Cora Buhlert's Blog, page 21

Cora goes virtually to Chicon 8, the 2022 Worldcon

For a variety of reasons, I can’t attend Chicon 8, the 2022 Worldcon in Chicago, Illinois, in person, but I will be participating virtually.

If you’re a member of Chicon 8, you can see me on the following panels:

If It’s Not Love, Then It’s The Bomb That Will Bring Us Together

Thursday, September 1, 1 PM CDT, Airmeet 1

A huge swath of SF from the 50s through the 70s was written in direct response to the Cold War, the threat of nuclear annihilation, and disastrous and inhumane proxy wars. It all feels terribly relevant again! What are some gems and must-reads in the genre of “cautionary tales, pacificist, and anti-war SF”? Who are some more recent writers taking up these trends and what changes in approach have they made?

Cora Buhlert, Gloria McMillan, Julia Meitov Hersey, PJ Manney (moderator)

Virtual Table Talk – Cora Buhlert

Friday, September 2, 1 PM, Airmeet tables

This is what used to be called Kaffeeklatsch, but because there won’t be any food or drinks on site, they’ve renamed them. Anyway, sign up if you want to virtually chat with me.

To sign up for this Table Talk, visit https://chicon.org/tabletalks All sign up are available starting WednesdayAugust 31st at Noon central, and you will be notified at least 12 hours before the Table Talk time if you were chosen for a spot. More details available at https://chicon.org/tabletalks

1946: A Vintage Season For SFF

Saturday, September 3, 8:30 AM CDT, Airmeet 5

As the world began to recover from the trauma of the Second World War, SFF authors grappled with atomic futures. From Chan Davis to C.L. Moore, what works have withstood the test of time, and how are these works continuing to influence the genre today? How did they reflect, respond to, or ignore social and technological challenges of the day? (This panel is part of the 1946 project, a look back at the year in lieu of awarding Retro Hugo Awards.)

Cora Buhlert (moderator), Valentin D. Ivanov, Farah Mendlesohn, Terry Franklin

How Horror and SFF Blend

Saturday, September 3, 5:30 PM CDT, Airmeet 1

Horror has often overlapped with SFF—hello, Frankenstein! Lately it seems like we’re seeing a rise in horror elements in popular SFF, including many recent Hugo winners and nominees. What makes horror blend well with science fiction or fantasy? Are there challenges or problems with mixing the genres? And how do cosmic horror, the Weird, and New Weird fit into this discussion? Come find out whether or not anyone can hear you scream . . . in space!

Bob J. Koester, Cora Buhlert (moderator), Emma Osborne, Jennifer Brozek, L. Marie Wood

The Culinary Delights of Speculative Fiction

Monday, September 5, 8:30 CDT, Airmeet 3

Why do the fellowship/party have to eat the same stew every day on their trek into the dark lands? Why do the space farers enjoy reconstituted cubes/pellets on their way to Alpha Centauri? Food is the way we as a species come together, bond, and connect with each other. What are some examples of stories with rich descriptions of culinary traditions, as opposed to “astronaut fare” or “epic fantasy stews”? How does the inclusion—or exclusion—of eating and cooking practices impact the story?

Cora Buhlert, Gillian Polack, Jennifer Rhorer (moderator), Jo Miles, Thiago Ambrósio Lage

Finally, as regular readers of this blog will know, I’m a Hugo finalist for Best Fan Writer this year,  so of course you’ll find me (virtually) at the Hugo ceremony.

Hugo Awards Ceremony

Sunday, September 4, 8 PM, Grand Ballroom

Join your hosts Charlie Jane Anders and Annalee Newitz — and a bevvy of guest presenters — for the most prestigious awards in science fiction and fantasy. Come for the glitz and glamour, stay for the laughs and surprises!

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law Experiences “A Normal Amount of Rage”

I haven’t been able to keep up with watching, let alone reviewing the latest Marvel TV series, because there are a lot of them and I don’t have a lot of time these days. So I still haven’t caught up with Moon Knight and Ms. Marvel, though I did like what little I saw of them.

However, there’s no way I was not going to watch She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, because She-Hulk or rather a version of her is a long-time favourite of mine.

Back in the 1980s, a company called Comics Spain made amazing PVC figures of various comic and pop culture characters, both American and European characters. Comics Spain had hardly any distribution in Germany, but at the time my Dad worked in the Netherlands and Belgium, where you could get the figures. And since I collect PVC figures and love comics, I bought a lot of their offerings.

Comics Spain‘s product range included a selection of Marvel and DC superheroes and a few supervillains (plus the Phantom and Flash Gordon, who are King’s Features Syndicate characters, but matched the Marvel and DC line in scale and style). Of course, I wanted to buy all of the characters – and I did eventually acquire most of them – but my pocket money was limited, so I could only afford a single figure first. I wanted a female character and as so often with toys supposedly aimed at boys, there were only two available, the Jessica Drew Spider-Woman and She-Hulk (they later added two DC heroines, Wonder Woman and Starfire, to the line). I never much liked the blank-eyes 1980s Spider-Woman costume, so I picked She-Hulk.

Except that I had no idea that this character was called She-Hulk at the time. To me, she was just an awesome green superheroine. Browsing some of the American comics on offer at the comic and book stores of Rotterdam and Antwerp eventually revealed that the character was called She-Hulk a.k.a. Jennifer Walters and that she was a female counterpart of the Hulk.

However, at this point I had already come up with a name, code name and origin story for the character, so I took the Marvel version as “Well, that’s their version of the story, but I prefer mine.” So here’s my version of her story:

Her name is Maud Daniels* and she used to be an investigative reporter. One day, while investigating a series of mysterious disappearances and deaths, she stumbles upon a mad scientist, is captured and experimented upon. Unlike the scientist’s previous test subjects, Maud survives, but she is now tall, muscular, super-strong and green. Maud takes out the mad scientist and escapes his lab, only to find that her old life is gone. No one will believe her, she loses her job, because she’s green and way too noticeable now and her boyfriend dumps her, because she’s green, taller and stronger than him and he thinks she’s ugly.

So Maud takes to wandering the world, looking for a cure, a purpose and a home. She finds the latter two, when she stumbles upon the Kirchenkistenheinis, an underground civilisation of gnomes, fairies, anthropomorphic animals and humans who have nowhere else to go. This underground civilisation of the Kirchenkistenheinis (the name means “church box guys” and refers to the fact that I originally kept my PVC figurine collection in a cookie tin embossed with a picture of the Cologne cathedral) is one of my oldest imaginary worlds and everybody, whether my own characters or characters borrowed from somewhere else, eventually washes up there. This stuff rarely finds its way into my published fiction, because it’s just too weird, but trust me, there are Kirchenkistenheinis everywhere and they’ve met everybody.

Anyway, the Kirchenkistenheinis and their leader Stella aren’t afraid of Maud, but think she’s absolutely awesome. Plus, her super-strength is really useful to help build their ever expanding underground civilisation (they have a space port, laser guns, highway, tunnels and everything). So Maud stays, find friends and is encouraged to become a superheroine, starts calling herself the Green Lady (yeah, not very imaginative, but then neither is She-Hulk) and joins a Justice League/Avengers type superhero organisation, because more Comics Spain superhero figures had by now joined my collection.

After a lot of misunderstandings, Maud eventually falls in love with and marries the Phantom, the second Comics Spain superhero figure I ever bought, because I liked the character. Plus, the version of the Phantom I was most familiar with was the one from the Defenders of the Earth cartoon who’s a widower living in a single dad superhero house share**. Together, Maud and Phantom raise Phantom’s teenage daughter Jedda from the Defenders of the Earth cartoon (who sadly never had a figure of any kind) adopt Suske and Wiske (there was no Aunt Sidonie figure and Suske and Wiske needed parent figures) and even have a baby boy.

You can see Maud and her family (sans Jedda, who has snuck off to make out with Flash Gordon’s son Rick – and yes, this is actually implied in Defenders of the Earth) below:

The extended Daniels-Walker family with Maud, Phantom, Suske, Wiske, Baby Kit, Jedda’s pet panther Kisa and the skull of the first Phantom.

Summing up Maud’s story, I still think it’s pretty good and no more absurd than what Marvel has come up with over the years.

Anyway, I absolutely loved this figure and took her everywhere. She was my absolute favourite for many years and I still love her and have her on display.

I did buy the John Byrne Sensational She-Hulk comics of the 1980s/1990s and generally enjoyed them, even if that story was not Maud’s story. Though Jennifer and Maud have a lot in common. They’re both green and both snarky and both kick arse.

There were rumours of a She-Hulk movie starring Brigitte Nielsen in the early 1990s, but it never happened and I never thought I’d ever see a version of this character on screen. Except that we now live in the golden age of superhero movies and every character, no matter how strange or obscure, will eventually wind up on screen. And if it’s a Marvel character, the chances of it being good are pretty high. If it’s a DC character, the chances are very hit and miss.

And so we have a She-Hulk TV series on Disney+ now and I of course had to watch it, because my teen self and Maud would never forgive me, if I didn’t. And yes, I had Maud and Phantom next to me, as I was watching.

Warning: Spoilers after this point!

When we first meet Jennifer Walters, she is practicing the closing statement for a trial and basically offers a variation of the famous “with great power comes great responsibility” motto. An annoying male colleague tries to mansplain her job to Jennifer and clearly wants to be the one who gives the statement, but Jennifer won’t have any of that. Her friend, paralegal Nikki, supports her and tells her that she’s got it. And if not, she can always hulk out. This causes Jennifer to turn to the camera and say that she’s better explain that “hulking out” comment, because otherwise no one will focus on the lawyer show.

There have been some comments about the fourth wall breaking and comparisons to Deadpool and – weirdly enough – the British comedy show Fleabag (Is that what Fleabag does? Cause all I know is that it’s about a woman and a sexy priest). However, She-Hulk has been breaking the fourth wall since the The Sensational She-Hulk debuted in 1989, well before Deadpool, let alone Fleabag. In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s the first time I experienced fourth wall breaking, though John Byrne sure as hell did not invent it either.

The episode then launches into Jennifer’s origin story with bonus appearance by Jen’s cousin Bruce Banner a.k.a. the Hulk. When we first see them, he’s in Bruce form with a device attached to his arm that keeps him from changing into Hulk. We get some nice banter, including Jen musing about whether Captain America was a virgin, and then their car almost collides with a random space ship, swerves off the road and overturns. Jen is injured, but manages to free herself and pull out Bruce. Bruce warns her to stay away, but it’s too late. Bruce’s blood accidentally gets into Jen’s wound and she hulks out, as does Bruce.

Jen’s origin story has been slightly tweaked from the one in the original 1980 Savage She-Hulk comic, where Jen is nigh fatally injured in a mob hit and Bruce has to give her a blood transfusion to save her life. But then, superhero origin stories are frequently tweaked to keep up with changing times and scientific knowledge. Iron Man’s origin story was fairly easy to adapt – Marvel kept the basic story, just changed the setting from the Vietnam to the Afghanistan War. Hulk’s origin story, however, was changed from “Was stupid enough to run into a nuclear explosion and survived, only green” to a lab accident as early as the 1970s. But while a mob hit wouldn’t have been implausible, it would still have required more story set-up than a random car crash. Also, regardless of how much movie and TV executives love them, origin stories rarely matter all that much.

Jen initially comes to somewhere in the woods, still injured and with damages clothes. She stumbles upon a roadside bar – one of these log cabin type roadside bars with neon signs that seem to be all over the place in the US, at least in movies and TV shows – and heads for the bathroom to clean herself up. A gaggle of woman come on and promptly offer help to Jen in a show of female solidarity. They help Jen clean herself up, one of the women gives Jen her jacket and another lends her her phone to call Bruce.

Next, we see Jen waiting outside the bar for Bruce to pick her up, when a bunch of drunken dudes stagger out and do what drunken dudes do, when confronted with a lone woman – they begin to harass and catcall her. Considering that Jen is a Hulk, this turns out to be a very bad idea.

Jen passes out again and the next time she comes to, she finds herself in a strange bed. This is of course highly alarming to her, but it turns out that she is in a hidden lab cum holiday cabin on a beach in Mexico that Tony Stark built for Bruce (or rather Tony and Bruce built it together). Bruce is there as well in his smart Hulk form. He explains to Jen what happened and that she was infected with his Hulk powers due to her contact with his blood.

Jen wants to leave and return to her job and her life, but Bruce tells her she can’t until she learns to control her newfound Hulk powers, because otherwise she’d be a danger to everybody around her. Jen is understandably not happy about this.

The bulk of the episode is given over to Bruce testing Jen’s powers – quite brutally at times, such as using a noisemaker on the sleeping Jen or locking her in a chamber with chainsaw studded walls closing in to make her transform. Hereby, it turns out that Jen is a very different kind of Hulk than Bruce. For starters, she retains her normal persona and intelligence even in Hulk form, something that took Bruce years to achieve.

Jen is also apparently stronger than Bruce – something she wasn’t in the comics – though it’s quite possible that Bruce is holding back at first. Though a full smackdown fight between two Hulks still trashes the entire environment, including the tiki bar that Bruce and Tony Stark built together.

BTW, one thing I really liked about this episode is that Bruce’s grief for Tony is acknowledged – after all, they were close friends in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, something that grew out of the real life friendship between Robert Downey Jr. and Mark Ruffalo, since the characters were never that close in the comics. In general, it’s fascinating how much Robert Downey Jr.’s portrayal of Tony Stark influenced the portrayal of the character in the comics. Because before approx. 2012, Tony Stark was a C-list character, something of a jerk, not very close to Bruce Banner, not in a committed relationship with Pepper, does not banter with Doctor Strange and he didn’t adopt and mentor teenage superheroes either.  In fact, I suspect that if Robert Downey Jr. hadn’t delivered such a great portrayal of Iron Man, the Marvel Cinematic Universe as we know it would likely have never come to exist.

As for why Jen is a different kind of Hulk than Bruce – and this comes straight from the comics, where Jen is never a mindless “Hulk Smash” type either – Jen herself delivery an interesting theory, namely that being a woman, she has a lot more experience suppressing anger than Bruce ever had. Gavia Baker-Whitelaw quotes the relevant bit of dialogue and also reactions to that scene at The Daily Dot.

Now it has always been quite obvious to me that She-Hulk is very much an avatar of female rage just as Hulk is an avatar of (male) nerd rage. She-Hulk was created in 1980 at the tail-end of a flurry of superheroines, often female versions of male heroes, that Marvel introduced in the 1970s as a response to second wave feminism. Carol Danvers in her Ms. Marvel incarnation is probably the most famous example, the Shanna the She-Devil, Tigra a.k.a. the Cat, Night Nurse and the Jessica Drew Spider-Woman all date from this era. And yes, Marvel obviously created these woman-centered comics to sell more comics to the underserved female demographic, but that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a genuine desire to tackle hot button issues of the day behind these comics, similar to how Marvel introduced several superheroes of colour in the late 1960s and 1970s in response to the Civil Rights movement. Of course, the results were quite often embarassingly clumsy, the 1970s Ms. Marvel comics (which coincidentally are some of the oldest original comics in my collection) are almost painful in their very earnest attempt to create a feminist superheroine, but at least they were trying. Also, anybody who complains that Marvel has gone “woke” should just shut the hell up, because Marvel (or rather its predecessor Timely Comics) has been “woke” at least since Captain America punched Hitler on the cover of Captain America No. 1 back in 1941.

If the original Ms. Marvel comic of the 1970s was about second wave feminism and issues such as equal pay, women’s rights, etc…, She-Hulk was about female rage at mansplainers, catcallers and other shitty men. Even my young self who bought a toy figurine of a superheroine she did not know or recognise back in the 1980s, instinctively understood this, because the story of Maud Daniels is as much a story about shitty men (the scientist who transforms her, the boss who fires her and the boyfriend who dumps her are all male) as it is a story about being accepted for who you are.

Another source of conflict between Bruce and Jen is that Bruce wants Jen to become a superheroine and protect the Earth, just as Bruce did/does with the Avengers. And interestingly, the “protecting the Earth” angle is another thing Bruce borrowed from Tony and to a lesser degree Natasha, because the Bruce we meet at the beginning of The Avengers just wants to be left alone.

Like Bruce pre-Avengers, Jen also just wants to be left alone. Saving the world isn’t her job, because she already has a job, thank you very much. And so Jen leaves Bruce’s Mexican hideaway to return to her life as a lawyer. She also doesn’t keep her powers secret from her family and best friend Nikki. But then, no one in the Marvel Cinematic Universe really keeps their powers a secret, which I for one like a lot, because not telling your loved ones that you are secretly a superhero is not only a recipe for disaster, it also never really made sense and I’m glad to see that trope either discarded or interrogated.

