An Emergency Time Travel Kit

 

Whenever I read a book or watch a movie or show set in some historical period – the US Civil War, the Crusades, Ancient Rome, whatever – I often wonder how I would react if a time portal opened up before me and I ended up in that time. (Hey, I’m sure your random thoughts make sense.) As I think through options on ways to keep from being killed when stumbling into, say, a Viking village, I figure it would be good to have a kit with a few modern items to help me survive. So here’s a few ideas for anyone who wants to put together an emergency time travel kit. A downside would be having to carry this kit with you all the time since you never know when a random time portal will open up.

1. A first aid kit. Just in general having aspirin and anti-diarrhea medicine would make spending time in the past more livable. Included in this would naturally be any medicine you’re taking, as well as other odd items like toilet paper and condoms.

2. A pistol. If the time portal drops you off in a time before gun powder, being able to make a loud noise – not to mention kill people at a distance – will probably get you labeled as a wizard. While it may not be ethical to allow this deception to continue, it may keep you alive. Of course, if movies have taught us anything, there will probably be a bad guy who will try to take your “power” so that they can rule. A way around that would be to have a smart gun. These are guns that can only be fired by a person who wears a special watch, has a chip implanted in their hand, or who has the right fingerprints. Such guns are not common, or are still being developed, but would be perfect for the accidental time traveler.

3. Some gifts and other trinkets. Depending on how far back you go, the people you run into – if you run into people – will probably be led by some form of chief. It may be useful to have some trinkets to show your good will. For example, a folding knife with a six-inch blade or longer. The folding ability may intrigue them, and the quality of the blade will probably be better than anything they have. Something else that may interest them is a bottle of vodka. If nothing else, it can be a disinfectant part of your first aid kit. Other simple trinkets that may amaze the people of the time could be things like a mirror, or a slinky.

4. A phone or tablet. Most things today have a built-in camera, which would be amazing even up to a few decades ago. There could be other useful features, but one issue is that there would be no access to the internet. So everything would have to be stored on the device itself. Maybe some music videos (Van Halen, perhaps?) to further amaze the people. One thing to keep in mind as you select your music are the lyrics. A large chunk of today’s music would probably be considered scandalous a century ago. Not to mention what phrases you might introduce into the language if you went back to when your language was first evolving. 

5. A recharger. Your electronic gadget – and possibly your smart gun – is good only as long as it has power. So having a way to recharge it with solar cells or a hand crank – preferably both – would be necessary.

So there are a few ideas for your emergency time travel kit. One note on this, I am a male, so in general I’m probably “safe” traveling through time. Women, I’m sure, would have a much harder time of it, but I think in general such a kit would still work for them. Maybe. If not, let me know what items would improve it.

***

Image from Pixabay.

Short story – “Ben’s Time Carriage”

“Ben’s Time Carriage”

“Where is he?”

Alexander turned to the man sitting in a frail wooden chair.  “My dear James, how am I supposed to know?  But, if you believe the word of the good Doctor, then it should be difficult for him to be–”

A brilliant flash of blue light filled the room, and both men raised their hands to their eyes.  When they lowered them a portly, older gentleman stood before them in a metal cage.  He opened a door, took a staggering step and began to fall, but Alexander caught him. 

“Benjamin, are you all right?” James asked.

“Yes, yes,” the man replied.  He laughed.  “Traveling through time leaves one … dizzy, for a few moments.”

“So you have done it then?” Alexander asked looking at the cage.  “Built a … time carriage.”

“Oh yes,” Benjamin replied, “and the things I have seen.”

James sighed.  “Were you able to do as we asked, or did you spend your time impressing the women in every century?”

Benjamin smiled.  “If you do not make time for the ladies, they will not make time for you.”

Looking in the cage, Alexander asked, “Did you memorize everything?  I expected you to return with countless books.”

“My dear Sir,” Benjamin replied, “do you think I would return empty handed?” Reaching into his coat pocket, he pulled out what looked like a thin glass rod.  He held it up and said, “Gentlemen, all of the books in all of our libraries would fit on this, with plenty of room to spare.”

“Surely not.” Alexander held out his hand and Benjamin placed the object in it.  Holding it up to his eye, he asked, “Did you find some minuscule printing press?”

“No, no, it’s …” Benjamin scratched his head.  “It is something that even I don’t fully understand.”

“How are we to read these … books?” James asked squinting at the rod.

“With this.” From another pocket Benjamin took out an object about the size of a small book made of a strange material.

“What is that?” Alexander asked.

“It is called,” Benjamin answered, “a computer.” Setting this computer on a table, Benjamin lifted the top and flipped it back with a click, so it was now twice the size but half the thickness.  He did this three more times until he had a stiff object about the size of a newspaper. 

