Moe Lane's Blog, page 692
August 31, 2021
Tweet of the Day, Zoinks edition.
I smilingly decline to give any context. I had to look it up myself, and I won’t deny you the pleasure of finding it all out for yourself.
This is honestly the greatest day. pic.twitter.com/EHr3yRhVPM
— Joe Cunningham (@JoePCunningham) September 1, 2021
This month’s Patreon entries!
They’re up:
Chapters 1 through 4 of MORGAN BAROD. To whet the whistle!Monster War Doom, Part 3: Monsters (The Unnatural): To flesh out the PCs!
Patreon!Item Seed: Deorderant.
Deorderant
Description: available in either solid or spray form. Odorless, but tastes slightly of peppermint. Deorderant can be easily transported (it’s highly stable under earth-like conditions), but any attempts to label the canisters the stuff is stored in will rapidly fail.
The Exalted Races officially don’t trade with us mere Galactic species. They don’t do much unofficial trade with us, either — but apparently individual members of hyper-evolved species will still have specific needs that can’t be filled conventionally. There’s quite a few of them among the Hamganda, for example: we trade them copies of humanity’s yearly cultural output* in exchange for whatever gimcracks they happen to have lying around at the time. It’s rarely a bad deal. Certainly Deorderant ended up being handy.
Deorderant is a directed entropy increaser. It eats ‘dead’ information that it comes in contact with, like DNA flakes, the printed word, or digital records; astoundingly, it’s aggressively non-toxic when it comes to living creatures, which in this context includes ‘artificial intelligences.’ Spray some in a room (Deorderant gas lasts a half-hour before dissipating), and it will prevent spying from outside. It’ll also eat the words off the page (or files off the hard drive) of anything that isn’t encased in an element (copper plating will do), so people are careful where they use it. The standard practice is to put two people in vaccuum suits, their communications devices connected by a copper cable; this way, they can talk to each other (and transfer files) in perfect security. The solid stuff isn’t too shabby, either: people picked up on its ability to destroy DNA evidence right away, but it’s also a remarkably good treatment against non-sapient infovores and memetic-based assaults — and, obviously, any kind of psionic attack.
All of this obviously violates multiple physical laws — but then, most Exalted Race tech does. People are used to it by now: scientists in particular treat Deorderant as flat-out magic, and it’s hard to argue that this particular act of memetic self-defense is the wrong idea. It’s never great when a scientist goes stark, raving mad in the immediate presence of multiple high-energy, poorly-understood artifacts.
*We’re pretty sure they’re just interested in the pornography, but don’t want to say. There’s a strong argument that we’re trading with the Hamgandan equivalent of healthy adolescents.
DECISIONS is now available in paperback!
Got it done before September. DECISIONS is likely to be the last fiction I publish in 2021: the Kickstarter money has been well and truly squeezed dry at this point. On the other hand, it helped fund two novels, one collection of short stories, three illustrated chapbooks, an illustrated short story, the upcoming RPG supplement, and an audiobook — so I probably shouldn’t complain.
August 30, 2021
I really don’t get this Amazon advertising thing at all.
Hopefully it’s because I’m new to it, and not simply old. Any insight would be lovely, really. I’m not proud.
…Well, I am, actually. Just not about stuff like that.
In the e-Mail: Seize What’s Held Dear (Fall of the Censor Book 3)
Seize What’s Held Dear is Karl Gallagher’s third book in the Fall of the Censor space opera series, and I will get around to reading it as soon as this week calms down. So, I guess… November? The first week of school stretches.
08/30/21 Snippet, FLIM-FLAM MAN.
Creaking!
Patreon!There was a road in these woods. And not just a dirt track, either. Actual stones could be seen, peeking through the grass. Gregor had found the road via the time honored tradition of stumbling across it, and the sudden change of footing made him lose his balance. Fortunately, the tree that stopped his undignified, headlong rush hit him in the shoulder, and not the nose. It still hurt enough that, comparatively speaking, falling on his rear was barely painful.
But after Gregor picked himself up — I’m too young to be this creaky, he thought, as he used the tree to get vertical — he felt a bit more philosophical about it. Even an abandoned road was a road, after all. It would go from one place to another one, and as long as he avoided the end closer to mobs and millponds, it should all work out. Besides, it was well past noon. The odds of him finding shelter at least before nightfall would be much better.
The DECISIONS Chapbook is now available on Kindle!
DECISIONS consists of four stories, illustrated, all different genres. I want clear decks for September, frankly. Also: I need to have those books ready for the fair I’m doing in October, so the sooner I get on that the sooner I can order author copies.
These are, I think, some of my best short stories. Well, so far.
First day of school!
…Hip deep in making sure the computer’s working for the youngest (he’s on all-digital, still). What fun. What amazing fun.
