Cora Buhlert's Blog, page 87

Cultural Differences and Some Baseless Speculation about Star Trek Discovery

No, I still haven’t gotten around to watching Star Trek Discovery. And considering how much the trailers and reviews so far have repelled me, I’m not likely to bother with a show that will only make me angry. A pity because I like Michelle Yeoh and Jason Isaacs a lot and Sonequa Martin-Green seems likeable as well. And indeed Star Trek Shenkou is a show I might have watched. However, based on everything I was seen so far, this show shouldn’t be called Star Trek Discovery, but Star Trek: The Abuse and Mistreatment of Michael Burnham (I had to look up her name). And I for one don’t want to watch the abuse and mistreatment of a woman of colour, intermingled with occasional space battles and fights with Klingons, that don’t even look like Klingons.

In short, Star Trek Discovery seems to be the new Battlestar Galactica of the Star Trek franchise. And if you know me, you know that’s not a company, because I hate the new Battlestar Galactica with the sort of rancor people normally reserve for the Star Wars prequels. I talk a bit about that here.

By now, I’ve accepted that in this age of remakes, reboots, prequels and sequels, it is our fate to see the heroes of our youth turned into jerks and outright monsters and to have our childhood raped again and again. I used to be massively angry about this, but I no longer am. I simply choose not to watch the remakes/reboots/sequels/prequels or whatever, though I reserve the right to grumble about them. And indeed, I tired of Star Trek long before Discovery came along. Indeed, I stopped watching Deep Space Nine, which I never liked, halfway through, and gave up on Star Trek altogether during the third season of Enterprise (which wasn’t Star Trek either, just some lame war on terror analogy, because apparently every SF TV show had to be a war on terror analogy in the early 2000s). Coincidentally, I don’t watch the J.J. Abrams Star Trek movies either (not happy what he’s done with Star Wars either), because whatever those movies are, they’re not Star Trek.

I may have to check out The Orville to fill the Star Trek shaped hole in my heart, since that has been getting generally positive reactions from old schoolm Star Trek fans (and how sad is it that the alleged Star Trek parody is closer to the real Star Trek than the latest actual Star Trek show?). Of course, I have a huge problem with Seth MacFarlane, ever since he did this. And according to reviews I have seen, MacFarlane’s character in The Orville is basically the same character MacFarlane plays everywhere else. However, there is a chance that Seth MacFarlane has learned better since that Oscar night. After all, if I could forgive Ron D. Moore for ruining Battlestar Galactica, because he actually did a good job on Outlander, then there is hope for Macfarlane

So this is not a post about Star Trek Discovery nor one about The Orville, let alone a review of either show or a comparison (though I might do that, if I can bring myself to watch them). Instead, this is a post about deep-seated cultural assumptions and how they can influence what we write and how we write it, using Star Trek Discovery and some baseless speculation about the show as a basis.

Warning: Spoilers behind the cut!

Though I probably won’t be watching Star Trek Discovery anytime soon, I know what happened in the two-part pilot, since I read a bunch of reviews and recaps (linked in my weekly link round-up over at the Speculative Fiction Showcase). When you live in a place, where it can take a year or more for you to get the latest US shows, if at all, you learn to be spoiler-resistant.

So I know that Jason Isaacs isn’t even in the pilot, that Michelle Yeoh’s awesome starship captain of colour dies in the second episode, killed by Klingons (yeah, as if a regular garden variety Klingon could handle Michelle Yeoh), that her protegee, the unlikely named Michael Burnham, played by Sonequa Martin-Green, manages to mutiny against her mentor, get thrown in the brig, watches her mentor get killed and manages to start a war with the Klingon Empire, all with the very best intentions. So in short, Michael Burnham is a screw-up. She’s also a deeply traumatised person, who lost her parents at a young age (to Klingons at that) and was raised by an emotionally distant foster father (Sarek, who already proved how crap he is at fathering with his somewhat better adjusted son Spock; not to metion that no one should hand a traumatised kid over to Vulcans of all people) and probably should never have been accepted into Starfleet at all, given her obvious issues. Coincidentally, Michael Burnham is also no different from the (white) male maverick officers with which stories like this are suffused, as Jodie points out in her review of the first episode only at Lady Business. Male mavericks usually find that everything works out for them, just ask James T. Kirk. Poor Mihael Burnham, however, is not so lucky. And so in the end, for all her troubles to stop the Klingons from attacking the Federation in order to make the Klingon Empire great again (there is apparently an Trump analogy in there, of course there is), Michael Burnham is court-martialled by a Federation military tribunal and given a life sentence. Cue cliffhanger – how can our heroine possibly get out of this? Judging by this spoilerish trailer for the rest of the season, it involves a lot of abuse and mistreatment, and it will probably turn out that the Discovery is a ship stuffed full of convicts on a Dirty Dozen style suicide mission (No, I don’t know for sure. This is not a spoiler, it’s just a hunch).

Now mind you, I haven’t actually seen Star Trek Discovery and Michael Burnham yet. But I already hated what happened to her and screamed at a random online review, “This is not Star Trek. Cause the Federation is supposed to be an egalitarian utopia. And an egalitarian utopia would never hand down life sentence for something like this, let alone abuse and mistreat a traumatised woman so much.” Never mind that Kirk or Picard or Janeway or Archer or even Sisko would never tolerate crewmembers abusing a prisoner.

And then I thought back at the previous versions of Star Trek, from the original series via Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager all the way to Enterprise. I remembered the original series two-parter The Menagerie, a reworking of the unaired pilot The Cage, where Mr. Spock is court-martialled and put on trial for his life for the dubious crime of mutinying (hmm, I think Sarek did one thing right: he instilled a healthy skepticism of authority and unreasonable rules in his kids) to take the severely disabled Captain Jonathan Pike back to a world where he can live out his days in happiness. I remember how much that two-parter horrified my teenaged self, because Spock was clearly right and didn’t deserve to be punished, let alone threatened with execution. And anyway, how could a clearly good political system like the Federation have something as horrible as the death penalty, when even the less than perfect West Germany I grew up in agreed that the death penalty was barbaric?

I also remembered reading about Harlan Ellison’s original draft of “City on the Edge of Forever” (a Star Trek episode which was considered a spectacular standout, even when I first watched it in the 1980s, because it involved Joan Collins, then a superstar due to her performance as Alexis Carrington in Dynasty, and was just a fabulous episode in general) and how Ellison’s original screenplay included an execution by firing squad (carried out by Mr. Spock of all people) for drug dealing (coincidentally, when I told my Mom this, she said, “Mr. Spock would never execute people. Period.) I remembered how glad I was that Ellison’s original version was never filmed, because if my teenaged self had watched that version, I would never have been able to watch Star Trek again, because it violated “the pact”.

For my teenaged self was very well aware that the US had the death penalty and actually executed people. However, this was never mentioned in any of the US crime shows I watched, because – so I assumed – US TV producers, being unassailably good people, were of course horrified that their country engaged in such horrific practices like executing people and therefore had a pact never to mention the death penalty in any crime drama, because otherwise viewers would hate the detective for being complicit with such a horrible thing. Villaims were allowed to threaten heroes with execution, of course – after all, they were villains. But heroes did not do such a thing. If a program violated “the pact”, it was an instant dealbreaker that caused me to never watch said program again, no matter how much I liked it before (and there was at least one example of that, a now forgotten Aaron Spelling show). Of course, “the pact” never existed anywhere except in my mind (I still wish it was real BTW) and the only reason US crime dramas shown on German TV hardly ever mentioned the death penalty was because such scenes were cut prior to broadcast for fear of upsetting viewers like me. They stopped doing such content edits sometime in the 1990s and we suddenly got US crime dramas in their full horribleness. From 2001 on, US television dramas got steadily worse. Indeed, if I still stuck to my old dealbreakers today, I couldn’t watch any US shows anymore, given the many torture scenes, threats with execution and prison rape committed by the supposed good guys, ridiculously high prison sentences, etc… in otherwise innocuous cop shows, crime dramas, etc… In fact, I suspect the increasing nastiness of other US TV shows, particularly the so-called “quality” TV shows is a large part of the reason why Star Trek Discovery is the way it is – after all, some reviews keep telling us that this is modern Trek for modern times and modern viewers and not “your grandpa’s Trek” and that we should deal with it.

However, the Federation was not as good and utopian as they think they are even way back in the original series. I also thought of other versions of Star Trek. I remembered Commander Sisko sending his ex-lover to prison for smuggling, a classic victimless crime, in an early episode of Deep Space Nine and how it cause me to hate the character forever after because of that (in this house, we refer to Commander Sisko as Captain Arsehole and indeed I always have to look up his name, because to me he is Captain Arsehole). I remembered how in the first episode of Voyager, we meet Tom Paris in prison, forced to do slave labour for – well, I don’t remember for what, but it wasn’t a very serious crime (interestingly, someone at File 770 immediately remembered what the crime was, apparently it involved cooperating with the Maquis, the supposed anti-Federation terrorists I always felt had a point). I remembered how the Federation considered Data not a citizen but property and wanted to take him apart. I remembered how they were willing to let a whole planet full of sentient and clearly intelligent beings die, because rescuing them would violate their precious prime directive. I also remembered how I was always convinced that the Second Doctor’s rant about the cowardice of the Time Lords at the end of The War Games was in truth an accusation aimed across the Atlantic at Star Trek and the prime directive. I remembered how the Federation imposed Handmaid’s Tale type politics (every woman is forced to bear at least three children from three different men – they’re not even allowed to have stable monogamous relationships) on some poor colony instead of helping them refresh their gene pool, because reproducing via cloning is apparently unnatural, while treating women like walking wombs is totally okay. There were grisly Irish stereotypes in the same episode (Next Generation, not original series), too.

In short, I remembered all of the times I hated the Federation. And I thought, “So the Federation is supposed to be an egalitarian utopia. But it isn’t and it’s never been that. If anything, the Federation is a fucking dystopia. Only that for some reason, no one ever noticed. And coincidentally, why do the Vulcans, who are supposed to be rational and logical, put up with a system like the Federation?”

Now there’s nothing wrong with future worlds that are dystopias. If I had problems with dystopian worlds, I could never have watched Star Wars nor read Nineteen Eighty-Four nor Brave New World, all of which I did around the same time I finally watched all of Star Trek except for Patterns of Force, which wasn’t broadcast in Germany until 2011 and which coincidentally has a Federation historian praising fascism as “the most effective form of government ever devised” (another strike against the Federation). Hell, my own attempts at space opera regularly feature pretty awful regimes. There is absolutely nothing wrong with awful regimes and dystopian worlds in science fiction. However, dystopias that don’t know they are dystopias are a problem.

And the Federation was never intended to be a dystopia. This is very, very clear and indeed, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry is on record for stating that he wanted the Federation to be a utopia, a vision for a world that is so much better than the one he was living in. And indeed Gene Roddenberry succeeded in presenting a vision of a better future that inspired generations of viewers and he did it during the Cold War and at the height of the Vietnam war. Yet Gene Roddenberry also had his blind spots. For all his progressive ideas, he still could not imagine a utopian society without the death penalty (which many countries had already abolished or severely reduced by the late 1960s) or life sentences or indeed without prisons altogether. Just as he clearly could not imagine a utopian society where LGBT people would have the same rights as heterosexuals and this would not be considered in any way remarkable or out of the ordinary.

Subsequent Star Trek works, including Discovery, have done their best to correct Roddenberry’s not so great record on LGBT rights. However, the Federation’s justice system (and coincidentally, its education system) is still appallingly backwards even by 21st century standards. And the telling thing is that many viewers, particularly American ones, just cannot see it. To them, it is utterly normal that a young woman is given a life sentence for nerve-pinching her Captain (an act that does not cause any permanent harm – indeed Michelle Yeoh’s character wakes up again almost at once), firing at hostile Klingons and killing the Klingon supremacist demagogical leader after he has killed her Captain.

In that discussion at File 770, another German commenter and I kept pointing out that Michael Burnham’s life sentence is kind of excessive and that the Federation’s justice system is appalling in general and also why do they have labour camps at all, when they are supposed to be a utopian post-scarcity society? Or are the previously unseen (except in the first episode of Voyager) Federation labour camps the reason they have a post-scarcity society in the first place? Most American commenters, on the other hand, felt that Michael Burnham’s sentence was just (Burnham even says so herself, but then she is a deeply traumatised young woman with what clearly are self-harm tendencies), while most other non-American commenters decided to sit that one out.

Star Trek Discovery and Star Trek in general are just the latest example for the differences between US and European sensibilities. Now the US and Europe as well as Canada, Australia and New Zealand are often summed up as “the West”, united by common values. However, there is a cultural and value gap between the US and Europe (leaving aside Canada, Australia and New Zealand for now as well as the differences between the various European countries) and that gap seems to be getting bigger.

Now I consume a lot of US pop culture, because homegrown pop culture rarely caters to my tastes. If you like science fiction, if you like fantasy, if you like horror, if you like superheroes, you’re pretty much forced to look for your fix abroad, because you’ll only find slim pickings at home (since “Science Fiction is not a German topic”, as the head of the Bavaria Studios once said). So I often run up against those cultural differences. Though it took me a while to understand that tropes which regularly drive me up the wall in US pop culture were not bugs but features to the US audiences these works are primarily created for. I go a bit deeper into this issue in this post.

