Cora Buhlert's Blog, page 34

Fancast Spotlight: The Book Wormhole

Today, I have another Fancast Spotlight for you. For more about the Fanzine/Fancast Spotlight project, go here. You can also check out the other great fanzines and fancasts featured by clicking here.

And so I’m pleased to feature the delightfully named YouTube channel The Book Wormhole.

Therefore, I’m happy to welcome Robin Rose Graves of The Book Wormhole to my blog today:

Tell us about your podcast or channel.

The Book Wormhole is a monthly updating BookTube channel where I provide spoiler free reviews and discussions of the books I read. Science Fiction makes up the majority of what I cover on the channel, and while I lean more towards female, POC and/or LGBT authors, I read both classics as well as contemporary releases. I balance popular books with indie and underrated titles. I promise there will be at least one book you’ve never heard of before on my channel.

Who are the people behind your podcast or channel?

Currently it is a one man production. I do everything from selecting books, reading them, scripting, filming, editing videos and graphic design. I wouldn’t have it any other way, though. This project is my baby. I love doing collabs, but ultimately when it comes to anything regarding quality control, I like being responsible to ensure everything I post is something I am proud to share.

Why did you decide to start your podcast or channel?

After college, my motivation to read plummeted and even when I did pick up a book, I was never connecting with anything I read. This project began once I broke the cycle and started finding books I liked and got me excited about reading again. I initially started the channel as both an outlet for me to talk about what I was reading, but also with the hopes that it would help connect others with books they are really going to like. It’s only happened a few times so far that someone has told me they read a book I talked about on my channel, but it’s still very rewarding each time.

What format do you use for your podcast or channel and why did you choose this format?

The predecessor to the Book Wormhole was a blog. Admittedly, I don’t care too much for blogging, and nor did I think it would be the right way to find the audience I was looking for. I was looking for people who wanted to read but didn’t know what, and I honestly don’t think too many of those people frequent blogs.

But I also wanted it to have a verbal component. I wanted to physically talk about the books that excited me so. Matched with my humble past experience with video editing, and it became obvious what medium this needed to be in. I was going to film video reviews on YouTube!

Funny enough, I didn’t know BookTube was a thing when I first had the thought to convert my reviews to film. I mean, I knew I couldn’t have been the first person to think of it, but I didn’t realize until I started just how big of a community BookTube is. It’s reassuring to see so many people are still passionate about reading.

The fan categories at the Hugos were there at the very beginning, but they are also the categories which consistently gets the lowest number of votes and nominations. So why do you think fanzines, fancasts and other fan projects are important?

There’s nothing more genuine than a fan. Oftentimes, it is work done without financial compensation and therefore nothing about it is motivated by money or what is going to sell. It’s purely driven by passion alone. I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of being spammed with commercials constantly, so finally seeing something genuine and made for the love of it is such a nice remedy.

As a reader, I find nearly all my books based on recommendation. I trust them more than a synopsis or a sponsored post who’s trying to make a sale. (Several times I’ve been misguided by an advertisement only to have been entirely let down by the book). I find BookTube reviews to be more honest. Sometimes delighting in tearing apart everything that didn’t work about a book. But also, oftentimes including minor details I want to know ahead of time that a synopsis isn’t going to offer. What beloved tropes and themes will the book contain? What sort of representation? The things I REALLY want to know about a book ahead of time.

In the past twenty years, fanzines have increasingly moved online and fancasts have sprung up. What do you think the future of fan media looks like?

I think fan media is going to continue to evolve along with upcoming new formats. With YouTube came BookTube. With Instagram came Bookstagram. And now, with the rise of TikTok, naturally there is BookTok. So long as there is a space for fans to exist in, they’ll be there making fan content.

On the plus side, accessibility will continue to improve. On the negative, I’ve noticed an increase in censorship as more young children enter what used to be almost adult-exclusive spaces. It’ll be interesting to see what fan media looks like even one year from now, judging by how quick the internet has been evolving lately.

The four fan categories of the Hugos (best fanzine, fan writer, fan artist and fancast) tend to get less attention than the fiction and dramatic presentation categories. Are there any awesome fanzines, fancasts, fan writers and fan artists you’d like to recommend?

Yes if you’re not familiar with the fancast Space Cowboy Books Presents – Reading and Interviews series, I highly recommend checking it out! Those events got me through the pandemic and I still enjoy them now. As for fanzines, Galactic Journey. I’ve been religiously following their coverage of Star Trek, starting with the first episode that premiered at Tricon in 1966. Also Simultaneous Times Newsletter. As for fan artists, I’m amazed by Lorelei Esther’s work!

Where can people find you?

Watch and Subscribe to The Book Wormhole on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFuAf6QaaLdJzXvZbNltDRw

And/or Follow me on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/spicymisorobin

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

Do check out The Book Wormhole, cause it’s a great BookTube channel.

***

Do you have a Hugo eligible fanzine/-site or fancast or a semiprozine and want it featured? Contact me or leave a comment.

The Tale of Declan, Disruptor of Doors

The Tale of Declan, Disruptor of DoorsA Sword and Sorcery Parodyby Cora Buhlert

In an age undreamt of, after the Supreme Lord of Darkness descended from his mountain to lead the Hounds of Sadness in their assault against the sinful cities on the coast, but before the scarlet plague swept the land, there lived in a barbaric country a young bard named Declan.

Declan was a rising star among the bards of his land. His name was spoken with admiration in the taverns and around the camp fires. Last year, he had even been runner-up in the bardic contest of the Great Dragon Atalanta, losing only to Bryan, the Grand Hunter of Witches. Declan was still sore about that.

Even though Declan resided in Nu-Yore, the most sinful of the sinful cities on the coast, he was a pious man who had seen the light of the One True God and followed the One True Faith. And so Declan decided to make a pilgrimage across the great sea to visit the great temple of the high priest of the One True God.

It was at this time that the ships anchoring in the harbour of Nu-Yore brought troubling news. For an unknown plague was sweeping through the lands across the great sea, felling the beggars in the streets and the lords and ladies in their palaces. Dark clouds were gathering and bodies, their skin turned a bright scarlet, were lying unclaimed and unburied in the streets of the cities across the sea.

The plague had also come to the land of Ital across the sea. It descended from the snow-capped mountains in the North to the fertile plains of Ital, where it struck old and young, rich and poor, sinner and saint alike.

In the heart of Ital, there lay the city of Va-Tica, home of the great temple of the One True God. And this was where Declan was headed on his pilgrimage. Like everybody in Nu-Yore, Declan had heard the news about the scarlet plague sweeping the lands across the sea. But he was undeterred. After all, his was a holy pilgrimage. And besides, he was a pious man and humble servant of the One True God. So surely, he would be spared from the scarlet plague.

“Art thou sure, son?” asked the captain of the galleon upon which Declan had booked passage to Va-Tica, “Hast thou not heard of the scarlet plague that devastates the land of Ital?”

“I am sure, good captain,” replied Declan, “After all, I am a man of faith and the One True God shall protect me.”

Days and weeks passed, as the galleon made its way across the great ocean that divides the world. It was an uneventful voyage. The waves were calm and the galleon passed few other ships. Even the pirates that plagued the seas had retreated to their fortified islands.

“Art thou truly sure that thou wantest to disembark, son?” asked the captain, when the galleon moored in the harbour of Va-Tica, “For the scarlet plague has reached Va-Tica and the sacred virgins are dropping dead in the streets of the temple district. It is not too late, son. I can take thee back to Nu-Yore free of charge.”

But Declan’s faith in the One True God was strong. “No, good captain, I am sure. All I want is to pray at the great temple of the One True God and ask his favour for my bardic ventures. And surely He Who Rules All Creation will hold His hand over His humble servant.”

The captain just sighed. “Thy word in thine God’s ear.” Then he ordered the mooring lines cut and the anchors lifted, for no captain worth his salt wanted to stay in a plague-ridden port longer than absolutely necessary.

***

Declan, meanwhile, wandered through the streets of Va-Tica, marvelling at the marble palaces, grand statues and obelisks that reached for the heavens, and blissfully ignored the bodies that lay rotting in the gutters, their faces and hands turned a bright scarlet.

“Surely…” thought Declan, “…they were sinners who would not worship the One True God.”

Onwards he wandered, through deserted streets and past shuttered houses with the sign of the plague painted on the doors in bright scarlet. As he reached the temple district, he spotted the body of a sacred virgin lying in the gutter, her soft skin stark scarlet underneath her gossamer veils.

“Another sinner, to be sure,” thought Declan, “Most likely, she wasn’t even a real virgin. And everybody knows that the One True God smites sinners with extreme prejudice.”

And then he quickly turned away, for even in her scarlet state, the fallen virgin was still most comely, her curves sound and soft and enticing.

“Temptation…” thought Declan, “…lurks everywhere.”

For many years, Declan had saved his coins for this journey, the journey of a lifetime. But the pilgrimage turned out to be most disappointing. For in the temple district of Va-Tica, all the shrines and seminaries, the sacred library and even the great temple itself were shuttered. The sacred virgins hid their faces behind their gossamer veils, hoping to the spared the breath of the scarlet death that stalked the streets, And the high priest himself had fled to his estate in the country and barricaded himself among orange groves and apple orchards.

It was the pilgrimage of a lifetime, but there was nowhere to pray, nowhere to worship, no sacred blessings to receive. There were only deserted streets and dead bodies, their skin grotesquely scarlet.

Not even the taverns and inns and the street market stalls were open and Declan could get nothing to eat nor drink. So in desperation, he visited the envoy of his homeland, standing outside the shuttered villa and banging onto the gate, until he was granted entry.

“What art thou even doing here, boy?” thundered the envoy, “Hast though not heard of the scarlet plague that sweeps the land?”

“I… I am on a sacred pilgrimage to see the great temple of the One True God,” stammered Declan, for the envoy was a very imposing man.

“Screw thine pilgrimage!” thundered the envoy, “The great temple is shuttered, has been shuttered for weeks. Half the priests and sacred virgins are dead, the other half has fled. Go home, boy!”

“B…but…”

“Get thy arse home!” thundered the envoy, “The harbour of Va-Tica is closed, but the port of Flo-Rina, a town to the North, is still open. Get thyself to Flo-Rina in three days and take passage home or thou wilt be trapped here, with the dying and the dead!”

***

So Declan took a horse and headed for Flo-Rina, riding day and night, stopping only to water and feed the horse. He rode past barricaded towns guarded by soldiers in tarnished armour and past deserted country villas, every single person therein dead. The mills lay idle, the grapes rotted in the vineyards and scarlet corpses and bleached bones littered the roadside. At last, Declan reached the town of Flo-Rina.

In the days before the plague, Flo-Rina had been famed far and wide for its wealth and the beauty of its palaces, villas and temples. But as in Va-Tica, the temples, palaces and villas of Flo-Rina were shuttered. The scarlet plague mark burned on many doors and the pyres of the dead burned day and night.

Declan had not slept in three days and neither had his horse. Somehow, he made it to the harbour and there, moored at the dock, lay the last galleon bound for Nu-Yore, that most sinful of cities that was Declan’s home and that he missed more than anything in the world now.

But the harbour was barricaded. Stockades blocked off the docks, manned by soldiers with pikes and halberds.

“Halt!” cried a soldier, “State thy business, traveller!”

“I am but a humbled pilgrim…” said Declan, “…come to return home to Nu-Yore on yonder galleon. Please, good sir, let me pass!”

“Thou canst not pass,” said soldier, “Though must quarantine for forty days in the barracks yonder, lest thou carry the scarlet plague to Nu-Yore.”

“But I am a man of faith, a servant of the One True God,” cried Declan, “He holds His hand over me. Thou must let me pass.”

“I do not care what god thou worships,” replied the soldier, “Thou canst not pass. And now begone!”

Declan was a pious man, not given to swearing and profanity. But even the most pious man can be tested to his limit and Declan’s patience had just exceeded that limit.

“Thou son of a mongrel dog and a disease ridden whore,” yelled Declan, “Is it my fault that thy shithole of a country cannot manage even a simple plague? And now let me pass and let me go home to Nu-Yore, where our overlord Donald the Great Orange protects us from plagues and imbeciles.”

“Insults won’t get thee past this barricade,” said the soldier and poked Declan with his pike.

Declan was furious. This imbecilic son of a mongrel dog and a disease ridden whore would not let him pass, would not let him board the galleon and return to Nu-Yore, the city where everything was sane and normal and where there was no plague and no dead people lying in gutters, at least not plague dead.

He peered above the stockade and saw that the galleon, his last, best and only chance of getting home, was cutting the mooring lines. If it sailed, he would be stuck here in this benighted land forever.

Beside the large gate guarded by the soldiers, there was a small door in the stockade. A door that led to salvation.

Beyond the stockade, the galleon was lifting the anchor and setting the sails. It was now or never.

The soldiers were busy examining the papers of a merchant and paid no attention to Declan. So he took a step towards the door and then another. He gave the door an experimental push and as if by the will of the One True God, it opened.

So Declan dashed through the door and onto the dock, dashed towards the departing galleon, crying, “Wait! Wait for me!”

He was still screaming when the soldiers wrestled him to the ground.

***

“Foreign imbecile,” muttered the judge under his breath, as Declan, who had now acquired the moniker “Disruptor of Doors”, was brought before him. And then he slammed his gavel down and sentenced Declan to pay a fine of one thousand gold doubloons for disturbing the peace and disrupting doors.

But Declan had no one thousand gold doubloons. He did not even have two copper pennies. And since an appeal to the great temple of the One True God to aid a true believer in his hour of dire need was ignored, he was thrown into the deepest, dampest dungeon in Flo-Rina.

There he languished in chains and fervently prayed for deliverance, when one day a fellow prisoner, a giant with steel-blue eyes and a shaggy mane of midnight black hair approached him.

“Art thou the one they call Declan, Disruptor of Doors?” asked the giant.

Declan nodded. “They call me that,” he said warily, for he had received more than one beating while in gaol.

“And is it true that thou broke through the barricade by the harbour, even though thou hast the statue of a skinny rabbit?” probed the giant.

“That what I’m in here for,” replied Declan.

“Excellent,” exclaimed the giant and slapped Declan on the shoulder, so hard that Declan went to his knees.

“They call me Conkull the Skullsplitter,” said the giant, “Declan, Disruptor of Doors, thou and I shall be partners. Thou shalt use thy door-disrupting magic on the doors of this dungeon and then on the doors of the villas and palaces of the rich. Together, thou and I shall tread the jewelled thrones of the world under our sandalled feet. So what sayest thou?”

Declan swallowed hard and uttered a quick prayer to the One True God who he feared had deserted him. Then he looked down at his bare feet, for he wasn’t even wearing sandals.

“I guess I have no other choice.”

The End

***

Inspired by this event and this comment thread at Camestros Felapton’s blog.

Foundation finally experiences “The First Crisis”

And here we thought that we have been in the middle of the first Seldon crisis since episode 3.

Anyway, welcome to my review of the penultimate episode of Foundation. Reviews of previous episodes of Foundation as well as two actual Foundation stories may be found here.

For more Foundation discussion, check out the Star’s End and Seldon Crisis podcasts.

But before we get to Foundation, I also want to point you to my latest Raumpatrouille Orion (Space Patrol Orion) review over at Galactic Journey. Unlike Foundation, Space Patrol Orion never pretended to be an Asimov adaptation, even though Asimov’s works clearly were one of several influences on the series. And indeed, Orion feels more like an Asimov story at times than Foundation.

But let’s take a look at the latest episode to see how it compares to the books and if the story is back on track by now.

Warning! Spoilers under the cut for both the TV series and the book!

The answer is that at least by the end of the episode, the story is sort of back on track, though the way to get there has nothing whatsoever to do with the books.

Like previous episodes, “The First Crisis” divides its time between two different storylines, namely the adventures of Salvor Hardin and the saga of Brother Dawn, the imperfect clone. Gaal Dornick is absent, except to provide voice-over narration about how history is written by the victors, though Hari Seldon’s hologram puts in a most welcome appearance.

As before, Brother Dawn’s story is the most interesting part of the episode, even though it has nothing whatsoever to do with the books and instead borrows elements from a lot of more recent space operas. The influence of Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan series is very obvious – and can we maybe adapt that, please? There are also similarities to Sean Danker’s Admiral series and Double Star by Robert A. Heinlein, which beat Isaac Asimov’s The End of Eternity in the race for the 1956 Hugo Award for Best Novel.

Brother Dawn, the defective clone, was clearly terrified of being found out and killed by his “brothers” and so he is plotting his escape with the aid of the lovely palace gardener Azura. However, before Dawn and Azura can put their plan into action, Brother Dawn is summoned by Brother Dusk, who has now taken over the neverending task of painting mural depicting the glories of the Cleons. Brother Dusk wants to show Dawn something, namely a pictorial representation of their hunting expedition back in episode 6. Considering that the mural normally depicts great victories, this is an unusual choice. Nonetheless, Brother Dawn pretends to be honoured and remarks how well the mural captures the three pterodactyl-like things he killed. Brother Dusk gives Dawn a very sinister smile and then leaves him to contemplate the mural on his own. Curious, Dawn dons the colour correction lenses Azura got for him and notes to his shock that Brother Dusk painted six rather than three pterodactyl creatures, i.e. the number of creatures that Dawn really killed. However, he painted the three missing creatures in a way that someone with red-green blindness cannot see them.

Dawn now knows that Dusk is on to him and heads for his chamber to make his escape now. However, before he can, Dusk’s right-hand man Obreht comes to fetch him, most likely to escort him to his execution. And Dawn’s protestations that he’s the Empire, too, and that Obreht is supposed to obey him don’t help either. Dawn finally uses his personal forcefield and projects it outward to knock out Obreht and runs away, while the palace guards go after him. He can’t get past the scanner at the palace gates, so he escapes via the ruins of the old palace (Why are those ruins even still there, since they must be hundreds, if not thousands of years old?) into the sewer system, almost drowns and then wanders around among the homeless of Trantor, clad only in his pyjamas. For of course, there have to be homeless people living in the sewers of Trantor, so Dawn can get a glimpse of the real world (TM).

Dawn trades his forcefield bracelet (yeah, smart, trading in the one weapon and protection he has) for the smelly coat of a homeless man to disguise himself. Unfortunately, he fails to put the hood up to hide his very recognisable face, but the people using Trantor’s public transport pretend not to notice. And so Dawn makes it to the Scar, i.e. the area that was wrecked by the falling space elevator and never fully repaired, where Azura has an apartment.

The scar looks like (and probably is portrayed by) a 1970s Brutalist outdoor shopping mall, jazzed up with glowing domes, trippy light projections and low-rent punks straight out of the 1980s cyberpunk novel. As AV-Club reviewer Nick Wanserski points out, it’s probably the cleanest slum with the best-fed population you’ve ever seen, but somehow it works, if only because Brutalism was the look of science fiction, especially of the dystopian kind, for decades.

