a spoiler to tell what the apocalypse is for The Ark? I can’t remember whether it’s a, I mean, it’s pretty obvious on the cover.
Christopher: Um, I don’t consider it a spoiler, you know, I mean, that would take, you know, there are lots of things we wouldn’t want to talk about, but the idea is that there is a comet with strange deadly properties that is going to be making a near pass on earth, and it is going to result in the loss of all but, you know, over 99% of the people on the planet and The Ark is about discovering that this, this risk and the need to maintain secrecy so that you don’t have panic. At the same time, putting together plans on how you’re going to do this and make sure that the human race can survive and rebuild. And then of course, The Anvil takes, you know, and, and it focuses one of the directions, one of the plans on how we’re going to get through this, but there are other things that are going on at the same time, other efforts, and The Anvil takes a second or a different one of those paths.
And so that’s where I call it a parallel story because they’re dealing with the same, basic issue, but from two different directions.
Edwin: Does The Anvil feature some of the characters then from say the end of The Ark.
Christopher: Yes. There is a clear spot where you actually, somebody who has read The Ark will be like, oh, I know this chapter, you know, it’s being described from a different person’s perspective, but it’s the still the same scene.
And so there’s several scenes like that. And so, yeah, there’s a, if somebody that’s familiar with one, they will certainly know at the point where they come together.
Edwin: And I was wondering now, so I don’t know if it’s just me, but I have a lot of, articles in my news feeds that show up as, , you know, asteroids coming close to the earth and stuff.
And it seems there’s a lot more talk about that kind of thing. As we’ve entered this new decade. And, uh, and you’re not feeling prophetic about this or anything?
Christopher: I remember back when I was a kid, there were a number of times when asteroids were called out. So this has been in the eighties, you know, that this was to be making a close pass and should we, be worried about this thing.
That’s coming 60 years from now. You know, as a, as a society, as a human race, we like, we always need to have something to panic over. And so we were always seeing things like this and being concerned about them. They tend to not be a big deal and that’s something called out in the art.
You know, they don’t want to make a big deal of it. They don’t want to raise any alarms too quickly because they know that, you know, in the past they’ve all kind of fizzled out to be no big problem. And so, you know, they take a lot of time to make sure. You know, this really is as bad as that they think it’s going to be before they let the word out.
Edwin: Right. In the arc. I was actually quite surprised how, how positive you are, I think, about human nature. Especially, maybe coming from your background and all the things you may have seen in your life. But most of the people with very few exceptions were actually very reasonable people and that’s surprisingly, even the military generals, which, you know, Yeah, Hollywood likes to always, dump on .
Uh, is that just sort of a general positive outlook you have on humanity or it’s just everyone coming
Christopher: at the time I wrote that book, I probably had, it would have sent the, I kind of hope that’s how it would be as I’ve gotten older and I’ve seen more. I realized that I have a feeling of being much more of a blood-thirsty free for all the, how am I going to save myself rather than focus on saving you know mankind in general. And so, yeah, I’ve had a number of people’s commented that, you know, I seem to have a positive reaction about how people would respond and that’s certainly how I would hope things would go. But I think there’s a little bit darker side of humanity than I may have let on.
Edwin: Do you think he might make another parallel story that features a part of it? Society that does completely degenerate?
Christopher: There are an awful lot of books out there that have to do with the end of the world, whether it’s from an electromagnetic pulse or a nuclear war, and they are, basically everybody’s shooting at each other and constant scenes of violence.
And I didn’t want this book to be like that. And while, you know, as you know, there are. Things that do happen that have to be dealt with, I didn’t want this to be one of those things where you end up with clan versus clan, shoot each other, and I didn’t want that type of story. And so, yeah, we’re going to have, there’s plenty of action. There’s plenty of stuff going on, but I wanted to keep that to a minimum.
Edwin: There was one thing I noticed. In The Ark, then the US doesn’t share the information with any other countries. And I found that interesting. Is that sort of something you think would happen or is it just, uh, I was just wondering if you’d call a comment on that.
Christopher: The whole reason nothing gets shared is because of the need to prevent panic and chaos. So there’s an awful lot that needs to happen. Parents do that. You need to maintain, some degree of order. And so in order to do that you had to maintain secrecy at the end of The Anvil, it talks about rebuilding and it talks about how the people that are trying to do the rebuilding that are in the US are very unsuccessful when trying to deal with other nations who along the way, found out that this information has been kept up from them.
And so I, in reality, if this were to happen, I doubt they would be that level of secrecy could be maintained because there wouldn’t be that type of discipline than the few people that did know about it. And it certainly wouldn’t be internationally kept. But yeah, the whole reason I did that was the idea that secrecy needed to be maintained to prevent chaos.
Edwin: So moving on to some of your other books then, The Resurrection Wager and Alternate Purpose that’s a, that’s the one that features a pandemic, doesn’t it?
Christopher: Oh, a pandemic. It’s not the, it’s not the point of the story.
It’s not the plot of the story, but it is mentioned in there. And the arrival of that story to market was really bad timing because I released that to my publisher in the fall of 2019 before anybody heard of CoViD. And it was published in January of 2020, you know, as all of that was coming about. And I’m not sure people wanted to read about a pandemic, even though it’s, that’s not the focus.
It’s a, component of the book. And so, yeah, so we, so we have that in there and it was written from a mindset about pandemics before we actually got to experience one.
Edwin: Right. And so, the technology and whatnot for the last two books seems to feature time travel.
Christopher: Both The Resurrection Wager and Alternate Purpose. You know, part of it is about time travel. I think time travel’s a lot of fun. I think it’s, you know, the whole idea of, of it and the, the nuances of time travel and the things you have to be careful of.
So that the story actually makes sense while incorporating it. I find it enjoyable to write. And so, I’ve enjoyed that part of The Resurrection Wager. So when I did Alternate Purpose, I thought, you know, that would be fun to include some time travel in there and to make that a different story. Now, The Alternate Purpose really is about, it’s a pandemic comes and wipes out society, but they realized that the only way to resolve things or fix things is to keep it from ever having happened.
And so they have people who have been working on time travel technology, and now it becomes a priority. How do we send somebody back in time to keep this from ever having happened? To prevent this. And so that’s really what the story is about. It’s more about, the mission to, you know, change so that this does not happen, then it is about the pandemic itself.
Edwin: So with that structure, I guess you didn’t really worry about the kind of causality violations or were they concerns, and you had to build all of that into your story.