Now Star Trek Discovery has the misfortune of hitting a few of my personal hot buttons. First of all, it’s Star Trek and though I’ve been done with the franchise for years now (I was actually relieved when Enterprise went off the air, because the franchise was seriously played out by that point, the story told once and for all), Star Trek was some of the first science fiction I encountered (along with Time Tunnel, Raumpatrouille Orion, Space 1999 and the Captain Future anime). Star Trek was part of what made me fall in love with the genre and I will always have a soft spot for it for that reason. And I don’t want to see it turned into yet another grimdark, explosion laden TV series – after all, I’m still angry about the new Battlestar Galactica.

Secondly, like most Germans, I have issues with the portrayal of the military in all US media and particularly the fact that following orders without questions is considered a good thing. Because due to our sorry history, blindly following orders without ever questioning anything is not considered a good thing in Germany. And indeed, Kirk and Spock, the original Apollo and Starbuck, Commander Cliff Allister MacLane were always creative about interpreting orders as well as bending and breaking the rules to do the right thing. Indeed, that was part of what I loved about these characters and their stories. They always got away with it, too. Whereas poor Michael Burnham gets life in prison.

Which brings me to point 3, the excessive punishment for Michael Burnham’s crime. Now in Germany, a life sentence usually means 15 to 25 years. Even the surviving Red Army Fraction terrorists were eventually released. In order for a life sentence to truly mean imprisoned for life, the person in question has to be an unreformably Hannibal Lector type, like this guy who died after 49 years in prison. There is also this guy, currently Germany’s longest serving prisoner, who’s still locked up after 54 years, even though he’s not the irredeemable serial killer type, apparently because he is refusing to comply with prison rules. Michael Burnham, however, is no Hannibal Lector. Indeed, there is no case in Germany that’s comparable to hers. Something that vaguely comes close is the play Terror by Ferdinand von Schirach, where an air force officer is put on trial after shooting down a civilian passenger plane that had been hijacked by terrorists who were going to crash it into a stadium full of football fans. At the end of the play, the audience is asked to declare the defendant guilt or not guilty. Now I have issues with Terror, mostly because the whole scenario is manipulative. However, German and western audiences in general mostly vote to acquit the defendant, whereas Chinese and Japanese audience tend to find them guilty. Here is a write-up of an American performance of Terror BTW, where some details were changed (the football match became a baseball match and – more crucially IMO – the air force officer, who is a white man in the German performances I know of, is a Hispanic woman). The American audiences also voted to acquit her BTW.

In a related point, I not just have an issue with excessive penalties, I also have a huge issue with prisons in general. I know that we can’t do without them altogether, but that doesn’t stop me from hating prisons. I’m not sure where this intensive dislike for prisons comes from, since I’ve never had any personal contact with the prison system beyond the fact that a neighbour of my East German great-aunt was a prison guard (and I was scared of that man). However, I’ve had this intense dislike from a very young age on. I suspect it’s pop culture induced due to watching movies like Jailhouse Rock (deemed harmless, after all it’s an Elvis musical, so how bad can it be?) on afternoon TV and being horrified at seeing Elvis whipped by prison guards.

As a result, freeing unjustly incarcerated prisoners is something of a power fantasy for me. That’s also the reason why there are quite a lot of prison scenes and last minute rescues from execution in my work. I suppose the execution thing also comes from watching old westerns and cloak and dagger movies unsupervised on afternoon TV as a kid*. Any culture we consume, even if it was decades ago, influences the art we make. I use mine to work out my prison break and rescue fantasies (whereby every evil guard I’ve ever written is based on the neighbour of my great-aunt). For the past few months, I’ve working on a SF prison break story in the In Love and War series. The going is slow, because both the required research (I was one of the few people in Germany who actually knew who Joe Arpaio was before Trump pardoned that piece of shit) and the story itself is emotionally harrowing that I often have to stop working on it for several days. Coincidentally, whenever I think “This is too awful. I can’t possibly write this. No one will believe it”, I come across similarly awful or even worse things that happened in real prisons. Once or twice, I’ve actually had to alter details of the story, because the reality is so much worse. And not just in places like North Korea either, but also in the US or Australia.

So I’m in the odd situation that I hate prisons, but like prison break stories, even though they tend to upset me. And if Star Trek Discovery turned out to be Star Trek Prison Break, I would probably have watched. However, based on the trailers I’m pretty sure it’s not going to be that. Instead, we’ll probably get Michael Burnham doing penance for her crime. Coincidentally, all this also touches on another hot button point for me, loyalty to the system trumping personal loyalty to friends and family. Because if Michael Burnham is the foster daughter of Sarek, a high-ranking Vulcan ambassador in the Federation, and the foster sister of Spock, who is himself not exactly powerless, not to mention the sort of person who interprets the rules creatively. So why aren’t they trying to help Michael? Of course, it may turn out that Sarek and/or Spock actually try to help her, but that’s not the vibe I’m getting from the grimmer and grittier Star Trek Discovery.

I’ve seen a lot of enthusiastic reactions to the first episode of Star Trek Discovery online of fans who were happy to see two women of colour playing lead roles in a new Star Trek series and who were thrilled to see a mentor and protegee relationship between two women, whereas the usual suspects on the right of course hated it. I’ve seen reactions from South East Asian fans who were thrilled to see Malaysian actress captaining a Federation starship and the script and set design acknowledging her cultural heritage. I feel sorry for those fans, because the show has pulled a cruel bait and switch on them. Instead of women and colour being awesome, we get one woman of colour dead and another woman of colour in prison, apparently headed for abuse and mistreatment.

Coincidentally, when my Mom saw a trailer for Star Trek Discovery on TV (Netflix is currently sitting on the German rights and try to use Trekkies to up their subscriber base) and when I told her what the show was about, her reaction was, “I like her [about Michelle Yeoh]. I like him [about Jason Isaacs]. That’s a nice looking young woman [about Sonequa Martin-Green]. Those Klingons look awful. Wait a minute, so Michelle Yeoh gets killed, the nice young woman gets thrown into prison and the Klingons are evil now [my Mom is a big fan of the Next Generation and later era Klingons]. Well, I won’t be watching that.”

If my suspicions turn out to be correct (and there still is a chance they won’t – after all, Star Trek is known for ropey pilots and first seasons), I won’t be watching either.

*My parents often visited friends who were the sort of people who had the TV running all the time. They usually didn’t pay attention to whatever was on, but I, who was bored, did. And so I saw a lot of things that were not exactly age appropriate.

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Romance Bashing: The New York Times Edition

The New York Times now has a review round-up column for new romance novels, just as it already has one for crime fiction and one for science fiction and fantasy. This is a good thing. However, while the SFF column is written by N.K. Jemisin, a genuine SFF writer and double Hugo winner, and the crime fiction column is written by Marilyn Stasio, a dedicated crime fiction fan and prolific reviewer, i.e. people who know what they’re talking about, the romance column is not penned by someone who has any discernible connection to the romance genre.

The column is here, by the way. And it’s awful. Any cliché and any stupid remark about romance novels and their readers that you can think of, you’ll find it in this column. Old books such as Julia Quinn’s The Duke and I (published in 2000) used as examples to explain the modern romance genre? Check. Obligatory references to Barbara Cartland, Danielle Steel, Nora Roberts and Fifty Shades of Grey? Check. Believing that romances come in only two flavours, regency and boss/secretary contemporaries? Check. Attempting to psychoanalyse romance readers trying to discern what women want and why they read “those books”? Check. General focus on heterosexual romances and heterosexual women? Check. Stupid comment that the race of the central couple in an African American romance has no real bearing on the plot? Check. Reflexively mentioning her father and her day job, when talking about a female romance writer (Eloisa James in this case)? Check. Wasting several paragraphs to sum up a novel that is not a romance in the current definition of the genre? Check. Selectively quoting sex scenes out of context to make them sound silly? Check. Being shocked, oh so shocked, that romance novels contain sex these days? Check.

The author finally ends his article with this little gem:

Its readership is vast, its satisfactions apparently limitless, its profitability incontestable. And its effect? Harmless, I would imagine. Why shouldn’t women dream? After all, guys have their James Bonds as role models.

Geez, isn’t it nice that women are allowed to dream now? How great that men now give women permission to dream? And isn’t it telling that dude who wrote this article considers novels in which women find respectful and supportive partners, who care about their sexual satisfaction, too, as much a fantasy as novels in which James Bond travels the globe, saves the world, has sex with incredibly attractive and implausibly named women and deals with sea monsters, shark attacks, gilded girls and equally extremely implausible things?

And come on, even before you get to the byline and the bio blurb, it’s obvious that the author of the article has to be a man. Because there’s no way anybody but a man – very likely a white cishet man – can be this clueless and at the same time this condescending.

Spoiler: Yes, the author is a man. His name is Robert Gottlieb, he is white, straight and 86 years old. Robert Gottlieb was editor-in-chief at Simon and Schuster, Alfred A. Knopf and The New Yorker. He is considered one of the best editors of the 20th century and has penned biographies, memoirs, essay collections and a book about collectible handbags. So in short, Mr. Gottlieb is certainly a gentleman of many accomplishments. However, nothing in his biography suggests that he has ever had anything to do with the romance genre, at least not in the past fifty years or so. And frankly, it shows. Because the column shows that regardless of his many accomplishments, Robert Gottlieb does not have a clue about the romance genre.

In short, this New York Times article is a prime patronising example of “Old white dude mansplains romance”.

So while it’s great that the New York Times finally acknowledges the romance genre, they really could have done much better in their choice of columnist and chosen someone who actually has a clue about the genre (e.g. Eloisa James a.k.a. Mary Bly or Jennifer Crusie or Courtney Milan or Sarah Wendell or… well, the list is endless). As for Mr. Gottlieb, I’m sure the New York Times could have found something for him to write about that’s more within his field of experience.

An article that stupid and condescending of course attracts rebuttals.

At Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, Sarah Wendell is thrilled that the New York Times is finally featuring romance novels – at least, until she read the article and saw what a condescending and mansplaining mess it was. Sarah Wendell also talks to publicists working at romance imprints, who are happy to see their authors featured, but also understandably disappointed about the condescending tone of the article.

Sarah Wendell also links to a great Twitter thread by Jen, a book blogger reviewing at The Book Queen’s Place.

Remember the good old days of 1980 when Joanna Russ wrote about how men suppress women's writing? pic.twitter.com/iidZiKjRhn

— Jen (@neighbors73) September 27, 2017

Jen matches Robert Gottlieb’s article against the strategies laid out by Joanna Russ in How to Suppress Women’s Writing and finds that Gottlieb goes for the full bingo card and uses every single one of them.

I also like this rebuttal by Ron Hogan at Medium, who states that Gottlieb’s column collects all the dumb things you can say about romance in a single place and coincidentally also proves that there are men who get the romance genre.

Meanwhile, at the Seattle Review of Books, Olivia Waite discerns some early symptoms of impending romance fandom in Robert Gottlieb’s article. Almost as if he doesn’t want to admit it to himself yet – which is probably why he has to snicker like a 12-year-old boy about the sex scenes – but is well on the way to getting hooked on the genre.

We can but hope, at least if the New York Times plans to continue to let Robert Gottlieb review romance novels.

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Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month for September 2017

[image error]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 authors newly published this month, though some August 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 epic fantasy, historical fantasy, urban fantasy, paranormal romance, gothic romance, science fiction romance, space opera, military science fiction, hard science fiction, Cyberpunk, dystopian fiction, time travel, horror, fae killers, light elves, cyborgs, blood-sucking debt collectors, interplanetary wineyards, space mages, intergalactic mercenaries, genetically engineered space marines, alien killer viruses, space prisons, prime valkyries, space engineers, star dogs 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:

[image error] Unblinking by Kira Carter:

Everyone is watching.

Minka Stanis just wants to be left alone–impossible since the Eyes record and broadcast every moment of her day. Then a humiliating incident in the high school cafeteria makes her the laughingstock of her tower city, and life behind the glass walls becomes unbearable. When the intriguing new boy at school tells her about a place away from the gaze of the cameras, Minka plots her escape from the towers. But the Shuttered Lands are across the desert, and going there will mean leaving everything she’s ever known behind.

Fresh out of tower training, Zedd Fincher is settling into his dream job. When he gets assigned to edit Minka Stanis’s Stream footage, he spins her every misstep into a string of hit clips. As Minka’s fame grows, so do Zedd’s feelings for her. But a crisis at home brings the darker side of his work into focus. And Zedd soon learns editing other people’s lives has consequences.

As Minka is thrust unwillingly into the spotlight and Zedd’s life begins to unravel, only one thing is certain:

The Eyes are always watching.

[image error] Water into Wine by Joyce Chng:

When war comes to your planet, everything changes.. perhaps even the meaning of family and identity.

Xin inherits a vineyard on a distant planet, and moves there to build a life… but an interstellar war intervenes. Will Xin’s dreams of a new life get caught in the crossfire? Xin’s understanding of family and sense of self must evolve to cope with the changes brought by life on a new planet and a war that threatens everything.

