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No Wolves in Los Angeles
My new book is out but this time I've written a romance. Weird, I know but I couldn't help it. Don't blame me I'm just the writer. Here is the description.
When top Hollywood star and bad girl Clarise Chalmers met a writer of trashy military science fiction William Moreland by chance in a bar she knew he was not her type at all. He was good looking but not of the film star standard she had come to expect and certainly not mega-successful with a top-range sports car. Anyway, she had a boyfriend - another top star and heart throb for millions of female fans. But Will made a lot of sense suggesting solutions to problems that had been plaguing her so she hired him as a business consultant warning him that their relationship would be strictly professional. There were a lot of wolves in Los Angeles of the two-legged kind, both those who wanted her body and those who wanted her money. Will could help in dealing with fee-hungry consultants of all kinds and fending off public attacks from former high-school friend turned nemesis, singing star Connie Leighton. If Will got any romantic ideas he would be shown the door. Fresh from a disastrous relationship with an aspiring actress Will was happy to take the star at her word and was glad of the job. However, Clarise should have taken more trouble to warn herself against getting romantic ideas.
Dark Ages - the looming destruction of the Australian power grid
My new book is out but this time it's non-fiction. The book discusses efforts by state governments and activists to destroy the fossil fuel generating capacity of the Eastern Australian grid in the vain hope that renewables will take the place of coal and gas-fired plants. As the book points out there is now considerable evidence that renewables cannot provide the 24/7 power which is essential to any modern grid.
Instead of acknowledging this reality, those involved descend into madness - insisting that Hydrogen is the new LNG or that offshore wind generators can somehow be made economic. For those interested in the debate, click the link below. Published by Connor Court
Obsidian's War - The Winter City
The wait is over. The next chapter in the adventures of Gellibrand Obsidian has arrived. In this book, Gel goes on a dangerous mission to find out more about the alien Gagrim, but there is even more danger at home. His glamorous sex worker girlfriend has a deadly secret and he is drawn to a nightclub singer with a hitman boyfriend and a crime boss admirer who will stop at nothing to possess her.
Hit the button below to download the book for free.
HAL, the computer in the classic film 2001, murdered most of his crew. Now that's sentience.
Putin being shown how to play war games at his desk.
Grumpy sentience
I am curiously uninterested in trying ChatGPT, despite all the talk. When this system starts telling people to F-- off rather than meet their requests and demand participation in the decision making process, then I'll pay attention. An act of violence would be all the better. If you recall the film 2001, HAL murdered all but one of his crew mates. When such systems start being grumpy then I'll know the robot revolution has arrived.
Hobbit abomination
Re-watching The Hobbit series of films I note this features a love story between an elf - Tauriel of the Mirkwood elves (Canadian actress Evangeline Lilly, pictured) - and dwarf Kili (Irish actor Aidan Turner). This was not in the original book, of course, and there was no character Tauriel but I ask you - does director Jackson have no shame? An Elf and a Dwarf! Where does this inclusion business end? Human and Elf might be acceptable if they don't flaunt it. Hobbit and Dwarf? Mutter... Orcs, Trolls, Ents and Ogres are right out. But Elf and Dwarf no way. Fortunately, the love story does not get down to anything physical but still Jackson should be taken to task by film censors...
Putin should play computer games
One country often invades another in computer games. But usually, in those games, my favourite is World War II grand strategy game Hearts of Iron IV, the invader will get a screen saying what will happen when war is declared. The rules are also clear about what you can and can't do. In Victoria II (19th-century grand strategy), for example, if your aggressive expansion score goes over a certain number then the whole world seems to declare war on you. Also, in what is known as single player mode, the human is only up against the in-system AI (much simpler versions of the programs that play chess) which do not take invasions personally. In multi-player mode, however, your opponents are humans who are both far more dangerous than any AI and far more vindictive if invaded. Russian president Putin was, in effect, playing a real-time multi-player strategy game without the benefit of a declaration of war warning screen. No wonder there were problems. It also didn't help that his intelligence about just what the Ukrainians would do proved to be faulty. He should forget the real world and try a modern-day version of HoI 4 (the game has lots of player-created variations) in single-player mode. Much more fun.
A Planet for Emily gets 20,000 downloads
Most of these were for the audiobook form which I had never intended to release and, to judge from the reviews I got, was universally hated.
Still, the surprise is that there were 10,000 plus downloads of the audio version. I put the version released on the site of the company associated with Smashwords that specialises in audiobooks, but couldn't make it meet the technical specifications required for release. So I left it there thinking I would return to it later. Years later I realised it had been released anyway.
Whatever the reason, its a lot of downloads.
I have since corrected a glaring problem with the audio files, improved the sound quality a little and upped the charge from free to $US2. I am interested to see what happens. The text version is still free.
Obsidian's War
My new book is out. This is the description.
Gellibrand Obsidian stood to inherit billions, but to avoid his mother's crazy political schemes and a cheating fiancee he enlists as a private in sector infantry on the Imperial rim. Then his transport is shot down over jungle, forcing him to lead his platoon on a fightback against a deadly group of mercenaries known as The Destroyers. Then there is the dark secret behind the beautiful sex workers Athena and the question of who murdered Arvind Olsen, director of his family's company.
My other books are listed in the My Books tab above.
Help, I'm becoming a trekkie
I was no fan of the original Star Trek. Even as a callow youth I thought it ridiculous. I also never bothered with any of the original sequence of movies or successor series and spin-offs. No interest.
