Christopher L. Bennett's Blog, page 11

Another bout of phone problems

About a year and a half ago, I blogged about a time when I went for nearly a week without landline phone or internet service, since there are just too few technicians still around who are trained to deal with my apartment building’s old copper wiring instead of fiber optics. More recently, last September, I had another phone outage that turned out to be due to the old, really long phone cord I was using, or perhaps the old surge protector I had the line going through — something I forgot I’d done until after the technician replaced it with a new, heavier cord. (The phone jack is so far from my desk that I need a really long cord going around the walls, and I couldn’t get the old cord out from behind the bookcase where it was lodged, so we just left it there and put in the new one, and I cut off the accessible ends of it later.)

The latest bout of phone problems started a week and a half ago, when I discovered the phone line had gone dead overnight. This time, luckily, the internet connection still worked, though the router’s wi-fi was out and I could only connect through the ethernet cable. (This turned out to be a glitch I could fix by unplugging and rebooting the modem, though it took me a couple of days to figure that out, since I didn’t want to risk losing the connection I had.) Thus, I wasn’t too worried when the repair appointment got delayed.

Finally, a representative called and explained that they were having trouble scheduling a copper technician, and she suggested sending a fiber technician to hook me up to the fiber that’s now reached our street. She explained that this would give me faster, more stable service without all these outages. However, it was up to the building manager to decide whether to okay that, and apparently they had trouble reaching him or negotiating for the switchover. All I could do was wait to see whether they either resolved that and sent a fiber tech, or got around to sending a copper tech.

Days passed, and the internet started to act up. First, it went out for less than a minute, it seemed. Over the next few days, it went out at least twice, about 20-25 minutes each time; rebooting the modem didn’t help, but it came back on its own eventually. I started to wonder if this could be like the switching-station mixup last time — maybe somebody was switching something off and on that affected my connection. I called back the direct line of the representative to let her know about the new problem, but never heard back.

The resolution to all this was anticlimactic and confusing. I got a call this afternoon, and it was an automated message telling me the problem had been resolved — after eleven days of no landline phone service. At first, there was still no dial tone, but the recording suggested unplugging the unit and plugging it back in — which was probably in reference to the router, but I tried it with the phone cord anyway. I couldn’t get it out of the socket, but after I jiggled it around some, I heard the jarring sound you get when the phone’s been off the hook too long, and then after a bit, I got a dial tone again.

So, okay, it was working, but how? Why? What had been the problem? The automated message didn’t tell me. I decided to go outside and look around for a phone company truck, and I found one in the parking lot. Moments later, I saw the technician come out of a different building in the complex. I asked him about it, and it turned out he’d been working on someone else’s phone and knew nothing about my problem. All he could suggest was that maybe he jiggled a wire that somehow fixed my issue, but that seems unlikely given that he was in another building altogether. He also didn’t know anything about the fiber switchover.

So now my phone is working again, but I have no idea what was done to fix it or if I’m connected to the fiber-optic lines now. The internet does seem to be moderately faster now; at least a couple of sites that are usually slow to load for me (including Facebook) are now loading with notably less delay, but HBO Max is still loading as slowly as usual. So I can’t be sure what the cause of the speed improvement is. I mean, if they had switched the building to fiber, wouldn’t the tech have known about it? He was right here. It’s very confusing.

I guess one way to know is to wait for the power to go out in a storm or something. Fiber optics don’t carry power for phones the way copper wires do, so landlines won’t work during outages anymore, unless you buy a backup battery which costs a hundred bucks (I declined the offer). But I’m in no hurry for the power to go out. I guess I’ll just have to live with not knowing, and hope things stay stable.

A closer look at the “Aleyara’s Descent” cover!

I just went looking online to see if there were any reviews out yet for “Aleyara’s Descent” in the May/June 2023 Analog Science Fiction and Fact, and while it’s still too early for that, it seems, I found something even better. Eldar Zakirov, the cover artist for the issue, posted the original artwork on his site:

https://ldarro.artstation.com/projects/yDAxoQ

Looking at the cover art blown up, it’s much more impressionistic than I thought it would be (I hope it’s okay to link directly to the image):

“Aleyara’s Descent” cover illustration by Eldar Zakirov

The page also includes a couple of concept sketches, and the one they didn’t go with is fascinating.

“Aleyara’s Descent” concept sketches by Eldar Zakirov

I didn’t intend the Biauru to have an actual tail — just a short pseudo-“tail” where their dorsal crests converge in a boat-prow shape at the base of the spine — but otherwise it’s a really neat interpretation of a Biauru’s brachiation and how their hands and feet grip branches, which is pretty close to what I envisioned. (See https://christopherlbennett.wordpress.com/aliens-of-the-arachne-troubleshooter-universe/#Biauru.) I almost wish they’d gone with this one instead, minus the tail, but I like that the final cover shows the whole quest party.

I’m impressed that Zakirov intuited my intent for the Biauru to have lean, lanky bodies, something I don’t think I really specified in the novelette, since it’s told entirely from Aleyara’s perspective. Maybe it just stood to reason from how I described them as agile, fast brachiators.

Anyway, I’m really glad I found Zakirov’s page, since I’ve been wanting to see a higher-resolution, textless version of this fantastic cover. And now you can all see it too!

“Aleyara”‘s arrival!

I just updated my bibliography page with “Aleyara’s Descent,” Star Trek Adventures: Lurkers, and Chapter 2 of Guardian Angel, and I found myself hoping my contributor copies of the new Analog would arrive soon so I could confirm that the “Aleyara” page numbers I got from the galley PDFs were accurate to the final issue. Just afterward, I went out to check my mail, and lo and behold, there was Analog!

