Steven M. Moore's Blog, page 148
July 23, 2015
Anti-Amazon psychosis…
So Doug Preston (of Preston and Child) is trying to convince the Justice Department to go after Amazon? The Hachette author is out for revenge. He’s lost several battles recently. I liked the way the NY Times put it: “…his Authors Guild.” Not mine or any other indie author’s, but Preston’s and other Big Five authors’ who are crapping in their pants because they think their life is threatened. The Guild’s name is an oxymoron. It doesn’t represent authors—only Preston and his friends. And it is...
July 22, 2015
Steve’s Shorts: The Call…
[This short story could be considered segue to my sci-fi thriller Full Medical, the first novel in the “Clones and Mutants Trilogy.” Enjoy.]
The Call
Copyright 2015, Steven M. Moore
Dirk Eddy looked more like a jockey than a thief, but that was his secret weapon. His size was an asset in his business. He could squeeze through tight spaces and slip by security guards and cops like the invisible man.
With penlight in his mouth, he walked around the mansion, selecting his loot. A decorative cha...
July 21, 2015
The Iranian-U.S. accord…
Israel won’t like it. The U.S. Congress won’t like it. It’s not perfect. But what do we have to lose? There will be naysayers—many congressional Democrats and Republicans will fall in line behind Netanyahu. There is a worry that ending the conventional arms embargo will lead to new saber rattling on the part of Iran. Maybe they can do more than rattle sabers against ISIS, right now the biggest danger in the Middle East—the Iraqis and U.S.-led coalition’s efforts are anemic.
Israel has been a...
July 20, 2015
A celebration of independence in my second homeland…
Veinte de Julio — Colombian Independence. Many of my readers know I spent many years in Colombia, South America, making many new friends, adding an international side to my family, and absorbing a culture that has influenced my life and my fiction (some of that “absorbing” came in liquid form, of course–cerveza and aguardiente became an important part of my Spanish vocabulary!). Colombia’s recent history, from La Violencia to the FARC, right-wing death squads, and the war on drugs, has been f...
July 17, 2015
News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #96…
Item. Mockingbird follow-up. Well, well, yet another case of the media looking for scandal! It turns out that the sequel to Harper Lee’s classic is creating a scandal because the grown-up Scout, after living in NYC for some time, returns to Alabama to find old Atticus has become a racist bigot. I found To Kill a Mockingbird a rough ride—disorganized ups and downs as the two different stories unfolded (only the trial appeared in the movie)—so maybe I’ll like this one better. I don’t have any e...
July 16, 2015
When is the book better than the movie?
Almost always it seems. Part of the problem is that Hollywood destroys book plots when they attempt to transfer them to the silver screen. I, Robot and the Bourne series of films are examples. The first turned Asimov’s cerebral study of human-robot relations, carried to its pinnacle in Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun, into a futuristic action film and vehicle for Will Smith that had nothing to do with the original stories. Same for the Bourne trilogy, where all the memory lapses were resolve...
July 15, 2015
Another short story for your enjoyment…
[Note from Steve: The first two sections of this story are based on real events. The rest is, of course, speculative fiction: sometimes brain drain is more than the Third World’s loss. Enjoy.]
The Universal Language
Copyright 2015, Steven M. Moore
Max Gorman accepted refreshments from his graduate student with a smile. She asked if he needed anything else, he said no, and so she went to mingle with the other PhD hopefuls.
“She hasn’t picked a thesis topic yet,” he said to the chairperson aft...
July 14, 2015
Irish Stew #42…
Item. ISIS. You’d think that their goal of returning to the Middle Ages with their oppressive caliphate and strict but antiquated Sharia law would have two consequences: (1) they’d eschew all modern devices as creations of the Great Satan; and (2) they’d be into preserving antiquities. Of course, they couldn’t maintain their hegemony without the Great Satan’s devices, so both points show their mad-dog fanaticism and bigoted hypocrisy.
Moreover, they certainly aren’t true followers of Islam be...
July 10, 2015
News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #95…
Item. The Mockingbird sequel. It turns out that the “discovery” of the Harper Lee’s old MS (written before Mockingbird but still a sequel) occurred in 2011 and not just recently. Why Harper Collins didn’t own up to that originally can be analyzed by the pundits, but do we care? I find it all a wee bit disappointing because it detracts from Lee’s famous and still unique novel, but who knows what big publishers will do to sell a book?
Item. Goodreads and LinkedIn mean good people. Now that I’ve...
July 9, 2015
Killing two worms in the Apple…
I don’t know about you, but my love for animals, tame or wild, stops with worms in my apple. Hence the title; it describes two cases where the tech giant Apple was stopped cold. Both these are wins for indie artists and negative publicity for this monster of the corporate world.
The little company that started in the garage was never one of my favorites. In the beginning, Apple computers were just toys. We taught high school teachers from the Colombian provinces about computing using early Ap...
