Thanksgiving Sale!

So it’s Thanksgiving, if you live in the US.  Which means you only have a few weeks left to spend your hard earned money on mostly useless crap.  I know things have been crazy for the last couple of years, so as an early holiday gift, here are five of my ebooks you can download for free.  And the best thing is, you can get them instantly: you don’t have to wait for them to sail across the ocean and get through a crowded port. 

You can get this all for the price of a click from Wednesday November 24th, through Sunday November 28th.  I hope you all have a safe and happy holiday season, and I hope you enjoy anything of mine you read.

A Man of Few Words

A Man of Few Words is a collection of fifty of my flash fiction stories. What would really happen if a “T-Rex on steroids” attacked a city? Why do science fiction writers make the best lovers? How does a company get to Second Base with VIPs? I explore these questions and more using less than 1000 words and in various genres from humor to horror and general fiction to science fiction.

The majority of the stories were previously published (most on my website) but all were revised for this collection. In addition, each piece is accompanied by some background information on the origin of the story or a funny tale about the writing of it to give a fuller experience.

The Moon Before Mars

Over the last few years a lot of people have caught Mars fever. It seems a week doesn’t go by without a report of some new group wanting to send people to Mars, or some big name in the industry talking about why we have to go to Mars, or articles talking about the glorious future humanity will have on Mars. All of this worries me. In my opinion, a Mars base is currently not sustainable because there’s no way for it to make money. A few missions may fly doing extraordinary science, but if it’s then cancelled for cost the whole Mars Project may just be seen as an expensive stunt.

Fortunately, there are other places in the solar system besides Mars. While bases on the moon and amongst the asteroids won’t be as “inspirational” as one on Mars, they will have opportunities for businesses to make goods and services as well as profits, meaning less chance of them being outright cancelled. This will make life better on Earth and secure a firm foothold in space for humanity. The essays in The Moon Before Mars: Why returning to the moon makes more sense than rushing off to Mars allow me to describe my ideas on what can be accomplished on the moon and with the asteroids, and why Mars isn’t the destiny of humanity its cheerleaders make it out to be.

Lonely Phoenix

Partway to a new colony world, board member Geoffrey Ames is woken from hibernation by the caretaking crew of the Lucian. They require him to look into the matter of their fellow crewman Morgan Heller. Morgan’s claims – such as being over 1500 years old – would normally land him in the psychiatric ward, except he can back up some of his other claims.

Brain for Rent and other stories

Brain for Rent and other stories is a collection of five of my short scifi stories to give a sampling of my writing. The collection includes: “Brain for Rent” about a ne’re-do-well failed writer with a conceptual implant who discusses his work with a young woman thinking of getting an implant herself. “The Demonstration” is about a different young woman wanting to show off her latest body modification. “Self Imprisonment” offers one solution of safe keeping the backup copy of yourself. “The Best Job Ever” is about a necessary – yet unpleasant – human/alien interaction. And the collection ends with “Why Stay?” which explains why, after years of fighting the humans, the robots just deactivate.

An Ounce of Prevention

Like most people, Jason Fisher wanted to make the world a better place, but he doubted he would ever have the chance to make much of a mark. Then a “woman” came to him, asking his help to save humanity by threatening it.

A space hotel problem, parking

I was recently thinking about space hotels.  I’m a space nerd who writes science fiction, so that’s just a Tuesday for me.  But I wondered what a basic space hotel would be like, so I designed one.  What I came up with has fifteen modules – basically the largest thing you can fit in a rocket faring – several of which would be nearly identical.  I’ll do my best to describe this three dimensional object.  You start with the core station which has seven modules arranged as a straight sided “8.” From the middle joints, there will be two modules sticking straight out and two sticking straight back.  These will have docking ports at the end and the modules themselves will be used mostly for storage.  Also from these middle joints will be two other modules to each side.  The outer most ones will have solar panels, while one of the inner ones will be the main control area and the other one will have an airlock and storage space for space suits.

