Cora Buhlert's Blog, page 10

The 2023 Dragon Award Finalists: Mostly Good with a Oddities

Does anybody except for me and Camestros Felapton and maybe Doris V. Sutherland still care about the Dragon Awards? I don’t know, but the 2023 Dragon Award finalists have been annunced today. The full list of finalists may be found here or – in a less eye-straining format – at File 770.

The Dragon Awards are a fan award given out by Dragon Con, a massive SFF media con in Atlanta, Georgia. This is only the eighth year of the Dragon Awards, but they have gone through quite a bit of history in those eight years, as recounted here by Camestros Felapton. You can also find my previous posts about the Dragon Awards and their tangled history here.

Camestros Felapton’s 2023 Dragon Award commentary can be found here. Meanwhile, Mike Glyer takes a look at the number of Goodreads ratings for the Dragon finalists in the various literary categories.

The 2023 Dragon Award ballot looks pretty good overall with many broadly popular works and authors, which confirms the trend that the Dragon Awards are actually doing what they were designed for. There’s only one category that’s something of an exception, but more about that later.

So let’s take a look at the individual categories:

Best Science Fiction Novel

This category is populated by popular and also very good works and doesn’t look all that different from a Hugo or Nebula ballot. The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal and The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia are both Hugo finalists for Best Novel this year as is Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky in Best Series.

Translation State (which the Dragon Awards site misspells as “Translation Slate” in a very Freudian typo) by Ann Leckie is a 2023 book, but I strongly expect to see it on the Hugo ballot next year.

Neom by Lavie Tidhar is a bit of a surprise, but then Lavie Tidhar has been a Dragon Award finalist before in the Best Alternate History category, so he may well be popular with Dragon Award nominators.

The Icarus Plot by Timothy Zahn is also something of a surprise, for though Timothy Zahn is extremely popular for his Star Wars tie-in novels,  The Icarus Plot never really appeared on my radar at all. Camestros Felapton notes that The Icarus Plot appeared on the recommendation list of the rightwing review site Upstream Reviews run by Declan Finn, disruptor of doors and unlikely story inspiration) as well as on a recommendation list posted on Twitter by someone calling themselves Aristophanes. Though I doubt these two recommendation are the only reason The Icarus Plot was nominated, because like I said, Timothy Zahn is a very popular (and good) author and previous Dragon Award winner in the now defunct media tie-in category.

Diversity count: 3 women, 4 men, 3 international authors, 1 author of colour

Best Fantasy Novel

This is another category full of popular books and authors. Martha Wells is a multiple Hugo and Nebula Award winner and I strongly expect to see Witch King (which acquired a stray article on the Dragon ballot) on several awards ballots next year.

Babel by R.F. Kuang is a Nebula and Locus Award winner and was on multiple Best of the Year lists. Its unexpected absence of from the 2023 Hugo ballot was a matter of much discussion and speculation. But if a Nebula and a Locus Award aren’t consolation enough, R.F. Kuang now also has a Dragon Award nomination.

I haven’t read The Atlas Paradox by Olivie Blake, but it was a popular and massively marketed book, so I’m not surprised to see it nominated, though I assumed it was YA for some reason.

Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson did show up on the Upstream Reviews recommendation list in a different category, but considering how hugely popular Brandon Sanderson is, I’m pretty sure he would have been nominated anyway.

Tower of Silence by Larry Correia was heavily marketed by Baen (though Correia himself did not campaign for a nomination for his book) and definitely appeared on my radar, though I’m very much not the target audience. Besides, Larry Correia does have a big fanbase. Tower of Silence also is the third book in a series where both previous installments won the Dragon Award in this category, so it’s not a surprising finalist.

The second Baen finalist Into the Vortex by Charles E. Gannon is more of a surprise, because I had no idea this book even existed (though again I’m probably not the target audience) and know Charles E. Gannon mainly as a science fiction author. That said, Charles E. Gannon has been a Nebula finalist several times and clearly has a fanbase. Larry Correia also apparently campaigned for Into the Vortex as well as Wraithbound by Tim Akers, which shows up in another category, and The Dabare Snake Launcher by Joelle Presby, which did not make the ballot. Plus, Baen always has a big presence at Dragon Con.

Diversity count: 3 women, 3 men, 3 authors of colour

Best Young Adult / Middle Grade Novel

Again, we have a lot of very popular authors and one surprise in this category.

Bloodmarked by Tracy Deonn and The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik (which awards voters seem to have decided is YA, even if some folks disagree) are also Lodestar finalists this year and not surprising choices at all.

The Scratch Daughters by H. A. Clarke got quite a bit of buzz, plus the previous book in the series was a Dragon Award finalist in the category in 2021.  Justina Ireland has been a Lodestar finalist and World Fantasy Award winner in the past and Rust in the Root sounds fascinating. Chloe Gong is a very popular author of YA fantasy, though I’m not familiar with Foul Lady Fortune.

The one surprise for me in this category is Academy Arcanist by Shami Stovall, because I’ve never about either the author or the book before. A bit of googling reveals that Shami Stovall and her husband run an e-book small press. The book doesn’t show up on any of the recommendation lists from the broader puppy sphere, so it seems Shami Stovall has an eager fanbase who nominated her.

Diversity count: 5 women, 1 non-binary, 3 authors of colour, 1 international author, 1 indie author

Best Alternate History Novel

The biggest surprise is that this category survived the purge of the most of the smaller subgenre specific Dragon Award categories, especially since alternate history was always a small subgenre – military SFF and media tie-in are much bigger. Plus, alternate history already has a dedicated award with the Sidewise Award, whereas military SFF has none.

But whatever the reason, the category is still here and it’s still the category with the most “I’ve never heard of these books or authors” finalists. It’s also the category that most resembles the early years of the Dragon Award with a mix of indie authors, Amazon imprints (no Baen, oddly enough) and even the token literary writer.

A.G. Riddle started out as a hugely popular indie writer, though his nominated novel Lost in Time – which judging by the blurb seems to be a time travel rather than alternate history novel – was published by Head of Zeus.

Christopher G. Nuttall is another very popular indie writer. I mostly know him as a writer of military science fiction, but apparently he moved into alternate history, because his nominated novel The Revolutionary War is already book five in an ongoing series.

Dan Willis has written for the popular Dragonlance series, which probably put him on the radar of Dragon Con attendees. His nominated novel Hidden Voices appears to be self-published and is definitely alternate history.

Halcyon by Elliot Ackerman is this year’s “literary novel you’d never expect to see on the Dragon Award ballot in a million years” finalist (let’s not forget that Ian McEwan and Margaret Atwood have both been Dragon Award finalists). He is a (US) National Book Award finalist, decorated US military veteran and a staff writer for The Atlantic. His book is also very definitely alternate history.

The Mother by B.L. Blanchard was published by Amazon‘s 47 North imprint and is definitely alternate history.

Diversity count: 5 men, 1 woman, 1 writer of colour, 1 international writer, 2 indie authors plus 2 more who started out as indie authors

Best Horror Novel

The horror category has usually been the most mainstream category at the Dragon Awards with the exception of the first year, where the winner was an obscure religious space opera rather than an actual horror novel.

This year’s finalists continue the trend. The Devil Takes You Home by Gabino Iglesias was this year’s Stoker Award for Best Novel, while Reluctant Immortals by Gwendolyn Kiste was a finalist. The Pallbearers Club by Paul Tremblay and No Gods For Drowning by Hailey Piper were both Locus Award finalists in this category (as was The Devil Takes You Home). Paul Tremblay and Hailey Piper are also previous Stoker Award winners. Ursula Vernon a.k.a. T. Kingfisher is perennially popular and I strongly expect to see A House With Good Bones on many awards ballots come next year. I have heard of The Only One Left by Riley Sager, though mainly as a thiller rather than a horror novel.

Diversity count: 3 men, 3 women, 1 author of colour

Best Illustrative Cover

This category is new this year and also the weirdest category, because I’ve never heard of most of the finalists and the artists are not names that show up on other awards which have art categories.

Ashes of Man is a novel by Christopher Ruocchio, the cover by Kieran Yanner can be seen here. River of Ashes is a novel by Alexandra Weis and Lucas Astor, the cover by Sam Shearon may be seen here. Both covers are nice enough, though I wouldn’t call them the best of the year.

But Not Broken is an anthology edited by Cedar Sanderson who also created the cover. People may remember her as a member of the Mad Genius Club and puppy Hugo finalist for Best Fan Writer back in 2015, though Camestros Felapton notes that this book and its cover do not show up on any puppy adjacent recommendation lists. The cover itself doesn’t do much for me.

Titan Mage: Apocalypse by Edie Skye is a self-published novel billed as a harem fantasy adventure. The cover by Jackson Tjota may be seen here. It’s very cheese cake. This cover was on the Upstream Reviews recommendation list. Personally,. I find it very amusing that a review site founded by a conservative Catholic recommends the cheese cake cover of a harem fantasy book featuring a sexy witch, which was created by an artist from Indonesia, a muslim majority country.

Tower of Silence by Larry Correia is nominated in the Best Fantasy Novel and the cover by Kurt Miller may be seen her (sans typography). It doesn’t do much for me and I suspect it was nominated more on the base of Correia’s popularity than on its merits as a piece of art.

Wraithbound is a fantasy novel by Tim Akers, which was quite heavily promoted by Baen. The cover by Jeff Brown may be seen here. It’s pretty good and Baen’s typography – often a weakness with their covers – isn’t too intrusive either. This cover was also on the recommendation by Twitter user Aristophanes.

Now taste in art is subjective. Some of the nominated covers are quite good and none are eye-searingly terrible. That said, I still find most of these choices baffling. Neither the books nor the artists are huge names and while the covers are perfectly competent and the artwork is mostly good, I wouldn’t call any of them outstanding. I suspect that the nominations in this category were spread over a large number of covers, because tastes are very individual, and so recommendation lists had more impact than elsewhere.

Diversity count: 5 men, 1 woman, at least 1 artist of colour, 1 international artist, 2 indie books

Best Comic Book or Graphic Novel

X-Men, Wolverine and Dawn of DC: Green Arrow are all mainstream superhero comics and not exactly surprising finalists, though apparently the Green Arrow mini-series only had three issues out by the nomination deadline. Also, have the X-Men comics improved? Cause last I heard they had moved away from everything that once made the X-Men interesting.

Night Fever by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips is a noir/horror comic published by Image and a most worthy finalist. Kaya by Wes Craig, another Image offering, wasn’t on my radar at all, though it certainly look promising.

Finally, we have Dune: House Harkonnen by Brian Herbert, Kevin J Anderson and Michael Shelfer, which fills this year’s “something or other involving Dune” slot. Now it’s quite possible that the Dune graphic novels are actually good – there is one on the 2023 Hugo ballot as well – but I’m very much over Dune.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make comics.

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy TV Series

Camestros Felapton calls this “basically a list of big name SFF shows” and that’s exactly what it is. Nothing here is remotely surprising.

The Star Wars universe is represented by Andor and The Mandalorian, the Star Trek universe by Strange New Worlds and Picard. The Last of Us, The Sandman and House of the Dragon round out the ballot. House of the Dragon was actually on the Upstream Reviews recommendation list, but I’m pretty that the show would have made the ballot anyway.

It’s notable that no Marvel show made the ballot, but then both Ms. Marvel and Secret Invasion fall into two different eligibility and besides, no one seems to have liked Secret Invasion very much. The only Marvel TV show that’s fully eligible for the 2023 Dragon Awards is She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, which the usual suspects hated, even though I personally found it delightful.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make TV shows.

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Movie

This is another category that’s full of popular, big name Hollywood movies with almost no surprises.

Everything Everywhere All At Once has already won every award in the whole multiverse and can now add a Dragon nomination to its accolades. Honestly, is this the most awarded movie in history? I also really want to see the Daniels’ awards cabinet, because it must be incredibly impressive.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse were the two most popular and critically acclaimed superhero movies in what was otherwise a lackluster year for superhero movies. I expect to see both movies on the Hugo ballot next year. Though I’m a bit surprised that Wakanda Forever didn’t make the ballot.

I’m really happy to see Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves on the ballot, because it’s such a fun fantasy adventure and finally a good Dungeons & Dragons movie. I also strongly expect to see this film on the Hugo ballot next year. It’s also a movie almost everybody seems to have liked, though it’s apparently considered a box office failure, largely because it was flattened by the Super Bros Movie which debuted a week later and inexplicably became one of the highest grossing movies of the year. And yes, a lot of families went to see Super Mario Bros, plus it drew in the nostalgia crowd, but I find its massive success still baffling, especially considering that other animated films aimed at the family audience like Strange Days or Elemental, both of which were almost certainly better than Super Mario Bros, underperformed.

I had sort of forgotten that Puss in Boots: The Last Wish existed, probably because it was released during the holiday period and I’m also not the target audience, but it’s apparently a good film. Apparently, both this film and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves were recommended by Upstream Reviews and Aristophanes, but again both movies would probably have been nominated anyway.

The ballot is rounded out by Avatar: The Way of Water. As I’ve already said in my Hugo commentary, I disliked the first Avatar and didn’t even bother to watch the sequel and think that James Cameron made exactly three and a half good movies, all of them more than thirty years ago. Besides, the critical and popular reception of Avatar: The Way of Water was lukewarm at best and no one seemed to like the movie very much and the various tie-in toys are currently hanging out on the clearance table at Smyths Toys. Therefore, I’m surprised to see Avatar: The Way of Water on the Hugo and Dragon ballot. Maybe people did like the film more than they said. Or maybe the nomination is due to the small devoted fanbase that original Avatar still has.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make movies.

Best Digital Game

The formerly four gaming categories have been consolidated into only two, best digital and best physical game, which makes sense IMO.

This category is full of popular and big name games that even I as a non-gamer have heard about. And yes, some of these games were on the Upstream Reviews and Aristophanes recommendation lists, but if there’s one game that didn’t need any help it’s Legends of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

The only slight surprise is Hogwarts Legacy, which attracted a lot of controversy due to being based on the work of noted transphobe J.K. Rowling and because apparently there were technical issues with the actual game as well. However, a lot of people still cling to Harry Potter and his world.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make games.

Best Tabletop Game

Magic the Gathering has been nominated and I think won in the former collectible cardgame category of Dragon Awards since their inception and so it’s no surprise to see the Lord of the Rings expansion set nominated.

Dorfromantik: Das Brettspiel (Romantic Village: The Boardgame) has just won the coveted Spiel des Jahres award for 2023, which continues the trend of Spiel des Jahres winners subsequently making the Dragon ballot. Of course, Spiel des Jahres is the world’s biggest boardgame award, so it’s not surprising that Dragon nominators will look to Spiel des Jahres for recommendations – after all, everybody else does. The Spiel des Jahres winners usually pops up under German Christmas trees that year – I have several of the winners from the early 1980s.

However a) Dorfromantik doesn’t even have an English language release as far as I know, so I’m not sure how many Dragon nominators were familiar with the game, and b) the Spiel des Jahres winner was announced only one or two days before the Dragon nominations closed, so it’s a very tight time frame. Finally, Dorfromantik isn’t even remotely SFF – it’s a game about building a village and planting crops. Another finalist, Earth, is not SFF either. Here is an interview with Dorfromantik co-creator Lukas Zach, who’s a local boy done good.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make games.

***

So all in all, this is a very good ballot and shows that the Dragon Awards continue to move towards what they were intended to be, a people’s choice type award that honours broadly popular works.

So far, reactions to the 2023 Dragon Award finalists are quite muted. There were some neutral “These are the finalists” posts of genre news sites. On Twitter, I saw a lot of happy finalists celebrating their nominations and little in the way of grumpiness. The official Baen Books Twitter account congratulated their finalists, but didn’t weigh in one the ballot otherwise.

Oddly enough, neither Upstream Reviews nor Aristophanes felt the need to comment on the relative success or lack thereof of their recommendation lists. The Upstream Reviewers appear to be on holiday and Aristophanes’ Twitter feed was full of US rightwing stuff, some of it outright offensive, but nothing whatsoever about the Dragon Awards. I guess he forgot all about them and moved on to being outraged that trans people exist, that Mexican immigrants exist, that Hunter Biden exists and is not on trial, that Donald Trump on trial, etc…

Only Larry Correia apparently cannot manage to get through a Dragon Awards season without having a freak-out, as Camestros Felapton reports here. Basically, Correia claims that someone – most likely Cam and File 770, since my post wasn’t up yet – accused him and Baen Books of issuing nomination slates and that Correia promoted himself. Except that no one said anything like this. Cam explicitly noted that Correia did not ask for a nomination for Tower of Silence and a publisher mentioning which of their titles are eligible for an award is standard business practice. The only thing that might be considered an actual slate was the Aristophanes list, since the Upstream Reviews list usually recommended more than one work per category. And the Dragon Awards explicitly encourage authors and publishers to ask their fans to vote for them.

Plus, none of the Baen finalists in the literary categories are huge surprises, since these are all popular authors with big fanbases. Even the two Baen finalists in the Best Cover category are not that much of a surprise, since both books are popular and actually the least obscure finalists in that category. Plus, Wraithbound has a very good cover.

If more reactions show up, I’ll add them to this post.

Comments are open for now, but I reserve the right to close them, if commenters behave badly.

Foundation meets “King and Commoner” and swears a lot

Season 2 of Foundation just started, so I guess I’m doing episode by episode reviews again, at least for now. For my takes on previous episodes, go here.

Warning! There will be spoilers under the cut!

Episode 2 of season 2 of Foundation starts where episode 2 left off – with Gaal still bothered by seeing Salvor dead at the hand of the Mule some one hundred and fifty years into the future.

Salvor, meanwhile, is as unbothered by this revelation as I was, though for different reasons. I don’t particularly care what happens to Salvor, because as far as I’m concerned, her story ended last season and there’s no reason for her to still be in the series at this point. Salvor herself, meanwhile, thinks that if she dies some one hundred and fifty years into the future, she’s safe in the here and now and still has a long life ahead of her. Gaal, however, won’t relent and declares that maybe they can find a way to prevent Salvor’s death. At this point, Hari Seldon or rather his hologram pops up that the path of history is not easy to alter and that any attempts to save Salvor may bring about her death, because some things are pre-ordained.

Before Gaal and Hari can argue some more, the Beggar (I’d forgotten the name of the ship) has reached its destination, a habitable but uninhabited planet that Gaal and Salvor assume is Ignis. Salvor remarks that this planet is an unusual choice to set up the Second Foundation, when Hari drops the bombshell: They’re not on Ignis at all. Instead, Hari – who partly lives in the Beggar‘s computer now redirected them somewhere else, because the Prime Radiant told him to.”Well, where the fuck are we?” an understandably frustrated Salvor demands. It’s the first of many f-bombs dropped during this episode.

Now Salvor has every right to swear at Hari taking the Beggar to an unknown planet. However, it’s really notable that there are a lot of f-bombs dropped in this episode. I don’t particularly mind and it’s mostly justified, but it seems as if they stuffed an entire season’s worth of f-bombs into a single episode. What makes this even more notable is that the original stories from the 1940s have no swearing at all, because censorship standards of the time wouldn’t have allowed that. There’s a reason that Conan keeps saying “Crom!”, because “Fuck” just wasn’t possible in those days, even in the more liberal Weird Tales. And there was no way Isaac Asimov would have gotten an f-bomb or even a less loaded term past John W. Campbell’s long-suffering eidtorial assistant Kay Tarrant, who was infamous among Astounding and Unknown writers for exorcising any hint of impropriety from the pages of the two magazines. According to Alec Nevala-Lee, Kay Tarrant once told some of Astounding‘s writers, likely including Asimov, “Personally, I don’t give a fuck what you write, but children read this magazine, too.” It seems the writers of the TV show were determined to make poor Kay Tarrant rotate in her grave.

Hari finally reveals that the Beggar has landed on Oona’s World, an Imperial palladium mining colony that was abandoned centuries ago. Oona’s World isn’t mentioned in the books, at least not as far as I recall. It is a fascinating setting, a barren world covered with rusting mining equipment and gigantic statues that have partially collapsed into the sand. It’s certainly interesting that the design aesthetic of the entire galaxy in Foundation is apparently Socialist realism. It’s also telling that even a random mining colony would be filled with gigantic statues of important people.

As for why they’ve come to Oona’s World, Hari has no idea. But the Prime Radiant told him to. Just as the Prime Radiant is now telling him to come to a certain mountain which is apparently Oona’s World’s answer to Mount Rushmore, since there are giant statues hewn into the rock. If you’re convinced by now that Hari is not quite sane, you’re not the only one.

Gaal and Salvor also have their doubts about Hari and his mysterious mission. However, since Hari is living in the Beggar‘s computer and has locked down all functions, they have no choice but to indulge Hari. Worse, since Hari has no body of his own and the Beggar‘s systems aren’t long-range enough, he demands that Gaal take Hari to Mount Rushmore of Oona’s World. Gaal is not at all happy about this and tells Hari that she is not carrying him around like “a fucking rat in a handbag”. Salvor tells Gaal to please just take Hari where he wants to go, so they can get the fuck off Oona’s World.

So Gaal and Hari Seldon or rather his holigram trek across Oona’s World. Hari gives some worldbuilding background and explains that once the planet’s palladium deposits were exhausted, the Empire turned the mining robots loose on the local population. The reason for this is not quite clear, since the human body does not contain any palladium except occasionally in tooth fillings and jewellery. Never mind that if those mining robots were beholden to the Three Laws of Robotics – which would make sense, because no one wants mining robots to ignore orders or attack humans – then how could they even be able to go after the human population of Oona’s World? So the whole thing makes no sense. However, it neatly illustrates that the Emperors are vicious pieces of shit, or – to quote Hari – “hollow men who hollow out their worlds”.

Hari is also quite cautious in moving across the barren landscape. Gaal wants to know why – after all, Oona’s World is uninhabited. “Uninhabited doesn’t mean we’re alone”, Hari says cryptically.

Otherwise, Hari and Gaal spend the rest of way bickering. Hari calls Gaal disruptive (annoying would be more fitting), whereas Gaal wants to know why Hari didn’t put a single Psychohistorian on Terminus to help the Foundation. Hari counters that he did intend to put one Psychohistorian on Terminus, namely Gaal, except that Gaal messed up that part, too.

The argument then goes into the issue of Salvor. Hari insists that Salvor’s death at the hands of the Mule may well be unavoidable and that any individual person is insignificant in the larger scheme of things anyway. Gaal counters that Salvor solved the first Seldon crisis and is therefore very important indeed, whereupon Hari says that Salvor has help because the forces of history were on her side and that if it hadn’t been her, someone else would have done the same. Which is exactly what Psychohistory teaches, namely that specific individuals don’t matter, even if they do important things. Hari calculated that someone would deal with the aggressive four kingdoms, but he had no way of knowing who this person would be nor does it really matter. So in short, Hari has read the books and knows how Psychohistory works, even if the writers sometimes don’t seem to know.