“Amazing,” James said.

Benjamin held his hand out to Alexander who returned the rod.  “First we turn this on,” he said, touching the upper right corner of the computer.  There were a few musical tones that made the other two men jump.  “I’m sorry, I should have warned you.  It makes … odd noises at times.”

The surface of the computer had been a dull, bluish-gray, but now it turned black before it was replaced by an image in bronze of Benjamin himself.  Benjamin laughed.  “I couldn’t help myself.  This is … an instant painting of a future bust of me.”

Benjamin inserted the rod in a slot along the side of the computer and told the two other men, “Don’t worry.  This is a very …” He paused and mumbled, “What was the phrase?” to himself.  “Oh yes,” he continued in his normal voice, “this is a very ‘user friendly’ model.  I’ll be able to talk you through using it in only a few minutes.”

An hour later, both men were finally able to use the computer to read the information on the rod.  Once he was sure they understood how to use it, Benjamin told them, “Now, gentlemen, you have access to all the important historical events for the next three centuries.  With this you will be able to foresee all the difficulties this new nation will face and write the perfect Constitution for it.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an engagement I wish to attend.” He opened the door to the cage and stepped inside.

Alexander turned from the computer and asked, “Where is … or should I say, when is this engagement?”

“To answer both questions, Philadelphia in 2006.  They are having a 300th birthday party for me.  Courtesy requires that I attend.” With that he closed the door of the cage, and in a flash of red light, was gone.

***

I first wrote this story in 2008 as part of my 30 Stories in 30 Days Challenge I used to do.  I updated it for my 2012 collection Political Pies.  But I was reminded of it recently by all the talk of Originalism in regards to all the problems certain groups aren’t allowing us to fix, and figured I should repost it so I can share it easily. 

The original reason for this story, is every time I hear some schmuck say we shouldn’t do something because it “wasn’t the intent of the Founding Fathers,” I want to ask if the Founding Fathers had a crystal ball with which they could foresee all the problems the country would face, and thus write the solutions into the Constitution?  Don’t get me wrong, the Founding Fathers were some of the brightest minds of the Eighteenth Century.  Of course, we live in the Twenty-First Century where we have things like indoor plumbing and cyber terrorism.

Fourth of July Sale and voter registration drive

I think for every Fourth of July since I published Political Pies – my collection of short stories of a political nature – I’ve had a free sale for it.  On one hand, it’s hard to make money if you give your books away for free, but on the other hand the point of Political Pies is to get people to start thinking about politics in the hope we could start working on some of the problems we face to make a better world.  I’ll sacrifice a few sales for that.

And over the last few years, I’ve also had voter registration drive … sales.  Basically, if you’re an American citizen over 18, all I ask is after you download the free copies of my books, you register to vote or check your voter registration to make sure it’s up to date.  Democracy only works if the people participate, and the first step to participating is to register to vote.  And the sooner you register, or fix any problems with your registration, the easier it will be come Election Day.  To register or check your registration, you can go to your state’s website, which should have the necessary information.

If you’re not an American citizen, you can still download my books for free.  All I ask is you participate in your nation’s politics. 

#

The following three ebooks will be free to download from Saturday July 1st, through Wednesday July 5th.  I hope you enjoy, and I hope you vote in the next election.

 

The Only Certainty

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.

Political Pies

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.

Duty

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.

Fourth of July Sale!

I think for every Fourth of July since I published Political Pies – my collection of short stories of a political nature – I’ve had a free sale for it.  On one hand, it’s hard to make money if you give your books away for free, but on the other hand the point of Political Pies was to get people to start thinking about politics in the hope we could start working on some of the problems we face to make a better world.  I’ll sacrifice a few sales for that.  At first, I only offered Political Pies by itself, but in the last few years I’ve started having bigger sales with four or five of my books for free.  This year, I think I’m having my biggest Fourth of July Sale with eight of my Kindle books available for free.  That’s 188 short stories all for the price of eight clicks. 

But before you go and snag some free books to read, I have a favor to ask.  If you are an American citizen who will be over eighteen by Election Day, November 8th of this year, all I ask is that in the next few days you either double check your voter registration or register to vote, your state’s website should have all the necessary details.  Democracy only works if the people participate and the first step of participation is to be registered to vote.  So if you do that, I’m happy to let you have several of my books for free.  And if you aren’t an American citizen, then I’ll ask you to get involved in your nation’s politics in whatever way you can.

The following ebooks will be free to download on Kindle between Friday July 1st, and Tuesday July 5th.

 

Relics

This work contains some profanity and sexual situations. It is intended for mature audiences only.

