Neo Ace New Release and Kickoff Sale

Hello!  A quick introduction is probably in order.  I'm Peter Lok, a science fiction writer based out of Canada.  I have been working on my Exocrisis Blue universe while I also maintain an author's blog and a Japanese pop culture blog.  Exocrisis Blue is an alternate future where the Earth has been invaded by the Blue Newts who were fleeing a dying homeworld.  During the Alien War, humanity finally turned the direction of the war against the Newts by developing the giant HARM robots based off of captured alien tech.  The war changed the geopolitical order on Earth, ending in an uneasy peace where the Newts consolidated their tropical and subtropical holdings.  For more information on the world of Exocrisis Blue and the HARMs, please check this link to my author's blog.

For the last year I have been writing and revising my novel Neo Ace.  It was just published as an Amazon ebook in the UK, USA, and Canada in June 2014.  This novel is about the story of Jake and Mayumi, two cadets at the Neo Ace Academy, who are going to be involved in events that will shape the future for both human and Newt.  This story is military SF, but with a good touch of anime inspired mecha tropes (since mechs are Japanese inspired anyhow).  While the protagonists are teens, a rich cast of adult characters drives the story along, the way things should happen in real life.  This story should appeal to all types of science fiction readers and anime viewers.  Neo Ace is a self-contained story arc, but the full Neo Ace story concludes in Neo Destiny.  Neo Destiny promises more world building, political machinations, character development, and epic battles involving mechs and conventional forces in high tech battlefields across the Earth.

Promotional Period
Neo Ace is available for approximately $2 US, half of the regular price (Amazon does some kind of adjustment), until the beginning of August.  Please consider buying a copy and providing some positive reviews, even if brief, on Amazon, as word of mouth is the only way an independent author can get ahead.

I have previously written a short story, HARM, and a novella, Raid on Kahamba, that are independent prequels set in the same universe.  Both HARM and Raid will be free for a limited time to promote Neo Ace.  Give them a read to see if you would like Neo Ace!

Limited Time Free Story Giveaway

• HARM is available for free from July 4 to 8, 2014.
• Raid is available for free from July 11 to 13, 2014.

Please click through to my publications page for the direct links to the various Amazon bookstores.
Check the price to see if it is still free before clicking the buy button!

Link to My Science Fiction Publications Page.

Thanks for your time in advance.

Neo Ace Action Excerpt
...
The platoon’s six HARM units were rapidly advancing in a skirmish line a quarter of a kilometre wide through a pine forested valley floor.  Trees and branches were effortlessly brushed aside or smashed by the rapid walking pace of the robots.  Every so often a laser shot from the spider-mechs would flash by, but it was mostly the HARM units sniping at the retreating enemy.

Jake was the acting platoon leader, positioned in mid-line in HARM #3.  In his cockpit, he studied the tactical display on the console in front of him.  They had engaged the advancing spider-mechs from concealment in the hilly woodland terrain, their HARM unit active camouflage systems blending them with the surrounding woods.  Their first volleys of fire had brought down four of the nine mechs.  They had then started pursuing the retreating alien Newts.  His shot meant that five were now down.  Return fire from the enemy had been ragged, but HARM #5, piloted by his friend Bing, had taken some torso damage and wasn't aiming as well.

"We have orders to hold this position, not pursue," Mayumi reminded Jake from  HARM #1.  "We have already stopped the breakthrough."

"I think Mayumi's right," Toshi added from HARM #6.  "My father says Newt units don't break very easily – they are not cowards.  This could be a trap to draw us out. "

"I know your dad is a mecha pilot in the Japanese Defence Forces,” Jake responded.  “I really think we have them on the run.  They’ll never break through to Central City if we take these guys out.  We have the initiative and should take it."

Jake looked at the tactical display again.  He projected the map for everyone to see and used his finger to point out a position.  "We won't move that far out of position if we can take them out before they exit the valley between these two hills. Geraldo, Mayumi, take the left flanking hill.  Bing and Toshi, take the right hill.  Mary and I will pursue and keep the pressure on.  You guys run for those hills and take them out from above."

"Jake’s plan sounds good to me," Geraldo spoke out in Hispanic accented English.  "We should take advantage of the situation."

"I'm in," Mary added.  She preferred a standup fight over waiting any day.  "Eliminated Newts won't be back."

After a bit of hesitation, Bing, assented too.

Mayumi agreed when it was obvious that everyone was in.  "Okay," she quietly added.

"I don't think we should be doing this," Toshi finally agreed, "but let us try it."

"Thanks, Toshi.  All units, move out," Jake ordered.  They were going to win this one in a big way.

Mayumi and Geraldo in HARMs #1 and #2 swept forward to the left and began running for the top of their hill.  On the right, Bing and Toshi in HARMs #5 and #6 began running for the other hill.  In the center, Jake and Mary in HARMs #3 and #4 widened the distance between them and increased their pace to a jog to begin closing in on the retreating mechs. 

Over the next several minutes the pursuing HARMs began to gradually overtake the retreating enemy, reducing the distance between them less than a kilometre.  Exchanged shots were few between the two sides as visual contact was poor between them.  Even though they were eight metres high at the top of their main weapon blister, the spider-mechs were almost impossible to see in the trees as they were short enough to disappear into them.   The taller 12 metre height of the Fenrir HARM units put them at tree top height much of the time,  but it did not make much of a difference in the fight.

There was a small explosion in the air near the spider-mechs.  "Damn, that was my last RPV," Mary commented.  "At least they know we're still here."  Recon drones were invaluable, but did not last long on the modern battlefield against point defence laser systems.  She just wished they had full equipment load outs for their units.  This fight would have been over long ago if they had Helldart missiles and a couple of Typhoon missile pack equipped HARMs.

The distance between the two pursuing HARM units and the four retreating enemy mechs had closed to 800 metres, and the enemy mechs had moved between the two hills.  Jake's HARM had moved closer to the base of the left hill while Mary had closed in on the right hill.  During the chase they had split themselves to snipe at the enemy from two different angles.

