Lancer Kind

A futuristic computer jockey named Diff gets attacked by bad behaving nano-bots during a Halloween party. The short story, “Bit Storm,” is about a future where nano particles have been commoditized to well beyond Diff’s prosthetic hand. Now it’s in makeup, toys, and nifty “Nstant” halloween costumes. Even Diff’s co-worker, Jake, an Artificial Intelligence, insisted on Diff picking him up a cat. Diff took the easy route and got him a nano cat (you don’t have to clean up after a nan cat).

Why does the nano go bezerk at the Halloween party? Have you ever heard of griefers? Being a griefer is a natural part of human development. All those naughty four-year olds spend a good part of their childhood enjoying the reactions they get when they purposefully behave badly. Sadly, not all these little buggers grow up. Some dedicate themselves to a life of causing grief by becoming Protest Warriors and stirring up trouble at peace rallies.  On the MOGS, they are groups of people who band together to cause grief to the other denzines.   Diff meets a griefer who goes by SickDevil and this griefer, like all griefers, has a very reasonable way of looking at the world which supports all of his ill doings.  (Griefers are very smart four-year olds in adult bodies.)  SickDevil challenges Diff to prove SickDevil’s “malthusian outlook,” that it’s “natures order of things” that the planet’s resources (oil, gas, food, water) will only be enjoyed by the strong and that the strong will user the weak to perish ASAP.

And this griefer, SickDevil, is  a nano expert.

This story was co-written by my then wife Shelli during a long road trip between Montana and Seattle.  It was my turn to drive and  I hadn’t finished the scene.  So she did it for me!  Thanks Shelli!  It was probably your part that got the honorable mention.  🙂

As some of you may know, I have moved to XiaMen, China.  In the US, there are many elements of the strange, like Quakers with rocket packs.  It turns out that China has interesting science fictional things happening in this island city of 1.3 million people.

XiaMen has a local chain of bakeries called USM with the slogan, Use Mind Bread Hause:

I’ve tried this psychedelic bread and while I’m forbidden by the government to speak of the mind trip,  it tastes really good!

I feasted on this spectacular specimen for breakfast and had thoughts of Pacific Ocean coconuts the whole day.  It made me rather sea sick, thinking of coconuts bobbing in the ocean.

Think about this when you are eating your rather lame “wonder” bread, hmm?     😉

This weekend, Sat June 6th, at 5:30 PM, will be the last reading this summer in Seattle before I take it on the road to China.  (If you haven’t heard, I’m moving there.)

If you missed the Wayward Coffeehouse reading where you heard Kij’s story about cute little girls cutting up unicorns, Tim’s story about a really, really, mad scientist, or (previously at Flying Saucer Pizza) Elizabeth’s story of love and tragedy on an archeology dig, pop into Redmond’s Flying Saucer Pizza for a pizza and a beer and you could hear those stories or something completely different.

Maybe your homeland is a city, maybe it is an island, maybe it is an entire planet.  The Book of Exodi is fresh off the presses and filled with stories of futuristic mass exoduses.  The book was edited and labored over by Michael K Eidson.  Harry Turtledove, the sci-fi master of alternate histories, has written the introduction.

The Book of Exodi contains a story written by me called “Memory’s Victims,” which is about the future of the Israeli Palestinian conflict where both sides become involved in a space race to leave Earth and reach the nearest habitable planet to establish their own world-wide state.  It follows a Jew named Arcadie who who lives aboard the generation ship (an interstellar ark), Children of Zion.  Arcadie witnesses the end of their thousand year voyage when they reach their destination and discover it has already been settled by people from Earth who have developed faster-than-light travel during the Children of Zion‘s voyage.  Arcadie’s people settle the planet because their ship has reached its engineered lifetime, and they try to build their lives as immigrants rather than as settlers.

They are treated like foreigners and feel like foreigners too because attitudes on Earth had changed in their absence.  The “super luminal” Jews and Palestinians no longer remember their grievances while those on the generation ships carried that history with them and nurtured it.  Arcadie and his people reject the “super luminal” Jews and feel they have a better understanding of the Palestinian immigrants who raced them to reach this planet due to their shared culture of animosity toward one another.  Problems between the Jewish and Palestinian immigrant populations start again.  Arcadie tries to distance himself by following a career in the Space Force, but a hatred between two people strong enough to survive a thousand years and travel within them to a new solar system, reaches Arcadie even when he is seeking solace in the emptiness of interstellar space.

The book is available on Create Space and Amazon.

There must have been something in the coffee at the book event at Lake Forest Park.  I think it made us go a little mad.  In the photo below, things look quiet stable.  That’s me reading a story called “Moss Memoirs.”  Take care to notice the grandee latte sitting on the table to the podium’s right.

I’m hazy as to what happened next.  Somehow all the archeological science fiction books (Ruins Terra, Ruins Metropolis, and Ruins Extraterrestrial) were stacked like towers of babel, and pens were involved.  Authors Camile Alexa and Elizabeth Kate Switaj were there too (they weren’t innocent either).  Then I remember coming to consciousness, lying face-down across a pile of books, a copy of Ruins Terra poking me in the cheek.

We shook ourselves out of the daze and examined the books.  All of them!  All of the books in the Ruins * series were maligned by the signatures of Camile, Elizabeth, and I.  An utter disaster!  Vladimer, a good friend of mine who works at Third Place Books, was sobbing, “what am I to do with all these autographed books!”

The three of us slinked out the back door.  I blame it on the bookstore.  I mean they gave a group of writers pens and coffee.  So we wrote.  What were they thinking!

So if you’ve been putting off buying a book.  You can get them postage free (though defaced with author autographs) at Third Place Books.  Help Vladimir out.  He’s trying to concoct a solution that will erase the ink.