Come to think of it, Psychohistory is in many ways the antithesis to the great man (or woman, but it’s mostly a man) theory of history, because according to Psychohistory broad social and historical trends are a lot more important than any individual figure. Of course, the great man theory of history was already being challenged by the time Isaac Asimov wrote the original Foundation stories. Indeed, the entire explanation that if one “great” person doesn’t to do something, someone else will do it is borrowed almost verbatim from sociologist William Fielding Ogburn’s 1926 paper “The Great Man versus Social Forces”. Did Asimov read Ogburn’s paper? It’s certainly possible.

Hari and Gaal have finally reached the mine and venture inside. There is a door, which opens and behind that door – on a supposedly uninhabited, if not empty planet – is none other than Kalle, the dead mathematician poet whose work inspired both Hari and Gaal. Kalle welcomes Hari, who sends Gaal away and tells her to leave, if she and Salvor don’t hear from him within six hours. Then the door slams shut and Gaal is left standing outside.

Gaal returns to the Beggar and debates with Salvor what to do next. Salvor doesn’t trust Hari anymore than Gaal does and declares that if the positions were reversed Hari would leave them behind (and I couldn’t even blame him). And besides, they don’t need Hari to set up the Second Foundation. Actually, they do need him, since I doubt Gaal has all the necessary knowledge and Salvor certainly doesn’t have it. Salvor also drops another of the aphorism her counterpart in the books is famous for, though she attributes it to her father: “Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.”

In many ways, it feels as if the writers are including these quotes from the books in the series almost as a bone thrown to the fans of the books to assure them that yes, the writers have read the books, they just chose to largely ignore them. Never mind that this particular Salvor Hardin aphorism doesn’t even fit in this situation.

Gaal and Salvor eventually decide to take off without Hari. However, just as they start the Beggar‘s engines and are about the take off, the Beggar crashes into a sinkhole and is attacked by two mining robots. I guess the Beggar contains palladium. Somehow, Salvor manages to manoeuvre the Beggar out of the sinkhole. However, before they head for orbit, the scanner detects a lifeform at the abandoned mine cum Mount Rushmore of Oona’s World where Gaal took Hari. The lifeform is lying in the palm of one of the giant statues and the mining robots are going after it, because – honestly, I have no idea. In his review, Joseph Kolacinski jokes that there appears to be a Fourth Law of Robotics that states: “A robot may not act until it is necessary to the plot?” Which makes as much sense as anything else.

Once again, the whole “escape the giant murderous mining robot” sequence feels more like something you’d see in The Mandalorian than like anything I’d expect to find in Foundation. I also find these pointless action scenes, which only seem to be there because the production seems to worry that the audience will get bored, if there aren’t enough action scenes, very frustrating. I don’t mind this sort of thing in The Mandalorian or any other Star Wars related show, but it just doesn’t belong in Foundation.

However, the powers that be have decreed that we must have an action scene, so Gaal and Salvor proceed to rescue the lifeform, which turns out to be none other than Hari Seldon and he’s got a body now.

Honestly, this development makes no sense at all. Why does Hari need a body? The whole point of Hari Seldon is that he is a ghost, a hologram of a man who died centuries ago. I applaud the show’s decision to turn Hari into an interactive hologram or rather two of them, because that makes him a lot more fun and gives Jared Harris more to do. But I still have no idea why Hari needs a body now and what the point of this whole Kalle business or the sidetrip to Oona’s World even was aside from giving us some cool visuals?

***

The second plot strand of this episode begins on the Lepsis penal colony where dissheveled convicts are harvesting sea salt – or at least that’s what it looks like. I did wonder why the Empire doesn’t use robots or machines for this, especially since machines are used to harvest sea salt even today. But then the Empire is in decline and may no longer have the machinery. Or they just really like torturing convicts. Besides, as I’ve pointed out several times before, prisoners in garishly coloured clothing being forced to do hard physical labour is a really common trope in US science fiction where practices in present day US prisons are extrapolated into the future, even if it makes little sense in the setting, as in season 1 of Star Trek Discovery. And to be fair, prisoners being forced to do hard physical labour makes more sense in Foundation or Andor for that matter than in the post-scarcity Star Trek universe. As for the bright yellow or orange outfits worn by the prisoners, something which is a comparatively new development that came in in the US only in the last thirty years or so and is not practice in most other western countries, I guess by now TV audiences, especially American ones, expect prisoners to wear garishly coloured overalls.

One prisoner collapses from exhaustion and is promptly prodded with some kind of shock stick by a guard, when another prisoner intervenes and tells the guard that his fellow prisoner has had enough and can’t work anymore. Before the guard can take out his frustrations on the prisoner who spoke up, Demerzel arrives and insists on speaking with this particular prisoner. And this is how we are introduced to Bel Riose, one of the main characters in “The Dead Hand” a.k.a. “The General”.

There are some differences to the books here. For starters, Bel Riose is not in prison at the beginning of “The Dead Hand”. There actually is a character in “The Dead Hand” who eventually dies in a prison slave mine, but that character is not Bel Riose and the slave mine where he is incarcerated is actually a Founndation prison (yes, they’re not always the good guys). What is more, Bel Riose in the books is a young man – for a general – and is only thirty-four. In the TV series he is played by 59-year-old British actor Ben Daniels. If his face seems familiar, that’s probably because it is, cause he has been in a lot of things over the years.

But apart from those differences, Bel Riose in the series is remarkably like his book counterpart, steadfast, loyal and protective of both the Empire and the people under his command. Indeed, the reason Bel Riose ended up in prison in the first place is that he countermanded an Imperial order to protect the people under his command. In short, Bel Riose is a good man, unlike the usual antagonists the Foundation deals with. He is also – and that’s not really a spoiler – doomed.

In many ways, the ultimate fate of Bel Riose is tragic. It’s also chilling when Hari Seldon’s hologram pops up at the end of “The Dead Hand” and says (paraphrasing), “Well, if the Empire sent a bad general after you – congratulations, you win. And if the Empire sent a general who’s actually good at his job after you, congratulations, you win as well, because a weak Emperor could never tolerate a strong general, but will have to eliminate him to save his hide.” Which is exactly what happens to Bel Riose in the end.

But for now Bel Riose has gotten a new lease on life, because Demerzel comes to fetch and give him his command back. Riose, however, has some conditions of his own and insists that his fellow prisoners (also Imperial military?) go free as well. Demerzel agrees to improve the conditions at the penal colony, which can hardly be worse, but won’t set the other prisoners go, whereupon Bel Riose tells her to fuck herself (which I suspect she might even be able to do).

However, Demerzel still has an ace up her voluminous sleeves, namely Glawen Curr, Bel Riose’s former second in command and husband. Yes, the Empire has marriage equality, which is something I guess. When he was imprisoned on Lepsis, Bel Riose was told that his husband had been executed for insubordination. However, Glawen Curr is still alive and Demerzel promises Bel Riose that they will be reunited, if he comes with her. Riose relents.

The scene switches to the Imperial palace on Trantor, where Demerzel shows Bel Riose to a quite luxurious apartment and tells him to clean himself up, since Riose literally looks as if he spent that past ten years on a desert island. Joseph Kolacinski says that he looks like a character from Planet of the Apes or Monty Python, which is not entirely wrong. Bel Riose, however, refuses to clean himself up and tells Demerzel that he’ll face Cleon as he is, so Cleon can see what he did to him. He also insists on seeing his husband, but Demerzel tells him that he can see Glawen Curr after he has talked with Cleon.

So we get the confrontation between Bel Riose and the Cleons which goes about as well as you can imagine. Brother Day and Dusk clearly dislike Riose as much as he dislikes them, while Brother Dawn, who has either never met Riose or only met him when he was very young, mostly seems curious. Riose insists on talking to Brother Day alone, so Dusk and Dawn as well as Demerzel are dismissed. Neither of them is happy about it.

Riose clearly triumphs in his one on one confrontation with Day, while Day comes off as weak and insecure. Which is exactly what Hari predicted. The confrontation culminates with Day trying to goad Riose into hitting him, something Bel Riose refuses to do, for while Day may be an arsehole and terrible person, he is still the Emperor and Bel Riose won’t strike his Emperor. I guess Bel Riose and Duncan a.k.a. Man-at-Arms could have a good long conversation in a bar about staying loyal to bad to terrible rulers. Though to be fair, even at his worst in Masters of the Universe Revelation, King Randor is nowhere near as terrible as Cleon XVII.

Turns out that not hitting the Emperor was exactly what Day wanted, so Bel Riose is reinstated and given his command over the 20th fleet back. He also finally gets to see his husband, who believed that Bel Riose was dead as well. The reunion between Bel Riose and Glawen Curr is genuinely touching, though the fact that Brother Day and Demerzel are spying on them through a mirror, while making out with each other is more than a little creepy. Day is once again unsure whether his relationship with Demerzel is right and proper, but Demerzel assures him that it’s perfectly all right. Dude, she says that to all the Cleons.

Glawen Curr tries to persuade Bel Riose to elope together, the Cleons and the Empire be damned. It would obviously be the right decision, but Bel Riose – being the steadfast and honourable man that he is – refuses. He’s well aware that the Brother Day and the rest of the Cleons are weak rulers, but Bel Riose will not abandon the Empire and its people to the likes of Brother Day. It’s a noble sentiment and one that will land the head of Bel Riose and probably Glawen Curr as well in a noose or on a chopping block or whatever weird and cruel forms of execution the Empire practices these days.

But first Bel Riose and Glawen Curr stand on the bridge of the Imperial flagship, where Bel Riose is greeted enthusiastically by his crew, including a female spacer. And then they take off to Siwenna to learn more about the mysterious Foundation from an Imperial agent stationed there.

I don’t recall feeling particularly sorry for Bel Riose the first time I read “The Dead Hand” a.k.a. “The General”, even though he clearly doesn’t deserve his fate. However, the books stick far closer to the Foundation than the TV series, which spends a lot of time on Trantor and with the Empire, and the Foundation were the good guys, so of course I was happy for them to win. That said, “The Dead Hand” is the moment where it becomes clear that the Foundation are not necessarily the good guys, though there are hints earlier, such as the Foundation forcing their fake religion and ideology on people who clearly don’t want it in “The Wedge”. As for Bel Riose, he is a Star Trek captain in a Star Wars world, which is the reason his story is so tragic. He also passes the “What would Commander McLane do?” test with flying colours.

In the books, the sexual orientation of Bel Riose never plays a role. He exists solely as a soldier with no personal life that we learn about. This is not unusual, since Asimov didn’t care very much about the personal lives of his characters. I also don’t recall any hints that Bel Riose is gay, but then any hints might have gone over my head, when I was younger. I really need to reread “The Dead Hand”, since it’s been a while. The TV-show turns Bel Riose into a happily married gay man to give his character more dimensions and to make his eventual fate even more tragic. However, what makes the decision to portray Bel Riose as a gay man in the show interesting is that there is a character in the show who is quite strongly implied to be gay in the books, namely Hober Mallow, the trader who enjoys engaging in nude sunbathing sessions, while smoking cigars, with a male friend. And yes, I know that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but trust me, that scene is very suggestive indeed.

***

This brings us to the third plot strand of this episode, namely what happens to the Foundation and Terminus. When we last saw Terminus, Hari Seldon’s Vault had just activated itself and accidentaly incinerated Jaeggar Fount, warden of Terminus. What is more, graffitti demanding “Get Hober Mallow!” appeared on the walls of the Vault, since the newly sentient Hari Seldon hologram has apparently taken up graffitti as a hobby.

The scene now opens with a cordon of armed guards surrrounding the Vault – which would seem to be smart lest someone else get incinerated. In Director’s Sermak’s conference room, Director Sermak, Poly Verisof and a bunch of other dignitaries including one Councillor Sutt, a name readers of the books may remember as Hober Mallow’s political rival in “The Big and the Little”, are discussing what to do now.

Poly Verisof insists that they fetch Hober Mallow, since that’s clearly what the Vault and Hari Seldon (who according to Poly are one and the same) wants them to do. Director Sermak counters that there is no way that Hari Seldon could predict the existence of a specific individual like Hober Mallow. There may be no psychohistorians on Terminus, but Director Sermak understands psychohistory better than some of the writers, it seems.

Poly counters that Salvor Hardin was a chosen one (though considering Poly was only a small kid when Hari Seldon last appeared, he must be misremembering things, since Hari clearly had no idea who Salvor was and even said so) and even points out a neat glass bust of Salvor in the conference room, confirming that she is one of the Foundation’s foundational heroes second only to Hari Seldon himself. So if Salvor could resolve the first crisis, maybe Hober Mallow can resolve this one, even though he is – to quote Poly – “a fucking arsehole”.

Since no one has any better ideas, Poly Verisof and Brother Constant set off to fetch Hober Mallow. Poly explains to Brother Constant that Hober Mallow was once a trainee priest in the Church of the Galactic Spirit (which matches his biography in the books), but that he became a con-man and scoundrel instead. Poly Verisof also manfully refuses a drink that Director Sermak offers him, so maybe he is cleaning himself up. As before, Kulvinder Ghir’s performance as Poly Verisof is a delight.

As for where Hober Mallow is to be found, Poly explains that he is on Korell, which is a problem, because Korell is actually off-limits to Foundationers. Again, this matches the books, where the Republic of Korell (which is very much not a republic) wants nothing to do with the Foundation and its missionaries, for fear of being taken over like the Four Kingdoms and Askone (which it seems we won’t be seeing in the show). Korell is of course also an important location in “The Big and the Little”.

In the TV show, Korell’s aesthetics seem to be operetta fascism coupled with brutalist architecture. The camera zooms in on some kind of rally. People in gray and tan uniform are lined up in a Leni Riefenstahl type arrangement. A man in a grey operetta uniform with lots of medals and tassles is sitting on a dais. He has what appears to be a golden sword with a big blue jewel in the hilt. This is Commdor Asper Argo, the well beloved leader of the Korellian Republic who is no more well beloved than Korell is a Republic. He is played by Philip Glennister, best remembered for playing DCI Gene Hunt in Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes, two British excellent British SFF shows which for unfathomable reasons seem to be completely forgotten today.

The well beloved Commdor Asper Argo is about to have a virtual meeting with a Foundation trader named Ponyets. Readers of the books will recognise the name Limmar Ponyets as the protagonist of “The Wedge”. And indeed, the Foundation plot strand seems to be a mash-up of “The Wedge” and “The Big and the Little”, while the Trantor plot strand is already in “The Dead Hand”. It’s mystifying why the entire first season basically stuck to the first two stories in the first book with a bit of the third thrown in, which forced them to pad out the rather thin plot of the first two stories with a lot of unrelated stuff, but now suddenly the show suddenly stuffs “The Wedge”, “The Big and the Little” and “The Dead Hand” into an one season.  It probably would have been better to cover all of Foundation up through “The Big and the Little” in season 1, Foundation and Empire or just “The Dead Hand” in season 2, since “The Mule” probably deserves a season of his own, and then doing Second Foundation in the final season. The 1980s prequels are fun enough but not essential and Foundation’s Edge and particularly Foundation and Earth are very much a let-down. If I never have to see or read that Gaia nonsense again, it will still be too soon. Also screw James Lovelock for ruining Foundation.

The Commdor’s pretty blonde aide who looks as if she stepped right out of a Nazi recruitment poster, whispers to the Commdor that the man on the screen is not Trader Ponyets, but the infamous con-man Hober Mallow. Interestingly, I’ve been thinking that a good way to adapt “The Wedge” without confusing viewers with yet another protagonist (though readers of the books never minded getting a new protagonist almost every story) would be to replace Limmar Ponyets with Hober Mallow, since they’re quite similar characters and turn “The Wedge” into an earlier adventure of Mallow. It seems the writers had the same idea. In the books, Hober Mallow is described as brown-skinned – one of the few characters in the Foundation stories to get a physical description and I think the only one whose skin colour is mentioned. In the series, he is played by Dimitri Leonidas, a British actor of Greek Cypriot heritage. I certainly would not call him brown-skinned. And yes, it’s interesting that in a show which has cast several characters who are of undetermined race in the books (which in the 1940s probably meant white) with actors of colour, the one character who explicitly is a person of colour is played by a white man.

If the Commdor were smart, he would have had Hober Mallow arrested straight away. However, the Commdor is mostly greedy, but far from smart and so he agrees to listen to what Hober Mallow has to say, even though he does remind Mallow that Foundation missionaries are not welcome on Korell. Mallow replies that he has no interest in religion and doesn’t care what gods people worship. All he cares about is making a good deal. In the books, Mallow tells Commdor Argo the same thing – that he doesn’t care about religion, only about business. This moment is probably the closest that TV Hober Mallow ever comes to his book counterpart.

As for what Hober Mallow has to sell, he has a something called a “castling device”, named after the chess move, which is basically a short range teleportation device that allows two people to switch places, including wearing each other’s clothes. Mallow promptly demonstrates the device by switching places with the Commdor, who is duly impressed – until he realises that Mallow has made off with the blue jewel in the hilt of his sword. How in the universe Hober Mallow can steal the jewel, when the castling device can only switch people and not even their clothes is not explained.

Hober Mallow is about to make his getaway, but before he can get his ship off the ground, it is stormed by the Commdor’s forces and Hober is arrested. So much for the Foundation’s last, best hope.

Luckily, Poly Verisof and Brother Constant are already on the way to retrieve Hober Mallow, unaware that this retrieval has turned into a rescue mission. We first see them moving through a crowd of Korellians, their dark red priestly robes standing out in a sea of gray and beige. Interestingly, no one seems to be interested in stopping Poly and Brother Constant, even though Korell explicitly forbids Foundation missionaries from visiting the planet and there is a crucial sequence in “The Big and the Little”, where a Foundation priest is lynched by a Korellian mob, while Hober Mallow does fuck all to help him.

As for what has attracted all of those crowds, the well beloved Asper Argo is sitting on his throne again, overseeing some public executions. The execution method is something called “Death by spike of titan”, which is basically impaling the victim with a giant dart. The condemned are also made to wear garish yellow jackets with a giant target on their chest plus a kind of rubber clown’s mask. It’s all suitably bizarre, but also very un-Asimovian. As I’ve noted before, whenever someone is threatened with execution in an Asimov story – which actually does happen  in “The Wedge” – it’s inevitably by gas chamber or lethal injection. Asimov was a chemist and apparently an adherent of better dying through chemistry. But then, gas chambers and lethal injections are a lot less photogenic than impaling people on giant spikes.

We see the first victim quite gruesomely impaled. The body is taken away and Commdor Asper Argo the well beloved orders the next condemned to be brought forward. And this condemned is none other than Hober Mallow. Which means that Poly Verisof and Brother Constant have to think quickly to save the Foundation’s last, best hope from being impaled on a giant spike. Poly Verisof tries to stall the execution to give them time to come up with a rescue plan. And so Poly interrupts the proceedings and asks to be allowed to pray with Hober Mallow – after all, he is a priest. Coincidentally, this is exactly what Limmar Ponyets does in “The Wedge” to be allowed to visit the Foundation agent Eskel Gorov, who has managed to get himself arrested and sentenced to death on planet Askone. Indeed, Poly’s interjection is a nigh verbatim quote of Limmar Ponyets request to the elders of Askone.

However, Korell is not Askone. For while Askone was a religious theocracy and therefore had some respect for priests, Korell is just a corrupt shithole. And so the Commdor denies Poly’s request. I guess this brief scene is all we get of “The Wedge”, which is a pity, since it’s a good story. I also hoped we’d see the cool gold transmutation gadget, but I think Hober’s castling device fulfils that purpose in the series. But then, I was maybe the only person who geeked out about the gold transmution device from “The Wedge”, because I’d just heard about the process chemistry class shortly before I read the story.

The execution is about to go ahead. Hober Mallow still has some last words, then a clown mask is pulled over his face. Suddenly, the condemned gets very agitated and his voice and statue notably change. Turns out that Hober Mallow has used his castling gadget to switch places with the Commdor again. He also uses the confusion to escape – taking the Commdor’s golden sword with the big blue jewel in the hilt along.

Once Poly Verisof and Brother Constant realise what just happened, they also realise that there is only one way for Hober Mallow to get the hell off Korell, namely by stealing their jump ship. So they head for the spaceport and manage to jump aboard just before Hober takes off. But the unlikely trio have no time to celebrate their narrow escape, for Hober Mallow is very determined that he’s not going to Terminus. He even tries to use an escape pod to get away, but Brother Constant knocks him out with a sedative injection.

The Korell scenes are great fun and Philip Glennister really captures the self-importance and idiocy of Commdor Asper Argo, the well beloved. However, the TV series version of Hober Mallow is very different from his book counterpart to the point that he is almost unrecognisable.

For starters, Hober Mallow in the books is a trader not a con artist, though he is definitely unscrupulous. As for the TV character, Paul Levinson compares him to Han Solo in his review, while the Stars End podcast compares him to “The Outrageous Okona” from the eponymous Star Trek: The Next Generation episode. Han Solo and the Outrageous Okona are both variations of the same characters archetype, the space rogue. The space rogue is a very popular character archetype for science fiction and shows up a lot, particularly in media science fiction. In addition to Han Solo and the Outrageous Okona, other examples include Malcolm Reynolds from Firefly, Book from Star Trek Discovery, Christobal Rios from Star Trek Picard and Peter Quill a.k.a. Star Lord from Guardians of the Galaxy.

All of these are fairly recent examples, but the space rogue is venerable archetype who has been around for a long time and definitely predates the original Foundation stories. The original space rogue was C.L. Moore’s Northwest Smith, who debuted in 1933, nine years before the first Foundation story. Leigh Brackett’s Eric John Stark is probably the most famous of the early space rogues, though he does postdate Foundation. However, Leigh Brackett wrote a lot of space rogues like Roy Campbell from “The Citadel of Lost Ships” or Rick Urquart from Shadow Over Mars, which came out in 1944, the same year as “The Big and the Little”. Other stories from the same year, which feature space rogues are Edmond Hamilton’s “The Free-Lance of Space” and Manly Wade Wellman’s “Gambler’s Asteroid”.

So in short, there were a lot of space rogues in 1940s science fiction. However, Hober Mallow is not one of them. He’s a space capitalist, not a rogue. And indeed, Isaac Asimov didn’t write space rogues and Astounding, home of the original Foundation stories, almost never published space rogue stories. The space rogue was born in the pages of Weird Tales, but by the 1940s he was mostly hanging out in Planet Stories, Startling Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories.