"You guys in position?"  Jake inquired.  From his tactical display he could see the locations of all of the HARM units, but not their status.  It looked like both sets of flankers had crested their hills.

"Almost there," Toshi responded, "I'm looking for a firing position."

"Same here," Geraldo added in.

"Shit!"  Bing suddenly yelled out.  Blue enemy markers appeared on the tactical display along the far downslope of each of the flanking hills.  "Enemy  contacts just crested the hill.  I'm engaging."

"It's a trap!"  Mayumi called out.  "Enemy Hunter class mechs!  Engaging!  Coilgun to full power."

Events had suddenly turned on them.  Jake couldn't believe his tactical display.  Each of his flanking pairs was suddenly outmatched by a squad of three Newt Hunters.  Unlike the spider  mechs, the Hunter mechs were advanced anthropomorphic mechs with a Newt body form, the enemy equivalent of their Fenrir mechs.   Each Hunter had three pairs of  limbs, with the rear two pairs for movement and the front pair for manipulation.  They resembled giant armoured lizards carrying laser cannon with their two front limbs.

"Fall back!"  Jake called out.  They were in a bad situation.

"Popping smoke,"  Bing responded, "but they're too close.  I don't think  we can disengage."

Jake didn't hesitate in his response.  "We're coming to back you up"
...

Readings in Mecha Science Fiction

Awhile back I asked in a mecha forum if members could name original mecha scifi novels, not anime, or established video games.  There were not many responses.  Written mecha SF isn't a big genre to begin with as it is a subset of military SF in most cases, but it could just be an SF adventure story.  Instead of tanks, you have big robots, as the master of the battlefield.  This genre doesn't have a great deal of exposure as I suspect that many readers think it is for kids.  Gritty, hard hitting military SF with mechs does exist though.

In this article, I'm going to list some fairly recently written mecha SF that you could try. Some of it is available in printed form, some of it in an ebook only.  I also write in this genre, so a few of my stories are also listed.  There doesn't seem to be a place you can go to find original novels that involve mechas otherwise.

Armageddon 2089 Series
I actually reviewed Standing Alone some time ago, but last year, a sequel was released.  I haven't picked it up yet as I have a pretty big backlog of miltary SF and other reading.  I enjoyed the first book and will have high hopes for the second.

Standing Alone (Armageddon 2089: Shotgun Mike) by Martin Dougherty
http://www.amazon.com/Standing-Alone-Armageddon-2089-Shotgun-ebook/dp/B00BJ8M604
Standing Together (Armageddon 2089: Shotgun Mike) by Martin Dougherty 
http://www.amazon.com/Standing-Together-Armageddon-2089-Shotgun-ebook/dp/B00EONMEB2


Exocrisis Blue Series
This is my universe that I have been working on in my spare time.  My new novel Neo Ace will be published in the next month or so.  Give it a try if you want hard hitting military SF with big robots written realistically.

HARM (Exocrisis Blue) by Peter Lok
http://www.amazon.com/HARM-Peter-Lok-ebook/dp/B007X65FYA
Raid on Kahamba (Exocrisis Blue) by Peter Lok
http://www.amazon.com/Raid-Kahamba-Peter-Lok-ebook/dp/B009BTMMC0
Neo Ace (Exocrisis Blue) by Peter Lok
http://www.amazon.com/Neo-Ace-Exocrisis-Blue-Book-ebook/dp/B00LCCXY3U

Universal War: ARM X Series
ARM X means "Armed Reserve Mecha of the Xeno Organization."  I had a few discussions with the author of this series over at Wattpad.  He's a real serious writer wanting to tell a big political and military tale that involves mechs.  There's currently two books available, with Shadow just being published this year in February.

The Road to Betrayal (Universal War: ARM X) by Peter W. Smorynski
http://www.amazon.com/Road-Betrayal-Universal-War-ARM-ebook/dp/B00DSILTCO
A Shadow of Chaos (Universal War: ARM X) by Peter W. Smorynski
http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Chaos-Universal-War-ARM-ebook/dp/B00I81OOM8


Armor Wars
This is a pretty interesting future universe.  The mechs are a mix of organics and regular tech and are amazingly capable with the new models.  I reviewed Mecha Corps earlier, and have Mecha Rogue on my backlog of reading.  This is the only one of the series here published by a big name publisher.

Mecha Corps: A Novel of the Armor Wars by Brett Patton
http://www.amazon.com/Mecha-Corps-Novel-Armor-Wars-ebook/dp/B005GSYYXA
Mecha Rogue: A Novel of the Armor Wars by Brett Patton
http://www.amazon.com/Mecha-Rogue-Novel-Armor-Wars-ebook/dp/B007R8GXI6


ATLAS Series
I think Isaac Hooke is based out of Edmonton, just like me, but we've never met.  He's written a number of previous SF novels in the last decade and seems to be pretty prolific and successful.  Out of all the series I've listed here, his books are selling the best, as I suspect he has a good fan base behind him based on his previous good work.  I've picked up a copy of ATLAS, and it is in my backlog.

Caterpillar Without A Callsign by Isaac Hooke
http://www.amazon.com/Caterpillar-Without-Callsign-Isaac-Hooke-ebook/dp/B00GZJQQUS
ATLAS (ATLAS Series) by Isaac Hooke
http://www.amazon.com/ATLAS-Series-Isaac-Hooke-ebook/dp/B00KFQZNEC


I don't just read military SF, so I have a good backlog building.  I still need to get out a mini-review for the Kris Longknife series of books too - I read the last two in the hospital awhile back.  At least I got the reviews of Armor and Armoured out!   I also recently read A Tale For The Time Being by Ruth Ozeki and it was an awesome literary read.  I blog about Japanese pop culture over at my Tokyo Excess blog and this book combined quantum physics, Buddhism, Japanese contemporary and pop culture in a fascinating read.  So have a read of that too if you get a chance.
www.amazon.com/Tale-Time-Being-Ruth-Ozeki-ebook/dp/B00AW0DM8K


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Review of Armored (A powered armor anthology)

Mini-review #15

This is a series of short reviews for military SF and mecha SF.  You will not see a review of something I don't like as it isn't worth writing about in that case, but I will tell you what works for me and what doesn't about the stories I did like.