A plague that kills men has devastated the world’s population. Only a few thousand boys and men were able to be quarantined. But Mike Shay is the only man known to have a natural immunity to the plague. Therefore, he is practically the only man in a world of women. He spends his days reading, playing video games, and making the occasional sperm donation. Then Dr. Veronica Barrett shows up, disrupting what passes for his life. She says she’s there to investigate his “mental wellbeing,” but is there more to her visit?

Instead of the normal, adolescent, heterosexual male fantasy of being the only guy on a planet of women, “Relics” tries to give a more realistic view of Mike’s life.

Duty

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.

Political Pies

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.

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 1,000 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.

Useless Cogs

Useless Cogs is a collection of forty, of my science fiction stories. They range from only a few dozen words to a few thousand and are filled with time travelers, AIs, clones, aliens, even sexbots, although not often as you would imagine. As example, there’s a time traveler that’s always a step behind, an AI that’s late on rent, and a sexbot with bad software. Some of the stories are humorous, some horrifying, and some … depend on your point of view.

The Only Certainty

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.

Seventh Story Stockpile

Over the years, I’ve posted several short stories on websites that later – for one reason or another – died. While the corpses of some of these sites are still around where you can read the stories, many have vanished from the internet. And since there are few sites that will publish such previously published works, the only way you could read them was if I self-published them in a collection.

In addition to such “lost” stories, I’ve included some new stories that – for one reason or another – I felt I’d have a hard time finding someone to publish them. So Seventh Story Stockpile basically contains stories I didn’t know what else to do with.

The All-You-Can-Read Buffet

The All-You-Can-Read Buffet is a collection of forty stories covering various genres and themes ranging from six to over 4,200 words in length. Some of these stories I wrote a decade ago, while others were written especially for this collection. All together, they are a buffet of my writing. As such, I encourage you to read as much as you want. Go back for seconds, thirds, fourths even. I won’t even mind if you skip over the stuff you don’t like, but, to quote your mother, “How do you know you don’t like it? Have you tried it?”

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.

Useless Cogs

I have just published my eighth short story collection.  “Useless Cogs” contains forty, science fiction stories that range from only a few dozen words to a few thousand and are filled with time travelers, AIs, clones, aliens, even sexbots, although not often as you would imagine.  As examples, there’s a time traveler that’s always a step behind, an AI that’s late on rent, and a sexbot with bad software.  Some of the stories are humorous, some horrifying, and some … depend on your point of view.  You can get it on Kindle for only $1.99, or the equivalent.

Half our knowledge

I have this habit – whenever I read or watch something set during some historic period – of wondering what I would do if some time portal opened and sent me to that time.  (Like the stuff that goes through your mind to pass the time makes sense.)  Basically, it’s a fun, mental exercise.  Like, if I ended up in Ancient Greece, how could I explain where I was from?  Assuming I appeared in a ball of lightning or something in front of people and wasn’t a strangely dressed barbarian found roaming the countryside who would probably just be speared.  Or what if I ended up in London – or Berlin – in 1940?  As a general rule of thumb, I’d try my best not to change the course of history.

For the longest time one of the more popular versions was if I ended up at a plantation in the South in 1860.  So they would know there’s something odd about me, I’d hope to show up above their dinner table while the family was eating.  I’d beg forgiveness, and ask for their discretion.  And as a white guy, hopefully they’d treat me okay.  (I’m ignoring the whole slavery issue because, well, getting into that now kind of sidetracks the entire point of this post.  Also, it’s rather pointless for me in the … comfort … of 2020 to state categorically what I would say to slave owners if I was magically transported back 160 years.)

I spent a lot of time wondering how much I could tell them of the future.  Like, I’m sure the womenfolk would want to know what the latest fashion was, and my best response was to say that they would consider the future fashion scandalous.  I might even say, “There are these things called bikinis – which women wear at the beach and swimming – that are made with less material than this,” and then I’d hold up a napkin.  Of course, that might make the mistress of the house faint from shock.

Anyway, to get to the point of this post, I would imagine that the white family members of this house – not having TVs or Netflix – would be well read.  They might ask my opinions on the “new” book A Tale of Two Cities, which I have read but I don’t remember much of it.  They might also ask me what I think of Ivanhoe, or some Greek philosopher, and I’d have to admit that I’ve never read them.  So they would probably think of my as an uncouth Yankee – okay, true – but I wanted some way to redeem myself.  And so I came up with the idea of “Half our Knowledge,” which shows that I have access to far more culture than they did.

