I think for the past decade, every Fourth of July I’ve had a sale for some of my ebooks. Which ones vary over the years, but Political Pies, my collection of forty short stories of a political nature, is always included. The sale is usually just to mark the Fourth of July, but this year – with an ever-quickening slide into authoritarianism – I’m making it a Save America Sale.
How will my ebooks save
America? Well, I could argue that most
of my stories are science fiction and show worlds where very alien aliens have
learned to live and work together, thus showing the idiocy of people being
upset their neighbor doesn’t have the exact same shade of skin color. But really, my ebooks don’t contain some magic
formula to save America. It’s just a
nice gesture. If you’re fighting
authoritarianism, then it’s likely you read, so here is a collection of free
ebooks you can pick up.
In previous years, I’ve had
sales at points throughout the year where I asked people to also register to
vote or to vote. But apparently,
offering anything to get people to register or to vote is technically
illegal. I doubt they’d go after some
unknown author giving away free ebooks, but I’m also not a billionaire who can
just bribe his way out of problems. So
for this Save America Sale, I’m not asking anyone to do anything. If you do decide to register to vote, or run
for office, or march in the streets, that is entirely on you. But if you have some time waiting for the
march to get going, some of these ebooks are collections of short stories you
can read in a few minutes.
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From Tuesday July 1st
through Saturday July 5th, the following eight ebooks will be free to download.
Everybody complains about politics, but does anyone do anything about it? My attempt to do something about it is to collect forty of my short stories with a political element into my Political Pies anthology. The stories are either politically neutral or equally condemning of the national parties. Instead of trying to sway you to one ideology or another, my goal is to just get people thinking about politics in the hopes a rose might grow out of all the political manure.
“Rise” is a standalone story set in my Human Republic Universe. The story follows the events after the tragic deaths of the colonists on a small colony in a distant star system.
For reasons of safety and avoiding paradoxes, Time Travel Incorporated assigns a Guardian to all its travelers. So when there is an accident during political historian Roj Hasol’s trip back to 1968, it’s his Guardian Susan who sets out on the arduous task of cleaning up the mess.
On The Day, for reasons unknown, people began changing. They went to sleep as their old selves and woke in their beds in different bodies: bodies that had belonged to other people. And each time they fall asleep, they wake in a new body. Set months later, The Only Certainty follows Derrick Gorton on an average day in this new world as he deals with food shortages, the semi-collapse of society, and how to finish his latest novel.
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.
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.
The Moon Before Mars: Why returning to the moon makes more sense than rushing off to 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.
As a science fiction writer, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how technology will change the way we live. I’ve come up with these ten short essays about science fictional elements that will – almost certainly – one day become science fact as a way for people to start coming to terms with them. Because I’ve spent time thinking about clones and AIs, I feel I’ll be okay when they do finally show up whereas most people will probably freak out. I hope these essays will get people to start thinking about the future because, no matter what we do, the future is coming.