 

 

[image error] The Defender of Rebel Falls by Eric Christensen:

The pen may be mightier than the sword, but William Whitehall knows which one feels better in his hand. As a librarian—a reluctant one—his reports catch the eyes of a powerful nobleman, who selects William for an important mission. As he faces danger after danger, he soon realizes that having the right weapon is one thing, but having the wits to use it is quite another. Because when he faces his ultimate challenge, it’s more than just his own life at stake.

 

 

[image error] Winter Rose by Ginny Clyde:

The Gerrickson House is waking up from its days of mourning. Lenara Gerrickson’s fifteenth name day is fast approaching and her old childhood friend, Lady Vivienne Schmidtson arrives to help her get ready for the occasion. To her horror, Lenara has forgotten her manners and etiquettes, indulging in pastimes like riding and archery.

Lenara is skeptical of finding love during the ball on her fifteenth name day, but she catches the gaze of a dark, handsome man who sweeps her off her feet into a whirlwind romance. Her happily ever after seems so close, but clouds of doubt and warnings hang heavy in the horizon.

Follow Lenara’s journey into womanhood as she faces the harshness of reality and discover the chain of events that changed her destiny forever.

Enjoy this prequel novella to the captivating and thrilling Gothic fantasy, The Rose Chronicles. It can be enjoyed as a standalone or be read in between any of the books.

[image error] Rika Outcast by M.D. Cooper:

In the Age of the Orion War…

Rika is mech-meat, a cyborg killing machine, created by the Genevian military and cast aside when the war was lost.

Now she slings cargo on Dekar Station, falling deeper in debt as she struggles to make enough money to keep her cybernetic body functioning. The local gangs would love to have her join their ranks, and the takings would pay her bills, but the only thing Rika hates more than what she’s become, is killing for others.

But morals don’t buy repairs and she’s at the point of utter desperation when her loan holder cashes in her debt and sells her to the highest bidder.

When Rika wakes, she’s in a warehouse on a planet she’s never heard of, and a trio of mercenaries are reassembling her body. Their mission is to kill the world’s president, and her mods and abilities are just what they need to get the job done.

Whether she likes it or not, Rika is in the business of killing once more as she joins the ranks of the Marauders.

[image error] O Negative by Paul Curtin:

In Cole’s world, a critical shortage has made blood expensive.

Now the ticket to a hefty cash loan is running through anyone’s veins—as long as a person’s willing to put up their blood as collateral. And if the debt defaults, Cole is the man who collects. He kidnaps debtors for his boss to drain—over long, excruciating months—until death. It’s a job he doesn’t mind until his boss asks him to pick up a guy with the rare and valuable blood type, O negative.

Except the guy doesn’t have O negative—his ten-year-old daughter, Sam, does.

Knowing the horrors waiting for her if he hands her over to his boss, Cole takes Sam and goes on the run. With corrupt cops on his boss’s payroll patrolling the streets, a psychotic colleague hunting him, and a savvy detective on his trail, Cole knows this will end one of two ways: he escapes the city or Sam dies a slow, painful death.

Either way, blood will be spilled.

[image error] Prime Valkyrie by Michael Scott Earle:

Adam has one mission: Hunt down the Magate Order and recover his kidnapped crew before they are lost forever.

Unfortunately, his life has been bound to the Prime Valkyrie, and if Adam doesn’t submit to her powerful father, he’ll be executed.

But the genetically engineered Marine submits to no man, and the king of the Vaish Overlord Clan is about to find out what happens when you try and kill a tiger.

Or keep him from his women.

 

[image error] Memento Mori by W.R. Gingell:

Even time travellers can run out of time.

Marx and Kez have been skipping through the known Twelve Worlds, keeping one step ahead of certain capture by the seat of their trousers, and the vastness of time and space is feeling a tad too small.

Kez has always been a bit crazy, but now it’s Marx who is getting mad. Someone is trying to kill them, and that’s the sort of thing he takes personally.

To add to their difficulties, there are Fixed Points in time that are beginning to look a little less…fixed.

Between Time Corp, WAOF, Uncle Cheng, and the Lolly Men, it’s beginning to look like there’s nowhere safe in the known Twelve Worlds for Kez and Marx.

Here be monsters…

[image error] Soul Marked by C. Gockel:

Magic is real, but Tara’s life isn’t a fairy tale.

From humble beginnings, Tara’s managed to work her way into a great job researching Dark Energy, aka “magic,” in Chicago. She has a beautiful house she renovated with her own hands, and a loving extended family, but she hasn’t found her soulmate … Not that she believes in soulmates.

Lionel is a Light Elf. Despite being of dubious heritage and being born a peasant, he’s risen in the ranks to serve the Elf Queen. Like all true elves, Lionel has a soulmark to identify his soulmate … He just hasn’t found her yet.

When Lionel’s and Tara’s lives collide and Dark Elves strike, they’re forced to work together or perish. Friendship and more grows between them, but dangers loom … Tara is more important than she knows, and Lionel is more important than he wants to admit. Both of them have choices to make.

Will Lionel choose a “perfect” love over Tara? How much is Tara willing to give up for a happily ever after?

They might find that in an uncertain world, the love you struggle for is the only certain thing.

[image error] Black Dawn by K. Gorman:

Humanity is under attack and she is the only one who can stop it.

For Karin Makos, the chance to pilot a small-time scrounging vessel to remote corners of space is the dream. After years on the run with her sister and enduring the constant paranoia of living planet-side, going off-radar gives her exactly what she wants: freedom.

After what seems like a routine mission, that dream is shattered.

A system-wide attack decimates humanity and leaves the survivors scraping for clues. And Karin might know where to look.

But digging into her past comes with a whole new set of secrets and consequences, none of which she wants to face. Plagued by strange dreams of her sister and a sense of growing danger, Karin and the crew of the Nemina must race desperately across space to find their loved ones—and answers.

[image error] Synthesis by Kyle Harris:

Sometimes violence is the answer.

Trident was mankind’s greatest discovery. A blue-and-green planet teeming with ocean life and breathable air, it was the solution to all of our problems. A new world and a clean slate–we wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.

Don’t believe the lies.

Separated from her family, Synthia Garland is just trying to survive in the slums of Crystal City, Trident’s single metropolis home to beggars and throat-cutting gangs. Until the wrong detour results in a knife to her throat and final thoughts–before a hooded figure saves her life. With street-smart skills and a knack for getting out of trouble, Chaz is everything Synthia isn’t, and the two quickly become friends. But Chaz’s penchant for thievery takes a terrible turn when Synthia is nearly killed.

With her body mutilated and now reliant on cybernetic parts, Synthia wakes up to find herself in the care of the mega corporation she was trying to steal from–including its cold, secretive CEO. And there’s more news: her sister is on the verge of death from a flesh-eating virus. And time is running out.

Synthia must embark on a mission to return her sister to the only doctor who can save her life. With the misfit Chaz riding shotgun, she’ll face bloodthirsty pirates, malicious gangs, and a corrupt capitalistic society where pro-human activists and robotics companies are on the brink of all-out war.

Luckily, she’s been programmed to kick ass.

[image error] Mass Hysteria by Michael Patrick Hicks:

It came from space…

Something virulent. Something evil. Something new. And it is infecting the town of Falls Breath.

Carried to Earth in a freak meteor shower, an alien virus has infected the animals. Pets and wildlife have turned rabid, attacking without warning. Dogs and cats terrorize their owners, while deer and wolves from the neighboring woods hunt in packs, stalking and killing their human prey without mercy.

As the town comes under siege, Lauren searches for her boyfriend, while her policeman father fights to restore some semblance of order against a threat unlike anything he has seen before. The Natural Order has been upended completely, and nowhere is safe.

…and it is spreading.

Soon, the city will find itself in the grips of mass hysteria.

To survive, humanity will have to fight tooth and nail.

[image error] Observation by Patty Jansen:

Space biologists Jonathan Bartell and Gaby Larsen arrive at Johnson Base at the Moon’s south pole for a project with Professor Isaacs that is so secret, he cannot share the details with them. However, the professor does not show up to meet them.

Vijay Singh borrowed money from a local council man who uses the debt to make continued threats to Vijay. In his despair to pay it back, Vijay gets involved with one of the most lucrative crime schemes in the solar system.

However, the capsule he retrieves from a crater near Johnson Base contains more than smuggled rare elements. But no one is going to talk about it for fear of getting on the wrong side of the crime lords. Even if keeping the secret will endanger the entire base.

This will appeal to readers of realistic adventure science fiction, like Robert Sawyer and Stephen Baxter. The books in this series can be read in any order.

The Dauntless by Alex Kings:

An alien fugitive carrying a secret. A mob of relentless assassins sent to stop her. A million-year-old ship from a dead civilisation.

Captain James Hanson of the Solar Alliance Vessel Dauntless knows he has to help. But soon he finds the conspiracy goes deeper than he ever imagined. Hunted down by his own government, he scrapes together a ragtag team and goes hunting for the truth.

He’s hounded on every side – from the authorities, from alien warriors, from mysterious, faceless soldiers. From the criminal backwaters of the galaxy to idyllic colonies hiding dark pasts, he uncovers a threat to the entire galaxy. A damaged, renegade ship and its unlikely crew of fugitives, mercenaries, and principled officers is all that stands between mankind and its destruction.

[image error] Zakota by Ruby Lionsdrake:

Katie Saunders isn’t used to sitting on her butt, but she’s been stuck doing exactly that as the Star Guardians fly all over the galaxy, trying to get her and the other kidnapped women back home. Now it looks like they have to engage in a battle against evil aliens before making the final flight to Earth. Since they’ve captured an extra ship and are short on pilots, Katie wants to help.

She flew jets during her time in the Navy, and she’s been training on the spaceship’s flight simulator, so she knows she can be useful. Because the captain won’t listen to her, she turns her focus onto the ship’s helm officer, Zakota. He’s an odd man who apparently believes he’s a shaman, but maybe she can convince him she can fly.

Wheeling and dealing with Zakota reveals a couple of unexpected things. First off, he’s super hot under that uniform, and second, he’s not quite as kooky as she thought. As a fellow pilot, he gets her, far better than she expected anyone out here would, and he’s quick to see her worth in the cockpit.

The problem? There’s not time for them to get to know each other better or much of anything else. They’re headed into a battle against a superior foe with superior numbers, and the odds are against them making it out alive.

[image error] The Gemini Hustle: Two Guys Walk Into a Bar by Kathleen McClure and L. Gene Brown:

Two guys walk into a bar…

Everyone knows the joke, but no one is laughing when Zodiac operative Ray Slater’s manhunt collides with fellow agent Harry Finn’s covert op.

Outnumbered and outgunned, the pair form an uneasy partnership, one that takes them from the depths of Ócala’s understreets to the pinnacle of its pleasure palaces, and straight into the heart of an interstellar crime syndicate.

Here, Ray and Harry become entangled with two of the syndicate’s key players, women gifted with psionic abilities—and burdened by secrets—who will change both men’s lives, forever.

Assuming, that is, they can survive the night.

[image error] Ember of War by Stephan Morse:

Warning: Contains Crude Language, Alien Blasting, and Sex.

Lee’s too wild for the military, but too good at his job to get rid of. The government’s solution is to banish him to the outer planets until he’s deemed civilized. His latest attempt at rehabilitation has him signed on with an outpost colony.

He hates ranching. He hates taking orders from his boss. But he likes shooting aliens. Luckily, the planet he’s on is about to face a full blown infestation.

 

[image error] Tiff in Time by Jaxon Reed:

In the beginning, God created people, angels, and fae. Creatures existing between the spiritual realm and the physical, fae scattered among parallel worlds spreading magic and chaos.

The Walker hunts fae, killing them, bringing them to justice. On occasion, he recruits followers. He found Tiff, an orphan, and raised her to be one of his best hunters. A skilled killer, she jumps into any timeline on any alternate, and seeks her prey.

A powerful artifact and a mysterious fae crop up in the Roaring Twenties, in Chicago. Tiff is on her way. But this time, after centuries of being hunted, the fae have other plans…

[image error] Into the Void by Kellie Sheridan:

Her legacy was built on lies, but uncovering the truth will put everyone she cares about in danger.

Evie was never interested in being part of SolTek Industries, content to enjoy the perks of her family’s legacy without any of the responsibility. But when her brother, a party boy with no tech skills whatsoever, starts claiming he’s about to reveal the next big thing, an invention of his own design, Evie can no longer deny that something is wrong.

Everyone in Evie’s family has been lying to her, and she intends to find out why. With a pocket full of credits and a set of coordinates she lifted from her brother, Evie sets off in hopes of finding what her family is trying to keep hidden. When those coordinates turn out to lead to deep space, though, she knows she can’t get there alone.

She’s going to need a ship.

Oliver Briggs is high on ambition but short on credits. Having spent his entire life’s savings to hire his dream crew, he risks losing them all if they don’t start bringing in some real money–fast. When the daughter of a tech magnate shows up looking for an inexplicable ride to the outer reaches of the system, offering a payday too lucrative to resist, he can’t help but accept.

But taking her offer may mean losing his crew after all.

The secrets uncovered by the crew of the Lexiconis could change the future course humanity’s future. The only question is if they’ll survive long enough to do anything about it.

[image error] Provoked by Izzy Shows:

You thought you’d uncovered the secrets of the universe. But you never found me.

The humans crossed the stars, traveling farther than any before, all to terraform a planet long thought dead. They destroyed their world, and now they need mine.