Back to the core station.  The central module will be the galley/common area.  One side of the “8” will have the two guest quarter modules.  These will each have spaces for four cabins, which can be opened up into double cabins for couples.  These modules will also have a toilet, and maybe some exercise equipment.  One of the modules on the other side will be the crew quarters, with another toilet and more exercise equipment.  The other side module will have an area for some experiments, but will mainly be a play area, where the guests can play with Slinkies, globs of water, whatever.  Now the main draw of the station will be the two observation modules; one facing Earth while the other faces the stars.  In a fantasy world, these would be all glass, but in reality there would just be a series of meter in diameter windows.  There might be copulas that could be attached to give an even better experience.  In addition there would probably be a couple telescopes mounted on the outside to give better views of things.

The basic idea I had would be there would be a crew of four who would spend six months or so on the station.  They would take care of all the maintenance and unloading of supply ships, be tour guides, and lead in case of emergency.  Between guests, they could do minor experiments – like exposing various materials to space for a year or so to see how they degrade – to have an extra revenue stream.  The guests would come up for two week stays.  The idea I had would be that they would be staggered, so each guest batch would have five or six days where they are the only guests. 

At first, I thought the airlock would just be for the crew for maintenance, because I figured the training to be in a spacesuit goes more into the area of professional astronaut than tourist.  But then I remembered that tandem skydiving is a thing.  Basically, you’d have a two person, updated version of the Manned Maneuvering Unit that the crew astronaut would control, while the tourist sat in front of them.  The crew astronaut might fly ten meters or so from the station, then let the tourist fire the thrusters a few times before taking back control and going back to the station. 

Now a visit to such a station would be a fantastic experience and one I would gladly take.  But, there’s only so much you can do in a cramped station.  To develop games like zero-g football, or whatever, would require open spaces twenty, fifty, or more meters in diameter.  That’s well beyond the capability of a small hotel like I designed.  To have such spaces – as well as allowing the possibility of middle class people affording such a trip – would require large hotels with hundreds of guests.  But if it takes thirty or forty capsules to get the hundreds of guests to the hotel, where to you park them all?  Not to mention any redundancy for lifeboat situations. 

One lifeboat solution could be a premise I had which I could never hammer out into an actual story.  It was about the Ælling, which is Danish for duckling, a play on “The Ugly Duckling” story.  The Ælling was the first spaceship built in space from resources mined in space.  Basically, they mined iron from an asteroid and made several sheets a couple meters on a side.  These were welded together into a cube with a hatch on one side.  This was placed into a larger cube, and regolith was added in between to act as micrometeor protection.  The pilot – in a spacesuit – got inside, and using compressed gas thrusters stuck on the outside, moved away from the mining space station where this was built.  They flew a few kilometers away, turned around, and came back.  It was ugly, but it worked.  It was built just as a test of building spaceships in space, but larger versions could be used as lifeboats on space stations.  If something happened, a dozen or so people could get into one of these things that had supplies for a week or two.  It would float in orbit until a rescue ship could be launched to gather everyone.  So instead of needing return vehicles for the hundred or so guests, you could just have a bunch of these basic lifeboats stuck on the outside of your hotel. 

Or instead of lifeboats, you could have hardened storm cellars that would be modules scattered throughout the hotel structure.  These could hold a dozen or so people for a couple of weeks, and they’d be designed to survive the hotel breaking up.  Of course, then there’d be all this debris floating around them making recovery efforts difficult.

Or you could just have giant spaceships that could hold a hundred or so people, so you’d only need a couple docked to the hotel.  But then will the hotel be too big for people to get to them in an emergency?  If the hotel is depressurizing, you may only have a couple of minutes to maneuver your way through hundreds of meters of corridors to get to the docking ports.

Or I guess you could do all three options.  But do you really want to design your hotel to be half lifeboats and storm cellars?  It would probably be worse to tell your guests, “If something terrible happens, half of you will die.”

Just another level of complexity to add to the idea of space hotels.

Random Story – Working with porn

This is just an odd little story from my life.

For a couple of months in the summer of 2001, I worked in a small video store.  If you’re young, what that means is I worked in a place where people would come in and rent movies on various formats.  And when they were done watching it, they would have to bring the movie back to the store. 