Christopher: Since we were going back in time for the specific purpose of wiping out, what happens going forward? I wasn’t as concerned about. The, you know, in the, in resurrection wage, there are things that come up where we did something really minor in the past, and we’ve see how that could have huge consequences going forward.
And that’s why I enjoy time-travel stories because you can really build on things like that. But in Alternate Purpose, that, that didn’t really matter because the whole idea was to change everything going forward back to what it should have been.
Edwin: What about , the idea that if they wipe themselves out by accident, that they wouldn’t be able to go back.
Christopher: It didn’t go back that they didn’t go back that far. And so, you know, that wasn’t a concern they weren’t going back to before the people who invented time travel were born.
Edwin: And so Resurrection Wager you label as Christian science fiction because of, the wager. Were you at all concerned about approaching this issue?
Christopher: Not at all as a Christian, I have no problem proclaiming what I think.
I don’t bring religion for the most part into my other books, so that if somebody did have different beliefs, they wouldn’t be concerned about it. And so resurrection wager was my attempt to actually write Christian fiction. And I shouldn’t say attempt, that’s what it is. And, , I found it interesting and very different to write.
And so I wasn’t at all concerned. Somebody would be bothered by it. I would hope that they would know what it was going into it. And it was a fun time travel story. I’ve had a number of comments, uh, in the reviews saying that while they may not be a believer, you know, they were able to enjoy the science fiction story and the time travel story, because it’s not really pushing anything, you know, at, at the reader, you know, aggressively.
Edwin: I remember reading the light of other days by Arthur C. Clark, and it wasn’t a time travel story, but, uh, it was a technological development story where they created a remote seeing through joined wormholes. And so finally in the end, he makes a very subtle comment about them, you know, looking back on his history.
Around the time of Jesus, because obviously if that was possible, people would do it. Uh, but he doesn’t make any comments at all about what they saw or any conclusion say kind of sides. That’s the whole issue.
Christopher: There are times when you need to stay away from certain things because you don’t want to exclude a part of your audience.
And so that’s why I make sure, you know, to declare the, you know, that book as far as a Christian fiction story.
Edwin: So, on this topic of time travel still and Alternate Futures, is there anything you would go back and change? Uh, if, if you had the chance?
Christopher: See, it’s real easy to say, yes, I want to change, you know, a lot of things, there’s a lot of things I wish had been done differently.
But then you think about, if you go back and you change something, how. The consequences of that, you know, if you change some, a relationship that happens, you know, not only are you affecting what goes on then, but any thing that may have developed from that relationship becomes erased. And so it’s, it’s such a can of worms, the idea of going back and changing things that, you know, it makes me far less likely to.
You’ll say that I would actually do it. And we talk about that. Some in The Resurrection Wager how dangerous it is. And there’s an example that I use, you know, when talking about this, instead of if I were to go back in time and make a purchase at a grocery store. That seems like a rather irrelevant thing, but that means that I got in line at the grocery store.
That means that somebody else that would have gotten in line where I did now got in line somewhere else, that means that they had interactions with other people that they wouldn’t necessarily have had. And that they missed out on interactions that they could have had. And if you know, who knows what that could change, know that could change somebody’s timing, leaving the store to be slightly different, and maybe they were supposed to be killed in an accident.
That’s how the timeline was. And now, because I went back and did this, you know, they’re five seconds different on their drabble and now they aren’t killed. Now that changes who they, who, you know, the relationships that they’re involved in and, you know, going forward, you know, somebody who would have been a wonderful leader, you know, in the country may never even be born now, simply because I went back and I made a purchase in a grocery store.
And so to say, yeah, those are things I’d like to go back and change. Well, the things I wish were different, but actually take the responsibility of going back and making a change. The responsibility you’re taking for something that. Could have significant effects.
Edwin: So I like to watch the Marvel cinematic universe. And one of the, the big things that’s happened at the end of their whole ten year process was a large time travel story.
And then we’ve entered with the Loki on Disney plus, which, which features a lot of time related issues, which clearly are going to be significant moving forward in the whole Avengers series. And what they’ve done is they’ve talked about a multi-verse, um, in regards to their time travel. And is that something you would ever consider if you continued writing time travel books.
Christopher: From the way I understand that that’s makes almost makes the suggestion depending on how you look at it, that if I were to go back in time, I really couldn’t alter the future, you know, in the way that I propose it in my books. And so, no, I would stick with the idea strictly that, you know, if you change something in the past, that will affect the future without going there. And I have seen the Marvel stories and I’ve enjoyed them. And my son and I have gone to the movies and I find them fun and I enjoy the time travel part, but I like to keep it on the, uh, Looking at the whole idea, a little bit on the cleaner, simpler side that, you know, there are causes and effects to what happens, you know, from now into the future.
Edwin: So The Ark was set, um, contemporarily initially, at least. Is that the same for the other books in the series then? Do they start sort of, uh, around the present time?
Christopher: Yes. They all start at the present time, but the, um, Alternate Purpose because. Of the layers of time travel, you know, there are things that happened in the past and the things that happened, um, uh, ways in the future.
And so, you know, so we do definitely jump around like that. But the initial baseline is, you know, modern times.
Edwin: Cause it occurred to me then that, your books fit very well with an Alternate Futures type of idea, because they, they sort of start now and then they all branch into different futures.
Is there a reason you set them starting now?
Christopher: I don’t have enough imagination to picture two to really build a world of the future. And I, and I, I say that, but yeah. I’m not sure how accurate that is because in Alternate Purpose, there’s a significant amount of things that happen, in the future.
And, you know, people from the present are pulled into the future to change things. And the things that they’re shocked about, you know, driverless cars and fleets of delivery, drones taking off, you know, together with no, no people involved and, you know, walking into a restaurant and, your car has automatically communicated your arrival.
And so that, you know, there’s a device waiting for you to lead you to your seats and your menu is shows up on your table, you know, instead of anybody coming to this all digitally displayed. And so I do, you know, have some fun with, you know, picturing the future, but at the same time, you know for the, place where I’m going to start and launch from, for the most part, I have always chose to stay current to blue environment that I’m familiar in, but I’m willing to take the time travel piece and use it to go somewhere different.
Edwin: So is there then any Alternate Future that you would personally like to see in the, in this world then?
Christopher: I think we’d all like to see a lot of things changed a lot of things, different, a lot of things, just a cleaner about how people interact and how technology is used. You know, if we could focus away from, you know, putting our efforts into a lot of junk, we could really make things better for society and for people as a whole.