They found me buried in the core of my planet, but when they set me free they also unleashed a dark force more powerful than any before—my twin. Possessed by the god of death, no guns can hope to battle his magic.

I couldn’t stop him from destroying my world before, but I’ll die before I let him take another people from me.

Many things have changed since I ruled. But death…death never changes.

[image error] Terra and Imperium by Glynn Stewart:

Secrets both ancient and new.

Powers great and greater—

With Terra caught in the middle

Humanity’s first colony is a project neither the Duchy of Terra nor the A!Tol Imperium can allow to fail. The planet Hope in the Alpha Centauri system has been lavished with resources and attention—but when an unknown alien force attacks the system, all of that is in danger.

An ancient alien artifact is the apparent target of the attack, an artifact older than known galactic civilization. Suddenly, the backwater colony of a second-rate power is the gathering point for a confrontation of the galaxy’s greatest powers.

Duchess Annette Bond might be pregnant. She might be five light years away. She might have another galactic power on her doorstep demanding she surrender their rebels who’ve settled on Earth.

But she speaks for both Terra and the Imperium—and the galaxy will listen.

[image error] Perfect Strangers by Jan Stryvant:

During his junior year in college, Sean finds himself suddenly dropped into the middle of a world that he didn’t even know existed. A secret world of magic and magic users, lycanthropes, goblins, and all the other things that go bump in the night. To make matters even more difficult, the very same magic users who had Sean’s father killed now believe that Sean will somehow inherit his father’s work when he turns twenty-one, which is just a few days away.

Needless to say most of the magic users’ councils seem to be in two camps: The first camp wants him dead. The second camp wants him captured and then will probably kill him after they’ve learned all of his secrets. The only solution Sean sees to any of this is to finish his father’s work, the very thing that got his father killed. But in order to do that, Sean must first find out just what his father was working on! He’s also going to need to learn magic himself, find a safe place to stay, raise some money, and gain a lot of allies.

Fortunately for Sean he’s got two good women at his side: Roxy, a cheetah lycanthrope with a lot of experience in fighting; and Jolene, a tantric witch with more than a few connections in the supernatural black market.

[image error] Clouds of Venus by Jeff Tanyard:

Dale Kinmont is a college student in post-catastrophe America. He’s lucky; he lives in one of the walled cities for the nation’s elite, and life is pleasant. He expects to graduate and find employment in his uncle’s company.

Everything changes when he’s framed for murder. He’s tried, convicted, and sentenced to hard labor in the prison colony on Mercury.

He ends up in Hesperus instead, a flying city that soars eternally through the acidic skies of Venus. His goal now is to find a way to clear his name and return to Earth before Hesperus erupts in civil war. He also must battle the harsh realities of the planet itself. Because if the Hesperans don’t kill him, Venus probably will.

[image error] City of Magic by Patricia Thomas:

Where do your favorite characters go after their stories are over?

The last thing Kadie remembers is getting dumped by the man she thought was the love of her life. Then, without warning, she finds herself somewhere impossible, surrounded by everything from magical kingdoms to futuristic cities and quiet suburban towns.

Her life before was merely fiction; this is where her story really begins.

The After is a world beyond imagining, existing for unfulfilled book characters who have reached the end of their stories. But not everyone in the After is happy with the status quo.

When Kadie arrives, her situation escalates from strange to deadly. Those in power are willing to play dirty in order to keep their secrets hidden. This time around, Kadie will have the chance to write her own future. But happily ever after isn’t going to come without a fight.

[image error] Mimic and the Space Engineer by James David Victor:

An aspiring space engineer, a shape-shifting alien, and the race to save an unknown alien race.

A new story from #1 Best Selling author James David Victor

Higgens has the best job in the galaxy. Except for the fact that he’s technically a janitor on a galactic mining vessel. When he discovers an unknown alien species, his world gets turned upside down. He will have to find unlikely allies if he is going to save his new friend and start the journey home.

Mimic and the Space Engineer is the first book in the Space Shifter Chronicles. If you like fast paced space adventures with engaging, and quirky, characters, you will love Higgens, Mimic, and their adventures in space.

Star Dog Liberation by Lucas C. Wheeler:

Star Dog and Clancy have spent months hiding in an abandoned apartment, and tensions and paranoia are beginning to rise. A threat still looms on the horizon, and it’s searching for Star Dog. She’s about to find him.

There’s a new German shepherd on the streets of Prism City, and the news can’t stop covering all her criminal endeavors – except they identified the culprit as Star Dog.

Whatever vendetta she feels compelled to settle against Star Dog, when she targets someone close to home, Star Dog feels he has to act. He vows to bring an end to the Star Dog technology, once and for all. No matter what it takes, or what it costs.

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Indie Crime Fiction of the Month for September 2017

[image error]Welcome to the latest edition of “Indie Crime Fiction of the Month”.

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

Our new releases cover the broad spectrum of crime fiction. We have cozy mysteries, small town mysteries, historical mysteries, police procedurals, psychological thrillers, crime thrillers, dystopian thrillers, pulp thrillers, men’s adventure thrillers, kidnappings, heists, the mob, intrepid reporters, murderous milk thieves, blood-sucking debt collectors, adventures in Thailand and Alaska, murder in the Pacific Northwest, bodies in the backyard and much more.

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

[image error] The Milk Truck Gang by Cora Buhlert:

Upstate New York, 1937: When the delivery vans of the Daisy Chain Dairy Company are targeted and robbed by a criminal gang and a driver is shot, Richard Blakemore a.k.a. the masked crimefighter known only as the Silencer decides to get involved.

So he stakes out the dairy company in the early hours of the morning to apprehend the criminals, only to find himself embroiled in a lethal fight on the bed of a speeding milk truck…

This is a short story of 3700 words or approx. 15 print pages in the Silencer series, but may be read as a standalone.

[image error] O Negative by Paul Curtin:

In Cole’s world, a critical shortage has made blood expensive.

Now the ticket to a hefty cash loan is running through anyone’s veins—as long as a person’s willing to put up their blood as collateral. And if the debt defaults, Cole is the man who collects. He kidnaps debtors for his boss to drain—over long, excruciating months—until death. It’s a job he doesn’t mind until his boss asks him to pick up a guy with the rare and valuable blood type, O negative.

Except the guy doesn’t have O negative—his ten-year-old daughter, Sam, does.

Knowing the horrors waiting for her if he hands her over to his boss, Cole takes Sam and goes on the run. With corrupt cops on his boss’s payroll patrolling the streets, a psychotic colleague hunting him, and a savvy detective on his trail, Cole knows this will end one of two ways: he escapes the city or Sam dies a slow, painful death.

Either way, blood will be spilled.

[image error] The Fourth Friend by Joy Ellis:

FOUR LOST FRIENDS. FOUR TASKS TO COMPLETE. ONE BIG MYSTERY LEFT.

Police detective Carter McLean is the only survivor of a plane crash that kills his four best friends. He returns to work but he is left full of guilt and terrible flashbacks. So for each of his four friends he decides to complete something that they left unfinished.

Eighteen months before the crash, Suzanne Holland disappeared, leaving a room with traces of blood, but no other leads. Suzanne was the wife of one of Carter’s four best friends.

Adding to the pressure, the boss’s daughter has a stalker. Due to the sensitivity of the Holland case, Carter is put on this investigation.

DS Marie Evans is the only person Carter can confide in. But even she begins to doubt whether he can really cope and whether he is actually losing his mind.

DI Jackman and DS Evans of the Fenland police face a battle to untangle three mysteries, and can they really believe their friend and colleague Carter?

[image error] Secrets of Wildflower Island by Michelle Files:

Wildflower Island is an idyllic place, where crime just doesn’t happen.

When 4 teenage girls discover a body, badly beaten, a nice day at the beach goes horribly wrong. As they embark on a quest to solve the murder, they find themselves as the main suspects. The girls quickly turn on each other as they are blackmailed by an unknown person and harassed by residents of the small island they live on. Who killed the boy? Will the girls be next? This mesmerizing mystery, suspense novel will have you guessing until the end. Get your copy today!

[image error] Murder in Seattle by Dianne Harman:

What would you do if your sister’s husband of twelve hours, Clark, was considered a suspect by the police in connection with his rich Uncle Vinny’s murder? And the rich uncle just happened to be a member of the Mob?

DeeDee has no choice but to enlist the help of her boyfriend Jake, a private investigator, as well as Al, Uncle Vinny’s scary bodyguard, to help her find the murderer and clear Clark’s name.

It could have been a number of people, but which one? Was it Uncle Vinny’s cousin or his wife? Uncle Vinny had a lot of money, and although he hadn’t come by it legally, the color was still green. Or the rogue cop whose father had ended the prostitution rings in Seattle, but was certain Uncle Vinny was the person who had resurrected them. Or perhaps Clark’s business colleague who was jealous of Clark’s recent promotion? Maybe it was the wedding planner who resented everything Uncle Vinny was giving the newlyweds, particularly the house on Queen Anne Hill. Or even Clark himself? After all, Uncle Vinny gave a toast at the wedding declaring him to be the sole heir of his substantial fortune.

[image error] Unwritten and Underwater by Amanda M. Lee:

Avery Shaw is living the dream … kind of.

She’s officially moved to her dream house and her boyfriend Eliot Kane is making her host a housewarming party to show off the new digs to her family. All is going well – other than the endless arguments over food and hiding from Avery’s family, of course – until one of Avery’s enemies comes calling.

Avery’s former boyfriend Jake Farrell broke up with Cara Carpenter weeks before but she’s still stalking him … and Avery in the process. When Cara turns up dead at a high-profile event, not only is Jake a suspect, but Avery and Eliot are, too.

The Michigan State Police wrestle the investigation from Jake, promptly turning Avery from the hunter to the hunted. The state police investigator assigned to the case is all up in Avery’s business – and Avery is cracking under the pressure even as she insists on covering the case, much to almost everybody’s chagrin.

From the stress associated with the new house, Grandpa’s constant naked visits to the pool, and Eliot’s insistence that Avery own up to something illegal, things are starting to get tense.

Avery is on her heels for a bit before starting to put the pieces together. When the truth comes out, though, the answers are welcome but the danger is not.

Can Avery survive to irritate everyone another day? Or will Michigan’s favorite reporter finally succumb to a mouth she can’t quite seem to control?

Mr. Miracle by Carey Lewis:

Hugh Gallant has survived being hit by lightning, throwing himself off a skyscraper, and a divorce from a redheaded woman. He has also won the lottery three times and moved to Thailand, leaving his former life behind. He is known as Mr. Miracle.

Dutch used to be Hugh’s best friend. Together, they concocted a scheme that resulted in a man plummeting thirty-eight floors to his death. Dutch must bring Hugh home or have the murder put squarely on him. But he’s not the only one searching for a Miracle.

The ex-wife has teamed up with a former rapper and a furnace repairman who moonlight as criminals to swindle Hugh. They continually raise the stakes when each plan fails, going from extortion, abduction, to even murder, until they can find some way to make Hugh give up his millions. They learn miracles are hard to come by.

Dutch realizes ‘The Land of Smiles’ isn’t just sandy beaches and bikini clad women, and moonlighting criminals can prove more deadly than full time ones. He needs to decide if he will risk his life to protect Mr. Miracle, bring him to justice, or make a play for the money himself.

The Body in the Backyard by Hollis Shiloh:

Clarence Collin is pushing up daisies—in Abe’s bed of zinnias!

When the caustic critic of a TV gardening show winds up murdered in Abe’s well-groomed backyard, both Abe and his hunky-but-irritating neighbor Gregory might be on the suspect list.

Abe starts amateur sleuthing in self-defense…and to spend time with Gregory. When the two green thumbs look into their neighborhood’s dirty little secrets, who knows what they’ll dig up?

A cozy gay mystery

51,000 words

[image error] From the Ocean to the Stream by J.D. Weston

What would you do…

How far would you go…

TO STAY ALIVE?

In this gritty psychological thriller novel, discover one man’s fight against the power of nature, and the greed of man.

‘From the Ocean to the Stream’ is a gritty thriller and suspense story that tells of one man’s account

and his battles with the greed of man, and the savage brutality of the wilderness. It can be read

as a standalone book, or as part of a survival fiction series, as the sequel to ‘Where the Mountains Kiss the Sun’.

For one so young, Jim has had more than his share of traumatic experiences. Now, he shares a simpler life with his Ma and Pa, where the mountains kiss the sun; away from the city and away from people, although at night he’s still haunted by dreams of what he’s seen and what he’s done.

Life is simple but good, until one day someone new comes into their lives to change them forever. Will he be able to extinguish his dreams, or will his new reality become more fearful than the visions of his past? Find out in the historical adventure ‘From the Ocean to the Stream’.

This is a gritty psychological thriller you can really get your TEETH into!

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Let us welcome our Robot Overlords

On a day like today, you need something to take your mind of all the bad things in the world. And no, I have zero interest in Star Trek Discovery right now, even if initial reviews are good.

One of the problematic media tendencies I alluded to in my last post is also the tendency to paint all sorts of apocalyptic scenarios. “The robots will take our jobs” is a sadly common one. Here is a recent example, which aired on TV this Wednesday.