The episode now comes full circle to the opening scene with Jen about to deliver her final statement in a trial against what appears to be an unscrupulous businessman type. However, just before Jen can get going, the trial is rudely interrupted by the arrival of the super-villainess Titania, who proceeds to smash up the courtroom, dressed up like an escapee from a 1970s disco. Honestly, Titania looks more 1970s in this episode than she looks in the actual comics from the era.

Like everybody else, Jen’s hide under the table, when Nikki tells her that now might be a good time to hulk out. As Titania proceeds to take apart the courtroom, Jen finally agrees, while lamenting that she really likes the suit she’s about to wreck. Jen also first takes off her shoes before hulking out, because there’s no reason to ruin a nice pair of shoes. Then she hulks out, saves the jurors from Titania and proceeds to whack Titania with the jury bench. Then she transforms back into Jen and dusts off her ruined suit and says, “I’m ready to deliver my statement now” to the judge. Cue credits.

There is a post-credits or rather mid credits scene, where a very drunk Jen laments that Steve Rogers, though extremely hot, very likely was a virgin until he want back in time at the end of Avengers: Endgame. Whereupon Bruce tells Jen that Steve lost his virginity back in 1943 to one of his back-up chorus girls from his “Star-Sprangled Man” tour. Which makes Jen very happy, happy enough to exclaim, “Yes, Captain America fucked!” Okay, she only says “fu”, because this is family-friendly Disney, but we all know what she was going to say.

Now I have to admit that I also assumed Steve Rogers was probably the last adult virgin of the Marvel Universe, now that Rogue can control her powers – unless Natasha took pity on him. But hurray for Steve actually getting to have sex with a pretty chorus girl.

The great strength of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and something that none of the other cinematic universe attempts have ever really managed to replicate is that it tells a great variety of different stories and tackles a lot of different genres in the same universe, even if all of these stories feature superheroes. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law introduces a new genre into the mix, because here we have a humorous lawyer show a la Ally McBeal, Boston Legal or Danni Lowinsky combined with a superhero story about female anger. And as with most Marvel attempts, the mix somehow works.

I have to admit that I’m not a huge fan of Tatiana Maslany, though she is a great actress and clearly deserved that Emmy. But I never liked Orphan Black and stopped watching after one and a half episodes. Maslany was good in last year’s Perry Mason show, though I didn’t quite get what the point of her weird radio preacher character was in the whole story, since that weird and very American church stuff distracted from the actual plot. And Tatiana Maslany wasn’t the first person who came to mind to play Jennifer Walters, but then Mark Ruffalo also wasn’t the first or even tenth person who came to mind to play Bruce Banner either. But Tatiana Maslany is really good here and after a few minutes I stopped seeing her as “that woman from Orphan Black” and began to see her as Jennifer Walters. She also nails the humorous aspects of the show, something she really didn’t get to do in Orphan Black or Perry Mason.

This episode is very much a Jen and Bruce two-hander, so the rest of the cast doesn’t get much to do, but I guess we’ll see more of Nikki and Titania in future episodes. Besides, more Mark Ruffalo as Hulk is always good.

The first episode is very much set-up and origin story and the actual plot doesn’t kick in until the last few minutes, but I did enjoy it and I will certainly watch (and try to review) the rest of the show.

If only because Maud would not forgive me, if I didn’t watch this.

*I remember picking the name Maud from a handwritten list of names I liked, but I have no idea where I got it from. Probably the movie Harold and Maude.

**1980s cartoons not only had a lot of single dads, they also had a lot of examples of men banding together to raise kids. Which is why I always find those complaints about LGBTQ content supposedly indoctrinating kids hilarious, because dudes, we already had this in the 1980s and we all survived and became better people for it.

Obi-Wan Kenobi Heads Into the Grand Finale

Here are my much belated thoughts on the final episode of the Disney Plus Obi-Wan Kenobi series. For my thoughts on previous episodes, go here.

Meanwhile, my latest article at Galactic Journey just went up two days ago. The subject is the rise of the shipping container, which may not be as flashy as space travel news, but which will profoundly transform global trade from the late 1960s on.

I’m also not sure if I linked to my previous Galactic Journey article, which was a review of two 1967 SFF novels, Chthon by Piers Anthony, which was still as terrible as it was when I first tried to read it at age 16, and The Flame of Iridar by Lin Carter, which was actually decent.

Warning! Spoilers under the cut!

The final episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi starts off where the previous episode ended, with Roken, Obi-Wan, Leia and the other refugees making a narrow escape from Jabiim, a Star Destroyer in hot pursuit. The refugee ship can’t make the jump to hyperspace either, because the hyperdrive is not working. Honestly, does any hyperdrive ever work in Star Wars or does only the Empire have hyperdrives that actually do what they’re supposed to do?

Roken is confident that he can get the hyperdrive to work, but that will take time and right now, time is one thing the refugees don’t have. So Obi-Wan does the heroic thing and offers to draw the Empire away, allowing the refugees to escape. After all, Obi-Wan is the one Darth Vader is really after. The refugees are just a bonus.

Absolutely no one is happy with this plan. The proto-rebels and their leader Roken do not want to lose their biggest gun and potential leader figure, while little Leia does not want to lose her protector. So Obi-Wan does what he does best and tries to reassure everybody. He tells Roken that yes, the proto-rebels of The Path need a leader, but that they have a pretty good one in Roken.

Then he calms down Leia, tells her that he’ll be fine and that they’ll see each other again and gives her the holster of the late Tala with notches for the people she saved. “It’s empty”, little Leia says, clearly disappointed. “I’m not giving you a blaster”, Obi-Wan replies, “You’re ten years old. But you won’t always be.” And there we have the birth of Leia Organa, rebel leader. Leia, meanwhile, gives Obi-Wan her little droid Lola for company.

Finally, Obi-Wan asks Haja Estree to promise him to take Leia home to Alderaan. Haja gives Obi-Wan his word with the caveat that he is a con-man and fake Jedi, after all, so he’s not sure how much his word is worth. “I believe in you”, Obi-Wan replies and thus inspires another person who will probably be a great asset to the nascent Rebellion. Haja Estree is a great character BTW and I wish we had seen more of him.

The scenes in Revenge of the Sith featuring Padme, Bail Organa and Mon Mothma (many of which ended up on the cutting room floor) seemed to imply that the seeds for the Rebellion were sown around the time the Empire was established. Obi-Wan Kenobi, however, is set ten years later and shows the Rebellion as basically one or more small groups instead of the organised force they will become. We have no idea what Mon Mothma is doing at this point and Bail Organa seems to be exactly the Senator he claims to be, albeit one with secrets. And the Path is a network of people helping Force sensitives and former Jedi to escape to safety.

So did Obi-Wan actually help to establish the Rebellion as we know it? As retcons go, this one is small, but it is notable.

After he has given the nascent Rebellion a pep talk, Obi-Wan gets into a shuttle and heads for a planet that just happens to be nearby. On the bridge of the pursuing Star Destroyer, Darth Vader and the Grand Inquisitor observe the shuttle leaving. Darth Vader of course senses that Obi-Wan is on board and promptly directs the Star Destroyer to pursue the shuttle with Obi-Wan rather than the refugees. The Grand Inquisitor is clearly not pleased to let all of those juicy Force-sensitives escape, but one does not argue with Darth Vader and expect to survive. So Obi-Wan’s plan worked and the refugees are safe.

Both Obi-Wan and Darth Vader land on the planet that conveniently just happens to be in the neighbourhood. Come to think of it, I wonder why Darth Vader didn’t just take a shuttle and go after Obi-Wan, while sending the Star Destroyer under the command of the Grand Inquisitor after the refugees. But of course, that would have ruined the plot.

The bulk of the episode of given over to Obi-Wan and Darth Vader having a lightsabre duel on a nameless planet full of dark spiky rocks that seems designed to serve as a duelling place for Jedi Knights and Sith Lords. As lightsabre fights go, this one is great to look at and excellently choreographed. The flashing lightsabres lighting up the spiky rocks make for great visuals, while the rocks themselves also make for great improvised missiles for Darth and Obi-Wan to Force-throw at each other.

Since their last encounter in episode 3 of the series, Obi-Wan had gotten his groove back, so he and Darth Vader are a lot more evenly matched. The climax comes when Obi-Wan slashes Darth Vader’s helmet open – a scene apparently borrowed from the Star Wars Rebels cartoon, where Ahsoka does the same – only to reveal the scarred and ravaged face beneath. Ewan McGregor does a great job conveying the shock Obi-Wan experiences at seeing what Darth Vader looks like under the mask, though I can’t help but wonder why he is so shocked, considering the last time he saw Anakin, Obi-Wan left him lying at the edge of a lava pit. After all, people normally don’t look very pretty after they have been thrown into a lava pit.

Anakin clearly relishes Obi-Wan’s shock and tells him, “I am what you made me” (which is technically true). Then he tells Obi-Wan that Anakin Skywalker is dead, that Darth Vader killed him and that Vader is all that’s left. This is apparently the closure Obi-Wan needs (and coincidentally also explains the “Darth Vader killed your father” line in A New Hope). He finally realises that the Anakin he knew is truly gone and not coming back – until Luke proves him wrong in Return of the Jedi, that is.  So Obi-Wan says “Good-bye, Darth” and turns around and leaves, leaving Darth Vader standing among the jagged rocks in his damaged armour.

Now the duel obviously couldn’t have ended any other way. After all, we know that neither Obi-Wan nor Darth Vader died on this nameless planet, because they will still be around ten years later in time for A New Hope. However, psychologically Obi-Wan just walking away makes no sense at all. Obi-Wan walking away on Mustafar in Revenge of the Sith made a bit of sense, because Obi-Wan likely assumed Anakin was going to die anyway and didn’t want to be the one to strike a killing blow at someone he once cared for. Though even back then, I remember people in the theatre yelling, “Either help him or kill him and be done with it.”

But Obi-Wan letting Darth Vader live here makes no fucking sense at all, because he just accepted that Darth Vader is no longer Anakin Skywalker, that Anakin is gone for good. So any lingering feelings Obi-Wan might have for Anakin should not have stopped him from killing Darth Vader. And even if killing Darth Vader would not stop the Empire, it would be a significant blow, because it would deprive the Emperor of his right-hand man. So there really is no reason not to kill him except that the overall plot dictates that Darth Vader cannot die here.

While Obi-Wan is duelling Darth Vader on the planet of the spiky rocks, Reva a.k.a. the former Inquisitor Third Sister, who is very much not dead in spite of getting gutted with a lightsabre last episode, is on a mission of her own. Because as we saw last episode, Reva found the communicator with Bail Organa’s message to Obi-Wan that Haja Estree dropped in the confusion. And the message tells her exactly where to go, namely to Tatooine to find someone named Owen and the kid he is taking care of.

Reva is clearly smarter than 99% of people in the Star Wars universe, because she understands exactly who this kid to whom Bail Organa is referring is.  Just as she also seems to have figured out the connection between Leia and Darth Vader. The question of course is, how does Reva know. True, in her time as a padawan at the Jedi Temple, she may have seen Anakin with Padme and may have noticed Padme’s notable baby bump, which still puts her ahead of 99% of the adult Jedi we see, all of whom politely ignore Padme’s baby bump. As for how she figured out, a) that the child(ren) lived, even though Padme died, and b) what happened to one of them, that remains a mystery. Of course, as an Inquisitor, she has access to all sorts of information and databases and may have pierced at least Leia’s origin together.

However, Reva now knows that there was not one child but two. And she knows where to find the second kid, Luke. So we next see Reva on Tatooine, using her patented Force-powered interrogation techniques on a random local and asking for a farmer named Owen.

Now a lot of science fiction, including Star Wars, tends to forget that planets are very big. And while Tatooine’s human population may not be very dense due to the inhospitable climate, Tatooine still has at least three bigger cities, Mos Eisley, Mos Espa and Mos Pelgo, and plenty of smaller settlements such as Anchorhead. I’d estimate that there are at least a million humans living on Tatooine, maybe more. So Reva walking up to a random person in a random town on Tatooine is like walking up to a random person in a random city on Earth and asking for a farmer named John. She’s literally looking for the needle in the haystack or rather in the sand dune.

Of course, we have no idea for how long Reva has been doing this by the time we see her. After all, Reva is nothing if not persistent and she may well have force-choked half of Tatooine by now. Though her best bet would probably partnering with the local underworld and Jabba the Hutt who would have the manpower and connections to locate Owen.

At any rate, Reva hits paydirt and finds someone who knows Owen. Though he does not talk, but instead warns Owen of the impending danger, when he and Luke come to town to pick up a spare part for their landspeeder.

Owen of course knows exactly who Reva is after and wants to make a run for it, but Beru convinces him that their chances are better, if they make a stand at their farm. They tell Luke that the Tuskens are about to attack (yeah, blame the poor Tuskens) and tell him to hide in a fortified room with a single escape route and make a run for it, when necessary. Then Owen and Beru ready their home for an attack, while Reva descends upon them.

Considering that Owen and Beru are farmers with no formal combat training, even though they live in an area that experiences occasional attacks by Tuskens, they manage to hold their own against Reva – a trained Sith Inquisitor with Force powers – remarkably well. Reva, meanwhile, is surprised at the lengths to which Owen and Beru will go to protect Luke. “You love him as if he were your own son”, she marvels in a moment that is both chilling and heartbreaking, because it shows us very clearly that no one ever loved Reva. Like all Jedi, she was taken from her family at a very young age and never saw them again, then saw the Jedi Temple destroyed and her friends and teachers killed and then survived on the streets, plotting her revenge, until the Inquisitors found her. If you needed any more proof that Jedi training is institutionalised child abuse, here it is. In fact, considering how the Jedi treat their padawans, it’s a miracle that not more of them go to the Dark Side.

“He is my son”, Owen replies to Reva, while tussling with her.

Now the entire Star Wars canon has always focussed on the biological paentage of Luke and Leia, but paid very little attention to the people who actually raised them, Owen and Beru Lars and Bail and Breha Organa respectively. Owen and Beru get a bit of screentime in A New Hope, where Owen is portrayed as the grumpy uncle who wants to keep his nephew on the farm, while Beru pours blue milk and tells Owen that he can’t keep Luke on the farm forever, because there is too much of his father in him. They are both killed unceremoniously off-screen. Bail and Breha never get any screentime at all in A New Hope and are blown up by the Death Star from orbit, though Bail at least gets a bit of screentime in the prequels.

Owen and Beru Lars and Bail and Breha Organa also never get any credit for raising the Jedi wonder twins to adulthood. In two separate continuities, Luke and Leia name their children after Ben Kenobi (who is not the worst choice) and even Anakin, but never after the people who actually raised them. This is a pity, especially since Luke and Leia lucked out in the adoptive parent department and had largely happy childhoods and were clearly loved. And considering that the Star Wars universe not just has a huge problem with orphaned children, but that most of those kids are treated badly and often turned into child soldiers. In the Star Wars universe, ending up with the Mandalorians, a nutty warrior cult with a weapon and helmet fixation, is actually one of the better fates that can happen to a child. So Luke and Leia both got really lucky, compared to pretty much every other character we see except maybe Grogu. Furthermore, considering their parentage, the mental health issues that clearly run in the Skywalker family and the fact that they both have massive Force abilities, it’s largely due to Owen and Beru’s and Bail and Breha’s parenting skills that Luke and Leia do not turn to the Dark Side, but become the heroic people that they are. Okay, so Luke turns out to be pretty much a failure in the end, but he’s merely a failed Jedi who spends the last twenty years of his life sulking on an island, not a Sith Lord.

In the light of all this, it is good to actually see Owen and Beru as well as Bail and Breha being loving parents who will do everything for their adopted kids. Especially since Star Wars has always glossed over Luke and Leia’s childhood.

During the fight at the Lars farm, Luke escapes from the fortified room, as his parents has instructed him to, and runs for the hills, Reva hot in pursuit. The scenes of Reva relentlessly chasing down a ten-year-old boy are genuinely thrilling, even though we already know how it will end.

Luke is knocked unconscious in a rock slide and Reva is looming over him, lightsabre in hand. However, just before she lands the killing blow, Reva sees herself as a terrified child, hiding from assassins, and can’t bring herself to kill Luke.

By the time Obi-Wan arrives and helps Owen and Beru to pick themselves up, Reva comes out of the desert, carrying Luke in her arms, unconscious but alive. Owen and Beru immediately attend to their son, while Reva sinks to her knees in the desert, horrified both that she was willing to kill a ten-year-old boy and do the exact same thing that was done to her as a child and that she failed to avenge her friends. Obi-Wan tells Reva that she did the honourable thing and that she is free now to become whoever she wants to be. Reva buries her lightsabre in the sand (the deserts of Tatooine must be full of discarded lightsabres by now) and leaves.