This is a review of Armored, an anthology of stories about powered armour, which is not to be confused with the older military SF book Armor.  I happen to have both the Kindle version of it and the paperback.  Baen Books has their own sales site which sells ebooks without DRM, which is nice.  John Joseph Adams has assembled a nice assortment of 23 short stories that range anywhere from steam punk to gritty miltary SF.  There's even a zombie type story in here too, but pretty much skimmed that as I don't like zombie / undead type stories of any kind other than the original Dracula.  Some of the stories I really liked were Hell's Half Acre, Jungle Walkers, Power Armor: A Love Story, Field Test, and Trauma Pod.  It was a nice mix of stories from direct engagements, a bit of horror, to a spy/romance plot.

Worth a read for the fan of powered armour or military SF.

Does it have a cast of characters listing?

Nope.  But there are tons of characters as there are 23 different stories.  The suits themselves are characters in a few of them!

What is the scope / scale of the story?

Varies, but mainly it is small unit, or commando raid type missions.  Nothing too epic, but these are short stories.

Does it have likeable characters?

There are quite a few memorable characters that range from Frost a Drone operator to a tough Gunnery Sergeant named Schaeffer.

Does it have an entertaining storyline?

Many interesting storylines.  Stories range from historical steampunk to far future in a variety of settings.  If you like powered armour, you will be entertained.

How is the internal consistency / plausibility?

The stories hold together pretty good.  No complaints.

Armor Book Review of a Miltary SF Classic

Mini-review #14

This is a series of short reviews for military SF and mecha SF.  You will not see a review of something I don't like as it isn't worth writing about in that case, but I will tell you what works for me and what doesn't about the stories I did like. 

Armor is an old book published in 1984 by John Steakley.  I looked around for a Kindle edition, but no dice, and ended up buying a paperback.  I had heard that this book was a military SF classic, but I'd probably disagree with that statement after reading it.  It isn't a bad book, but it was definitely not what I was expecting to read after the first 25% of the book.  The story is divided into 4 arcs of which the first 25% is the "classic military SF with power armour (like in the title).  This is where all the buzz is from about the book.

In the initial story arc, our hero, Felix, is assigned to being a scout on his first mission on Banshee, a hellhole of a planet, where humanity is fighting a war against the Ants for some reason that I wasn't sure about.  His life as a scout is supposed to be short, but he prevails against all odds as he has a weird psychological part of his mind called the Engine that keeps him fighting and alive.

The combat is close and vicious and the humans quickly find themselves in a desperate situation.  The powered armour (Canadian spelling of armor) is pretty impressive, but so are the thousands upon thousands of 3 metre high bugs armed with blasters.  Pretty gripping combat scenes, good use of powered armour, and the read went by pretty quickly.

The story then changes to very interesting alien prison break, space pirates enter the story, and rest of the story takes place at a research station on a colony world at the fringe of human space.  It was a jarring story shift as it didn't seem like it connected with what I had just read.  Needless to say these story threads all tie together with a suit of powered armour as the glue.  Nice touch.

If you run across this book it is worth a read just for the first arc.

Does it have a cast of characters listing?
Not really.  There are many characters, but they stay under a half dozen or so in each story arc, so it is trackable.

What is the scope / scale of the story?
The battles are often fought personally by Felix.  The larger battlefield picture is at the division level, but you don't see much of it.  The situation  on Banshee starts bad and just gets worse.  It is a very personal tale around Felix and then our space pirate.

Does it have likeable characters?
Can't say I liked any of the characters other than the female scout that helps Felix out initially.  Everyone seems to be portrayed as broken goods to some extent.  The protagonist himself at the beginning is kind of an amnesiac to boot and very fatalistic.

Does it have an entertaining storyline?
Really liked the first part, and slogged throught the rest of it.  I'm not sure if this novel would get the same amount of popularity in todays very competitive military SF marketplace.

How is the internal consistency / plausibility?
The novel is really not about military organization, planning, or tactics.  You have no idea why Banshee is an important military objective.  The operation planners must have been idiots as their intel is abysmal and military bureaucracy is just out of touch with reality in this case.  Could be a good anti-war  theme and the story is really about how Felix and the grunts deal both mentally and physically with their situation.

What cool bonus features are there?
The  powered battlesuits are cool, with Starship Trooperesque weaponry. The suits have blasters, bomb dispensers, and are capable of amazing feats of strength and agility.  There are some discrpencies with the suits thought.  Despite being nuclear powered, they need recharging.  The nuclear aspect is actually a key plot point too.

The troops deploy to the surface by running into a teleporter field. Very nifty.

The Science Future (Not Fiction) of AI is Near

This could happen in my lifetime or at most within the lifetime my children.  While I don't know about the "technological singularity" where machines replace man or where man / machine evolves together, the future looks like it is going to happen sooner than later.  This future is about robotics and artificial intelligence being integrated with human society.  Already AI algorithms are in current use everywhere in business and research.  They help us design better machines and computers, assist in medical diagnosis, predict what we like for music and books, detect computer viruses, predict stock markets, etc.   Robots are everywhere from vending machines, household cleaning devices, making good coffee, making war, and working on assembly lines.  Computers and the right software and AI are able to replace human workers doing "thinking work" and not just rote assembly or warehouse work.