The following day, I was in Oldenburg on my regular under- and sleepwear buying expedition at Leffers. And while I was on my way to the under- and nightwear department on the top floor, I came across this little cutie:

[image error]

Pepper, the robotic sales assistant at Leffers in Oldenburg

This is Pepper, Leffers‘ new robotic sales assistant. She can talk, she will show you pictures of the latest fashions as well as a short slideshow of Oldenburg. Here is an article about Pepper from the Leffers website.

Pepper is always surrounded by customers, because she’s fun. However, when I needed to a new pyjama, the one who quickly found one for me that wasn’t just the right size, but also matches my specific requirements regarding cut and material was not Pepper, but one of her human colleagues.

So yes, maybe robots will one day take our jobs. But that day is still quite a bit of.

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Some Comments on the 2017 German General Election

As you may know, Germany had a general election today. Angela Merkel’s CDU is still the strongest party, though they suffered significant losses. Her coalition partner SPD under Martin Schulz, former president of the European parliament, fell to only 20% of the vote. The Greens and the Left Party largely maintained their 2013 results, the pro-business liberal party FDP is back in parliament and – this is the really, really bad news – the rightwing extremist, nationalistic and xenophobic party AfD (short for “Alternative for Germany”) won 13% of the vote and is not just in parliament, but are also the third strongest party. There is an English language overview with liveblog here at Deutsche Welle.

Here are the election results for my district, Dieholz – Nienburg I, and also for my town. As you can see, the CDU won with a pretty significant majority (which is not a surprise – the CDU always wins our district). Axel Knoerig of the CDU won the direct vote for the third time. Again, this is not surprising, because the CDU always wins here and because Axel Knoerig does a good job for the region and its people. Coincidentally, Knoerig was also the only direct candidate in my district who sent out flyers explaining not just what the goals of his party are, but also what his political goals are and what he is planning to do for our region. And coincidentally, it’s notable that Knoerig’s personal results are much better than those for his party (we have two votes, one for a candidate and one for a party), because he does a good job and had a good campaign. However, and this is the sad thing, we also have between 8% and 9% AfD voters. The two Bremen voting districts bth went to SPD candidates, but then Bremen traditionally votes SPD, so any other result would have been a huge surprise. But the SPD lost only won narrowly in Bremen.

So what does this result mean for Germany? Angela Merkel will remain chancellor for another four years, though very likely in a different coalition government, since her former coalition partner SPD folded and more or less ran off. Currently, the most likeliest government seems to be a so-called Jamaica coalition. No, we’re not going to be ruled by Rastafarians (though that would be cool), but by a coalition of CDU, FDP and the Green Party. Deutsche Welle also offers an overview of German coalition shorthand, which can be confusing for people from countries with pure first past the post voting systems and the resulting two-parties and maybe a few scattered others parliaments these tend to result in.

I’d never have thought that I’d ever say this about any CDU chancellor, but Angela Merkel does a good job and I’m glad that she will remain Germany’s chancellor for the next four years. The German economy is doing well and the unemployment rate is the lowest since 1990 (pre-1990 values are not really comparable). Tax revenue is high and the budget is balanced. The last nuclear power stations will be shut down for good in the next few years and we are in the process of successfully switching to renewables. We have full marriage equality. Education is free from the primary to the university level. The German government has a good reputation abroad, especially since several other countries of global significance have fallen to rightwing populists and straight forward incompetents. And Angela Merkel is probably the first leading CDU politician who takes both the “Christian” bit in her party’s name as well as our constitution seriously and opened the country to those fleeing war and terrorism, against opposition from her own party. And coincidentally, the vast majority of refugees are eager to integrate, find jobs and restart their lives here. I should know, cause I taught German to some of them. And yes, Angela Merkel is skilled at changing her personal views in tune with wider social trends (nuclear power, of which she first was in favour and then voted to abolish) or at least getting out of the way (e.g. the marriage equality vote). But today’s Germany is a good place to live and a lot more open than it was twenty-five, twenty or even ten years ago. And coincidentally, I’ve heard quite a few people say, “Well, I don’t normally vote for the CDU, but I really like Angela Merkel.”

Are there problems in Germany? Of course, there are problems. We still have way too much poverty, though our poor are comparatively better of than the poor in the US (at least they have health insurance, unemployment and welfare benefits). Our police and intelligence services are not very good at identifying terrorists (both Neo-Nazis and Islamists and they don’t do a great job on violent leftwing extremists either) before they do harm and sometimes even after (NSU, anybody?), plus we have a few rightwing extremists in the police forces. Parts of the infrastructure (schools mainly, but also some roads and bridges) are crumbling and our school system is in need of an overhaul (though I don’t trust any party to do a good job with the school system). Too many people, particularly young people, have unstable temp and contract jobs. Gentrification is running rampant in certain big cities, pricing poorer people out of the housing market. We don’t have enough affordable social housing, because too little has been built in the past thirty years. The non-existing interest rate in the Eurozone makes it difficult to save money for retirement. The pension system requires an overhaul (and has required it for thirty years at least, though I have even less faith in the political parties here than with education). Internet connections, particularly in rural areas, are not nearly fast enough. Not all of these problems are Angela Merkel’s fault – indeed she inherited many of them from her predecessors, while others are the result of global forces beyond her control.

So what about the SPD, the big losers tonight? Now I like Martin Schulz. He did a good job as the president of the European parliament. Quitting that job in favour of national politics was not a very good idea, because now his legacy will be “The guy who gave the SPD its worst election result since 1945” rather than respected European politician and co-winner (sort of) of the Nobel Peace Prize. And indeed Martin Schulz should have stayed in Brussels and let Sigmar Gabriel captain the sinking ship SPD this year and held back until 2021. To be fair, Martin Schulz tried. However, he and the SPD failed and I for one can understand why. After all, the very social policies which Schulz attacked were implemented by his own party during the Schröder government. And let’s not forget that the SPD supported a change in the right to asylum in the 1990s (which was my personal red line) and that one SPD-led government voted in favour of a VAT hike also in the 1990s. If you want to be the party of social justice, that sort of track record doesn’t look good. Besides, if you look at the three SPD-led governments in (West) Germany, all three of some collapsed prematurely because the SPD chancellors threw the towel: Willy Brandt because one of his aides turned out to be an East German spy, Helmut Schmidt because of protests against the stationing of NATO nuclear weapons in West Germany and Gerhard Schröder because of protests against the cuts to welfare programs and social services his party initiated. Add to that that Martin Schulz also threw the towel earlier this evening and basically declared that he and his party want no part of a new German government and an image emerges of the SPD as a party that folds in the face of controversy and runs away like a little kid. Besides – and I suspect this is a factor for many women voters – the SPD steadily ignores the capable women in its ranks in favour of men. Whenever the SPD is looking for a new leader or a chancellor candidate, no woman even makes the shortlist, in spite of female SPD politicians doing good work as state prime ministers. Hell, the SPD even brought in Martin Schulz from Brussels rather than consider a woman. Voters – well, 87% of them – aren’t stupid. They notice such patterns. In general, I like the idea of the SPD much more than the reality and it has been that way at least since 1990.

The Green Party and the Left Party are what they are. They have a certain voter base and they have largely managed to mobilise that base, which is why their results are largely unchanged. The Greens are running out of topics, since other parties, including the CDU, adopted many of their positions. The Left Party seems to be moving towards xenophobic rhetoric of late, which I personally find deeply troubling. But then, it seems that they are determined to make the same mistakes that the SPD made 25 years ago by pandering to the prejudices (imagined or real) of working class voters rather than embracing the young urban left-leaning voters who’d love to vote for a leftwing alternative. The FDP is back in parliament after four years, largely due to their young head Christian Lindner and also because of votes by people who dislike Angela Merkel, but will not vote either for a left party nor for rightwing extremists (yes, there are protest voters who are not a disgrace). Now the FDP is frequently the butt of jokes and a lot of people really don’t like them, which I’ve never quite gotten. I also have to admit that I’m not quite objective with regards to the FDP, since my cousin is an FDP politician and member of the Bremen state parliament (visible in the background here). And I think that a certain FDP presence in parliament is good for German politics, just as the Greens and the Left Party (provided they drop the xenophobic rhetoric) are good in moderate doses, because they address issues the other parties ignore. And besides, I’d much rather have the FDP in parliament than the AfD.

Which brings us to the 13% of German voters – more in certain parts of East Germany – who voted for the AfD. Sorry to be so blunt, but those 13% are a disgrace. Yes, a lot of them claim they voted against Angela Merkel rather than for the AfD. And can even sympathise – after all, I was once very desperate to be rid of the neverending Kohl government and the leaden era it imposed on Germany myself. I also have no issue with protest voting – I’ve done it myself on one or two occasions, where I genuinely disliked both alternatives. However, you don’t protest vote for racists, xenophobes and outright Nazis. There were 42 parties running for German parliament, the overwhelming majority of whom were not rightwing xenophobes and Nazis. You want to protest? Fine: Vote for the Greens, the FDP, the Left Party, Die Partei (satirical party), the Pirate Party, the Anarchistic Pogo Party, the Party of Bible Believing Christians (okay, maybe not them), the Marxist Leninist Party (okay, maybe not them either), the Humanist Party, the Grey Party (for pensioners), the Urban Hip Hop Party, the Purple Party for spiritual politics, the Animal Welfare Party, etc… There’s plenty of choice. But if you vote for racists and outright Nazis, don’t be surprised if people call you a Nazi.

And it’s not as if people don’t know what the AfD stands for, since they’re not exactly shy about airing their noxious views. One of their leaders recently stated he wanted to dispose of a German-born SPD politician with Turkish roots in Anatolia, because she dared to say that there is no such thing as a single German culture beyond the German language and the constitution, just lots of different regional cultures (which is true BTW). The same guy said he is proud of the heroic German soldiers of WWII. He also claimed that most Germans would not want to live next door to football player and member of the German national team Jerome Boateng who happens to be black. Other AfD politicians have stated that they want no more holocaust rememberance, that the holocaust monument is a monument of shame, that they want our police forces to shoot illegal immigrants at the border, including women and children, and all sorts of other grisly things. One of their former leaders later deposed as being not radical enough wanted to institute Handmaid’s Tale like policies to raise the white and bio-German birthrate. The AfD is racist, xenophobic, islamophobic, homophobic (even though one of their leaders is a lesbian woman), anti-feminist and anti-European and it has never been any different.

The 13% of Germans who voted for the AfD are at the very least willing to overlook those views, even if they don’t personally share them (and I’m sure many of them do share them – indeed this article where AfD voters state why they voted like they did is brimming with racism, xenophobia and islamophobia). And when you look at one of the many “Wah, why won’t someone think of the poor white AfD voter!” pieces in the media, you’ll see a lot of people stating that they’re definitely not Nazis, but that they are scared of all those foreigners and Muslims and terrorists, even though they live in tiny villages where there are hardly any foreigners. They are scared of everybody who isn’t like them. They constantly claim that people are afraid to go out alone by night, when they themselves haven’t been outside after dark in decades. They hate refugees and immigrants, even though several of them were themselves refugees from East Prussia or Silesia after WWII, or East Germans who were themselves welcomed by West Germans in 1989/90 or Russians immigrants of German origin who were welcomed in Germany in the 1990s (though according to this article, the percentage of AfD voters among Russian immigrants isn’t that much higher than among the general population). In short, some of them once had welcoming hands extended to them (and also faced prejudice) and now want to pull up the ladder behind them. AfD voters believe every bit of fake news they come across, no matter how ridiculous, as long as it confirms their prejudices. These people also don’t get that not every party has to cater to their particular problems – and mind you, as a single childless self-employed woman absolutely no party caters to me either. In those “Wah, won’t someone think of the poor white AfD voter” reports, you get people screaming that refugees want to take their pensions (uhm, no, refugees are supported via taxes, while pensions are paid out of social security payments, i.e. a totally separate pot). You get people whining that the local kindergarten or the maternity ward of the local hospital in their shrinking villages are closing or that the local open air pool now closes at six, when it used to be open until eight (apparently, they have no idea that such decisions are made on the local level and not on the national level). Or – my personal favourite – the elderly woman who was interviewed at a Pegida ralley and complained that the local refugee home got a washing machine (probabyl shared between 20 to 30 people), but that she doesn’t get a free washing machine, she has to pay for it. Yeah, because you’re not poor (if she was, the state would pay for a washing machine, provided she needs a new one) and you haven’t lost everything in a war. You can buy your own fucking washing machine.

That’s the sort of person who votes for the AfD. Not those who actually are poor, but working and middle class white folks who are furious that someone somewhere might be getting something that they don’t get, even if it’s only the cheapest washing machine at Media Markt. In short, the same sort of people who supported the Sad/Rabid Puppies and Gamergate, who voted for Trump, Brexit, the Front National and other rightwing parties. Mediocre white people whose see their privilege eroding and fear they can’t make it without an artificial leg up. Here is a great interview with Holger Lengfeld, a sociologist from the Univsersity of Leipzig, who researched AfD voters and came to the conclusion that they haven’t so much fallen behind economically, but culturally. These people see that Germany is changing, that it is becoming more open, more tolerant, less straight, less white and less Christian, and that bothers them. Of course, absolutely no one is stopping them from living very conventional lives, if that’s what they want. But these people can no longer pretend that those who are different don’t exist. Even in small villages and rural towns, there are muslims and black people now who go to the same supermarkets and whose kids attend the same school. There are openly LGBT people. Sometimes, they have to tolerate people speaking different languages. And merely having to see and hear those who are different is too much for the delicate sensibilities of these folks.