Anyway, besides all the beloved classics and latest mainstream movies, we also had an adult section.  Because of this section, I had an unusual day.  My boss – who also managed a couple other stores – was a rather attractive woman about 40.  One day she came in with a box full of new porn.  She had the invoice and would read off a title like, Backdoor Bitches, and I’d look through the box until I found it.  While I attached an anti-theft thing to the DVD, she’d enter it in the computer.  And then we went on to, Lesbian Island, Vol. 17.  (I just made up those titles, but I’d be surprised if they weren’t actual movies.) It was just … weird to be casually talking about porn with my boss. 

This job also gave me another porn story, but it’s not mine.  The reason I only worked there for a few months is that one morning I showed up and my boss said, “Surprise, this is your last day.  They’re closing the store.” But I got one last day of work helping pack stuff up.  At one point, her boss showed up to help.  I think at lunch he ordered pizza, and while we ate he told a story.

He drove a station wagon, and one night he got stopped at a sobriety checkpoint.  The cop shined his flashlight in the back of the station wagon and saw twenty or so large boxes and asked, “What’s in the boxes?” My boss’s boss then said, “Let me give you my business card first.” Because he was moving some twenty boxes of porn.  He said the cop made him open every box, to make sure he didn’t have any child porn.  Looking back I don’t know if saying I have twenty boxes of porn is probably cause to do a search, or if the cop was just curious about all the porn. 

Free Pies!

Here in the US, we’ll be having an election on November 2.  It’s not a Presidential Election, and for most people you’ll only be voting for local elections or issues, but voting is important.  So if you’re an American citizen over 18, I hope you’re registered and will be voting.

Every election I try to have a sale for Political Pies, my collection of forty short stories of a political nature.  And this election will be no different.  So, from Friday, October 29 through Tuesday, November 2, you’ll be able to grab the Kindle version of Political Pies for free.  If you get it early, you can have something to read while you wait in line.  And if you’re not an American, well, you can still get it, and I hope you are peacefully involved in your own nation’s politics.

Over-engineered holiday lights

I have a crappy, part time job at a store.  One of the things we sell are holiday lights.  Mostly Christmas, but also Halloween.  These strings of lights usually come in a small display box that has a super short string of lights on it and a button you can press to see how they look when they light up.  Usually, once the display box is empty, we just throw it away.  But a couple of times I’ve ripped the display lights out to hang them around the register.  I then have to rig some way to keep the lights on, usually by taping the button down.  The thing I’ve noticed by doing this a few times, is that these cheap, disposable lights will stay lit for days.  I guess the lights are so efficient we can’t make batteries small enough for them to only last a few hours.  So if you need some holiday lights, for a day or so and are okay with super short strings, ask if you can have the empty boxes the store would normally just throw away. 

***

Image from Pixabay.

Short story – “Rest in Peace”

This story began as a dream.  In the dream, I was walking along the sidewalk and I saw the Tenth Doctor carrying bags of groceries or something, and he stopped at a beat up old vending machine.  He soniced it, and it opened up to be a TARDIS, slowly decaying in plain view.  The image stuck with me, and since I had been kicking around the idea of doing some fan fiction stories at some point, I started working on a story based on that.

But after a few months, I hadn’t started anything.  Then a site I wrote on had a Doctor Who Fan-Fiction contest.  I guess a new season was starting, so I got around and wrote this story.  It didn’t win, and then a couple years later the site went belly-up. 

I have a few ideas for fan fiction stories, but I haven’t really written any because I have too many of my own stories I need to work on.  But I was reminded of this story recently and I decided to repost it.  In case you’re wondering, my only other fan fiction story is “Jedi ER,” which is more parody.

“Rest in Peace”

“Where are we?” Martha asked.

Opening the TARDIS door, the Doctor replied, “In the middle of nowhere, in what will one day be Nebraska.”

They stepped outside to a small clearing surrounded by pine trees.  The trees right in front of them were back lit by a rosy sky.

Walking forward, Martha asked, “Is that a sunrise, or a sunset?”

“Sunset.  It’s late on the evening of the Twelfth of November, 1833.” Waving at the clear sky, the Doctor added, “Right now, far out in space, untold thousands of dust particles and pebbles and other debris of Comet Tempel-Tuttle – which humans won’t discover for another thirty-three years – are heading for Earth.  In a few hours they’ll hit the atmosphere and burn up in The Great Leonid Meteor Storm.  It’s estimated that at its height, people could see 100,000 meteors an hour.  The number of meteors was so great, some people even thought the next night would be completely black because all the stars had to have fallen.”