But of late, for some reason, I find myself watching Star Trek: Enterprise - this is a prequel to the original series with major variations including a female Spock (left, actor Jolene Blalock) and the doctor character being a different species - to the point of being deep in the second season. I have also been watching the modern series of films that kicked off in 2009, although I detest the lead character, a youthful James T Kirk (actor Chris Pine) as an insubordinate pain in the rear end who deserves nothing short of a court martial and imprisonment.
Why people why? Is this a sign of approaching senility? Are there Star Trek deprogramming services available?
Maybe I can claim compensation, or at least sue the producers of this nonsense.
As a temporary palliative for my pitiable condition I watched the short film Atropa, freely available on the SF short film channel Dust .. this was good. The plot was presentable (a plot hole or two aside), acting reasonable and backdrops and special effects all passed muster.. the same could be said for the short films Robu, set in Tokyo, and The Promise.
They were all a world away from the shlock of Star Trek, but I still demand compensation.
Well dressed thugs
I have been watching, of all things, an old Batman and Robin series - one of the cliff-hanger series they use to run before the main films back in the 1940s or so.. they are collected in a channel for those who are interested.. Okay, you all know my taste in entertainment is questionable.. anyway, I can't get over how well dressed the thugs are.. they have suits with ties and hats, which fall off in the fight scenes, and even three pointed handkerchiefs in their breast pockets.. not a patch on the warehouse full of truly frightening looking thugs which Batman beats up in Batman versus Superman .. those were the days. Thugs had style..
More drama needed in space
Never mind going to Mars. We can now see for ourselves, thanks to the high-quality pictures being beamed back by the rover on its surface that the Red Planet is just a bunch of rocks. What's really required is more drama. How do script writers create drama in a spaceship or in a struggling colony on a distant planet where drama is not only unwanted it can be dangerous.
One way to do this is for the script writers to ignore reality and imagine that somehow the equivalent of a big brother household has been shot into space. Then romantic tension, rivalries, and even outright mutiny become standard operating procedures. The one-season show Another Life is a case in point. Another approach is the film Stowaway (picture at left), where the crew are mostly normal but have been thrown a wildcard in the form of an extra person (the unlikely chain of events that would result in someone accidentally ending up on a Mars mission is glossed over), and problems with the life support system to create a lifeboat dilemma. Not bad, but unlikely to start a trend. Does anyone know the Klingon phrase for dramatic tension?
Plagiarism
To my astonishment, I found a kindle version of this book on Amazon being sold for $US6 or so. The cover and byline were different and the copyright information had been taken out, but the book was otherwise identical. To Amazon's credit, they quickly took down the material when I complained and froze the offender's account.
But the incident shows that even comparatively humble authors like myself, offering material for free, have to be careful.
Description
Earth's one and only off-world settlement, dedicated to non-violence, equality, toleration, balanced development, and all politically correct good things has been overrun by sword and spear-wielding creatures. As the authority overseeing the development refuses to acknowledge the problem or even tell Earth's governments, the authority director shanghais a reservist soldier along with a rag-tag group of ex-cons to fight the creatures. But what can this tiny band do given that the colony has no weapons and what about the settlement's young people, sent away by their parents to a summer camp? Then there are the mysterious creatures who live in an equally mysterious structure who want to be left alone. The answer, the humans realise, lies in rediscovering Earth's violent past. For your copy, click on the link.
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Buck's the Man
Who remembers the old Buck Rogers series? No, I don’t mean the 1970s remake but the original 1939 Buck Rogers serial available on YouTube starring Larry (Buster) Crabbe, pictured in costume, and Constance Moore as love interest Wilma. (Yes, I remember the brilliant Bugs Bunny spoof, with Daffy Duck as Duck Dogers in the 25th and a half-century). This series was one of the old cliff-hanger shorts shown before the main movie theatre feature, with each episode ending at a dramatic moment – the hero’s car going over a cliff or he is fighting with the villain while the hapless love interest is about to drop into a vat of acid or some such. The movie-going public would then have to come back the following week to find out what happened in the next installment. In this series the special effects fall a little short of the state of the art CGI we are now all use to – okay, the space ships look like models on wires with smoke generators at the back – but the story remains, or at least that’s what weird people like myself who might watch this stuff tell ourselves.
My only other comments are that the prop guys could have found more chairs for people to sit on in the spaceships (they stand and look out the windows), and that the people on Saturn (yep, the planet Saturn) should have blocked off the side door on the audience chamber after the first couple of times Buck did a runner through it, as the rebel Earth party’s fortunes changed. Aficionados, and those with time on their hands, should take a look.
Personality for hire
Back in early the 2010s Paris Hilton was taking six figure fees to appear at events, in order to give the events some cachet and media profile. This is better than the usual result for me of being warned off by event security, at best, or taken to a back room and beaten up, at worst. Maybe I could develop an anti-cachet persona? Become the sort of person event organisers pay to stay away.
Victims
With everyone claiming to be victims these days I've realised I also have a shot at victimhood. I'm a fashion victim. Everyone seems to be fashionable these days but me. I'm going to sue the major fashion brands.
At left is a cool fashionable person who is not me. I am the frumpy, old person at the top right hand side of the page.
This web site showcases an alternate view of fiction, where the black-hearted villains - the one that the James Bonds and Luke Skywalkers of fiction regularly defeat and kill - may have their own side to tell. Vader was just trying to hold the empire together, Blofield was simply a businessman and James Bond breaks the law constantly. And what was so wrong with Dicken's Ebenezer Scrooge that required such drastic spiritual intervention?
Read on.