Now I very well remember the supposed “golden” age those folks are missing. I remember what it was like to have to show your passport at every border and every airport. I remember what it was like to have to change the contents in your wallet at every border. I remember what a hassle it was and I don’t miss anything about it. I grew up in rural North West Germany in the 1970s and 1980s. We had three TV stations, which mainly showed (bad) German made programming with the very occasional US TV series (and no movies younger than ten years). To watch a movie, go to theatre, listen to a concert, buy a record, buy a book or even buy anything but very basic food, you had to go to the next city. Want an English language books, a foreign newspaper, a superhero comic, decent basmati rice, curry powder, chili peppers, ramen noodles or indeed anything “foreign”? Maybe you can buy it in the city, but you’ll have to pay grossly inflated prices. And heaven help you if you couldn’t drive, because the last bus went at eight. I remember very well how stiffling and conformist and outright hostile to anything that was different the atmosphere was. Now I was different. I had seen a bit more of the world than my classmates and teachers. And I took my teachers by their word, when they told us to question everything, and did. I always got good grades, so they couldn’t get rid of me (which they tried with several other kids who didn’t fit in), but it was very clear that I didn’t belong there and wasn’t welcome. And the only reason I didn’t run screaming as soon as I could was because things gradually started getting better in the 1990s.

The AfD and the people who vote for them want to take us all back to that stiffling monocultural era with some kind of universal German culture, which never existed, just because they can’t hack the modern world. They also don’t care who they throw under the bus to get there. We are having a huge problem with rightwing extremism in Germany and not just outright terrorists like the NSU either. All over Germany, rightwing extremists are harrassing and threatening anybody who disagrees with them, whether people who work with refugees, pro-immigrant politicians, artists who dare to speak out against the right, scholars and academics (gender studies professors are targeted in particular) and even priests, which is particularly disgraceful considering these people are claiming they want to protect the Christian West. And now we have people like those sitting in our parliament, ready to spread their hate and venom there.

And yes, our media are at least partly at fault, because they kept giving a platform to rightwing and xenophobic views. The media gave a platform to people like Thilo Sarrazin, Claus Strunz, Henryk M. Broder (particularly sad, since he’s Jewish, i.e. a very likely target of rightwing extremists) and others, who may not support the AfD themselves, but promoted similar views and made them first sayable in public and then respectable. The media reported about the AfD, when they were still a tiny fringe party, and invited AfD politicians into talk shows. And no, they didn’t have to invite the AfD every time, especially since representatives of many of the smaller of the 42 parties running for German parliament never get invited either. And when the AfD and Pegida folks started calling the German media “Lügenpresse” (lying press), they didn’t double down, but changed their reporting to placate those who cannot be placated. Suddenly, reports about garden variety crime included the nationality of the suspect again, if they were not German (if the nationality is not mentioned, you can assume that they are German), something which was common well into the 1990s, but vanished in recent years. Journalists who didn’t give a damn about sexual harrassment when the perpetrators were white men suddenly felt the need to report about every incident where the perpetrator was not a white man. Meanwhile, positive reports about immigrants and refugees and those Germans who help them, which had been common throughout 2015, largely vanished from our media. Instead, we got the familiar flood of “Wah, won’t someone think of the poor widdle white AfD voter” opinion pieces that we also got after the Brexit vote and the US election. In the months before the election, there were some attempts to expose the racists inside the AfD, but it was too little too late. What is more, I don’t think it is a good idea in general to do opinion polls until one week before the elections or to have political talkshows and political comedy programs airing mere days before an election, something which wasn’t allowed in Germany until fairly recently.

So what’s the solution? Moving back towards the right clearly isn’t it, especially since the CDU’s Bavarian sister party CSU, which is very anti-immigrant, also suffered significant losses. And thankfully, Angela Merkel quietly removed most of the xenophobic conservatives from her party years ago, making the CDU electable for people who would never have considered voting for Helmut Kohl. The SPD running away like a little kid isn’t the solution either and indeed the party continues to disappoint. However, treating the AfD like a normal party or a transient phenomenon isn’t the solution either. Because they’re not a normal party and while I hope they will turn out to be a transient phenomenon, I fear they may not be. After all, the Greens and the Left Party were also once upon a time a transient phenomenon, the sort of party no one would ever form a government with, and now we have a Green (Winfried Kretschmann in Baden-Württemberg) and a Left (Bodo Ramelow in Thuringia) state prime minister. And while no one would form a government with the AfD on any level at the moment, there is no guarantee that this won’t happen in the future. There is also no guarantee that the AfD will vanish again like the Pirate Party (who actually filled a political niche) or other rightwing populist parties like the Schill Party in Hamburg or Arbeit für Bremen in Bremen or rightwing extremist parties like the Republikaner, the DVU or the NPD.

What needs to be done is fight the AfD by all democratically possible means both inside and outside parliament. It’s also necessary for people to speak up against noxious political views wherever they show up and not ignore the racist at the dinner table, because that’s just what Uncle Herbert is like. Let’s make it very clear that they don’t speak for the German people. Cause there’s 87% of us and 13% of them. The spontaneous anti-AfD protests that broke out in several German cities tonight are a good sign, but we need to remain wary and resist.

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A New Adventure of the Silencer: The Milk Truck Gang

As mentioned in my last post, there will be a couple of new release announcements in the near future, as I work through the backlog of stories I wrote during the 2017 July short story challenge.

The first story from the 2017 July short story challenge to see the light is The Milk Truck Gang, the latest adventure of the Silencer. For those of you that aren’t familiar with the series, The Silencer follows the adventures of Richard Blakemore, hardworking pulp writer by day and the masked crimefighter known only as the Silencer by night, and is my homage to the hero pulps of the 1930s such as the Shadow, the Spider, Doc Savage and others.

The Silencer stories are fairly research intensive because of the 1930s setting and also because New York City, where most of the stories take place, has changed a lot in the past eighty years. Luckily, New York City’s past is extensively documented, though tracing what the city looked like in the mid 1930s, what long gone buildings were in which location and what shops, restaurant, hotels, theatres, etc… were called (cause they change names and tennants often) can still be a pain. On the plus side, researching locations for a Silencer story often yields plenty of interesting facts that provide ideas for more stories. Coincidentally, I recently came across this fabulous site, which is a basically a Google Streetview into the past and links historical photos to particular locations. Invaluable, particularly when dealing with an area that had changed drastically in the past eighty years.

Because the Silencer stories require so much research, they don’t really lend themselves to a project like the July short story challenge, where speed is of essence and there usually isn’t a lot of time for research. I did write a Silencer story during last year’s July short story challenge, but Fact or Fiction is a housebound story that takes place entirely in Richard’s study and therefore required a lot less research than the average Silencer story. Though even Fact or Fiction required some research, e.g. was white out fluid available in the 1930s (no, invented in the 1950s) and if not, what did people use instead?

While doing the 2017 July short story challenge, I chanced to listen to a report on the radio about a wave of thefts, where cargo – mostly electronics – was stolen directly from the backs of trucks. The report was about a new alarm system that would alert the driver, but what piqued my interest was the crime itself. “That would make a great Silencer story”, I thought to myself.

The July short story challenge requires coming up with a whole lot of ideas in a very compressed time period and so it didn’t take long before I thought, “Hey, that idea for a Silencer story about a wave of thefts from truck beds was pretty good. Maybe I should write that one.”

The next question was what should the thieves steal? It needed to be something that was shipped in sufficient quantities and on a predictable schedule, that was easy to sell and difficult to trace. And so I settled on milk. Milk was ideal for the purpose of my story, because a city the size of New York consumes a lot of it, it is delivered on a predictable schedule and by trucks following predictable routes in the very early morning, it is easy to sell and almost impossible to trace, particularly with 1930s technology.

This led to the question, where precisely did the milk consumed by New Yorkers in the early 20th century come from? Researching this led me to the swill milk scandal of the mid 19th century, which in turn made its way into the story, for the gang not just steals milk and attacks truck drivers, it also adulterates the milk and so poisons young children, which gives the story an extra sense of urgency.

There were a couple of other questions to research, such as what route would the milk trucks take to get the milk from Westchester County to New York City and did those streets already exist in the 1930s (thanksfully yes – what is now Broadway was first mentioned in 1642 and is likely much older)? The reminder that Broadway extends quite a bit beyond the city limits of New York into Westchester County brought to mind the George M. Cohan song “Forty-five minutes from Broadway”, which not only made it’s way into the story, but also stuck in my head for several days.

After the Christmas extravaganza that is St. Nicholas of Hell’s Kitchen, The Milk Truck Gang is a more low-key Silencer adventure that basically centres on a single fight scene. The investigation take place largely off-stage and of the Silencer’s usual supporting cast, only Constance and Edgar, the kitten, as well as Baby Kenny (introduced in St. Nicholas of Hell’s Kitchen) appear. I’m somewhat troubled by the fact that this is the third Silencer story in a row, where Constance doesn’t get a very much to do aside from making coffee and breakfast and patching up Richard after his adventures (the fifth story in the row, actually, since Constance doesn’t appear at all in The Great Fraud and Mean Streets and Dead Alleys). Okay, so she does get a bit more to do in St. Nicholas of Hell’s Kitchen, but it’s not nearly close to the level of Constance’s involvement in Countdown to Death or The Spiked Death. However, in the hopefully not all too distant future, there will be a Silencer story where Constance goes on an undercover mission of her own.

But for now, here is the Silencer’s latest case, as he battles…

The Milk Truck Gang

[image error]Upstate New York, 1937: When the delivery vans of the Daisy Chain Dairy Company are targeted and robbed by a criminal gang and a driver is shot, Richard Blakemore a.k.a. the masked crimefighter known only as the Silencer decides to get involved.

So he stakes out the dairy company in the early hours of the morning to apprehend the criminals, only to find himself embroiled in a lethal fight on the bed of a speeding milk truck…

 

 

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Length: 3700 words

List price: 0.99 USD, EUR or GBP

Buy it at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, Amazon France, Amazon Netherlands, Amazon Spain, Amazon Italy, Amazon Canada, Amazon Australia, Amazon Brazil, Amazon Japan, Amazon India, Amazon Mexico, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple iTunes, Scribd, Smashwords, Inktera, Playster, Thalia, Weltbild, Hugendubel, Buecher.de, DriveThruFiction, Casa del Libro, e-Sentral, 24symbols and XinXii.

And if you want to read the entire Silencer series, there is a bundle of all nine stories to date available at a steeply reduced price at DriveThruFiction.

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A New Cover and a New German Short Story Available – Ein neues Cover und eine neue Kurzgeschichte auf Deutsch erhältlich: Der Lohn des Henkers

There will be a few new release announcements in the next days and weeks, since I’m currently editing my way through the backlog of stories I wrote during the 2017 July short story challenge.

However, today’s double announcement has nothing to do with that. For starters, my science fiction short story Whaler has a new cover. Now Whaler is one of those stories I refer to as a never-seller. It was my lowest selling book for a long time and though it isn’t my lowest selling title any more (currently, that’s Parlour Game, but since that’s a fairly new release, that will probably change), it’s still a story that sells very little.

Because Whaler doesn’t sell and isn’t part of any series, I was reluctant to invest any more time and money in it. However, I recently had to update the file because of an issue with epubcheck, that had gone unnoticed for six years. And while I was updating the file, I also noticed that the cover was getting really long in the tooth. It wasn’t bad for its time, but that time was six years ago. Whaler is one oldest covers I have that has never been updated (Outlaw Love and Rites of Passage are even older, but those are still pretty good) and it was really in dire need of an update.

So behold the beautiful new cover for Whaler (and maybe buy the story, while you’re at it):

[image error]

The second announcement is for a new German language short story. During the long hot days of summer, when I don’t feel creative enough to work on new stories, I occasionally translate some of my existing stories into German. My historical romances have always done well in Germany, so I decided to tackle Hangman’s Wages for my next translation project.

***

Die zweite Ankündigung für heute (die erste war für ein neues Cover einer Science Fiction Kurzgeschichte, die es bis jetzt leider nur auf Englisch gibt) betrifft eine neue Kurzgeschichte auf Deutsch. Während der langen heißen Sommertage fühle ich mich manchmal nicht kreativ genug, um etwas Neues zu schreiben. Also nutze ich die Zeit, um einige meiner älteren Geschichten ins Deutsche zu übersetzen. Meine historischen Liebesgeschichten haben sich auf Deutsch immer gut verkauft, also habe ich mich der Kurzgeschichte Hangman’s Wages angenommen, die es jetzt auch auf Deutsch gibt:

Der Lohn des Henkers

[image error]Während der öffentlichen Hinrichtung eines berüchtigten Banditen wird die junge Anna beim Taschendiebstahl erwischt und an Ort und Stelle zum Tode verurteilt. Der gnadenlose Graf Dietmar von Finsterwalde weist seinen Henker Ulrich an, die Diebin unverzüglich aufzuhängen.