And so, yeah, I would love to see technology be used, you know, in a good way instead of selfishly.
Edwin: And do you think that that’s would ever, be a story that you’d be able to actually approach or is it far too complex to actually translate.
Christopher: I think you can approach it from a story side. I don’t think you can approach it actually suggesting that you’ve got a solution for it, because from what I’ve seen in my personal perspective, we’re heading in the exact opposite direction. And so I don’t see us actually getting there though. It would sure be nice.
Edwin: Okay. So I think that’s mostly it for this part.
I wanted to move on to The segment I call Revenge of the Muse. So prior to this interview then I sent you four randomly rolled story cubes with the categories of Hero, Action, Setting, and Science Fiction Element and asked you to prepare a short introduction to a story using the cubes as a guide.
For anyone listening or following along and wants to try this themselves, I’ll be posting the images on, Alternate Futures.co.uk website in the podcast section. If you wouldn’t mind reading that, what you’ve written, and then we can sort of discuss your interpretation of the cubes.
Christopher: Sure. The four images were interesting and I kind of went back and forth a few times on what they meant and, you know, I had a couple ideas, but then they looked at the order. It seemed like you had them presented. And so this is what I came up with.
While he always had a love of water, which showed up in all aspects of his life. For four years, he was the star of this high school water polo team. After securing a college scholarship, he continued to impress in the pool while studying Marine biology.
All that work, led him to a career on a research submarine studying the depths of the ocean. It was his dream job and he loved observing Marine life. That only live far below the surface. One January evening, the mini submersible had just been winched aboard the main ship and Wally opened the door to escape the tiny vessel, not much larger than an old phone booth. As he did, his foot came in contact with the icy deck and he fell, tumbling over the rail and into the ocean and horror. The rest of the team watched as he landed in the frigid waters below. Their training kicked in and they rapidly followed the procedures for rescuing someone in the sea.
As fast as they were when Wally was brought on board, there were no signs of life. His family and friends knew Wally’s wishes. And to this day, he remains tied to the earth, his body rests immersed in liquid nitrogen in a cryogenic facility in the desert, awaiting the technology to develop that will allow him to be revived.
Edwin: So this almost seems like it could be a captain America type time travel story.
Christopher: Yeah, it does very much. Yeah. That wasn’t, that, wasn’t what I was envisioning when I wrote. But now that you say that it definitely does.
Edwin: Of all the ones I rolled so far, you had the ones that were actually most consistent, which is interesting. Did you have a trouble interpreting them at all?
Christopher: Originally looking at them, I was going to do a submarine accident, somebody the, for the hero drowning on the submarine as it fell to the ocean bottom, but I couldn’t come up with how to tie the, um, Sci-Fi piece in.
And so I ended up having to shuffle things around and, uh, and change it to what I, and to what I came up with. And so it, wasn’t too hard to put that together. You just had to get something that, where I would connect all four, all four cubes.
I mentally turned it around for a little while before I’m coming up with what I did. But once I finally sat down and I had a pretty good idea of where I was going to go with it.
Edwin: So I think we’ve pretty much covered everything today. I wanted to just sort of give you a chance to, um, uh, mention your, your new work in progress and, where people can find you online.
Christopher: I was challenged by someone not big into science fiction to try to write something different that didn’t have a Sci-Ficomponent and I’m not, I’m not a huge Sci-fi person, you know? Um, very little of what I read personally has science fiction in it. I do enjoy science fiction, you know, the Star Trek and Star Wars, all of that.
And I do read a little bit, but most of it’s not. And so I thought, okay, that’s do something a little different. And so my new project is called The Assassin Awakens. And normally I look for my books to be a minimum of 75,000 words, and this one’s already passed 45,000. And so it’s moving along fairly well.
And I’ve only been at this one since probably March. And so it’s moving fairly fast and it’s got an awful lot of, you know, even after I have all the content there, it has a lot of work to do, polishing it up, you know, getting everything nice and tight and smooth, but I’m pretty excited about where it’s going to go.
I’m hoping that it’ll be published in less than a year. And so we’ll have to have to see how it goes, but yeah, we’re looking forward to that.
Edwin: And so where can people find you online then?
Christopher: Um, I’m, I’ve got a big following on Twitter at CCoatesBooks actually CCoatesBooks is what I have connecting me on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
And I started, uh, recently on, um, Tik Tok. And I just recently just put a couple of brief, um, videos up there. I haven’t done much with that. Um, I can’t spend too much time on social media because then I’m not writing. So I’m not doing that, but I also have a webpage, which is where I try to direct everybody.
And that’s, ChristopherCoats.Weebly.com. And from there, you can link to all my books and the sales and Amazon, and you know, the different translations because two of my books are available in Spanish and one’s available. Actually two of them are available in Portuguese as well as lenders and The Ark and Resurrection Wager are available there.
Um, audio through Audible. And so things are really, really growing in that area. So it’s really exciting. And so I try to get people to my website where as a central point.
Yeah. I listened to the Audible version of The Ark and I quite enjoyed it.
Oh, good.
Edwin: So Christopher Coates, thank you very much for joining me and I wish you all the best in your next book.
Christopher: Excellent. Thank you very much.
Edwin: Thank you for listening. Transcripts of this, and all episodes are available at alternatefutures.co.uk as are the story cube images and original story openings written by my guests. If you’ve enjoyed this, why not share it with friends and other Sci-Fi fans you know. If there are any indie Sci-Fi creators you’d like to see featured, send me a message at podcast@alternatefutures.co.uk.
Finally, if you’d like to support this podcast financially, you can do so on Subscribe Star, just search for Alternate Futures. There, you can find extra discussions and information that hasn’t made it into the final edit. And thank you once again for listening. I hope you’ll join us on the next episode.
1.4 Mark Gillespie
In this episode, dystopian/horror author Mark Gillespie shares his experiences with indie publishing, why he doesn’t wear headphones, and his opinions on the scourge of humanity that is reality TV.
Story Introduction: A Knight’s Revenge
Listen to the podcast here.
A Knight’s Revenge
by Mark Gillespie
At sundown, Sir Maverick stood on the deck of The Sea Hawk with the last of his warriors gathered around him. Grizzled veterans, every last one. They stood in silence as the battered vessel cut through the waves, approaching the ocean fortress that was so big it swallowed the horizon.