Now Reva was probably the most interesting character in the entire series and Moses Ingram’s performance as this very deeply disturbed woman was fantastic. Though considering the actress fell afoul of the same toxic fanboys who fling abuse anytime a woman or person of colour dares to do anything in a legacy franchise, even if said franchise always had women and people of colour in prominent roles, I doubt we’ll see more of Reva, which is a pity.

And while on the subject of racist Star Wars fans,  I recently came across this video by someone who worked in the toy industry about why Lando Calrissian figures don’t sell and tend to clog store shelves in the US. “Let me guess, the answer is because some Star Wars fans and some toy-buying parents are racist shitheads”, I thought and that’s exactly what the answer was, though phrased much more nicely. And this is Lando, a character from the original trilogy a.k.a. the films the toxic fanboys claim to love.

That said, I still have a hard time forgiving Reva that she was willing to murder a ten-year-old kid for revenge, even if she did not do it in the end. Never mind that killing Luke – or Leia for that matter – wouldn’t have been much of a revenge on Anakin, because at this point Anakin has no idea that Padme had twins, let alone that the children survived. As far as he knows, Padme and her unborn child both died on Mustafar. Would Reva murdering a child he did not even know he had affect Anakin? Well, it would affect most people, but this Anakin we are talking about and he is a psychopath.

The episode ends with an extended coda of Obi-Wan first visiting Alderaan to make sure that Leia – who has taken to wearing Tala’s holster wherever she goes – is okay and return Lola. He gets a big hug from Leia, who has finally decided what she is going to do with her life and her position. Obi-Wan tells Leia that she is very like both her parents and promises Bail and Breha that he’ll be there for them whenever they need him again. We all know how that story ends and that Obi-Wan arrives too late to save anybody on Alderaan.

Next, Obi-Wan is back on Tatooine. He visits Owen Lars once more and gives him the shuttle toy for Luke (the same one Luke still has ten years later at the beginning of A New Hope) and promises Owen that he will not bother them again, because Luke deserves to grow up like a normal kid. Ever since the standoff at the farm, Owen has softened towards Obi-Wan and asks him if he wants to meet Luke. So Obi-Wan finally gets to meet Luke face to face. Luke looks up at him and looks so much like Anakin did back in The Phantom Menace that you can see Obi-Wan’s heart breaking. Because let’s not forget that Obi-Wan was the one who basically raised Anakin, even if he was barely out of his teens himself.

Finally, Obi-Wan relocates to the home in the mountains where he is living when we meet him in A New Hope. However, someone is waiting there for him. It’s none other than the Force ghost of Qui-Gon Jinn, still portrayed by Liam Neeson. Obi-Wan asks Qui-Gon why he never came, no matter how often Obi-Wan called for him. Qui-Gon replies that he was always there, only that Obi-Wan could not see him. But now Obi-Wan has come to terms with his massive PTSD, he can finally see Qui-Gon’s ghost. So PTSD affects Force abilities? That’s an interesting idea, only that the show never really follows up on it.

So what’s the verdict on Obi-Wan Kenobi as a whole? The show was enjoyable enough, less disjointed than The Book of Boba Fett and boasted some fine performances with a particular shout-out to Ewan McGregor (whose performance in the prequels actually made me like Obi-Wan, a character I did not like very much in the original trilogy) and Moses Ingram. Plus, it was nice to get a glimpse of Luke’s and Leia’s childhood and see them growing into the people they will become, but then I am a sucker for childhood flashbacks for beloved character.

However, Obi-Wan Kenobi was also completely superfluous, because we already know what happens to these characters. We know that Obi-Wan, Darth Vader, Luke, Leia, Owen and Beru and Bail and Breha won’t die here, because we know exactly where and when they will die. So there’s never any real tension regarding their fate, because we know they’re not in danger.

I did like many of the supporting characters introduced – Reva, Tala, Roken, Haja Estree. They were all interesting characters and unlike the main characters, their fate is not a foregone conclusion. All of these characters could have – and Tala did – die.

In fact, Obi-Wan Kenobi would have been a better show, if the focus had been on one of the supporting characters and how their story intersects with Obi-Wan’s. Reva’s dogged quest to avenge herself on Anakin or the proto-rebels of The Path smuggling Force-sensitives to safety or the adventures of Haja Estree, fake Jedi and real hero would all have made for a more compelling story than the one that we got. However, Disney would not greenlight a Star Wars show focussing on a new, never-before-seen character. Yes, there is The Mandalorian – and there is a reason why it is the best of the Disney Star Wars shows by a mile – but the selling point of The Mandalorian was basically “Mandalorians are badarses and you think they’re cool, don’t you?” That was enough to get people to watch the first episode and then Grogu showed up and hooked everybody.

Considering how well Disney is doing by Marvel, where even the duds at least fail in interesting ways, it’s a mystery why they are mishandling Star Wars so badly. True, The Mandalorian was good, but The Book of Boba Fett was an unholy mess and Obi-Wan Kenobi was okay, but predictable, added very little to the overall storyline and mostly retread familiar ground.

Maybe the Cassian Andor show, which premieres next month, will be better. At least, it will be largely divorced from the Jedi and the Skywalker family.

The 2022 Dragon Award Finalists Look Really Good… With One Odd Exception

As always this time of year, when you’re way too busy with other things, the Dragon Awards decided to drop their 2022 ballot. I sometimes swear they do this on purpose.The Dragon Awards are a fan award given out by Dragon Con, a massive SFF media con in Atlanta, Georgia.

This is only the seventh year of the Dragon Awards, but they have gone through quite a bit of history since then, as recounted here by Camestros Felapton. You can also find my previous posts about the Dragon Awards and their tangled history here.

Anyway, the finalists for the 2022 Dragon Awards were announced today and the ballot looks really good with only a single WTF? finalist (more on that later) and a lot of popular and well regarded works on the ballot. This confirms a trend that we’ve seen in the past three years, namely that the Dragon Awards are steadily moving towards the award for widely popular SFF works that they were initially conceived to be, as the voter base broadens and more people become aware of the award, nominate and vote for their favourites. It’s a far cry from the early years of the Dragon Awards, where the finalists were dominated by Sad and Rabid Puppies, avid self-promoters and Kindle Unlimited content mills with a few broadly popular books mixed in.

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

Best Science Fiction Novel

This category not only looks very good, it could easily be a Hugo or Nebula ballot. The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi, Goliath by Tochi Onyebuchi and Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky all could (and well may) be on the Hugo or Nebula ballot. Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey probably wouldn’t make the Hugo or Nebula ballot, because later entries in long series rarely get nominated in the Best Novel category. But given how popular The Expanse series is, I’m not at all surprised to see it here. Finally, we have You Sexy Thing by Cat Rambo, which makes me very happy, because it’s a great novel that deserves more recognition.

Diversity count: 5 men (James S.A. Corey is two people), 1 woman, 2 authors of colour, 1 international author

Best Fantasy Novel

This category also looks very good and none of the finalists would feel out of place on a Hugo or Nebula ballot. Indeed, the excellent Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki is a Hugo finalist this year (though personally, I would have put it in science fiction rather than fantasy) and the also excellent Green Bone Saga, of which Jade Legacy by Fonda Lee is the final instalment, is a Best Series Finalist. The first book in the series, Jade War, was also a Dragon Award finalist. Ursula Vernon a.k.a. T. Kingfisher is both a Hugo and Dragon favourite and I would not be surprised to see Nettle and Bone on the Hugo ballot next year. Besides, it’s a great book. Moon Witch, Spider King by Marlon James is one of those books that sit on the borderline between genre and literary fiction and Marlon James did win the Booker Prize in 2015. It’s also a fine fantasy novel and I’m glad to see it on the ballot. Daniel Abraham’s solo work tends to get less attention than his collaborative work as James S.A. Corey, so I’m happy to see him nominated for Age of Ash. I was a bit surprised to see Book of Night by Holly Black nominated in this category, not because Holly Black isn’t a fine and highly popular writer, but because she is best known as a YA writer. However, Book of Night is apparently aimed at adult readers and therefore absolutely appropriate here.

What’s a bit surprising in this category is the absence of Larry Correia, either alone or together with co-author Steve Diamond, since Correia is a Dragon Awards favourite and had at least two eligible books.

Diversity count: 2 men, 4 women, 3 writers of colour, 1 international writer

Best YA/Middle Grade Novel

This category not only looks like an Andre Norton or Lodestar Award ballot, it actually is half of the 2022 Lodestar ballot, because A Snake Falls to Earth by Darcie Little Badger, Redemptor by Jordan Ifueko and Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao are all Lodestar finalists this year and very fine choices they are, too. Nnedi Okorafor and V.E. Schwab are always worth reading and so I’m not surprised to see Akata Witch and Gallant on the ballot. A Dark and Starless Forest by Sarah Hollowell is the only Dragon finalist in this category that’s unknown to me, but then I am not much of a YA reader. Judging by the number of Goodreads and Amazon reviews, it’s definitely a popular book.

Diversity count: 5 women, 1 non-binary, 4 writers of colour

Best Military SFF Novel

Once again, this category looks most like the early years of the Dragon Awards with several indie books and Baen books on the ballot. But then, military SF is dominated by Baen and indie writers, so that’s no surprise. The Shattered Skies by John Birmingham also got quite a bit of attention among people who are not hardcore military SF readers and is probably the finalist I will end up voting for. Former countryman Marko Kloos is popular with Dragon Award nominators, so I’m not surprised to see his latest Citadel here. Resolute by Jack Campbell is a book in his popular Lost Fleet series. Unless I’m mistaken, this is the first Dragon nomination for Jack Campbell, which is surprising, considering how popular he is. A Call to Insurrection by David Weber, Timothy Zahn and Thomas Pope is connected to Weber’s hugely popular Honor Harrington series. J.N. Chaney is a popular and prolific indie author. He is nominated for Backyard Starship along with co-author Terry Maggert. Against All Odds by Jeffery H. Haskell is the first book in a series published by indie small press Aethon Books.

Diversity count: 9 men

Best Alternate History Novel

This category is a big surprise this year, because it does not resemble the early years of the Dragon Awards at all. There is not a single indie author on the ballot, instead all finalists are popular traditionally published books. She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan is also a Hugo finalist this year and a fine choice. Charles Stross has been nominated in this category for the Dragon Awards before and of course also has multiple Hugo nominations and even wins. Invisible Sun is the third book in his Empire Games alternate history series. When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill got quite a bit of buzz, though I wasn’t aware it was alternate history. The Silver Bullets of Annie Oakley by Mercedes Lackey passed me by completely, though I usually like her work and Mercedes Lackey is of course a hugely popular writer. I’m a bit surprised to see no nomination for the late Eric Flint, though a book in the 1632 series he originated, 1637: Dr. Gribbleflotz and the Soul of Stoner by Kerryn Offord and Rick Boatright, is nominated. Apparently, Rick Boatright died last year, so it’s nice that he get s posthumous nod for his work.

Which brings me to this year’s WTF? finalist, namely The King’s Daughter by Vonda N. McIntyre. Not that The King’s Daughter is a bad book, in fact it’s excellent. But it also isn’t eligible. Now Vonda N. McIntyre died in 2019. Posthumous award nominations are a thing, of course, but The King’s Daughter is not a new novel, but was published in 1997, i.e. 25 years ago, and even won the Nebula Award under the title The Moon and the Sun. A movie based on the book was released earlier this year after many years in development hell and on the shelf. As a result, The Moon and the Sun was re-released as The King’s Daughter, but it’s still the same novel that won the Nebula in 1997. Honestly, does no one at the Dragon Awards check this stuff?

Diversity count: 3 men, 4 women, 1 author of colour, 2 international writers, 2 deceased writers

Best Media Tie-in Novel

There are no surprises in this category. We have two Star Wars tie-in novels written by fan favourites Timothy Zahn and Claudia Gray, two Star Trek tie-in novels by David Mack and John Jackson Miller and a Halo tie-in novel by Troy Denning.

Diversity count: 4 men, 1 woman

Best Horror Novel

This is another really good ballot full of fine and popular horror novels. Stephen Graham Jones is probably the best horror author currently writing. He is nominated for My Heart Is a Chainsaw. Grady Hendrix is not just a great horror historian, but also a very good horror writer and is nominated for The Final Girl Support Group.  Chuck Wendig is another Dragon Award favourite and is nominated for The Book of Accidents. Daryl Gregory is a frequent presence on Hugo and Nebula ballots. I haven’t heard of his Dragon finalist Revelatory before, but it sounds like something I should like. I enjoyed Caitlin Starling’s 2019 SF horror novel The Luminous Dead a whole lot. Her Dragon finalist The Death of Jane Lawrence is billed as gothic horror and should be right up my alley. Hide by Kiersten White got a lot of buzz, when it came out earlier this year and I’m not surprised to see it on the ballot.

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

Best Comic Book

This is another very good ballot. We’ve got three mainstream superhero comics in Immortal X-Men, Nightwing and Devil’s Reign, a Marvel mini-series about Wilson Fisk a.k.a. Kingpin becoming mayor of New York City. Marvel is also represented by their (very good) King Conan comic, which I’m very happy to see here. Step by Bloody Step and Twig are two newish SFF comics by Image that I hadn’t heard of before, but that sound really good.

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

Best Graphic Novel

This is another mix of old and new favourites. Both Monstress and Saga are perennial Hugo and Dragon favourites and also excellent comics. Though I’m surprised that Saga is nominated in Graphic Novel rather than Comic Book, because Saga was on an extended hiatus and only started up again recently and the next collection won’t be out until October. There’s also a Wonder Woman and a Dune graphic novel. Geiger is a post-apocalyptic graphic novel by Geoff Jones and Gary Frank, who was one of my favourite artists, back when I was still reading comics. Bitter Root is an Eisner Award winning series about a family of monster hunters in Harlem.

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

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy TV Series

We have a whole lot of very popular series here. The Expanse and Stranger Things are long-time favourites and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is the best of the three live action Star Trek series currently running. I have zero interest in either For All Mankind or Wheel of Time, but both are popular, both were Hugo finalists and Wheel of Time is based on a very popular novel series, too. The Boys is another popular and well regarded series. The only finalist in this category that surprises me a bit is Halo, for even though the TV show was based on a series of extremely popular videogames, neither fans of the games nor regular viewers seem to have liked it very much. I’m a bit surprised to see neither Moon Knight nor Ms. Marvel nor Obi-Wan Kenobi on the ballot, considering how perennially popular Marvel and Star Wars are.

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

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy TV Film

This category is a mix of expected and somewhat unexpected favourites. Marvel is represented by Spider-Man: No Way Home and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, its two most fan servicy films of recent times. The also eligible Marvel movies Eternals and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings did not make the ballot. In the case of Eternals, this isn’t surprising, because Eternals was as close to a dud as Marvel can get (though it’s getting a sequel), but Shang-Chi was generally popular and IMO better than either No Way Home or Multiverse of Madness. Dune is pretty much a no-brainer, because a) it’s Dune and b) it’s actually a good adaptation. Ghostbusters: Afterlife surprises me a little, because not even the fanboys who hated the 2016 Ghostbusters (which at least tried to do something new and was a lot of fun) seem to have liked this one very much and everybody else felt it was overly nostalgic and fan servicy. Free Guy was a lot of fun and I’m glad to see it nominated. And while I had heard of The Adam Project, I had to look up what it even was about (time travel), because it largely passed under my radar. Interestingly, both Free Guy and The Adam Project share the same director (Shawn Levy) and star (Ryan Reynolds), so are we maybe seeing the impact of eager Ryan Reynolds or Shawn Levy fans here?

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

The Gaming Categories

I’m still not a gamer, so all I can say is that I have heard of some of those games, so they must be popular. And something called Thirsty Sword Lesbians must be good based on the title alone. Apparently, two of the boardgames are not SFF, but then that’s nothing new for the boardgame category at the Dragons. One year, a (very good) game about tile-making won.

All in all, this is a very good ballot and shows that by now the Dragon Awards have gone beyond their initial niche of puppies and indie writers. Coincidentally, the Dragon Award ballot also proves that the Hugos and Nebulas are not in fact out of step with the tastes of “real fans(TM)”, because the same books and authors get nominated for the Hugos, Nebulas and Dragons these days, even if the Dragons tend to have more male finalists than the other two awards. Also, I find it amusing that authors like John Scalzi, Cat Rambo or Chuck Wendig, who are vehemently disliked by the Puppies, are all on the ballot as are a lot of women and writers of colour.

Of course, it would still help if the Dragon Awards administrators would at least do a cursory check to avoid things like a 25-year-old novel being nominated due to a re-edition. Nonetheless, the Dragons seem to have reached full mainstream respectability by now and are another addition to the spectrum of SFF Awards with a few unique quirks such as their odd category breakdown and eligibility period.