Hatsune Miku, the first Japanese vocaloid, and a holographic jpop star with live concerts.  If she had an AI personality matrix, would she be a true idol versus the personality that her fans give her?  I blogged about her here: http://tokyoexcess.blogspot.ca/2012/06/vocaloid-hatsune-miku-breaks-out.html

All of these things I just talked about used to be purely science fiction.  In the 1950s, the rise of modern classic SF, it was almost unthinkable that this could happen in this manner.  Even now, SF writers are dabbling in it, some are swimming and going with the flow, but in most cases, the future often seems like the past to me.  SF on television is some of the worst.  I've talked about military technology in SF before and how a great deal of military SF seems to be a rehash of our current combat techniques and old wars.  It isn't very futuristic and we are stuck writing about what we are familiar with.  Only in the last decade is powered armour and such becoming common along with smart weaponry, but even then battles tend to be the same old thing.  When we write (myself included) we don't think what the battlefield should be like if all the new technology comes into play.  I myself think war would be very different with cheap robot armies, and the fog of war will be different as tiny little recon drones would saturate the battlefield.  These scenarios are likely if there isn't some kind of international accord or something like that to stop it.

The same case is playing out with AI.  If there are AIs that have access to the entire Internet and people interact with these AIs, what are the outcomes.  How does this affect everything basically as there is a new partner we are dealing with?  If they are as intelligent as people, or more so, it is a completely new story as they would be powerful players in society.  In this case, are they citizens, starting a revolution, or beings with rights?  Would they look at humanity benevolently?  If they are not fully intelligent, but "smart" to behave like one they would be amazing augments to human mental capability.  Would they be cheap for the masses (don't see why not as tech tends to be cheap as it matures)?  How would people still relate to other people and society as a whole? What happens to the structure of society?  What if you only had to let your AI work on your behalf and you just did something else to develop your skills/interests, or just have fun?  Also, with the growing inequality in wealth distribution and robots taking jobs away, what if the police and army were automated too?  Would the 1% beat down the other 99% as they control all the weapons?

These are big questions that SF can always visioning about.  I myself don't really have the answers, but I do have a whole bunch of interesting reading linked below that could get you thinking about AI and robotics.  Scarey part is that many of the articles are from mainstream magazines and are about now or the near future.  Have fun checking them out.

The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era by Vernor Vinge
This is the paper that started or helped to kick off the singularity is in our future thinking.
https://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/misc/singularity.html

The Singularity is Further Than it Appears by Ramez Naam
Talks more about the singularity and machine progression with monkey wrenches thrown it into the process.
From the blog of SF writer Charles Stross.
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/02/the-singularity-is-further-tha.html

What if a Time Traveller Saw a Smartphone?
Interesting article about what a pre-1914 individual would think about a 21st century humans.  The pre-1914 individual is in a modified Turing Test where they are dealing with a typical 21st century human augmented with a smartphone linked to the Internet.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2014/01/if-a-time-traveller-saw-a-smartphone.html

How Robots Will Work With Us?
Many questions about how humans will interact with the many robots to come.
http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/03/how-robots-will-work-with-us-isnt-only-a-technological-question/

Why Asimov’s Three Laws Of Robotics Can’t Protect Us
It just doesn't look like it would work in practical terms.
http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/dvorsky20140415

The Man Who Would Teach Machines to Think
What is AI?  Will we understand how we think and create human-like AI too?
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/the-man-who-would-teach-machines-to-think/309529

Facebook, Google, And Sony Are Getting Ready To Fight A Cyberpunk War
The big tech players are getting ready to put the consumer into cyberspace virtual reality.  Ghost in the Shell and Snow Crash, here we come.  AIs are mandatory of course.
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3027921/facebook-google-and-sony-are-getting-ready-to-fight-a-cyberpunk-war

Making Robots More Like Us
People and robots working together.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/29/science/making-robots-more-like-us.html

As Technology Gets Better, Will Society Get Worse?
How will people and society cope with big technological change?
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3027921/facebook-google-and-sony-are-getting-ready-to-fight-a-cyberpunk-war

An army of robot baristas could mean the end of Starbucks as we know it
Brewing good coffee without the human in the loop.

http://qz.com/134661/briggo-coffee-army-of-robot-baristas-could-mean-the-end-of-starbucks-as-we-know-it/

Drones will cause an upheaval of society like we haven’t seen in 700 years
This could have been titled "The Age of the Gun is Over" too.  Will the rich have robot armies to keep the poor in line?
http://qz.com/185945/drones-are-about-to-upheave-society-in-a-way-we-havent-seen-in-700-years/

Robots of death, robots of love
Governing the use of military robots and robots helping us in society.
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/robots-of-death-robots-of-love-the-reality-of-android-soldiers-and-why-laws-for-robots-are-doomed-to-failure

Confessions of a Drone Operator
A view of remote warfare from a drone operator.
http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/201311/drone-uav-pilot-assassination

AI Could Kill Us All
Title says it all.
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2014/03/08/ai-could-kill-all-meet-man-takes-risk-seriously/

A perspective on alien thinking.
http://io9.com/how-to-write-from-the-perspective-of-a-truly-alien-self-1449703465



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Big Ideas in SF

Science fiction provides a very wide canvas for painting stories about alternate futures and histories that portray the use of current and hypothetical technologies.  Over the last year I've read a few articles about how science fiction isn't portraying big ideas anymore or how popular dystopian futures are.  There is certainly plenty of that, but the amount of SF being produced is also greatly expanded these days so there is still positive stuff out there.  I'd only say it is probably easier for many writers to produce drama with a not so perfect future and it resonates with their audience these days (zombie outbreaks, new plagues, controlling governments).  During the Cold War, there were plenty of post-apocalyptic stories set recently or long after a nuclear WW III.  When I was young I ate that stuff up.  There were great books like the Breaking Earth, Emergence, Breaking of Northwall, Empire of the East, Vault of the Ages, Damnation Alley, In Iron Years, The Postman, etc.

Flight of Fancy

For myself, I prefer a brighter future for everyone, even if some type of danger threatens it in my stories.  Technology is an enabler and I think I would like to see how positive it can be rather than negative (after all, both the bad guys and the good guys are going to use it).  It would be nice to see more stories set with massive technological enterprises at their core.