Somehow, Dawn manages to find Azura’s apartment. Azura doesn’t look too happy to see him, though she does let him in. As before, Azura must live in the cleanest and most spacious slum apartment ever. The place looks like a mid-range hotel suite. Azura sends Dawn to take a shower, because he reeks. When Dawn emerges from the shower, Azura pulls a gun on him. “What’s that for?”, Dawn – not being the sharpest Cleon in the drawer – asks. Azura fires and Dawn realises that she has betrayed him. He tries to run away, but the picturesque punks have him quickly surrounded and knock him out. Just before Dawn passes out, he finds himself looking up into his own face.

At this point, I assumed that Azura was working for Brother Dusk and had been instructed to spy on Dawn and find out his secret and that the fellow with Dawn’s face was the replacement clone we saw two episodes ago. However, the truth is a lot weirder than that.

For when Dawn comes to again, he finds himself strapped to a chair in Azura’s apartment, a needle in his arm, as his nanites are removed from his blood and fed into that of Dawn’s doppelganger. We now learn that the whole thing is a plot by the (never before mentioned) Trantor underground decades in the making. Somehow, the Trantor underground managed to get their hands on enough genetic material to clone their own Cleon. They also managed to reprogram to nanites in Dawn’s bloodstream to alter his genes and cause the mutations that plague Dawn. This was supposed to induce Dawn to flee the palace, so the underground could grab him and replace him with their own Cleon. Azura was in one the whole plot – and Paul Levinson points out in his review that in Forward the Foundation, a (male) gardener assassinates the non-cloned Emperor Cleon.

Now I have to admit that this was one development I absolutely did not see coming. As plans go, the Trantor underground’s plan is overcomplicated and also hinges on way too many coincidences, such as Azura being in the right place to witness Dawn’s thwarted suicide attempt and getting him to trust her. Unless half the staff at the palace are members of the Trantor underground, which would certainly be interesting. Also, if you’re going to introduce an underground movement, it would be helpful to at least drop a few hints that such a movement exists, i.e. have the Cleons and Demerzel hunt unsuccessfully for the Trantor underground. However, we get no hints of that sort beyond a vague mention of unrest on Trantor.

The Trantor underground is just about to kill the surplus Dawn, when he spots the dragonfly drone he had given Azura. Soon thereafter, Imperial troops led by Brother Dusk storm the apartment, kill the rebels including the fake Dawn and arrest Azura, using those weird prison hoods again.

Brother Dawn is shocked that Dusk knew what was up all along and used him to root out the rebels, though he’s also happy to be rescued. Brother Dusk, however, is still furious at Dawn, for being stupid and gullible, though those sins are forgiveable. The fact that Dawn is defective, though through no fault of his own, however, is not. “Your face is a permanent reminder of our failure”, Dusk says to Dawn, whereupon Dawn points out that it’s his face as well. Dawn also points out that Dusk can’t decide his fate on his own, he has to consult with Day. And this version of Day is somewhat nicer than his predecessor, whereas Dusk has always been a murderous bastard. However, Dusk points out, Day is probably not going to be kindly inclined towards Dawn after his ordeal on the moon of the Luminists. And he did order the murder of Zephyr Halima, after she’d ceased to be a threat. On the other hand, Day’s half-naked pilgrimage also gave him a crash course in empathy, as Camestros Felapton points out in his review, so maybe everything will go all right for Brother Dawn. Especially since I have the feeling that Brother Dawn will make a pretty good Emperor, if he survives.

It needs no saying that none of this happens in the books, beyond the assassination of Emperor Cleon by a (male) palace gardener in Forward the Foundation.  Instead, the whole clone doppelganger plot is borrowed from other science fiction novels, most notably Lois McMaster Bujold’s 1989 Vorkosigan novel Brothers in Arms, where Komarran insurgents plan to replace Miles Vorkosigan with a clone in a plot to assassinate Aral Vorkosigan. Needless to say that this does not go the way anybody expected.

Sean Danker’s Admiral trilogy also has a junior member of a royal family replaced by a lookalike, who then proceeds to sabotage the royals and their planet. However, this is all backstory – the actual trilogy starts with what happens to the royal lookalike after he has fulfilled his mission and has become a liability to his own people. The trilogy is well worth reading, though fairly obscure, so the similarities might just be a coincidence.

Finally, in Robert A. Heinlein’s 1956 science fiction novel Double Star, which beat Isaac Asimov’s The End of Eternity in the Hugo race for Best Novel, a down and out actor is hired to replace, first temporarily and then permanently, a prominent politician. Hijinks ensue. Heinlein admitted that Double Star was inspired by the granddaddy of all “important person is replaced by a nigh identical doppelganger” stories, namely The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope.

But even though neither the clone doppelganger plot nor the whole genetic dynasty are to be found in the books, this storyline is actually entertaining and a lot of fun to watch.

Which brings me to the other plot strand, namely the adventures of Salvor Hardin. The Salvor plot starts with a flashback to little Salvor and her Dad watching the stars. Salvor’s Dad tells her that all humans, whether Foundationers, Anacreons, Thespins or Trantorians, all come from the same planet, though they don’t know where that planet is. There are several theories, including one that the origin of humanity is a planet called Earth, though no one knows where that planet might be. I was pleasantly surprised at this scene, because the location of Earth is also a mystery in the books. I guess the showrunners were trying to set up Foundation and Earth, the final (not very good) book in the series. At the pace they’re going, they’ll get there in eight or nine seasons.

Little Salvor is stunned. So everybody comes from just one planet? Then why do people hate each other? This prompts Salvor’s Dad to give her a lecture about how violence and hate beget even more violence and hate. Hereby, Salvor’s Dad also says the following, “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.” This is an actual quote from the books – and one of the most famous ones, at that – though in the books Salvor Hardin is the one who says it. Of course, Salvor may well have gotten the saying from his/her Dad.

But while book Salvor acts according to his own aphorism and beats the Anacreons without a single shot fired – twice – the TV series has turned Salvor into an action girl character who usually tries to solve problems by hitting or shooting at them. Still, even a little bit of Asimov is welcome in a show that offered so very little of that.

Flash forward to the present: When we last saw Salvor, she was on the bridge of the Invictus with Lewis Pirenne, Phara and the last remaining one of Phara’s goons, when the Invictus suddenly jumped to parts unknown, pulling several Thespin ships along with it.

Now Foundation has made a point of making it clear that unaugmented humans cannot tolerate hyperspace jumps while awake, which is why they are sedated before the jump. However, since the Invictus jumped in the middle of a fight, no one had the time to get sedated. And so Salvor is awake during the jump and not negatively affected beyond distorted vision, because Salvor is super-special, just in case you hadn’t noticed it yet.

When Salvor scrambles to her feet again, she realises that the Invictus is orbiting Terminus, which is exactly where Salvor wanted to take her. She finds that Lewis Pirenne has plugged himself into the navigation console and sent the ship to Terminus, which cost him his life. Rest in Peace, Lewis Pirenne, a character who was so much better here than in the books, while also staying true to his book self.

The jump also knocked Phara and her goon out. Salvor ties them up and then tries to hail Terminus or indeed anybody on the coms of the Invictus, but gets no response. Plus, unless Salvor can figure out how to disable the jump drive, the Invictus will jump again to heaven knows where.

On the scanners, Salvor spots Hugo’s ship, which apparently was dragged into the jump as well. So she gets into a spacesuit to return to the ship she at least has some hope of controlling. Of course, she still can’t hail Terminus, but at least a piece of cosmic debris on a collision course with the ship turns out to be Hugo in his spacesuit, who somehow had also hitched a ride with the Invictus. So Hugo and Salvor are reunited. They make a very cute couple and Hugo is one addition the series makes that I genuinely like. Though they quickly start arguing, because Hugo just wants to take his ship and Salvor and fly away, whereas Salvor doesn’t want to abandon Terminus or the Invictus. She also explains that she believes that the reason she can’t hail anybody on Terminus is that the null field around the Time Vault has expanded to swallow Terminus City.

So Hugo returns to the Thespins to help them disable the Invictus‘ jump drive, before she can jump again, while Salvor heads for Terminus. Now we also finally see some Thespins not named Hugo. They are all white, vaguely Eastern European and tend to go for totalitarian chic. Indeed, they could easily be Imperial officers in Star Wars. The Thespins arrest Phara’s lone remaining goon, but Phara herself has escaped and promptly hijacks a Thespin ship.

Meanwhile, back on Terminus, everybody has passed out from the expanding null field. Only Salvor, who’s immune to its effects (cause she’s super-special), can still walk around. Unfortunately, she neglects to disarm and tie up the Anacreons, but instead checks the vital signs of people she knows like those two cute kids and her Mom, whom she finds unconscious fairly close to the Time Vault. In her hand, Salvor’s Mom holds Hari Seldon’s magic dodecahedron.

Salvor now has another psychic flashback and sees Hari Seldon and Gaal Dornick with the dodecahedron. More importantly, she also sees how to activate the dodecahedron, so she does just that.

I’ve seen the theory bandied about that Salvor is the biological kid of Gaal and probably Raych (who was implied to be psychic in the books), which is why she seems to be psychic as well. There is certainly some merit to this theory, especially since we got that lengthy sequence about Irish Foundationer Shivaun extracting eggs and embryos from women aboard the Foundation’s generation ship, including Gaal, back in episode 2. That said, I have no idea why Salvor’s parents would decide to carry the biological child of Gaal and Raych to term, unless there was a mix-up at the fertility clinic. Also, in the books, Salvor Hardin is smart and resourceful and in the right place at the right time. However, he/she is not in any way special.

Salvor’s activation of the dodecahedron has the desired effect. There are some glowy special effects, the Time Vault turns to a glowing crystal, burries itself into the ground of a hilltop and splits in half, revealing a glowing doorway. Meanwhile, the null field is deactivated and everybody wakes up again.

Salvor and her Mom are arguing about whether to do through the glowy doorway, when the Anacreons show up, brandishing guns. Foundationers and Anacreons are at each other’s throats, when the Thespins show up with two neat ships, which look like streamlined TIE-fighters and can be remote-controlled by the Thespin commander to fire at the Anacreons, unless they stand down.

The stand-off escalates, when Phara shows up with her stolen Thespin spaceship and blasts the other two Thespin ships to bits. Then she lands and also pulls the remote control stunt on the Anacreons and the Foudationers. Meanwhile, Salvor – who has taken her father’s words to heart after all – yells at everybody to calm down and listen to her. After all, the Invictus is the most powerful weapon in the universe and much too useful to waste on Phara’s crazed revenge scheme. Keeping her and using her to keep the Empire and any other expansionist neighbours at bay would be a much better purpose, so why don’t Anacreons, Thespins and Foudationers just band together and sing Kumbaya use the Invictus to tell the Empire where they can stuff it.

It’s a good proposal and the Foundationers, the Thespins and most of the Anacreons are actually considering it. However, Phara won’t have any of that, so her own goon pulls a gun on her, cause he’s had enough of Phara and her crazed revenge quest. This leads to another stand-off between Phara and her goon, while Salvor grabs Phara’s bow and shoots her, instant archery skills apparently being another of her super-special abilities.

Seriously, fun as the whole Invictus and Terminus sequences were, the fact that everybody just instantly has all the skills they need is seriously eye-roll worthy. After all, Salvor has never been to space before and yet she can instantly fly a spaceship, put on a spacesuit and navigate in it and use the com system on a seven-hundred-year-old spaceship. Lewis Pirenne has some space knowledge, but can use the navigation console of a seven-hundred-year-old spaceship without any issues, even if it kills him in the end. Phara can control a type of spaceship that’s completely unknown to her. And Salvor can hit someone with an arrow on the first try. I’m as sick as anybody of calling every remotely competent character a Mary Sue, but the instant skills many of the Foundation characters display are just ridiculous. Salvor knowing how to fly a spaceship with zero training is like me flying a plane and not crashing with zero training. And that arrow would have been far more likely to hit a random bystander than Phara, if Salvor had managed to fire at all.

While everybody is still at each other’s throats, the glow of the Time Vault intensifies and out strolls none other than Hari Seldon or rather his hologram, a smug grin on his face. “Well, well, Termini, Anacreons and Thespins all in one place”, the hologram says, “If that isn’t a good sign that we will survive this crisis.”

“Foundation” may be by far the most famous story to appear in the May 1942 issue of Astounding, but the cover actually illustrates the lesser known “Asylum” by A.E. Van Vogt.

This is basically how the first every Foundation story published, entitled simply “Foundation” upon first publication in the May 1942 issue of Astounding Science Fiction and “The Encyclopedists” for the book version, ends, with Hari Seldon’s hologram showing up and explaining that everything is happening just as he foresaw it and that the solution to their dilemma is obvious – though readers would have to wait until the June 1942 issue of Astounding to hear just what that obvious solution was.

The sequel “Bridle and Saddle” actually did get the cover of the June 1942 issue of Astounding, though it’s a rather underwhelming one.

I have to admit that I punched the air when Hari Seldon’s hologram showed up with that smug grin on his face, because this right there was what I’ve been waiting to see for thirty years. Here finally was the Foundation I read and enjoyed all those years ago. Of course, it still took the show seven episodes to tell a story that is under 10000 words long (the first episode was an adaptation of “The Psychohistorians”, the first story in the book version, and the second episode was filler/bridging material). And even though the outcome is the same – the Foundation will join up with (and very likely control) its aggressive neighbours – the way the show took to get there was long, meandering and a massive detour from the books. The endless chase, capture, escape sequences on Terminus and the equally endless exploration of the Invictus could have easily been condensed to two or three episodes, which would have given the show the room to adapt “Bridle and Saddle” a.k.a. “The Mayors” in the first season as well. Since both stories are two halves of a whole and both feature Salvor Hardin, this would have actually made sense, before jumping ahead in time and giving us Limmar Ponyets and Hober Mallow.

So in short, Foundation is back on track after endlessly meandering detours. Though I hope that the TV show will also adopt Salvor’s obvious solution – share our tech with our neighbours, but pretend it’s magic and only special priests can controll it – because the fake religion of Scientism was always one of my favourite bits from the first Foundation book.

Foundation fails to find “The Missing Piece”, but at least gives us a lot of nearly naked Lee Pace

Since we only have two episodes to go, I’m doing episode by episode reviews of Foundation, so here is my take on episode 8. It’s a little late, because I had technical issues and had to wait until I was actually able to watch the show. Reviews of previous episodes of Foundation as well as two actual Foundation stories may be found here.

For more Foundation discussion, check out the Star’s End and Seldon Crisis podcasts.

Warning! Spoilers under the cut for both the TV series and the book!

There are only two episodes to go in season 1 of Foundation and I’m still not sure what this show is trying to do, since adapting Foundation clearly isn’t it. Nor do I know who this show is supposed to be for? Cause those people who actually wanted to see Foundation will come away disappointed even with all the goodwill in the world. And the people who vehemently hate the idea of adapting any SFF by dead white authors of the golden and silver age in general and Foundation in particular won’t be watchng anyway. So who is the intended audience? Viewers who just want a generic flashy space opera? But in that case, there are plenty of books which better fit the bill. Or just make up your own story, especially since that’s what the showrunners are doing anyway. Or are they aiming at that mythical mainstream audience who only watched Game of Thrones for the sex scenes? But if that’s your target audience, Foundation is about the worst book you could to adapt.

Like the previous episode, “The Missing Piece” divides its runtime between three separate storylines, namely Brother Day versus the generic Triple Goddess religion, Salvor Hardin’s adventures aboard the Invictus and Gaal Dornick and Hari Seldon’s hologram aboard the Raven.

This time around, Brother Day’s storyline is not the worst of the lot, if only because nothing that features Lee Pace wearing nothing but a loincloth can be all bad. However, it still has fuck all to do with the books nor does it have anything to go for it except nearly naked Lee Pace. Unfortunately, he’s also badly sunburned and covered in sand for much of the time, which rather spoils the effect. According to this interview in the AV-Club, Lee Pace read the books long before he was cast for the show and was of course keen to appear in Foundation. Though I wish that Lee Pace and Jared Harris, both of whom are great in their respective roles, as well as the rest of the cast would have gotten a more accurate adaptation.

When we last met our intrepid Cleon clone, he had just announced that he would embark on the gruelling pilgrimage known as “walking the Spiral” as a ploy against Zephyr Halima, frontrunner in the race to determined the next high priestess of the influential cult of Luminism, who also happens to think that clones, including the Emperors Three, are an abomition against her faith cause they do not have souls. Now Brother Day knows all this is nonsense (though I’m not sure the show does), but unfortunately Zephyr Halima happens to be a talented speaker with a gift of moving the masses. So he decides to beat her at her own game and use her religious beliefs against her.

In my last review, I wrote that I expected Brother Day to cheat, and he does – sort of. However, Brother Day actually subjects himself to the gruelling pilgrimage, which kills more than half of those who attempt it, and even takes off his personal forceshield and has the nanobots filtered out of his blood, which is frankly idiotic, because he could easily have gotten killed.

Now let’s talk about the whole lethal pilgrimage for a moment. Because frankly, it makes zero sense for a religion to have a ritual, which kills more than half of its followers. Even if you have trillions of followers, systematically killing the faithful is never a good idea, if you want your religion to thrive and survive. Okay, there was Jonestown, but the so-called People’s Temple were a small cult under the control of a deeply disturbed man. And while crucification reenactments and flagellants are/were a thing, they were never more than a fringe phenomenon and the Catholic church actually persecuted flagellant cults in the 14th century. Walking the spiral recalls the spiritual exercise of walking a labyrinth, but again that’s supposed to be a spiritual and meditative exercise, not a gruelling death march. And while pilgrimages are a common feature of many religions, they are not supposed to kill worshippers and indeed there usually is an infrastructure in place to support pilgrims. I suspect one inspiration for the deadly spiral pilgrimage may have been the various deadly crushes and stampedes that occurred in Mecca during the Hajj during the 1990s and 2000s and cost hundreds, sometimes thousands of lives. However, these crushes and stampedes were tragic accidents, pilgrims risking death was never the point and indeed the Saudi Arabian government has done a lot to manage the crowds better and make the Hajj safer.

Meanwhile, the Luminists care very little about the health and safety of their worshippers. And so we see Brother Day walking along the spiralling path and gradually loosing his clothes (yeah), while the sun burns his skin raw. In his review at The AV-Club, Nick Wanserki calls those scenes “a mostly naked Lee Pace walking around in a Robert Smithson installation” and that’s exactly what it is. He also manages to look positively Christ-like, when he walks about with an injured body clad only in a loincloth. And yes, I’m sure that’s deliberate. I suspect that masculine trinity of Day, Dusk and Dawn is supposed to evoke the Holy Trinity of Christianity, while the Triple Goddess is supposed to evoke the mother, maiden, crone triad found in many pre- and non-christian religions.