But of course the question is: How do the Puppies react to a Dragon Award ballot they’re pretty much guaranteed to hate? Oddly enough, the reactions in Puppyland are fairly muted. Everybody seems to be way too upset about the FBI searching Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate to worry about the Dragons. Even Declan Finn is oddly silent.

Below, you’ll find a few puppy-adjacent reactions I found:

dragoncon ballet got in. I assume under 1k submitted because Scalzi and Cat Rambo are up for a science fiction novel against James Corey’s latest.

I guess no one from Baen participated. The award is now boring.

— Pinkerton’s Ghosts (@PinkertonsGhost) August 12, 2022

Just looked at mine. I only voted in 1 category.

This is a wasteland.

I only knew of 2 selections. Weber and the Backyard Starship option. They were in the same category. https://t.co/TgEd0hQicT

— Fiannawolf, Questing for the Superversive. (@Fiannawolf2) August 12, 2022

Isn’t this the putz that shit all over the @DragonCon awards? He went on at length about how it was irrelevant and he wouldn’t accept the award because…skreeee “only the same white guys are nominated!’ BTW, there were POC, women etc. Scalzi was just being his douchenozzle self” https://t.co/1TQoWirXWD

— Conservative Biker (@RightSideBiker) August 12, 2022

So in short, it’s the usual “I have never heard of any of these books” along with the also usual “We hates John Scalzi” stuff.

For more Dragon Awards discussion, see also Camestros Felapton’s post.

Non-Fiction Spotlight: Cosplay: A History by Andrew Liptak

After the Hugos is before the next Hugos, so I’m continuing my Non-Fiction Spotlight project, where I interview the authors/editors of SFF-related non-fiction books that come out in 2022 and are eligible for the 2023 Hugo Awards. For more about the Non-Fiction Spotlight project, go here. To check out the spotlights I already posted, go here.

For more recommendations for SFF-related non-fiction, also check out this Facebook group set up by the always excellent Farah Mendlesohn, who is a champion (and author) of SFF-related non-fiction.

Today’s featured non-fiction book is the definitive history of a phenomenon born out of SFF fandom. Therefore, I am happy to welcome Andrew Liptak, author of Cosplay: A History, to my blog today.

Tell us about your book.

The book is a big overview of how and when cosplay came about! Cosplay as we understand it today has undergone some considerable changes over the decades, and as a historian and cosplay, I was interested in how and why we ended up dressing up at cons.

There’s the conventional history: that Forest Ackerman dressed up for the 1939 World Science Fiction convention, but there’s precedence to that: there were people dressing up well before he and his then-partner, Myrtle Douglas (who made his costume, along with one for herself) suited up in New York: Jules Verne had a costume party where guests showed up as his characters, there was an early convention at the Royal Albert Hall to commemorate a popular science fiction novel, Vril, and some other scattered examples throughout the 19th and early 20th century.

But you can also go back a bit further, and I wanted to also explore the broad story of how costumes became a tool for storytellers and how their use evolved with time.

In many ways, this is one of the core stories in the book: how we use costuming to relate to stories, and when you look at it through that lense, you see other, similar examples: people using costumes for political purposes, like protests (all the way up to the modern day), or education (living history and reenacting), and for one’s own personal journey to understand their identity, their fandom, or just for their own entertainment.

The other core part of the book is that it’s a story of fandom and community: it’s about how fans come together to share in their common interest, whether it’s to show off their work at a convention or to help one another build their costumes. I’ve been a member of the 501st Legion, a Star Wars costuming group for nearly 20 years, and that group takes a bit of the forefront of the book, because it’s a big part of my upbringing and identity, but also because I felt that it serves as a solid, representative microcosm for the growth and mainstream profile that the activity has experienced in the last couple of decades.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I’m a historian and journalist who’s written pretty extensively about science fiction and fandom for a long time. I fell in love with Star Wars when the special editions hit theaters, and after burning my way through the various tie-in books in high school, I jumped over to everything else I could get my hands on, from Redwall to Lord of the Rings to Foundation to Dune, and quite a bit more.

I studied history and then military history (BA and then MA), and found myself writing for a bunch of places like SF Signal, io9, and Kirkus Reviews about SF/F stuff. One of those projects was a history of SF/F at Kirkus, which gave me a broad understanding of how the genre evolved over time, and introduced me to some of that earlier history.

From there, I jumped over to The Verge, a tech / culture site run by Vox Media, and wrote extensively about SF/F stuff. But more importantly, I worked with two editors, Bryan Bishop and Laura Hudson, who really transformed how I thought about storytelling and how we relate it it: how does fan culture impact the things we consume, and what do those various books, comics, TV shows, games, and movies shape our view of the world? And of course, there’s the technology stuff, like how social media and the internet helps those things.

Above all, I’m also a cosplayer. I was a Star Wars fan from ‘97, and acquired my own set of stormtrooper armor in 2003: I’ve been with the group ever since in various roles, from regular trooper to holding leadership roles in my local garrison, and I’ve branched out to various other costumes over the years.

What prompted you to write/edit this book?

Saga Press’s Joe Monti did! He met some members of the 501st Legion at San Diego Comic Con back in 2015 or 2016, and reached out to me to see if there was a story there. The project went through a bunch of iterations until 2019 when we sold it. It went from a bit of a more specific history of the 501st to a much wider focus of cosplay in general, which I’m pretty thrilled at: the more I developed the project, the more I recognized how much bigger this story was.

Joe ended up setting me up with fellow Saga / Gallery editor Amara Hoshijo, who picked up the project and really helped me hammer it into shape from a manuscript into an actual book.

But I’ve always been interested in history, and how the past connects to the present that we currently exist in, and learning about the past helps to bring about some understanding as to why the institutions and traditions that surround us are here.

Why should SFF fans in general and Hugo voters in particular read this book?

In short, it’s a history of fandom as a community — not just the capital F literary traditions/community, but of the wider history of fandom and how it’s evolved and changed over the decades.

This was a particularly fascinating thing to watch as I interviewed folks or pored over documents from Fanac.org: how did the act of costuming become an institution within the worldcon scene, and how did it grow out and fracture as fandom expanded and Balkanized as science fiction and fantasy entertainment began to take over movie theaters, television sets, and video game consoles? It’s a really fascinating evolution, and one that I think is well worth paying attention to, culturally.

It’s a high-level overview of the larger fan world, one that touches on a bunch of these various tribes. I wanted to make sure that it was approachable to folks who have been fans for decades, long-time costumers/cosplayers/makers, and to folks who were just casual fans or who wanted to learn a little more. Hopefully, it’s a good entry point to understand the larger cosplay — and fan — world.

Do you have any cool facts or tidbits that you unearthed during your research, but that did not make it into the final book?

Hm. There were some things that I just didn’t have time or space to include: I wanted to write a chapter about furries, but just ran out of time to really do the topic justice. I also came across some interesting tidbits about the impact of laws designed to curb KKK members from masking up around the US and how that’s impacted costuming in various places. (Didn’t quite fit with the topic of the book, but it’s something I’d like to delve into a bit more.)

Those are things that I’m hoping to do a bit more research into in the coming months for what I’m thinking of as “lost chapters”, which I’m thinking I’ll release in the newsletter I write.

But with any history, there are things you learn after the fact that you just didn’t come across during the initial research. Arthur Conan Doyle dressed up as his character Professor Challenger, and apparently there was a Roman Emperor, Commodus, who apparently dressed up as the hero Hercules. And, literally while writing this, someone just told me about Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish Republic, who apparently commissioned a Jannissary uniform for a costume ball he attended. There’s undoubtedly plenty of other examples of this that I’ll be reading / researching!

SFF-related non-fiction is somewhat sidelined by the big genre awards, since the Nebulas have no non-fiction category and the Best Related Work Hugo category has become something of a grab bag of anything that doesn’t fit elsewhere. So why do you think SFF-related non-fiction is important?

I think the awards are an excellent way to highlight the scholarship that takes place about science fiction and fantasy. As a historian (I might be a bit biased here), I think it’s important to research and understand the past, because the fans, authors, editors, the works they produced and the events they participated in help to form the foundation of the community that we’re part of now. Those actions and works have a profound, lasting effect on everything that follows: look at how we’re still grappling with issues of equality and equity with fan circles. So, understanding and deconstructing the road that brought us here helps us conceptualize the environment we’re in today.

There’s been a lot of good work towards this end, and I think that an award nomination is useful to encourage people to seek out these works and these histories.

That said, I don’t think that something like “Best Related Work” necessarily needs to be limited to just book-length projects, but I do think that there’s value in specifically promoting long-form scholarship, because of the work that goes into it, and what such works yield for the reader and community at whole. I think it’s worth pointing out that the works that have ended up on the Hugo ballot have largely been well worth the inclusion on those lists.

The primary issue that I see is that “Best Related Work” is something of a catch-all, and I think that if we want to make sure that we’re putting attention to these things, and if we really value this as a category Hugo members need to draw up some more specific boundaries for that (maybe even something as simple as BRW Long / Short form). But then again, the Hugo ceremony is already pretty long and mission creep is a thing.

Are there any other great SFF-related non-fiction works or indeed anything else (books, stories, essays, writers, magazines, films, TV shows, etc…) you’d like to recommend?

There are a couple of books that I’ve picked up in recent weeks/months. The first is Ben Rigg’s Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons & Dragons, which is a voice-y nerd history but which essentially boils down to an interesting business book about TSR and a bunch of the product, business and organizational mistakes they made over the course of theri run. Riggs is essentially asking a question: why did Wizards of the Coast buy TSR in the 1990s, and lays out the case for that. It’s less about the making of D&D (there are lots of histories of this), which I found intriguing.

The other is Phasers On Stun! How the Making (and Remaking) of Star Trek Changed the World by Ryan Britt, which I’m reading now, and which is proving to be an interesting history of that particular franchise.

Where can people buy your book?

It’s published by Simon & Schuster’s Saga Press, so anywhere you buy books! If you’re interested in a signed copy, some of the stores near me, like Bear Pond Books, Yankee Bookshop, and Phoenix Books should have some that they can mail to you if you’re not in the area.

Where can people find you?

My main home online is a newsletter I write, Transfer Orbit, which I write on a somewhat regular (weeklyish) basis. You can also find me on my website, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Thank you, Andrew, for stopping by and answering my questions. Do check out Cosplay: A History, if you’re at all interested in the history of fandom and cosplay.

About Cosplay: A History:

A history of the colorful and complex kingdom of cosplay and fandom fashion by Andrew Liptak, journalist, historian, and member of the legendary fan-based Star Wars organization the 501st Legion.

In recent years, cosplay—the practice of dressing up in costume as a character—has exploded, becoming a mainstream cultural phenomenon. But what are the circumstances that made its rise possible?

Andrew Liptak—a member of the legendary 501st Legion, an international fan-based organization dedicated to the dark side of Star Wars—delves into the origins and culture of cosplay to answer this question. Cosplay: A History looks at the practice’s ever-growing fandom and conventions, its roots in 15th-century costuming, the relationship between franchises and the cosplayers they inspire, and the technology that brings even the most intricate details in these costumes to life.

Cosplay veterans and newcomers alike will find much to relish in this rich and comprehensive history.

About Andrew Liptak:

Andrew Liptak is a writer and historian based in Vermont. He graduated from Norwich University with a master’s degree in military history and writes about history, technology, and science fiction in his newsletter Transfer Orbit. His work has appeared in Armchair General Magazine, Clarkesworld Magazine, Gizmodo, io9, Slate, The Verge, and other publications. He coedited the anthology War Stories: New Military Science Fiction, and his short fiction has appeared in Galaxy’s Edge Magazine and Curious Fictions.

***

Are you publishing a work of SFF-related longform non-fiction in 2022 and want it featured? Contact me or leave a comment.

Non-Fiction Spotlight: Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller by Alec Nevala-Lee

After the Hugos is before the next Hugos, so I’m continuing my Non-Fiction Spotlight project, where I interview the authors/editors of SFF-related non-fiction books that come out in 2022 and are eligible for the 2023 Hugo Awards. For more about the Non-Fiction Spotlight project, go here. To check out the spotlights I already posted, go here.

For more recommendations for SFF-related non-fiction, also check out this Facebook group set up by the always excellent Farah Mendlesohn, who is a champion (and author) of SFF-related non-fiction.

Biographies of prominent SFF and SFF-adjacent people are quite common on the Hugo ballot and today’s featured non-fiction book is just such a biography.

Therefore, I am pleased to welcome Alec Nevala-Lee, author of Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller to my blog today.

Tell us about your book.

Inventor of the Future is the first comprehensive biography of Buckminster Fuller, the architectural designer best known for the geodesic dome and the concept of Spaceship Earth. During his lifetime, Fuller was the most famous futurist in the world, and he had a particularly strong influence on the founders of Silicon Valley.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

My book Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction was a Hugo and Locus Awards finalist in 2019. On the fiction side, I’ve published three suspense novels with Penguin and many hard SF stories in Analog, which will be releasing my latest novella, “The Elephant Maker,” sometime next year. I studied classics at Harvard University. My favorite writer is Jorge Luis Borges, and my other big influences include the movies of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, The X-Files, and the Pet Shop Boys. I’m half Chinese and half Finnish/Estonian, I identify as bisexual, and I live with my wife and daughter in Oak Park, Illinois.

What prompted you to write/edit this book?

I’ve been interested since high school in Fuller, whom I first encountered in the pages of the Whole Earth Catalog. After Astounding, I was looking to expand the range of subjects that I could cover as a writer, and Fuller was an obvious choice—his life expresses many of the themes that I’ve explored in my earlier work, and until now, there’s never been a reliable biography that covered his entire career using the best available sources. I hoped that writing it would be a real intellectual adventure, and it was.

Why should SFF fans in general and Hugo voters in particular read this book?

Norman Spinrad once referred to Fuller as “a science fiction hero in the real world,” and his career offers a case study in how a certain kind of technologist might attempt to realize these ideals in practice. Fuller believed in solving social problems through design and engineering rather than politics or activism, which was part of the reason that he had such an impact on so many key players in the personal computer revolution. His approach didn’t always work as intended, and I see him as both a role model and a cautionary tale for enacting the values of science fiction in real life. (The book also features cameo appearances from numerous science fiction writers, including H.G. Wells, L. Ron Hubbard, and Arthur C. Clarke.)

Do you have any cool facts or tidbits that you unearthed during your research, but that did not make it into the final book?

One fact that I discovered too late to include in the book is that the director George Miller—of Max Max fame—is a huge Fuller fan. According to a recent profile in the New York Times, a lecture by Fuller that Miller attended in medical school inspired him to pursue filmmaking as well as medicine: “He synthesized so much that was rumbling around loosely [in] my mind.”

SFF-related non-fiction is somewhat sidelined by the big genre awards, since the Nebulas have no non-fiction category and the Best Related Work Hugo category has become something of a grab bag of anything that doesn’t fit elsewhere. So why do you think SFF-related non-fiction is important?

There are dozens of books that ought to be written about the history of science fiction, both because it’s inherently fascinating and for the insights that it can provide for authors and fans who are trying to make sense of the genre for themselves. (I’ve learned a lot about how to survive as a writer—and as a human being—from the lives that I’ve studied.) Since the financial rewards for this kind of work aren’t always great, a Hugo Award that was expressly designed to honor serious nonfiction would encourage a wider range of scholars, which is why I’m in favor of establishing a separate category for Best Nonfiction Book, while keeping Best Related Work as it is.

Are there any other great SFF-related non-fiction works or indeed anything else (books, stories, essays, writers, magazines, films, TV shows, etc…) you’d like to recommend?

The best works of SF nonfiction that I’ve ever read—aside from Astounding, of course—are probably Isaac Asimov’s memoirs In Memory Yet Green and In Joy Still Felt, as long as you remember that there are less attractive aspects of his personality, particularly his harassment of women, that aren’t reflected there.

Where can people buy your book?

Inventor of The Future will be available everywhere on August 2, although I’d prefer that people support their independent bookstores, e.g. by searching for the book on Indiebound.

Where can people find you?

I have a blog at www.nevalalee.com, which isn’t particularly active these days, although the “Science Fiction Studies” page includes hundreds of thousands of words of history and criticism that I wasn’t able to fit into Astounding. If you want to see what I’m currently doing, you can follow me on Twitter at @nevalalee.

Thank you, Alec, for stopping by and answering my questions.

Do check out Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller, which just came out yesterday. And if you haven’t read it already, also check out Alec’s other SFF-related non-fiction book Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction, which is probably my favourite non-fiction book of recent years.

About Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller:

From Alec Nevala-Lee, the author of the Hugo and Locus Award finalist Astounding, comes a revelatory biography of the visionary designer who defined the rules of startup culture and shaped America’s idea of the future. 