That said, there certainly are some parallels between the space rogue, especially the way the space rogue was portrayed in the 1940s, at the time the Foundation stories were written, and Hober Mallow. For the space rogue of the 1930s and 1940s wasn’t a charming scoundrel or comedic never-do-well – that came in much later. And indeed, even the charming scoundrels or comedic never-do-wells often hide deep trauma underneath their charming smile – see Peter Quill or Malcolm Reynolds.

The space rogue of the 1930s and 1940s was an outsider, often someone from a marginalised background who didn’t fit into society and turned to crime, often out of desperation and poverty. A lot of the fiction in magazines like Planet Stories, Startling Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories – home of the space rogues – had a strong anti-colonial, anti-imperialistic and anti-capitalist streak. Space rogues were cynics who claimed to care for nothing and no one, yet usually had a hidden heart of gold. The space rogue shares a lot of DNA both with sword and sorcery protagonists (and the space rogue was born in the pages of Weird Tales, appearing alongside Conan and created by C.L. Moore, who was also one of the original sword and sorcery writers). A remarkable number of space rogues were also people of colour. Leigh Brackett’s Eric John Stark is the most famous example, but Leigh Brackett’s Roy Campbell and C.L. Moore’s Northwest Smith.

And now let’s take a look at Hober Mallow as he is described in “The Big and the Little”. Hober Mallow is originally from Smyrno, one of the Four Kingdoms. He initially trains as a priest, but once the Foudation recognises his intelligence, he is told the truth about scientism and the Seldon Plan and becomes a trader, part of a loose network of people like himself, most of whom are not from Terminus itself but from the Four Kingdoms, who spread the Foundation’s influence via trade and act as agents and spies, if required.

“The Big and the Little” makes it very clearly that Hober Mallow is an outsider on Terminus, a man who knows the truth about the Foundation and its purpose, but who will never be one of them. There’s a reason Hober Mallow gets more physicaly description than almost everybody else in the Foundation stories – we learn that he has brown skin and stubbornly dresses in the style of his homeworld of Smyrno and not like a Foundationer – because it shows his status as an outsider. The fact that he’s implied to be gay only further serves to add to his outsider status. And once Hober Mallow’s investigation into what the hell is going on in the Korellian Republic has the convenient side effect of making him rich, the Foudation’s establishment really starts to hate him.

So Hober Mallow shares some characteristics of the space rogue of the 1940s – he’s an outsider, a cynic and a man of colour – though only actual space rogues, Hober Mallow embraces capitalism. In fact, it’s quite possible that Hober Mallow as well as similar Foundation characters like Limmar Ponyets and Latham Devers were Asimov’s attempt at writing a space rogue, only that the character turned into something else than a pure space rogue.

Come to think of it, the protagonists of the first few Foudation stories do reflect Asimov’s experience as a first generation Russian Jewish immigrant. In both the books and the TV series, Salvor Hardin is a member of the first generation born and growing up on Terminus , who don’t give a damn about the Galactic Encyclopaedia but just want to live their lives – a reflection of a conflict we often see among immigrants who still retain memories and the culture of their original homeland and their children who grow up in a different society and don’t particularly care about the old country. And Hober Mallow is someone who lives on Terminus, but who will never be considered a “real” Foundationer because of his ethnic and cultural background. I’m sure the son of Jewish immigrants in early twentieth century New York City could sympathise.

So in short, Hober Mallow in the books is a very interesting, if not particularly likeable character, who shares some characteristics with the space rogues of the 1940s, though he himself isn’t one. The Hober Mallow in the show, however, is a very shallow interpretation of a space rogue, more outrageous Okona than Northwest Smith or Eric John Stark or Han Solo or Malcolm Reynolds or even Peter Quill. Of course, we haven’t seen a lot of Hober Mallow yet and he may well display some hidden depths and dimensions in future episodes (And please, give us the naked sunbathing and cigar smoking scene, because Lee Pace can’t get all naked scenes). But considering how well the show handled Bel Riose, it’s a bit disappointing that Hober Mallow, hero of the Foundation, so far seems to be mostly a comic relief character.

Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre: “The Uninvited Guest”

It’s time for another Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre photo story. The name “Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre” was coined by Kevin Beckett at the Whetstone Discord server.

I got a new Masters of the Universe figure recently, namely Zodac, the Cosmic Enforcer:

Even big bad Cosmic Enforcers need their morning coffee.

Zodac has always been one of the strangest Masters of the Universe characters. He was there from the very beginning, one of the first eight figures to come out in 1982. Zodac bears a lot of similarities to Metron from Jack Kirby’s New Gods, but then the early Masters of the Universe designs were partly inspired by Jack Kirby’s Fourth World, because Mattel was apparently working on a Fourth World toyline in the late 1970s that never went into production, so a lot of ideas were reused for Masters of the Universe.

Though the Battle Ram Blog points out that the Jack Kirby influence on Masters of the Universe was not as great as the video linked claims, since no one who worked on the line in the 1980s ever mentioned Jack Kirby as an influence. The one part of Masters of the Universe that was influenced by Jack Kirby’s Fourth World is the 1987 movie. Director Gary Goddard was very open about the Kirby influence and even wanted to bring in Jack Kirby as a concept artist.

Zodac was also the only one of the main characters not aligned with any faction. Instead, he was billed as a neutral observer, a cosmic enforcer who’s task it is to maintain balance in the universe. Zodac is also frequently described as being a connected to or even being a former member of the all-powerful Council of Elders (a concept that goes back to the early 1980s, though it wasn’t really explored very much until the 2002 cartoon). Quite often, Zodac is the sole member of the Council of Elders to remain in human form.

Zodac’s position of a neutral force preserving the balance of the cosmos is a heady concept for a kids’ toyline. As a result, neither the kids playing with the toys nor the people working on Masters of the Universe often had no real idea what to do with Zodac. He only put in a handful of appearances in the original mini-comics and the Filmation cartoon of the 1980s, though a related character named Zodak with a K (the two Zodacs are different enough that they are generally considered two separate characters) played a bigger role in the 2002 cartoon. Zodac did appear in the West German audio dramas, voiced by Jürgen Thormann, and also put in several appearances in the various Masters of the Universe comics over the years.

Whenever Zodac did appear, he was often portrayed as something of a jerk. This goes back all the way to the original 1982 cardback illustration by Errol McCarthy, which shows Zodac firing his blaster at He-Man (reproduced here along with a lot of background information on the character and his development), which outright billed him as an evil character. Because Zodac is comitted to maintaining the balance between good and evil, he often doesn’t approve of He-Man, since He-Man is just too powerful and tilts the balance too much towards good. Zodac obviously doesn’t approve of Skeletor either, yet while he will occasionally aid the heroic warriors against the Evil Forces of Skeletor, we mostly see him harassing He-Man. Zodac is also one of the very few people (in the wider sense of the word) who knows that Prince Adam is He-Man.

In the Filmation episode “The Search”, Zodac shows up on Eternia to warn He-Man that Skeletor is trying to steal the Star Seed, an all powerful glowing orb (Eternia has a lot of all powerful glowing orbs) buried deep underneath the surface of the planet. However, once He-Man has stopped Skeletor, Zodac reveals that the whole thing was just a test to see if He-Man would be able to resist the temptation of using the all powerful Star Seed for himself and was thus worthy of wielding the Power of Grayskull. As for how Skeletor learned about the Star Seed – well, Zodac told him. This wouldn’t be the only time that Zodac would aid the villains for his own ends either. His counterpart with a K in the 2002 cartoon deliberately unleashes the terrifying Snake People upon Eternia, because he wants to avenge himself on the Snake People’s leader King Hiss for murdering and eating his brother.

Zodac’s obsession with whether Prince Adam was worthy of the Power of Grayskull would become something of a pattern in later appearance of the character, particularly in the comics. Hereby, the Sorceress of Grayskull was usually the one who had to serve as an advocate for He-Man – well, he is her champion, after all – and who had to persuade Zodac that yes, Adam is indeed worthy.

Indeed, this is very much the plot of Dark Horse‘s recent Masters of the Universe: Masterverse comic mini-series by Tim Seeley, Eddie Nunez and various other artists. Zodac pays a visit to the Sorceress and once again expresses his disapproval of Prince Adam – as well as his intention to torture Adam to test him – whereupon the Sorceress proceeds to show Zodac a selection of He-Men throughout the Multiverse and how He-Man is always a force for good, regardless of the universe. This serves as a framing device for different Masters of the Universe stories set in alternate realities.

In the Masterverse mini-series, Zodac at least only confines himself to threatening to torture Adam and holding the Sorceress at blaster point – something that doesn’t impress her very much. But in issue 19 of the 2012 DC Comics He-Man and the Masters of the Universe series, written by Rob David (there’s a great interview with him here at the Dad-at-Arms podcast) and illustrated by Tom Derenick (yes, I looked that up), Zodac goes even further and actually wants to kill Prince Adam until the Sorceress stops him. What makes this even worse is that Adam is only about twelve years old at this point and unwittingly taps into the Power of Grayskull and stops time in order to pull his father from a crashed Wind Raider.

It’s very much a standalone flashback issue of Adam recalling a pivotal day in his life – a day which starts with young Adam kissing Teela (because she dared him to) and then getting rebuffed by his father and manipulated by his evil Uncle Keldor into running away in order to lure both Adam and Randor into an ambush. Adam has his Sky Sled shot out from under him, but is otherwise unharmed, but Randor is badly injured and trapped inside the wrecked Wind Raider. Adam is struggling to save him and accidentally taps into the Power of Grayskull to stop time. This is when Zodac and the Sorceress show up to discuss what to do about the twelve-year-old boy who has accidentally stopped time. Zodac wants to kill young Adam, because he’s too powerful and might pose a danger to the balance of the cosmos, but the Sorceress argues that Adam is acting purely out of love for his father and that they should help him instead. Obviously, the Sorceress wins this argument or else there wouldn’t be a story.

I imagine that the Sorceress would get quite annoyed to constantly have to defend her champion against Zodac. As for what would happen, if Duncan were to find out that Zodac wanted to murder Adam… well, let’s see…

Castle Grayskull, in the Sorceress’ private quarters:

Everybody on Eternia likes Delftware.

“It’s so nice of Duncan to drop by and help me with my home improvement project. And maybe afterwards, there’ll be time for other things…”

Knock, knock.

“And here he comes. Time to lower the jawbridge.”

“Duncan! How wonderful of you to come! And…. Malcolm?!”

“Don’t worry, Sorceress, whatever repair work you need done, Eternia’s strongest and most handsome brothers will get it done for you in a jiffy.”

“Sigh.”

“So what can we do for you today, my… ahem, Sorceress?”

“Ahem, Duncan, could I have a word? In private?”

“Well, if you two want to make out or whatever, I’ll be over here unpacking the tools.”

“Sigh.”

“What is it, my love?”

“When I said I needed a hand, did you have to bring your brother?”

“Malcolm comes in handy, if you need a wall knocked down.”

“I don’t need a wall knocked down, all I want is for you to put up a picture.”

“Malcolm is handy for that, too. If you have Malcolm, you don’t need a hammer. And anyway, I would have brought Adam, but he’s busy with some royal duties.”

“And it never occurred to you to just come alone?”

“Why? What’s wrong, my love?”

“What’s wrong?! Your brother is the most indiscreet person on all of Eternia, that’s what’s wrong. And I don’t want him to blab about our relationship all over the royal barracks.”

“Uhm, if you want to retreat somewhere more private, that’s fine by me.”

“See what I mean?”

“Shut up, Malcolm.”

“So where do you want us to hang this picture?”

“Right above that dresser will be fine, thank you.”

BOOM!

“Teela-Na, I need a word. Now.”

“Zodac?! Don’t you knock? No, of course you don’t. You never do. So why don’t you just come in and treat my private quarters like a public transit station? After all, everybody else does.”

“Uhm, Teela-Na, do you need help? I didn’t know you were expecting a visitor.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Enough! Remove your mortal associates, Teela-Na, for we must talk about the problem of He-Man. Your champion is upsetting the balance of the cosmos.”

“Who is that jerk?”

“I think I know. And I don’t like it.”

“You! The Sorceress has told me all about you, Zodac. She told me how you wanted to kill Prince Adam, when he was only twelve and pulled his father from a wrecked Wind Raider.”

“He did what?!! He tried to kill Adam?!! Get the bastard and give him hell, brother!”

“I’m warning you, Zodac, lay one hand on Adam or on Teela-Na and you’ll answer to me.”

“Duncan, no!”

ZAP!

“Unhand me, mortal. Matters of cosmic importance do not concern you, Man-at-Arms.”

“Duncan!”

“Okay, that does it. No one zaps my brother without answering to the strongest right first in Eternia.”

“Eat steel knuckles, cosmic shithead!”

“Duncan, are you all right? You shouldn’t have intervened. Zodac is powerful beyond imagination.”

“I’m… uff… sworn to protect Adam… and you. Can’t let him hurt you.”

ZAP!

“Shut up, imbecile! These matters do not concern mere mortals like you.”

“That’s it. No one tells me brother to shut up except for me.”

“No, Duncan, he’s too powerful.”

“Listen, Zodac, I don’t care how powerful you are or how important your mission is. If you as much as touch Adam or Teela or Teela-Na or even Malcolm, I will kill you. Is that understood?”

ZAP! BOOM!

“Now you listen, Man-at-Arms. I have no quarrel with you nor with your imbecile of a brother. But interfere with my sacred mission and I shall kill you both without a second thought.”

“Hey, hands off my brother, cosmic arsehole!”

“ENOUGH! You will not harm my champion or my daughter or my man or even Fisto or you will find that I am more than a match for you. And now leave, Zodac. You are not welcome here.”

“Yeah right, you tell him, Sorceress.”

“All right, Teela-Na. I shall take my leave and enforce the balance of the cosmos over in Galaxy SW-77, cause those Jedi are getting way to complacent. But be warned. If your champion gets out of line again, I’ll be back.”

“Don’t let the door hit you on your way out, arsehole!”

“Are you all right, my love? Did he hurt you?”

“Have no fear, Duncan. Within these walls, I’m more than a match for Zodac and he knows it. But you should have kept out of this. Zodac is too powerful for you.”

“I don’t care how powerful he is. If he threatens Adam or Teela or you, he picks a fight with me.”

“And that cosmic jerk really tried to kill Adam, when he was just twelve and saved his Dad from that Wind Raider crash? You know, the one event that convinced all of the Masters that there was more to Adam than just a kid who kept getting underfoot. What a fucking arsehole!”

***

That’s it for today, folks. I hope you enjoyed this Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre Photo Story, because there will be more.

Disclaimer: I don’t own any of these characters, I just bought some toys, took photos of them and wrote little scenes to go with those photos. All characters are copyright and trademark their respective owners.

Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month for July 2023

It’s that time of the month again, time for “Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month”.

So what is “Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month”? It’s a round-up of speculative fiction by indie and small press authors newly published this month, though some June books I missed the last time around snuck in as well. The books are arranged in alphabetical order by author. So far, most links only go to Amazon.com, though I may add other retailers for future editions.

Once again, we have new releases covering the whole broad spectrum of speculative fiction. This month, we have urban fantasy, historical fantasy, sword and sorcery, paranormal mystery, space opera, military science fiction, Steampunk, horror, vampires, dwarves, elves, dragons, superheroes, time travel, aliens, airships, fly gods, lesbian space pirates, crime-busting witches, crime-busting ghosts and much more.

Don’t forget that Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month is also crossposted to the Speculative Fiction Showcase, a group blog run by Jessica Rydill and myself, which features new release spotlights, guest posts, interviews and link round-ups regarding all things speculative fiction several times per week.

As always, I know the authors at least vaguely, but I haven’t read all of the books, so Caveat emptor.

And now on to the books without further ado:

The Morass: Servant of the Fly God by Zachary Ashford

What if you had been kidnapped by a serial killer and your only hope of escape was cut off by rising floodwater?

“A terrifying descent into a nightmarish scenario, rendered with skill, imagination and a merciless desire to immerse the reader in undiluted horror. This is a terrific work of horror fiction by one of Australia’s best genre writers. I couldn’t put it down.”—Jamie Blanks, director of Urban Legend and Valentine

The Australian Outback is a place mired in myth, folklore, and rumour that’s inspired some of the best horror fiction and creature horror books. Some say it’s full of deadly creatures. Others claim it’s rife with serial killers hunting for backpackers and stranded tourists. Whatever the cause, young people in central Queensland are disappearing and the locals are frightened.

Katy is fresh from college and ready to research and write her magnum opus, a book investigating the many disappearances of outback youths in Australia. When she meets Kip, a guitarist on his way to the city, she knows she’s onto something good and that she can prove her hypothesis: there’s nothing there for the youth of today and they’re running away, searching for employment and prospects in the city.

Unfortunately, she’s wrong. In this terrifying cosmic horror book, there is a killer in the outback. One that thinks God is the ancient creature that lurks in the swamps near his property. With floodwaters rising, he’s certain Katy and Kip are the sacrifices that will allow the entity to emerge from the morass and cleanse the world of sinners. One terrifying abduction later, he has them both imprisoned.

As they struggle to escape the terror and the torture, their desperate fight for survival will lead only to more horror. Because their kidnapper is not crazy. His god is real. His god is hungry, and it is screaming to be reborn.

Aurealis-nominated Australian author Zachary Ashford turns his attention to the isolation of the outback with this fast-paced horror. The tension thrums. The brutality screams. The desperation of his protagonists’ plight bleeds from the page. For fans of extreme horror, splatterpunk, gore, violent films like Wolf Creek, or international movies like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and the grotesque creatures of movies like Aliens, The Thing, or The Fly, The Morass: Servant of the Fly God is not to be missed.

Will Katy and Kip survive? Will their killer succeed? Will the God in the swamp take over the world. Buy this supernatural thriller book now, and discover their fate.

Brave New Dawn by Jonathan P. Brazee and J.N. Chaney:

Live for today. Prepare for tomorrow.

The unknown reaches of the galaxy still offer danger for Sergeant Major Reverent Pelletier and his small group of Marines and karnans. They must be ready to protect their own.

But back in human space, war has reared its ugly head once again. Pax Naxli is done, and the central government pays little attention to the Exiled Fleet. On their own now, they can’t count on help when the inevitable comes a’knocking.

Without any outside support and unable to return home, Rev, Tomiko, and the rest must figure out how to survive.

Rev is a Marine, born and bred to fight and survive, to defend those who cannot defend themselves, but one way or another, his journey is coming to an end.

The only question is: will he and his friends live long enough to see it?

Cursed by Lindsay Buroker:

The final installment in the Legacy of Magic series!

Matti Puletasi has defeated her enemies, rescued her parents, fallen in love with the elf of her dreams, and even started thinking of having children. Will her life finally return to normal (as normal as possible when one is mated to an elf and has a goblin for a roommate and a dragon for a neighbor)?

All Matti has left to do is to fulfill her obligation to Mikki the Wrench. That task, however, takes an unexpected turn when she encounters a powerful dark-elven artifact.

Before she knows it, the foul relic has marked her, leaving her cursed as it steals her magic—and threatens to steal her life.

If she can’t figure out how to remove the curse, she may lose everything she’s fought so hard to achieve.

Uninvited House Ghosts by Rachel Ford:

Ghosts are real, and they’re watching over their families. Sometimes, that’s a good thing. But not for the Evanses.

Tennessee Evans comes from a long, undistinguished line of crooks, grifters, layabouts, and rascals. She’s made her share of mistakes, sure, but she’s trying to break the mold. Even after a contentious breakup that hits her emotionally and financially, she works hard, keeps her head up, and carries on.

Then her ex winds up murdered in her backyard. And her prints are all over the murder weapon. She didn’t do it, but no one believes her.

Especially not the pigheaded, infuriatingly hot lead detective investigating the case. On the contrary, she seems to have it out for Tennessee.

Tennessee knows she needs help, and she needs it fast. What she doesn’t know is that the ancestral spirit council is on the job. Which is probably for the best, since their last few missions have ended in disaster – and the odd, accidental death. (Sorry about that, Jane!)

The council dispatches a 20th century American tax expert and an 18th century British criminal to tackle the case. Whether the pair can put aside centuries of personal and cultural differences to save Tennessee is anyone’s guess.

But one thing’s for sure – Marshmeadow will never be the same after this ill-advised haunting!

A supernatural cozy mystery with outrageous shenanigans, cute dogs, found family, a slow burn lesbian romance, and an old, definitely haunted house full of secrets.

Sisters of Fangs by Carlo Hart:

When Emily and Luna, two sisters from Los Angeles, hear about all the paranormal activity on Frazier Mountain, they decide to move there and see if the stories are true. Armed with a camera and a tripod, they are ready to capture footage that will go viral and jump start their fledgling social media careers.

They make friends and enjoy the sweet mountain life before one of them is kidnapped and they find themselves trying to solve a dangerous mystery.

Now they find themselves surrounded by dark woods and horrible creatures. They face vampires, hellhounds, demons, aliens, a talking polar bear and a secret lab. Will they fight the growing evil before it takes over the mountain and then the world.

Sisters of Fangs is the follow up urban fantasy series to the Mountain of Fangs series that has scared so many readers deep into the night.

Rent a cabin on Frazier Mountain. Come for the quiet, stay for the monsters.

Witches of the Deep by Lily Harper Hart:

Hali Waverly thought she’d seen the worst the world had to offer. Then her boyfriend Gray Hunter’s parents arrived on her beach. Now the horror truly begins.

Hali has a big problem…and that’s not including the skeletons that are taking over the beach thanks to an errant spell.

Nobody knows who cast the spell, or more importantly why, but Hali is determined to find out. When she’s not dodging visits from the people Gray wants to see least in his life that is.

Hali is a fixer, which means she can’t stay out of the situation. Will she make matters better or worse, though?

Gray knows exactly how he sees his future going. His parents aren’t part of it. Despite that, part of him doesn’t want to shut the door forever. If he lets them in, though, will he lose everything he’s been working toward?

Gray and Hali are a team. Dark forces are moving in on them from every direction, however. It’s going to take both of them working together to come out on the other side.

Even then, it might not be enough.

Death is coming for St. Pete Beach, and it’s not taking any prisoners.

Little Nothing by Dee Holloway

Two young women race to turn the tide in a Florida on the brink of civil war…

Everyone knows that Jonnie trains and races the limerunners, the deadly water horses that live in the swamps and streams around the town of Sawgrass and that she’s got a way with them that none of the local men can match. And everyone suspects that while Bess works at her family’s inn, The Nag’s Head, she sews her little nothings, magic in every stitch, to protect her beloved Jonnie and their family. What they don’t know is that Jonnie runs messages, stitched in code by Bess, for the Union Army. But now the Confederate forces have taken the nearby fort and they want to use Jonnie’s limerunners and Jonnie herself as weapons against the Union. And all of Bess’s magic won’t be enough to save them when they’re caught in a web of betrayal in a Florida being torn apart by burgeoning civil war. Only Ada Nuit, the Maroon’s ghost queen, knows what lies in store for them and she’s not telling…

Black Sails to Sunward by Sheila Jenné:

In a world of frock coats, solar sails, and rigid class boundaries, Lucy joins the Martian Imperial Navy as a midshipman.