Examples of big technology for SF would be:

• Construction of FTL Spaceships or Seeder / Generation Ships for space exploration and colonization.
• Realistic new space colony stories in space or on new planets done right - not lets shove them out the door and they revert to a 19th century lifestyle - kind of stupid if you have high tech.  No space westerns. We should see terraforming at work.
• Wormhole or instantaneous travel gateways.
• Construction of space elevators or alternate methods to get into Earth orbit.
• Construction of orbital colonies.
• Construction of massive solar energy collectors in space to beam energy to Earth.
• Development of new types of cities or arcopolis.
• Any kind of massive save the world project from some kind of impending doom like global warming, alien invaders, asteroid strike, super flares from the sun, cosmic shockwave heading our way, etc.
• Environment re-engineering to restore ecosystems on a massive scale.  The world's first weather control system.
• Space mining of resources - sounds boring, but the possibilities are out there.

Examples massive tech change on society would be cool too:

• Integration of technology and humans playing a central role - but not trans-humanism.
• Machine intelligence integrated with a society that feels like it could work.
• What does cheap energy do to humanity if we actually had it?  What does this do for the global balance of power?  I actually thought this was interesting in the movie Elysium as the rich in space seemed to have everything.  If they could actually do all of that, couldn't they have solved more problems down on Earth at the same time (energy must have been cheap).
• What if we all doubled our lifespans in good health due to medical advances / nanotech / gene therapy, etc?  What will happen to the family, career, marriage, overall employment, etc.What kinds of medical tech changes would be needed to do this?
• What if education worked better?  Do we still have classrooms, teachers, text books?  What is the new way of learning and then what happens outside of the learning process?
• Cheap robots and their impact on human society, but I think this one is going to play out in real time so it almost isn't SF any more.
• Positive mass benefits of nanotech to society like cures for cancer and other diseases.  Augmentation of humans to be prettier, stronger, smarter, healthier, etc. 

All of these things are very interesting even without a dystopia. So I invite anyone reading this to submit a story / novel / movie they think is big science and not dystopian in the comments below!


Quick update to the Neo Ace novel status.
I have finished the final edit for the first 10 chapters.  Only 23 more to go.  Sorry to anyone who is still waiting patiently.  I'm still working through the health issues that hit me in January.  Full recovery won't be until the fall, but I'm still plugging away and planning the next book.  All I can say is that I'm glad the universal coverage provided by the Canadian Health Care System works well.  I have now benefited from it twice in my life for major life events.  One was the premature birth of my daughter years ago (up to $100K personal cost in the USA even with insurance) and now the cancer treatments I am going through now (seems like I'm always reading about a fund raiser for some artist in the USA too (see Stan Sakai's wife)).  I've had great service that hasn't cost me a penny, but it was paid for my taxes over the years.

BTW, I wanted to share this article as our health care system is always being criticized.

• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/13/danielle-martin-richard-burr_n_4958164.html?utm_hp_ref=politics

And everyone, have a great day and don't travel into any dystopias on your way to work.


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Combat Walkers, Harry Potter Exhibition, and the Videogames Tomb Raider and Last of Us

Howdy!

It has been awhile since I last posted.  I've been terribly distracted with some health issues that I'm still working through.  Editing on Neo Ace continues and my editor is about a third of the way through.  We also adopted a black kitten named Firefly from the humane society on New Years Eve and she has done wonderfully at our home.

I'm starting to plot out the next installment of Exocrisis Blue now and I have some big plans for the story that range from:

• Another love interest to create a love triangle.
• Preventing a major coup attempt.
• A few large set piece battles with massive combined arms including naval assets, drones launched from airborne drone carriers, conventional armour, and mechas of course.
• The Newts are going to get an alien warrior champion.
• The war faction of the Newts will progress with their use of the Shre'lor to destroy humanity.
• And a final showdown on a massive command ship.

There are going to be more ideas, but the story should move along quick as it will pick up shortly after the ending of the first novel.  I'm going to have a few more military SF reviews too in the coming months.  I'm reading Armor, Armored, Kaiju Rising, and some more mecha novels.  Once I'm through this rough patch there it'll be busy again.

So here are a few recaps of cool things that I saw in photos with captions below.

Combat walker robots similar to what I use in my stories like HARM.  Interesting magazine cover I saw recently.

I went and saw the Harry Potter Exhibit on at the Telus World of Science in Edmonton.  It wasn't as good an exhibit as the amazing Star Wars Identity exhibit from last year, but all of the movie props and costumes were great to see up close.  Really enjoyed it and it brought another dimension to the movies.  I can only say that the kids that played the heroes in the movies were sure small for the first film once you saw their clothes and beds - something that being on the big screen doesn't seem to convey as well.  It was an exhibit well worth seeing if you have seen the movies and are a fan, but not otherwise due to the price.

One of the giant chess pieces from the first Harry Potter movie.  You weren't allowed to take photos inside.

Giant croc from the live action Peter Pan in the bringing monsters to life exhibit.  Could swallow me whole!

Also had a great bento lunch!  Sashimi and Tempura!  Yum.

I also managed to finish the new Tomb Raider game and the big award winning game Last of Us in the last two months.  I have to say that these first person shooters are just getting too bloody in general.  I enjoyed playing both games and both of the games were really well done.   Maybe too much killing going on, but I guess what do you expect with a first person shooter.  The games had really high production quality and the stories were pretty good.  However, I think I'm going to have to play something a little more tactical and fantasy-like to take a break - some stuff like Bravely Default or Tales of Xillia as I'm tired of the gore.  I think it would be nice if they turned the gore back down to what it was like in 2000 with Unreal or Half-life.  I wanted to like Last of Us more due to the great reviews, and it was good, but the story was way too manipulative by the end for me.  Like many stories these days, clean endings are just too simple to write.  Writers seem to want to kick the drama up a notch or two, and throw in extra angst for no real reason.  You just can't win (which is why I like the Uncharted games), but people seem to like it.  I'll just sit it out and avoid the prequel as it just wasn't for me.

Anyhow, that's all for now.  I'm still plugging away at stuff.  My apologies to anyone who was waiting for Neo Ace.  It'll be ready when I can get it ready.  I'll announce dates when I'm sure of a release date.