At one point, Day finds a companion, an elderly man who lives on a terribly polluted planet where all the stuff that’s too poisonous to manufacture on Trantor is made – clearly a reference to the outsourcing particularly of dangerous industrial production to poorer countries. The elderly man helps Day up, when he stumbles and Day tries to return the favour, when the elderly man falls, but the man refuses to go on. The mother aspect of the triple goddess is calling to him. Day genuinely seems to be bothered by the elderly man’s death, which must be a first for him, and lays him to rest by the side of the path. He’s not the first or the only one to die there, indeed, the path and even the cave at the end are littered with skulls, making the whole thing look more like the set of an Indiana Jones movie than anything found in Foundation. Coincidentally, the whole thing also makes me wonder why we are supposed to care about a religion that so casually kills its followers and then lets their corpses rot.

Day makes it to the cave at the end of the spiral, where he casts off his remaining loin cloth and takes a bath in a pool. Allegedly, the salt crystals in the cave and the water in the pool (and near lethal heat exhaustion and dehydration) are supposed to bestow a sacred vision upon the faithful. And indeed, Day tells a panel of priestesses about the vision he had, a vision of the salt crystals forming a three-petaled flower. This flower only grew on the Luminists’ moon, but is extinct now and of course, sacred to their religion. The three petals symbolise the three aspects of the goddess and also the three Emperors (because apparently no one noticed that neat little parallel until now), so the priestesses are satisfied that Day had a sacred vision and that he has a soul and is a real human. Zephyr Halima is out and her rival is named high priestess.

So far, so good. Except that Day didn’t have any sort of vision at all, but just made one up, based upon stories what other pilgrims saw and a sample of the extinct flower he’d seen on Demerzel’s dressing table. Nor is Day satisfied with having Zephyr Halima, he wants the bloody woman gone for good and so he sends Demerzel to poison her.

Demerzel is not happy with this at all – and not just, because she’s about to violate the First Law of Robotics in a huge way. No, Demerzel apparently genuinely believes in Luminism. And so she visits Zephyr Halima in her quarters to tell her that she thinks she would have made a great high priestess. She also tells Zephyr Halima that no, she did not coach Day in what to say and admits that she did walk the spiral eleven thousand years ago.

Given that Zephyr Halima is a fanatic, I would have expected her to make her religion’s equivalent of the sign of the cross and scream, “Burn the witch! Stake the vampire! Kill the demon!” But instead, Zephyr Halima is fascinated by Demerzel and all the things she must have seen in her long life. She also tells Demerzel that she is convinced Demerzel has a soul and that she need not obey the commands of the Emperors Three. Demerzel, on the other hand, is in tears and insists that she must obey.

This whole scene is well acted by Laura Birn and T’Nia Miller and I actually got some lesbian vibes from both of them, which would have made the murder by touch much more interesting. However, it makes no sense and doesn’t match how the characters have been portrayed before.

Because the Zephyr Halima we’ve seen so far was a strident fanatic who didn’t just challenge the Emperors Three for the sake of power, but because she genuinely believed every single word she said about how they were a soulless abomination. But in her scene with Demerzel, she’s suddenly the kindly and understanding priestess. Not to mention that there is no way that a religious fanatic who hates clones for not having souls wouldn’t hate robots, too.

Meanwhile, Demerzel insists that she is programmed to follow the Emperors Three’s commands even against her will. However, Demerzel/Daneel is subject to the Three Laws of Robotics and “Thou must obey the Emperor” is not one of the Three Laws. Instead, the Second Law of Robotics states: “A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings [any human beings, not just Emperors] except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.” And the First Law of course states: “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.” So Brother Day ordering Demerzel to kill Halima is a clear case of the Second Law conflicting with the First, whereby the First Law automatically has preference.

Of course, there’s also the Zeroth Law: “A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm”, which only two robots ever explicitly formulated and followed, namely R. Daneel Olivaw and his pal R. Giskard Reventlov, whose decision to let Earth become an irradiated wasteland, so humanity would be forced to colonise space destroyed his positronic brain. So the only robot left following the Zeroth Law is Daneel a.k.a. Demerzel.

So far, I have interpreted Demerzel following the orders of the Emperors Three, including awful orders – after all, we see her overseeing tortures and a mass execution in episode 2 – as adhering to the Zeroth Law, because at this point in time, keeping the Empire in functional is best for humanity. And of course, in the Foundation prequels, Daneel/Demerzel manipulates Hari Seldon towards setting up the Foundation specifically to protect humanity.

But while Zephyr Halima clearly was a problematic and deeply unlikeable character, she wasn’t a threat at this point anymore and there was no reason to murder her. If there was a right moment to kill Zephyr Halima, it would have been before Brother Day went on that pilgrimage. Of course, getting rid of or at least reforming Luminism, so it stops trying to kill more than half of its worshippers with deadly pilgrimages, would be very good for humanity as a whole, but that’s not achieved by getting rid of one fanatical priestess.

As for Demerzel genuinely believing in Luminism rather than finding it an interesting moral problem, which is how Daneel treats the Bible discussions he has with Elijah in The Caves of Steel, sorry, but that doesn’t fit the character Asimov created at all. But then, Demerzel in the TV series appears to be a robot to whom the Three Laws don’t apply, which is worse betrayal of the spirit of Asimov’s work than any other nonsense the series has served up so far, because the Three Laws and Daneel are so very central to Asimov’s work.

Demerzel also reveals that she had a vision when she walked the spiral, which not only made me wonder, “And how does that work exactly, since she’s a robot and whatever causes those visions clearly only works on humans?”, but elicits much the same reaction from Brother Day. This is also the moment where it is revealed that Brother Day did not have a vision, just a nice soak in the salt pool. Of course, there is no real reason Brother Day would have a vision – unless there is a chemical component such as a hallucinogenic substance in the water that causes the visions – because Brother Day does not believe in Luminism. Just as I likely would not feel any effects from drinking or bathing in the water from the spring of Lourdes, because I’m not Catholic and don’t believe that there’s anything special about that water.

However, Foundation the TV series takes religion seriously in a way that the books never did and so Brother Day is not only troubled by the fact that he did not have a vision, but this is also apparently proof that he doesn’t have a soul. Now I don’t know which religion, if any, Brother Day subscribes to, but unless it’s a religion which has the concept of a soul as something separate from the body, I don’t know why he would be bothered by this.

While Brother Day is searching for his soul, Salvor Hardin, Phara and a dwindling number of shanghaied Foundationers and Anacreon goons are still exploring the stranded Invictus. It’s a very big ship, you know.

We are treated to a flashback to Phara as a litle girl playing in the forest with her brother, when Anacreon is bombed and her brother is killed. The casting doesn’t match, since kid Phara has green eyes, while adult Phara’s good eye is brown, and I’m not sure what the point of the flashback is at all. Do Americans need periodic reminders that indiscriminately bombing other countries/planets also kills and maims children? Because the rest of the world already knows that. And no, kids who survived bombings do not all grow up to become violent fanatics like Phara. In fact, the Thesbians, who suffered just as much as the Anacreons, seem to be much saner.

Otherwise, the Invictus plot is a standard “Let’s explore the creepy ghost ship” storyline that we’ve seen a hundred times before. The other nameless hijacked Foundationer is killed by an automatic gun set up to protect the bridge from mutineers. In a scene more appropriate to The Mandalorian, Salvor draws the fire of the gun, while Phara disables it with an arrow – yes, really.

Luckily, Salvor can grab hold of the gun of one of the dead mutineers and even more luckily, the gun still fires after 700 years. So Salvor shoots a hole into the hull, which sucks out the guts of one of Phara’s remaining goons in a gruesome scene. Then, Salvor uses the confusion to open the bridge, haul Lewis Pirenne, who’s the sole other surviving Foundationer, inside and close the door again, momentarily locking out Phara and her sole remaining goon.

Inside the bridge, Salvor and Lewis find – big surprise – more dead crewmembers, including the Captain who killed themselves and wrote “Exo” on a random bridge console in their own blood. Salvor and Lewis are not sure what this is supposed to mean aside from “outside”, but outside of what? Outside the universe? Or an outside threat? Please, not aliens. Because the Foundation universe does not have aliens, blast it.

However, since Phara and her goon are trying to break through the door from outside and the jump countdown is still running, Salvor and Lewis have more immediate problems. They locate the navigation console and receive an unpleasant surprise. Because it turns out that navigators used to be hardwired into the ship and that navigation basically involved making a wish where to go. Yes, my eyes rolled so hard they almost fell out of my sockets.

Salvor, i.e. the one with zero space travel experience at all, who hasn’t even been in space before this little excursion, insists that Lewis, who actually has a bit of space travel experience, plug her into the navigation console, even though Salvor doesn’t have the required implants and the process will likely kill her, if it works at all. However, since Salvor is super-special, she is confident she can take the Invictus to Terminus, before she dies. And yes, that’s actually in the dialogue.

However, before Lewis can cut into Salvor’s brainstem to plug her into the navigation console, Phara and her goon break through the door. Lewis is wounded and Salvor’s gun jams at the wrong moment, so Salvor and Phara have yet another physical fight.

Meanwhile, the Thesbians show up to demand that the Anacreons hand over the Invictus. Because Hugo was not killed after all, when he drifted off into space, but managed to make it to one of the abandoned Thesbian mining stations and called in the Thesbian fleet. And since the Thesbians still can’t stand the Anacreons – well, who can? – they were only too happy to help.

Unfortunately, that pesky countdown is still running and so the Invictus jumps, taking Salvor, Phara, Lewis, Phara’s goon and the Thesbian fleet to hell knows where.

Meanwhile, back on Terminus, Salvor’s Mom informs the Anacreon commander that they have problem, cause the repellant field around the Time Vault is expanding and will soon swallow up Terminus City, knocking out Anacreons and Foundationers alike. I suspect this means that Hari Seldon’s hologram will finally put in an appearance where he is supposed to be.

But for the time being, Hari Seldon’s hologram is still aboard the Raven with a very pissed off Gaal Dornick, who has just admitted that she has precognitive abilities. Hari questions her about that and Gaal admits that she gets feelings and hunches and prophetic dreams. One of those dreams showed her little community sinking beneath the waves of the world ocean of Synnax (after all, we haven’t had a climate change analogy in a few episodes), so Gaal taught herself highly advanced math to see whether her dream was correct and if there was anything to be done.

Hari takes Gaal’s precognition in stride and decides that this means that she’s even more of a math genius than he thought. However, for now they really need to get to Helicon, because the entire Seldon plan hinges on Hari’s hologram making it to Helicon. For you see, Hari Seldon or rather his hologram desperately needs to get to Helicon to establish the Second Foundation or the plan will be at risk.

And this right there is the only thing in this episode apart from a few names that’s actually in the books. Because Hari Seldon does indeed establish the Second Foundation as a behind the scenes safeguard for the First sometime after his followers get exiled to Terminus, even though – as Camestros Felapton points out in his review – we do not learn about the existence of the Second Foundation until “The Mule” halfway through the second book Foundation and Empire, though there is a brief mention of Hari leaving some of his followers behind in “The Psychohistorians”, the very first story in the first book, which was only written as an introduction for the publication of the fix-up in 1951.

So in a 56 minute episode, there’s one thing, which actually happens in the books, albeit offscreen, and that is Hari Seldon establishing the Second Foundation. And the writers get even that wrong, because Hari intends to establish the Second Foundation on the wrong planet, namely on Helicon, which he dubs Star’s End. Of course, that it’s at Star End is all anybody knows of the Second Foundation’s location in the original trilogy, though there are different theories where or what Star’s End is. The answer lies in an old proverb: “All roads lead to Trantor and that’s where all stars end.”

So in short, the Second Foundation is on Trantor and always was on Trantor, hanging out in the remnants of the Imperial University. Indeed, the Trantor reveal is so well done that I can still remember where and when I read it – on a bench in the yard of my high school, interrupted by annoying classmate Andreas W. at the crucial moment – more than thirty years later. And the show manages to ruin even that, though it’s possible that the Second Foundation will still end up on Trantor, as Paul Levinson, who’s no more happy with the change to Helicon than me, points out in his review.

Gaal, meanwhile, reacts just as the First Foundation always react to learning of the existence of the Second, with a mix of anger and betrayal. Also, she wants nothing to do with the Second Foundation, thank you very much. So she insists that Hari let her go back into the suspended animation pod that brought her on board in the first place. And when Hari’s hologram does not comply, Gaal smashes the temperature controls of the Raven, so it will overheat while passing through the asteroid field on the way to Helicon. Because Gaal would rather be boiled alive than go to Helicon. If you think that Gaal is pretty nuts at this point, you’re not alone.

Hari’s hologram eventually lets Gaal go and opens the door to the miraculously perfectly cooled escape pod bay, where Gaal gets into the pod, ejects right into the asteroid field and sets the course home for Synnax. It will take her more than a hundred years to get there, if the asteroid field doesn’t smash her to bits first. I suspect that this is the last we will see of Gaal this season, though she will probably pop up again, when the showrunners think the viewers need a familiar face to handle the time jumps.

I’ve tried to give Foundation and its many deviations the benefit of the doubt, especially since so far there was always still enough left of the books to make me hope that maybe, the showrunners know where they’re going. However, my goodwill is just about exhausted, because this show is just an unholy mess, a Frankenstein’s monster of different storylines stitched together with a little bit from the books. Space Patrol Orion, the other show of which I’m currently doing episode by episode reviews over at Galactic Journey, feels more Asimovian than Foundation, even though Orion is not an official Asimov adaptation, but was just inspired by his stories as well as many other golden and silver age science fiction stories.

The individual storylines aren’t even all that bad. Viewed on their own, the saga of the Emperors Three as well as the story of the ghost ship Invictus are compelling. However, I signed up to watch Foundation and so far, the show is not giving me nearly enough of the story I actually wanted to see. And considering that we have only two episodes to go, I don’t see how they will ever get there.

Fancast Spotlight: Seldon Crisis

The Fancast Spotlights are coming thick and fast these day, cause here is the next entry in the Fancast Spotlight project. For more about the Fanzine/Fancast Spotlight project, go here. You can also check out the other great fanzines and fancasts featured by clicking here.

Today, I’m pleased to feature Seldon Crisis, a podcast devoted to Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series and the current TV adaptation.

Therefore, I’m happy to welcome Joel McKinnon of Seldon Crisis to my blog today:

Tell us about your podcast or channel.

Seldon Crisis –the podcast, is a loving tribute to Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, in which I bring to life each chapter in audio form through summary, excerpted dialog, and analysis. Official story episodes come out every few weeks with intermediate updates appearing occasionally where I am still experimenting with the format. So far I’ve included essays, personal notes, and a primer on Foundation for Newbies targeted to watchers of the new series from Apple TV+.

I also have a YouTube channel with a video introducing the podcast, promo shorts featuring the custom intros for each episode, and video versions of each episode. My son, Jeremy MacKinnon creates the videos and does sound design on the official story episodes starting with The General, Part I in Season 2.

Who are the people behind your podcast or channel?

I’ve mentioned my most significant collaborator in Jeremy, who also acts as a sounding board and quality control for all episodes. The theme music was orchestrated by my old friend and bandmate Tom Barnes from a simple melody I provided. The logo art comes from a UK artist named Mike Topping who also created a whole series of classic cover art for Foundation and the Robots series. My most recent collaborator is Amanda Kreitler who saves me from having to voice female characters. She also performs on the RPG podcasts Severed Fate and  Dimension Door.

Why did you decide to start your podcast or channel?

I read the full Foundation series for the first time last summer during lockdown. I had read the trilogy in my youth but had forgotten most of it and it was pure joy to re-read it. I had that common feeling after reading a great work of literature of wanting to share it with others, and decided the easiest way to share it with the world was in podcast form. I had no knowledge of the AppleTV series until after I’d written the first several scripts.

What format do you use for your podcast or channel and why did you choose this format?

It’s kind of a unique hybrid of multiple formats. I usually start out with setting some context in the larger story and often include cultural context in which Asimov wrote it. Then I get into the story itself and try to make it stand on its own. I do a fair amount of summary, but the heart of it is the dialog, which I voice as I interpret the personalities of the characters. As you know, Asimov didn’t do a lot of physical description of his characters or the scenes they inhabit, so I just go by the content and try to imagine the real person who would say these lines. Often I don’t know what they’ll sound like until I voice them. Among my favorites – besides the big ones Hari Seldon, Salvor Hardin, and Hober Mallow, are lesser known characters like Limmar Ponyets from the Traders and Commdor Asper from The Merchant Princes. Right now I’m having the time of my life doing Magnifico in The Mule.

When I wrap up the story part I include more analysis including how I think the themes and ideas are relevant to our current societal context. A good example is the comparison of Seldon’s predictions of coming catastrophe for the Empire with our current predictions of climate catastrophe and suggest that it might be a good idea to come up with a coherent plan to tackle it.

The fan categories at the Hugos were there at the very beginning, but they are also the categories which consistently gets the lowest number of votes and nominations. So why do you think fanzines, fancasts and other fan projects are important?

Fan art of all kinds is a wonderful source of new creativity building on the stories that often leave a lot of loose ends and unanswered questions. Asimov provided lots of grist for this by the nature of his creative process. He claimed to never use an outline, but to have a clear idea of the eventual resolution. What happened along the way was totally by the seat of his pants. A great example is the Siwenna revolt that is mentioned as background in The Merchant Princes and again in The General. Among the unanswered questions is what happened to Onum Barr’s daughter who he thought might have survived the Empire’s bombardment that killed all but one of his six sons. In The General we are told she committed suicide, but nothing about the surrounding circumstances. There are enough fragments of this tale to create a whole novel. It’s really temping to take a crack at it some day.

In the past twenty years, fanzines have increasingly moved online and fancasts have sprung up. What do you think the future of fan media looks like?

I haven’t thought a lot about this to be honest, but I can imagine new platforms appearing to organize fan content. VR should be a great format for immersive experiences of stories that have been told but not particularly well described – as with Asimov’s settings – along with entirely newly created worlds. I can imagine people populating these virtual environments and reliving old stories and encountering new worlds as actual participants. Imagine being completely immersed in a realistic experience of taking a space elevator trip down into Trantor as Gaal Dornick does in the first episode of the TV show. Hardier fans might want to be on it when it is is destroyed and ride one of the flaming carriages down to oblivion. Another cool thing might be to choose your own plot developments from within the story, possibly with the help of AI algorithms facilitating creation of random scenarios.

The four fan categories of the Hugos (best fanzine, fan writer, fan artist and fancast) tend to get less attention than the fiction and dramatic presentation categories. Are there any awesome fanzines, fancasts, fan writers and fan artists you’d like to recommend?

I’m mostly aware of the podcasting space right now, and since starting my own it’s been all about Foundation. One of my favorites is one we both did a guest appearance on, Stars End Podcast (https://starsendpodcast.wordpress.com/). The three hosts are very knowledgeable about the source material and open to new expressions of it like the TV show and I really enjoy their discussions. Another of their recent guests, named Morgan, writes some pretty decent fan fiction herself, along with some awesome memes, and spends a lot of time on the Galactic Empire Discord server as Dors Venabili. I’ve encouraged her to start her own podcast and hope she does.