Mars and Earth are at war, and Lucy hopes for quick promotion. But when she arrives aboard ship, she finds harsh officers and a crew on the verge of mutiny. And worse: her former friend, Moira—a commoner and a radical—is a member of the crew.

It’s clear where Lucy’s duty lies. As an officer and a gentlewoman, she has to quell the crew’s rebellion and preserve her ship for the fight against Earth. But soon, she’ll have to make a decision between all she’s been taught to believe and the injustice she can see with her own eyes.

A Book of Blades, Volume II, edited by Matthew John and L.D. Whitney:

Within this tome are buried the blades of warriors, thieves, and wizards. Tales of their deeds, glories, and triumphs shall ring throughout the ages.

Rogues in the House Podcast has gathered the best tales of Sword & Sorcery from across the community.

Here, brave adventurers will discover tales of daring and adventure, of dark sorcery and bloody combat, all penned by members of the burgeoning Sword & Sorcery Community. Returning authors John R. Fultz, Jason Ray Carney, and Charles Clark are joined by new addtions like J. Thomas Howard, Bryn Hammond, and legendary Kirk A. Johnson. Journey across distant, unremembered lands with these and many more!

Bewitched and Bothered by Amanda M. Lee:

Hadley Hunter is taking some downtime with her fiancé Galen Blackwood. All she wants to do is bask in their happiness and pretend nothing bad could possibly happen.

This is Moonstone Bay, however. That’s simply not reality.

When Galen gets a call that an old-timer on the island is holding a gun on the guests at a local bar, Hadley accompanies him to the scene…and watches as the unthinkable happens. The man’s death is strange enough, but when news starts to spread that their victim had been carrying on with a woman who was young enough to be his granddaughter, things take an even odder turn.

It seems there’s an unknown power on the island, and this individual is casting the sort of love spells that force unusual couples to start burning—literally—for one another.

Not only are Hadley and Galen hot on the trail of an outside player, but they’re also targets.

Hadley has learned a lot since finding out she’s a witch. This lesson, however, might be too hot to handle.

The union of earth, air, fire, and water has become symbolic on Moonstone Bay. This time the union will lead to a whole new adventure.

Nothing will ever be the same again.

Of Wings and Shadows by Kyoko M.

In a modern-day world teeming with marauding dragons, there is only one solution: The Wild Hunt.

The United States government has decided to hold a tournament called The Wild Hunt to determine who will be responsible for the capture of wild dragons by the Knight Division. The four challengers Noah Wilson, Charlie Howard, Su Jin Han, and Beowulf have to catch five deadly dragons alive if they want to win the tournament and become the new Knight Division dragon hunters. Their journey will take them through the mountains of South Carolina, the seas of Key West, the caverns of Ruby Falls, the Redwood forest, and finally, the murky bayous of Louisiana. Will they succeed against their competition, or will the dragons of the Wild Hunt be too wild to tame?

Of Wings and Shadows is the sixth book in the Of Cinder and Bone series. It takes place in medias res of Book Five, Of Claws and Inferno. It follows Of Cinder and Bone, Of Blood and Ashes, Of Dawn and Embers, and Of Fury and Fang

Vaulting Through Time by Nancy McCabe:

Can she perform the vault of her life to save her loved ones—and herself?

Sixteen-year-old gymnast Elizabeth Arlington doesn’t care that her mother is older than the other girls’ moms or that she doesn’t look anything like her parents. She has too much to worry about like her body changing and how all of a sudden the balance beam is not as easy as it used to be. But when she makes a discovery that throws her entire identity into question, she turns to her ex-best friend Zach, who suggests a way for her to find the answers her mother won’t give her: a time machine they found in an abandoned house.

As Elizabeth catapults through time, she encounters a mysterious abandoned child, an elite gymnast preparing for Olympic Trials, and an enigmatic woman who seems to know more than she’s revealing. Then when a thief makes off with an identical time machine, Elizabeth finds herself on a race to stop the thief before the world as she knows it—and her future—are destroyed.

Space Ships and Other Trips by Raven Oak:

Part II of this debut collection by multi-award-winning author and artist Raven Oak brings together speculative fiction stories from the past ten years of her career, ranging from space adventures with a dash of mystery and other near-future tales to post-apocalyptic stories and deep dives into the mind.

You’ll find closed-ship mysteries, foul-acting apps, talking cats, retail hell, and hacked programs in these ELEVEN speculative fiction pieces. Space Ships & Other Trips contains FIVE never-before seen stories for your enjoyment, including a tie-in story from Jeff Sturgeon’s The Last Cities of Earth universe.

STORIES INCLUDED: The Loss of Luna, Hungry, Mouth, Only a Bird, Q-Be, Hands, Ol’ St. Nick, Drip, Level Up, Scout’s Honor, and D.E.A.T.H.

Blue Lancer by Glynn Stewart:

It was just supposed to be a run to the bank…

A superpowered criminal named Cashout just took over the bank Joshua Hammond went to for cash—demanding that the unlicensed super-vigilante called Blue Lancer come out and fight him.
Unfortunately for everyone, Joshua Hammond is the Blue Lancer—and trapped with the rest of the hostages, he can’t do anything.

But if Cashout’s “nemesis” doesn’t come out and fight, people are going to die…

Faraway and Forever: More Stories by Nancy Joie Wilkie:

This collection of novelettes takes the reader from the not-to-distant future to a time when travel between worlds is a common occurrence. Each stop along mankind’s journey outward to the stars is accompanied by a deeper look inward–from examining how extraterrestrial beings might use our own biology against us, to whether a human consciousness can survive in a virtual environment, to how wishes are really granted. Original and thought provoking, these stories–which include an interstellar religious thriller involving a second coming of Christ–will stimulate the intellect and engage the imagination.

Indie Crime Fiction of the Month for July 2023

Welcome to the latest edition of “Indie Crime Fiction of the Month”.

So what is “Indie Crime Fiction of the Month”? It’s a round-up of crime fiction by indie authors newly published this month, though some June books I missed the last time around snuck in as well. The books are arranged in alphabetical order by author. So far, most links only go to Amazon.com, though I may add other retailers for future editions.

Our new releases cover the broad spectrum of crime fiction. We have cozy mysteries, small town mysteries, historical mysteries, Jazz Age mysteries, paranormal mysteries, crime thrillers, adventure thrillers, horror thrillers, police officers, FBI agents, private investigators, amateur sleuths, serial killers, kidnappings, missing persons, deadly weddings, plane crashes, redneck detectives, murdered space tourists, fly gods, crime-busting witches, crime-busting socialites, crime-busting butlers, crime-busting ghosts, murder and mayhem in London, Louisiana, New Mexico, Florida, the Australian Outback, a deserted island in the Pacific and much more.

Don’t forget that Indie Crime Fiction of the Month is also crossposted to the Indie Crime Scene, a group blog which features new release spotlights, guest posts, interviews and link round-ups regarding all things crime fiction several times per week.

As always, I know the authors at least vaguely, but I haven’t read all of the books, so Caveat emptor.

And now on to the books without further ado:

The Morass: Servant of the Fly God by Zachary Ashford

What if you had been kidnapped by a serial killer and your only hope of escape was cut off by rising floodwater?

“A terrifying descent into a nightmarish scenario, rendered with skill, imagination and a merciless desire to immerse the reader in undiluted horror. This is a terrific work of horror fiction by one of Australia’s best genre writers. I couldn’t put it down.”—Jamie Blanks, director of Urban Legend and Valentine

The Australian Outback is a place mired in myth, folklore, and rumour that’s inspired some of the best horror fiction and creature horror books. Some say it’s full of deadly creatures. Others claim it’s rife with serial killers hunting for backpackers and stranded tourists. Whatever the cause, young people in central Queensland are disappearing and the locals are frightened.

Katy is fresh from college and ready to research and write her magnum opus, a book investigating the many disappearances of outback youths in Australia. When she meets Kip, a guitarist on his way to the city, she knows she’s onto something good and that she can prove her hypothesis: there’s nothing there for the youth of today and they’re running away, searching for employment and prospects in the city.

Unfortunately, she’s wrong. In this terrifying cosmic horror book, there is a killer in the outback. One that thinks God is the ancient creature that lurks in the swamps near his property. With floodwaters rising, he’s certain Katy and Kip are the sacrifices that will allow the entity to emerge from the morass and cleanse the world of sinners. One terrifying abduction later, he has them both imprisoned.

As they struggle to escape the terror and the torture, their desperate fight for survival will lead only to more horror. Because their kidnapper is not crazy. His god is real. His god is hungry, and it is screaming to be reborn.

Aurealis-nominated Australian author Zachary Ashford turns his attention to the isolation of the outback with this fast-paced horror. The tension thrums. The brutality screams. The desperation of his protagonists’ plight bleeds from the page. For fans of extreme horror, splatterpunk, gore, violent films like Wolf Creek, or international movies like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and the grotesque creatures of movies like Aliens, The Thing, or The Fly, The Morass: Servant of the Fly God is not to be missed.

Will Katy and Kip survive? Will their killer succeed? Will the God in the swamp take over the world. Buy this supernatural thriller book now, and discover their fate.

Dead Among Stars by Kat Bellemore:

Space tourism isn’t dangerous. It’s the passengers.

Psychologist Maddie Swallows had always thought of space tourism as science fiction. That was before the phone call that turned her world upside down and she was hired to work with celebrity passengers as they prepared for their once-in-a-lifetime flight.

It was her dream job. Until six passengers went up into space, and two hours later, only five returned.

If you don’t count the dead body.

Investigating a murder hadn’t been in the job description, but Maddie now needs to use her psychological training to discover who of the remaining five passengers is a murderer.

Before they strike again.

Dead Among Stars is the fourth book of the Maddie Swallows mystery series. If you like confined suspects, humor, and impossible whodunits, you’ll love this cozy mystery.

Pitch Our Evils by Beth Byers:

Once again, adventure arises for Smith and Bea. Only this time, it’s Bea who drags them into trouble. Bea who faces the dark side of her soul. And, it is Bea who has to decide just how deep into the darkness that she is willing to go.

The only question remaining is can Smith pull her back out?

 

 

 

Never Letting Go by Stacy Claflin:

A destination wedding is the idyllic escape. Except when there’s a murderer on the loose.

Ariana and Damon are thrilled for a getaway weekend to celebrate their friends’ new life together. Everything is smooth sailing until strange things start happening… Unexplained noises. People feeling watchful eyes when alone. Mysterious threats.

Then a member of the wedding party goes missing.

Everybody must work together to find their friend. But who can they trust? Any of them could be behind the disappearance… or it could be someone who came without an invitation. Either way, they’re dealing with a desperate person who will stop at nothing to end the marriage before it even begins.

Ariana is determined to find answers before anyone else vanishes…

Uninvited House Ghosts by Rachel Ford:

Ghosts are real, and they’re watching over their families. Sometimes, that’s a good thing. But not for the Evanses.

Tennessee Evans comes from a long, undistinguished line of crooks, grifters, layabouts, and rascals. She’s made her share of mistakes, sure, but she’s trying to break the mold. Even after a contentious breakup that hits her emotionally and financially, she works hard, keeps her head up, and carries on.

Then her ex winds up murdered in her backyard. And her prints are all over the murder weapon. She didn’t do it, but no one believes her.

Especially not the pigheaded, infuriatingly hot lead detective investigating the case. On the contrary, she seems to have it out for Tennessee.

Tennessee knows she needs help, and she needs it fast. What she doesn’t know is that the ancestral spirit council is on the job. Which is probably for the best, since their last few missions have ended in disaster – and the odd, accidental death. (Sorry about that, Jane!)

The council dispatches a 20th century American tax expert and an 18th century British criminal to tackle the case. Whether the pair can put aside centuries of personal and cultural differences to save Tennessee is anyone’s guess.

But one thing’s for sure – Marshmeadow will never be the same after this ill-advised haunting!

A supernatural cozy mystery with outrageous shenanigans, cute dogs, found family, a slow burn lesbian romance, and an old, definitely haunted house full of secrets.

Fatal Game by Olivia and K.S. Gray:

Jumping off a plane is one thing, but being forced to do so amid a plane crash is something no one puts on their bucket list.

After surviving a plane crash in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, FBI agent Olivia Knight and a group of survivors are washed ashore onto a desolate island.

An island harboring more danger than any of them could have ever imagined.

As they set foot on the sandy shores, Olivia and Brock discover a chilling truth.
A masked figure known as the Game Master has brought all the survivors there for the purpose of his twisted games.
Games where the unwitting contestants must fight for their lives.
Forced to play the fatal games with possible enemies hiding at every turn,
Olivia and Brock must rely on one another more than ever before.

What is the true identity of the Game Master and what is the purpose of these games?
With mysteries at every turn and answers fleeting, there is only one thing certain.
On this forsaken island everyone is a pawn, and there’s only one way off it…

Witches of the Deep by Lily Harper Hart:

Hali Waverly thought she’d seen the worst the world had to offer. Then her boyfriend Gray Hunter’s parents arrived on her beach. Now the horror truly begins.

Hali has a big problem…and that’s not including the skeletons that are taking over the beach thanks to an errant spell.

Nobody knows who cast the spell, or more importantly why, but Hali is determined to find out. When she’s not dodging visits from the people Gray wants to see least in his life that is.

Hali is a fixer, which means she can’t stay out of the situation. Will she make matters better or worse, though?

Gray knows exactly how he sees his future going. His parents aren’t part of it. Despite that, part of him doesn’t want to shut the door forever. If he lets them in, though, will he lose everything he’s been working toward?

Gray and Hali are a team. Dark forces are moving in on them from every direction, however. It’s going to take both of them working together to come out on the other side.

Even then, it might not be enough.

Death is coming for St. Pete Beach, and it’s not taking any prisoners.

Bewitched and Bothered by Amanda M. Lee:

Hadley Hunter is taking some downtime with her fiancé Galen Blackwood. All she wants to do is bask in their happiness and pretend nothing bad could possibly happen.

This is Moonstone Bay, however. That’s simply not reality.

When Galen gets a call that an old-timer on the island is holding a gun on the guests at a local bar, Hadley accompanies him to the scene…and watches as the unthinkable happens. The man’s death is strange enough, but when news starts to spread that their victim had been carrying on with a woman who was young enough to be his granddaughter, things take an even odder turn.

It seems there’s an unknown power on the island, and this individual is casting the sort of love spells that force unusual couples to start burning—literally—for one another.

Not only are Hadley and Galen hot on the trail of an outside player, but they’re also targets.

Hadley has learned a lot since finding out she’s a witch. This lesson, however, might be too hot to handle.

The union of earth, air, fire, and water has become symbolic on Moonstone Bay. This time the union will lead to a whole new adventure.

Nothing will ever be the same again.

The Redneck Detective Agency by Phillip Quinn Morris:

The title seems to say it all. But not quite. Fifty-five year old Rusty Clay does not claim to be a detective, though his office door says otherwise. He says he is no redneck, though his longtime friend Gloria Davenport asserts otherwise.

Not being a detective changes when a big man walks into Rusty’s office and insists he find his two hundred fourteen pound catfish. Five thousand dollars cash asserts this is no joke. And he wants it found so he can win first place in the annual grabbling (catching a catfish with one’s bare hands) rodeo.

Second Chance by Jim Riley:

FBI agent Sheila Richardson finds herself in a twisted game of cat and mouse when the daughter of a powerful Louisiana congressman is kidnapped. As she leads the search, Sheila discovers that the kidnapper possesses intimate knowledge of her dark past, turning the investigation into a treacherous dance of deception.

To save the young girl, Sheila joins forces with Niki Dupre, an independent investigator whose sharp instincts rival her own. But as tensions rise and the kidnapper demands ransoms from both women, they must unravel a web of secrets and betrayal, knowing that defying the captor’s demands could cost the girl her life.

With each passing moment, the kidnapper’s grip tightens, forcing Sheila and Niki to question everyone around them. In a heart-stopping race against time, they uncover a shocking truth that extends beyond the abduction, leading to a revelation that challenges their notions of loyalty and justice.

The Girl on the Road by A.J. Rivers:

“You’re going on a date with someone you’ve just met online?
There are a bunch of crazies out there. You need to be careful!”

After multiple assassination attempts, FBI agent Emma Griffin is on the road to recovery.
At times though, her dreams and reality seem to blur together. Leaving her to question aspects of her life.

When the bodies of young women are found on the side of the road at multiple rest stops.
Emma and her team are assigned to the case.
No one could make sense of the brutal and sadistic murders, and it seems as though the bloodthirsty killer might be sending a message.

With more questions than anyone could answer. Nothing is certain.
On the pathway of justice, the pit stops to find the highway killer will exact a costly toll…

Foundation Gets “A Glimpse of Darkness” and Introduces Some Major Players

Season 2 of Foundation just started, so I guess I’m doing episode by episode reviews again, at least for now. For my takes on previous episodes, go here.

Warning! There will be some pretty big spoilers under the cut!

Okay, that’s more like it. Of course, this episode of Foundation is still something of an unholy mess and Gaal Dornick continues to wear out her welcome even further, but there’s actual stuff from the books here and some of it is even fun.

The part that’s the least fun of the episode is once again the continuing adventures of Salvor Hardin, Gaal Dornick and Hologram Hari. After managing the raise Hugo’s, now Salvor’s ship at the end of the last episode, Gaal and Salvor are just about to take off before a storm hits their corner of the world ocean of Synnax, when a royally pissed off Hari Seldon emerges from the Prime Radiant.

And why is Hari so royally pissed off? Well, turns out he was conscious the entire 188 years or so that Gaal spent in cryo-sleep. Gaal blabbers something along the lines of that she’s sorry, but that she was so depressed upon learning that Raych was dead. Harry insists that Gaal and Raych were never meant to be together and continues to rant that they upset his precious plans, whereupon Gaal confesses that she checked the Prime Radiant and that the plan has gone off track – badly.

“And whose fault is that?” Hari rants, “It’s yours, Gaal, because you prevented me from setting up the Second Foundation to keep the plan on track.”

This statement is very significant, because this is the first time we explicitly hear about the Second Foundation which will play a very important role in stories to come. But before Hari can expound upon why the Second Foundation is important, Salvor interrupts to point out that a storm is coming in and that the ship won’t survive it, unless they get it airborn now. So if Hari wants to set up his Second Foundation, he should project his consciousness into the computer and help to start the ship.

“And who are you?” Hari asks, whereupon Salvor replies that they met on Terminus. Hari points out that the Hari Salvor met on Terminus wasn’t him, but the other one. Salvor also unwisely mentions that she is Gaal’s daughter, which sets Hari off on another rant about how Gaal came to have a daughter. I suppose Hari hasn’t quite realised that Salvor is also his granddaughter.

In many ways, Hari’s rants reminded me of the frustrated fans of the Foundation books ranting at the TV series for getting everything wrong and messing it up. Even the fact that he focusses his ire on Gaal fits, because Gaal remaining in the series long after she should have exited the story is major symptom of things going wrong.

However, before they can fix anything, Gaal, Salvor and Hari first have to get the ship in the air. So Hari does vanish into the computer to boot up the system. The ship is ready to fly, but barnacles in an exhaust port (the ship spent a long time under water) prevent it from taking off, so Salvor hands the controls to Gaal (who has no idea what to do, not being a pilot), while Salvor goes outside in the storm to remove the barnacles. This leads to a completely superfluous action scene, which would have been far more at home in The Mandalorian and which is only in this episode, because apparently we cannot expect the audience to focus on people – gasp – talking and explaining important plot points.

This is yet another example of not trusting the audience to actually listen to the characters explaining something, if there isn’t an action scene involved. It’s the same impulse that gave us the so-called “sexposition” scenes in Game of Thrones, where the characters would discuss worldbuilding details while having sex. And frankly, I find it insulting to assume that audiences can’t focus on some worldbuilding and exposition without an action or a sex scene. After all, plenty of people watch courtroom dramas, where the various lawyer characters explain what happened and what’s going on, while talking. Sometimes, there are flashbacks, but there are no sex scenes, at least not in the courtroom, and almost no action scenes either. Medical dramas are similar, a lot of talking about what could have caused these symptoms. So if audiences are perfectly happy to listen to people talking about how and why X killed Y and why patient Z is sick in real world set shows, why don’t production teams trust audiences to listen to characters talking about dragons, the history of Westeros, psychohistory or the Seldon Plan in an SFF show?

Though once again, I suspect that the issue lies not with the actual showrunners, writers and producers, because people like David S. Goyer, Josh Friedman, Jane Espenson or Eric Carrasco (with whom I actually had a very nice Twitter exchange about his work on Masters of the Universe: Revelation without knowing that he was also involved in Foundation) are all genre people and good writers. No, I suspect that the problem lies with the higher echolons of Apple Plus executives who don’t think audiences are smart enough to get SFF and push many of those inexplicable changes on the showrunners and writers.

Once the combined efforts of Hari, Salvor and Gaal (well, mainly Hari and Salvor, since Gaal doesn’t know squat about spaceships) have gotten the ship into orbit, the three of them get back to the actual meat of the story. Hari explains why a Second Foundation is necessary to keep the plan on track and that the Second Foundation must know the plan, while it has to remain hidden from the First, because too much information would knock the Foundation and the plan itself off course. This is all pretty much straight from the books and hearing it all laid out made me happy.

Hari also points out that a war between the Foundation and Empire is imminent. Salvor of course wants to go off and help them, but Hari tells her that they can’t help the Foundation, but that they must resolve the crisis on their own. Which again is exactly what happens in the “The Dead Hand” a.k.a. “The General” segment of Foundation and Empire. Honestly, it’s such a relief to actually get to references to things which happen in the books.

Gaal displays the deviation from the plan and suggests using her precognitive abilities to go to the point in time where the plan diverges from the path. There’s also a line about how Gaal’s precognitive abilities and Salvor’s occasional flashbacks to a past that’s not hers are two sides of the same coin. Anyway, Gaal does manage to briefly project her mind to the future and finds herself in a Terminus on fire and experiences a feeling of overwhelming despair. And we know who tends to project exactly such feelings…

Because Gaal’s initial glimpse of the future didn’t reveal very much, it’s decided to try again. However, this time Gaal insists that she must open her mind the way the religious fanatics back on Synnax, hence gone extinct with the rest of the planet, used to do – by drowning. Of course, there is no water basin or pool aboard the spaceship, so Gaal decides to use the fire suppression system, which removes oxygen from the atmosphere inside the ship instead. If you think that Gaal Dornick is a bloody idiot, you’re not alone. Though she does remember to give Salvor a breathing mask first. Hari, being a hologram, doesn’t need to breathe, of course. He is also remarkably unconcerned about the fact that Gaal needs to “drown” to get a vision, but then Hari has plenty of reasons to dislike Gaal, plus he knows that she’s nuts.