During his lifetime, Buckminster Fuller was hailed as one of the greatest geniuses of the twentieth century. As the architectural designer and futurist best known for the geodesic dome, he enthralled a vast popular audience, inspired devotion from both the counterculture and the establishment, and was praised as a modern Leonardo da Vinci. To his admirers, he exemplified what one man could accomplish by approaching urgent design problems using a radically unconventional set of strategies, which he based on a mystical conception of the universe’s geometry. His views on sustainability, as embodied in the image of Spaceship Earth, convinced him that it was possible to provide for all humanity through the efficient use of planetary resources. From Epcot Center to the molecule named in his honor as the buckyball, Fuller’s legacy endures to this day, and his belief in the transformative potential of technology profoundly influenced the founders of Silicon Valley.

Inventor of the Future is the first authoritative biography to cover all aspects of Fuller’s career. Drawing on meticulous research, dozens of interviews, and thousands of unpublished documents, Nevala-Lee has produced a riveting portrait that transcends the myth of Fuller as an otherworldly generalist. It reconstructs the true origins of his most famous inventions, including the Dymaxion Car, the Wichita House, and the dome itself; his fraught relationships with his students and collaborators; his interactions with Frank Lloyd Wright, Isamu Noguchi, Clare Boothe Luce, John Cage, Steve Jobs, and many others; and his tumultuous private life, in which his determination to succeed on his own terms came at an immense personal cost. In an era of accelerating change, Fuller’s example remains enormously relevant, and his lessons for designers, activists, and innovators are as powerful and essential as ever.

About Alec Nevala-Lee:

Alec Nevala-Lee was a 2019 Hugo and Locus Awards finalist for Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction, which was named one of the best books of the year by The Economist. His latest book is Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller (Dey Street Books / HarperCollins), which will be released on August 2. He is the author of three novels, including The Icon Thief, and his nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Slate, Salon, and The Daily Beast. His short stories have been published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Lightspeed, and two editions of The Year’s Best Science Fiction, as well as the audio collection Syndromes.

Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre: “Holiday on Orkas Island”

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

The small toy aisle at the German drugstore chain Rossmann has turned out to be an unlikely source of Masters of the Universe Origins toys, because they tend to have even hard-to-find figures at regular prices. And during my last visit to the local Rossmann store, I hit paydirt and found Clawful, the lobster-like Evil Warrior who is almost impossible to find in Germany. I got even luckier at the shoe shop next door and walked out with a pair of half-price Dockers.

Clawful is ready to wreak havoc with his claws and his club.

In the 1980s Filmation cartoon, Clawful looks quite different from his toy counterpart, probably because the cartoon was based on an early prototype. He also seems to be one of a kind. However, the 2002 He-Man cartoon reveals that there is a whole species of lobster people out there and that they hail from a place called Orkas Island, which also happens to be the retirement home of an aged warrior called Dekker, Duncan’s former mentor and predecessor at Man-at-Arms.

So I decided to send Prince Adam, Teela and Man-at-Arms on a well-deserved holiday and have Clawful and his fellow aquatic Evil Warrior Mer-Man cause some trouble. I also got out a bunch of maritime themed objects to serve as props.

On Orkas Island in the Ocean of Gnarl (yes, I looked up the names):

“I was a bit skeptical about leaving the palace unguarded at first, but this beach holiday was a great idea, Adam.”

“The palace will be fine, Teela. After all, your guards are there to watch over it. And I think we all needed a break from fighting the Evil Forces of Skeletor. Plus, you and I finally get to spend some time alone.”

“Yes, luckily my father decided to go fishing in that secluded cove that only he and Dekker know about.”

“Come to think of it, it is a bit strange that your father left so quickly.”

“By Zoar, you don’t think he knows, do you? I mean, we’ve been so careful.”

“Well, I still have all my body parts, so I don’t think he knows.”

“Don’t be silly! My Dad loves you. You’re the son he never had.”

“That doesn’t mean he thinks I’m good enough for his daughter.”

“You’re the Crown Prince of Eternia and Champion of Grayskull. If you’re not good enough for me, then who is?”

In a secluded cove nearby:

“I wonder how long I have to stay here and pretend to be fishing, so Adam and Teela can have some privacy. Sigh, I just wish they’d make it official, so we can all stop pretending we don’t know what they’re doing when they sneak off to be alone. Not that I never snuck off to meet my lover. Though I do hope I was a bit less obvious about it. Sigh, I just hope they’re careful. Not sure I’m ready for grandchildren yet. Yeah right, because I was so careful that I managed to get the Sorceress of Grayskull pregnant…”

Also nearby:

“Well, Skeletor is the Lord of Destruction, Beast-Man is the Master of Beasts, Evil-Lyn is the Mistress of Dark Magic and I shall be King of the Ocean.”

“No, I’m King of the Ocean.”

“And what about me?”

“You can be Lord of the Lobsters.”

“I’m not a lobster. Hey, check that out!”

“Yeah, it’s Prince Adam making out with Captain Teela. Again.”

“Right. Prince Adam and Teela.”

“Oh, and if we capture them, Skeletor will be so pleased that he’ll promote me to his right-fin man.”

“No, he’ll promote me to his right-claw man.”

Back on the beach:

“You’re wearing too many clothes, Adam.”

“Ahem, if you want He-Man, I told you that’s too dangerous. I could hurt you.”

“I don’t want He-Man, stupid, I want Adam… naked.”

“In that case, I think I can oblige.”

“Why is it that whenever I see Prince Adam, he’s either chained up in the dungeons of Snake Mountain or boning the Captain of the Royal Guard?”

“Well, I’ve also seen him standing next to the King at a public audience.”

“What were you doing at one of King Randor’s public audiences?”

“I was using the opportunity to scout out the palace and look for weaknesses, okay? Anyway, let’s go and get them!”

“Oh crap, it’s Mer-Man and Clawful. Is it too much to hope for some privacy around here? Is it too much to ask for a quiet day on the beach just once.”

“Let’s just kick their arses and get back to business.”

“Do you want to change? I can hold them off, while you run behind those rocks over there.”

“I don’t want to leave you alone. And besides, Prince Adam is enough for those guys.”

“What’s the matter, Your Highness? Are you waiting for He-Man to come and save your arse?”

“I don’t need He-Man to deal with the likes of you, Mer-Man.”

“Then bring it on, puny Prince!”

“Feel the power of my claws, Captain.”

“Feel the power of my staff, lobster face.”

“For the last time, I’m not a lobster.”

“Who’s puny now? Yield, Mer-Man!”

“That silly little shield won’t protect you from my club, Captain.”

“That’s a buckler, fish-face.”

“I’m not a fish either.”

“Now I’ve got you, my pretty. Skeletor will be very pleased about this catch.”

“Ah, let go off me!”

“Teela, no!”

Meanwhile, in a secluded cove nearby:

“Dekker was right, fishing can be very meditative. I think I’ve finally figured out how to fix that pesky induction coupling on the Road Ripper. Though if I don’t catch something soon, we’ll go hungry tonight, because I’m pretty sure Adam and Teela are way too busy with each other to catch any fish…”

“Aaahhh!”

“What’s that? Screams? By Zoar, what now? I’d better go investigate.”

“Oww, this hurts.”

“Let go off her, Clawful, and take on someone your own size.”

“Leave my daughter alone, you lobster-faced fiend!”

“For the last time, I’m not a lobster.”

“Touch my daughter again and I’ll make crab cakes out of you.”

“I’m not a crab either, I’m Karikoni. Is that so difficult to understand?”

“Teela, are you all right?”

“I’m fine, Adam. Just a little bruised, that’s all.”

“Uhm, I’d better make my escape. Let Clawful go to prison for this. After all, it was his idea.”

“Wait for me, Mer-Man!”

“Are you hurt, my daughter?”

“I’m fine, Dad. Just a few bruises.”

“Let me see. I just want to check if anything’s broken.”

“Thanks for the help, Duncan. Though I could have handled him.”

“Oh, I have no doubt of that, Adam.”

Later, on the beach:

“Well, after all that excitement, I’m certainly hungry. Good thing you caught that lobster, Duncan.”

“Well, I guess the two of you were much too busy to catch anything.”

“Busy with Clawful and Mer-Man, you mean?”

“Of course, what else would I mean?”

Meanwhile, back at Snake Mountain, Skeletor is having a shrimp boil of his own:

“You had Prince Adam and Teela in your claws and let them go? You’ll pay for that, you incompetent seafood platter.”

“No, Skeletor, I beg you, have mercy! Not the Old Bay!”

***

The Old Bay gag was inspired by my friend and fellow Hugo finalist Paul Weimer, who remarked that the Twitter version of this story was missing an Old Bay joke. And since I had a container of Old Bay seasoning in the pantry, I let Skeletor have a shrimp boil of his own.

I hope you enjoyed this Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre Photo Story. There will be more stories soon. Meanwhile, here is a preview of Coming Attractions:

Yes, I got myself a Castle Grayskull. Though it’s still in the box for now, because the space where I’m planning to set it up is not ready yet, because the carpenter is on holiday.

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.

First Monday Free Fiction: Bullet Holes

Welcome to the August 2022 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 story is called Bullet Holes and is part of my In Love and War space opera romance series. Anjali and Mikhail are two soldiers from opposite sides of an intergalactic war, who fell in love and decided to go on the run together, pursued by both sides. In this story, they have a run-in with Mikhail’s former superior and finds themselves dealing with…

Bullet Holes

Varishka was a miserable ball of ice and mud on the galactic rim, orbiting a distant sun. Its remoteness, hostile climate and a lack of useful resources meant that neither the Republic of United Planets nor the Empire of Worlds, the two powers that had divided the galaxy amongst themselves, had any interest in the planet. Those very same qualities, however, had made Varishka extremely interesting to the assortment of smugglers, pirates, outlaws, fugitives and other lowlives who had established a colony here.

Through the commercial district of Varishka’s capital, a man and a woman, both in their mid twenties, trudged side by side through the wet snow. Their pace was brisk, their movements in synch with each other, all of which suggested a close and intimate partnership.

The woman was short, with brown skin, sparkling dark eyes and thick black hair that fell loosely down her back in soft waves. She was Lieutenant Anjali Patel, formerly of the Imperial Shakyri Expeditionary Corps, now a deserter, traitor and wanted fugitive.

The man was tall with pale skin, striking blue eyes and long dark hair that he wore tied back in a ponytail at the nape of his neck. He was Captain Mikhail Alexeievich Grikov, formerly of the Republican Special Commando Forces, now a deserter, traitor and wanted fugitive, just like his partner.

Mikhail and Anjali had met on the battlefield of the eighty-eight year war that the Empire and the Republic had been waging on each other. Against all odds, they had fallen in love and decided to run away together to eek out a living in the independent worlds of the lawless rim. Neither the Republic nor the Empire were particularly happy about that.

Since they’d gone AWOL, Anjali and Mikhail had taken all sorts of odd jobs from anybody on the rim who required their particular skills and didn’t ask too many questions. Such as the smuggler who’d hired them to deliver a shipment of black market cyber-implants to her customer.

“I don’t like this,” Anjali said quietly to Mikhail, speaking in the Imperial tongue, so they wouldn’t be overheard, “We’re fighters, not smugglers.”

“We’re not the smugglers, just the delivery service,” Mikhail pointed out.

“We’re not couriers either.”

“I know. But the money is good and we need to replenish our funds.”

“It’s too good,” Anjali countered, “Who in their right mind would pay that much just for a courier? Especially since there are plenty of established courier services around who’ll work for much less.”

“Our client is also paying for the extra security.”

“Yeah, but why?” Anjali adjusted her shawl and kept her head down against the snow and the icy wind. “Sure, those implants are almost certainly smuggled and very probably stolen, but they’re still not valuable enough to require extra security to deliver.”

Mikhail winked at her. “Well, I for one am not going to ask the person who is paying us an obscene amount of money for an easy delivery job just why she feels the need to do so…”

Anjali scanned their surroundings, a warehouse district that seemed largely deserted. “Are you sure this is the right way?”

“Quite sure,” Mikhail replied, “In fact, our destination should be right ahead.”

Like all warriors of the Shakyri Corps, Anjali had an implanted compass, which facilitated navigation in unknown terrain. But that was nothing against Mikhail’s uncanny knack — enhanced by some Republican nano-tech wizardry — for effortlessly locating any place anywhere.

“Your sense of direction continues to amaze me,” she remarked, “One of these days, you have to tell me just how the Republic makes this work.”

Mikhail shrugged. “There’s no big secret to it. I’ve been to Varishka before, on an undercover mission last year. Still have a few friends here, too.”

“Friends of yours or of whatever alias you used back then?”

In his time with the Republican Special Commando Forces, Mikhail had been an undercover agent, operating under a dozen different names on countless different worlds. The fact that they were on the run frequently required Mikhail to slip back into one of those aliases, becoming a completely different person. Even after several months together, Anjali still found this disconcerting.

“Both, actually,” Mikhail replied, “Most people here on Varishka only know me as the smuggler and merc I pretended to be back then. But I ran into a spot of trouble and needed an emergency upgrade for my nano-agents, so a handful of people here know who I really am.”

“Do you trust them?” Anjali wanted to know.

“As much as I trust anybody. They’re no friends of the Republic nor the Empire, that much is for sure.”

“And they still helped you? Even knowing you were a Republican agent?”

Mikhail winked at her. “I can be very charming. And very persuasive.”

Anjali could attest to that. After all, she’d fallen for the charming and persuasive side of Mikhail long before she knew who he really was. Though his sense of unerring direction had been uncanny even back then.

“And even a year later, you still remember every street and every corner in this city?”

Mikhail flashed her a quick smile. “Like you said, I’ve got an excellent sense of direction.” He broke off abruptly. “We’re here.”

“Here” turned out to be a warehouse with windowless walls of corrugated steel, probably pre-fab. The building would have been utterly unremarkable, if not for the sheer amount of sensors and camera eyes studding the walls.

“Pretty heavy security,” Anjali remarked.

“Maybe they have reason to be cautious,” Mikhail whispered back, “After all, this world is a den of crooks and thieves, like you said earlier. So maybe they have powerful enemies.”

“If that’s the case, then let’s deliver the implants and begone, cause I’d rather not be dragged into any conflict with those powerful enemies.”

“Same here,” Mikhail agreed.

Anjali studied the warehouse again. “So how do we let them know we’re here? Cause I don’t see any door signal.”

Mikhail nodded at the camera eyes set into the walls that seemed to be following them, as they moved around the outside of the warehouse.

“I think they already know we’re here.”

As if on cue, a portion of the wall swung away.

***

Inside, it was dark. Anjali’s heightened senses could make out boxes stacked on both sides of a narrow passage that led towards a single light at the end.

Of course, boxes and labyrinthine passages in warehouses were not exactly uncommon, nonetheless something about the whole set-up gave Anjali that tell-tale prickle at the back of her neck that told her they were walking into a trap.

Her right hand drifted to the grip of her blaster, while her left reached for the hilt of her dagger, the signature weapon of the Shakyri Corps. She cast a sideways glance at Mikhail, which told her that his hand was resting on the grip of his blaster, too.

Their steps slowed, as they cautiously moved forward, Anjali using her genetically enhanced senses to scan for potential dangers ahead.

A normal, unenhanced human, and even Mikhail, who was far from normal, would never have picked up the subtle sounds near the pool of light at the end of the passage. But Anjali did. She picked up the quickened breaths of nervous humans, the slight shuffling of feet jockeying for a better position, the gentle clicks of blasters and rifles being readied for action.

“Mikhail,” she whispered, “Run.”

And not a moment too soon, before a volley of gunfire opened on them.

They ran back down the passage, dodging and swerving to avoid the blaster bolts and bullets — Honestly, bullets? Who the fuck used projectile weapons these days? — crisscrossing the warehouse, only to realise that the door at the far end had swung shut.

They were trapped.

Mikhail pushed Anjali into a side passage, really nothing more than a gap between two shipping containers, and took up position at the entrance to return fire at their attackers.

The overhead lights came on, blindingly bright, allowing them to finally see their pursuers.

“Mine or yours?” Anjali asked, her body flattened against the wall of the container.

“Mine, I fear,” Mikhail replied, “Republican Special Commando Forces, a squad in full armour.”

“Fuck,” Anjali exclaimed.

Both the Republic and the Empire were hunting them, eager to bring the deserters and traitors to justice. Though it seemed to Anjali that the Republic was more enthusiastic about it. Probably because Mikhail hadn’t just walked out on his comrades and his country, he’d also walked on his mentor, who just happened to be the Deputy Commander of the Republican Special Commando Forces and was apparently the type to hold grudges.

While Mikhail kept returning fire at his former comrades, Anjali scanned their surroundings for a way out, only to find that there was none. The side passage, into which they’d ducked, ended after a few meters at the exterior wall of the warehouse. And the only exit was the one they’d come in through.

“It’s a dead end,” she said to Mikhail, raising her voice over the roar of the guns, “We’re trapped.”