I’ve encountered some amazing indy sci-fi writers in the last few years, and I’ll call out Tobias Cabral for his sensational novel New Eyes set on Mars a century or so from now and Erasmo Acosta for his extremely ambitious K3+ about the future of humanity set just a billion or so years in the future. An entirely different and probably more realistic vision of a galaxy filled to the brim with humanity – should we succeed in getting through our great filters and launch a diaspora to the stars.

Where can people find you?

Seldon Crisis is at seldoncrisis.transistor.fm and on all of the major podcasting platforms and at the official YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCSnydc0fSf0zQJ91IxoVmQ). I engage on twitter @joegmckinnon and as Max Wyvern on Discord at Galactic Empire (https://discord.gg/S3FtSXJC). I also have an earlier podcast called Planet and Sky which is an original science fiction story combined with a creation myth. It’s based on a rock opera I wrote and both the album and podcast details can be found at PlanetAndSky.com. My old band JupiterSheep – where I got the name Max Wyvern – has a website at jupitersheep.com. Email me at joel@seldoncrisis.net.

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

Do check out Seldon Crisis, cause it’s a great podcast.

***

Do you have a Hugo eligible fanzine/-site or fancast or a semiprozine and want it featured? Contact me or leave a comment.

 

Fancast Spotlight: Worldbuilding for Masochists

Even though I recently announced the new Semiprozine Spotlight series, I’m still featuring fanzines and fancasts, too.

And therefore, here is the next entry in the Fancast Spotlight project. For more about the Fanzine/Fancast Spotlight project, go here. You can also check out the other great fanzines and fancasts featured by clicking here.

Today, I’m pleased to feature Worldbuilding for Masochists, a 2021 Hugo finalist for Best Fancast.

Therefore I’m happy to welcome Marshall Ryan Maresca, Cass Morris and Rowenna Miller of Worldbuilding for Masochists to my blog today:

Tell us about your podcast or channel.

Tide charts — a stack of books on constellation mythology — an elaborately sketched map — a bulletin board covered in illustrations of obsolete technology — research on textiles, naming conventions, architecture and a dozen ways to cook lentils — what could it all mean? 

It means worldbuilding. Big worldbuilding. Elaborate worldbuilding. Obsessive worldbuilding. Dare we say… masochistic worldbuilding?

Play along with three fantasy authors as they delve into the intricacies of building a fantasy world from the ground up. We build a new fantasy world together, we explore history, culture, science, and more as we learn new and exciting ways to choose the shape of our invented worlds, rather than merely repeating the presumptions of common tropes.

Who are the people behind your podcast or channel?

MRM: I’m Marshall Ryan Maresca, and I’m a fantasy writer mostly known for the Maradaine Saga, which is four interconnected series set in the same city that braid together over time, starting with The Thorn of Dentonhill, A Murder of Mages, Holver Alley Crew and The Way of the Shield, and the latest book in that setting is An Unintended Voyage.  I also have a standalone dieselpunk fantasy, The Velocity of Revolution, about an undercover officer infiltrating a rebel cycle gang in an occupied, colonized nation. And I’m an obsessive worldbuilder.

CRM: I’m Cass Morris, writing historical fantasy. My debut series, the Aven Cycle (From Unseen Fire and Give Way to Night) takes place in an alternate version of ancient Rome, where magic has shaped society as much as law, politics, and war. In my other life, I’m an educator currently teaching composition at a community college, but most of my experience is in Shakespeare studies.

RM: I’m Rowenna Miller, a fantasy writer, history nerd, sometimes-seamstress, part-time English professor, and novice goatherd. My trilogy, The Unraveled Kingdom, follows a dressmaker through a revolution in a world inspired by 18th century France and England; my next book, The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill, is a historical fantasy set in the waning years of the Gilded Age. 

Why did you decide to start your podcast or channel?

 So, the origin of the podcast, like so many things these days, came from Twitter. At the time– April or May 2019– Rowenna & Marshall and Alexandra Rowland were having several extended conversations about getting very detailed into worldbuilding– the effects of multiple moons on culture, how different fabrics choices can cascade into other elements, the sort of “if you decided to do A, how does that affect B, C, D” and so on.  And one of us commented, “So convention really should put us on a worldbuilding panel.”  And then someone commented to us, “You all should just start a podcast.”  And we went, “Should we?  Why not?”  

So we did!  And one of our first guests was Cass Morris, who was amazing. So when Alex decided they needed to step away, Cass was the obvious choice to join in on the fun.

What format do you use for your podcast or channel and why did you choose this format?

I think we chose a podcast specifically so we could actually talk to each other and geek out about worldbuilding together, while not having to necessarily be good on camera.  I know for me, audio is a very forgiving format, especially in the ability to edit it.

The fan categories at the Hugos were there at the very beginning, but they are also the categories which consistently gets the lowest number of votes and nominations. So why do you think fanzines, fancasts and other fan projects are important?

CRM: Fandom is what drives so much of speculative fiction. I have no idea what my life would look like without the fandoms I’ve been involved in since childhood. Fan projects are a way of making full cultural conversations out of original stories, encouraging contextualization and re-examination of favorite works, drawing attention to marginalized creators, and making a place for every reader, viewer, and listener to become part of the narrative.

RM: I’m sure this is true of other genres and mediums, but most SFF writers–we were fans first and we’re still fans. Doing this podcast is the ultimate nerd fantasy–we get to talk to these people we are in awe of and geek out together. I think that fan projects foster that exchange–that the audience is not passive, the audience are creators. I always say that reading is a creative process, but fan work makes it even more active and vibrant.

MRM: Fandom is where we all start, one way or another.  Even if we don’t necessarily find our communities, we all get into SFF by loving some work so much we need to 

In the past twenty years, fanzines have increasingly moved online and fancasts have sprung up. What do you think the future of fan media looks like?

CRM: Personally, I’m looking forward to holodeck fan media.

RM: I’m all for anything that continues to make fan creation more accessible and more equitable. I want everyone to be able to play! As Cass said, it’s in fandom that some of the most important conversations happen–digging deeper into the biases and structures in works we love, and can center marginalized voices when, well, traditional avenues don’t always do a great job.

MRM: I think a lot about how much the capability of fanmade work has jumped to the next level.  You have, for example, fanfilms made in someone’s garage that look just like the original Star Trek.  So I’m excited about what sort of things fans will just be able to do with the tools at their disposal.  But also holodecks.  Holodecks would be cool. 

The four fan categories of the Hugos (best fanzine, fan writer, fan artist and fancast) tend to get less attention than the fiction and dramatic presentation categories. Are there any awesome fanzines, fancasts, fan writers and fan artists you’d like to recommend?

MRM: I’ve been paying more attention to BookTubers, and I’m glad that they’re getting attention in this category.  I’m a big fan of SFF180, though that’s in no small part because Thomas is an old friend.  

CRM: I have to shout-out CerebroCast, with the confession that it’s my agent’s podcast. But it’s seriously amazing — every week, he’s doing a deep dive into one character from the X-Men with a guest who loves that character, with particular attention to the perspectives of marginalized fans. There’s also been a lot of discussion of the sociopolitical implications of the current storylines, where the mutants are establishing their own homeland on the island of Krakoa. The podcast is smart, funny, equal parts heartfelt and snarky.

Where can people find you?

Podcast: https://worldbuildingformasochists.podbean.com/
Twitter

MRM: http://mrmaresca.com/, @marshallmaresca on Twitter, @mrmaresca on Instagram

CRM: cassmorriswrites.com; @cassrmorris on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok; patreon.com/cassrmorris 

RM: rowennamiller.com, @rowennam on Twitter, @rowenna.past.perfect on Instagram

Thank you, Marshall, Cass and Rowenna, for stopping by and answering my questions.

Do check out Worldbuilding for Masochists, cause it’s a great podcast.

***

Do you have a Hugo eligible fanzine/-site or fancast or a semiprozine and want it featured? Contact me or leave a comment.

Two Podcast Appearances about Old and New SFF

In addition to the Fancast Spotlights, I also have two podcast appearances of my own to announce.

First of all, I was a guest on the Hugos There podcast, where I discussed the 2021 Hugo finalists for Best Novelette with Sarah Elkins, Olav Rokne of the Hugo Book Club Blog, Juan Sanmiguel, Ivor Watkins and host Seth Heasley.

You can listen here or watch the video on YouTube.

Moreover, I’m the special guest for episode 106 of the Appendix N Book Club podcast, where I discuss the Jirel of Joiry stories by C.L. Moore with hosts Jeff Goad and Ngo Vinh-Hoi.

C.L. Moore is not listed in the original Appendix N of the AD&D Dungeon Master’s Handbook, but we rectify that inexplicable oversight.

You can listen here.

First Monday Free Fiction: A Grave Case

Welcome to the November 2021 edition of First Monday Free Fiction, which goes out on a Tuesday, because I was really busy yesterday and just forgot to post this.

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.

November 1 is All Hallows’ Day and November 2 All Souls’ Day, which are traditional days to honour and remember the dead, so what could be a more perfect story for this day than A Grave Case, a murder mystery set at a cemetery.

So accompany Detective Inspector Helen Shepherd and her team, as they investigate…

A Grave Case

Detective Inspector Helen Shepherd parked her battered Vauxhall on the parking lot just off Harrow Road and walked up to the main gate of Kensal Green cemetery.

As she passed through the gate with its faux Grecian columns, she suppressed an involuntary shudder. She’d never liked cemeteries, not even during her misspent punk youth. You’d think that an aversion to cemeteries would be a hindrance for an officer of the Homicide and Serious Crimes Command. You’d be wrong, though, because normally Helen and her colleagues solved the murder long before the funeral, so there was no need to visit a cemetery.

Unless the cemetery was the crime scene, that was.

And the murderer couldn’t even find themselves a nice small graveyard to commit the dastardly deed — no, they had to pick one of London’s biggest cemeteries. For Kensal Green was huge. Huge and full of famous corpses. Freddy Mercury was buried here, Charles Babbage, Ingrid Bergman, Alan Rickman, Christine Keeler, Anthony Trollope, Wilkie Collins, William Makepeace Thackeray, Harold Pinter, Sax Rohmer, a famed highwire artist who crossed Niagara Falls, a nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, an Indian maharani and several lesser members of the royal family. As well as thousands of unknown folks, including Helen’s Aunt Mabel and Uncle Horace.

Helen suspected that she could still find her way to Aunt Mabel and Uncle Horace’s grave, though she hadn’t been there in ages. But unfortunately, that did not help her find the crime scene.

“Near the Anglican chapel,” the dispatcher had said. So Helen glanced at the signpost and directed her steps that way. She strutted briskly along the path, gravel crunching under her heels.

She did not have long to search. The chapel with its neo-classical columns was looming in the distance when Helen spotted two uniforms loitering among the trees and gothic gravestones.

The uniforms nodded to her, as they lifted the police tape to let Helen through.

“Good morning, Inspector. It’s a bit further down. Turn right at the ivy covered mausoleum, then pass between the weeping angel and the gothic stele and you should find it.”

So Helen picked her way across the uneven ground (“Do not think about why it is so uneven!”). She spotted the mausoleum up ahead, turned to the right, found the weeping angel (“Wasn’t there a Doctor Who episodes about such statues coming alive and killing people?”) and what she assumed was a gothic stele. It did look gothic, at any rate.

Among the graves, she spotted Detective Constable Kevin Walker and Police Constable Martin Jackson. They were both sipping coffee from paper cups, while chatting with a woman Helen did not know.

Helen sighed. She should have gotten herself a coffee. Especially since she’d passed a few coffee shops and bakeries on the way here, including one that was almost directly opposite the cemetery gates.

By now, DC Walker had spotted Helen and waved. So Helen made her way over, wondering whether PC Jackson or one of the other uniforms might be persuaded to head to one of the coffee shops on Harrow Road and fetch her a coffee.

Still, first things first. She nodded at Walker and Jackson. “Good morning, Constables.”

“Hello, Inspector,” DC Walker said. A bit of milk foam clung to his upper lip, obscuring the freckles that dotted his pallid skin.

“Good morning.” PC Jackson raised his cup and grinned, his teeth stark white in his dark face.

“This is Detective Constable Laila Kermani of Harlesden Police Station,” DC Walker introduced the woman next to him. She was about thirty, with brown skin, dark eyes and long black hair she wore tied into a braid at the nape of her neck.

DC Kermani held out her hand. “I’m so glad you’re here, Inspector,” she said, “Maybe now someone will finally take this case seriously. Though it’s a shame that this poor woman had to die first.”

Helen had no idea what DC Kermani was talking about.

“Maybe you could start by telling me what exactly we’re dealing with here,” Helen said.

DC Walker shifted the coffee cup to his other hand and consulted his trusty notebook. “Maureen Pettigrew, aged seventy-eight,” he rattled off, “Found dead on the grave of her late husband Ronald Edward Pettigrew.”

“I assume she did not die of a broken heart.”

“No, boss, she had her skull bashed in,” DC Walker announced with inordinate cheerfulness.

“The victim’s handbag and jewellery are missing,” PC Jackson added.

“Looks like a robbery gone wrong then,” Helen said.

“It was a robbery,” DC Kermani announced, “And it’s not the first time something like this has happened, though it’s the first time someone died.”

Helen shot her a questioning look.

“These past few weeks, we’ve been experiencing a wave of robberies on the cemetery grounds.”

“How many robberies have there been?” Helen asked.

“Eight that we know of, including poor Mrs. Pettigrew.”

“And you’re sure it’s the same person?”

DC Kermani nodded. “Absolutely sure. The modus operandi is always the same. Elderly people, mostly women, are attacked from behind, knocked out and robbed of their valuables. So far, none of the victims have been able to identify their attacker.”

“I assume this was your case before we were called in?”

Once again, DC Kermani nodded. “I’ve been trying to get my superiors to take these robberies seriously and authorise a covert operation to apprehend the culprit. After all, three women and one man, all in their seventies and eighties, had to be hospitalised following the attacks. It was only a matter of time until this bastard — pardon, my language — killed someone.” DC Kermani lowered her eyes. “And now he did.”

“Do you have any suspects?” Helen wanted to know.

DC Kermani shook her head. “Not really. The caretaker, one Harold Cummins, claims he has seen a scruffy young man skulking around the cemetery.”

“Mr. Cummins was also the one who found the victim and called us,” PC Jackson added.

“Where is he now?”

“Waiting in the caretaker’s lodge with a uniform,” DC Walker replied, “Do you want to talk to him, boss?”

“Later. First, I want to take a look at the crime scene and the victim.”

***

Kensal Green cemetery had plenty of graves with ornate headstones, but Ronald Pettigrew’s was not one of them. His headstone was plain grey granite with his name, birth and death date neatly chiselled into the stone. Helen glanced at the dates. Ronald Pettigrew had died six months before, aged eighty-three.

His widow Maureen lay face down on her late husband’s grave, her nose in a pot of purple petunias. Dried blood stained her white hair and camel hair coat. A cellophane wrapped bouquet of red carnations lay next to the body.

“I guess the cause of death is not much of a mystery,” Helen remarked.

Doctor Rajiv, the forensic pathologist, looked up from where he was kneeling next to the victim. Dark eyes gleamed behind gold-rimmed glasses.

“Well, we have to wait for the post-mortem, of course, but the initial examination suggests that Mrs. Pettigrew died after being bludgeoned with a blunt object.”

“Do you have any idea what the weapon was, Doctor?”

Doctor Rajiv shook his head. “Not exactly. Though I have found gravel and soil in Mrs. Pettigrew’s head wound, which suggests the object was something the perpetrator found here at the cemetery.”

“Maybe I can help,” Scene of the Crime Officer Charlotte Wong announced. She got up, the knees of her white coverall stained with grave dirt. She did not look particularly enticing, but DC Walker grinned at her anyway. The two of them had been dating for a while now.

“I found a chunk of granite, most likely a fragment of a gravestone, over there.” Charlotte pointed at the grave with the weeping angel. “It was stained with blood. We’ll have to wait for the post-mortem, of course, but…” Charlotte Wong held up an evidence bag containing a bloodstained rock. “…most likely this is the weapon the attacker used.”

“Excellent,” Helen said, “So we have the murder weapon. Do we have any prints?”

Charlotte Wong shook her head. “It’s weathered granite. Not very good for retaining fingerprints. The blood stains are also smeared, suggesting that the attacker tried to wipe off the rock before discarding it.”

“Ah well, that would have been too easy. Do we have anything else?”

Charlotte beamed. “We have footprints, some of them quite clear. Looks like workboots, size 8.”

Helen gave her an appreciative nod. “Now that’s helpful. If you find anything else, let me know.”

“Inspector…?”

Helen turned around and found herself face to face with DC Kermani. “Yes, Constable?”

“With the previous robberies, the stolen handbags and wallets sometimes showed up again in garbage bins around the cemetery. Without the valuables, of course.”

“And you think the perpetrator might have discarded Mrs. Pettigrew’s handbag as well?” Helen asked.

“It’s worth a try, at any rate.”

“Good thinking, Constable. Have some uniforms search the bins. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

As DC Kermani left to organise the search, PC Jackson picked his way through the graves.

“Inspector, we have some potential witnesses,” Jackson announced, “A couple of goth kids. They say they’re students and were filming a horror movie here. They claim they haven’t seen anything, but…”

At the word “filming,” Helen’s eyebrows shot up. “But they have video footage of the cemetery shot around the time of the murder?”

Jackson nodded.

“All right, keep the kids here. I’ll question them later. And we need that video footage. Maybe they filmed the murder or the murderer and don’t even know it.”

“On it, Inspector,” Jackson said and took off.

DC Walker looked after him. “What now, boss?”

“Now we’ll question the caretaker.”

***

The caretaker’s lodge turned out to be a surprisingly cosy looking Victorian cottage next to one of the cemetery entrances, It would have been a highly desirable piece of real estate, if not for the fact that it was located right beside one of London’s biggest cemeteries.

The caretaker himself, Harold Cummins, was sitting at a table in a small kitchen, while a bored looking police constable was lounging in the corner. Cummins was a white man in his late fifties, gone prematurely grey and looking permanently worried. He was fidgeting with a pack of cards and looked up as Helen entered, Constables Walker and Kermani on her heels.

“Finally,” he snapped, “I have to be about my business, you know, instruct the gardeners, make sure the bins are emptied. Plus, we have two memorial services today at eleven, one in the Anglican chapel and another at St. Mary’s Catholic chapel and someone needs to make sure that everything’s ready.”

Helen interrupted his diatribe. “I apologise for keeping you waiting, Mr. Cummins,” she said smoothly, “And I assure you, we will be as brief as possible. However, this is a murder inquiry, so I fear your other duties will have to wait.”

Cummins scowled and glared at DC Kermani. “Well, if she had arrested that young never-do-well I pointed out to her, we wouldn’t be in this mess and that poor woman would still be alive.”

Helen made a mental note to ask DC Kermani about “that young never-do-well” — later. For now, she turned to the police constable in the corner. “Would you be so kind to fetch some coffee for Constables Walker and Kermani, Mr. Cummins here and myself?” She handed the man a twenty pound note. “I think I spotted a café right across Harrow Road.”

The police constable saluted and left, clearly glad to have gotten out of dull guard duty.

