Moe Lane's Blog, page 451

Your semi-annual reminder: I have a Patreon!

Patreon!

Which features fiction and gaming material, including a new short story every month! And if we get to $200/month, I’ll finally start regularly updating my SF serial novel THE BOLD MARAUDER. Check it out today!

Patreon!

Tweet of the Day, See? See? edition.

It doesn’t mean anything, obviously. But it’s kind of funny. Some of the questions change significantly when you have kids…

https://twitter.com/Ogiel23/status/16...

12/15/2022 Snippet, ANALOG.

After-report!

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Gabe looked Ibrahim over. He was sporting bandages on his arms and neck, and his fingers were trembling from one too many buzzkills. “Looks like you were in the scrum yourself, Chief. When were you planning to get some sleep?”

“I dunno. When are you?” Ibrahim shot back as he lit a cigarette. “We got a lid on the situation now, but the pot’s still bubbling and the handle’s damned hot. I can keep track of what still needs doing; I’ll hand things off to my relief when I can’t. Kimiko’s better off soaking up what happened while she’s still got fresh eyes for it, anyway.”

“Fair enough, Chief.” Greg lit his own cigarette. “What did happen, anyway? I know we got swarmed, sure — but who released the wasps? We haven’t had this many gold-witches at once since the last days of the War. An incursion point didn’t show up when I wasn’t looking, did it?”

“I almost wish, Greg. That’d be easy-peasy to solve. A couple of H-bombs through the point to let the Others know we ain’t happy, and a firecracker on our end to seal the hole; if we could do that, it’d already be done. There’s been no breakthroughs, though. Besides, we’d know if one had popped up. It’s for sure we’d have done better triage!”

See a free preview of MORGAN BAROD!

I’m testing some features today in my eternal quest to sell more books. Hopefully, this should work, with ‘work’ being defined as ‘will be able to easily read a preview of MORGAN BAROD.’ Lemme know if it doesn’t…

#commissionearned

12/14/2022 Snippet, THE THING IN THE AIRLOCK.

Not as much as I wanted, but it was a weird day.

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“Sorry, sir. I’m just wondering. Why didn’t Domaine come up with this? He is a logistics guy. Architecture, too.”

“He’s also not at his best, maybe? I mean, the man carved up his friend, so Domaine’s not too stable to begin with. And I think being in solitary is getting to him. Lately he’s been acting kind of stir-crazy. I think he misses being around people.”

“You gonna let him out, then?”

“Oh, absolutely not.” Tobias laughed, technically. “What if what he misses about people is not being able to stab them, too? No, he stays where he is until it’s time for us to leave. And he’ll spend the entire trip back to Earth strapped in, with a diaper and a food tube. If we have any sedatives, he’ll be dosed to the gills, too.”

“I’ve had people talk to me about that, sir.” Abbie looked just a little bit uncomfortable. “Some folks don’t know why we should bring the crazy people, too.”

This time Tobias laughed, for real. “Ha! Like we have anybody left who’s sane. We’re all Loonies by now, Abbie. Some people are just better at maintaining, that’s all. If I start deciding who’s least-crazy enough to get to make the trip, we probably… won’t be able to make it.”

12/14/2022 Snippet, ANALOG.

On the beam…

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The crazed screaming of the gold-witch — no burbling now from that hideous creature! — increased behind him as he cleared the doorway, a bare half-second before the heavy door slammed down. Bernice was already yanking on the large switch mounted by the door, hard enough for it to creak as the circuit slammed closed. That part of Greg still capable of reasoning thought approved; the switch was built to take it at least once, and it was for damned sure that nobody would be using that room for anything, any time soon!

The rest of him instinctively concentrated on shying away from the reinforced window looking into the room. The blast shutters had snapped shut, and they should have been as immobile as tungsten steel over composite armor could make them; only they were now faintly clattering from the titanic forces now contained in the room. He could feel the first tendrils leaking through, lashing at local time-space in ways that could not be described, save as corruption in the nose and a roiling in the gut. Time itself stuttered, in slow, sickness-inducing waves, stretching the current moment like taffy in the sun.

The three seconds between the blast door’s closing and the first wild electrical surges felt like a grotesque, nigh-eternal Now — but it was, indeed, still ‘only’ three seconds. Greg could feel the intrusive, blindly questing fingers of corruption suddenly shudder and sublime as the gold-witch was electrocuted, its calls (faint, but damnably perceivable!) devolving into a shriek of mortal pain before being abruptly cut off. Greg thought he could feel the surge of regular reality pass through him as it rushed to fill the newly-made vacuum in space-time, and the sheer relief of it staggered him as he stood.

If you live in the top half of the country, please stay safe.

We got a bad dose of snow and freezing rain going through that’s going to make life fun for half the country by Saturday. My kids’ schools are already doing two-hour delays tomorrow, which is impressive. Normally they wait until 3 AM before making that particular call. I give it only a 70% chance that they have school at all, honestly.

So, stay safe and contemplate the idea of avoiding non-essential travel. I dunno, make some cocoa or something.

:raised eyebrow: An updated CAINE MUTINY.

Sure. That’s gonna fly.

Jake Lacy, who is known for his roles on The Office and I’m Dying Up Here, as well as his Emmy-nominated role on The White Lotus, and the recent limited series A Friend of the Family, has signed on to star opposite Kiefer Sutherland in an updated version of the story The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial at Showtime. The movie will be based on the 1953 play by Herman Wouk, itself an adaptation of his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Caine Mutiny.

Apparently they’re gonna make up a war with Iran, or something. By the way, I am bringing this remake up solely as a reference point for y’all. I have a remarkable tolerance for reboots, remakes, and updates, as the most cursory examination of this site would show — but there are limits. Stripping one of Bogart’s better movies of all meaningful context and redoing it for no particular reason at all is just a little bit too much, for even me.

#commissionearned

The “Convoluted [Spoiler] in Space Movie” 65 trailer.

You’ll figure it out quick. I mean, shoot, they give it away right on the loading screen. But I’m gonna be nice and allow as much surprise as I can.

I’m fine with the central conceit, mind you. The science is gonna be wonky, but that’s a tradition with this particular genre of flick. The directors know why you want to watch 65, after all. It’s because you wanna see guns and [spoilers]. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

‘Silent Night.’

Silent Night, Jewel

#commissionearned