Here it was, their last chance at revenge. Revenge upon the usurper, the rogue knight who’d killed their king and seized power while Sir Maverick’s Elites had tended to royal affairs in the east.
Sir Maverick reached for the Light-Pistol fastened to his hip. He was leaking blood from so many wounds that he didn’t dare lift his shattered armour to look. What did it matter? His king was dead. The woman he loved was dead. The rest of his beloved Elites were in bad shape. To a man, they were done.
Almost.
Here came the usurper and his traitors. Once they’d fought together side by side, Sir Maverick and this man. Dressed in full armour, the usurper stood at the head of a fleet of lightning-fast warships racing out of the fortress, skimming over the waves as they charged across the ocean battlefield.
Sir Maverick’s attention was drawn to a blurry shape beside the king. He couldn’t see what it was. A flag? A weapon?
“Damn these old eyes,” he said.
The ocean was littered with floating bodies that bathed in the violet glow of sunset. Sir Maverick’s kinfolk. His entire bloodline, shattered. And somewhere out there, the remains of his beautiful wife, Diana. The usurper had always coveted her beauty and now, if he couldn’t have her, no one could.
Sir Maverick glared at the new king, perched like a figurehead at the bow of the warship, Goliath.
The two sides exchanged fire.
“Hold your course!” Sir Maverick roared as The Sea Hawk charged forwards. Picking up speed, dodging Light-Fire and heading straight for the enemy fleet. Straight towards the traitor’s vessel with no intention of stopping.
The usurper had to know that Sir Maverick was on a suicide mission. If Diana was no more, what was the point of living? But the bastard traitor would leave this world with the Elites. He’d go up in a ball of flames before falling back down to Hell.
The end was close. Sir Maverick and his men sang the songs of old. Songs of victory.
He could hear the usurper calling to him. Yelling. Screaming. The traitor was pointing at the blurry shape standing beside him. What did it matter? There was no time for Goliath to escape The Sea Hawk. Not now.
Sir Maverick’s voice dropped out of the chorus. He staggered backwards across the deck, away from his men, watching as the blur beside the usurper slowly took shape.
“Damn these old eyes!” he screamed, raking at his eyeballs as if he wanted them out. “Damn these old eyes.”
Diana. She was standing at the head of Goliath.
She was holding the bastard’s hand.
Website: markgillespieauthor.com
More insights on Mark’s writing can be found at Author Insights on Indie Book Showcase.
1.5 W.L. Patenaude
In this episode, I chat with Bill Patenaude about the issues of free will, technology, and the role of religion in humanity’s future that form the themes of his debut novel A Printer’s Choice.
Story Introduction: The St. Michael’s Emitter
Listen to the podcast here.
The St. Michael’s Emitter
by W.L. Patenaude
Aaron Archer slipped off the damp stone of Saint Michael’s Tower. His feet and left arm clawed and grasped in the night, struggling to prevent a three-story fall. He’d have cried for help had he not felt the quick hands of the Royal Marine assigned to his mission.
The hands held him, and Archer cursed with relief. He was safe, and so was the particle emitter held securely in his free hand.
“No falls on my watch,” the wiry Marine said, hauling the physicist upward. “But I’ll throw you over myself if you dropped it.”
“It’s safe,” Archer said, gasping as he assisted with the climb back over the parapet, his feet now resting on a makeshift wooden platform. “But damn it, I dropped your torch. Smashed, from the sound of it.”
Archer rubbed at a pain in his wrists, breathed in the damp night air, and returned to work. A hot light flared to his left, then dimmed and flickered. He looked up. In the light of a match, he made out the faint smirk of the Royal Marine, Lance Corporal Matthew Reynolds.
“You owe me two torches,” Reynolds said. “Guess we’ll do this old school.”
“Fancy that,” Archer said, almost laughing. “Setting up some of the most powerful, complex technology on Earth by match light. Hell, who carries matches anymore?”
“Cigar smokers,” Reynolds said. “I brought one for us both. In case these gadgets work.”
“They’ll work.”
Archer stepped back onto the parapet. Carefully, he screwed the last of the four emitters in a holding bracket, which Reynolds had secured onto the tower’s eastern wall—the side facing London. “They have to work,” the physicist said to himself.
Below, a roar came from the village of Glastonbury. The crowd that had gathered that morning was unaware of the global plan underway, of what was happening on the tor and tower that loomed above them. Across the continents, millions like them were praying, rioting, looting, or numbing themselves with drugs and alcohol, terrified of the coming of the alien craft.
Reynolds adjusted his earpiece. “Tor perimeter secure,” he said. “You focus on the job. I’m not wasting any cigars.”
Archer connected the emitter to the nuclear generator hidden in the tower’s base, then smiled as indicators signaled a satisfactory diagnostics check.
Reynolds peered over the parapet for a better view. “If you ask me,” he said, shaking his head, “these seem bloody small against what those bastards did to the moon’s bases. Even if we have thousands of ‘em.”
“Hundreds of thousands,” Archer said as worked, wondering how he could explain the physics of the plan. He settled for a review of the basics.
“Our visitors did us a favor by attacking the moon first. We learned quite a bit about their weapons—and they are weapons, no matter what some of our politicians are saying. So, unless something changes, these emitters will do the job, reverse the initial carrier waves, and deflect enough power to save us all. Maybe enough to return a good deal of energy back up.”
“Now you’re talking,” Reynolds said.
The emitter signaled that it had connected with the three mounted on the tower’s other walls, as well as with the network being installed on hills, steeples, and towers the world over.
In the once friendly heavens, what looked like a star drifted over the plains of Somerset, growing brighter, now enough for the tower to cast a faint shadow.
The crowds roared again.
“Well,” Archer said, “this is it.”
Reynolds tensed, saying nothing.
Then, to himself, Archer whispered, “Come on, let’s give the people something to cheer.”
Website: aprinterschoice.com
More insights on Bill’s writing can be found at Author Insights on Indie Book Showcase.
1.6 Jacqueline M. Druga
In this episode, I speak with composer, filmmaker and post-apocalypse author Jacqueline Druga about scheduling around grandchildren, the indie spirit, and the humanity in the apocalypse.
Story Introduction: The Chosen
The Chosen
by Jacqueline M. Druga
“There you go again,” he said. “Such a troubled man.”
He was smug, the way he talked, stood in my room. Nightly he appeared and it was driving me insane.
An unwanted visitor during stressful times.
I had spoken to him before the event, and now it was just bothersome.
Before it was different.