“I don’t need a coffee,” Harold Cummins mumbled to no one in particular, “I really need to go. The bins…”

“Will have to wait,” Helen said firmly. She settled down at the table, careful not to touch the grubby, red and white chequered wax cloth that covered it.

“I understand that you found the victim, Mr. Cummins.”

Cummins nodded. “During my round this morning. I spotted her lying on the ground and went over to see if I could help. At first I thought that she stumbled and fell — it happens sometimes with old people. But then I came closer and saw the blood. So much blood.” He shuddered at the memory.

“Did you touch the body?” Helen wanted to know.

Cummins rubbed his hands, like Lady Macbeth trying to remove non-existent bloodstains.

“I… I might have,” he hedged, “I had to check for a pulse, see if she was alive or dead. Is that bad, Inspector?”

“Well, it’s not ideal, but completely understandable under the circumstances,” Helen replied soothingly.

“And if Mrs. Pettigrew had been still alive, she would have needed medical attention fast,” DC Walker added.

“However, if you touched the body, one of our forensics specialists will have to take a DNA sample from you, so we can exclude you from our investigation,” Helen continued.

At the mention of the word “DNA sample,” Cummins blanched, but quickly caught himself.

“Of course, Inspector. Anything I can do to help.” He shook his head. “That poor woman.”

“Did you see anybody else in the cemetery this morning?” Helen wanted to know, “Anybody who behaved suspiciously perhaps?”

“Oh, you can bet that I did. It was that young fellow again. The one who’s always skulking around the cemetery. I told her…” Cummins glared at DC Kermani. “…about him, but she never did anything about it.”

“You must forgive us, but DC Walker and I are new to the case, so could you please repeat what you told DC Kermani about this young fellow?”

Harold Cummins, shifted in his chair, clearly about to launch into a longer tirade.

“I first noticed him four or five weeks ago, around the time the muggings started. Young fellow, jeans, leather jacket, long hair. It was obvious he was up to no good.”

“How can you tell?” DC Walker wanted to know.

“I’ve been working here at Kensal Green for thirty-five years now,” Cummins replied, “And in thirty-five years, you develop an eye for who belongs and who doesn’t. First, there’s the recently bereaved. They come a lot, every week, sometimes even every day. They bring flowers, keep the grave clean, sometimes just sit there and talk to the gravestone. Almost all are elderly, most are women. Younger people, they mourn, too, but they don’t go to the cemetery that often…”

Elderly women, recently bereaved. Exactly like Marjorie Pettigrew and the other victims of the cemetery mugger.

“Then there’s the anniversary people. They come once or twice a year, when it’s the deceased’s birthday or anniversary. They bring flowers, too, and clean up the grave, but just on those one or two days. Otherwise, they can’t be bothered.”

Harold Cummins shook his head, as if he couldn’t quite believe that there were people in the world who had neither the time nor inclination to visit a cemetery every day of their lives.

“Then there’s birdwatchers and photographers who take pictures of the many striking monuments we have here.”

Cummins beamed with pride.

“They’re odd but harmless. Then there’s the tourists who want to see the famous graves. All right, mostly just one. Freddie Mercury. We have royalty here, scholars, poets, playwrights, scientists, politicians. And who do the tourists want to see? Some fag of a singer. And then they always complain that they can’t find him. Cause he’s not buried here as Freddie Mercury, but under his real name, Farrokh Bulsara.”

Cummins shook his head.

“As if there ever was anybody who was really called Mercury. That’s a planet, not a name…”

At this moment, the door opened and the police constable returned, bearing a tray with coffee for everybody.

“Thank you, Constable.”

Helen took the tray and the change from the man. She handed a paper cup of coffee each to DC Walker and DC Kermani, set down a cup in front of Harold Cummins and kept the last one for herself.

“I don’t want any coffee,” Cummins said once more, “I really need to empty to bins and make sure everything is ready for the memorial services at eleven.”

“And I assure you, we won’t keep you any longer than necessary,” Helen said.

She took a sip of coffee, savouring the taste and the caffeine that shot into her veins, instantly making her more awake, more alert.

She turned back to Harold Cummins, who hadn’t touched his coffee yet. “All right, Mr. Cummins, where were we? Oh yes, you were just telling us about a suspicious young man you observed.”

As well as ranting about Freddie Mercury and the fact that tourists dared to want to see his grave rather than that of some long dead dignity. And muttering about bins. Cummins was oddly obsessed with emptying the bins.

“Like I said, Inspector, after thirty-five years, you can instantly tell who belongs and who doesn’t. The mourning relatives, the anniversary folks, the birdwatchers and photographer, even the tourists, they all belong.”

Harold Cummins finally did take a sip of coffee.

“And then there are the ones who don’t belong. Like those bloody goth kids who want to have parties in the mausoleums by night or do fashion shoots and movies or just ‘feel their mortality’. I always chase them away. Ghouls, that’s what they are. Ghouls and vampires without an inch of respect.”

“I understand there was a group of such goth kids in the cemetery this morning,” Helen probed.

“Oh yes, them.” Cummins spat derisively. “I had to remind them of the cemetery regulations. Again. If I didn’t have to chase them around, maybe I could have saved that poor woman.”

Cummins face suddenly took on a stricken look.

“Anyway, that young fellow I mentioned. He doesn’t belong. You can tell by the way he moves, skulking furtively, sticking to the shadows, slinking away whenever I walk past.”

“It’s not actually illegal to furtively skulk, stick to the shadows and slink away,” DC Walker pointed out.

“Maybe not,” Cummins replied, “But as far as I am concerned, it damn well should be.”

“Did you ever see that young man do anything do anything suspicious?” Helen asked, “Anything other than skulking, slinking and sticking to shadows?”

Harold Cummins scratched his head. “Well, not exactly,” he finally said, “But the way he behaves, it simply is suspicious.”

“Did you see him today?” Helen wanted to know.

Cummins scrunched his forehead, thinking hard. “Yes, he was here. I spotted him while I was chasing those goth kids.”

“Was he in the part of the cemetery where Mrs. Pettigrew was killed?” DC Walker asked.

Once more, Harold Cummins seemed to think hard. “Yes, he was. At least, I think he was. I wasn’t paying much attention.” He shook his head. “Those damned goth kids…”

Helen got up. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Cummins. You were very helpful. Ms. Wong, our scene of the crime officer will come by later to take your finger prints and DNA, so we can exclude you from our investigations.”

Harold Cummins rose as well. “Can… can I get back to work now?” he asked, “I have to take care of the bins and the gardeners and the services in the Anglican chapel and St. Mary’s chapel.”

“I’m afraid you’ll first have to wait for Ms. Wong,” Helen said, “But afterwards, you can go about your business, as long as you keep away from the crime scene and do not interfere with police matters.”

“Of… of course, Inspector. Thank you.”

***

“That was… very strange,” DC Walker said, as they left the caretaker’s lodge and walked along the crunching gravel path back to the cemetery proper.

DC Kermani emitted a sigh. “‘Strange’ is exactly the right term for Harold Cummins.”

“He did seem inordinately concerned about the garbage bins,” DC Walker said.

“Tell me about it.” DC Kermani emitted another sigh. “Mr. Cummins is always concerned about someone or something messing up his precious cemetery. Today it’s garbage bins, the last time it was sagging gravestones at risk of toppling over, the time before that slippery leaves on the path and the time before that bird shit corroding grave monuments…”

“Not to forget tourists seeking the grave of Freddie Mercury,” DC Walker added.

DC Kermani nodded vigorously. “I swear, that man would only be happy, if no one were allowed to enter the cemetery except for the dead.”

Helen was inclined to agree with Laila Kermani. Harold Cummins really did seem extremely protective of the cemetery he clearly considered his property. But that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Because it meant that Cummins paid attention to everything that happened here and might have noticed something that others had missed.

“So what about that suspicious young man Cummins mentioned?” Helen asked.

“Oh that.” DC Kermani emitted a heartfelt sigh. “He keeps going on about that young man as if he were the devil incarnate.”

“Did you follow up on that?”

“Of course, I did. But the description is too vague. Jeans, leather jacket, long hair, white, young. There must be thousands of people in London alone who match that description. And no one except Harold Cummins has ever seen him.”

“And you don’t have anything else? CCTV footage, for example?”

DC Kermani shook her head. “The only cameras on the premises are at the three chapels. And this young man, if he even exists, never came near the chapels.”

“What about CCTV footage from some of the shops along Harrow Road or maybe Kensal Green tube station?” DC Walker asked, “Maybe we’ll get lucky there.”

“It’s possible.” DC Kermani shrugged. “But I don’t have the resources and manpower to check all cameras that might have caught him. They didn’t even give me a police constable or two to patrol the cemetery. My superiors aren’t particularly interested in this case. Or at least, they weren’t until someone died.”

“I know how frustrating this must be,” Helen said, “But we have the resources and the manpower, so we should check at least the CCTV cameras closest to the cemetery gates to see if we can spot our man.”

DC Walker winked at her. “Did you mean Jackson by ‘resources and manpower’? Cause he’ll just love that.”

Helen nodded. “He’s with those goth kids and since I’ll have to talk to them anyway, you and Jackson can go hunting for CCTV footage.”

DC Walker made a face. He no more liked viewing CCTV footage than PC Jackson did.

Though his face quickly lit up again, when Charlotte Wong came walking up the gravel path, lugging her equipment case. She was still wearing her white coverall, but she had pulled down the hood, revealing glossy black hair.

“I’m supposed to take samples from someone?” she asked.

“Harold Cummins, the caretaker. You’ll find him in there.” Helen pointed at the lodge. “He touched the body, so we’ll need DNA, fingerprints, the whole works.”

Charlotte nodded. “On it, boss.”

“And watch out,” DC Walker added, “He has a thing about garbage bins and Freddie Mercury and people defiling his precious cemetery.”

Charlotte raised an eyebrow. “He must hate me then, cause I fear I just defiled his cemetery and the garbage bins and I like Freddie Mercury, too.”

“Did you find anything in the garbage bins?” Laila Kermani wanted to know.

“It’s amazing what you can find in cemetery garbage bins,” Charlotte replied, “Gardening waste, wilted flowers, tissues, newspapers, magazines, empty bottles, empty crisp packages, broken umbrellas, broken watering cans, at least three syringes, pinwheels, a football, a teddy bear. But no handbag so far.”

Taking in the look of pure dejection on DC Kermani’s face, Charlotte added. “But it’s a huge cemetery with lots of bins and we haven’t even searched half of them so far.”

“I’ll go and help with the bins then,” Laila Kermani announced, “Only if you don’t mind, Inspector.”

“Not at all,” Helen said, “The sooner we check all the bins, the better.”

***

Helen and DC Walker found PC Martin Jackson standing ramrod stiff next to a bench on which four young people, two men and two women, were lounging. Two were dressed in vaguely Victorian costumes, the other two in regular street clothes. They were all wearing black, though, and they all looked sullen, as if they’d rather be somewhere else. Helen couldn’t even blame them. After all, being stuck on a cemetery wasn’t her idea of fun either.

“Here comes the Inspector,” PC Jackson announced, visibly relieved to see Helen and DC Walker. Apparently, the goth kids had been giving him grief.

PC Jackson turned to Helen. “Inspector, these are Rebecca, Amy, Ryan and Joshua. They’re all students at London Film School and were shooting in the cemetery this morning.”

“Inspector…,” one of the young women began. She was clad in black jeans and a black oversized sweater, which made her pale freckled face seem even paler. A jaunty beret sat on ginger hair that fell down to her shoulders in gentle waves.

“…when will we get the camera and the footage back?”

“This is our graduate film…” one of the young men explained. He had sandy hair, pasty skin and was clad in black skinny jeans and an equally black turtleneck sweater. “…so we really need to get it finished. Not to mention that we borrowed the camera and must return it or pay a fine.”

“And I assure you that you will get your camera and your footage back, Mr…?”

“Jones, Ryan Jones, cinematographer.”

The girl with the beret stretched out her hand. “And I’m Amy Ludgate, the director.”

“Ms. Ludgate, Mr. Jones, I assure you that you will get your equipment back as soon as possible,” Helen said soothingly, “However, we are investigating a homicide and your camera might have recorded vital evidence.”

“Like in Blow-Up, you mean?” the other young woman wanted to know. She was dressed in a lacy faux Victorian gown. Her long dark hair was piled into a messy topknot. Her skin was powdery pale and her lips were painted a bright bloody red.

“Well, we don’t yet know if you captured the murder or a suspect,” Helen replied, “That’s why we need to check your footage, Ms….?”

“Rebecca McDaniel,” the girl replied, “I’m the star of Blood on the Vampire’s Tomb.”

“And I’m Joshua van Dyke,” the other young man said. He was clad in a frilly pirate shirt, tight velvet pants and a swirling cape. “I play the vampire,” he added with a smile that revealed pointed fake fangs.

“Anyway, we have to hand in the film by the end of next month and we’re still shooting,” the director Amy added, “We want to help, of course, but we really, really need that footage back.”

“We can copy your footage and then you can have everything back,” DC Walker said.

“What happened anyway?” Ryan Jones wanted to know, “If you’re at liberty to tell us, that is.”

“A seventy-eight-year-old woman, Maureen Pettigrew, was robbed and killed today, while visiting the grave of her late husband,” Helen explained.

“Oh my God!” Rebecca McDaniel pressed a gloved hand to her mouth. “That’s so sad.”

Helen nodded to DC Walker who pulled up a photo of Mrs. Pettigrew on his smartphone. He showed it to the four students.

“Did you happen see her at the cemetery today?”

The film students took a close look at the photo.

Rebecca McDaniel shook her head. “No. At least not as far as I remember.”

“Me neither,” Joshua van Dyke added, displaying his faux fangs, “Crap, is that real blood?”

Amy Ludgate frowned. “There are always old ladies around here. It’s a cemetery, after all. But this old lady? I’m sorry, but I really can’t say. I was too focussed on our shoot.”

“Same here,” Ryan Jones said, “Besides, whenever I’m shooting, I sort of become the camera. I no longer really see what’s going on, I just point the camera and record. That’s how a scenario like in Blow-Up could happen. Or how George Lucas, back when he was still a film student, could film a real life murder at the Altamont music festival in California and never notice it, until he reviewed the footage later.”

“Maybe we should review your footage, so we can see if you caught anything on camera and never noticed it,” Helen suggested.

She plopped down on the bench between the students, while Ryan tinkered with the camera. He handed it to Helen.

“This is the footage from today,” he said and pressed “Play”.

The next eight minutes, Helen was treated to some very bad Hammer Horror wannabe footage of Joshua Van Dyke chasing a screaming Rebecca McDaniel across Kensal Green cemetery.

“I thought he’s supposed to be a vampire,” DC Walker remarked, “So why is he running around in broad daylight? Shouldn’t he crumble into dust or burst into flames or something?”

“Count Valeri has drunk a potion made from the blossoms of the rare midnight orchid,” Amy Ludgate explained, as if it all made perfect sense, “The potion allows him to walk around by day. But it only lasts for an hour, then he must return to his crypt or die for good.”

“But if he drinks my sweet virgin blood, the time he can walk by daylight is extended,” Rebecca added, “That’s why the Count is chasing me around. Because he wants my blood.”

“That figures, considering he’s a vampire,” DC Walker said dryly.

After a lot of footage of the vampire chasing the maiden, shot from any conceivable angle, a familiar figure suddenly stomped into the frame.

“Didn’t I tell you to stop filming?” Harold Cummins demanded, shaking a rake at the students, “Filming in the cemetery without a permit is strictly forbidden.”

Amy rolled her eyes. “He’s always doing that, always bothering us. He treats us as if we’re hooligans who desecrate graves and party in the crypts.” She shot Helen a questioning look. “We won’t get into trouble for filming in the cemetery without a permit, will we? Cause these permits are not easy to get, especially if you don’t have the budget of a Hollywood production.”

Helen shook her head. “Not my department.”

The footage became shaky now, as the film team fled from a wrathful Harold Cummins.

“There, boss,” DC Walker suddenly exclaimed.

“What?”

“I think I spotted someone in the background.” DC Walker turned to Ryan Jones. “Can we see that again and maybe freeze it?”

Ryan Jones nodded. “Sure. Just tell me when to stop.”

He rewound the recording and then forwarded it frame by frame, until DC Walker said “Stop”.

Helen squinted at the image. The form of Harold Cummins took up most of the frame, looming like Godzilla himself. But there in the background, lurking among the gravestones, was another figure. A young man with long greasy hair, dressed in jeans and a beat-up leather jacket.

Helen and DC Walker exchanged a glance.

“So the young man in the leather jacket really exists and is not just a figment of Harold Cummins’ imagination,” Helen said.

“Yes, but how can we identify and apprehend him?” DC Walker wanted to know.

***

Later that day, Helen and DC Walker were back at the office, discussing the case with DC Kermani, when Charlotte Wong sauntered in, waving some computer printouts.

Helen raised an eyebrow. “I take it you have some results to show us, Ms. Wong.”

Charlotte nodded, beaming. “Well, for starters that chunk of granite we found really is the murder weapon. Those blood traces on the rock are Mrs. Pettigrew’s.”

“Any prints?” Helen asked.

Charlotte shook her head. “As I said, weathered granite isn’t an ideal medium for retaining prints. But I did find the DNA of that very strange man, Mr. Cummins.”

“That doesn’t have to mean anything,” DC Walker said, “After all, he admitted that he touched the body.”

Charlotte flashed him a triumphant grin. “Yes, the body. But I also found his DNA on the murder weapon.”

DC Kermani’s eyes went wide and DC Walker spat out the coffee he’d been drinking.

Helen raised an eyebrow. “Now that’s unexpected.”

“You can say that, boss,” DC Walker said, trying to wipe away the coffee stains from his desk.

“You don’t think that Harold Cummins…” Laila Kermani began. She shook her head. “No, it doesn’t fit. He’s so devoted to his cemetery that I just can’t imagine he’d do something like this. At least not to old women who are mourning their late husbands. Would he brain a tourist who annoys him by asking for the grave of Freddie Mercury? I have no doubt that he would. But elderly grieving widows? Sorry, but no way.”

“DNA doesn’t lie,” DC Walker pointed out.

“Maybe not,” Helen said, “But it doesn’t necessarily tell the full truth either. And considering that he works at the cemetery, Harold Cummins could have had any number of legitimate reasons to touch that chunk of rock. He might have found it on the ground and picked it up, because it offended his sense of order.”

“So we’re striking Cummins off our list of suspects?” DC Walker wanted to know.

“Right now, we’re striking no one,” Helen said, “But there are legitimate reasons for his DNA to be on both the body and the murder weapon.”

She turned to DC Walker. “So what about our other suspect, the mysterious young man in the leather jacket?”

DC Walker sighed. “We checked CCTV footage from several cameras on Harrow Road and spotted him a few times. Our mystery man apparently goes to Kensal Green cemetery a lot, several times per week. But that’s not illegal.”

“Was there anything suspicious?” Helen asked.