Science Fiction Is About The Characters!

I read this article about a week ago at Locus about how writers make up excuses for science fiction being inaccessible.  You know - I agree with Kameron Hurley.  I'm  writing a story with different props and setting and that it is it.  Yes, there are stylistic and differences in approach to writing the story for a genre, but it should be just like generic storytelling for any audience. Any more, and it is now an intellectual puzzle or exercise for specialists.  You should be able easily describe the core theme of the story relating to the characters without the tech to pass this test.

http://www.locusmag.com/Perspectives/2013/12/kameron-hurley-making-excuses-for-sciencefiction/

Kuratas - a real Japanese mecha.

At its core, any science fiction story should be about characters and how futuristic technology affects their lives or society in general.  You have to explain the tech to show the effect on people, but that is all.  It is about the characters be they alien, human, or robot AI.  I actually came to this same conclusion based on other readings, in particular manga, as the most recent example.  Manga - or Japanese comics - is successful in all story genres because of the characters.  There are action, mystery, sci fi, high school, disaster, etc., manga, but they all have strong storytelling based on rich characterizations.  Yes, manga follows formulas, but so do other types of fiction, and it is better than many western comics because of the character focus of the stories.  One of my favourite manga is Bakuman, which is about a pair of aspiring mangaka (manga writer and artist), and what they do to become famous.  While I'm not going to wait to kiss the girl like one of the Bakuman protagonists, I would also like my Exocrisis Blue to be made into an anime.  It is a pipedream, but one that I can hopefully strive to achieve, by having a good story with strong characters.  While my writing involves mecha and advanced military technologies, it is about the student pilots who must pass their training and fight for all humanity in the end.

I write mecha military SF for now, but I'm definitely going to think about how I can push the envelope with advances in AI, robotics, drones, and humans in the command loop. You need human characters to tell the story, but if military tech keeps improving, how do you tell a rich story without humans at the pointy tip of the spear?  There is going to be no need for combat pilots, regular infantry or starship crews as robots / electronics can do our job faster and they don't leave grieving families.  What kind of story revolves around that?  I'm thinking about it and hope that military SF pushes these boundaries even more.  No more crews dying in space in their cruisers, or men having limbs blown off by mines.  Soldiers will still be there, but in what role?

Happy new year for 2014 everyone!

About the Blue Newts

The aliens are named the Sh’thimori or the People of the Water.  Before this name was known, the humans knew them as the Blue Newts from the dead bodies they recovered.

They are six limbed amphibious beings that walk on four of them and use the first two limbs as arms with three fingers on each hand. Their heads appear like flat-headed newts with large golden eyes with a mouth full of short sharp teeth.  They prefer to eat their food raw.  There is a vestigial tail.  Their skin is slick and wet that is normally light blue-grey in colour but it can change colour to show their emotional state.  It is blue hued when relaxed, more orange when agitated.  Communication occurs via low clicks and clucks and the odd use of limited range telepathy by certain individuals with the telepathy gene.  They see well in low light, but bright light hurts.  On Earth they wear goggles in bright sunlight.

Their home world terrain is a hot, very humid water world with many archipelagos of thousands of islands.  It circles a red giant star.  They prefer hot, moist climates and prefer to live in marshy, coastal, or swampy areas.

They are a matriarchal society and live in nest communities that can achieve the size of mega cities.  Leaders can be either male or female.  Nests have many relationships to other nests and nests often specialize in a task or duty.  Most of the young do what their families have always done.

They give birth to live young – newtlings.  There are usually pairs of infants born to a mother and the children are communally raised.  Maturity is long, similar to a human, but some abstract reasoning doesn’t fully develop until they hit puberty in their teens.  Sexual activity is governed by cycles and there are pair bonds that develop.  The children tend to get into a great deal of mischief when they are young and need to be constantly watched / guarded.

The newts have a caste system that organizes the various nests.  All nests are equal in value / rights, but governing decisions are decided by nests that perform important governing functions.  There is a great congress that decides on a ruling council.  The Sh’thimori do not have raw ambition as a psychological attributes so they naturally put the collective race before their own. They do have feelings of achievement and pride which pushes them forward to advance and promote themselves or their collective.  The working toward the greater good can be seen as cold or calculating by humans.  They do live in harmony with nature as they evolved and lived at the waters edge.  Things like pollution and disturbances in nature affect them quickly.

Some nests are specialized for extremes such as warrior, thinker, mediator, and explorer.  They may have minor genetic engineering modifications to enhance their abilities such as intelligence, endurance, speed, strength, and tougher skins.  These specialized castes are treated with reverence and are not allowed to interbreed with other nests of a different designation.  They are guardians of the pure race – the natural body.  All nests work side by side on a mission, and the caste differentiation only applies for the command structure.

It is known that the aliens came from a dying world, are vaguely humanoid amphibians, are blue in color and don’t understand us well at all.  Not very much is known about their culture, but it is known they are not part of a hive mind.  Their biotech is very advanced and hundreds of years ahead of ours.  They don’t really want to exterminate us, but don’t trust us, and needed to weaken us.  Their home world was dying, it was from an old red sun.  Too hot.  World was roasting.  The Newts were not the first civilization to originate on their world.  They had a forerunner species that was Newtlike but went extinct or left the world.  Newts will not use nukes first as they know the world is fragile.

Great Mother Egg, or Shre’lor
Newts have a belief in the Mother Egg or Mother Sea.  The egg was lost during the destruction of the Newt mothership at the end of the Alien War and was recovered ten years later from the Kahamba research facility by a CAJUN special forces raid.  The artifact now resides at the AO research facility in Edmonton, Canada.

The Shre'lor is an egg shaped crystalline object about ninety centimeters tall and weighs almost a hundred kilos.  It is quite dense. It is translucent, with a smooth surface.  It glows with a faint amber light and also seems to generate a faint amount of magnetism and heat.  It the Newts holiest religious artifact. Faint crystalline lattices can be seen inside the object, as if they were holographically etched.  Could be a computing or information storage device, a power source, or something else altogether.