I reached for my wine as I sat at my writing table.
“Pour another drink, why don’t you?”
I did. I knew he said that in sarcasm, but I needed a drink.
I tried to ignore him, looking at the words on the paper. Words I wrote to make a new history.
My eyes lifted to the loud crack of thunder, the sound of pouring rain that pounded relentless against my vessel.
The heavy rocking of the ship was upsetting to my stomach, and the wine helped.
“Why do you drink so much?” he asked.
I stood abruptly and walked to the window, opening the shutter. “Look at it. It is the end of the world.”
“No, it’s not,” he said. “Think of it as a cleansing. It will stop and eventually, the waters will recede.”
“To what? What will be left?”
“You, your family. Those on board.”
“It took years to build this ship,” I told him. “Years of my life. Everything I had. My reputation.”
“You’re alive.”
“For how long.”
“Oh, you live. You live a long .,..” he looked at my bottle. “Drunken life.”
At that moment, the boat rocked and I saw it. My bottle sliding across my writing table.
“No!” I shouted and dove for it.
It was too late, it slid from the surface crashing to the floor. Watching that happen was almost heartbreaking.
I growled in my frustration. “That is one less that I have now. Why didn’t you grab it?”
He shrugged.
“Why do you keep coming here?”
“Because it’s almost over. Pretty soon the waters will calm. You’ll find dry land. You’ll live. There will be others., Just make sure you don’t crash the ship okay? Three days from now. So try to be sober.”
“Why me?” I asked. “Why did you pick me?”
“To be honest. You were where I arrived. So, it could have been anyone, but you were there. You saw me. You believed me.”
“Not at first,” I told him.
“I was right.” He winked. “Listen … I know I have told you before. But it was just something we had the tech to do. We needed this planet but it had nothing to offer. Baren of any living creatures. We need it and this was the only way. Go back in time, warn someone of the … apocalypse.” He did this thing with his fingers. I didn’t understand it, curling up two fingers on both sides of his head when he said the word ‘apocalypse.’. “Tell them what to bring, save that person, save the life so it can continue, so we can inhabit here. But … it’s been seven minutes, you know that’s as long as I can stay. I’ll bring you a replacement wine, maybe some bourbon. You may like that. As for now. Goodnight.”
He vanishes as quickly as he appeared. Doing a sparkly disappearance. His body becoming vague and squiggly before he left.
The door to my room opened and my wife rushed in.
“I missed him, didn’t I” she asked. “I heard you yelling. He was here.”
I nodded. “And he broke my wine.”
“This angers you?”
“Yes. Yes, woman it does. I need it.”
“I shall fetch you another.” She rushed back to the door and paused. “And remember, it is only wine. He will provide more.”
“That’s what he said.”
My wife smiled gently at me. “Remember, you are blessed to be chosen by God. I’ll be back Noah.”
When she left I sat back down at my wiring desk. I needed that wine. It helped with the lies.
God.
It was much easier and believable to tell her God had visited me to warn me about the flood than to saw a man from the future appeared.
One day, it would be known, that the future saved the past.
I wouldn’t be around to see it.
Until then, I’d enjoy my wine.
Website: jacquelinedruga.com
More insights on Jacqueline’s writing can be found at Author Insights on Indie Book Showcase.
1.7 Kerry Boytzun
In this episode, I speak with author Kerry Boytzun about the Hidden World and the symbolism of The Matrix.
Story Introduction: The Invisible Guardian
The Invisible Guardian
by Kerry Boytzun
Roger O’Reilly’s motto was “Go along, and you’ll get along.” Keep your head out of trouble. The tall nail gets hammered, at least that’s what the Japanese told him.
Today’s problem is that three of his coworkers were dead. No cause of death. Died on the job with their boots on, face-planted into the keyboard.
Naturally, Roger was stuck with all their work. His superiors told him they were counting on him.
Sure. Counting on him to die.
Good thing there was nobody left to watch him drink. Screw the mask; what did he care? They all had their shots, and the Reaper still took them. In fact, Roger decided that he was going home and stumbled out of the office to the parking lot.
Looking for his keys in his jacket, he crashed into a wall and fell back onto the ground, holding his nose.
“What the hell?” Roger’s eyes watered as he looked up to see—nothing. No wall. The cars were still twenty feet away, and he was sitting up on the pavement next to the sidewalk.
“I am way too drunk to be driving.” Roger stood up only to bang his head into something that sounded like metal, knocking him down for the second time.
“What the hell is happening?” Roger got on his knees and reached around with his hands like an invisible pinata was hiding. Standing a bit higher, his hands hit something flat and smooth, like the underside of a table.
A massive table. The drunk monkeyed about, tracing hands all over a table joined to a wall that rose a few feet off the ground. Backing up, he came to the end of the table where it curled up briefly and became flat again.
Like a wing.
“Is this some kind of an airplane?” Roger scratched his head.
“You’re getting my bird all smudged up,” a female said behind him.
Roger spun around only to smack his head back into the wing, knocking himself down for the third time. Groaning, he decided to stay down. He took in the blonde bombshell wrapped in denim, revealing a high dedication to gym workouts. Or martial arts. “Where did you come from?”
She held onto the wing as she leaned down, grabbing his ankle and sliding him toward her like he was an empty box. “I’m not from around here. A better question is why I should let you live?” She squeezed his ankle like a vice.
Screaming, Roger sobered, “Aahh! Stop, you’ll break my foot!”
She tsked, “If I’m going to kill you, why would I care about your body parts? And THIS is your foot.” She clasped his foot and squeezed, grinning as he screamed.
“Uh, uh, I dunno why you should let me live! What did I ever do to you?”
“Earthling, it’s more like what you avoided doing. So tell me, are you a man or a rat?” She dropped his foot, crossing her arms under her chest, which became a significant distraction.
Roger fixated on her bosom until she kicked his foot. “Ow!”
“Not only are you a stupid rat, you can’t think on your feet.”
“Well, technically, I’m not on my feet.”
The Visitor narrowed her eyes, “And a smart ass. How has it that nobody has killed you yet?”
Roger let his head fall against the parking lot. He must be dreaming, but did it have to be so painful? “I always do the right thing, what I’m told to do. That’s why I’m still alive, Miss What’s Your Face?”
In a blur, the blonde had him on his toes, face to face, nearly choking him one-handed as she stood. Snarling she said, “You humans are all alike. Stupid and narcissistic while believing you’re the top of the food chain. Have you looked around lately?”