DC Walker shook his head. “No. He goes to the cemetery, stays maybe half an hour or an hour, then he leaves.”

“At least, you’ve been able to determine that the young man in the leather jacket really exists.” DC Kermani leant back in her chair. “That’s further than I ever got.” She sighed. “But then, my boss felt that checking CCTV recordings was a waste of time, just like he nixed any other idea I ever had to tackle this case.”

Helen was about to ask DC Kermani about those other ideas her boss had nixed, just in case one of them was good. But before she could, PC Jackson entered, triumphantly waving a clear plastic evidence bag containing a battered looking black handbag.

“We found this in one of the bins at the cemetery,” Jackson announced, “Maureen Pettigrew’s handbag.”

“Excellent work, Constable,” Helen said, “Please give it to Ms. Wong, so she can check it for prints and DNA.”

Jackson handed Charlotte the bag, who examined it and wrinkled her nose. “What are those bits stuck to the bag?”

“Grass, leaves and rose petals, I think,” PC Jackson said apologetically, “Like I said, we found it in a bin.”

Charlotte emitted a “harrumph” of distaste.

Meanwhile, Helen turned to Laila Kermani. “Constable, you just mentioned that you had some ideas to tackle the case. Would you mind sharing them?”

DC Kermani’s face brightened. “Not at all. I… well, I was hoping that we could use a decoy to trap the mugger. A police officer pretending to be a mourning relative.”

Helen nodded appreciatively. “That’s an excellent idea, Constable. We should try it.”

Charlotte Wong’s ears had perked up at the word “decoy”. “Inspector, I really enjoyed my undercover mission as a decoy in that Christmas market case last December. I’d love to do it again.”

“That’s a very kind offer, Ms. Wong,” Helen said, “However, I fear that I have to decline.”

Noticing how dejected Charlotte looked, Helen added, “Your enthusiasm is appreciated, but you’re simply the wrong demographic. Cause we know that our mugger targets elderly women.”

“So we need a police officer who can pass for an elderly woman?” DC Walker wanted to know.

Helen nodded. “Exactly. And I know just the person.”

***

The next morning, Charlotte Wong finished taping a microphone wire to Sergeant Barbara Ironside’s body.

“There. Now we can hear everything that happens.” Charlotte handed her a wireless earbud. “And this is how you can hear us.”

Sergeant Ironside inserted the earbud and buttoned up her plain white blouse. Critically, she regarded herself in the mirror, taking in the frumpy black suit and equally frumpy camel hair coat, the iron grey hair that was pulled back into a severe knot at the nape of her neck, the old-fashioned gold jewellery borrowed from the evidence room, her make-up less face and thick-rimmed glasses.

“Blimey, I look like my own grandmother,” she exclaimed.

Charlotte nodded in appreciation. “Very frumpy.”

“That’s exactly the point,” Helen said, “After all, you’re a poor grieving widow.”

“A poor grieving widow with zero sense of style,” Barb Ironside remarked, “Why, oh why couldn’t I be a hot, glamourous widow?”

“Because our mugger tends to go for the frumpy and harmless looking ones,” Helen said, “Anyway, thanks for doing this, Barb.”

“Oh, I’m always up for a decoy job,” Barb Ironside replied, “Only that they’re getting thin on the ground these days, now I’m a little old to pass as a streetwalker or punk kid.” She sighed. “From hot streetwalker to frumpy old lady. Such is life.”

“And isn’t that the truth,” Helen exclaimed, “So, about the grave…”

“Oh, I already have one in mind. Harry Dempsey, in his late sixties, lived and died alone four weeks ago. Some of my constables found his body after he’d lain dead for two weeks in his flat. Not pretty and a constable promptly vomited onto the body. But it turned out to be natural causes, heart attack. No friends, no relatives, all very sad. He was buried at Kensal Green.”

Helen nodded. “The grave is still new, so a mourning widow doesn’t look out of place.”

“And since Harry Dempsey didn’t have any relatives, there is no chance of a competing widow showing up at the graveside and messing up our sting operation.”

Charlotte suppress a giggle, probably imagining the soap opera like confrontation that would ensue if two widows met by the same grave.

Meanwhile, Barb Ironside picked up a plain black handbag — frumpy like the rest of her attire — and a plastic-wrapped bouquet of carnations of the sort you could buy at petrol stations.

“All right, let’s get the bastard.”

***

An hour later, Barb Ironside was on her knees before the grave of the late Harry Dempsey, laying down her bouquet of carnations, brushing away stray leaves, dabbing at her face with a lacey handkerchief and generally pretending to be in deep mourning. Her plain black handbag sat on the ground next to her, a fat, juicy target.

“Anything yet?” Barb subvocalized into the microphone, “Cause I’m running out of things to do.”

“No sign of any suspect yet,” Helen, who was stationed inside a mausoleum a little bit away, said into her own microphone, “Just keep going, Barb.”

“And what? The grave of poor Harry Dempsey hasn’t looked this clean since the day he was buried.”

“I don’t know. Pretend to weep or something.”

Barb promptly launched into a mournful wail that would have been worthy of a BAFTA. “Oh, Harry, my poor, poor Harry. To die all alone in your favourite armchair, while watching Eastenders and eating a Tesco’s cottage pie…”

Helen suppressed a smile. Frumpy clothes or not, Barb was loving this.

“Boss,” the voice of DC Walker sounded in her ear, “I see the suspect.”

“The young man in the leather jacket?” Helen asked.

“Yup, the same. He’s heading in Sergeant Ironside’s direction.”

“Barb, the suspect is coming your way,” Helen said.

“All right, bring it on,” Barbara Ironside subvocalized. Out loud, she continued, “Oh, my poor, dear, departed Harry. How shall I miss your threadbare cardigans and felt slippers!”

“Oh crap,” DC Kermani exclaimed, her voice echoing in Helen’s ear, “There’s Harold Cummins. He’s carrying a shovel and heading your way.”

“Fuck,” DC Walker exclaimed, “What if he chases the suspect off? Maybe we should’ve informed him about the sting operation after all.”

“No,” Helen said, “After all, we found his DNA on the body and the murder weapon, which means he’s still a suspect.”

“The suspect — leather jacket guy, not Cummins — just entered a row of graves a little bit behind Sergeant Ironside,” PC Jackson reported.

“Acknowledged,” Helen said, “Barb, it’s showtime.”

Sergeant Barbara Ironside was still kneeling in front of the grave of Harry Dempsey, pressing her handkerchief to her face, while pretending to weep over the poor, dear, departed Harry, when she heard the crunch of gravel behind her and saw a tall shadow falling upon the tombstone of Harry Dempsey. The shadow raised his hand, holding some kind of implement.

Barb whirled around, springing to her feet with a speed that belied the poor elderly widow she was pretending to be.

She faced her would-be assailant. “Halt. Police. Stay where you are and put down your weapon!”

“What are you doing? Leave that poor woman alone,” another voice exclaimed in puzzled anger. A young man in a leather jacket appeared between two tombstones, fists raised at the mugger.

A second later, Constables Walker, Jackson and Kermani arrived to seize the would-be mugger.

A shovel clattered to the ground.

“No, please. This is all a mistake,” Harold Cummins lamented, “A tragic mistake.”

Constables Walker, Jackson and Kermani exchanged a glance.

“Now that is… unexpected,” DC Walker said and proceeded to cuff Harold Cummins.

***

A little later, Helen, Barb Ironside as well as Constables Walker and Kermani were all clustered around a bench, facing a dejected looking Harold Cummins.

“This is all a mistake, Inspector,” Harold Cummins insisted, “I just spotted that young never-do-well heading towards an elderly lady and wanted to stop him.”

“And what was the shovel for?” DC Walker asked.

“To defend myself.” Harold Cummins glared at the young man in the leather jacket, who was giving his statement to PC Jackson. “After all, he’s a killer.”

“He is not a killer,” DC Kermani corrected, “But you are.”

“You’re just trying to pin everything on me, because you’re unable to catch the real killer,” Harold Cummins insisted.

“Actually, Mr. Cummins, you are the real killer,” Helen said, “We found your DNA on the body of Maureen Pettigrew.”

“Because I found her and checked her pulse.”

“We also found your DNA on the murder weapon, a chunk of granite that had broken out of a gravestone. And our forensics officer just informed that she also found your DNA on the handbag of Maureen Pettigrew, a handbag that was thrown into a garbage bin right here on the cemetery.”

“So that’s why you were so eager to empty the garbage bins,” DC Walker exclaimed, “Because you wanted to get rid of the evidence before we could find it.”

Harold Cummins crumpled like a paperbag. “It was all a tragic mistake,” he lamented, “I didn’t mean to hit that old lady so hard. I didn’t mean to kill her.”

“And you didn’t mean to brain me with a shovel either, right?” Barb Ironside said.

“I never meant to hurt anybody. I just needed the money,” Cummins continued. He seemed about to burst into tears.

Helen sat down on the bench next to him. “I only have one question. Why? Why would a man like you, a man who has dedicated his life to this cemetery, suddenly start mugging old ladies mourning their late husbands?”

“Because of the money,” Cummins said. Now he was sobbing in pure self-pity. “I have debts, gambling debts. Debts too high to pay off any other way. And the people to whom I’m indebted… they’re not nice people. They’ll break your fingers or your legs, if you don’t pay up. So you see, I had to do it. I had no other choice.”

“You always have a choice,” Helen said and got up.

She turned to Constables Walker and Kermani. “Take him away. He disgusts me.”

***

Police Constable Martin Jackson was just finishing taking the statement of the young man in the leather jacket.

“Inspector, this is Jordan Costello,” PC Jackson said, “He witnessed the entire attempted attack on Sergeant Ironside.”

“Very good,” Helen said and turned to Jordan Costello, “You know, Mr. Costello, you were initially our main suspect.”

Jordan Costello looked taken aback. “Me? But why?”

“You were repeatedly seen on the cemetery in the vicinity of where the muggings took place. And you don’t fit the demographic profile of people who frequent cemeteries.”

“My father died four weeks ago,” Jordan Costello said, “And we… well, we didn’t get along very well. Since I went away to uni, I never visited anymore. I haven’t seen my Dad since Christmas. And now he’s suddenly dead — heart attack. And I never had a chance to talk to him, never had a chance to make him proud.”

Jordan lowered his head, his long hair hiding his features.

“So I come here, whenever I can, just to… — well, it sounds silly, but I talk to him. I don’t know if he can hear me, but I hope he can.”

“And what happened today?” Helen wanted to know.

“I saw the old lady, but I didn’t pay much attention to her.”

Good thing that Barb didn’t hear this, Helen thought.

“I mean she was obviously here for the same reason I was, to visit a loved one. I did notice the caretaker coming my way, because he’s been bothering me before.”

“Actually, Mr. Cummins was the one who pointed you out to us as a possible suspect,” Helen said.

“Yeah, that makes sense. Bastard. Anyway, I watched him and then I saw that he was about to attack the old lady. I read about the murder of that other old lady in the paper and suddenly everything clicked and so I tried to intervene.”

Helen put a hand on Jordan Costello’s shoulder. “And you did good, Mr. Costello. You helped to apprehend a dangerous criminal. Your father would be very proud of you.”

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.

Foundation discovers “Mysteries and Martyrs” and departs even further from the books

Since we only have three episodes to go, I’m doing episode by episode reviews of Foundation, so here is my take on episode 7. Reviews of previous episodes of Foundation as well as two actual Foundation stories may be found here.

For more Foundation discussion, check out the Star’s End and Seldon Crisis podcasts.

Warning! Spoilers under the cut!

Before we get to this week’s episode, I want to point you to this New York Times opinion piece by economist and Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman about the current adaptations of Foundation and Dune. Now I almost never agree with Paul Krugman on anything, because he is very much in favour of debts and deficits and inflation, whereas I’m vehemently opposed to these things and believe keeping deficits and inflation low is one of the main purposes of any government. Krugman also repeatedly criticises German financial politics – something that US Nobel Prize winners of economics love doing, even though it’s none of their fucking business (also, while I don’t particularly like Wolfgang Schäuble, he did his job as secretary of finance well. Olaf Scholz didn’t, though to be fair, he was hampered by the covid pandemic, which his ministry bungled as well). So in short, I don’t like Krugman and I rarely agree with him.

However, it appears that I agree with Krugman on filmic adaptations of classic science fiction. Because Krugman says that Denis Villeneuve’s take on Dune is exactly the adaptation he’d been hoping to see for decades. Foundation, on the other hand, is not. Let’s have a quote:

“Foundation” might seem unfilmable. It mostly involves people talking, and its narrative inverts the hero-saves-the-universe theme that burns many acres of CGI every year. The story spans centuries; in each episode everything appears to be on the brink, and it seems as if only desperate efforts by the protagonists can save the day. But after each crisis, Seldon’s prerecorded hologram appears to explain to everyone what just happened and why the successful resolution was inevitable given the laws of history.

So how does the Apple TV+ series turn this into a visually compelling tale? It doesn’t. What it does instead is remake “Star Wars” under another name. There are indispensable heroes, mystical powers, even a Death Star. These aren’t necessarily bad things to include in a TV series, but they’re completely antithetical to the spirit of Asimov’s writing. Pretending that this series has anything to do with the “Foundation” novels is fraudulent marketing, and I’ve stopped watching.

I haven’t gotten around to seeing Dune yet and I’m obviously still watching Foundation nor would I be quite so harsh on the TV series as Krugman, though I’m beginning to feel the same. The Foundation TV series is a cool space opera with stunning visuals. However – even with a lot of goodwill – it’s not the story that Krugman and I and many other fans of the books signed up to watch, the story we’ve wanted to see for a very long time. And considering that we have only three episodes to go, I’m not sure if we’re still going to get a version of that story.

“Mysteries and Martyrs” devotes its time between four distinct plot strands. Two involve the Emperors Three, one Salvor Hardin and the Anacreons and one Hari Seldon and Gaal Dornick.

As last week, the least interesting plotline involves Brother Day and the high priestess succession crisis of the generic Triple Goddess religion. Everything I said last week still holds true. I don’t care about these people, I don’t care about their religion and I have no idea what this plotline is supposed to accomplish aside from showing that the Empire is disintegrating, which could be done in more compelling and interesting ways.

Brother Day is understandably furious that Demerzel bowed to the heretical would-be high priestess successor Zephyr Halima (apparently, I have to remember that bloody woman’s name, since she plays a bigger role than I initially assumed). Demerzel informs him that she did not bow to Zephyr Halima, but to the Mother aspect of the Triple Goddess. She also tells Brother Day that she is loyal to the Cleons above all else, that she is programmed to be loyal and that she could never have bowed, if that violated her programming. Of course, we know Demerzel is lying to Brother Day’s face, cause we know the laws she follows (though in the books, Daneel/Demerzel had a more liberal interpretation of the Three Laws of Robotics than his fellow robots) and “Loyalty to the Cleons above all else” is not one of them.

Day is skeptical as well and tells Demerzel that if he is an abomination without a soul, then Demerzel is one as well. He also wonders what Zephyr Halima would say, if she knew what Demerzel really was. Cause if that bloody woman freaks out over clones, how will she react to androids? Most likely, it would involves torches, pitchforks and “Burn the heretic”.

However, for now Day has more pressing problems than doubts about Demerzel’s loyalty, because he has to try to win over that pesky Zephyr Halima. So he goes to see her where she is ministering to those of her flock who have attempted to do a gruelling pilgrimage rite called “walking the Spiral”, where they have to walk along a spiralling desert canyon to reach “the womb of the mother” (a.k.a. the centre of the spiral) in extreme heat and sunshine. This rite regularly kills or maims the faithful, e.g. there’s one man who was blinded by the sun. The fact that what is supposedly one of the major religions of the galaxy is perfectly okay with killing its own worshippers is troubling. Because in this episode the Luminists are shown not just to be followers of some weird fictional religion, but dangerous fanatics.

The desert camp where Zephyr Halima (who is not walking the spiral, of course) offers her ministrations to the maimed pilgrims looks like something out of a Bible film. There are ragged makeshift tents made from cloth and what looks like wood, the exhausted and maimed pilgrims lie down on rough cots, the fellow who went blind has a rag tied over his eyes. These people have forcefields, nanotech and jump ships, so why the hell do their camps look like the set of The Ten Commandments? Once again, this makes no sense at all.

Brother Day decides to be frank with Zephyr Halima and tells her, “Okay, cool power play, great speech, you win. So what do you want exactly?” He also proceeds to offer her not just an advanced desalination system for her water-poor moon, but also an orbital satellite defence system. He might have thrown in some decent tents and cots, while he was at it.

However, it turns out that Zephyr Halima is a true believer. She genuinely believes the Emperors Three to be an abomination against her faith and wants the genetic dynasty gone. And that’s of course the one thing she’s not going to get.

Now Hari Seldon and Zephyr Halima are not exactly wrong that an Empire ruled by increasingly error-riddled clones of the same man over centuries is a bad idea and indicative of the generally bad state of the Empire. Nonetheless, Zephyr Halima is just so very unlikeable and so rude about saying to Brother Day’s face that he is an abomination without a soul – after all, none of the Cleons are responsible for the system they were decanted into and each is also terrified of what the other two might do – that you just hate her on the spot, as AV-Club reviewer Nick Wanserski points out. Also, I can’t help but be bothered by the fact that the two most unlikable characters in this episode – Pharah and Zephyr Halima – are both women of colour.

And so I found myself yelling at the screen, “Oh, just have that bloody woman assassinated. You’re a galactic tyrant, after all, so you can do that sort of thing. Actually, I would even understand, if you were to nuke that bloody moon from orbit.” Brother Day, however, has a more stand-offish solution to the problem. He will prove that he is worthy by doing the spiral pilgrimage, the one that tends to kill pilgrims, and get the approval of the Triple Goddess. I really, really hope that Brother Day cheats. Because let’s face it, that’s what he would have done, if Asimov had written the script.

Because the main sin of the whole “Brother Day and the religious fanatics” storyline is not that it is boring – though it is – or that it neither advances the plot – though it doesn’t – nor that it has fuck all to do with the books – though it doesn’t. No, it’s that the whole Luminism plot is completely antithetical to the way religion is portrayed throughout the Foundation series. Because in the Foundation books, religion is literally opium for the masses.

The most prominent religion in Foundation is Scientism, the science disguised as a faux religion that the Foundation uses to keep the Four Kingdoms at bay. And very point of Scientism is that it’s fake, a scam. No one who actually matters believes in Scientism, not even their own high priest. The other religion we encounter in the first Foundation book is the anti-technology religion of Askone in “The Wedge”. And “The Wedge” makes it very clear that the political leaders of Askone don’t actually believe in their own religion either, it’s a way to keep their population under control. However, they’re forced to adhere to the taboos of their own religion, namely that technology is bad, or the fanatic mob would throw them into the nearest gas chamber. And this exactly how the Foundation gets them, via their own hypocrisy.