“Maybe not,” Mikhail replied, keeping his eyes focussed on the enemy, while his blaster spat fire, “The wall’s standard corrugated steel, not very thick. We should be able to blast our way out.”

With his free hand, Mikhail reached into his black synth-leather coat and produced a standard magnetic charge with a five second timer. He flashed her a devilish smile.

“Could you take over for a moment, while I make us an exit?”

Anjali returned his smile. “My pleasure.”

She crouched down at the entrance of the passage to pick off the advancing Republicans, while Mikhail planted the charges.

Mikhail had fired to slow down the Republican troopers, but Anjali shot to stop them. They had never been her comrades and brothers-in-arms, after all, so she felt no guilt at maiming or even killing any of them.

Though the troopers turned out to be damned hard to kill, but then they were the best and deadliest the Republic had to offer. Which was pretty damn good and pretty damn deadly — after all, Anjali knew what Mikhail was capable of. And so the Republicans were already uncomfortably close by the time Mikhail had finished setting the charges.

He shouted a warning and shielded Anjali with his own body, as the charges exploded. The smoke had barely cleared, when he was back on his feet again, dragging Anjali towards the hole in the wall.

Anjali was just about the clamber through the hole, when the Republicans burst around the corner and fired. Mikhail fired back, covering her, and then she was outside, running towards the nearest corner that would take them back into the labyrinthine alleys of the commercial district, where they could hopefully lose their pursuers.

Just before she rounded the corner, Anjali felt an impact on her left calf, followed by a stab of pain. One of the Republicans had gotten lucky.

Adrenaline flooded her system, dulling the pain and allowing her to run after Mikhail, keeping up with his pace with very little effort. Not a serious wound then, just a graze that would heal in no time. Though Mikhail would probably fuss about it.

***

After countless twists and turns that would have left Anjali completely disoriented, if not for her implanted compass (and all that did was tell her which way was north), they had finally lost their pursuers. At any rate, Anjali hadn’t seen any sign of Republican troopers since a few corners back.

So Mikhail and Anjali allowed themselves a brief moment of rest behind a stack of food crates in an alley behind a restaurant.

“Did we lose them?” Anjali asked.

Mikhail peered around the stack of crates. “I think so. Seems almost too easy. As if they weren’t all that interested in apprehending us.”

“Or maybe we’re just that good.”

“I recognised some of those troopers. They’re as good as I am.”

“Well, how do they say? Never look a gift horse in the mouth.”

There was an unpleasant sensation — not pain exactly, but pressure — where Anjali had been shot, so she shifted her weight onto the other leg, which caused Mikhail to spot the blood on her calf.

“You’re hurt.”

“It’s nothing. Just a graze “

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Because it’s nothing. One of those bastards got lucky, that’s all.”

“Sit down and let me take a look.”

Anjali shook her head. “There’s no time for that. And besides, I’ll heal.”

“I know that you will. But I’d like to take a look anyway.”

Because she knew that it was no use arguing with Mikhail, not where her health was concerned, Anjali obediently settled down on a crate and pulled up the hem of her utility pants to let Mikhail examine her injury.

On her left calf, there was a small round wound maybe a centimetre across. A projectile weapon then, not a blaster. Anjali should probably count herself lucky, since blasters left nasty burns, whereas projectile weapons left only holes.

There had been some bleeding, but it had stopped by now. And the wound was already closing thanks to the military grade nano-agents coursing through her bloodstream.

“See? It’s nothing.”

“Let me be the judge of that,” Mikhail said. He poked and prodded at the leg for a few moments, always extra careful not to hurt her. Then he produced a can of liquid bandage and sprayed it onto the wound.

“The projectile’s stuck inside your calf, but it hasn’t hit any bones or vital arteries. I’ll have to take it out later, but for now you should be able to walk, until we can find a place to lay low.”

“If the Republic’s here, we also need to warn Tyrone,” Anjali said.

“As soon as we’re safe.” Mikhail got up and helped Anjali to her feet.

She smiled at him. “See? I told you it’s noth… aahhh!”

“Anjali…” Mikhail wrapped his arms around her, steadying her. “…what is it? What’s wrong?”

“The bullet…” Anjali looked up at him, an expression of pure horror on her face. “…it’s moving.”

Smart bullets was what they were called. One of the many nasty inventions to come out of the weapons factories of the Republic. At first, they looked and behaved just like regular projectiles, but once they’d lodged themselves inside your body, they inevitably bored their way towards your heart, causing a lot of damage and excruciating pain along the way. They couldn’t be surgically removed either, since they tended to either explode or pump a load of lethal poison into the victim’s system. Though often, that was the kinder option.

Smart bullets had been banned by the Accords of Logabirum eight years ago and the Empire had never used them anyway, considering them cowardly weapons. But trust the Republican Special Commando Forces not to play by the rules.

Mikhail still held her crushed against his chest, while Anjali felt the bullet squirm its way up her leg. It wasn’t particularly fast, moving only a few millimetres per minute. But then it didn’t have to be fast. That way, the terror it inspired in the victim was even greater.

“What do we do?” she whispered, “Can’t the nanos take care of it?”

Mikhail shook his head. “Smart bullets can be programmed so that the nanos leave them alone. You’d need the exact frequency, of course, but…”

“…the Republic has that,” Anjali completed.

The Empire did not believe in nano-tech, one of the many things they did not believe in. And so the self-replicating, military grade nano-agents coursing through Anjali’s bloodstream had originally been Mikhail’s, a standard part of the enhancements all members of the Republican Special Commando Forces underwent. Anjali had ended up with them, when Mikhail gave her an emergency blood transfusion to save her life.

“So what do you do if you accidentally shoot one of your own people with one of those?” she wanted to know.

“There’s a deactivation code. Renders the bullet harmless.”

“So that’s why it was so easy to shake them off,” Anjali whispered. She still felt the bullet moving in her leg, so she clung even tighter to Mikhail, as if his solid presence could drive the pain and the horror away. “They never really wanted to capture us at all, they just wanted to tag us with the smart bullets to force us to surrender.”

Mikhail was about to say something, but then he clutched his right ear, as his old military com implant activated.

***

“Hi there, Grikov. Been a while.”

The voice that echoed through his com implant, a gruff and businesslike baritone that could be surprisingly kind on occasion, was one that Mikhail had known since he was eight years old.

“I trust you’ve found the bullet by now. Kendrick tells me he hit Patel in the leg.”

“Damn you, Brian. Damn you, you god-damned bastard.”

Mikhail felt Anjali’s questioning look on his face. His com implant was shielded from external eavesdroppers — even those with genetically enhanced Shakyri senses — so she could hear only his half of the conversation. He pulled her closer, as if his arms could shield her from the fate that awaited her.

“How could you do something like this? You know what those god-damned things do to human beings.”

“Yes, I do,” Brian Mayhew, Deputy Commander of the Republican Special Commando Forces and the closest thing Mikhail had to a steady presence in his life since he’d lost his family at the age of eight, said, “I know the effects of a smart bullet as well as you.”

There was a pause and some faint clicking in the background, which told Mikhail that Mayhew was reviewing information.

“Kendrick says he hit Patel in the calf. That means she has what… six hours, maybe eight. Though she’ll probably be begging for death long before then.”

“You fucking bastard!”

“I know you love the girl,” Mayhew continued, his tone surprisingly gentle, “I know you don’t want to see her suffer. So here’s the deal: Surrender, both of you, and you have my word that the smart bullet will be deactivated.”

“What does he want?” Anjali whispered.

“Surrender and he’ll deactivate the bullet,” Mikhail whispered back.

“So I can stand upright, when we face the firing squad? Screw that. Do you hear me, Mayhew? Screw you. There will be no deal.”

“I hear Lieutenant Patel is still spirited as ever, even in the face of an excruciating death,” Mayhew said, “I can understand what you see in her, Mikhail, I really can.”

“Damn you, Brian, why couldn’t you just leave us alone?”

“Because this is war, Mikhail. And war requires harsh measures. I know that and once you did, too.”

“You also once believed that torturing and abusing prisoners was wrong,” Mikhail countered.

There was a brief pause, which told Mikhail that his words had hit whatever shreds of a conscience Mayhew had left.

“I still do,” he said, “But I have my orders and orders must be obeyed, no matter our feelings.” There was another pause. “You once understood that, too.”

“Maybe I did,” Mikhail said, “Maybe I once followed orders without questioning. But then I opened my eyes and saw what we did. I saw what we did to Anjali, what we did at Unity, what we did during so many other missions. It’s wrong, Brian. What we did was wrong. And I want no more part of it.”

“You can argue about the morality of our actions at your trial,” Mayhew said, “And yes, you have my word that you will get a fair trial, though that’s all I can do for you.”

Mikhail had seen too many “fair trials” to know that the conclusion was foregone. If the Republic ever got their hands on him, he’d face the firing squad. And unlike many others who’d gotten fair trials at the hands of a Republican military tribunal, Mikhail had at least done most of the things he was accused of.

But this was no longer just about him. There was someone else in his life now, someone who meant everything to him, someone it was worth going to the firing squad for.

“And Anjali? What about her?”

“Surrender and we will deactivate the bullet.”

“And then? Will you promise that you’ll let her go, if I surrender? I’m the one you want, the traitor and deserter. Not her.”

Mayhew emitted a small sigh. “You know I can’t do that, Mikhail. Patel is still an enemy combatant and prisoner of war and she’ll be treated accordingly.”

“What will happen to her?”

Mayhew’s voice was final. “You know what. And for the record, I don’t like it either.”

Six months ago, Brian Mayhew had ordered Mikhail, then still a loyal officer of the Republican Special Commando Forces, to seduce and capture a member of the Shakyri Corps and bring her back, so Republican scientists could finally figure out just how the genetic enhancements the Empire used on the Shakyri warriors worked. Unfortunately, the only way to do that was via vivisection.

It would be painless, Mayhew had assured him. Anjali would be sedated all the time, she wouldn’t feel a thing. Nonetheless, Mikhail found that he could not consign another human being to such a fate, let alone the woman he’d fallen in love with. And so he’d taken Anjali and went on the run with her, leaving behind the only life he’d ever known. It was a decision he’d never regretted.

“You’re not honestly thinking of surrendering, are you?” Anjali wanted to know.

Mikhail shook his head. “It wouldn’t change a thing. You’d be dead either way and I’d be facing the firing squad or serving a life sentence.” He shot her a questioning look. “Unless you’d rather avoid the pain…?”

“I’m a Shakyri,” Anjali said through gritted teeth, “We’re not afraid of pain. And this way, you’ll at least be free and alive.”

Only that it wouldn’t matter without her. Anjali was his life, his light, his love. In not yet thirty years of life, Mikhail had already lost more than any one person should lose. He was not going to lose her, too.

“All right,” Mayhew’s voice said in his ear, “Now you’ve had the time to discuss the matter among yourselves, what is your answer?”

“The same one Anjali already gave you,” Mikhail said, his lips twisting into a feral smile, for an alternative plan had begun to form in his mind. All right, so it was really just a vague possibility, but anything was better than certain death for both of them.

“Screw you, Brian.”

“I’d really hoped you’d be reasonable, Mikhail,” Mayhew said, “Because now you force me to do this.”

Anjali cried out, as her wounded leg suddenly gave way beneath her. She would have fallen, if Mikhail hadn’t caught her.

“The bullet just released some of its poison load,” Mayhew said calmly, “For now, the leg is merely paralysed. Not fatal or irreversible, but she won’t be able to walk, unless I enter the deactivation code. It will also dull the pain, at least for a while. Call it an extra incentive.”

“Damn you, you fucking bastard,” Mikhail said, “If she dies, I swear that I’ll kill you.” He cut the connection.

Anjali clung to him, her face lined in pain. “Mikhail, what…?”

“The smart bullet injected a paralytic agent into your leg,” Mikhail explained, “Mayhew’s idea of an incentive.”

He swept Anjali up in his arms.

“It will only get worse, will it?”

Mikhail nodded.

“If… if it comes to the worst, you’ll be there, will you? Hold my hand, so I won’t have to face the end alone? Like you promised?”

Last year, when Anjali had still been his prisoner, slated for vivisection at the hands of the researchers of the Scientific Council, Mikhail had promised her that he wouldn’t leave her to face her fate alone, that he’d be with her till the end, holding her hand. It was a promise he’d hoped he would never have to keep.

Mikhail crushed her tighter to his chest and buried his face in her hair. “Of course, I’ll be there for you. I’ll always be there for you. And I won’t let you die.”

“I don’t think you’ll have much of a say about that,” Anjali whispered against his chest, “That thing is inside me now and we can’t get it out. Just promise me that no matter how bad it gets, you won’t surrender to Mayhew. I don’t want you suffering and dying on my behalf.”

“It’s not over yet,” Mikhail said, his voice choked with unshed tears, “I have a plan. It’s not a very good plan, but it might just work.”

“Right now any plan sounds good,” Anjali said weakly, “As long as it doesn’t involve surrendering.”

Once Anjali was settled in his arms, Mikhail strode off through the swirling snow, his nano-enhanced muscles carrying her as if she weighed nothing at all.

“Mayhew made a mistake,” he said grimly, “He shouldn’t have staged his ambush on a world I know better than he does, a world where I have friends.”

***

Some twenty minutes later, Mikhail Grikov burst into a non-descript shop in a side street, accompanied by a blast of icy wind and a flurry of snowflakes. Above the door, a buzzing red neon sign grandly proclaimed “Medical Clinic”. “Treatment against cash only” a smaller sign announced on the door itself.

Behind the door lay a small lobby, really just a few battered aluminium chairs and a counter. Behind the counter sat a pleasant-faced woman, watching a vid melodrama on her screen. She was in her thirties, with rosy cheeks and brown hair pulled back at the nape of her neck. The woman was dressed in a nurse’s uniform that had seen better days. A golden crucifix was gleaming at her throat.

As the door opened, a chime sounded. The woman behind the counter looked up to see Mikhail standing before her, the unconscious Anjali cradled in his arms. Recognition lit up her face.

“Mikhail?” the woman exclaimed, “You vanish for… like… a whole year and then you walk back in, as if nothing happened.”

“I’ll explain later, Sladjana,” Mikhail said, “But right now I need your help. Yours and Drago’s.”

Sladjana took one look at the unconscious Anjali and asked, “For her? What happened?”

“We got into a fire fight and she was shot.”

Sladjana sighed. “Will you ever come to see us when you’re not in dire trouble?”

“I was going to see you. Trouble just caught up with us first.” Mikhail took a deep breath. “You and Drago are our only hope. We can’t go anywhere else.”

Sladjana nodded. “I see. Bring her right in then.” She swept aside the plastic curtain that led to the treatment area. “I’ll fetch Drago.”

The treatment room looked just as bad as Mikhail remembered it. The place was grimy and dirty, more butcher’s shop than medical facility. The floor tiles were cracked, the steel walls rusty, the ventilation system hissing like a late stage lung cancer patient. The smell was appalling, the floor stained with splatters of blood and other, even less savoury bodily fluids. It looked more like a torture chamber than a place of treatment.

But beggars couldn’t be choosers. And besides, Drago Drakovic was the best black market cybersurgeon on the rim. If anybody could remove the bullet from Anjali’s leg without killing her, it was Drago.

Mikhail carried Anjali over to the treatment chair and laid her down. The chair was in no better condition than the rest of the clinic. It was at least forty years old and looked as if Drago had liberated it from a junkyard. The synth-leather covering was grimy and patched with duct tape in many places, but the chair was fully functional. The tiles underneath were splattered with old blood, while the instrumentation above the chair — designed and assembled by Drago himself — looked positively sinister.

But in spite of the dismal surroundings in which he worked, Drago knew his job. Mikhail had met him and his sister Sladjana during his undercover mission last year, when Mikhail had been hit with a pulse gun that had caused the nanos in his bloodstream to go awry. Drago had managed to reprogram the nanos and done his job so well that even the head of the medical facility of the Special Commando Forces had been impressed.

Draco and Sladjana had also kept the truth about Mikhail’s identity to themselves, even though they could probably have earned a load of credits, if they’d sold him out to one of the many crime syndicates operating on Varishka. They were friends and Mikhail didn’t have many of those.

On the chair, Anjali moaned and Mikhail brushed her sweat-matted hair from her forehead. He hated seeing her like this, hated what Mayhew and his bullet had done to her, were doing to her.

He knelt beside the chair and took her hand in his, just like he’d promised. “Don’t worry, I’m here. I’ll always be here,” he whispered and pressed a kiss onto the back of her hand.

Anjali had lost consciousness sometime ago, while Mikhail carried her through the streets of Varishka City. But though she likely couldn’t hear him, couldn’t feel his hand clutching hers, it nonetheless seemed to him as if she became calmer.

“Mikhail?”