If you made a graph of what humans know vs. time, you’d see that the Total Human Knowledge increases over time.  At first it was basic things like which plants we can eat and how to make fire, then it advanced to making pottery and boats, and now it’s reusable rockets and dating apps.  But there’s also poetry and plays and movies.  Now this is extremely rough, because what counts as a “unit of knowledge?” Does The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark have the same weight as Thor: The Dark World?  (Shakespeare wrote about forty plays, which is about as many superhero movies released in the past fifteen years.)  And this also ignores lost knowledge, like all the ancient books that all we have are their titles.  But if you ignore all of that, then you realize that there was a point in time that had half the knowledge we have here in 2020.  When was that?

When I first thought of this idea, my knee-jerk answer was 1900.  That was before flying (1903) even before sliced bread (1928).  But as I thought about it, I moved my answer to 1940.  Because a lot of stuff we don’t think twice about – jets, computers, nuclear power – all came about during World War II.  But once I thought of computers, that really threw everything out of whack.  And it comes back to the problem of what counts as a unit of knowledge.  How does “Eating that green berry will make you sick” compare to the trillions and trillions of calculations a supercomputer does modelling how a protein folds up, which could fully explain why that green berry makes one sick?

And then there’s all the social media stuff.  Like, how many equivalents of The Iliad are tweeted each day?  And before you say that what some asshole says online shouldn’t count as knowledge, I have to ask what did the average peasant think of Robert II of France?  He was the King of the Franks a thousand years ago.  The answer is, they probably thought he was swell, because if they said otherwise some nobleman would cut them in half with a sword.  But unless some literate peasant wrote down what they thought or some clergyman asked them what they thought and accurately recorded it, we have no idea.  But the historians a thousand years from now – assuming they can still access the data – will have millions and millions of tweets, blog posts, YouTube videos, etc., of people voicing their thoughts on Trump.  So shouldn’t the rambling Facebook post of your crazy uncle be counted as, in some sense, knowledge?

Given that we now have supercomputers finding all sorts of tidbits of knowledge and that there are seven billion humans reading over all our old knowledge and making new stuff every day, could it be possible that the “half our knowledge” point was a recent as … 2000?  And I know it sounds ridiculous to try to balance making the wheel, domesticating cows, and creating plastics to what has happened in the last twenty years, but in 2000 Pluto was basically just a point of light, now we have maps of it.  In 2000, YouTube wasn’t a thing, and now how many billions of hours of videos have been made?  In 2000 I had only been writing for a few years, now I have several ebooks to my name.

There is no right answer to when we had half our knowledge, but it’s a question that the more you think about it, the deeper down the rabbit hole you go.  A reference that hypothetical family in 1860 wouldn’t get since Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland didn’t come out until 1865. 

Fourth of July Sale!

For the last few years, I’ve tried to have a free sale for my ebook of political stories, Political Pies, around the Fourth of July.  But this year – because of everything – I figured I’d include a few of my other ebooks as well.  So if you are so disgusted with real politics you don’t want to even read fictional politics, you have a few other choices.  All of these will be free to download from Wednesday July 1st, through Sunday July 5th.  So grab them before you get too drunk.

Political Pies

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 this 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.

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 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.

Duty

Who cleans up the mess when the time machine malfunctions?

A Cabin Under a Cloudy Sea and other stories

Hopefully, in the not too distant future humans will return to the moon. We will build bases and colonies, make farms and factories, and live, love and learn. “A Cabin Under a Cloudy Sea and other stories” contains five of my short stories that are all set upon the moon. They give the tiniest glimpse of the possibilities awaiting us there.

Coronavirus sale!

So you’ve been stuck at home for a week or so and you’ve burned through all your Kindle ebooks.  What do you do?  Why, you download more, of course.  To help you out, from Monday March 23 through Friday March 27, the following six of my ebooks will be free to download.  That’s over one hundred short stories for the price of a few clicks. 

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 All-You-Can-Read Buffet

The All-You-Can-Read Buffet is a collection of forty stories covering various genres and themes ranging from six to over 4,200 words in length. Some I began writing well over a decade ago, while others were written especially for this collection. All together, they are a buffet of my writing. As such, I encourage you to read as much as you want. Go back for seconds, thirds, fourths even. I won’t mind if you skip over the stuff you don’t like, but, to quote your mother, “How do you know you don’t like it? Have you tried it?”

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.

A Cabin Under a Cloudy Sea and other stories

Hopefully, in the not too distant future humans will return to the moon. We will build bases and colonies, make farms and factories, and live, love and learn. “A Cabin Under a Cloudy Sea and other stories” contains five of my short stories that are all set upon the moon. They give the tiniest glimpse of the possibilities awaiting us there.

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.

The Future is Coming

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.