Gaal’s plan works, too, and she gets her vision. And so we get a flash forward of Gaal running through the burning streets of Terminus. There are bodies all around and Gaal is running from something or rather somone. We get to see a man in a leather coat with goggles and some kind of electrical weapon glove. He finally captures Gaal and says something about how he has beaten her Mentalics – apparently some kind of warriors corps with psi powers. This is not as ridiculous and out of place in Foundation as it sounds, because yes, people with psi powers play an important role in the series. Foundation is, after all, a science fiction series of the 1940s published in Astounding, whose editor John W. Campbell really liked stories about psi powers and absolutely considered them hard SF.

The man with the goggles and the electrical shock glove eventually realises that he has the wrong Gaal, a Gaal from the time of the Empire, before Hober Mallow pierced its hide. And then he asks the all-important question: “Where is the Second Foundation?” Gaal obviously has no idea where it is, which does not stop the man with the goggles from using his own telepathic powers to try and pull the answer from her mind. However, before he can get anywhere, Gaal is revived by Salvor and Hari.

She briefly related what she saw and heard, the the person who pursued and captured her is called “The Mule” and that he is telepathic. She also relates that while she did not divulge the location of the Second Foundation, she realised where it was when the Mule tried to pry it from her mind. It’s on a planet called Ignis, which is quite close to Synnax, close enough to get there for a ship without a jump drive without requiring cryosleep. So that’s where Gaal, Salvor and Hari will go next.

Now Gaal’s flash forward is an incredibly important scene, probably one of the most important ones in the series so far. Because we get to see the Mule, a character I hadn’t expected to see this early in the narrative. The time frame, approximately 150 years into the future, fits as well, because the Mule shows up around the year 300 in the Foundation era to take down what’s left of the Empire and completely shatter the Seldon Plan. As for how and why the Mule is able to do all this – he is a telepathic mutant, the random result of a roll of the genetic die that Hari Seldon could neither foresee nor plan for. Worse, the Mule’s telepathic powers give him the ability to instantly take over everybody he encounters and make them his slave. In the short novel “The Mule”, we see this ability in terrifying action, when he takes over and converts Captain Han Pritcher, a member of the Foundation’s military determined to stop him.

In short, the Mule is one of the most terrifying characters you’ll ever encounter, spiritual ancestor of the equally terrifying Jason Wyngarde and Aldo Ferro from the X-Men comics, Jim Jaspers from the Captain Britain comics (Marvel, please make a Jaspers Warp movie and do it right) and TAO from WildC.A.T.S. What makes the Mule so terrifying is that you have no chance to beat him, no defence against him. If you try to kill him, he’ll do to you what he did to Han Pritcher and make you his slave. Not even the all-knowing Hari Seldon can help you to defeat him, because the Mule is the one thing Hari could no foresee.

So in short, “The Mule” is a huge deal and a large part of what made the Foundation series as memorable and beloved as it is. So seeing the Mule in the flesh was both exhilarating and infuriating. Exhilarating, because I’ve been waiting for this moment for more than thirty years. And infuriating, because we’re not actually supposed to see the Mule or know what he looks like. For in the books, the identity of the Mule is a big secret, because no one who has seen him is able to tell the tale later. There is one character who claims to know what the Mule looks like – basically scary and impressive, like the dude with the leather coat, goggles and electrical glove, who looks as if he stepped right out of a 1980s/90s SF B-Movie – but he’s not telling the truth.

The reveal of the true identity of the Mule is one of the most jawdropping and heart-stopping moments of the entire series along with the reveal of where the Second Foundation is located (it’s not Ignis. Or Helicon. Or Tarzenda). And to waste that moment and give us a B-movie villain, which is very much not what the real Mule looks like, too, is an infuriating storytelling choice. In his review, Joseph Kolacinski notes that the B-Movie villain dude may not be the show’s version of The Mule, but the Warlord of Kalgan, a character who serves as a front for the real Mule. He sincerely hope he’s right, because you don’t waste one of the best moments in the entire series like that.

Another thing that bothered me is the implication that Gaal falling in love with Raych and going on a weird escape pod odyssey across the galaxy is the reason for the rise of the Mule and for knocking the Seldon plan off course. Because it’s another symptom is the show’s intention to turn Gaal Dornick into the most important person in the universe rather than a minor character who appears only in a single story. The very point of the Mule is that he is a freak accident, a product of random genetic chance that Hari Seldon and the Second Foundation could not foresee.

But while every Foundation reader is salivating over the Mule, Gaal has a different concern. For she confesses to Salvor that there was a part of the vision that she didn’t reveal. For just before she was captured by the man pretending to be the Mule, she saw Salvor lying on the ground, quite dead. This reveal is actually the end of the episode and apparently supposed to be a kind of cliffhanger, but in truth it’s just massively underwhelming. Because the show just gave us the fucking Mule and expects us to care that Salvor Hardin is dead? Salvor Hardin who’s not even supposed to be in the story anymore at this point, let alone at the time of the Mule? I like Salvor, but her story has been told and she’s just superfluous at this point.

However, the rise of the Mule and the final fall of the Empire is still some 150 years in the future at this point. For now, the Empire is still chugging along, which means it’s time to check in on our favourite clone Emperors and their robot. We first see Brother Day as he is contemplating the giant murals in the palace, particularly one showing a pre-genetic dynasty group of Empresses. Brother Day is still absolutely convinced that he wants to marry Sabeth of the Dominion and have children.

Demerzel finds him and reports that she has found the perfect person to send against the Foundation, namely a general named Bel Riose. This is another name that will excite readers of the books, because Bel Riose is the titular general from the story “The General” a.k.a. “The Dead Hand”, which coincidentally is also the only story other than the very first story “The Psychohistorians” and the 1980s prequels to be partly set in the Empire and actually feature an Emperor, Cleon II.

Brother Day, however, wants absolutely nothing to do with Bel Riose, because the man has the tendency to ignore orders, is not properly subservient and much too popular for Day’s liking. Brother Dusk agree with him. Demerzel, however, insists that Bel Riose is exactly the right man for the job. We don’t Bel Riose yet, but so far his introduction as the brilliant but unconventional general who is the only person who could possibly stop the rise of the Foundation is remarkably close to the books, as is the fact that the Emperor neither likes nor trusts Riose. In the end, it’s this distrust that doooms Riose and in turn the Empire, while the Foundation once again doesn’t really have to do anything except trust in the Dead Hand of Hari Seldon and let history run its course to win. Coincidentally, Demerzel’s insistence on pushing Bel Riose on Brother Day once again made me wonder whether she isn’t a lot more invested in making Hari Seldon’s predictions come true. After all, in the books Demerzel and Hari are on the same side and want the same thing.

However, before the Cleons have to deal with Bel Riose, there is still a wedding to plan and an engagement dinner of sorts to get through. We see that the Cleons no longer move in synch due to the genetic drift and now need a movement coach to make sure that they give the appearance of moving in synch and being three versions of the same person.

The dinner does not go well. Sabeth does manage to charm all three Cleons, but she is also very cocky and forward to the point that I strongly suspect that she will not survive her wedding to Brother Day for long, if the wedding ever takes place at all. At any rate, Sabeth is as doomed as Bel Riose and the Empire itself.

Sabeth asks to see the chambers where the clones are grown and Day obliges and takes her there. He explains how the process works and what would happen if he or any other of the Cleons got killed and replaced by a new clone. Sabeth wants to know what happens if they have children. Day assures her that euthanizing the clones won’t be much of a problem. As for how Day and Sabeth will have children, Day reveals that he is sterile like all Cleons, which makes sense to prevent Cleonic by-blows from running around the Empire and upsetting the genetic dynasty. However, the process can be reversed and then Day and Sabeth can have children conceived in test tubes. The most promising embryos are selected and implanted, for why leave anything to biological chance. Artificially conceiving their future children to prevent genetic disorders does make sense for the future rules of the Galactic Empire (and that they have long to rule), but personally, I raised an eyebrow at the implantation bit. For why subject Sabeth and the future heir to the Empire to the potential risks of pregnancy, when you’ve got a chamber full of artificial wombs right there? Honestly, I think someone needs to read the Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold.

The third plot strand in this episode takes us to the planet Siwenna, a location that will be familiar to readers of the books. Siwenna is a world on the furthest edge of the Empire, beset by civil war and ruled with an iron first by a cruel Imperial vice roy with very little oversight. In “The Big and the Little”, Hober Mallow travels to Siwenna to see for himself what has become of the Empire. He meets an impoverished patrician named Onum Barr who tells him the story of how Siwenna became a hellhole and goes to visit a power station only to realise that Imperial technology is large, clumsy and aging and that the technicians tasked with maintaining it have no idea how anything works. This convinces Mallow that the Empire is doomed, because they have stopped innovating.

Siwenna shows up again in “The Dead Hand” a.k.a. “The General”, where Bel Riose travels to Siwenna to interrogate Ducem Barr, the sole surviving son of Onum Barr, about his father’s contact with Hober Mallow decades before, which makes Ducem Barr the one person with the most knowledge about the Foundation. There is a Ducem Barr listed in the end credits, so I suspect we’ll get to see him eventually.

But for now the Siwenna in the show is an Old West inspired planet on the outer rim which has been cut loose and ignored by the Empire. The inhabitants have been eeking out a meagre living ever since then.

However, the first person we meet in Siwenna is not a local but a Foundation missionary named Brother Constant who uses a Bishop’s Claw monster as a mule. Brother Constant, who is a young woman BTW, has just stumbled upon something, a fellow Foundation missionary who was lynched by binding him to a tree and waiting for him to be killed by lightning, for Siwenna’s inhabitants worship a lightning bolt hurling deity. There actually is a priest lynched in “The Big and the Little”, though this happens on Korell rather than on Siwenna and the circumstances are quite different, because the priest is a trap for Hober Mallow.

Brother Constant promptly runs off to fetch her superior, only to find him in his bunk in their spaceship in a drunken stupour. Brother Constant rudely rouses the priest with an injection that instantly turns him sobre and takes him to their murdered comrade. Both Brother Constant and her boss know that the murdered priest is a warning and fear that they will be next.

“But why?” Brother Constant wonders, “They can keep their gods. We are just shining a light on the great force that underlies everything.” And what would that great truth be? Well, of course the teachings of the great prophet Hari Seldon.

The two missionaries have a presentation planned for that night and decide to go ahead with it anyway, even though their personal forceshields are not very good against lightning.

We next are treated to Brother Constant giving her presentation/sermon in the market place of a town on Siwenna, surrounded by hostile locals who are brandishing ropes. She has a little projector that shows 3D images of the vault on Terminus and Hari Seldon and a personal forceshield that may not work against lightning, but works really well against hostile locals trying to grab her.

Just when things are about to get hairy for Brother Constant, her boss arrives, floating to the ground via an anti-gravity cloak. The locals are more and more impressed by the show put on by those foreign missionaries who appear to be magicians and end their performance by flying off into the air via a tractor beam.

The whole event is very reminiscent of a US-style medicine show or tent revival, which is exactly what it is. Because the Church of the Galactic Spirit (just called Scientism in the books) is a fraud, its miracles are technology dressed up as magic. The personal forceshields are straight out of the books, though the anti-gravity cloaks of the missionaries are borrowed from another “science as a fake religion” story published in Astounding around the same time as the Foundation stories, namely Gather, Darkness! by Fritz Leiber, which was serialised in Astounding in 1943.

Now the fake religion of scientism was always one of my favourite things about the Foundation stories and something I really, really wanted to see in the show, because my sixteen-year-old self, who’d recently decides that religious people were all hypcrites, loved the idea of the Foundation using a fake religion to spread its influence and dupe the idiots. So I was absolutely thrilled to actually see Foundation missionaries do their thing and duping locals in the show.

Even better, Brother Constant’s boss is Poly Verisof, last seen at the end of season one as a young boy. As in the TV series, Poly Verisof in the books is the high priest of scientism and one of the fairly few people who know that the religion is a scam, because most of the priests and missionaries don’t actually know that their religion is fake. In the books, the priests are also not Foundationers, but recruited from the Four Kingdoms and given just enough education to be able to operate the Foundation’s technological miracles. Particularly smart acolytes like Limmar Ponyets from “The Wedge” and Hober Mallow are removed from the seminaries and told the truth about the Foundation. However, both Poly Verisof and Brother Constant are Foundationers and apparently true believers in their own faux religion. Poly Verisof is also the last survivor of those who saw Hari Seldon emerge from the Vault during the first crisis, which would make him some 144 years old. He is portrayed by 58-year-old British-Indian-Kenyan actor Kulvinder Ghir, who is way too young to play a 144-year-old, but still manages to be utterly delightful in the role of the drunkard high priest of the Church of the Galactic Spirit. The Siwenna scenes are a genuine delight and I would gladly watch a whole show of Poly Verisof and Brother Constant missionating the outer rim and spreading the good news about Hari Seldon and the Church of the Galactic Spirit.

However, Poly and Brother Constant’s mission trip is cut short, when they are recalled to Terminus, because the Vault has come alive and a new crisis is imminent. Poly Verisof is excited to meet Hari Seldon again. We also see that the spaceship of the two missionaries is a jump ship developed from the technology used aboard the Invictus. Again, this is true to the books, where the Empire’s technology stagnated or declined, while the Foundation, which is after all a colony of geeks, continued to develop and refine its own technology.

On Terminus, Poly and Brother Constant are welcomed by warden Jaeggar Fount and Director Sermak, who also happens to be Brother Constant’s father. There is an argument about who gets to talk to Hari Seldon, when he emerges from the Vault. Poly Verisof thinks that he should be the one to talk to Seldon, but Director Sermak and Jaeggar Fount only want him to hold back the crowds – after all, he is the High Priest and people will listen to him. Apparently, the Church of the Galactic Spirit is also a thing on Terminus rather than just an opiate for the masses of the Four Kingdoms.

Shortly thereafter, everybody is gathered outside the Vault. Jaeggar Fount attempts to enter, but only get s single message conveyed, before the Vault quite rudely incinerates him. And just to make its point, the Vault also graffitis the message on it walls. “Get Hober Mallow!” I guess the Vault has read the books and knows who is supposed to be up next.

I have to admit I was not exactly looking forward to watching this episode, because watching Foundation often feels more like a chore than a joy, since it’s very much not the story I want to see and have wanted to see for more than thirty years now. However, I thoroughly enjoyed this episode. The saga of the Emperors Three is always fun, the adventures of Poly Verisof and Brother Constant are a pure delight and even Gaal Dornick is not quite as annoying as usual and besides, she gave us a glimpse of the Second Foundation and the Mule.

As Paul Levinson points out in his review, the show introduces a lot of major players that will become important later on in this episode. Not only does the show tease Hober Mallow and Bel Riose, though neither has appeared on screen yet, but we also get Poly Verisof, the Church of the Galactic Spirit and of course the Mule and the Second Foundation, well before either of them should enter the story.

Personally, I suspect that showrunners might not be sure if they will get another season, so they’re teasing the meaty parts of Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation will before they should appear. Even Bel Riose shouldn’t yet appear in the story at this point, since this should be the story of Hober Mallow and his proxy war with the Empire via the Republic of Korell. Though it appears that the showrunners are skipping over the proxy war with Korell and may have combined Hober Mallow with Latham Devers, a similar character who appears in “The Dead Hand”.

Once again, this episode illustrates two major problems with the TV series. The first is that once again, the TV show cannot resist making the various Foundationers dealing with the crisises facing them special. The Vault asks for Hober Mallow specifically, whereas the books always made it clear that while general trends dictate what will happen, they can’t predict who the protagonists will be. If Salvor Hardin hadn’t kept the Four Kingdoms in check, someone else would have done it. If Hober Mallow hadn’t dealt with the Republic of Korell, somone else would have done it. The protagonists themselves don’t matter nor are they special. They’re just the right person who happens to be in the right place at the right time. In many ways, the Foundation stories are the counterpoint to the “great man” theory of history, because the stories very clearly say that anybody could have been that great man and that larger trends matter more than individuals. In many ways, this is a remarkably modern view. Which makes it so annoying that the TV show has to make all of the protagonists of the hour special in some way.

The other problem is one that’s inherent with the structure of the book series, namely the fact that the first five stories, collected in Foundation, are somewhat dull and talky and that everything that made the series the classic that it is happens in the second and third book. However, you can’t just skip ahead to Foundation and Empire and skip the first book – which new readers sometimes try to do – because that will ruin the impact of the later stories. Cause you first need to see the Foundation use their wits to triumph against steadily stronger enemies again and again and you need to see Hari Seldon be right again and again to feel the absolute shock when the Foundation faces its strongest enemy yet – the Mule – and Seldon is wrong.

Personally, I think it would have been best to cover the events in Foundation in season one rather than spending ten episodes on only three stories with lots of filler and massive departures. Because if you actually reread Foundation, “The Psychohistorians” is just set-up (and the show did handle that story really well) and “The Encyclopaedists”, which was only known as “Foundation” upon first publication in 1942, is the only story that really is fairly dull and mostly features people talking. “Bridle and Saddle” a.k.a. “The Mayors” has plenty of action, “The Wedge” would make a neat single episode story and “The Big and the Little” is a mystery which culminates in a courtroom drama. It would be possible to turn these stories into good TV by actually showing much of the action that happens off stage without changing the stories too much.

However, you have to trust your audience and that’s something Apple Plus just isn’t willing to do.

Foundation Finds Itself “In the Seldon’s Shadow” at the Start of Season 2

Season 2 of Foundation just started, so I guess I’m doing episode by episode reviews again. For my takes on season 1, go here.

But before we get to season 2 of Foundation, I also have something else Foundation related to share. Because I was a guest on the most excellent Stars End podcast again, talking about my essay in Asimov’s Foundation and Philosophy: Psychohistory and Its Discontents, edited by Joshua Heter and Josef Thomas Simpson.

Which brings me to another Foundation related thing to share. Because, as mentioned above, I have an essay in the anthology Asimov’s Foundation and Philosophy: Psychohistory and Its Discontents, edited by Joshua Heter and Josef Thomas Simpson, which just came out a few weeks ago from Carus Books.

My essay is called “Between Cynism and Faith” and discusses the very different ways in which the original Foundation stories from the 1940s and the Apple+ TV series handle the subject of religion and also notes that the extremely cynical view of religion found in Isaac Asimov’s original stories from the 1940s was not actually all that unusual for the so-called Golden Age of science fiction.

Unfortunately, there is no Hari Seldon action figure, so Roboto kindly posed with my contributor copies of Asimov’s Foundation and Philosophy.

So will season 2 of Foundation stick closer to the original stories by Isaac Asimov and also preserve the very cynical view of religion found in the original Foundation stories? Let’s find out.

Warning! Spoilers under the cut.

After the beautiful flowing pigments title sequence, season 2 opens with Hari Seldon, which would seem to be a good thing, since Hari Seldon or rather his hologram is the one connecting thread in the Foundation stories of the 1940s.

However, the Hari Seldon we meet in the opening moments of season 2 appears to be in the process of losing his mind and runs screaming through triangular black and white corridors, all of which absolutely does not match the all-knowing and yet infuriatingly vague wisdom dispensing hologram that we all know and love.

There is a childhood flashback, where Hari remembers making some kind origami object out of the pages of a book and learning the difference between two-dimensional and three-dimensional objects, all while his family is camping on a ridge on some barren planet. Hari’s mother is cooking over an open fire and encouraging his inquisitiveness, while his father is angry that tore a page out of a book – which actually seems to be some kind of origami making workbook, i.e. the pages only exist to be torn out – and slaps Hari.

There is no reason for this scene to be there at all, except to use some deep, dark childhood trauma as characterisation. Not that Hari Seldon ever needed any characterisation beyond “brilliant mathematician turned hologram who is all known, until he isn’t”. Also, why do brilliant mathematicians in the Empire inevitably grow up on primitive backwater planets where their talents are not appreciated? It makes sense for Gaal Dornick, who is also from a backwater world in the books, but not for Hari. Also, the books make it quite clear that even backwater worlds had a certain level of technology and connection to the wider Empire in Hari’s day.

The childhood flashback helps Hari to figure out that he is trapped inside the Prime Radiant – that’s the glowy puzzle box in which Hari encoded the entire Seldon plan, which only Hari and Gaal Dornick can activate. The Prime Radiant was last seen, when Salvor Hardin absconded with it, when leaving Terminus to look for her roots. As for how Hari or rather his hologram came to be trapped inside – well, when Gaal Dornick sabotaged Hari’s ship The Raven and fled in an escape pod, the Hari hologram aboard The Raven hitched a ride with her and Gaal trapped it inside the Prime Radiant, because she doesn’t trust Hari.

Hari’s mental breakdown inside the Prime Radiant is interrupted – or accelerated – when a woman in a pink dress appears. Hari recognises the woman as his deceased life partner Yanna, a fellow mathematician, and embraces her.  Now Hari Seldon does have a life partner in the Foundation prequels of the 1980s. However, her name is Dors Venabili, she is a historian and also a robot. There is absolutely no need to mention the whole robot thing in the show, since it would only confuse viewers, but why in the galaxy couldn’t Hari call the apparition of his late wife Dors? Why call her Yanna? It’s one of the many changes between books and show that make zero sense.

Hari eventually realises that the apparition is not Yanna, whereupon she transforms into a woman named Kalle, the mathematician poet who came up with the unsolvable problem that Gaal Dornick helped to solve all the way back in episode 1, setting the plot in motion. However, Hari quickly realises that the apparition is not Kalle either, but something or rather someone else. He also blames Gaal Dornick – “my tormentor”, as he calls her, for his predicament – not without justification, it turns out.

The “Hari trapped in the Prime Radiant” scenes are well acted, but then Jared Harris is one hell of an actor and perfectly cast as Hari Seldon. Nonetheless, the sole purpose of these scenes is to remind the viewer who Hari is and that he is kind of important to the plot. But while I accept that casual viewers need to be reminded who Hari is, I wonder whether this couldn’t have been handled better than by various scenes of the all-knowing Hari Seldon losing his mind, while trapped inside a cosmic puzzle box.

