I recently dropped the price on my novel Neo Ace to 99 cents US$. If you're interested in a good a good read, hit the link and head over to Amazon. I'm also looking for some reviews and if you liked it, please leave one and help me out.
It has been a pretty busy summer and work is finally starting to slow down a bit. I'm still plugging away slowly at the concluding novel for Exocrisis Blue. When I get a few chapters done, I'll start posting it up on Wattpad again. Neo Ace is a complete story arc as I wouldn't want to leave anyone hanging (I hate it when it happens to me), so no worries if you want to read Neo Ace.
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| Edmonton City Hall, or life under the dome if this were an offworld colony. |
- As I'm a Canadian, eh, one item of interest that has stood out is the mini-series comic "We Stand On Guard" from Image Comics. This is written by Brian K. Vaughan, an American married to a Canadian and is about a future war between America and Canada. Canada has basically been overrun by American mechs and we're fighting a guerilla war. In most scenarios we'd be hamburger if attacked by the States, but the first issue was pretty entertaining and I'm interested in the rest.
http://www.cbc.ca/m/news/arts/we-stand-on-guard-comic-offers-explosive-look-at-canada-u-s-relations-1.3137480http://kotaku.com/one-of-comics-best-writers-has-america-and-canada-figh-1716016922 - The Gate (can be seen on Crunchyroll for free legal streaming). This is about a gate opening up in Tokyo's Ginza that disgorges a fantasy army of goblins, roman-like legionnaires, and flying dragons. The JSDF fights them off, and an otaku army officer helps to save the day. The JSDF invades the other world to secure the gate and has to immediately defeat another massive army of medieval low tech types. Our hero, the otaku (and the JSDF has tried to appeal to them via recruiting campaigns) is now in his dream universe and trying to establish relations with the locals while holding the evil empire at bay. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gate_%28novel_series%29
- The movie Chappie, Jupiter Descending, Interstellar, Avengers: Age of Ultron, and Jurassic World, etc. Have all been pretty good. Jupiter Descending was kind of lambasted, but I think it is better than some simply because it is a good story (especially when compared to most comics or TV SF) with an original idea. Jurassic World was just fun, and yes, what kind of moron would weaponize raptors? Chappie became a movie with ideas far bigger than the movie in a hurry, but it was enjoyable too. Interstellar had a terrible storyline (probably easier to spend that space program money to genetically engineer something that actively resists or kills the blight), but the ideas about space and time in it were all top notch. Avengers was an awesome superhero movie, not as good as the first one, but it was nice to see some character development for Black Widow, etc.
- I just finished Leviathan Wakes from the Expanse by James Corey and am reading the second book. I wanted to read this as they were making a TV series based on this. It was an enjoyable space opera kind of read with many factions from the belt colonies, Earth, and Mars, plus the obligatory evil megacorporations. The one thing I did find really funny about it was the fact that food was mentioned quite a bit in the book, but I did find it inadequately addressed. In a previous post, I talked about the SF future of food, and my observations stand on this. The book always talked about the food being bad. This situation only could occur if you were in a survival situation or had strict central bad planning over food. The Expanse universe is clearly not any of these situations.
Food is easy to grow and it will be tasty simply because food science is already here to deliver it. People will also demand tasty food. With the hundreds of millions of people in space, I would have actually expected Martian, Jovian, and Belter cuisine to have evolved that had its own distinct flavourings and styles that had diverged from their earthly origins. Like airplane food is prepared for low pressure and the dry climate found on planes now. Nothing like a spicy belter roll for zero G with the Jovian moonbugs that pop in your mouth. Also, energy should be cheap with massive solar arrays (continental size in the asteroid belt) or fusion, etc. But energy was not cheap back when the book was written and scarcity still pervades the work. Still, a good read, with a crazy and powerful unknown threat in the background.