Ulrich hat Mitleid mit Anna, aber Befehl ist Befehl. Also führt er das verängstigte Mädchen zum Galgenbaum vor den Toren der Stadt hinaus. Ulrich ist entschlossen, dafür zu sorgen, dass sie so wenig wie möglich leidet. Aber als er Anna die Schlinge um den Hals legt, wird Ulrich sich bewusst, dass diese junge Diebin sein Herz rührt wie keine andere Frau zuvor.

Aber wie kann er Anna retten, wenn Graf Dietmar schon ihren Tod befohlen hat?

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Länge: 3800 Worte

Preis: 0,99 EUR, USD oder GBP

Erhältlich bei Amazon Deutschland, Amazon USA, Amazon UK, Amazon Niederlande, Amazon Frankreich, Amazon Italien, Amazon Spanien, Amazon Canada, Amazon Australien, Amazon Brasilien, Amazon Mexico, Amazon Japan, Amazon Indien, Kobo, Apple iTunes, Thalia, Weltbild, Hugendubel, BOL, Osiander, Mayersche, buecher.de, buch.de, eBook.de, Barnes & Noble, Scribd, 24symbols, Playster, txtr, Inktera, Smashwords, DriveThruFiction, Casa del Libro, Flipkart, e-Sentral und XinXii.

Dieses Buch gibt es auch auf English.

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2017 Dragon Awards Reactions

I already posted my own reactions to the 2017 Dragon Awards, so here are some reactions from around the web:

At Women Write About Comics, Doris V. Sutherland offers a detailed summary and analysis of the 2017 Dragon Awards and the resultant drama, including lots of quotes by nominees, organisers and bystanders. She also declares that as of 2017, the Dragon Awards are no longer the puppy awards. This is probably the best summary of the Dragon Awards and the debates surrounding them I have seen, so if you read only one article on the Dragon Awards, make it this one.

George R.R. Martin has a brief post about the Dragon Awards, in which he congratulates the winners, particularly James S.A. Corey a.k.a. Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck who won in the best science fiction category with Babylon’s Ashes, the latest novel in The Expanse series, and Stranger Things which won in the TV series category. George R.R. Martin also expresses his pleasure at the increased numbers of votes cast and hopes that the Dragon Awards will eventually become the People’s Choice Awards (an American pop culture award voted upon by the general public) of science fiction and fantasy.

Daniel Humphreys, whose novel A Place Outside the Wild was nominated in the best apocalyptic novel category and lost to Walkaway by Cory Doctorow, offers a gif-laden reaction to his Dragon loss.

At Adventures Fantastic, Keith West says that he did not vote for the Dragon Awards this year, because he felt he hadn’t read enough of the works on the ballot (fair point). He goes on to says that he considers the Dragon Awards, the David Gemmell Awards and the Shamus Awards the only awards he pays attention to, because they reflect “the view of the readers” (TM), whereas he considers some other awards (probably the Hugos, though he doesn’t name them directly) anti-recommendation lists. There’s nothing wrong with ignoring awards that rarely award works you like – I don’t pay much attention to the David Gemmell Legend Awards, for example, because the books they honour are not to my taste at all. However, I find it funny that he believes that the Dragon Awards and the Gemmell Awards reflect the true taste of the readers, whereas the Hugos apparently don’t. Ahem, Hugo voters and nominators are readers, usually very active and engaged readers. That doesn’t mean that those who vote for the Gemmell Awards or the Dragon Awards are not readers – they simply are readers with a very different taste. Readers are not a monolith.

Keith West is also incensed that several authors decided to withdraw from the Dragon Awards, which he considers a slap in the face of their fans. This is a view I’ve heard a few times, usually from the puppy camp (not saying that Keith West is one, just that he shares some views with them), and one I don’t get at all. There is no obligation to accept a nomination for an award, if you don’t want it for whatever reason. The Hugo Awards had plenty of withdrawals over the years, both publicly or privately before the ballot was announced, for all sorts of reasons. At least once, a finalists who withdrew (Black Gate in 2016) was someone I nominated. However, I didn’t consider this a slap in the face, because it was their right and their decision. There have also been authors who have asked their fans not to nominate them in a particular year – most recently Charles Stross asked his fans not to nominate The Laundry Files for best series. And whenever someone asked people not to nominate them, I respect that (though I wouldn’t have nominated The Laundry Files anyway, since I don’t like the series). Because there is no obligation to accept a nomination or an award, if you don’t want it. And indeed that’s why the Hugo Award administrators contact finalists before announcing the final ballot, to give them a chance to withdraw or also to confirm eligibility. The Dragon Awards should have done the same thing, contact the finalists beforehand. I hope they will do so next year to avoid a repeat of the withdrawal drama.

Now let’s venture into puppyland and see what they have to say:

Larry Correia, who won the Dragon Award in the fantasy category together with John Ringo, talks about the Dragon Awards in the context of a general report about Dragon Con. Apparently, he enjoyed himself thoroughly, though he cannot help but get in a swipe at other “stuffy cons” and “snooty awards”. Correia also seems to believe that the Dragon Awards represent every group in fandom (no, they don’t) and that anybody who criticises the Dragon Awards automatically also dismisses Dragon Con and the crowd of 70000 fans it draws. There are quite a few people criticising the Dragon Awards, mainly because there still is a lot to criticise about them, even though they have taken steps to improve. However, I have heard absolutely no one criticising Dragon Con itself, at least not in connection with the Dragon Awards. I have seen discussion of sexual harrassment and of an incident where two women cosplayers were injured by chairs thrown from a hotel balcony.

At the PulpRev website, which is apparently the hub of the Pulp Revolution movement, a rabid puppies offshoot, someone named Bradford Walker is very happy about the 2017 Dragon Awards and declares that the winners did their best to please their audience and that the Dragon Awards are a boost for “fun fiction” (a.k.a. books Bradford Walker enjoys) rather than what he calls “Pink Slime SF” (I guess that would be what I like to read and what I write, even though I actually write pulp style adventure).

Bradford Walker also shows up at the Superversive SF website to declare that the 2017 Dragon Awards are a win for the superversive, which is something of a stretch, since none of the authors associated with the Superversive SF site won anything. However, if you read the post, it becomes clear that what Walker really means is that at least the people he dislikes didn’t win either.

Jon Del Arroz, whose novel Star Realms: Rescue Run was nominated in the best military science fiction category, is totally happy about the 8000 votes cast for the Dragon Awards, even if he lost out to Richard Fox. Del Arroz also praises his fellow nominees in the military SF category, though he seems to have forgotten Amy J. Murphy (or maybe her book has too many girl cooties for him). Oh yes, and Tor.com and Locus are so mean, because they won’t report about the Dragon Awards. Which is wrong BTW, because Locus did report about the Dragon Award winners, even if Tor.com didn’t. Coincidentally, the Castalia House blog didn’t report about the Dragon Award winners either, at least not yet. And yes, I checked.

Richard Paolinelli, whose novel Escaping Infinity was nominated in the best science fiction category, does not mind losing to James S.A. Corey and believes that the 8000 votes cast for the Dragon Awards, more than for the Hugos or Nebulas, means that the Dragon Awards are the premier SFF awards. Paolinelli also writes a follow-up post in response to “another blogger’s screed”, though he doesn’t tell us which blogger, in which he elaborates why he thinks the Dragon Awards are so wonderful, namely because he feels that they are the true representation of the best in science fiction and fantasy. If the Dragon Awards eventually work as advertised – and this year was an encouraging sign in that direction – they may offer a representation of what is popular in the various categories. But popular does not equal best.

Paolinelli also dismisses all the criticisms that the Dragon Awards process is vulnerable to ballot stuffing with a fairly lame, “I’m sure they checked IP-adresses” (even though there is no evidence they have done so and at least one person has said she was able to cast three joke nominations from the different e-mail addresses), and also accuses Hugo voters of casting multiple votes, even though that’s very difficult to do with the Hugos, not to mention expensive.

Kevin Standalee has an interesting theory about why the various puppy factions seem to have no problem with the almost complete absence of voting controls in the Dragon Awards and why they keep accusing the Hugo Awards of being rigged in spite of plenty of evidence to the contrary. The reason is, so Standalee claims, because the puppy factions consist of the sort of people who believe that everything and everybody is corrupt anyway. And as long as their choice wins, they don’t care about the how.

Benjamin Cheah a.k.a. Cheah Kai Wai, whose novel No Gods, Only Daimons was nominated in the best alternate history category, doesn’t mind losing to Harry Turtledove, because Turtledove is a legend. He’s also not sad that none of his Dragon Awards recommendations actually won the award and then launches into the usual rant that the Dragon Awards are clearly superior to the Hugo Awards, because of the higher number of ballots cast, that the Social Justice Warriors are furious that John Scalzi did not win (I haven’t seen anybody upset that Scalzi did not win, not even Scalzi himself) and that the Dragon Awards are totally not sexist and racist, even though the winners are overwhelmingly white and male.

Brian Niemeier, whose novel The Secret Kings (sequel to last year not-a-horror novel Nethereal which won the Dragon Award in the horror category) was nominated in the best science fiction category, also jumps on the number of voters to claim that the Dragon Awards are clearly superior to the Hugos and the Nebulas. Niemeier is also very happy that John Scalzi did not win the Dragon Award for best science fiction novel (which Scalzi made pretty clear he did not want anyway), because Niemeier is still very confused about a photo of John Scalzi wearing blue lipstick. There’s also the usual rhetoric about SJWs, CHORFs and whatever who want to destroy science fiction, western civilization and mom and apple pie (okay, maybe not the last two).

I also honestly wonder just why some puppies are so hung up about John Scalzi that they seem to view him of all people as the representation of all that is wrong with SFF. I can understand why the works of Ann Leckie or N.K. Jemisin incense them, but Scalzi? A straight white guy who writes space opera that’s enjoyable enough, but also fairly nutty nuggetty, and whose political views would put him somewhere in the political centre in Europe (Scalzi reminds me of those CDU politicians who voted in favour of marriage equality). That’s your great enemy?

So far, the puppy narrative about the Dragon Awards seems to focus mainly on the number of votes cast (approx. 8000, a figure I have no reason to doubt), which was higher than the number of votes cast for the 2017 Hugo Awards (3319 valid final ballots). And since the number of votes cast for the Dragon Awards is much higher than the number of votes cast for the Hugo Awards, the Dragon Awards must therefore be superior.

There is only one problem with this narrative: There is no corelation between the prestige of an award and the number of people deciding who wins said award. The SFF genre award with the highest number of voters are not the Dragon Awards, but the Goodreads Choice Awards, which is open to every Goodreads member and has participation numbers in the six to seven figure range. Going by puppy logic, the Goodreads Choice Awards should therefore be the premier SFF awards. Which they obviously aren’t. Meanwhile, the most prestigious literary award in the world, the Nobel Prize for Literature, is decided by a committee consisting of four members and two associate members. So between four and six people (depending upon whether the associate members get a vote) decide who wins the most prestigious literary awards in the world. Other prestigious awards such as the Pulitzer Prize or the Man Booker Prize are also decided by fairly small juries. Because no matter what some people might think, there is no link between the prestige of an award and the number of people deciding over said award.

So let’s tackle the next puppy talking point, namely that the Dragon Awards represent the true tastes of fandom, whereas – that’s the implication – the Hugos and the Nebulas don’t. Well, for starters no single award can represent the tastes of all fandom, because fandom is pretty damn big and consists of lots of small subgroups with their own tastes, which may or may not overlap with those of other groups. That’s also why we have several awards with different focusses, simply because no one award can represent all of fandom. However, when the same work shows up among the finalists or even winners of several awards, it’s a pretty good indicator that this is a broadly popular work. But while there was some overlap among the Dragon finalists and the shortlists for other SFF awards, so far none of the 2017 Dragon Awards winners except for Stranger Things have shown up among the finalists and winners of other awards (part of which may be due to the odd eligiblity period). Make of that what you will.

So what part of fandom do the Dragon Awards represent? Based on this year’s results, it seems to be a part of fandom that goes for broadly popular and fairly middle of the road fiction, written by overwhelmingly male authors with brand-name recognition (but then, let’s not forget that there wasn’t much choice, since many categories were overrun by obscure niche candidates of various flavours). The Dragon Awards certainly don’t represent the puppies and their various offshoots, because while there were plenty of puppies and puppy-favoured authors on the shortlist, none of them won anything except for Larry Correia who has a broader fanbase that goes beyond puppy circles.

Nor are the 2017 Dragon Awards a win for conservative politics in SFF, since Cory Doctorow and the duo that makes up James S.A. Corey tend politically to the left. I have no idea what Victor LaValle’s political views are, but I’d be very surprised if he didn’t tend towards the left. The political views of Jim Butcher and Rick Riordan are not known. I have zero idea about Harry Turtledove’s political views. Richard Fox is a US military veteran according to his bio and veterans tend towards the conservative side of the political spectrum, but again I am not aware that he ever explicitly stated his political views. That leaves Correia and Ringo as the only outspoken conservatives.