Foundation is, as Paul Krugman says in the introduction to a recent edition, “a bracingly cynical story”. And Foundation is rarely more cynical than in its portrayal of religion. And so, if Asimov had written Zephyr Halima, she would have responded to Brother Day’s offer with, “Yes, I know it’s all bullshit and I neither know nor care if you have a soul or not, but the people believe all this nonsense and there’s three trillion of them. This is what I want or I will tell my three trillion followers to tear down your Empire.”

Not only would this have made for a better story, it would also have been closer to the story Asimov actually wrote. And as I said in my last review, there is no chance of offending anybody with this cynical portrayal of religion, because Luminism is a completely fake religion and there are no Luminists to offend.

While Brother Day is grandstanding for Zephyr Halima, Brother Dawn is finally losing his virginity courtesy of Jacenta, the cute gardener he has fallen for, when they have a clandestine tryst in a greenhouse in the Imperial gardens. Brother Dawn even takes off his personal forcefield, which makes having sex difficult, as we saw back in episode 4. I’m still not a huge fan of the obligatory sex scenes inserted into every episode to satisfy the folks who apparently watched Game of Thrones for the sex scenes, but this one was at least nicely done and well shot.

Though it’s notable that once Jacenta strips off her uniform, she’s wearing a typical 21st century department store bra underneath, which is just incongruous. I’m not the only one who noticed this either – Nick Wanserski makes a crack that bra clasps haven’t evolved in twenty thousand years. And considering how awful bra clasps (and bras in general) are now, I really hope that isn’t true. The anachronistic bra is an odd lapse, especially considering how very detailed the costume and set design is otherwise. And Gaal is shown wearing a very futuristic bra/bikini top several times. Most likely, the bra was a last minute addition during shooting, either because the actress was uncomfortable performing without one or because the director felt she should be wearing one.

Jacenta also presents Brother Dawn with a gift, lenses to correct his colour vision. But Brother Dawn cannot wear them, because the other Cleons and the household staff might notice. We also learn that Brother Dawn is different from his clone brothers is other ways as well. Cabbage tastes intolerably bitter to him (which is due to a genetic variation), whereas Brothers Dusk and Day like it. And there are other variations as well. The genes of the Cleons are mutating, though so far it’s not clear, if Brother Dawn is the lone defective Cleon, or whether the whole cloning process is breaking down, which would be a nice metaphor for the breakdown of the Empire.

At any rate, Brother Dawn knows that if he is ever found out, his “brothers” will kill him and replace him with a backup clone kept at hand in a tank for just such occasions. He even shows Jacenta the backup clones, which gives Foundation the excuse (not that it needs one) to show Lee Pace and Cassian Bilton naked, their private parts hidden to cleverly placed art deco panels.

“Well, if there’s a backup clone anyway, then why don’t you just run away from it all”, Jacenta suggests. Brother Dawn notes that he has the most recognisable face in the galaxy and tracking nanos in his bloodstream, but Jacenta is undeterred. After all, Brother Dawn could have his face changed in an underground plastic surgery parlour and his nanos filtered out. Brother Dawn is still wavering, but Jacenta is determined to show him what Trantor looks like outside the palace via a drone that accompanies her home on a graffiti covered commuter train/tram. The graffiti is a nice touch, since it’s yet another sign that the Empire is decaying since no one is bothering to clean up Trantor’s public transport anymore.

Brother Dawn is interrupted by Brother Dusk, because it turns out he was late for dinner. And Cleons are never late. Brother Dawn apologises and says he was caught up in learning about Trantor outside the palace. “We are Trantor”, Brother Dusk replies. And that, dude, is why your Empire is going down.

It would truly have been better for all concerned if Brother Dusk, who has a ruthless streak, had gone to deal with Zephyr Halima and Brother Day, who is somewhat nicer than his predecessor, had stayed on Trantor to deal with the wayward Brother Dawn, especially since I don’t think Brother Day would kill Brother Dawn outright. Brother Dusk likely would.

I do hope that Brother Dawn manages to escape with Jacenta and live happily ever after on some quiet backwater planet, but that’s not going to happen. He’s likely going to be found out and killed, ditto for Jacenta. A pity, because this Brother Dawn might actually make a pretty good Emperor one day.

The Brother Dawn storyline has nothing to do with the books as well, but at least it’s compelling, unlike the Brother Day and the religious fanatics storyline. Paul Levinson, who is more happy with the overall direction of the show than I am, also enjoys the Brother Dawn storyline as a compelling piece of science fiction on its own.

Which brings me to the two story strands which have at least a tenuous connection to the books, namely Salvor’s and Gaal’s story. When we last saw Salvor Hardin, she, Hugo, Lewis Pirenne, Lord Dorwin and two elderly Encyclopedists had been taken hostage by Phara and the Anacreons and set off to some asteroid field in Hugo’s ship, which is now bound to Salvor, so Phara is forced to keep her around. They are looking for the Invictus, a legendary lost Imperial warship.

Phara leads them to an asteroid field, which is dotted with abandoned Thesbian mining installations. Hugo, who is Thesbian, tells Salvor (and the audience) that these mines were abandoned, because without Imperial technology, the Thesbians had no way to keep them running. That’s also why Hugo became a trader rather than a miner or mine supplier. And right there, we have a glimpse of the actual Foundation stories in that the Four Kingdoms no longer have neither access to nor the knowledge to operate and repair Imperial technology. I really wish we would get more of that.

Phara, being the unpleasant person that she is, makes a crack about Hugo abandoning his people, whereas Hugo points out that all he did was make sure that there was one less hungry mouth to feed on Thesbis. I think Phara and Hugo are supposed to be counterparts here in that they both survived the bombing of their respective homeworld. Only that Hugo moved on and carved out a life for himself, while Phara was consumed by revenge.

They find the stranded Invictus in the middle of the asteroid field. Two Anacreon frigates were destroyed trying to dock at the Invictus, because her weapons are still active after 700 years. But the weapon sensors cannot detect small targets of less than two meters diameter. So everybody has to get into spacesuits and fly through the asteroid field to the Invictus via the built-in thrusters. That leads to a beautifully rendered spaceflight sequence.

Normally, I really hate it when certain fanboys (and they’re almost all male) call any accomplished female character, especially if it’s a woman of colour, a Mary Sue and her skills unrealistic. However, considering that Salvor was born on Terminus and never left the planet, I did find the fact that she knows how to fly a spaceship (with some help by Hugo) and not only knows how to put on a spacesuit, but also knows how to navigate in one a bit unbelievable. Cause Salvor never had any reason to learn any of these things, anymore than I have any reason to know how to put on and use a diving suit.

Still, Salvor makes it to the Invictus as do Lewis Pirenne, Dorwin, the Encyclopedists and Phara and her goon. Only Hugo, the only one among them who actually has any space experience, misses the Invictus and drifts off into space. It is an anticlimactic death for a fairly prominent character – if he really is dead, that is. Because personally, I suspect that Hugo is headed for one of those abandoned mining installations to radio for help.

Lewis Pirenne, who’s something of an idiot, manages to trigger the Invictus‘ guns, which take out one of the Anacreons (hurray) and pin down the whole party. But Lord Dorwin makes it to the airlock and manages to open it, because the Empire apparently hasn’t changed its access codes in 700 years. He’s promptly shot by Phara for his troubles, which not only kills a character who’s so much more likeable than his book counterpart, but who also had an actual plan to call for help via using the Invictus‘ systems to send a recording from his implant to the Empire. But now that Dorwin and Hugo, the two characters with actual space and combat experience and a plan to call reinforcements, are out of the game, it’s up to Salvor and three non-combatant Encyclopedists to stop Phara and her goons.

Now Foundation turns into Event Horizon or the various “spooky ghost ship with dead crew” episodes of Star Trek Discovery (and indeed the whole Invictus sequence felt and looked very much like a lost Star Trek Discovery episode). And so the Invictus is full of frozen crewmembers (most of whom seem to be women) floating in zero G. Other standard tropes of “spooky ghost ship” stories are also present such as dark corridors, randomly flashing lights and various obstacles and perils such as forcefields and badly secured basins full of burbling liquid. Of course, it’s all a bit cliched and particularly the burbling basins of toxic liquid are a bit reminiscent of Galaxy Quest‘s famous chomper scene, but it’s also a lot of fun. Furthermore, unlike most ghost ship episodes, you can actually see what’s going on, which is a big plus.

Lewis Pirenne, being useful for once, figures out that the frequency of the flashing lights is changing and believes that it’s some kind of countdown, probably to a jump. Turns out that the Invictus‘ jump drive is damaged and out of control, which is why the ship keep popping up on opposite ends of the galaxy like some kind of cosmic Flying Dutchman. Inbetween the infrequent sightings, the ship may well have been hurled out of the galaxy altogether. The crew, unable to call for help and slowly running out of supplies and power, starved and froze to death. Phara confirms that some Anacreon scavengers spotted the Invictus jumping into the asteroid field and that the Anacreons have been trying to take control of her ever since. However, they could neither get near the ship nor do they have the knowledge to operate it, hence the raid on Terminus. And now, they only have four hours to get the Invictus back under control or they will be taken to wherever she jumps next. Phara, insane as she is, also reveals her great plan. She wants to jump the Invictus into the heart of Trantor, destroying the capital and the empire.

Salvor and the Encyclopedists try to stop her and jump Phara and her goons in the room with the burbling basins. Considering that only Salvor has any combat training, the Encylopedists put up a pretty good fight. One of them falls into the burbling basin, taking down an Anareon goon with him. But in the end, Phara and the now much diminished Anacreons prevail… for now.

The whole Invictus sequence may be cliched, but it is fun. That said, the whole plan doesn’t make a lot of sense. After all, the Invictus has been lost for seven hundred years, so the chance that a contemporary person, even a specialist, would be able to fly her is zero. Ditto for the Invictus responded to Lord Dorwin’s nano-bots. Because technology changes a lot in seven hundred years, unless the Empire has been in decline for centuries, Honestly, Phara’s big plan makes about as much sense as if I had decided to steal the Bremen cog (which sank approx. 740 years ago) and would kidnap a bunch of random modern sailors to operate her and sail her into Berlin to blow up the Kanzleramt and/or Reichstag to get back at the government for some real or imagined slight.

Of course, Phara is completely insane, so she may not be aware of the flaws in her plan. Though I suspect it’s more likely that the writers simply didn’t consider how long seven hundred years really are.

Because one ghost ship plot isn’t enough, “Mysteries and Martyrs” gives us a second one, featuring Gaal Dornick, last seen in episode 5, aboard the mystery ship that by now gains a name, The Raven. When we last saw Gaal aboard The Raven, she had just discovered a somewhat glitchy hologram of the dying Hari Seldon. Gaal runs to his side and tries to help him. Amazingly, the hologram stabilises and can talk to her, though Hari or rather his hologram is very confused to find himself facing Gaal, because he expected Raych.

Now we finally learn what happened the night that Hari Seldon was killed. Hari realised that in order to succeed, the Foundation needed a symbol. And what better symbol than their cruelly martyred leader. Plus, Hari was also diagnosed with some incurable form of dementia and realised that once his cognitive abilities would decline, the Foundationers would no longer admire, but resent him. So he arranged for Raych to murder him and download Hari’s consciousness into a chip embedded in his knife (something we know is possible in this world, since the same tech is used to keep the spare clone emperors up to date on their lives). Raych was then supposed to flee in the escape pod and make his way to The Raven, where he and Hari’s hologram would set course of Hari’s homeworld Helicon. They had explicitly planned to stage the murder, while Gaal was taking her daily evening swim.

Of course, we know that this plan went completely wrong. Gaal ended up in the escape pod with the bloody knife, while Raych never left the colony ship until he took a short walk out of the nearest airlock. And Gaal floated in space for 35 years. Once she used the knife to open the cargo bay doors of The Raven (like you do), Hari’s consciousness was uploaded into the ship and now he’s a talking sentient hologram. I have to admit that I like this updated version of the iconic Hari Seldon hologram from the books. And Jared Harris manages to project just the right amount of know-it-all smugness as hologram Hari. Though the hologram is in the wrong place, because it should be in the time vault on Terminus, telling the Foundationers that everything has happened just as it should.

Hari is also not happy with the deviations from his plan, whereas he seems less troubled by the death of Raych and more bothered by the fact that Gaal is not on Terminus, leading the First Foundation (and yes, Hari explicitly says “First”) through its first Seldon crisis. “But who’s leading the Foundation then?” Hari asks. “I don’t know. Lewis Pirenne, I guess”, Gaal replies, whereupon Hari groans. Poor Lewis Pirenne. Not even his great idol Hari Seldon believes that he’s competent at anything really.

Meanwhile, Gaal is understandably furious that Hari worked out his brilliant plan, a plan that would have separated her and Raych forever, no matter what happened, without even telling her. “You’re not a god”, she tells Heri, “And the Foundation is not a religion.” “No, gods are impervious to knives”, Hari replies.

I’ve gone a bit into Foundation‘s generally negative view of religion above. However, upon rereading the early Foundation stories for the Retro Hugos last year, I also noticed that there is something very cult-like about the Foundation. They follow a mysterious all-knowing prophet who occasionally manifests in the form of a smug hologram to fulfil his secret plan and bring about a future positive state. And the only reason the readers accepts all this is because Asimov convinces us that Hari Seldon and the Foundation are absolutely right and the good guys here. Otherwise, the Foundation looks very much like a bunch of religious fanatics taking orders from a hologram. So yes, they got that bit right.

However, Hari still can’t get past the fact that Gaal walked into his cabin, when she was supposed to be swimming, whereupon Gaal tells him that she had a premonition. Just as she has had other premonitions before, e.g. when she was about to be arrested or just before the Skybridge was blown up. “I think I can foresee the future”, Gaal tells a shocked Hari Seldon, “And not through math, but for real.”

Now there are people with psychic abilities in the Foundation universe, most notably the Mule and the Second Foundation. However, in the books Gaal is not one of them, largely because book Gaal is a cypher, a character who merely exists to give us his POV on Hari Seldon. Also, people with psychic abilities are rare in the Foundation universe and don’t show up in the series at all until halfway through the second book. They also cannot be predicted, indeed the whole point of The Mule was that Seldon could not predict the rise of the Mule, because he was the result of a random mutation that gave him irresistable psychic powers.

The series, however, gives us not one but two people with psychic abilities in the first season, namely Gaal Dornick and Salvor Hardin, neither of whom of psychic abilities in the books. This is a major departure from the books, because in the books there is nothing special about either Gaal Dornick or Salvor Hardin, they are just two smart people who are in the right place at the right time (or the wrong place at the wrong time). And indeed, the whole point of psychohistory and Foundation is that no one special is needed to fulfil the Seldon Plan. The Plan runs on rails – occasionally derailments like the Mule notwithstanding. Even if Salvor Hardin had never been born, someone else would have been in his/her place. This is what makes Foundation very much the anti-thesis of the “great man theory of history”. Foundation gives us plenty of great men and women, only for Seldon or rather his hologram to reveal that the victory that was just won would have happened anyway, no matter who was in charge. This recent post at the Hugo Book Club Blog also goes into why it’s problematic that Foundation, which is explicitly not about chosen ones saving the galaxy, now suddenly embraced the trope of the super-special chosen one for the TV series.

I suspect that Gaal, being psychic, will eventually wind up founding or at least leading the Second Foundation. Introducing the Second Foundation this early in the narrative would be a good idea, especially since they will go on to play a bigger role in later stories. Also, it would explain why the showrunners decided to keep Gaal around, even though she served her narrative purpose in episode 1 and Gaal never reappears in the books nor is ever mentioned again after “The Psychohistorians”. Because it seems that Gaal is destined to for the role that was played by Raych’s daughter Wanda (who for obvious reasons does not exist in the show) in Forward the Foundation, namely that of the psychic who founds the Second Foundation and locates others of her kind.

All in all, Foundation is absolutely gorgeous to look at and entertaining enough to watch. Nonetheless, I find the show also very frustrating, because I only get glimpses of the story I came here to watch, the story I’ve been hoping to see on screen for more than thirty years now, amidst a lot of stuff which seems to have wandered in from completely different shows.

Yes, a literal adaptation of Foundation would not have been possible due to the talkiness and lack of the action of the original stories. And I have no problem with the fact that Salvor Hardin and Gaal Dornick are both women of colour now nor do I mind the occasional fight scene or ghost ship exploration to spruce up the storyline a bit for modern audiences. But is it too much to ask to actually get the basic bits of the original stories? Is it too much to ask that we get to see Scientism and the Foundation tricking the Four Kingdoms with their superior technology disguised as a fake religion? Is it too much to ask to see Salvor being the clever bastard who dislikes violence and wins by smarts and cunning that he/she is in the original stories rather than action girl Salvor whose main response to any threat seems to be to punch it?

Because in spite of all the talkiness, one-dimensional characters and lack of action, the original stories are compelling for their clever solutions to the problems facing the Foundation. There’s a reason that millions of people have read and enjoyed and have even been influenced by those stories over the past almost eighty years. Because the ideas at the core of Foundation are so compelling that we don’t mind the talkiness and flat characters. And I have no issues with the fact that the show gives Salvor, Gaal and especially cardboard cutouts like Lewis Pirenne and Lord Dorwin more characterisation than they ever had in the originals – in fact, I welcome it. I don’t even mind that the show invented the whole genetic dynasty bit out of whole cloth, because it works and is genuinely interesting. But why don’t the showrunners give us the bones and the spirit of the original stories, even dressed up with all sorts of add-ons? It almost seems as if either the showrunners or Apple+ don’t trust the original stories or don’t trust the audience to get them. And so they try to turn Foundation into some kind of Game of Thrones knock-off in space that it isn’t.

Why not just give us what we came here to watch, namely Foundation? Audiences are smart. They will get it. After all, the books have been beloved for generations and won the Hugo for the Best SFF Series of all time, beating among others Lord of the Rings. And with the great production values and updated for modern sensibilites, the basic story would still be as compelling as it always was.

Of course, it’s still possible that Salvor will think up Scientism and trick the Anacreons into accepting that Foundation technology is magic that can only be controlled by holy priests. It’s still possible that we will see Hari Seldon’s hologram smugly telling the assembled Foundationers, “Well done, but then I predicted that it would happen exactly like this.” But with only three episodes to go, it’s looking increasingly unlikely.

Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month for October 2021

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 September 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, portal fantasy, science fantasy, paranormal mystery, space opera, military science fiction, YA science fiction, post-apocalyptic fiction, science fiction romance, fantasy romance, time travel romance, gothic romance, LitRPG, historical horror, zombies, aliens, shapehshifters, climate change, virtual reality, assassins, paladins, sellswords, Pluto, Puritan witch hunters, crime-busting witches, crime-busting skeletons, Oz revisited 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:

An Old Man’s Journey by Gregory Allanther:

At the end of his life, Charles was left with one question: What was it all for?

After his tour of duty and an unremarkable post-Army business career, Charles spent his twilight years watching old movies and waiting for his grandkids to call. He’d lived a good life, been a decent man, but now that his wife was gone he was… Lonely.

Until his old friend Bert introduced him to Crossroads, the new VR sensation. In this virtual world he can move without pain, explore new lands, and most importantly – see his family again. For as long as he can hold their interest, in this fast-paced modern world of instant gratification and VR thrills.