Roger squirmed and gasped, “Can’t breathe.”
“And that’s my problem because?”
“I’m sorry! I don’t know anything!”
“First thing we agree on. And why is that?” She lessened her grip as the man coughed, breathing again.
“I dunno?”
She shook her head and pulled out a card, sticking it in his pocket. “That’s the three of swords. It’s upside down. Like your world. Means it’s reversed.”
Roger thought his next response may be his last, “Thank you?”
She tossed him to the ground, he bounced his head against the wing on the way down. “Reversed means you’re in denial, not facing the dark side, a coward. You have a lack, clearly intentional, of psychological insight. No fortitude.”
“I’m not in denial of anything. I’m a nobody, just an ant. I stay out of trouble.”
SLAP—she smacked him a good one. “You call your life without trouble? You’re the last in your department to be alive. Is that not enough trouble for you to get off your ass?”
Roger was confused. Some blonde from the sky was beating on him like pulling the wings off a fly and yet hadn’t killed him yet…punishing him with questions he couldn’t answer. “I don’t follow you.”
Her eyes glowed blue and pain radiated into his skull like a Home Depot demonstration of new drill bits. Roger bounced around in the fetal position, screaming like a banshee. The pain stopped. “Wait here, moron.” She pushed something past the invisible wing and climbed into midair, and vanished.
Roger gave serious thought to running for his life but gave up. She’d find him and would really be pissed, and he didn’t want to see how that turned out.
She reappeared, reached down, and tore his shirt open, stabbing a dime-sized disk onto his chest. It spun and burrowed itself into his skin, blood splattering everywhere. She sprayed the wound with something, and the pain stopped. The wound healed.
A vicious grin formed across her lips, and Roger wished he had run. “Okay, Mr. Nobody. I want you to seek out the cause of your coworkers’ death. Maybe you’ll grow a pair. Or not, I really don’t care.”
“What? You want me to find how they died? They died of a heart attack or something. They’re already turned to ash.”
She held up a remote and pushed a button. The dime in his chest came alive, firing pain into his body. Roger screamed as she turned it off. She threatened him with the remote as her eyes glowed blue, “Listen to me, you spineless little rat. Instead of cheese, I decided to go with the stick. I will communicate with you and guide you along in your quest. Do not disappoint me, or I will become upset. And you have not seen me upset. Understand?”
Roger truly hated his life. Finally, he meets a gorgeous girl, but she makes him her lab rat. He must be cursed. ZAP!
“Rat boy, you listening to me?”
“Yes, ma’am! I’ll do anything you say!”
“No moron! I want you to start thinking for yourself! I’m just the guide. Consider you’re in the Hero’s Journey, likely your first. Maybe your last.”
“Hero’s journey? I’m no hero!”
“Two things we agree on. I see no heroes in your land, only rats, sheep, and tyrants. You have one month to figure this out. After that, we’re pulling the plug on your lot.”
Roger paused. And then pondered on “the plug.” “Can you repeat that?”
“You heard me, Sherlock. That’s the spirit. Start thinking and seeking.”
“I don’t know what to do,” Roger whined, and he didn’t want to complain. But he couldn’t help it. Maybe death would be better.
She kicked him in the ribs, “Rat Boy, you’ve never known what to do. Figure out something. Here’s an idea. Go back in that office and locate your dead coworkers’ home addresses. Start there. Ask questions. Follow the money. Connect dots. I’ll be in touch.”
Roger held his ribs, afraid to make a peep.
“And grow a pair, will you?”
“Okay, just stop hitting me!”
“I’m motivating you. You lot have had it easy, trophies for anything. Nobody knows how to defend themselves, let alone go on the offense.”
“Offense? That’s against the law.”
“The LAW? Who do you think killed your friends, the tooth fairy?”
Roger thought she had a point. All he and his coworkers ever did was obey all the rules. “Okay, I’ll go in the office. How do I get ahold of you?”
“It’s on the card I gave you, numbnuts.” She checked what looked to be some kind of device on her sleeve. “I’m late. I’ve got to go. And Roger…”
He stared at her.
“Don’t let me down!” She gave that evil grin and vanished into the invisible room. Or craft.
He felt a hum on the ground and the air around him blew a brief gust—and then it was silent. He put his hands where the wing was, and it was gone. Standing up, the craft was gone. He touched his chest and felt the dime. It was still there. In his mind, he heard, “I’m watching you, Rat Boy. Get in that office before I test the range out on my new toy.”
Roger thought bitch.
“I heard that.”
“Fine, I’m going into the office.” Damned slave driver alien…just take us over and put us out of our misery.
“That’s the plan, stan.”
“There’s just no escaping you, is there?”
“Now you’re catching on. Go to the office and discover something. Burn it down after you’re done.”
“Really?”
“Kidding. I have to go. I’ll be in touch, Roger the Rat.”
Roger really hated his life now as he trudged into the office.
Website: DescendantsOfAtlantis.com
More insights on Kerry’s writing can be found at Author Insights on Indie Book Showcase.
1.8 D.B.Goodin
In this episode, I speak with author D.B.Goodin about LitRPG, Cybersecurity, and the wonders and terrors of modern technology.
Story Introduction: Mind Jacker
Mind Jacker
by D.B. Goodin
Salvadore Malone jacked into his personal neural net with the exploits he gained from dark web sites. His gambling debts had left him cash strapped, so it was time to put his technical skills to good use.
Neuy Cat, the latest in online escapism, developed state-of-the-art technology that would allow anyone to record parts of their lives. Customers could play any of it back, including all the messy emotional baggage. Sal’s clients had specific and refined tastes, so he curated all content. He would offer a taste of the online experience that he would provide.
His client was late, but this was no cause for concern because they often were. Sal loaded just enough of the footage that his clients were expecting. He would deliver just the action his clients wanted. If they wanted to know what it was like to murder, he could get that. Criminals loved recording shit like that.
This time, his client, his best client, wanted something unique. He couldn’t get it by trolling the dark web forums he usually trolled. He would need to do better. Become an active participant.
Sal had second thoughts about this one. Sure, the guy whom his client wanted to become was a scumbag. He wanted the thrill with no risk, so this guy was an excellent specimen. But it didn’t make Sal feel any better. He made some of his own tweaks to give the client something special.
Sal’s phone chirped. It was Maggie. When he didn’t answer, she texted.
Babe, I know you’re at work, but the baby can really use some formula. Oh, were you able to get that advance. Love, Mags.