Drago stepped into the treatment parlour, followed by Sladjana. He had the same round face, ruddy cheeks and brown hair as his sister. It made him look jovial in spite of his sinister profession. As always, Drago was dressed in a simple grey coverall and boots of black plastic, encrusted with all sorts of substances. Over the coverall, he wore a plastic apron that had once been white, a long time ago.

“It’s been ages. Where have you been, old friend?”

“I’ll explain later,” Mikhail repeated, “But right now, we need your help.”

Drago spotted the patient on the treatment chair and promptly became all businesslike.

“All right, who is she? And what happened?”

“She’s my partner,” Mikhail replied, “And she’s got a smart bullet stuck in her left leg.”

“Oh my God,” Sladjana exclaimed and crossed herself.

“A smart bullet?” Drago said, “Fuck. I thought only you guys had those toys.”

Mikhail winced. “It was one of ‘my guys’ who shot her.”

“Your guys?” Sladjana said, “But I thought…”

Mikhail took a deep breath. Might as well let it all out. “I’m no longer with the Republican Special Commando Forces. I’m… well, technically I’m a traitor and deserter.”

Drago emitted a deep belly laugh and clapped Mikhail on the back. “Ah, so you’ve finally decided to take my advice and took your skills to the free market.”

Mikhail was about to point out that it hadn’t been that way, not really. But there were more important things to attend to, such as Anjali.

Drago had already put on his cyberhelmet, which made him look like an insectoid alien from a horror vid. He bent down to examine Anjali.

“How long ago was she shot?”

“Half an hour maybe,” Mikhail replied, “The bullet went into her calf. We thought everything was okay, until it started moving.”

“She looks in a bad way for only half an hour,” Drago remarked.

“My… the bastard who once was my commander had the bullet release a paralytic agent as an extra incentive.”

“A paralysing smart bullet as an incentive?” Sladjana exclaimed in horror, “Goodness, Mikhail, what did you do to piss those people off?”

Mikhail flashed her a wry smile. “Fall in love,” he said, “With an officer of the Imperial Shakyri Expeditionary Corps.”

“Is that who she is?” Sladjana asked, “I thought the symbol on her dagger looked familiar.”

“She’s a Shakyri?” Drago wanted to know, “Damn, I’ve never met one of them before. If only half of the things they say about them are true…”

“Most of them are true,” Mikhail said, “Can you help her, Drago? She… she means everything to me.”

In response, Drago flipped up his helmet. “I think I can. Though you will have to donate some of your nano-agents to her.”

Mikhail shook his head. “Not necessary. I already did. Emergency transfusion.”

Drago raised an eyebrow. “Looks like you’ll have a bunch of stories to tell after we finish with your partner here.”

“But the nanos aren’t affecting the bullet,” Mikhail said, “My former bosses programmed the projectile so the nanos would ignore it.”

Drago flashed him a smug smile. “Yeah, but nanos can be reprogrammed. As you should well know. And now get out of the way, while I do my job. Sladjana, strap her down.”

Sladjana stepped forward to close the straps that held the patient on the treatment chair. And though Anjali was unconscious, she began to thrash about.

Mikhail squeezed her hand. “It’s all right. They’re friends and they’re here to help.”

Anjali promptly calmed down, allowing Sladjana to tighten the straps.

“Mikhail…” Drago said warningly. His helmet was down again, his voice muffled.

“Why don’t you go to the waiting room and have a cup of coffee?” Sladjana said gently, “There’s nothing you can do here.”

Mikhail knew that there was nothing he could do, that Anjali’s life lay in Drago’s hands now. But he still had a promise to keep.

“Can I stay, please? I promised that I’d always be with her and hold her hand.”

“His presence seems to calm her,” Sladjana whispered to her brother.

Drago finally relented. “All right, you may stay. But keep out of my way and don’t argue.”

“Wouldn’t think of it.” Mikhail moved out of the way to let Drago and Sladjana work, never letting go of Anjali’s hand. “And Drago… thank you.”

“That’s what friends are for,” Drago mumbled and got to work.

***

A tense four hours later, Anjali came to again. Her leg hurt, dulled by what had to be some heavy-duty painkiller, but otherwise she was still very much alive to her own surprise.

She blinked, blinded by the surgery lights that were shining down on her, way too bright. When she opened her eyes again, she found Mikhail smiling down at her. His hand was entwined with hers, just as he’d promised her all those months ago.

“Hi there,” he said.

“Hi yourself.” Anjali attempted a smile, though she wasn’t sure whether she succeeded. “What happened?” She remembered the shot, the bullet moving up her leg, the pain. “The bullet, what…?”

“It’s gone.” Mikhail squeezed her hand. “You’re safe.”

“But I…I thought it couldn’t be removed.” A horrible thought dawned on her. “You… you didn’t surrender, did you? This isn’t the last time I get to see you, before they haul me off to the lab and you before the firing squad?”

“No, of course not.” Mikhail bent down and planted a kiss on her forehead. “You know I wouldn’t surrender.”

“But then how?”

“That would be thanks to me,” a new voice said. A second later, a man in his thirties with a round, jolly face and a shock of brown unruly hair appeared in her field of vision. “I reprogrammed the nano-agents in your bloodstream to recognise and neutralise the smart bullet, so I could remove it.” He held up a gleaming projectile covered in circuitry. “I’ve got it here, just in case you want a souvenir.”

“Not particularly, no,” Anjali said. She shot Mikhail a questioning look. “Who…?”

Mikhail smiled. “Allow me to introduce you to my good friend Drago Drakovic, the best black market cybersurgeon on the rim.”

Mikhail turned to the surgeon. “Drago, this is Anjali Patel, my love and partner in crime.”

The surgeon, Drakovic, took Anjali’s free hand and shook it. “Well, after poking around in your body, it’s a pleasure to finally meet the woman who persuaded Mikhail here to turn his back on the Republic. And may I just say that I’m extremely impressed by everything I’ve heard about the Shakyri Corps, Ms. Patel?”

“Th… thank you,” Anjali said, “For everything.”

Mikhail and Drakovic turned around, as a third person entered the room. A few seconds later, a woman who shared Drakovic’s round face and brown hair, looked down at Anjali.

“Oh, I see the patient is awake,” the woman said, “Just in time, too, cause I’ve made a pot of pasulj.” She smiled at Anjali, a pleasant smile. “Now that horrible bullet is out, a good hot bowl of pasulj will make you feel better in no time.”

Noticing Anjali’s questioning glance, Mikhail said, “This is Sladjana, Drago’s sister. They’re both very good friends.”

Those had to be the friends he’d mentioned earlier then.

“Pleased to meet you both,” Anjali said, “I have just one question. What is pas…?”

“Pasulj? It’s bean soup. A good hearty bean soup.”

Anjali attempted another smile. “Bean soup sounds excellent. Though where I come from, we call it dal.”

“You’ll have to tell us all about that,” Sladjana said, “And how the two of you met, of course. It must have been very romantic.”

Anjali and Mikhail exchanged a glance.

“We first met in a luxury resort on Brahimi Prime…” Anjali began.

“We danced, walked along the beach, went sailing,” Mikhail continued.

Sladjana clapped her hands. “Oh, that sounds very romantic.”

“It was,” Anjali said, “For a while. Until the Republic showed up and ruined everything. Then it was just dark cells, restraints and sensory deprivation masks…”

Mikhail reached for her hand and squeezed it, a silent apology for the role he’d played in her capture. Anjali returned the squeeze and smiled at him.

It’s okay. I forgive you. I forgave you a long time ago.

“And then we spent several days trapped in a crashed spaceship in the frozen wastes of Brahimi Tertius,” Mikhail continued, “We fought, talked…”

“…and in the end, we decided that we’d rather be together and free than prisoners of our respective governments,” Anjali completed, “And that’s how we ended up here on the rim.”

“That sounds like one hell of a story,” Drago said.

“And we’d just love to hear more about it over dinner,” Sladjana said and helped Anjali to her feet, “But now come. The pasulj is waiting.”

Anjali began to follow her, but she was still a little wobbly on her feet and promptly swayed. Mikhail was by her side at once, supporting her.

“Easy,” Drago said, “I may have taken out the bullet, but you’re still weak.”

He lowered his voice. “Not that I mind having the two of you stay with us, but if your people are here on Varishka…”

He nodded to Mikhail.

“…you should find passage of planet ASAP.”

“I know,” Mikhail said.

“Any ideas?”

Mikhail and Anjali exchanged a glance.

“There’s a freighter in port,” Mikhail finally said, “The Freedom’s Horizon. The Captain and the crew are friends and they’ve helped us before. I hate to involve them in this again, but…”

“…it looks like we have no choice,” Anjali completed, “We’ll have to warn them anyway. After all, they helped us to escape from Metra Litko and I’m pretty sure Mayhew is the sort to hold grudges.”

“Then you’d best call them,” Drago said, “Soon.”

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.

Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month for July 2022

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, epic fantasy, sword and sorcery, fantasy romance, paranormal romance, paranormal mystery, science fiction romance, space opera, military science fiction, weird western, horror, wizards, werewolves, domens, elves, fox shifters, Greek mythology, alien invasions, space marines, space pirates, space cops, crime-busting witches, haunted streetcars 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 Princess Paradigm by Lindsay Buroker:

Elven princesses aren’t supposed to fall for brutish human warriors, especially not warriors from an empire of ferocious conquerers.

But when the tattooed Colonel Mrothgar stalks into the elven court, claiming to be there on a diplomatic mission, Princess Hysithea has to learn more about him.

Not because he’s handsome and his smile makes her insides melt. As a princess, it’s her duty to protect her people, and she needs to find out if the colonel is a threat to them.

But what if the answer is yes? And what if her heart leads her astray?

She can’t protect her people if she falls in love with the man who wants to conquer them.

Corsairs: Mathiras by Ruby Dixon:

Someone is illegally stealing humans from their home world and cloning them.

For months, we’ve been hunting this ring of criminals and the end is in sight. I’m separating from my brothers and taking my ship to track down the bad guys.

One small problem — Helen insists upon joining me on this dangerous mission.

Helen herself is a clone, created to be an object of beauty. She’s not safe if she goes with me, as her kind are coveted all across the universe. But she’s not interested in staying safe. She’s interested in staying at my side…and tempting me to kiss her.

And kef me, is it ever a temptation.

Am I really going to run headlong into danger with the universe’s most beguiling female at my side? Am I going to be able to resist her charms?

(I think we all know the answers to those questions.)

Underworld Elements by Rachel Ford:

They say the only guarantees in life are death and taxes, but they forget crime.

Not Space Station Frontera’s Marshal Kalandri, though. Crime is her business. And on Frontera, a port truly on the frontier of inhabited space? Well, job security is never a worry.

When a station-wide power outage enables a brazen heist, Kalandri is tasked with finding the culprits and retrieving the stolen goods. She knows just who is behind it, too.

Dani “Dusty” Agincourt: the beautiful underworld queen who always seems to be one step ahead of the law.
Proving it is going another thing altogether, though – because Dusty has covered her tracks, and covered them well.

When the privateer ship Black Flag pulls into port with the parts needed to fix the power system – and an unexpected stowaway – things go from bad to worse. Because that’s when the killings start.

To stop a ruthless assassin, the lawwoman and the underworld queen are going to have to strike a truce. It’s a risky business, and Kalandri knows she’ll regret it.

If she lives that long, anyway.

Space Station Frontera is an all-new space opera series in the Black Flag world. It features new characters and new adventures, and can be read independently of the Black Flag series.

Judas Kiss by Rachel Ford:

Mercy is weakness. Forgiveness is blasphemy. Sin is crime.

Agata and Father Edlin have made a new life on a colony of outcasts and fugitives far beyond the tyranny of the Union. He practices his heretical faith in freedom, without fear of prosecution, and she and her little ship supply their colony. Life is good.

And then an old friend – and sometimes enemy – arrives, with a desperate plea for help. Soon, they find themselves back in the Union, racing against time to unravel a terrible conspiracy.

A conspiracy that might blow the Union apart at the seams and ignite an intergalactic holy war in the process.

A holy war that will destroy them and any hope of a new life.

Witch at the End of the Tunnel by Lily Harper Hart:

Vanity is the one thing Hali Waverly has never understood. That’s about to become a weakness.

Life at the Salty Cauldron is going well…right up until a body washes onto the beach. The dead woman, who is forty years younger than her husband, had a run-in with Hali in her tiki bar the previous day. Authorities assume it was an accidental drowning, but a mark on the dead woman’s neck gives Hali pause.

Grayson Hunter finds himself in a pickle when the identity of the body becomes public. Seems he was the one hired by the victim’s husband to investigate her extra-curricular activities. Surprisingly enough, it turns out she wasn’t having an affair. That doesn’t mean she wasn’t up to something nefarious.

Crossing paths has Hali and Gray partnering up for a second time, and as tense as things are between them, things are worse when they enter the world of Selfie Planet, the victim’s place of business.

Vanity goes by many names, has many faces. The one Gray and Hali find themselves facing off with is dark and menacing. There’s more going on than selfies and rampant narcissism, however. There’s also a mirror monster and several soulless individuals walking around making things worse.

Separately, Hali and Gray are forces to be reckoned with. Together, they can handle almost anything…except maybe this.

Worlds are about to collide, and nothing will ever be the same again.

Harmony and Disharmony by Bill Hiatt:

Orpheus is not interested in inheriting his father’s throne. He wants nothing more than to use music to bring joy to his fellow mortals. Jason believes that nothing is more important than wresting his father’s throne from a usurper. He wants to perform heroic feats that will earn him as much glory as possible. Under ordinary circumstances, Orpheus and Jason would probably never have met. Certainly, they would never have been allies. But scheming gods plunge them into adventures greater than either of them has ever imagined. Both of them want to achieve their respective dreams. But facing hostile armies, monsters, and even conflicts among the gods will force them into horrible dilemmas. Will they sacrifice their dreams, or will they die trying to preserve them?

Invasion by Joshua James:

THEY INVADED.
THEY CONQUERED.
THEY UNDERESTIMATED.

The War of the Worlds gets turbocharged in this nonstop action-packed thriller about a group of survivors thrust into extraordinary circumstances.

When aliens arrive on Earth, the tiny town of Little Creek isn’t any more prepared than the rest of the planet.

Without warning or provocation, the otherworldly creatures begin to lay waste to everything.

In the chaos that follows, an unlikely group bands together:

A beauty queen with something to prove…
A shopkeeper with something to hide…
A shellshocked teenager set on revenge…
And a world-weary veteran desperate to save them all.

As time runs out, this ragtag crew must find a way to fight back against the alien forces massing around them.

What are they? What do they want? How can they be stopped?

If they fail, it won’t just be Little Creek that is lost.

It will be all of humanity.

A Book of Blades, edited by Matt 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 find stories lovingly crafted from Heroic Fantasy greats such as Howard Andrew Jones, John R. Fultz, and John C. Hocking. At their side are up and coming genre authors Chuck Clark, T.A. Markitan, Cora Buhlert, and many more.

Includes artwork from various artists, including Morgan King, director of Spine of the Night, and Sara Frazetta, granddaughter of the Legend himself!

Witch Is the Word by Amanda M. Lee:

Hadley Hunter is finally getting a handle on life as a witch. Island living isn’t always beautiful sunsets and fruity cocktails, but things have never been better…until a body washes up on the beach during a private picnic with her boyfriend Galen Blackwood.

The body belongs to a local business manager, who just happens to be married to the daughter of one of the richest men on the island. Unfortunately for their victim, nobody – including his wife and daughters – seems to care that he’s gone. The deeper they dig, the more dirt they come up with on the victim … and the clues lead them straight to the isolated coven on the far side of the island.

Hadley doesn’t know a lot about witches, including herself, but what she learns doesn’t leave her with warm and fuzzy feelings. These witches mean business, and they’re intent on keeping their secrets from seeing the light of day.

When more bodies start dropping, all coven members, Hadley realizes something very big is about to happen. What, though?
With Galen and their friends at her side, Hadley is ready to engage in a new type of battle. This one is bigger than witches because it leads right through the heart of the island’s government body, the terrifying DDA.

Hadley thought she was adjusting but things are about to change. The question is, when the dust settles, who will be left standing and what side will they be on?

Sinister Magic by N.P. Martin:

A Dead Witch. A Dark Elf. An Avenging Wizard

The name’s Corvin Chance, and though I was born with magical abilities, I’d rather be playing my guitar in one of my local pubs than running around flashing my magic.

Until someone murdered my mother that is.

Now I’m slinging magic around the streets of Dublin as I try to find out who killed her. A gangster elf who crowned himself the king of the south is my main suspect. But besides being powerful and sociopathic, the elf is also part of a murderous cabal that includes a bloodthirsty vampire prince. I’m good, but not that good.