What Is My Audience for Mecha or Military SF?

I was just thinking the other day about what my audience size is as I write "realistic" military SF with a mechas in it.  While I don't have any real numbers, I went through it as a thought exercise.  The goal was to figure out how to write my Cover Blurb for Neo Ace.  My first step was to determine the approximate size of the science fiction and anime audiences.

I used the number of registered users on Reddit for the rough statistics.  You can see that SF fans outnumber anime fans, but only by 22%  (anime is big as a genre).  There is a mecha forum, but it doesn't have many members compared to the anime forum, but I figured the numbers were low as anime companies in North America wouldn't sell to 1% of the market for mecha anime so I guessed the number was closer to 5% of the number of anime fans.  For military SF, there is no forum - weird, but not surprising as I can't find a marketing channel for this audience either.  I guessed that military SF fans were about 10% of the SF fan base as Amazon classifies about 10% of the SF books as military SF.  Publishers must be making money, so they'll publish what can sell.

Military SF / Mecha SF / Anime / SF Audience Overlap (click to enlarge)

Having come up with these numbers, I did a real quick Venn diagram with the overlap with the various fan bases.  Military SF and Mecha Fans belong to their appropriate larger bubble. There is a big problem determining the overlap where the sets of fans meet, but based on my past experience, here's what I figure.

Anime and SF fans crossover, and it is larger than what the diagram shows.  However, I'd be surprised if fans that read SF and watch anime overlap by more than 50%.  I think it is probably way lower, like 20 or 25%.  The number does go up if you include other non-written - say visual media (TV, movies).  I'm a writer though, so I'll go with the lower number.

Then, out of these two big audiences, you want the mecha fans and the military SF fans.  This is a sizable number of fans even at 10% of the overall fan base, and it would be wonderful to get both.  Military SF fans are mainly written media fans as there just isn't that much visual military SF.  Mecha fans by definition are visual fans as it is mecha anime. The crossover here is unknown, but I believe it is low again just because of the parent set numbers. 

So, based on all this, what do I do for marketing my Exocrisis Blue books?  I think the intersection of mecha fans and military SF fans is small.  I also tried to market my ebooks in the mecha forum on Reddit and I didn't get too many bites.  There were some fine folks who liked it and downloaded the book, but the numbers were tiny compared to the 1000 members in the forum.  I like both SF and anime so I cross over, but many people are more specialized.

Neo Ace is a military SF novel, but it has 30 ton combat robots operated by human pilots.  It is written to be realistic, especially when used with combined arms operations with regular military units.  Note that I used combat robot instead of mecha; this is the type of word phrasing I was debating on using.  Mecha is for anime fans, not military SF fans in general.  Mechs also implies western robots versus eastern mecha.  After looking at this, I'm going to be changing my marketing so it is aimed at military SF, the larger audience of readers (probably 5 times larger).  I think I went down the wrong road in my earlier efforts.   I still found readers, but not as many as I would like.

Anyhow, thanks for listening to my ramblings.


More Scifi Topics

After The Alien War

The Aftermath of the Alien War

The fighting was heavy in both Africa and South America and the countries there were severely devastated by both the aliens and foreign troop interventions.  The surviving countries are now strongly independent and wary of the other Human Alliance member nations.  Some tactical nuclear weapons were even used on their soil, but no foreign aid was received for the devastation that was done.  While the remaining Human Alliance nations had enough troubles on their own, their unwillingness to help other countries in need convinced these countries the outside world was not their friend.  Some limited shipments of medical supplies and food were sent from Canada and Japan to Brazil during their crisis, resulting in the formal trade ties that exist today. However, Brazil only has limited trade and diplomatic ties to other Human Alliance members such as the European Union and True America. Africa is a complete basket case that is xenophobic to outsiders with constant skirmishes against the Newt colonies there.

Japan held out well in the war after being invaded and utilized captured alien technology to build mechas with active molecular armour and rail guns.  It is rumoured that some South American nations like Brazil have special deals with the aliens.

During the war and the ensuing chaos, half of the human race or 4 billion people perished. Vast stretches of the world are now run by warlords and / or are no man’s lands.  Many nations were shattered and no longer exist.  The United States and Russia were dealt  major hammer blows and are shadows of their former selves.  The USA has fragmented into east and west, with some states pretty much obliterated.  Northern China is split by the powerful Tianjin and Xian factions, with the powerful remnants of the People’s Republic of China is based out of southern China, with the new capital in Guangzhou.  Hong Kong / Shenzen Special Economic Zone is the powerhouse of the PRC now.  The European Union is still powerful, but badly devastated by the war.   Central America is controlled by the Newts from southern Mexico down to Columbia and then into central Brazil.  The Brazilians emerged semi-victorious from the war and control much of South America directly or indirectly.

Canada was blasted, with a meteor impact devastating Toronto, but the western cities survived more or less intact.  Vancouver and Seattle were devastated by an earthquake four years later and rebuilt. Canada is now basically Western Canada with Ontario gutted by the destruction of Toronto.  Quebec is now Free Quebec (or Quebec Libre), a more autonomous province with its own military, but still part of Canada.  The Atlantic Provinces are now part of the US East or the True United States of America.  Alaska is Alaska.  Canada is allied with Pacifica or US West.  Trade goes north from Churchill Manitoba through the ice free NW Passage.

Ten years after AA  (After Armageddon or After Arrival).