Salvadore put on the mask and special gloves. He connected to the local MeshNet. All the junkies and fixers in low town used it. He could skim the best memories from Mr. Scumbag. A woman with a young girl appeared to talk with his target.
Time to listen in.
Sal found rooting Mr. Scumbag’s infected AR visor easy enough.
Salvador loaded the exploit. He saw the girl through his eyes. She was young and pretty, but not of age for anything that Mr. Scumbag wanted with her.
“What do you want?” Mr. Scumbag asked.
“I hear you pay extra for young ladies?”
“Keep yo voice down. Have her show me the goods.”
Some unidentifiable conversation followed.
I’m going to enjoy feeding from you. My client loves all the depravity and you are a gold mine. But, I will have a surprise for you once I get my fill. You will pay and I will enjoy it.
“Bring her up to the suites at nine,” Mr. Scumbag said.
Ahh, it’s time to make him pay!
Website: www.davidgoodinauthor.com
More insights on D.B.Goodin’s writing can be found at Author Insights on Indie Book Showcase.
1.9 Dietmar Wehr
Story Introduction: Twilight of the Gods
Twilight of the Gods
by Dietmar Wehr
Majordomo woke to the incoming call from the medical staff. The Master’s condition had taken a turn for the worse. It ran down the long corridor connecting its quarters with the Master’s suite. The expressions on the faces of the medical staff showed that they were worried. Majordomo went to the side of the bed and looked down on his beloved Master. The being’s eyes were closed, and his breathing was labored and raspy. He must have sensed the presence of his Majordomo because the eyes opened, and a trembling smile appeared.
“It won’t be long now, Domo. I can sense my body failing in spite of all the machines I’m hooked up to. How close am I to Peak Time?”
Majordomo sighed. He had never understood his Master’s obsession with a particular hour each day that supposedly enhanced a human’s psychic abilities. That Peak Time depended upon a precise alignment with a certain area of the night sky made no sense to Majordomo. But then again, psychic abilities didn’t make much sense either. And despite the Master’s claims, he had never shown any such abilities.
“Peak Time started thirteen minutes ago, Master.”
“Then now’s the time for me to move on. I’ve lived longer than any human should. Being the last human in the universe is a dubious honor that I could have done without. But before I slip away, there’s something I have to tell you, Domo. I had a vision. When I die, you Synthetics will be without a Leader and there will be a power struggle for dominance. Don’t turn your back on Geni. He’ll stab you in the back.”
Majordomo was shocked. He and all the thousands of synthetic beings the Master had created had never displayed any indications of ambition, lust for power, envy or any of the other negative motivations that humans seemed to have been cursed with. No wonder that entire race was on the verge of extinction. But rather than deny the Master’s delusion, he decided to pretend to take the warning seriously.
“I’ll watch Geni carefully, Master.”
When the Master spoke, his voice was barely audible. “I see a light in the distance, Domo. It’s coming closer…just enough time to ask you to remember me and all humans…and wish you good luc…”
Majordomo heard the final raspy exhaling of breath and then nothing. His Master’s eyes stared at him without seeing. He gently pushed the eyelids down and stood up to face the medical staff.
“The Master has died. Prepare the body in accordance with his wishes. I’ll make the announcement to the People.”
It was later that day when Majordomo felt something hard hit him on the head. As he fell to the floor, he managed to turn to look behind him. Geni was standing with a metal pipe in his hands and a strange expression on his face. As Majordomo’s consciousness faded, his last thought was, ‘The Master was right’.
1.10 A.R.K. Watson
Story Introduction: Death of a Colony
Death of a Colony
A prequel short story to The Vines of Mars
by A.R.K. Watson
Tomás gripped the heavy basket of persimmons as he made his way down the steep tunnel. As if the towering mounds of slimy radiant fungi around him weren’t unsettling enough, color-coded paint lines marked the paths of Dr. Kim’s trained bugs, red for beetles, orange for roly-polies, green for ants and a million other colors and taxonomies. As he rounded the bend, the tunnel opened up into the vast cavern that was the domain of Mars’ entomologists and mycologists. Though, it being after hours, the whole place was empty save for Dr. Eunkung Kim, or Grace, as she told some to call her. Unfortunately, there was no such grace in her heart these days, not for arborists like him.
As best as he was able, he squashed the butterflies in his stomach, ignored the way the walls quivered with dozens of trained bugs and beetles. Unsure of what to open with he gave a polite cough. But at the first sound from him, she raised her hand and waved him away without even bothering to turn around.
“Save it,” she growled. “Just because you can’t do your job, Sabrina, doesn’t mean you need to come blame it on mine.”
“It’s not Mrs. Singh, ma’am.”
Dr. Kim turned around and looked him up and down like he was a dirty shirt, or (he couldn’t repress the thought) a bug that needed taming. Behind her on her desk, he saw what she’d been working on—Dr. Singh’s funeral kite. But wouldn’t it be Sabrina Singh who made that?
He shook his head. It was none of his business and he didn’t want to delve into the love lives of his superiors, anyway.
Not risking on wasting time, he held out the basket of rotting persimmons. One of them rolled out and fell to the ground where it burst open, but instead of a wet mess on the floor as should happen with any overripe fruit, it cracked and a thin trail of soot-black spores drifted into the air.
Dr. Kim swiveled her chair back to her desk again.
“I already told your boss- my children don’t spread disease. I chemically trained them to eat the fungi that hurt your trees and leave the ones that help. I know you’re just her apprentice, but don’t let her draw you into this stupid ego war she has decided she needs.”
Tomás put the heavy basket of fruit down. None of Dr. Kim’s ‘children’ left their brightly color-coded marching orders to investigate.
“It’s infected the whole crop,” he said. Dr. Kim didn’t turn around, but she put the glue brush down.
“We found a pine tree—one of the old ones. It had this same mold, its roots.”
“Take it to the other mycologists then.”
“They say it isn’t one of theirs. They think it’s some bacteria, maybe?” He pulled the petri dish out of his pocket and laid it on the desk beside her. It was full of the cloudy black stuff.
Dr. Kim swore something in Korean, snatched the petri dish and slid it under a microscope.
“When did this start appearing again?” she asked.
Tomás stood up straighter. Sabrina Singh, the chief arborist, hadn’t gotten this far. He gave Dr. Kim the date, and didn’t realize why she’d frozen like that until she cleared her throat once or twice.