“And let me guess,” Martha said.  “Hidden amongst all those meteors are alien spaceships here to conquer the world.”

The Doctor stopped and frowned.  “Why would you think that?”

“I don’t know.  But that’s the sort of thing that happens around you.”

After a few seconds, the Doctor continued walking.  “Those were just coincidences.”

“So why are we really here?”

“Because it will be pretty.”

The clearing widened into a small meadow filled with drying weeds.  The Doctor turned and said, “Martha, you really should-”

Martha took a few more steps before she stopped and looked at the Doctor.  The blood had drained from his face.  “Doctor, what is it?” She followed his gaze to see – at the edge of the meadow – an old, wooden shed that looked like one strong wind would blow it over.  “What is that?”

Without replying, the Doctor took off running towards the shed. 

Martha ran after him.  “Doctor.  What is it?”

The Doctor reached the shed and slowly reached out to pat the rough wood. 

When Martha arrived, she heard him whisper, “Oh you poor girl.” Martha took a closer look at the shed.  It was made from old, weather beaten planks, several of which had fallen off.  Patches of moss grew on some that remained.  Piles of dead weeds and pine needles were around the base, and a few small trees had taken root in them.

Looking back at the Doctor, Martha said, “I don’t understand.  It’s just an old shed.”

“No, it’s not.” The Doctor took his sonic screwdriver from inside his coat and aimed it at the door.  It buzzed a few seconds, and then the door – despite the rusty hinges – swung open.  Inside was a much, much larger space.  It was very dim inside, but Martha could make out what appeared to be a rustic cabin.  But in the center, surrounded in pale light, was a TARDIS console.

It took a few seconds for Martha to voice her thoughts.  “It’s the TARDIS.”

“It’s a TARDIS,” the Doctor corrected her.  “A Type 60.”

Before Martha could ask, the Doctor walked in.  After a few seconds she followed him.

The Doctor stopped by the console.  He reached out, but hesitated before resting his hand on it.  In response, the room filled with a low, mournful sound.

Martha walked around the Doctor, but had only gone a few steps before she stopped.  “Doctor.” On the other side of the console was a comfortable chair filled with remains.  All that was left inside the tattered clothing was a skeleton, but it looked as if a third of the bones had been turned to dust.

The Doctor looked at the body and sighed.  “Janithid.”

“You … knew him?”

“Only in passing.  He disappeared during The War.”

“What did that to him?”

“The Nightmare Child.”

“Who’s that?”

“You don’t want to know.”

They were silent for a few seconds, then the room again filled with a mournful sound.

Martha looked up the ceiling and asked, “What’s wrong with this TARDIS?”

“She’s dying.”

“Is there anything we can do?”

The Doctor shook his head.  “No, she’s too far gone.  They’ve been here for centuries.  Slowly gathering dust, fading away, being buried by time.” He patted the console and added, “These are her final moments.  Of course, the final moments of a TARDIS can last for decades.”

Martha placed her hand on the console next to his.  “Rest in peace,” she said.

The Doctor smiled and took her arm.  “Come on.”

Back outside, the Doctor soniced the door closed.  He then patted the worn wood and said, “Rest in peace.”

He turned around and said, “Now then, it’s getting dark.  Let’s find a good spot to watch the Great Leonid Meteor Storm.”

Random Story – Giant penis

This is just an odd little story from my life.

In 2002, I lived in a college town.  And I had a crappy job where I worked the night shift.  I had to work on Halloween, so I was asleep when all the trick or treaters came, which annoyed my one roommate because he had to deal with them. 

Anyway, I left for work – I think about 10:30 or so – and as I was driving through town I saw a bunch of dressed up college kids partying.  And then, down the sidewalk, I saw an eight foot tall penis slowly walking.  And it wasn’t just penis-shaped, they took the time to make it look lifelike. 

I can’t remember how long I laughed.  And since then, whenever someone mentions Halloween, one of my first thoughts is of a giant penis shuffling down the sidewalk.