Do the Dragon Awards accurately represent the tastes of Dragon Con attendants? The puppies seem to think so, but based on what I’ve heard about Dragon Con, I’d say that the Dragon Awards only represent a minority of Dragon Con attendants. Cause as I understand it, Dragon Con’s attendance skews younger, less male, less white and less straight than that of more traditional cons, including World Con (even though there were plenty of young people at World Con 75). But when I look at the Dragon Awards finalists and winners, those don’t really strike me as the choices young queer women of colour would make. The YA category is a good example. Sarah J. Maas is massively popular among young women and yet the Dragon Award in the YA category went to Rick Riordan, who is more of a middle grade author and appeals mainly to teenage boys. Furthermore, I also have trouble believing that the attendants of a media-focussed convention like Dragon Con would vote for two fairly unremarkable tie-in comics over the many excellent comics and graphic novels on the Dragon shortlist, including such fan favourites as Saga, Ms. Marvel and Monstress. Instead, the win of the two Harry Dresden tie-in comics strikes me as the result of people who don’t know a whole lot about comics, but really like Jim Butcher voting.

I’ve also heard (it’s somewhere in the comments to Camestros Felapton’s Dragon Awards post) that Dragon Con’s science fiction literature track skews older and more male than the con in general, plus Dragon Con is apparently a big gathering for Baen authors and their fans. And the 2017 Dragon Award results do strike me as fairly representative of what that group might vote for, broadly popular SFF by established white and male authors.

In fact, the heavily skewed gender ratio of the 2017 Dragon Awards, especially compared to the 2017 Hugo and Nebula Awards, is another point that often comes up in discussion of the Dragon Awards. A lot of puppy commentators seem to respond to an alleged claim that the Dragon Awards are sexist, because the winners are almost all men (except for Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins and one of the winning games, whose developer team includes Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian among others), by screaming that the Hugos and Nebulas are sexist, since pretty much all winners in 2017 were women. Now a lot of us did notice that the 2017 Dragon Awards were one huge sausage fest (it’s kind of hard to miss), but the only place where I’ve seen them called explicitly sexist is this Twitter thread. And even there the main point is that the Dragon Awards are out of touch with what is happening in the SFF genre right now, since some of the most highly regarded authors at the moment are women and writers of colour.

However, the puppies immediately jumped on these comments. Apparently the current narrative in puppyland is that mainstream SFF publishing is ignoring the poor widdle male authors, because some folks have got their knickers in a twist about “women only” issues of magazines that they donb’t read anyway. There’s even some math to prove their point. And let’s not even talk about all those female protagonists who aren’t even properly feminine. Honestly, if the puppies don’t want to be perceived as sexist, they’re doing an awfully bad job of it.

This brings us to the final puppy talking point, namely that those of us who criticise the Dragon Awards hate either the Awards or Dragon Con or both. Well, I can only speak for myself, but I don’t hate the Dragon Awards. And I certainly don’t hate Dragon Con – why should I? In fact, I want to see the Dragon Awards succeed, because they could fill a niche that other awards don’t cover. And in fact, pretty much every non-puppy post I have seen points out that the 2017 Dragon Awards have taken a big step towards becoming what they want to be, a popular SFF award. However, as we know from previous go-arounds, a lot of puppies tend to mistake criticism for hate.

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Some Comments on the 2017 Dragon Awards Winners

The Dragon Awards, a new “popular” SFF award handed out at Dragon Con in Atlanta, Georgia, have been plagued by controversy in their first two years. I blogged about some of it, though the vast majority of this year’s uproar happened, while I was enjoying myself at WorldCon 75 in Helsinki, so just read Andrew Liptak’s summary at The Verge.

Then, in the past week, the Dragon Awards plot thickened even further when a heretofore unknown group calling itself the Red Panda Fraction entered the fray, criticising the Awards and offering their own recommendation list. Camestros Felapton reports about the mysterious Red Panda Fraction here and also posts a response from one of the Red Pandas, wherein they explain who they are (left-leaning fans and Dragon Con regulars from the greater Atlanta area), what they want to do, how they arrived at their recommendation list, etc…

The Pandas’ recommendations actually overlap with my own Dragon Award votes in most categories and I agree with their criticism of how the Dragon Awards are run. However, in the space of two years the Dragon Awards have become a contest between competing parties (various overlapping Rabid Puppy affiliated groups, Inkshares, the Red Pandas) rather than individual fans nominating and voting according to their personal preferences, a fate the Hugo Awards have managed to avoid (with a few hick-ups, mostly notably 2015 and 2016) for more than sixty years. And with Rabid Puppies, Happy Frogs (Jon Del Arroz’ group) and the Red Panda Fraction all actively campaigning, the Dragon Awards are now beginning to look more like the Conference of Animals than an SFF award.

Just so you won’t get lost regarding which fraction is backing whom and who the various fractions are anyway, the tireless Camestros Felapton offers not just an overview of the 2017 Dragon Award finalists, noting which works are backed by which fraction, but also a map visualizing the various players in the Dragon Awards.

Tonight now, the winners of the 2017 Dragon Awards were announced at Dragon Con in Atlanta. But before we go there, let’s take a moment to look at the other SFF award whose winner was announced at Dragon Con, the Eugie Foster Memorial Award for short fiction. This year’s winner (highly deserved) is “The City Born Great” by N.K. Jemisin, which you can read here. “The City Born Great” was also a Hugo finalist this year. My Mom and I both ranked the story highly, because it really is a very good story (the concept behind which will apparently be expanded into a trilogy of novels). And indeed when I told my Mom today that “The City Born Great” won the Eugie Foster Memorial Award, she immediately said, “Oh yes, I remember that one. That was a lovely story.”

The Eugie Foster Memorial Award have no connection to the Dragon Awards beyond the fact that both awards are given out at Dragon Con and that both are in their second year. So far, the Eugie Foster Memorial Award has had a very good track record. By contrast, the Dragon Awards track record for their first year wasn’t so good. For their second year… well, let’s see:

The Dragon Awards website is still crap, so here is a list of the winners as well as a report about the ceremony from File 770. Camestros Felapton also offers an overview of the winners and some analysis. There are also some interesting discussions going on in the comments at both places.

More importantly, we finally have voting numbers according to which there were an impressive 8000 final ballots cast this year, supposedly twice as many as last year (though we never got the actual 2016 numbers and we don’t have any 2017 nomination figures either, let alone a breakdown). I’ve heard that Dragon Con started promoting the awards more in the past few weeks and it shows.

So let’s taken a look at the categories. Babylon’s Ashes, the latest Expanse novel by James S.A. Corey (a.k.a. Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) wins in the science fiction category. It’s an unsurprising and uncontroversial win, since both the novel series and the TV series based on the novels are highly popular. My own vote was for Becky Chambers BTW.

The winner in the best fantasy category is Monster Hunter Memoirs: Grunge by Larry Correia and John Ringo. One could see this as a win for the puppies, except that as Camestros Felapton notes, only Declan Finn backed Monster Hunter Memoirs: Grunge, while every other puppy-aligned fraction backed A Sea of Skulls by Vox Day. Besides, Correia and Ringo are popular authors and big fan followings, even if their work is not to my taste at all (To be honest, I’m not sure if I’ve ever read anything by John Ringo, but Larry Correia’s work is definitely not to my taste). Larry Correia also repeatedly asked his fans to vote for him (which is not against the rules for the Dragon Awards). So this win is far from unreasonable. My own vote was for Faith Hunter BTW. Coincidentally, I find it interesting that the majority of finalists in the fantasy category are urban rather than epic fantasy.

The winner of the best YA/middle grade novel is The Hammer of Thor by Rick Riordan. Again, it’s a popular choice by a popular author. Though personally, I expected that A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas would win in this category, because Maas is hugely popular and writes YA, whereas Rick Riordan, while popular, is more of a middle grade author. I’d have expected the electorate to skew more towards the higher end of the YA spectrum. My own vote was for Sarah J. Maas BTW.

On to best military science fiction or fantasy: The winner is Iron Dragoons by Richard Fox. I have to confess that this was the first winner I had to look up, but then military SF is its current form is not really my genre. Turns out Richard Fox is a popular indie science fiction author (and come to think of it, I have come across his name in that context) and judging by the blurb, Iron Dragoons is the sort of Starship Troopers inspired military SF novel that is popular with the Amazon military SF crowd. I’m somewhat surprised that Richard Fox beat popular Baen authors Charles Gannon and Eric Flint, but again his win is neither unreasonable nor puppy-backed. My own vote was for Amy J. Murphy BTW.

Fallout: The Hot War by Harry Turtledove wins in the alternate history category. This novel was backed – sort of – by Declan Finn who couldn’t decide between Harry Turtledove, Eric Flint and Lou Antonelli, but I’m pretty sure he had little to do with the fact that it won. After all, Harry Turtledove’s name is pretty much synonymous with the alternate history subgenre by now, so he is a logical winner, even though I voted for Beth Cato.

Walkaway by Cory Doctorow is the winner in the best apocalyptic novel category. Now Cory Doctorow is a writer whose fiction does nothing for me (though I like his non-fiction), but he is also very popular, probably the most popular author in this category. My own vote was for N.K. Jemisin and then, after she withdrew, for Omar El Akkad.

The Dragon Award for best horror novel, finally, goes to Victor LaValle for The Changeling. Coincidentally, this was also my choice. Besides, we finally have a genuine horror novel winning in the horror category rather than a space opera with horror elements like last year.

Both comic categories go to the Harry Dresden comics/graphic novels by Jim Butcher and different artists. Now I have to admit that these wins surprise me a little, since The Dresden Files is primarily a novel series with the comics more of an adaptation. Besides, there were some very fine and popular comics and graphic novels nominated and Dragon Con is more media and comics oriented than e.g. WorldCon. However, The Dresden Files is a masively popular series with a huge fan following, so this is not an unreasonable win. The Dresden Files graphic novel was backed by Jon Del Arroz’s Happy Frogs, but I doubt they had much of an influence. My own votes were for Saga and Genius Girl respectively.

Stranger Things wins in the TV category and Wonder Woman in the film category. Again, both are extremely popular choices, even though Stranger Things relies a bit too much on 1980s nostalgia for my taste and while there was a lot to love about Wonder Woman and Gal Gadot is fabulous in the role, the anachronistic World War I setting and some of the choices connected with it (e.g. German bad guys once again or choosing a real historical figure like Erich Ludendorff and killing him off 20 years before he died) left a bad taste in my mouth. My own votes were for Lucifer and Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 respectively.

I’m not gamer, so I don’t have very much to say about the four gaming categories. But Magic the Gathering and Legend of Zelda are both highly popular franchises and Pokemon Go! is a genuine phenomenon, so none of those wins is unexpected. I have never heard of Betrayal at House on the Hill: Widow’s Walk, the winner in the boardgame category, but that doesn’t mean anything, since I haven’t played a boardgame in ages.

So for their second year, the Dragon Awards managed to do exactly what they set out to do, reward popular works and authors with big fan followings. There are still points to criticise, of course, such as the easily manipulated nomination and voting system or the flat out odd subgenre choices. I also can’t help but notice that the winners are one massive sausage fest with Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins the only woman among a sea of men. At least they’re not all white – I spot at least three writers of colour among the winners. However, the massive sausage fest that is the 2017 Dragon Award does match what we see in some other SFF popular vote awards such as the David Gemmell Legend Awards. It’s still a sad truth that books (and other creative works) by men get more promotion than books by women, so popular vote awards with a large voter base often default to male winners and nominees, because the average fan is more likely to be familiar with them.

ETA: Annalee Flower Horne also noticed the overwhelming whiteness and maleness of the 2017 Dragon Awards and launched into a rant on Twitter to point out that the Dragon Awards do not accurately represent the state of the SFF field in 2017. I agree with her that today’s SFF is a lot more diverse than the 2017 Dragon Awards winners would let you believe (though two of the winning authors self-identify as Hispanic, so there are three winners of colour instead of one). Besides, there were popular and high profile female authors among the 2017 Dragon Award finalists such as Becky Chambers and Sarah J. Maas and yet none of them managed to win. However, does anybody honestly look solely to the Dragon Awards of all things as a measure of state of the SFF field in 2017? Well, I suspect puppies and their offshoots might, but I hope everybody else is better informed.

Will the Dragon Awards become a valuable addition to the SFF Awards spectrum? Time will tell, though things are looking better than they did last year. Will they eventually supplant the Hugos or Nebulas? No they won’t, if only because the Hugos and Nebulas tend to award more innovative works, which expand the scope of the genre and push it forward, whereas the Dragon Awards tend towards the tried and true (and currently male and white). But that’s what they’re trying to do and in that respect, they succeeded. Okay, so the Dragon winners and nominees are less to my taste than the Hugo or Nebula winners and nominees of the past few years, but that’s okay. Not every award needs to mirror my tastes and in fact, many of them don’t.

And more importantly, the 2017 Dragon Awards have managed to rise above their vulnerability to small interest groups (the various puppy offshoots, but also the Inkshares crowd), probably due to the vastly increased voter base. To put it more succinctly, the puppies resoundingly lost even the award they believed was theirs.

So far, there is only resounding silence from the puppy camp except for this surprisingly gracious (by his standards) post by Vox Day. His commenters are their usual unpleasant selves, rant about the fact that Rick Riordan has LGBT characters in his books now and also claim that this seals the Hugos’ demise, because… well, it doesn’t really make any sense to me, either, but apparently it has to do with the bigger voter base.

Meanwhile, John Scalzi has the following message for the various puppy fractions:

Note to the authors who tried to win an award by positing it as a culture war with me on the other side: You sure wasted your time, dudes.

— John Scalzi (@scalzi) September 3, 2017

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