The solution: Build a place his family wants to visit. Armed only with a magic stick with game-breaking powers that should be nerfed, Charles sets out on a journey to find a place to call his own. Along the way, he will be mistaken for an NPC quest giver, become the antagonist in epic questlines, and attempt to teach the next generation proper behavior – even if he has to beat it into them.

This is the story of one man’s search for belonging in his second virtual life. A search for a place to belong, and what it takes to get there. It’s also a hilarious romp through online fantasy cliches that will appeal to fans of Ready Player One, The Wandering Inn, and slice-of-life comedies.

Because at the end of a man’s life: What’s more important than family?

The Emerald Republic by J.D. Anderson:

When a teen from Kansas is chosen as the king in a world filled with fantastic cities and extraordinary creatures, some of his ideas don’t go over well. Now he faces a divided Emerald City, a rebellion and the threat of a new Witch – and he’s doing everything he can to fight back.

As the situation in Oz grows desperate, Roy’s friends and family face a dire situation of their own: booze, lies, and an emerging war in 1930’s Europe, in the world Roy left behind.

Join Roy and the talking trees and hotheaded munchkins of Oz on a hilarious and thrilling quest to return the Emerald City to its former glory, by any means necessary…

A Deadly Winter by Kody Boye:

The last word my mother ever said to me was, “Go.”

That was after I’d escaped the initial outbreak at my school. After I managed to find my mother and make my way home. After I thought I was safe.

But when my mother is bitten by a zombie, and I am forced to flee into the apocalyptic wasteland of South Texas, I find that survival means more than just being able to be strong. It’s about building bridges. Making connections. Finding friends. But will those friends help me save my life?

The Witchfinder’s Apprentice by Cora Buhlert:

Massachusetts in the Year of the Lord 1695: Matthew Goodson, eighteen years of age, is apprenticed to a team of experienced witchfinders, who travel from village to village and town to town to uncover witchcraft, examine the evidence, interrogate suspects and stamp out evil.

When a wave of mysterious illnesses and deaths hits the town of Redemption, the witchfinders are called in and quickly arrest a suspect, a teenaged girl named Grace Pankhurst.

Matthew has long been having his doubts about the witchfinders and the righteousness of their mission. The interrogation of Grace brings those doubts to a flashpoint. But is Grace truly innocent or has Matthew fallen under the spell of a comely witch?

This is a historical horror story of 5500 words or approximately 20 print pages by two-time Hugo finalist Cora Buhlert.

Remnants, edited by Stephen Coghlan:

Strange clouds on the horizon herald the coming of the swarm. The undulating masses of the horde cannot be stopped. Terrifying creatures roam the Earth, seemingly with no aim but to devour all that stands before them. Experience the end of the world as we know it with these seventeen tales of horror, survival, and hope. The world ends in a frenzy of death and miasma of terror, but what will become of the remnants of humanity?

Seventeen tales of post-apocalyptic survival horror!

 

Magnitude by Dean M. Cole:

A team of military special operators. A lost race of advanced beings. An invading swarm of land-hungry sentient robots.

An elite team of SAS special operators battle across the multiverse after a plague of land-hungry sentient robots invade today’s Earth. But, when an aircraft carrier-based counterattack goes horribly wrong, it traps the team in an alien universe with a top-secret group who’ve already saved the world twice. After discovering a dark plot that threatens humanity’s very existence, the two groups jump into action, fighting both on the surface and in orbit in a last-ditch effort to stop the enemy before time runs out.

With the fate of two Earths hanging in the balance, the combined teams must pull a lost race of advanced beings off history’s scrapheap, or humanity will join them in oblivion.

Magnitude combines sleek starships, strange aliens, and high-tech weaponry to pit heroes, zeroes, and a smart-assed battlebot against powerful enemies

Auntie Mags by Kate Danley:

Maggie’s a now an auntie and ready to show this new nugget all the awesomeness of being a World Walker. But when the child is kidnapped as part of an ancient prophecy, Maggie and Killian must save the kid before nap time means a permanent sleep. The creatures of the Other Side are about to get a hands-on lesson in why you don’t mess with the MacKay girls.

 

 

Itinerant by Marco de Hoogh:

A storm is coming. There is no escape…

It is a time of discovery, as our heroes venture forth on expeditions.

General Theodore Davies rushes to meet an ally, but will it be for naught? Olympus is but a shell, ready to be crushed under the heel of Rosae Crucis. The enemy is at the gates.

John Miller leads a team in search of answers. He knows the coordinates of his goal but doesn’t know if they will make it to their destination and back, or what they will even find.

New characters step out of the shadow and into the light. Their stories are told, and revelations made. What are the things that link them together? A mosaic is slowly being laid; Tile by tile.

In the meantime, the undead continue their mission. They snuff out all life that they find. They heed the call of the collective. They mass together, forming a tide that will wash over the living.

Now they come.

Follow along as events unfold in Itinerant, the third volume in Apocalypsis Immortuos

Legacy of Seven by P.J. Flie:

A world filled with magic, wizards and, enchanted beings—or the ashes of a highly advanced civilization?
The truth is much more complicated.

Zairoc, a dark wizard

Sir Francis, a benevolent wizard

Trick Mark, captain of the guard

and the construction robot CD-45.

Their destinies will collide at the city of Bastion. But concealed from everyone, a young woman holds the key to each of their fates.

Ondreeal has lived her whole life on the farm with her callous adoptive father. She longs to see the world and witness for herself the magical wonders that fill it—and she’ll soon get her wish, thrust into an adventure that carries her to heights she never dreamed possible, and to the depths of despair and loneliness. Ondreeal can never become the hero the world wants her to be.

But will she become the hero it needs?

No Bones About It by Rachel Ford:

He’s a skeleton who used to be a cop. I’m a Freak who used to be a detective. Together, we’re going to find the woman I love.

Technically, the PD hasn’t fired me yet. But when my girlfriend, the star witness in the biggest embezzlement case in a century, went missing, I stepped on some toes. And maybe busted a senior detective’s nose.

He had it coming. He’s hiding something. I’m going to find out what, and I’m going to find my fiancée. But I can’t do it alone.

In a world of magic and undead beings, Normies avoid Freaks like me like the plague. Our magic terrifies them.

But there’s one place I know I can turn to find the help I need: the undead. So here I am, trusting the fate of my career and the love of my life to the bony hands of a 150 year old undead investigator.

And that’s a recipe for disaster. No bones about it.

Love Sickness by Rachel Ford:

A mysterious newcomer. Strange new infatuations. A cursed treasure.

A beautiful stranger arrives in Little Eerie asking questions about an ancient treasure. The jarl is smitten at first sight. He’s sick with love for her.

But when she doesn’t even recognize him the next day, Apprentice Wizard Idun Wintermoon knows there’s some kind of sorcery at play.

As more people succumb to the love sickness, Idun and the sellsword Liss Forlatt are in a race against time to find the culprit – and discover what her real motives are. Before she unleashes a curse on the jarldom that’ll make love sickness seem like a minor inconvenience.

The Ghoul, the Bad and the Ugly by Lily Harper Hart:

Zombies in Casper Creek? Say it ain’t so. Unfortunately, it looks to be true … and Hannah Hickok and her motley crew of helpers have a mess on their hands.

As Cooper Wyatt struggles with the perfect way to propose, his girlfriend is buried in zombie lore … and seemingly having a good time digging up solutions.

The bodies are rising from two different cemeteries, one so old it hasn’t seen a new resident in thirty years. Why, though?

Needing help, Lindy suggests her brother David join the team. He’s a paranormal investigator, and he has an interesting set of skills. He also seems to be sparking with animal wrangler Tyler James, which has all the women in a tizzy in an effort to help him make the ultimate connection.
Love is in the air. Zombies are on the streets. Trouble is afoot.

It’s a normal day in Casper Creek, but the stakes are ratcheting up. Hannah’s magic is off the charts, but this time the monsters she’s facing are like nothing she’s ever seen.

Death may be stalking Hannah but she’s not afraid to stand her ground. Survival isn’t a given, but if she makes it through to the end, Cooper has a surprise for both of them.

Poisonous Paws by CeeCee James:

Murder can reach out and touch you when you least expect it.

The mysterious death of a town founder rocks the Thornberry Estate. Miss Janice is the main suspect and everyone is up at arms. How was she to know the truce she formed with her neighbor put the target squarely on her? Coupled with a strange box that shows up out of nowhere and filled with bizarre things beyond imagination, and strange footsteps at night has everyone anxious.

…then there’s the bit of the skeleton in the closet. Literally.

The book club group is determined to discover who the real culprit is, and who is sending them disturbing messages. Especially since no one is supposed to know the club exists.

Little do they know, that’s only the beginning of their problems.

If you like cozy mysteries with all the feels, good friendships, giggles and snorts, you’ll love this heartwarming series.

Emanations: When a Planet Was a Planet, edited by Carter Kaplan:

The ninth volume of the critically acclaimed Emanations literary anthology series, Emanations: When a Planet was a Planet presents stunning new art, illustrations and writing from around the world. The forty-two contributors represent South Korea, Canada, India, Oman, France, Nigeria, England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Germany, Spain, the Philippines, Sweden, Japan and the United States. Comprising a broad range of graphic and literary expressions, this new volume wonderfully sustains International Authors’ commitment to innovation and experimentation, with unusual visual pieces, intriguing artists’ statements, idiosyncratic memoirs, dynamic poetical constructions and cutting-edge speculative fiction.

Published by International Authors.

A Dark Dawn by Ralph Kern:

Far from the fury of The Great War, the citizens of the Liberty Federation live in peace and prosperity.

The Dawn Empire’s light is fading. Admiral Ikson Koto has one chance to renew the flame before it is extinguished forever. To save the Empire from a slow death, he must destroy the Federation’s fleet in one fell swoop. His plan calls for a brutality that has never been seen before.

For Lieutenant Shannon Reeve, the horrors of battle still burn strong in her mind. Her posting to a fighter squadron in the paradise of the Federation’s premier base, Azure Anchorage, should be a welcome respite. Instead, she will witness her fears come true as it comes under a relentless assault by Koto’s overwhelming Imperial forces.

Deep in the expanse of space known as the Great Void, a place far from home, civilian engineer Winston Grant has been tasked with upgrading a lonely base’s defences. Soon, he will find himself holding the line in a desperate last stand against an armada.

Both will play their parts in these darkest of days.

The golden age of the Federation will soon end, and instead be engulfed in the raging fire of war as Koto’s grand plan comes to fruition.

Paladin’s Hope by T. Kingfisher:

Piper is a lich-doctor, a physician who works among the dead, determining causes of death for the city guard’s investigations. It’s a peaceful, if solitary profession…until the day when he’s called to the river to examine the latest in a series of mysterious bodies, mangled by some unknown force.

Galen is a paladin of a dead god, lost to holiness and no longer entirely sane. He has long since given up on any hope of love. But when the two men and a brave gnole constable are drawn into the maze of the mysterious killer, it’s Galen’s job to protect Piper from the traps that await them.

He’s just not sure if he can protect Piper from the most dangerous threat of all…

Nostalgia is Heartless by Sarah Lahey:

Earth, 2050. Pregnant, unemployed, and living back home with her father, climate scientist Quinn Buyers wonders how she got to this point in her life. Her famous scientist mother is mysteriously missing, the planet is at risk from a massive solar storm, the Transhumans want to take a colony to Titan, and her assisted living companion, a robotic meerkat, is showing clear signs of anxiety and depression. But her biggest challenge is her partner. How can she reconcile her long-distance relationship with this reserved, enigmatic cyborg?

The sequel to Sarah Lahey’s debut novel and the second book in the Heartless Series, Nostalgia is Heartless delves into the world of near future, exploring a society on the brink of climate catastrophe.

Warlord of Ackbarr by Erme Lander:

“You can’t just invade, they’ll have men with crossbows looking out for you. They use poisoned arrows, they can fell your outriders in seconds.”

Cassai has managed the unthinkable by killing thousands and Ackbarr can no longer ignore the tiny country defying them. Mika must make a choice who she stands with – her adopted country or the homeland who expelled her as an animal. In the meanwhile, her grip on the human world is sliding…

The Medici Chronicles follows Mika through nearly twenty years of her life as she disguises herself as a boy to survive, learns to become a Medici and struggles to find where she belongs.

Follow the Crumbs by Amanda M. Lee:

There’s a prominent threat on the block … and he might just be sharing Stormy Morgan’s roof.

She’s a new witch but she has a big problem … and it talks. Her new roommate Krankle may look cute but he’s a huge pain in her posterior. He’s also hiding something. Before she can focus on that, however, the unthinkable happens.

On the highway leading out of town, three vehicles are involved in an accident. One belongs to Harold Lautner, the former head of the senior center who went missing months before. He was presumed dead in a hunting accident, but now the truck he was driving at the time he fell off the face of the earth is front and center … and emergency crews say there’s nobody to save inside.

Hunter Ryan, Stormy’s boyfriend and a police officer in Shadow Hills, is chasing lead after lead but they’re going nowhere … and then things get worse.

A magical shadow, the type Stormy isn’t ready to fight, is taking over the town. The Winchester witches, who are eager to help, can’t offer much in the way of aid because their magic is being affected by the shadow. That leaves Stormy to solve things, and she has no idea how to do it.

Stormy is eager to learn but the curve is steep. Alone, she knows she will fail. That means her new friends have to pitch in and help … including Krankle.

Someone is lying. Someone is playing games. The answer to the question might be closer than it seems.

Stormy has a fight on her hands. Will she survive long enough to answer all the questions, or is she doomed to disappointment … and death?

Sirena by Gideon Marcus:

One starship, six friends, 10,000 lives in the balance

Young captain-for-hire Kitra Yilmaz has gotten her first contract: escort the mysterious Princess of Atlántida beyond the Frontier and find her a new world. It’s a risky job, fraught with the threat of pirates, dangerous squatters, and rising romantic tensions.

Still, Kitra and her crew are up for anything — until they find a lush world, perfect for settlement…with an enormous ghost ship already in orbit.

What secret does the crippled vessel hide? And is Kitra ready to take responsibility for its precious cargo?

The Lighthouse by Christopher Parker:

Enchanting, mysterious, and deeply romantic, The Lighthouse follows a young woman’s breathtaking journey far from home to discover where she truly belongs.

Something strange is happening in Seabrook. The town’s lighthouse–dormant for over thirty years and famously haunted–has inexplicably started shining, and its mysterious glow is sparking feverish gossip throughout the spooked community.

Amy Tucker is only visiting for the night and has no plans to get caught up in the hysteria, but that changes when she meets Ryan, the loyal, hard-working son of a ranch owner who lives on the outskirts of town.

Their chance encounter turns into an unforgettable weekend, and against the backdrop of the lighthouse-obsessed town, the two of them forge a deep connection, opening their hearts, baring their souls, and revealing secrets long kept hidden.

But as they grow closer, and as the lighthouse glows ever brighter, a startling discovery about Ryan leaves Amy questioning everything she thought she knew. To uncover the truth about her new friend, Amy will need to enter Seabrook’s ominous tower, where waiting inside she will not only find the reason why fate has brought them together… but a shocking secret that will change the course of their lives forever.

The Last Days of Hong Kong by G.D. Penman:

Book 3 in the Witch of Empire series

In the aftermath of the war, Iona “Sully” Sullivan has lost everything; her job, her friends, her fiancé and even her magic. But when an old friend shows up on her doorstep, offering her the chance to undo one of her long litany of mistakes, there is still enough of the old Sully left to get her on the first boat to Hong Kong. A stranger in a strange land, Sully must navigate alien customs, werebear chefs, the blossoming criminal underworld, religious extremists, Mongol agents, vampire separatists, and every other freak, maniac or cosmic leftover with an iota of power as they all compete for a chance at the most valuable prize in all the world; a little sailor doll named Eugene, and the last wish on earth.

Digital Death by Jaxon Reed:

The Republic’s AI controls a clone on one planet. The League controls a bot on another . . .

Jade Thrall is the League’s Tetrarch but she holds a secret even she does not realize. She is a highly advanced droid, formerly known as Miriam.

Few military assets are available to Jade in her effort to wrest back League planets lost during the war. But one potent tool remains in her arsenal: assassins . . .

Join this rip-roaring, action-packed space opera adventure! Featuring space marines, rotten villains, fist fights, gun battles and sharp political intrigue, Digital Death kicks off a brand new series by veteran science fiction and fantasy author Jaxon Reed set in the Milky Way Universe.

Valkyrie’s Daughter by John E. Siers:

The Otuka are hunting a most dangerous game!

The alien Akara have a secret. They’ve discovered the location of a planet that is home to a primitive human civilization, another ancient “seeding” of the legendary Progenitors. But this planet lies in the territory of the Otuka, spacefaring alien predators who consider human flesh to be a delicacy and the planet to be their private hunting preserve.

Unwilling to confront the Otuka, the Akara have passed the problem to their human allies, the Lunar Free State. Now, the LFS needs to decide what to do about it. Are the “Moonies” willing to take responsibility for an entire planet’s population?

One thing seems certain: a favorite food of the Otuka is about to get much more expensive, as the LFS Marines stand ready to teach the Otuka hunters a hard lesson in the perils of hunting the humans in this part of the galaxy. But no one knows the technology state of the Okuta. Will the Marines be the hunters, or find themselves being hunted in turn?

Escape by Rosalind Tate:

A Bloody Revolution. Hard Choices. Fatal Consequences.

Sophie Arundel is stranded in a parallel universe, stuck in a grand house in an alternate 1925 England. Thankfully, she has her faithful dog, Charlotte. Oh, and Hugo Harrington who is stranded too — and Sophie’s fallen for him, head over heels.

Hugo’s entirely uninterested, but Sophie has bigger problems.

As a revolution threatens the Manor and everyone in it, Sophie finds the hidden portal to the twenty-first century. When she opens it, one man’s deadly secret will be exposed.

And he’ll kill to stop her.

Songbird Rising by R.K. Thorne:

Commander Ellen Ryu, Lieutenant Kael Sidassian, and the crew of the starship Audacity have met every challenge thrown their way, from super soldiers, to telepaths, to rivals with axes to grind.

Each step has brought them closer to Ellen’s ultimate goal—finding and defeating Dr. Arakovic, the scientist who destroyed her unit, her brothers- and sisters-in-arms, and her promising Union career. The woman who nearly stole Ellen’s sanity.

But Arakovic’s Songbirds grow more powerful each day. The clues are adding up. And the Audacity crew is discovering that Songbird’s influence reaches deeper and farther than they ever expected.

They’ll dive into battle—but this time they may find themselves underwater.

Not every battle can be won. Ellen Ryu has never let that stop her from trying.

But with his newfound daughter and new friends to protect, will the cost be too high for Kael to stay by her side?

Jump into this epic adventure in a galaxy where abuse of science is rampant and hope is all some people have left. Character-driven space opera with a mix of humor, action, and romance, SONGBIRD RISING is the fourth book in the Audacity Saga.