Luckily, I have my two best friends: Dalia, a sardonic Demi-Fae who could scare the bejeezus out of Lucifer himself; and Monty, a wise-cracking street magician and YouTube star with a gift for cybermancy and conjuring.

Together we will enter a dangerous Dublin underbelly populated by dark elves, vampires, goblins, and orcs to discover just who killed my mother and why… if we don’t die ourselves first, that is.

Join me and my oddball motley crew as we attempt to solve a murder, exact justice and just maybe… get a pint of the black stuff afterwards.

Last Car to Annwn Station by Michael Merriam:

One week to save the child, bargain with Death and get the girl…

Child Protective Services Attorney Maeve Malveaux is sure that Chrysandra Arneson needs to be rescued from her rich, powerful and abusive family. But how? Her boss won’t listen to her and neither will the judge. But after she gets taken off the case and sent on involuntary leave to get her out of the way, she’s determined to find out what’s going on.

She’s not counting on joining forces with Jill, the gorgeous law librarian from work, and a mismatched collection of fairy folk. Or getting the ghostly assistance of the long-defunct Minneapolis streetcar system. And, perhaps, even a hand from Death himself. Mae and Jill are about to be caught up in a supernatural power struggle that will take them on an adventure from the Uptown neighborhood in Minneapolis into faery realms and beyond. All they need is a dime for the streetcar fare and a little help from their new allies to be on their way. But will it be enough to save a little girl and get them where they need to go? They’ve only got a week to find out…

I Have Asked To Be Where No Storms Come by Gwendolyn N. Nix:

The demons are coming, and Hell’s coming with them.

A weird west alternate history horror novel set in Hell. “…like Stephen King and Cormac McCarthy teaming up to reboot Dante’s Inferno as a Western.”—Michael Pogach

The facts of Domino Bluepoint’s afterlife are simple in this horror adventure: he’s a half-breed witch from a people without a name, and no one wants to be stuck in Hell with witch blood.

When a demon bounty-hunter comes calling, Domino pairs up with his mother, who died too young and carries the witch lineage in her veins, to survive. Soon the two of them are Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid running from whatever torture awaits them and whoever wants to harvest their magic.

Yet, Domino doesn’t know that his brother, Wicasah, is behind this and is desperate to resurrect Domino out of long-lasting guilt and a sensation of belonging to no place and no one.

As Wicasah dives deeper into darker magic that ends in an ill-made deal, Domino must overcome addiction, depression, and hone his own brand of witch-magic to help save his brother—and the world—from an ancient god.

I Have Asked to be Where No Storms Come is perfect for fans of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, supernatural fiction, dark fantasy, adult horror books.

Proudly represented by Crystal Lake Publishing—Tales from the Darkest Depth.

Fox Heart by Hollis Shiloh:

There are too many cops in my life. First there’s Ken, the guy I’ve been seeing. I’ve been his secret for far too long. Now he wants to join the Shifters and Partners organization—with me as his partner.

I’m not convinced. There’s also this wolf hanging around now. Eli works with the cops, and he’s awfully easy to get a rise out of. But he’s also kind of my friend now. And he’s…hot?

Fox shifters and wolf shifters don’t mix. Everybody knows that. But this situation is starting to get tricky for my poor heart.

What am I supposed to do when love is always just around the corner—for somebody else, but not for me?

Discretion by Glynn Stewart:

A crew, scattered across enemy lines
A father, separated from his daughter
A daughter who will not wait for rescue

The bounty for bringing down a major crime syndicate may have removed Captain Evridiki “EB” Bardacki’s immediate financial needs, but no freighter captain wants to fly empty between the stars.

A cargo mission to run a blockade seems within his crew’s unique mix of talents, and he agrees to supply weapons to one side of a stalemated civil war in the Estutmost star system.

The sudden collapse of the stalemate puts EB on the wrong side of the front lines from his adopted daughter.

He took down a crime syndicate to protect her once—what’s a planetary military or two?

Breaker Marine by James David Victor:

As a breaker, she was destined to live a hard life serving the whims of galactic corporations. As an Earth Alliance Marine, she has a chance to change the balance of power in the galaxy.

Holly Cropper grew up as a Breaker, mining the outer reaches of space. Now, she’s an up-and-coming lieutenant in the Earth Alliance Marines. Her mission: keep the peace and help humanity survive in the endless darkness of space. When a distress call comes in from a large mining vessel, her orderly world gets turned upside down. What starts with a simple pirate takeover turns into a hostile alien invasion. This Breaker Marine and her small team might be the only thing standing between humanity and annihilation at the hands of ancient aliens.

Breaker Marine is the first book in the Star Breaker series. If you like fast-paced space adventures with interesting characters who battle aliens, evil corporations, and space pirates, Holly Cropper and her team of Marines are ready to share their epic adventure with you.

Indie Crime Fiction of the Month for July 2022

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,  historical mysteries, Jazz Age mysteries, paranormal mysteries, crime thrillers, adventure thrillers, legal thrillers, police procedurals, romantic suspense, police officers, FBI agents, lawyers, journalists, amateur sleuths, missing persons, serial killers, poachers, crime-busting witches, crime-busting socialites, crime-busting realtors, murder and mayhem in London, Edinburgh, Cornwall, South Dakota, Michigan, Florida 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:

Murder, Perhaps by Beth Byers:

When Vi gets a visit from her brother, Geoffrey, she is delighted. Their relationship has been shaky from the beginning, but he’s older now. He even seems to have shaken off the claws of his mother.

Even so, when he tells Vi he’s seen a murder, she can’t quite believe it. It becomes clear that their relationship may never recover if she doesn’t take him seriously. Before long, Vi faces more than an investigation. She’s dealing with a nightmare she never expected: asking questions about a doubtful murder with her stepmother, her brother, and her father.

The mystery quickly becomes not whether she’ll find the killer, but whether her sanity will survive the investigation.

All Or Nothing by John Carson:

Practice makes perfect. Even in death.

DCI Harry McNeil is back at the helm, joined by his old friend, DI Frank Miller. He is juggling his private life with being a single father, running a new Major Investigation Team, and spending time with a woman who may or may not become more than just friends.

Edinburgh at New Year is a time for celebration, fun, and for one person, murder.

The festivities leading up to Hogmanay are tinged with fear as Harry’s team gets a shout when the murdered body of a woman is found floating in the Water of Leith near the docks.

A vicious killer has left his mark and Harry’s new team is put to the test.

But with time running out, the killer is going to be knocking on Harry McNeil’s door, in more ways than one…

Paradise Gone by David Crosby:

AN ENDANGERED FLORIDA PANTHER, A DEADLY
POACHER, AND A KID IN TROUBLE…

Hotshot Florida journalist Will Harper, known for reporting hard-hitting stories (and for living on a trawler), is quietly doing both those things when cans of worms suddenly explode in all directions.

His story-in-progress seems safe enough, even a bit predictable—it’s about overdevelopment killing Florida culture and wildlife. But when he contacts a wildlife photographer for information, he finds himself listening to a much more compelling yarn than the one he’s working on. The photographer and her assistant recently filmed a mother black bear tragically killed by a poacher in front of her cubs.

And then the poacher, carefully setting his sights on the humans, shot her assistant right in front of her.

Rushing to get help, she returned with the police only to find that both the wounded man and the bear’s corpse had disappeared. With no evidence, the cops declined to investigate

Enter the ever-quixotic investigative reporter—if no one else is going to look into this, Will sure will.

But his investigation is hampered by a new development that’s destroying his domestic peace and quiet. It seems his girlfriend neglected to mention she has a teenage daughter who’s hell on wheels and who’s now been to sent to live with her mom and Will—which means their once-peaceful trawler is now home to squabbling, tension, and teen-age angst.

So while Will is hellbent on trying to track down the missing assistant, he’s also got to keep this teenager from finding a way to get in touch with her psycho biker boyfriend. Watch the exceedingly nimble Will juggle his article on gorgeous (and disappearing) Florida culture, his investigation into the deadly poacher’s ghastly crimes, and his big-hearted attempts to keep the angry teenager from being kidnapped by the so-called “love of her life.”

All in a day’s work for this guy.

Witch at the End of the Tunnel by Lily Harper Hart:

Vanity is the one thing Hali Waverly has never understood. That’s about to become a weakness.

Life at the Salty Cauldron is going well…right up until a body washes onto the beach. The dead woman, who is forty years younger than her husband, had a run-in with Hali in her tiki bar the previous day. Authorities assume it was an accidental drowning, but a mark on the dead woman’s neck gives Hali pause.

Grayson Hunter finds himself in a pickle when the identity of the body becomes public. Seems he was the one hired by the victim’s husband to investigate her extra-curricular activities. Surprisingly enough, it turns out she wasn’t having an affair. That doesn’t mean she wasn’t up to something nefarious.

Crossing paths has Hali and Gray partnering up for a second time, and as tense as things are between them, things are worse when they enter the world of Selfie Planet, the victim’s place of business.

Vanity goes by many names, has many faces. The one Gray and Hali find themselves facing off with is dark and menacing. There’s more going on than selfies and rampant narcissism, however. There’s also a mirror monster and several soulless individuals walking around making things worse.

Separately, Hali and Gray are forces to be reckoned with. Together, they can handle almost anything…except maybe this.

Worlds are about to collide, and nothing will ever be the same again.

The Escrow Escape by CeeCee James:

It’s a Georgie and Stella combo!

Stella’s routine is getting back to normal after her mother’s trip to Poland. But even the simplest things can lead to unexpected adventures. While searching for a mystery at the local bookstore, Stella picks up an abandoned book. A handwritten note falls out with an odd message: Where she goes there are no shoes…

When she mentions the note to her Oscar, her grandpa, the retired FBI agent tells her about the missing persons case he couldn’t solve a decade ago and shows her an old newspaper clipping. The photo shows the phrase spray painted on a wall, with red paint. Before long, Stella is wrapped up in the strangest mystery she’s faced yet.

Three Ring Murder by CeeCee James:

Perfect for readers who love mysteries with unforgettable characters. Join Trixie in this newest cozy mystery where she must rescue her friend Jerry, accused for the death of the Mayor! With the evidence in plain sight, it seems the detectives have the right guy. But Trixie remembers a certain someone sneaking around the Big Top who didn’t belong, despite being a respected politician. With Prancer, her horse, and the many circus dogs, Trixie is on the hunt for both evidence and the true villain.

Then she discovers he may be on the hunt for her. Can she catch him in time in this fast-paced mystery?

Cold Evidence by Robin James:

A murder so brutal, only a monster could have committed it. The accused had no motive. But there’s a mountain of evidence against him.

A decorated war hero, Ty Chapman has built his dream life in the quiet lakeside community of Delphi, Michigan. He has a beautiful wife. A baby on the way. Everything to live for. He’s the last person anyone would suspect of beating a local handyman to death behind a seedy motel. But when two credible witnesses see him running from the crime scene, hands bloodied, the police believe they have him cold.

There has to be a reason for the killing. But the prime suspect won’t talk. Not even to his lawyer.

Cass Leary is Delphi’s top defense attorney. In Ty Chapman, she’s finally got a client who can afford her. Only Ty goes mute anytime she tries to get his side of the story. All she has is a parade of character witnesses who swear Ty isn’t capable of such a heinous act.

The more Cass delves into the mystery, the more questions she has about the victim. Only most of what she learns is inadmissible in court and Ty still won’t tell her what really happened in those woods. If that weren’t enough, Cass gets a call that her former mob boss has gone missing and the FBI thinks she’s the key to finding him. Their timing couldn’t be worse as Cass heads into the courtroom to argue for Ty Chapman’s future.

Will Cass’s fight win her client’s freedom or expose an even more shocking truth?

Witch Is the Word by Amanda M. Lee:

Hadley Hunter is finally getting a handle on life as a witch. Island living isn’t always beautiful sunsets and fruity cocktails, but things have never been better…until a body washes up on the beach during a private picnic with her boyfriend Galen Blackwood.

The body belongs to a local business manager, who just happens to be married to the daughter of one of the richest men on the island. Unfortunately for their victim, nobody – including his wife and daughters – seems to care that he’s gone. The deeper they dig, the more dirt they come up with on the victim … and the clues lead them straight to the isolated coven on the far side of the island.

Hadley doesn’t know a lot about witches, including herself, but what she learns doesn’t leave her with warm and fuzzy feelings. These witches mean business, and they’re intent on keeping their secrets from seeing the light of day.

When more bodies start dropping, all coven members, Hadley realizes something very big is about to happen. What, though?
With Galen and their friends at her side, Hadley is ready to engage in a new type of battle. This one is bigger than witches because it leads right through the heart of the island’s government body, the terrifying DDA.

Hadley thought she was adjusting but things are about to change. The question is, when the dust settles, who will be left standing and what side will they be on?

The Girl and the Twisted End by A.J. Rivers:

A horrific beginning.
Ends with the most unexpected twist…

Marie was young, beautiful, and vibrant.
Her life was cruelly taken from her.
Her murderer still roams this world, potentially looking for a new prey.
With Sam devoting himself to finally bringing an end to Marie’s case, Emma dives further into the twisted worlds of corruption and brutality, to finally bring an end to the mystery behind Miley’s disappearance…
As the pieces seem to fall into place to bring an end to the cases FBI Agent Emma Griffin has been chasing, unexpected people come into her life.

The question is… what are their true motives?
Who or what do you believe?

All questions are ready to be answered.
All the mysteries lead to one twisted and shocking conclusion.
There’s a storm brewing around Emma Griffin.
Will she get through the eye of the storm or get swept up into utter destruction?

The Creek by L.J. Ross:

YOU CAN RUN, BUT YOU CAN’T HIDE…

Kate Irving arrives at her grandfather’s cottage at Frenchman’s Creek in the dead of night with her young son, a small suitcase and little else. Its scattered community of fishermen, farmers, artists and jetsetters barely bat an eyelid, because theirs is a rarefied world, tucked beneath the lush forest that lines the banks of the Helford estuary, deep in the heart of Cornwall, where life is slow and people generally mind their own business. Unless, of course, your grandfather happens to be a pillar of the local community…

Kate’s left the past behind and guards her privacy and her son fiercely. She’s wary of accepting the friendship her new neighbours offer, but their kindness is too great to refuse and she begins to feel she has found her place in the world. That is, until tragedy strikes, and her new friends look to her for the answers…

Kate soon learns that the past always catches up with you, in the end—the question is, will she be able to face it, when it does?

Suspense is peppered with romance and humour in this fast-paced mystery, set amidst the spectacular Cornish landscape.

Man Overboard by Wayne Stinnett:

Jesse McDermitt has returned to the Florida Keys. But things in the islands are different now. The locals are worried, but nobody can explain why. A sense of foreboding hangs in the humid July air.

One of the locals, an investment banker, is waiting tables at the Rusty Anchor Bar and Grill. He seems a shell of the man he used to be—a hollow man whose fortune and wife are gone. He’s tight-lipped about how he came to be a guest in Rufus’s little shack behind the bar.

Something very sinister is going on—Jesse smells it. He’s usually very good at rooting out the source of a problem, but is stumped this time. Will he figure it out in time to stop it from happening to someone else?

Until another tight-lipped hollow man shows up.

Murder at the Boxing Club by Lee Strauss:

Murder’s a knockout!

Despite her misgivings and general distaste for fighting sports, Mrs. Ginger Reed, also known as Lady Gold, agrees to attend a boxing match to support her adopted son’s cousin, a street fighter who’s quickly risen in the ranks.

But when his opponent, the presumed champion-to-be, drops out and then drops dead, Ginger and her husband, Basil, a chief inspector at Scotland Yard, investigate. Was the fighter dead because of sports-betting gone awry? Were London gangs involved? And has an old, but newly present danger returned to threaten the Reed family?

When one of their own falls prey, the gloves come off and the fight becomes personal. Can Ginger and Basil save their family and stop a killer before the towel is thrown in the ring?

Without Mercy by Ava Strong:

MMA champ-turned-FBI Special Agent and BAU specialist Dakota Steele is as tough as they come—and as brilliant, too, able to crack serial killers that no one else can. But this new case is unlike anything she’s seen, and Dakota, weighed down by the demons of her own past, may have just reached her breaking point.

Dakota’s last case broke her, driving her to quit the FBI and return to the hard streets of her South Dakota hometown. She is weighed down by a lifetime of fighting, and by the demons of her dark past: her missing sister who vanished when Dakota was a teenager. Her estranged father, who she still can’t bring herself to speak to.

The killer she let get away.

Dakota has hit her low point.

Only the most desperate case—and the tough love of her partner—can lure her back.

Victims are disappearing along empty stretches of desert highway, with no witnesses. The landscape is desolate, the people tough and dangerous. And the police are stumped.

Time is running out before the next victim is taken, and it’s up to Dakota to connect the dots.

Can Dakota stop him in time?

Or will her own demons take her for good?