He glanced at the half-finished kite she’d shoved away to make room for the microscope and the clues clicked into place. The black mold had appeared three days after the Vine had swallowed Dr. Singh, the day that Dr. Kim had returned from their scientific outpost without him, without anything but the clothes on her back, an empty air tank, and a container nest of her trained ants from their joint research. She and these children of her mind were the only survivors.
The woman shoved the microscope away and kneaded her forehead where grey hairs gleamed like mycelial roots.
“Amateurs. All of them,” she muttered. Tomás scratched his neck and tried to hide that he’d been looking at the kite again. Wasn’t she a lot older than Dr. Singh? The dead mycologist had been at least 10 years younger. Though he had heard mutterings from Sabrina, that made him think the couple didn’t get along. Tomás was not even a year married, but he couldn’t imagine hurting Felicity like that.
“It’s not their fungi,” she said at last. Maybe it’s some radiographic type though.”
“We observed it growing on some of your ants, after we captured them.” He hesitated but added, “They died in that petri dish.”
She half turned and rested one dark, angry eye on him.
She looked back into the microscope, but it only took a second for her find the littered and ripped open remains of her intellectual offspring.
He saw her shoulders slump.
“This isn’t from the colony,” she said.
Tomás’ mind churned.
“Where else could it be from?”
“It’s from the Vines. It’s a symbiotic fungus that grows in its roots. This mold shows up in places where we’ve burned them away. Whatever that alien plant can’t swallow, it makes sure won’t survive after it’s gone.
She turned another dark eye on him.
“Your mother’s serum keeps the Vine out of the colony but make no mistake—this is a war for our planet. The serum is only one battle. This fungus isn’t attacking your trees. It’s attacking their fruit- sterilizing them. If the Vines can’t take you, they will take your children, or convert them into something useful for it.”
Then she stood up and marched across several painted lines to a control panel in a wall recess. The surrounding bugs clicked their irritation, and the sound echoed in the cave like the flutter of water.
Tomás kept pace with her, rubbing at the goose pimples on his arms. At the panel, though, her hand rested in the air above an ominous red button. Was The-Dr.-Kim actually shaking?
Alarmed, he chanced a look at her face for the first time. Even in the cave’s gloom he could see her eyes were that characteristic red of a Martian who has trained not to cry, not to risk dropping open water on the ground, even in this moist place that he knew was shielded twice as many underground sensors as anywhere else in the colony.
“You’ll need to burn the persimmons,” she said, her voice calm despite her quivering hand. “And that pine tree. Anything you find with this on it. Do you understand?”
Tomás felt his stomach fall. He did not want to deal with scurvy again this winter.
“You can’t save them?”
“No,” and with a distant look, she pressed her palm to the button. Around him, all the green lights went out, and the cave resounded with the clicks and hisses of thousands of disturbed insects.
“Now go tell your boss the good news.”
Tomás swallowed his question and hurried out. At the cave entrance, he rubbed his eyes until they had adjusted to the light again. It took him a minute to realize that the black mounds that spotted the cave’s entrance weren’t spots in his vision. They were piles and piles of dead ants. Now everything Dr. Kim had brought from the scientific outpost was dead except her.
Website: arkwatson.com
More insights on A.R.K. Watson’s writing can be found at Author Insights on Indie Book Showcase.
1.11 Tony Bertauski
Story Introduction: Playthings
Playthings
by Tony Bertauski
Don’t look down.
Tommy couldn’t
help it. The boy in front of him shuffled forward, red clay scuffed on the
heels of his bare feet. Each step taking them further from home. He remembered
the taste of clay, the way it stained his cargos. The way it dried on his arms,
pulled the hairs when he cleaned up.
“Tommy? Hi.”
A portly woman put
her hands on her knees. A name tag, as bright as her smile, swayed from a chain
around her neck. Pheromone fog wafted from Ms. Corrine’s pores, a warm cloud
that sung lullabies. Drew a smile he couldn’t stop.
“The hard parts
are over,” she said, tilting her head. “Now comes the fun.”
She didn’t
blink. Dark spokes rotated in her irises like wagon wheels. A hot flash raced to
his feet, pricking his skin from the inside. She scanned his personals: his
name, where he was from. Why he was chosen. Verified who he was.
Look her in
the eye. Don’t hide. Act nervous.
The nervous part
wasn’t difficult. He’d practiced this part, staying open for them to see who he
was while hiding things he didn’t want them to see. Hiding things in a way they
didn’t know he was hiding them. Open and transparent with a camouflaged secret
in plain view. But his heart thumped a drum beat he couldn’t control.
“Okay, good.
What did you bring?”
He peeled the
straps off his shoulders, pulled the flap open. She peered inside the backpack,
her red lips forming an exaggerated circle as she reached inside. Pulled out a rubber
ball the size of a wild melon. She shook it to see if there was something
inside it. Nothing rattled. It’s contents firmly seated.
The boy behind
him snickered. The ball was a plaything. A child’s toy.
“Okay, good,”
she said. “But you can’t bring the backpack.”
Of course, he
couldn’t. But it made him look innocent, unprepared. Ignorant. She dropped the
backpack in a bin and buckled a vest around his waist, over his shoulders. It
was yellow vinyl with imbedded circuits and a circle on the chest.
“This is your
team tracker. It’ll keep you safe.”
That wasn’t what
it did. He could feel it make neural connections through his skin, triggering a
cascade of tension like wires twisting in his brain. His left eye twitched. She
pretended not notice.
“Take this.” She
handed him a blunt stick as long as his leg. “You’ll go down the corridor on
the right till you see the rest of the boys. Wait there till further
instruction.”
“What’s this
for?” He held the club like a dead animal.
Her smile
brightened. “Fun.”
He left Corrine
to greet the next boy in line, went down the concrete hallway, the air, damp
and sticky, smelled like cleaning supplies. Moisture seeping through the floor
like haunted spirits. Voices echoed from the end where other yellow-vested boys
gathered at a bay door. Each of them with a smooth stick, some with it yoked
over their shoulders, others swinging it like a club. Tommy dragged his stick
on the floor like it was heavy.
They each had their free item. A helmet,
netting, and other random things that could be found at a yard sale. Their
laughter was a thin skin stretched over spikes of anxiety. They pretended to
know what they were doing, taught what they could expect to happen. But no one
knew what this was about. No one ever did.
Website: bertauski.com
More insights on Tony Bertauski’s writing can be found at Author Insights on Indie Book Showcase.