As for how Hari came to be trapped inside the Prime Radiant, as mentioned above, that was the doing of Gaal Dornick, who – having decided that she’s had enough of Hari and the Foundation and the Seldon Plan – jumped into an escape capsule, set course for her backwater homeworld of Synnax – you know, the very place she was so desperate to escape – and put herself into cryo sleep for the next approximately 150 years. Season 1 ended with Gaal arriving on Synnax, which is completely submerged by now with all the inhabitants gone – something that Gaal actually predicted, so why she decided to return to a planet she knew was uninhabitable is anybody’s guess.

However, submerged in the world ocean of Synnax, Gaal finds a spaceship with a single inhabitant in cryo sleep. It’s none other than Salvor Hardin who borrowed the spaceship of her trader lover Hugo, set course for Synnax and put herself in cryo sleep. And now, 138 years later, Gaal rescues and wakes up Salvor, only for Salvor to drop a bombshell on her. Because Salvor has just learned that Gaal is her biological mother.

Season 2 picks up where season 1 left off with Gaal coming to terms with the twin shocks of finding that her entire homeworld and its culture are gone and that she has a daughter she never knew about. Even more troubling is that Salvor is actually older than her biological parents Gaal Dornick and Raych Seldon.

There is actually a massive consent violation here, which is never really addressed, because unless there was a blanket “embryos belong to everybody” agreement aboard the spaceship that brought the Foundation to Terminus, neither Gaal nor Raych ever consented to having their embryo implanted into Mari Hardin. Raych was unable to consent due to being dead and Gaal was unable to consent due to having gone missing. I’m not a huge fan of how Foundation portrays Gaal Dornick as a constant font of hysterics and whining, but she is absolutely correct to be upset about Salvor’s sudden appearance and the fact that her frozen embryos were implanted in someone else. Just as Gaal has every right to be upset about that Salvor is looking for some kind of connection or relationship that Gaal just doesn’t feel.

Foundation largely glosses over the consent issue by having Gaal and Salvor wondering what the hell to do now that they find themselves stuck on a dead planet more than a hundred years into the future. Gaal would rather just mope and wait until the little raft she built for herself was consumed by the rising waters, but true to her woman of action portrayal in this series, Salvor will none of that. She borrows Gaal’s canoe, patrols the perimeter (not that there is a perimeter to patrol, since they’re in the middle of a bloody world ocean) and even manages to catch some fish for dinner.

Meanwhile, Gaal shows Salvor how the Prime Radiant works and also explains that she trapped Hari Seldon’s consciousness inside. Salvor replies that this can’t be possible since she spoke to Hari or rather his hologram on Terminus. This is when Gaal and Salvor realise that there are two Haris – one for each Foundation. Gaal also reveals that she doesn’t trust Hari, because as far as she is concerned he’s ruined her life.

When Gaal activates the Prime Radiant she also displays the Seldon plan. Only there is a problem. For while there was supposed to be smooth sailing after the first Seldon crisis, something has knocked the plan off course and there is now a pearl necklace of crisis after crisis after crisis. Gaal declares that her and Salvor’s actions might have lengthened the dar ages that follow the fall of the Empire until they will never end at all.

The Seldon plan going off course is something that also happens in the books. However, it doesn’t happen this early in the series – chronologically we should be about at the time of “The Big and the Little” – but much later in “The Mule”. And the very reason why “The Mule” has the impact that it had is that at this point we have seen Seldon or rather his hologram being right every single time through five stories. So when everybody is gathered in Seldon’s vault, while Terminus itself is under siege by the Mule and experiencing its most desperate hour, the shock is all the greater when Seldon’s hologram appears and blabbers about something completely unrelated. It’s one of the most memorable moments of the entire Foundation series, but it needs to be earned and the TV show hasn’t earned it yet.  Even worse, having the plan go off course this early actually undermines the impact, when/if the TV series ever gets to “The Mule”.

Salvor isn’t content to sit around on an empty planet with no connection to the wider galaxy or what’s happening out there – something she should have considered before embarking on this quest – so she comes up with a plan to raise her or rather Hugo’s spaceship, repair it and take off to find out what’s happening in the galaxy and if the Empire has already fallen. However, Salvor and Gaal have to hurry, because there’s a storm coming. Together they dive into the ship, Gaal shares her breath with Salvor in a weirdly sexualised kiss of life scene that’s even weirder when you consider that Gaal and Salvor are mother and daughter. With Gaal’s breath, Salvor manages to reset the ship and raise it from the ocean floor. But just as Gaal and Salvor are about to take off the who knows where, Hari Seldon or rather his hologram escapes from the Prime Radiant and he is rightfully pissed off.

The Gaal and Salvor scenes are the weakest part of the entire episode. And just to reiterate, no, I have zero problem with the fact that two characters who were portrayed as men of indeterminate race in the books are now played by two women of colour, because honestly, the gender and race of Gaal and Salvor doesn’t affect their role in the story at all. However, neither character has any reason to still be in the story at this point.

In the books, Gaal Dornick only appears in the opening story “The Psychohistorians” and basically serves as a vehicle to introduce viewers to Hari Seldon and Psychohistory and then vanishes from the story. Book Gaal is very much a cypher, so I have no issue with the show giving Gaal more personality, though I wish they wouldn’t have made her so whiny and annoying. They could even have made Gaal an ancestor of Salvor Hardin to create a connection between different generations of Foundationers. Several characters in the books are descendants of other characters, after all. However, as a character Gaal has no reason to exist beyond episode 2.

In the books, Salvor is an important figure, protagonist of two stories (the only character except for Hari Seldon himself to appear in two different Foundation stories) and one of the founding heroes of the Foundation, who shepherded it through its first two crisises. Salvor Hardin in the books is a fount of aphorisms, frequently quoted in subsequent stories (cause there are other ways of linking the present to the past than putting people in cryosleep or cloning them), and often named in one breath with Hari Seldon and Hober Mallow (who should be entering the story around now). Book Salvor is a very different character from TV Salvor – a person who prefers to think before acting and who choses non-violent solutions – which is sharply at odds with the action woman as whom Salvor has been portrayed in the series. That said, I don’t mind TV Salvor Hardin as a character, but her story ended with season 1 and she has no reason to be here at all.

I understand that the showrunners feel that the audience needs recurring characters to serve as an anchor during the time jumps. However, there already are recurring characters in the Foundation books – Hari Seldon and to a certain degree Daneel/Demerzel. The TV series also adds the Emperors Three as further connective tissue, at least for now. So why exactly do we need Gaal and Salvor as well? Why couldn’t they have stayed in their respective eras and be the hero of the day, just like they are in the books?

The Foundation books, particularly the original stories from the 1940s, have been beloved by generations of science fiction readers who had no problems accepting that a character would be the hero for one story and then the next story would take place decades later, when the previous protagonist was long dead. Yes, there are people who dislike Foundation books, sometimes violently. But many people over the decades have loves those books with all their flaws. And I don’t see why TV audiences shouldn’t accept an anthology type show – Black Mirror and American Whatever Story are popular, after all – held together by the common thread of Hari Seldon or rather his hologram and the Emperors Three.

It seems to me as if the showrunners or rather some higher up executives at Apple Plus are underestimating their audience, sadly a common problem with entertainment industry executives. Remember that Bob Iger – yes, the arsehole who is now CEO of Disney – killed Twin Peaks, one of the best and most innovative shows of its time, by forcing David Lynch and Mark Frost to reveal the killer of Laura Palmer early, destroying all tension? Remember how hard it was to get serialised TV shows made, even after several shows had proven that yes, audiences will come back week after week after week to watch? Remember how long the X-Men movie was in development hell and how superhero team movies of any kind were impossible to get made, because common wisdom claimed that audiences got confused when there was more than one superhero on screen, even though superhero team-ups had been bestselling comic events for decades? Remember how no one believed that such a thing as a cinematic universe was possible and that audiences would come back to watch film after film after film until Marvel tried it? Entertainment executives are dumb and keep underestimating their own audience.

The Verge has a very illuminating interview with Foundation showrunner David S. Goyer, in which he apologises that the first few episodes of season 1 were so slow and talky – you know, the episodes which had a massive terrorist attacks, scenes of torture and execution, two planets getting bombed to smithereens and a bloody murder – but that he had to introduce concepts like psychohistory first. Coincidentally, the first episode was the closest to the books Foundation ever got – and IMO it wasn’t talky at all. I don’t even mind injecting action scenes into the story, because the books, particularly the first one, are very talky and not very cinematic at all. But it seems to me as if Apple Plus wants to make Game of Thrones in space – and remember that Game of Thrones was initially very controversial and a huge gamble, because it was a show about dragons on a channel known for pseudo-realistic dramas about drug dealers. But if they want Game of Thrones in space, there are dozens of SF properties that would have been a better choice than Foundation.

Talking of Game of Thrones in space, let’s check in with everybody’s favourite clone emperors, the Cleons. The Empire has clearly not fallen yet and the current Brother Day is Clean the Seventeenth (the last one we saw was Cleon the Thirteenth). We first meet Cleon the Seventeenth with his pants down – literally – because he is having sex with Demerzel. We also learn that he wants to be called “Cleon” during sex and not “Empire”.

Just at the climax, they are rudely interrupted by eyeless blind ninja assassins, who slice off half of Demerzel’s head. Worse, the ninjas’ weapons can somehow penetrate the Cleons’ protective field, so he is wounded as well. Nonetheless, the combined efforts of Brother Day and Demerzel make short work of the assassins.

The assassination scene is impressively choreographed and nothing that involves a naked Lee Pace fighting off blind ninja assassins can possible be bad, though Joseph Kolacinski points out that it’s quite unlikely that a civilisation which doesn’t even remember the location Earth would still have ninjas. Nonetheless, a sex scene that turns into a fight scene is about as far away from anything Asimov ever wrote as you can get, since action scenes were not his forte at all. In fact, the mere idea of Asimov writing that scene makes me shudder to imagine how awkward it would be.

Brother Day and Demerzel are both injured in the attack. Demerzel did not suffer any lasting harm, since her consciousness is distributed across storage chips she keeps in a box. Brother Day, meanwhile, is stuck in a regeneration tank and refuses any kind of anaesthesia, because he fears – quite rightly – that he might be replaced with another Cleon clone, while under sedation.

There’s also the question of who sent the assassins. The assassins are conveniently dead and not talking. Brother Day kills his Shadowmaster for failing to anticipate or prevent the attack. He also orders to have the brains of Brothers Dusk and Dawn scanned, since he clearly does not trust them. For a rift has opened up between the Emperors Three. And the reason for that rift is that Brother Day has decided to discard the genetic dynasty and get married to Queen Sareth of Cloud Dominion, who even now is on route to Trantor to meet her betrothed. Brother Dusk and particularly Brother Dawn are not happy at the threat of being replaced with Brother Day’s bouncing babies. Particularly Brother Dawn points out that having children will not make Brother Day immortal, since “children are meant to replace us”. It’s the sort of screwed up view of human reproduction the last in a long line of clones would have.

Meanwhile, Brother Dusk also disapproves of Brother Day’s physical relationship with Demerzel, because she used to change his diapers, so sleeping with her is seriously weird. Though it also seems as if Brother Dusk is just a little jealous that he never had the idea to sleep with Demerzel when he was in his prime. Brother Day replied that Cleon the First slept with Demerzel, so why shouldn’t he? He also notes that Demerzel seduced him, something that is confirmed when Brother Day asks Demerzel, if their relationship is indecent, and Demerzel replies that something that is given freely can never be indecent. Of course, Demerzel’s position would also be threatened, if Brother Day were to marry, so she’s using all the means at her proposal to stop the wedding. Though I now also wonder whether Demerzel slept with all or at least most of the Cleons (she clearly did not sleep with the current Brother Dusk) and whether this is a rare occurrence.

The wedding party appears and we see that Trantor has replaced its space elevator – destroyed in a terrorist attack all the way back in the first episode – with rings that make the planet look like a giant astrolabe. Queen Sareth’s adviser Rue points out that Trantor is trying to seem bigger and more important than it is.

The first meeting between the prospective bride and groom is rather fraught as well, since Queen Sareth makes it very clear that Brother Day needs her, not the other way around. There is an exchange of gifts. Queen Sareth’s delegation brings various pigments that are hard to source in the Empire now and Brother Dusk, whose task is to record the glories of the genetic dynasty in a giant mural, completely forgets his Imperial composure to thoroughly geek out about the pigments. In return, Brother Day gifts Queen Sareth with a bronze model of Trantor with its rings – a symbol of what he’s offering. “But surely the Empire is bigger than Trantor”, Queen Sareth replies, “Or is this a vision of a diminished future?” The girl certainly has guts and she is easy on the eyes, too.

Meanwhile, the Emperors Three also receive an alarming report. For the body of Imperial envoy Lord Dorwin – who was killed by Phara in season 1 and left drifting in space – has finally been found and so has his final message, in which he reports that the Anacreons have taken over Terminus and located the missing warship Invictus. This is the first inkling the Empire gets that Terminus, Anacreon, Thesbis and a couple of other rim worls – a map shows Smyrno, home of Hober Mallow – were not actually destroyed in a massive solar flare, as the Foundation faked at the end of season 1 to get the Empire off everybody’s backs. What is more, “there have been rumors of an alliance at the edge of the galaxy, led by magicians who glow in the darkness, and fly unaided through the air, and whom weapons cannot touch, who speak of a galactic spirit who will return and guide his people to a promised new age,” a quote that Joseph Kolacinski points out is taken almost verbatim from “The Big and the Little”.

In the books, the Empire and the Foundation lost contact fairly early on – somewhere around the time of “Bridle and Saddle” or “The Wedge” – and the Foundation doesn’t learn that the Empire hasn’t yet fallen until Hober Mallow makes contact with them in “The Big and the Little”, while the Empire isn’t really aware of the threat the Foundation poses until “The Dead Hand”. Of course, two galactic states just drifting apart and losing contact was a stretch even in 1944 – and Asimov had a map showing troop movements on the other side of the world on his wall at the Navy Yard, while he was writing “The Big and the Little”. In 2023, however, no one will believe that two states just forget that the other exists, so the fake solar flare was used as an excuse for contact between the Empire and the Foundation to break down.

Still, the Empire no knows that the Foundation is still out there and a growing threat. Which brings us to the place which should actually be the main focus of the series, namely Terminus. Terminus has by now grown nicely and spread its influence across the outer rim. One night, an alarm sounds, raising the current Warden of Terminus and the current Director of the Foundation from their sleep. The Vault is waking up, which means another crisis is imminent. The Warden (I don’t think the character ever gets a name) fears that this will mean war with the Empire. And that’s a war the Foundation does not think it can win at the current time.

Now in the books, the first skirmish between the Foundation and the Empire is a proxy war involving the Korellian Republic (which is anything but a Republic), which is being supplied with Imperial weaponry and tech via a political marriage between the Korellian ruler and the daughter of an Imperial warlord. The Korellians take out Foundation ships and Hober Mallow is sent to investigate, as chronicled in “The Big and the Little”. The actual war between the Foundation and the Empire doesn’t happen until “The Dead Hand”. The Empire loses and falls soon thereafter to the Mule.

Normally, I’d say that we’re about to see the proxy conflict with the Korellian Republic, which would also fit the time frame. However, considering that the show ignores the books almost completely, I have no idea whether they’ll jump straight to “The Dead Hand” or whatever the show makes of “The Dead Hand”.

In his review, Paul Levinson points out that even though the story of the three Cleons and their robot has fuck all to do with the books, it is a compelling story in itself and fun to watch. However, the trials of Gaal and Salvor are a lot less compelling. And Terminus, the place where the main action should take place, barely appears at all.

Will season 2 of Foundation be as frustrating as season 1 to someone for whom the books have meant a lot? I fear it will be.

 

 

 

Some Thoughts on the 2023 Hugo Finalists

After taking an inordinately long time to tabulate the nominations, the Chengdu Worldcon finally announced the 2023 Hugo finalists last night – after accidentally posting a not quite correct list on their website a few days ago.

Of course, there is no Worldcon without drama, including Hugo drama. That said, this is certainly something new.

The full and correct list of finalists may be found here. And now, let’s delve right into the categories under the cut:

Best Novel

This 2023 Hugo finalists for Best Novel not only have a lot of overlap with my own ballot, it’s also a very good if not overly surprising list.

Every volume in Tamsyn Muir’s Locked Tomb series so far has been a Hugo finalist, so I’m not at all surprised to see Nona the Ninth on this list. Though this reminds that I’m behind with this series and haven’t read Nona yet.

The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi just won the Locus Award – to some controversy – and besides John Scalzi is a very popular author, so I’m not surprised to see the novel nominated here. Though this will also piss off a lot of people both on the left and the right.

ETA: John Scalzi shares his reaction to finding himself on the Hugo ballot again and his thoughts on the 2023 Hugo finalists in general.

I enjoyed The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal a whole lot and am happy to see it nominated, though again it’s not a huge surprise. This was also on my ballot BTW.

T. Kingfisher a.k.a. Ursula Vernon is a favourite of Hugo voters and has been nominated and won several times before, though this is her first Best Novel nomination, if I’m not mistaken. Besides, Nettle and Bone is a great novel and was also on my ballot.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia has had several Nebula nominations and her career has really taken off in the past two years or so. However, The Doctor of Doctor Moreau is her first Hugo nomination. It’s also a fairly rare example of a horror novel getting a Hugo nomination. This was also on my ballot coincidentally.

Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree was one of the breakout SFF success of the past year. Legends & Lattes also started out as self-published, though it was quickly picked up by Tor.  I enjoyed the book a lot and am happy to see it get a Hugo nod, especially since it shows that yes, cozy fantasy is popular and not just a niche subgenre. This is another finalist that was also on my personal ballot, which gives me a four out of five hit rate. The Red Scholar’s Wake by Aliette de Bodard is the only one of my personal nominees in this category who did not make it and it’s probably further down on the longlist.

One book that’s notable by its absence is Babel by R.F. Kuang, since it was on a lot of “Best Books of 2022” lists and also won the Nebula and Locus Award. Of course, it may just have missed the ballot by a few votes. After all, this wouldn’t be the first time that a Nebula winner for Best Novel did not make the Hugo ballot – two recent examples that come to mind are A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker in 2020 and Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer, which won the Nebula and Shirley Jackson Award in 2015 and did not make the Hugo ballot. Or maybe R.F. Kuang declined.

Those who worry that men, particularly straight white American cis men, are being shut out of the Hugos will be pleased that we have two white American cis men on the ballot for Best Novel this year. Of course, those same people will probably complain that one of those men is John Scalzi, because lots of people love to hate John Scalzi. And quite a few people have issue with Travis Baldree as well for being too cozy and writing about lesbian orcs. And indeed I have already seen some grumblings online about these two finalists in particular.

Diversity count: 2 men, 4 women, 2 international writers*, 1 writer of colour

Best Novella

Even Though I Knew the End by C.L. Polk won the Nebula Award in this category. It’s a lovely urban fantasy retro-noir story, so I’m glad to see it here. This novella was on my personal longlist.

I’m really, really happy to see Ogres by Adrian Tchaikovsky on the ballot, for while Adrian Tchaikovsky won the Arthur C. Clarke Award a few years ago and frequently shows up on the BSFA ballot, he never got any Hugo love until his nomination for the (excellent) Elder Race last year. Coincidentally, this is the only one of my personal nominees in this category who made it. It’s also the only novella on the ballot not published by an imprint of Tor, though that does not fail to stop the people who complain that all the finalists are published by Tor.

A Mirror Mended by Alix E. Harrow is the sequel to last year’s finalist A Spindle Splintered. I haven’t read this one yet.

Into the Riverlands by Nghi Vo is a sequel to the 2021 Best Novella Hugo winner The Empress of Salt and Fortune. Again, I’m afraid that I haven’t read this one yet.

The Wayward Children series by Seanan McGuire is a longtime favourite with Hugo voters, so I’m not surprised to see the latest installment Where the Drowned Girls Go on the ballot. Coincidentally, this also means that Seanan McGuire has an amazing thirteen-year interrupted streak of Hugo nominations.

As I said above, T. Kingfisher a.k.a. Ursula Vernon is very popular with Hugo voters and makes another appearance on the 2023 Hugo ballot with What Moves the Dead. The fact that she’s a great writer doesn’t hurt either. This is another 2023 Hugo finalist that is horror (and published by Tor’s Nightfire horror imprint), so the simmering resurgence of the horror genre is breaking into the general SFF sphere by now.

Notable by its absence is A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers, which just won the Nebula Award in this category. Again, it maybe missed the ballot by a few votes or Becky Chambers declined.

Diversity count: 1 man, 4 women, 1 non-binary, 2 international writers, 2 writers of colour

Best Novelette

“If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You” by John Chu is not just a lovely gay superhero romance, but also the 2023 Nebula and Locus Award winner for Best Novelette. This was also on my personal ballot.

I have been enjoying Marie Vibbert’s short fiction as well as her debut novel for a while now, so I’m thrilled that her novelette “We Built This City” made the ballot. Coincidentally, this was another of my nominees.

“Murder By Pixel: Crime and Responsibility in the Digital Darkness” by S.L. Huang is a novelette I liked a lot and I’m happy to see that others agree with me. It was on my personal longlist, though in the end it did not make my ballot, because there are a lot of good novelettes published in any given year.

“A Dream of Electric Mothers” by Wole Talabi was also a Nebula and Locus finalist in this category, plus it’s a very good story. Coincidentally, Wole Talabi is only the second black African-born Hugo finalist after Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki (who is also on the ballot again in the Best Editor category) last year. There were three other African-born Hugo finalists (Manly Wade Wellman, J.R.R Tolkien and Dave Freer), but they were all white. The increased visibility of African SFF in the West is also reflected on the Hugo and other award ballots by now.

I haven’t yet read either “The Difference Between Love and Time” by Catherynne M. Valente nor “The Space-Time Painter” by Hai Ya. That said, I usually enjoy Catherynne M. Valente’s work and look forward to reading this story. I am unfamiliar with Hai Ya and couldn’t find out anything about him, not even on the website of Galaxy’s Edge magazine, but I’m looking forward to reading his work.

We have our first Chinese finalist, Hai Ya, in this category. There will be more the further we move down the ballot.

We also have a nice range of sources in this category. Two finalists appeared in Clarkesworld, one in Uncanny, one in Galaxy’s Edge (this is not the US magazine Galaxy’s Edge, but its Chinese counterpart) and two appeared in anthologies. So much for “It’s just Tor/Tor.com”.

Diversity count: 3 men, 3 women, 2 international writers, 4 writers of colour

Best Short Story

John Wiswell is one of the most exciting new voices in our genre to emerge in recent years and I am happy to see him on the ballot again with “D.I.Y.”

I’m afraid I still haven’t read “Rabbit Test” by Samantha Mills, though considering it already won the Nebula and Locus Award in this category and has now made the Hugo ballot as well, I really should.