• European Union is now lead by France as the Germany was greatly devastated by the war.  A great deal of rebuilding has happened.
• Brazil – or the Brazilian Empire.  It rules South America except for neutral Chile. Brazil has a Guyana Space Base that was captured from the European Union and works with them for space launches.
• The former eastern United States of America – also calls itself the True United States. A very conservative Christian religious democracy originally started in the power vacuum at the end of the Alien War.
• The former western United States is now Pacifica and represents the ideals closest to the nation from which it originated.  A former president from Chicago started this nation in a revolt from the tyranny of True America.
• Japan is once again an economic powerhouse with close ties to Canada and Pacifica.  Japan has had brush fire wars with the PRC even though it has simmered down.  They support the northern Chinese factions.
• China has fractured into a southern block which is now the Peoples Republic of China, and multiple northern factions.
• The Pan-African Alliance is lead out of South Africa.  This block is allied with the PRC which provided aid to the African continent.
• Australia is independent along with New Zealand.
• The Russian Federation stretches from Europe to the Pacific.  It is a strong power block that heavily influences its neighbours.
• India and Pakistan have set aside differences to be their own power bloc with ties to the Middle East, Russian Federation, and PRC / Northern Chinese.
• The middle east, the -stan countries, Iran, Iraq all have ties to the Russian Federation. 

A good chunk of Earth’s tropical and subtropical lands had been occupied by the Newts, who had either pushed the humans out or now lived in a tenuous coexistence with them.

Almost seventeen years later

It is a relative period of prosperity for the recovering nations.  Much of the world is still devastated, but the countries that were least scarred absorbed huge numbers of skilled refugees and began reconstruction.  People are optimistic, but there is a societal trauma that lingers.  Many Americans are now Canadians.  There are also many Japanese living in Canada as the countries have major trade and exchange relationships.  Australia is the major southern trading partner for Japan and the PRC.

More Exocrisis Blue universe articles.

The Alien War

The Alien War lasted a year and a half.  Amazing brutality was practiced by both sides, with no quarter given.  No aliens have ever been captured alive.  The war began with alien landers dropping off their spider bio-mechs that left a trail of destruction behind them.  Using their powerful beam weapons, they ravaged the countryside around them in a scorched earth type campaign.  They did not attempt to occupy ground, but just destroyed human population centres and infrastructure.  Manufacturing facilities, bridges, military bases, power stations, refineries and more were targeted.  Their role was to knock out the human race as an organized force.  Mankind dropped its differences and formed the Human Alliance under the leadership of the United States.

A single bio-mech could take on a regular army battalion and only the heaviest gun weapons could hurt it.  The bio-mechs have a type of energy enhanced armour, called active molecular armour, that can regenerate the surface and make it denser.  Each bio-mech has a supporting set of mini-bugs – drones that fly and crawlers for close support / small space work. Nuclear weapons were used in a limited fashion against them, but it was major overkill.  The alien energy weapons made attacking aircraft obsolete as they could be easily shot down. Massed fire with supporting artillery could take down the bio-mechs, but the mechas are fast and move out of the kill zone quickly.

At the beginning of the Alien War the aliens started out with a vastly superior hand.  It was a desperate war of attrition for humanity as vast amounts of equipment and soldiers were expended to just blunt the alien advances. The tide began to turn in the eighth month  with the development of tank mountable coil guns that could defeat the alien armour and the mass combat deployment of HARM units in the tenth month to use them.  Within the next six months the aliens were driven back to their enclaves and the war was at a stalemate.  Initial onslaughts and gains by the Blue Newts were mostly taken back or being fought over still. 

The Newts had taken their primary territories in the subtropical and tropical areas of the world which suited them.  At one point, they pretty much owned both Africa and South America, but lost territory in the second half of the war.  They ruled New Guinea, a swath of Africa from the central Congo to the Indian Ocean, Central America, and a large portion of the Amazon Basin.  In many of the areas around their territory there was lawlessness due to governmental collapse.  The pirates of the Caribbean became a reality again. Warlords and other pirates flourished in the aftermath.

NEWT FACTS

The colony fleet had one large mother ship or master vessel with 12 other smaller colony vessels.  This master vessel stayed clear of the action out at one of the L4 points and only sent planetary shuttles down.

The Blue Newts sent in their smaller colony ships which had atmospheric entry capability.  Three landed in Brazil, three landed in Africa, two in Borneo, two in Guatemala, and two in New Guinea.  These ships became colony hubs and were used as administration centers and also as a source of raw materials for colony expansion.

This was never a combat fleet.  It was a colony fleet.  Nukes were launched by the Human Alliance against these foothold colonies, but they were easily destroyed by the Newt orbital defences and their landing shuttles.  Missiles were easy to kill in the boost phase and were still good targets in space. 

It is suspected the Newts may have some deep space ships left, but none have been seen since the Alien War.  One wonders if there is another invasion wave coming from their home world.

In the closing weeks of the Alien War, the Human Alliance, hatched a desperate scheme to destroy the alien mothership.  The Americans, Russians, and Chinese seized orbital space back from the aliens with a combination of space attack drones and massive ground based laser cannon.  They then launched a fleet of nuclear armed drone shuttles after mothership.

The attack worked as a number of the drone shuttles were actually powerful, single use, x-ray laser weapons.  They utilized nuclear bomb pumped x-ray lasers to cripple the defenses of the mothership and allow the remaining nuclear armed drones to finish it off.  It was the Human Alliance’s last unified response as the aliens used fusion bombs on Beijing, Washington D.C., and Moscow.  It was a very clear and calculated response to the nuclear armed powers that was accompanied by the first communicated message of the war.  "Destroy our most valuable asset and we destroy yours.  We are here to stay on our terms."  This was the only use of nuclear weapons by the aliens and the world has been in a cold war state since.  The destruction of the capital cities killed the President of the United States and the Chinese Premier along with much of the central government.  Both nations were already stressed to the breaking point and were plunged into chaos and civil war.  The Russian Federation survived in a much better state as the President had been in a different location.

The crippling of the alien mothership provided just enough warning for the a massive evacuation of the vessel.  Shuttles and escape sections scattered from the mothership until the drones hit with their nuclear payloads.  The escape sections of the ship were lifeboats.  Sections and pieces of  debris came crashing to Earth all over the equatorial band from the mid-Atlantic all the way to the middle of the Indian Ocean.  Orbital space became a no mans land with neither side in total control.

More Exocrisis Blue universe articles.