The remaining four finalists in this category are all Chinese stories and don’t seem to be currently available in English – at any rate, I couldn’t find anything online. That said, Regina Kanyu Wang is a name that’s familiar as a writer and tireless champion of Chinese science fiction. There’s a great interview with her in English on the website of the Literaturherbst festival in Heidelberg, Germany, which also mentions her Hugo-nominated story “Zhurong on Mars” (you have to scroll down past a lot of other interviews).

I’m not familiar with the works of Jiang Bo, Ren Qing or Lu Ban so far, though I look forward to checking them out. Lu Ban and Jiang Bo have both had stories published in Clarkesworld or the Sinopticon anthology, but I wasn’t able to find out anything about Ren Qing, who has the misfortune of sharing a name of several other people as well as a common Chinese phrase. Though their story “Resurrection” is available in English in this anthology, translated by Blake Stone-Banks.

With regards to sources, we again have a nice variety. Three finalists were published in Science Fiction World (well, it is the biggest science fiction magazine on the planet) and one each in Uncanny, Tor.com and Frontiers, which appears to be another Chinese mag.

Diversity count: 4 men, 2 women, 4 international writers, 4 writers of colour

Best Series

The Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir has been popular with Hugo voters with every volume so far getting nominated, so it’s not surprising to see the series as a whole get a Hugo nod as well. That said, the final volume is supposed to come out this year, so I expected that nominators would wait until the series was complete before nominating it.

October Daye by Seanan McGuire and Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch are two popular and very good urban fantasy series, that we’ve seen on the Hugo ballot before. Coincidentally, both are also exactly the sort of books the Best Series Hugo was created for, series, where individual books don’t necessarily stand alone well enough to be nominated in Best Novel, but where the series as a whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Adrian Tchaikovsky shows up on the 2023 Hugo ballot again with his very good Children of Time trilogy, the first volume of which won the Clarke Award back in 2016. So it really seems as if Hugo nominators have finally discovered the greatness of Adrian Tchaikovsky.

Robert Jackson Bennett was nominated in this category for his Divine Cities trilogy back in 2019 and is now back with the Founders trilogy, which I’m afraid I haven’t read.

The last finalist in this category is Naomi Novik with her Scholomance series. The series is clearly popular with Hugo voters, since all three volumes to date were nominated for the  Lodestar Award and the second volume won last year.  However, I’m afraid the series doesn’t really work for me, probably because I don’t care for school settings and so-called dark academia at all.

Personally, I’m sad that Elric by Melniboné by Michael Moorcock did not make the ballot, because not only is it a seminal sword and sorcery series, it’s also the longest running series written by a single author ever, as far as I know. The first Elric story “The Dreaming City” appeared in 1961,  The Citadel of Forgotten Myths in 2022, i.e. the series has been going for a whopping 61 years. Plus, Michael Moorcock has never won a Hugo due to the longstanding anti-fantasy bias of the Hugos and the undeserved dominance of John W. Campbell’s Analog in the 1960s, when he was editing New Worlds. That said, a new Elric story will appear later this year in New Edge Sword and Sorcery No. 1, so maybe we can rectify this oversight next year.

Diversity count: 3 men, 3 women, 3 international authors

Best Graphic Story

This category is a mix of the expected and unexpected. Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow and volume 10 of Saga are excellent comics and were both on my ballot. I did not nominated volume 7 of Monstress and volume 4 of Once & Future this time, though I’m not surprised to see them on the ballot, because they’re both popular and well regarded series.

The remaining two finalists, however, came as something of a surprise to me, because I certainly did not expect to see either the videogame tie-in Cyberpunk 2077: Big City Dreams or Dune: The Official Movie Graphic Novel on the Hugo ballot. And while vaguely knew that there are Cyberpunk 2077 tie-in comics, I had no idea that there even was a Dune graphic novel adaptation.

Now media tie-in comics are not necessarily bad – indeed there have been some very good ones. Marvel’s ROM the Space Knight and The Micronauts comics of the 1980s transcended and outlived the forgotten toylines they were based upon, Dark Horse has published some very good Star Wars, Alien and Predator comics over the years and the 2012 DC Comics Masters of the Universe run was remarkably good, as was the Masters of the Multiverse mini-series. So the two tie-in comics might very well be good.

However, tie-in comics on the Hugo ballot were a phenomenon in the early years of the Best Graphic Story Hugo, because a lot of Hugo nominators were not necessarily comic readers, but they did read and nominate tie-in comics to something else they already liked. In recent years, Hugo nominators are more likely to nominate a few popular and good comic series not affiliated with any other media, though the Hugos are less good at recognising new talent than the Eisners, because they are not a pure comic award.

ErsatzCulture has dug up a Hugo recommendation list posted on a Chinese website, which includes the Dune graphic novel and Cyberpunk 2077: Big City, which would explain these two unexpected finalists.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make comics. That said, the nomination for Cyberpunk 2077: Big City may well have given Poland its first ever Hugo finalists.

Best Related Work

The good news first: The 2023 Hugo finalists for Best Related Work are almost entirely the sort of serious and well-researched non-fiction I prefer to see in this category. There’s only one edge case finalist and that finalist is less edgy than some other finalists we have seen in this category in recent years.

Alas, not a single of the many 2023 SFF-related non-fiction books I featured as part of my Non-Fiction Spotlight project made the ballot this year. Still, it’s good to see a Best Related Work ballot that actually contains mostly non-fiction.

So let’s take a look at the finalists:

Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road by Kyle Buchanan is a chronicle of the making of a very popular SFF movie, that was also a Hugo finalists in its own right. I wanted to feature this book and also had requests to feature it, but I couldn’t contact the author.

Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes by Rob Wilkins is a biography of a hugely beloved writer of our genre, written by his former assistant. Again, I would have loved to feature this one, but had no way of contacting the author.

Still Just a Geek: An Annotated Memoir by Wil Wheaton is exactly what it says on the tin. In this case, I didn’t even try to contact the author, since I suspect Wil Wheaton has better things to do than answer the questions of a small fry blogger.

ETA: Wil Wheaton shares this charming post about his joy to be nominated for a Hugo.

Chinese Science Fiction, An Oral History, Volume 1 by Yang Feng is absolutely the sort of book that I love to see in this category, though I was not aware of it until today. There’s some info about it in English on the website of the Chengdu Worldcon.

“The Ghost of Workshops Past” by S.L. Huang is an extensive non-fiction article about the origins of the so-called Milford creative writing workshop model (i.e. the model that most of us who ever took a creative writing workshop in a western country will be familiar with), its connections with the Cold War and the CIA, how the Milford model can be harmful, particularly to marginalised writers, and how writing workshops can do better. It’s a great article.

Now we come to the edge case finalist in this category, namely the Buffalito World Outreach Project by Lawrence M. Schoen. So what is the Buffalito World Outreach Project? It’s the same short story translated into more than thirty different languages, so that people all over the world can enjoy it. Some of the translations may be found on Lawrence M. Schoen’s website and there also is a book version available. So yes, it’s definitely an edge case finalist, but one that I as a translator and linguist have a lot of sympathy for. Plus, this appears to be Lawrence M. Schoen’s first Hugo nomination, though he’s had several Nebula nominations.

Diversity count: 5 men, 1 women, 2 international writers, 2 writers of colour

Best Dramatic Presentation Long

This is the one category I have mixed feelings about, because I don’t particularly care for several of the finalists and find one outright unworthy.

Everything Everywhere All at Once is probably the least unexpected Hugo finalist on the entire ballot. I also strongly suspect that it will win, since it has already won every other award under the sun. But since it’s also a really good movie, I don’t mind.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is one of the best Marvel movies in the rather lacklustre phase IV to date and I’m happy to see it on the ballot.

I still haven’t gotten around to watching Severance, because I don’t have a lot of time to watch TV and I also have problems connecting with office workplace dramas, because I have never worked in anything even remotely like a US-style cubicle open plan office. About the only office-set workplace drama I ever had any interest in was Mad Men and what drew me to Mad Men was the 1960s period setting as well as the behind the scenes look at the advertising industry. I couldn’t care less about all the soap opera antics of who’s sleeping with whom this week. And most office dramas pay little to no attention to the actual work these people do and focus instead on petty office politics, rivalries and affairs, which I have zero interest in, neither in fiction nor in real life. So in short, I didn’t watch Severance, because it looks superficially like a genre I dislike. Still, I guess I’ll have to watch it now. Who knows, maybe I’ll even enjoy it?

Nope is another movie I haven’t yet gotten around to watching, probably because Jordan Peele’s films are hit and miss for me. I liked Get Out!, didn’t care for Us at all. Nope also seems to have gotten less attention than eithe Get Out! or Us, so I’m a little surprised to see it here.

At first glance, Turning Red is another surprise, even though Disney/Pixar animated movies have won quite a few Hugo nominations over the years. Plus, Turning Red was very popular with Chinese viewers, because of it’s set in the Chinese ex-pat in Toronto and the director is Chinese-Canadian. Ironically, this is the reason why (white male) western critics disliked the film and claimed they couldn’t connect with it (probably because they’re not the target audience) and were made uncomfortable by the fact that it’s about puberty and periods and teenage crushes. Because obviously, every movie must speak to the white male experience. I haven’t yet watched Turning Red either, because I’m not the target audience for an animated fantasy movie cum puberty metaphor either, though I remember being a teen girl well enough.

Finally, we get to the finalist whose presence on the ballot really irks me, namely Avatar: The Way of Water. Now I don’t like James Cameron and think he has made exactly three good and one decent film, all of them thirty or more years ago. Everything he made since then has been downhill, but inexplicably popular. That said, I can understand why people flocked to the theatres to see the original Avatar in 2009, because of the sheer visual spectacle and novelty of the whole thing. However, the original Avatar has long since become the butt of jokes, the once spectacular visuals are a lot more commonplace and the last thing it needed was a sequel thirteen years later. However, Cameron can basically do whatever he likes by now and if that means foisting Avatar sequels on the public, then so be it. However, that thing isn’t even remotely Hugo worthy and it annoys me that this thing made the ballot when films like Prey, Neptune Frost, The Northman, Three Thousand Years of Longing or You Won’t Be Alone didn’t.  Avatar: The Way of Water was also slammed by critics and didn’t seem to garner a lot of audience love either. However, it apparently was extremely popular in China, which probably explains why it made the ballot.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make movies.

Best Dramatic Presentation Short

This is normally a category I’m not very happy with, since my tastes in SFF TV seems to be wildly out of step with those of the majority of the Hugo electorate. That said, this year’s Best Dramatic Presentation Short ballot looks pretty good, even though only two of my personal picks made it.

Of the three Star Wars shows that streamed in 2022, Andor was the best (though I did have some issues with it) and is rightfully represented with two episodes on the Hugo ballot, “One Way Out” a.k.a. the prison break episode (which was also one of my nominees) and “Rix Road”, the season finale.

I enjoyed She-Hulk: Attorney at Law a whole lot, partly for personal reasons, because She-Hulk has been a favourite superheroine of mine since the 1980s. Therefore, I am really happy to see the fourth wall breaking season finale “Whose Show Is This?” on the ballot. This was also one of my nominees.

When I saw an episode of The Expanse on the ballot, my initial thought was, “Huh, this has to be a mistake, because The Expanse ended in 2021.” However, two episodes of season 6, including the series finale “Babylon’s Ashes”, aired in early January 2022, so The Expanse got onto the Hugo ballot again by the skin of its teeth. Which I’m fine with, because The Expanse was a very good science fiction series that got less Hugo love than it would have deserved due to being overshadowed by the inexplicably popular Good Place for much of its run.

Stranger Things is another hugely popular SFF TV series that got less Hugo love than one would expect for such a beloved show – only one nomination for season 1 in 2017, where it lost out to Arrival. So I’m happy to see it on the ballot again with the season 4 episode “Dear Billy”.

I’m afraid that I continue to have zero interest in For All Mankind and don’t quite get its popularity with Hugo voters, especially given the absolute riches of good SFF television out there. Though at least it is better than The Good Place.

For the second year in a row, there is no episode of Doctor Who on the Hugo ballot, even though three Doctor Who specials aired in 2022. I guess this means that the era of the guaranteed Doctor Who spot on the ballot is over, which I for one am glad about. Not that mind Doctor Who, but if it makes the Hugo ballot, it should at least be good and not just nominated out of habit.

Also notable by its absence is Star Trek, even though Discovery, Picard and Strange New Worlds all aired in 2022. And while season 4 of Discovery was uneven, it did have a few good episodes – and indeed one of them was on my personal ballot. Season 2 of Picard was uneven as well, but also a lot of fun, and Strange New Worlds was actually really good. Still, Star Trek clearly isn’t the Hugo ballot draw it once was.

It’s also notable that the two duelling mega-budget epic fantasy series Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and House of the Dragon are completely absent from the ballot. Of course, nobody seems to have liked The Rings of Power very much, but House of the Dragon seemed to be quite popular. The third epic fantasy series of 2022 (and the one I actually liked best) Willow is also absent from the ballot, but then it was hampered by airing over the Christmas/New Year period.

In the past few years, we’ve seen several animated series on the Hugo ballot, but sadly not a single animated series made the ballot this year in spite of some very good and popular animated series such as Primal, The Dragon Prince, Dragon Age Absolution, The Owl House and the CGI He-Man and the Masters of the Universe being eligible.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make TV shows.

Best Editor Long

Tor.com‘s Lee Harris and Ruoxi Chen have both been nominated in this category before. Lindsey Hall, also from Tor, and Sarah Peed from Del Rey are first time finalists.

We also have two Chinese editors, Huan Yan and Haijun Yao, nominated in this category. Haijun Yao is an important name in Chinese science fiction and highly worthy finalist. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find out anything about Huan Yan, since they share a name with a prominent Chinese chemist. According to ISFDB, they have edited the Chinese editions of Mary Robinette Kowal’s Lady Astronaut novels.

Diversity count: 2 men, 3 women, 1 unknown, 3 international editors, 3 editors of colour.

Best Editor Short

Scott H. Andrews, Neil Clarke, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki and Sheree Renée Thomas are all returning finalists and most excellent choices. Plus, of these four, only Neil Clarke has ever won the Hugo.

We also have two Chinese finalists in this category, Xu Wang and Fen Yang. Again, I had some problems finding out more information about them, because both have several namesakes, including some who edit scientific journals. According to ISFDB, Xu Wang has edited a number of science fiction anthologies. I also found a profile of a Chinese editor named Feng Yang, so maybe her name has been misspelled on the announcement.

Diversity count: 3 men, 2 women, 1 unknown, 3 international editors, 4 editors of colour

Best Professional Artist

Alyssa Winans is a friend and a great artist and I’m really happy to see her on the ballot again.

Paul Lewin’s name was new to me, though his stunning artwork wasn’t and I’m happy to see his work recognised.

Sija Hong is another artist I wasn’t familiar with, though once again her work is beautiful.

I have admired Kuri Huang’s beautiful artwork on book covers, though again I wasn’t familiar with her name so far.

Jian Zhang is another artist I wasn’t familiar with at all. Interestingly, in a category that is mostly dominated by illustrators, cover artists and comic artists, here we have a painter of surreal still lives.

Enzhe Zhao is a Chinese concept and game artist who does absolutely stunning space artwork. Again, I wasn’t familiar with their work, but I like what I see very much.

Diversity count: 3 women, 2 men, 1 unknown, 5 international artists, 6 artists of colour

Best Semiprozine

We have a lot of returning favourites in this category, since Uncanny Magazine, Strange Horizons, FIYAH, Escape Pod and PodCastle are all finalists we’ve seen before. They’re all very good choices, too.

khoréo (sorry for butchering the title, but WordPress’ well-known issues with diacritics strike again), a magazine dedicated to speculative fiction by immigrant and diaspora writers, is the one new finalist in this category and another fine choice.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make magazines.

Best Fanzine

We have four returning favourites in this category, namely Galactic Journey, Journey Planet, The Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog and nerds of a feather. All four are great fanzines and friends, besides. Furthermore, I have contributed to two of them in the past year, namely Galactic Journey and Journey Planet.

The remaining two finalists are two Chinese fanzines, Chinese Academic SF Express and Zero Gravity Newspaper, that I’m not familiar with. I look forward to exploring their work.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make fanzines.

Best Fancast

This category is full of great podcasts that also happen to be friends.

Worldbuilding for Masochists, Hugo Girl! and Octothorpe are all great podcasts and good friends and I’m thrilled to see them on the ballot again. I’m also thrilled to see my friend Seth Heasley make the ballot with his Hugos There podcast.

The Coode Street Podcast is the veteran in this category, since they have been on the ballot almost every year (excluding the puppy unpleasantness of 2015/16) since the inception of the category in 2012. Kalanadi, which also was a finalist in 2021, holds up the flag for the BookTubers.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make podcasts.

Best Fan Writer

Nope, I’m not nominated this year. Nor did I expect to be, because I have a shiny rocket and I think other people should have the chance to win one as well. Besides, we have some really great finalists in this category.

Chris M. Barkley and Jason Sanford have both been ballot before. They are highly deserving finalists and friends as well. Jason’s Genre Grapevine columns are must-reads for anybody even remotely interested in SFF publishing. And I always enjoy Chris’ insightful columns at File 770. In his latest column, he talks about his reactions to finding himself on the Hugo ballot for the second time.

2023 is also turning out to be a great year for Twitter fiction with returning finalist Bitter Karella, the mastermind behind the fun Midnight Society account, and first time finalist Örjan Westin, whose MicroSFF stories on Twitter I have been enjoying for years.

I wasn’t familiar with the two Chinese finalists RiverFlow and Arthur Liu before, though we’ve since met online and I look forward to checking out their work. Arthur Liu was involved in the Chinese Science Fiction issue of Journey Planet and RiverFlow penned this article about Chinese fan and prozines by RiverFlow at Strange Horizons (translated by Emily Jin). RiverFlow also shares his feelings upon learning that he was a double Hugo finalist in this letter published on Twitter.

Diversity count: 5 men, 1 woman, 3 international writers, 3 writers of colour

Best Fan Artist

This category is once again a mix of returned favourites and new faces.

We’ve seen the beautiful artwork of Iain J. Clark and Laya Rose on the Hugo ballot before. Alison Scott is another familiar name as part of the Octothorpe podcast as well as a Hugo winner for Plokta, but we haven’t seen her as an artist on the ballot before.

España Sheriff has been a Hugo finalist as part of Team Journey Planet, but not in her own right so far.

Orion Smith is an artist whose work is new to me, though I like what I see.

Richard Man is a photographer who has documented cons and portrayed many SFF writers, artists, fans, etc… I think he may be the first portrait photographer to be nominated for a Hugo, though we did have a Finnish toy photographer on the ballot a few years ago.

Diversity count: 2 men, 3 women, 1 non-binary, 4 international artists, 1 artist of colour

Lodestar

This category is full of familiar names, many of whom we’ve seen in this category before.

Akata Woman by Nnedi Okorafor is the sequel to the inaugural Lodestar winner (back in 2018, before the Lodestar Award officially had its name). I enjoyed the previous book, so I’m sure I’ll enjoy this one as well.

Bloodmarked by Tracy Deonn is the sequel to the 2021 Lodestar finalist Legendborn. I haven’t read this book yet, but I liked the previous book in the series, so I’m sure I’ll enjoy this one as well.

Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak by Charlie Jane Anders is the sequel to last year’s Lodestar finalist Victories Greater Than Death, which I liked a whole lot.

The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik is the latest instalment in her Scholomance series, which is also nominated for Best Series. As I said above, the Scholomance don’t work for me, because I’m very much over school settings and dark academia. There’s also some grumbling, because the Scholomance books are not explicitly published as YA. I suspect a lot of people view them as YA because of the school setting.

In the Serpent’s Wake by Rachel Hartman is the sequel to the 2019 Lodestar finalist Tess of the Road. I remember that I did not like Tess of the Road all that much, but that was probably because it was the last thing I read for the 2019 Hugos (I usually leave the Lodestar finalists for last) and also the third of three Lodestar finalists with very similar plots, so my eagerness to be done probably influenced my view of the book. Perhaps I’ll enjoy the sequel more.

Osmo Unknown and the Eightpenny Woods by Catherynne M. Valente wasn’t on my radar at all, though I know that Catherynne M. Valente does write for young readers on occasion. This one appears to be middle grade rather than YA and certainly looks cute.

Diversity count: 6 women, 2 writers of colour

Astounding

Travis Baldree’s Legends & Lattes was definitely one of the breakout SFF books of 2023, so I’m happy to see him on the Astounding ballot.

Everina Maxwell was an Astounding finalist last year as well. I enjoyed her novels Winter’s Orbit and Ocean’s Echo very much and am happy to see her back.

Naseem Jamnia burst onto the scene this year with The Bruising of Qilwa, which I haven’t read yet, but look forward to.

I’ve enjoyed several of Isabel J. Kim’s stories in various SFF mags and am happy to see her on the ballot.

Weimu Xin is a Chinese writer and translator whose work I’m not yet familiar with. Once again, I look forward to checking it out.

I haven’t been able to find out much about Maijia Liu, though I suspect they are the author of this book. Unfortunately, Google returns a lot of hits for the Chinese spy fiction author Mai Jia, who is a different person with a similar name.

Diversity count: 1 man, 3 women, 1 non-binary, 1 unknown, 3 international authors, 4 authors of colour

***

Many thanks to Best Fan Writer finalists RiverFlow and Arthur Liu for supplying information on some of the Chinese finalists about whom it was difficult to find information. If anybody knows more about the finalists about whom I couldn’t find any information, please let me know.

All in all, this is a very good Hugo ballot. It’s a lot more international and less white than recent ballots, which is a very good thing. Because I for one found it depressing that there wasn’t a single Japanese finalist on the ballot, when Worldcon was in Japan in 2007. I’m thrilled to see many friends and also many new faces on the ballot. And of course I’m looking forward to checking out the authors and works I don’t know.

There have been some complaints, of course, though thankfully in walled gardens like Discord and not in public where the finalists can see them. In fact, I already got into an argument with some dudes (and they were all dudes) who felt the need to declare that they had never heard of those books and authors, that the Hugos were irrelevant anyway and that those books don’t sell. In sort, the usual sour grapes by people who can’t be bothered to participate and yet feel the need to complain about the results.

We also have the usual complaints that Tor and its imprints dominates the Hugos. However, as John Scalzi points out in this very good Reddit post, Tor dominates the Novel and Novella categories because they publish a lot of books, pay well and their editorial team has a good eye for books that tend to win both critical and commercial acclaim. And for novellas, Tor.com is the biggest publisher. Yes, there are plenty of small press and self-published novellas, but they can’t compete with Tor’s market penetration and advertising dollars. Besides, it’s notable that Tor and its imprints only dominate the Novel and Novella categories, but are just one publisher among many in Best Series, Best Novelette, Best Short Story and for the Lodestar.

Like last year, I don’t see a lot of strong themes on this ballot. We do have a couple of retellings on the ballot, but they’re not as prominent as they were a few years ago. There also are several works with horror and gothic vibes. Another mini-trend are science fiction mysteries and crime stories. Unlike what certain people claim, the ballot is not actually full of lighter feel-good works, though there are a few. There are also some very dark works.

Who’ll win? We’ll see in October.

I’ll keep the comments open for now, but if things get rude or people start fighting each other, I reserve the right to close them.

*I define “international” as a writer/creator living outside the US. If we include writers who are first or second generation immigrants, there would be several more. I’ve also stopped counting LGBTQ+ finalists for the diversity count, because it’s very difficult to tell, since not everybody is out.

Finally, apologies if I have accidentally misgendered or otherwise misidentified someone.

The 2023 July Short Story Challenge – Day by Day

For starters, Smashwords is currently having its annual summer sale, where you can get plenty of e-books at reduced prices or for free, including several of mine.

The 2023 Hugo finalists were also accidentally announced for about an hour on Sunday night, but since the list was not yet final and posted in error, I guess we’ll go back to waiting for the finalists, which is currently turning into Waiting for Godot, while I will go back writing a story a day. For, as already mentioned, blogging will be light this month, because I’m currently doing the July Short Story Challenge again.

What is the July Short Story Challenge, you ask? Well, in July 2015, Dean Wesley Smith announced that he was planning to write a brand new short story every day during the month of July. The original post seems to be gone now, but the Wayback Machine has a copy here. At the time, several people announced that they would play along, so I decided to give it a try as well. And then I did it again the following year. And the next. And the next. If you want to read my post-mortems of the previous July short story challenges, here are the posts for 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022.

Because I’ve already done the July short story challenge eight years in a row now and always found the experience very rewarding, I’m aiming for a repeat this year. Though I’m only committing to one week for now.

In previous years, I’ve always done a post-mortem post about the July Short Story Challenge in August. In 2019, I also started keeping a running tally of all stories written to date right here on this blog to hold myself accountable. It worked well and so I did it again in 2020, 2021 and 2022. I will do it again this year as well and will update this post with every new story. This tally will be very basic, listing just the date, title, word count, genre, series, if any, and maybe a one or two sentence summary/comment.

Most of these stories will become longer in editing. Many will eventually change their titles and some may never see the light of day at all.

If you want to follow along with the challenge, bookmark this post. And if you want to play along or cheer me on, feel free to do so in the comments.

And now, let’s take a look at the stories:

July 1, 2023: “Bodies Are My Business”, dark fantasy, 2240 words

Shaezius is a graverobber, dealing in artefacts, body parts and entire bodies. Even though there is a lot of demand for his wares, Shaezius and his fellow graverobbers are locked in a steadily escalating arms race with the guardians of the city’s cemeteries. The latest round of escalating security measures may be the worst yet, because it involves magical barriers that no human being may cross without having the soul ripped from their body…

The inspiration for this story was twofold. The immediate inspiration was seeing a photo of a tripwire activated cannon that was supposed to deter graverobbers in the eighteenth century. The other inspiration that I occasionally do translation work for a company that sells preserved human bodies and body parts to medical schools, museums and the like. And there is a lot of rigmarole involved in the export of preserved dead bodies as well as a lot of hypocrisy.

July 2, 2023: “Grandmother”, crime fiction, 1533 words

Enrique’s life was turned upside down, when his adoptive parents were arrested for supposedly stealing him and Enrique was reunited with his biological grandmother, a woman who cannot let go of the past. With his parents on trial, Enrique goes to see his grandmother to try to persuade her not to testify and drop all charges one last time…

The inspiration for this story was reading an article about babies born in Argentinian prison during the military dictatorship. The parents were usually murdered and the babies given up for adoption and often ended up with military families. Decades later, these now grown children learned the truth about their origins and were reunited with their grandparents, while many of the adoptive parents were put on trial.

It was harrowing reading, but as I read the article, I also wondered how those children would feel to see the only parents they ever knew hauled off to jail and suddenly find themselves faced with grandparents who were complete strangers. Especially since not all of the adoptive parents were actively involved with the military dictatorship, but were just people desperate to have a baby who didn’t ask the questions they probably should have asked. And indeed, of the various cases presented in the article, at least two, both of them men, were extremely ambiguous about the whole situation and protective of their adoptive parents. One man had completely broken off contact with his biological family and another was irritated by the fact that his biological grandmother insisted that he change his name.

Not sure if this story will ever be published, because it’s dark and not very politically correct. However, it cried out to be written.

July 3, 2023: “The Night of the New Moon”, sword and sorcery, 2178 words

Syltja is a girl from a small farming village nestled among dense woods, where the shadow demons roam. When Syltja is caught out in the woods on the night of the new moon, she is saved from the shadow demons by Kaltak, a wandering warrior. Kaltak spends a few weeks in the village, recuperating from a battle injury, and Syltja falls in love with him. Yet Kaltak’s destiny lies elsewhere and Syltja knows that eventually he’ll leave…

This is a sword and sorcery story about a wandering barbarian warrior saving a young woman from some terrible danger. However, the story is told from the POV of Syltja, the woman left behind, when Kaltak leaves to seek his fortunes elsewhere. The idea was to take one of the many women a typical sword and sorcery hero in the Conan mold meets (and beds) on his travels and tell the story from her perspective as one of many women left behind, as the barbarian hero drifts in and out of her life.

I’m really happy with this one.

July 4, 2023: “Refuge”, cozy fantasy (sort of), 2494 words

Jory is an exiled prince, king now in theory, who has spent the past twelve years living in the Citadel of Shadow in the Valley of Rocks, where his father and the remaining defenders of the realm withdrew, after the Dark Legions of Zarkoz swept across the land. To Jory and young sister Melly, the secluded valley and the citadel are the only home they’ve ever known. But when his father doesn’t return from a raid, Jory finds himself king of a land he has never even seen. So he ventures out of the Valley of Rocks on a scouting mission to see the terrors of the Dark Legions for himself. He also gets a kiss from a girl selling cherries by the roadside. But he can’t wait to return home to the Citadel of Shadows, even though he knows that he will have to leave eventually to take back his kingdom and free his people.

The inspiration for this story were two pieces of fantasy art by Nele Diel, this one and this one. I wondered who the person heading through that lonely valley and towards that sinister looking fortress might be and finally thought that maybe the forsaken valley and sinister fortress were just someone’s home.

As for why it’s cozy fantasy in spite of some terrible things happening, it’s basically the story of a boy and his horse who just want to go home, see his little sister and get a hug from his mentor.

July 5, 2023: “Bowl” (The Culinary Assassin), crime fiction, 1488 words

The world’s only gourmet hitperson eats a poke bowl and kills a corrupt civil servant who also mispronounces “chicken  satay”.

Inspired by having a poke bowl for lunch as well as by a recent scandal about a corrupt civil servant.

I really need to collect those Culinary Assassin stories, since I have about twenty of them by now.

 

 

 

First Monday Free Fiction: “The Valley of the Man Vultures”

Welcome to the July 2023 edition of First Monday Free Fiction.

To recap, inspired by Kristine Kathryn Rusch who posts a free short story every week on her blog, I’ll post a free story on the first Monday of every month. At the end of the month, I’ll take the story down and post another.

This month’s free story is The Valley of the Man Vultures, the first story in my Thurvok sword and sorcery series.

So follow Thurvok, as he ventures into…

The Valley of the Man Vultures

The Great Western Desert was an endless expanse of sand and death, parched land and bleached bones. Many a traveller had succumbed to its many dangers and their bones littered the caravan trails. But no matter how many bleached skulls lay scattered by the roadside as a silent warning, there were always more travellers willing to brave the dangers of the desert. For somewhere beyond the Great Western Desert lay the city of Krysh, with streets of gold and spires of silver and walls studded with diamonds and riches beyond imagination.

One of the many brave and foolhardy travellers who attempted to cross the Great Western Desert was Thurvok, the sellsword. He was a large man, a mountain of muscles and sinews. His hair was dark and his skin the colour of bronze, like the parched steppes of the East whence he had come, in search of riches and adventure. Thurvok was a fearsome fighter and dangerous scoundrel, wanted for various crimes in no less than seven cities of the realm. Like so many before him, he was headed for Krysh and its fabled riches. For in a city of such wealth, there was always work for a sellsword and always opportunity for plunder. And Thurvok was determined to avail himself of both.

So far, Thurvok had made good progress through the desert. He travelled with a caravan of merchants bound for Krysh, providing the protection of his sword and his muscles in exchange for food and water and wine and a gold coin or five. Though so far, the journey though the desert had been mostly uneventful. Only once did some bandits attack the caravan. Their carcasses were now rotting by the roadside, soon to be yet another pile of bleached bones.

And now Krysh was but a day’s journey away. Just one more day and Thurvok would enjoy women, wine and wealth beyond imagination.

But before they reached Krysh, Thurvok and his fellow travellers first had to pass through the Valley of the Accursed Blood, a narrow canyon bordered by towering mesas on either side. This valley was considered the deadliest part of the Great Western Desert, rumoured to house dangers few men had lived to tell about.

At least that was what the merchant Mikeliz, one of Thurvok’s travelling companions had said by the friendly flicker of a campfire last night.

“But how can you possibly know about those dangers…” Thurvok had pointed out, “…when no men ever lived to tell about them?”

“Not no men, only few men,” Mikeliz continued, “And anyway, everybody knows about the dangers that await unwary or reckless travellers in the Valley of the Accursed Blood…”

“Even though few men lived to tell about them.”

“Dangers beyond imagination,” Mikeliz continued, clearly irritated.

Thurvok just shrugged. “If you say so. But my imagination is pretty vivid.”

Personally, he wasn’t convinced that whatever awaited them in the Valley of the Accursed Blood was worse than the rest of the trek through the desert so far. Besides, Mikeliz was afraid of his own shadow. As far as the merchant was concerned, even a hungry rat or an amorous skunk would count as a danger beyond imagination.

For the past two days, Thurvok had seen the mighty mesas looming on the horizon, marking the road ahead. The mesas were named Varosh and Veresh after the twin patron gods of Krysh. Varosh and Veresh, it was said, guarded the path to Krysh and woe betide the traveller who failed to make the appropriate sacrifices or tried to pass through the valley with evil in his heart.

At any rate, that’s what Mikeliz had said. But then, Mikeliz said a lot of things when he’d had a cup of wine or five.

At the mouth of the canyon, there was a temple, where travellers could make sacrifices to Varosh and Veresh and in the process put plenty of gold coins into the pockets of the priests guarding the temple to purchase the divine protection of Varosh and Veresh for the journey ahead. For the Valley of the Accursed Blood was fearsome and the path full of dangers untold and what traveller would risk death or disaster so close to their goal?

And so, travellers inevitably entered the temple and brought offerings to Varosh and Veresh and paid the priests for their blessings and prayers. Of course, it was probably a con and the valley likely was no more dangerous than the rest of the desert. However, so Mikeliz said, it was always better to be safe than to be sorry, even if it cost you a gold coin or two. But then, a gold coin or two wasn’t much of a sacrifice for Mikeliz and his fat purse.

Thurvok, on the other hand, just scoffed at the superstitions of his fellow travellers. He no longer believed in gods, let alone the gods of a distant city, and he was not afraid of curses, not anymore. Whatever might await him in the Valley of the Accursed Blood, it was nothing that his hands and his blade couldn’t handle.

And so he watched with bemusement, as Mikeliz and the other merchants he’d travelled with these past nine days made their offerings at the twin altars of Varosh and Veresh, setting down bowls, baskets and jars full of red meat, fine wine, good ale, succulent grapes and fresh bread, that would feed the priests well. In return, the merchants and their waggons were anointed with consecrated oil that was supposed to protect them from whatever dangers lurked in the valley beyond.

Some people, Thurvok mused, truly were gullible.

“What about you, sellsword?” Mikeliz asked, after he’d paid his tribute to Varosh and Veresh and their greedy priests, “Will you not make an offering to assure our safe passage?”

“Methinks you’ve made already sufficient offerings to assure safe passage for a dozen caravans…” Thurvok replied, “…and to keep the good priests fed for weeks, of course.”

Mikeliz’ round face paled and his eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. “So you will not make an offering to the twin gods of Krysh?”

“No,” Thurvok replied, “I don’t see the point.”

Mikeliz’ complexion abruptly shifted from marble pale to a red bright enough to rival the stones of the twin mesas that loomed up ahead.

“Begone then,” he said, waving a limp hand at Thurvok in what was probably supposed to be a commanding gesture, “Begone, for you will only bring us ill luck.”

So much for gratitude, Thurvok thought.

“All right, I’ll be gone then…” he said, “…as soon as you’ve paid me the five gold coins we’ve agreed upon as a fee for my services.”

“Blackmailer,” Mikeliz hissed, but his pudgy fingers reached for the bag at his waist, “Extortionist.” Trembling, he handed Thurvok five gold coins.

Thurvok pocketed the gold coins and bowed to Mikeliz. “I wish you a safe and speedy journey.”

Then he walked off, leaving the caravan behind. If the merchants believed that they didn’t need him anymore now they’d purchased protection from the priests, then so be it. And besides, he was eager to get to Krysh and its fabled riches. The lumbering caravan would only slow him down.

So Thurvok strutted right past the temple towards the entrance of the valley, only to find his way barred by an aged priest.

“I am Alberon, high priest of the blessed Varosh and the twice blessed Veresh,” the priest announced in a thundering voice.

Thurvok nodded curtly at the priest. “Good for you. And now let me pass.”

But the priest did not budge. He was clad in a crimson robe embroidered richly with gold thread. Around his neck, there was a golden amulet with a ruby the size of an eyeball. That ruby must have brought a lot of protection for some gullible soul, Thurvok mused.

“Will you not make an offering to Varosh and his twin Veresh, stranger?” the priest urged.

“No, as a matter of fact I will not,” Thurvok declared, “And now let me pass.”

“But you will need protection, stranger, sacred protection, if you are to travel through the Valley of Accursed Blood.”

“I’ve got all the protection I need right here…” Thurvok patted his trusty sword. “…and here.” He flexed his muscles at the priest with only a slight hint of menace. “And now go and bother some gullible merchants and let me pass.”

In response, the aged priest smiled a smile of pure malice. “As you wish, stranger. I curse you.” The priest sprinkled a foul-smelling substance onto Thurvok. “I curse you, so you will not cross the Valley of the Accursed Blood alive.”

Thurvok shoved the priest aside.

“Your curse stinks, old man.”

***

So Thurvok ventured into the Valley of Accursed Blood, quickly leaving the merchants and their lumbering waggons behind. So far, the valley was no different from the rest of the Great Western Desert. The ground was parched, the sand hot and the colour of a maiden’s cheeks on the first night she lay with a man. Occasionally, a bleached skull grinned up at passers-by from the side of the road, stark white against the blushing sand.

On either side of the trail rose the steep cliffs of the twin mesas of Varosh and Veresh. The stone was the colour of fresh blood, which probably was probably what had given the valley its name.

Thurvok was more than halfway through the valley and nothing untoward had happened yet, when he suddenly noticed a flutter of wings from the corner of his eye. He turned to look and spotted a large bird — a vulture most likely — sitting on an outcropping of the Varosh mesa high above the canyon.

Thurvok looked up at the vulture, which seemed to stare back at him. “Sorry, pal, but you’re not feasting on my flesh today.”

He thumbed back at the way he’d come, where the merchant caravan was still lumbering through the valley, almost lost to sight now, its location only marked by the dust clouds stirred up by the wagons.

“Try Mikeliz back yonder. There’s much more flesh on him than on me anyway.”

Thurvok continued on his way, leaving the vulture behind. After all, vultures posed no danger to the living. They only cared for the dead and those who would soon be.

After a few steps, he spotted the vulture again or rather its shadow cast on the ground by the merciless sun. It was circling overhead and apparently, it had brought along some friends.

He looked up at the sky and the sinister forms circling overhead. “Go away!” he yelled, “I’m not dead and I’m not going to die this day either. Bother someone else.”

But the vultures did not go away. They continued to circle overhead for several more steps, until one of them suddenly descended, flying so close past Thurvok that he could feel the rush of its wings on his skin. It landed in front of Thurvok, barring his way.

The creature was huge. The size of a man and not a short one either. It had the wings, the head, the beak and the claws of a vulture, but it also had arms and legs that looked suspiciously human. Its hands — five-fingered, like a man’s — were tipped in razor-sharp claws. The thing glared at Thurvok, as if daring him to pass.

In response, Thurvok cracked his knuckles. “So that’s how you want to play it? All right then, bring it on.”

In response, the man vulture charged. But Thurvok sidestepped its attack easily, letting the creature flutter into thin air.

The man vulture emitted a screech of pure fury. And then its companions arrived, dropping down from the sky like a hail of burning arrows at a siege. Within the space of a heartbeat, Thurvok was completely surrounded.

Undaunted, he drew his sword. “So you want to play? Then let’s play.”

The leader attacked again, but this time Thurvok did not sidestep its attack. Instead, he met the creature head on with steel in his hand. The man vulture drew blood, its claws ripping into Thurvok’s shoulder. But Thurvok drew blood as well, impaling the man vulture on his sword. The creature emitted one last dying screech and collapsed to the ground, its blood watering the parched soil.

Now the remaining man vultures cried out as one in blind fury. They attacked from all sides, but Thurvok swung his mighty blade in a wide arc, driving them back. Occasionally, his blade touched one of the man vultures, sending blood and feathers flying all around.

But then, one of the man vultures got lucky, its claws raking across Thurvok’s back. Thurvok cried out in pain, but he did not go down. Instead, he spun around, swinging his blade at the attacker and taking its head right off. The body collapsed where it stood, while the head flew against the cliff wall and rolled to the ground.

Once more, the remaining man vultures cried out as one. And then they suddenly descended upon their fallen brethren in a true feeding frenzy.

Thurvok shook his head. “So you’re cannibals, too. Vile creatures.”

Very slowly, he backed away from the man vultures who no longer seemed to pay any attention to him at all, so absorbed were they by their meal.

Nonetheless, Thurvok did not dare to stop to clean and dress his wounds until he was well away from the vile man vultures and could no longer even hear their screeches in the distance.

***

The sun had already sunken beneath the horizon and the Valley of the Accursed Blood was cast into darkness, when Thurvok finally emerged on the far side. Somewhere down the road lay Krysh and its fabled riches. The city was probably close enough to see by now, if the night hadn’t been so pitch dark.

Thurvok scowled. He would need to make camp, preferably a bit further away from the mouth of the valley, lest the man vultures decide to get their revenge on him.

He trudged along the road, his path only lit by a single wan lantern. But then he spotted the tell-tale flicker of a campfire a bit further down the road and headed towards that lone beacon of light in this dark night.

When he reached the fire, he saw that another traveller had made camp here. A man about Thurvok’s age, though a good head shorter. He was clad all in black and his body was lithe and wiry rather than muscular. A dagger gleamed at his waist and a silver amulet at his throat.

“Good night, traveller,” the man called out, once he spotted Thurvok, “Sit down and share my fire, if you will.” He sketched a mock bow “I’m Meldom, cutpurse, thief and occasional assassin, whatever they pay me to do.”

Grateful for the break, Thurvok sat down cross-legged by the fire.

“Thurvok,” he grunted, “Sellsword.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Thurvok,” Meldom said, “I’d offer you some rabbit, but I fear I ate it all. But you do look somewhat bedraggled, if I may say so. Did you pass through the Valley of the Accursed Blood?”

Thurvok nodded.

“I hope you didn’t pay those extortionate priests at the far end. Bloody con artists.” Meldom spat on the ground.

Thurvok shook his head. So his instincts had been right. The priests were con men.

“Did you encounter the man vultures?” Meldom wanted to know, “Judging by those bandages, you probably did.”

Thurvok nodded. “What’s the deal with those creatures anyway?”

“They have been living in the valley for as long as anybody knows,” Meldom explained, “No one knows where they came from or how they came to be, though there are stories, stories of dark magic and curses.”

“I don’t believe in magic,” Thurvok muttered.

“And you’re right not to, because most magic is just a con,” Meldom said knowingly, “Just like those priests at the temple. Do you know how their protection racket works? That consecrated oil with which they anoint those travellers who pay up? It’s just regular scented oil.”

Meldom rolled his eyes.

“The scent repels the man vultures, though, so those who have been anointed can pass through the valley unmolested. Of course, it’s much easier to just steal a vial of the oil and use it on yourself.”

Meldom pulled a vial from underneath his black tunic and grinned.

“Now that’s something I should’ve known beforehand,” Thurvok grunted.

“Well, you didn’t know me beforehand. And let me guess, when you refused to pay up, that wizened old husk Alberon cursed you and sprinkled a foul smelling liquid on you?”

Once more Thurvok nodded. “That he did.”

“Yeah, he tends to do that and a really mean trick it is, too. For you see, the foul smelling liquid attracts the man vultures, so they will attack those who do not pay up. As a warning to others, so to say.”

Meldom winked at Thurvok.

“Of course, if you wash off the liquid just after entering the valley, nothing bad will happen. Those man vultures are basically blind and react only to the smell.”

“That’s something else I should have known beforehand,” Thurvok said.

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Meldom said, “Like I said, you should count yourself lucky that you met me, cause I only cheat and rob people, if I get paid for it. Unlike those priests at the temple who do it for a living.”

Privately, Thurvok wondered what the difference was, though he did not say so out aloud.

“So, are you headed for Krysh?” Meldom asked.

Thurvok nodded. “You, too?”

“Aye,” Meldom said, “I’ve been away for a while, but now I’m headed back. Lots of opportunity for an enterprising man of imagination in Krysh.”

“So is it like they say?” Thurvok wanted to know.

“Well, the walls aren’t really made from gold and the streets aren’t really paved with silver, if that’s what you mean…”

“I thought it was streets paved with gold, spires made of silver and walls studded with diamonds.”

“Well, they’re not,” Meldom said, “But there’s a lot of money in Krysh and a lot of opportunity. And a big market for sellswords, too. Say…”

Meldom shot Thurvok an enterprising look.

“…I have some contacts in Krysh, contacts who would have use for a fighter like you. Of course, this means that we have to travel the rest of the way together, so I can introduce you to my contacts.” Meldom held out his hand. “So what do you say?”

“Deal,” Thurvok said and shook Meldom’s hand, all but crushing the thief’s slender fingers in his giant paw.

The End

***

That’s it for this month’s edition of First Monday Free Fiction. Check back next month, when a new free story will be posted.