It’s great to have the issue in my hands at last, and the cover art looks great in person. There’s even a bit more of it that wraps around onto the spine. And yes, the page numbers were accurate. I look forward to reading the rest of the issue.

GUARDIAN ANGEL Chapter 2 now on Patreon!

The second chapter of my Troubleshooter serial Guardian Angel, “The Innocent Assassin,” is now up on my Patreon’s Original Fiction tier, along with the usual annotations page on the Behind the Scenes tier.

GUARDIAN ANGEL Chapter 2: “The Innocent Assassin”

GUARDIAN ANGEL Chapter 2 Annotations

This month, we meet Troubleshooter Tenshi’s ship/sidekick and reveal Kari’s wrenching origin story.

“Aleyara’s Descent” now on sale!

As promised last week, the May/June issue of Analog Science Fiction & Fact featuring my epic new novelette “Aleyara’s Descent” is now on sale!

Here’s the description from their site: “When an encounter with a ghost suggests to young Aleyara that there may be a world beyond the one told of in her species’ stories about their arboreal home, she and a band of friends set out to discover the truth, but their biggest challenge may yet be waiting for them even if they can make it home . . .”

They’ve included a hefty free excerpt of the novelette — the first nine scenes, in fact — as an enticement, so you can get a pretty good sense of it here:

Read an extended excerpt of “Aleyara’s Descent”

You can order print or digital subscriptions here:

Order Now

As usual, I’ve put up some supplementary material on my site. The main discussion page is here, including a link to the spoiler annotations. I’ve also added description and sketches of the Biauru to my “Aliens of the Arachne-Troubleshooter Universe” page.

I’m really thrilled that this story is finally out there! I hope my readers like the Biauru as much as I do.

(Edit) The magazine’s blog, The Astounding Analog Companion, has posted a Q&A interview I did about the story:

https://theastoundinganalogcompanion.com/2023/04/20/qa-with-christopher-l-bennett-3/

Cover reveal for “Aleyara’s Descent” in the new ANALOG!

Analog Science Fiction and Fact has just posted the cover for the May/June 2023 issue releasing next week, featuring my epic new tale “Aleyara’s Descent”!

To quote their Facebook page, “An excellent novelette from Christopher L Bennett leads the issue with incredible world-building.”

This is the first time in my 25 years as a contributor that I’ve gotten a cover painting devoted to my story. It’s a great honor. (At least I think it’s the first time. I got the cover-story byline for “Hubpoint of No Return” in the May/June 2018 issue, but I think the cover was generic space art, though it could be loosely interpreted as a representation of the space station from the story.)

I have my own artwork for the featured aliens, the Biauru, which I’ll be posting soon. But cover artist Eldar Zakirov, who worked solely from my descriptions in the text, came impressively close to what I had in mind. I was actually kind of concerned about that, but it turned out well. I can even recognize which scene in the story it’s depicting.

I’m really excited that “Aleyara’s Descent” is finally seeing print. It’s one of my favorite things I’ve ever written, a grand adventure in the early history of an alien planet — a hard science fiction tale with the feel of epic fantasy. The issue goes on sale starting next week, and you can subscribe here:

Analog Science Fiction & Fact Subscription

STAR TREK ADVENTURES goes to the LOWER DECKS!

Big news today from the Star Trek Adventures role-playing game! Modiphius has gotten the rights to add Star Trek: Lower Decks to its gaming universe, as revealed today on StarTrek.com:

https://www.startrek.com/news/star-trek-adventures-brings-the-action-to-the-lower-decks

A hardcover campaign guide for creating Lower Decks-style campaigns will be out in the summer, but there’s some digital content releasing today, including a Season 1 character pack containing statistics for a range of LD characters and the U.S.S. Cerritos. And I had the privilege of writing the first Lower Decks-style standalone campaign, Lurkers, which releases today. Here’s the description:

Star Trek Adventures: Lurkers

“Are you pretending to do a “Captains Log?”

A routine maintenance overhaul on a subspace relay station identifies a much bigger problem on a nearby planet. Starfleet data leaking from the relay station is being used as entertainment by a pre-warp civilization and only junior officers can fix a problem that (yet again!) endangers the Prime Directive.

Starfleet has given your crew instructions to perform a long-overdue maintenance overhaul on Subspace Relay Station 2103. The situation becomes complicated (of course it does) when the maintenance team discovers that a malfunction has caused the transmission of classified signals that could have been intercepted by the cultures of a nearby planet.

Shawan II is home to a pre-warp humanoid civilization at a late 20th-century Earth level that appears to have made a pop-culture phenomenon out of the potentially classified Starfleet data (great idea, wish I’d thought of it). The crew of your ship must ensure that the leaked data doesn’t compromise Starfleet in any way. Someone’s going to have to go down to the planet but the senior crew could be recognised by fans of the Starfleet transmissions. So it falls to some intrepid and ingenious ensigns to sneak onto the planet, engage with fans and critics at a convention, and sort this mess out (what could possibly go wrong??).

Although this is a standalone adventure, a one-page mission brief provides inspiration for continuing the mission.

This 21-page PDF adventure for the Star Trek Adventures roleplaying game is written by Christopher L. Bennett, and is set in the Lower Decks era with the player characters being the junior officers of a Starfleet vessel. This adventure also contains advice on adaptation for use in campaigns based in other Star Trek eras and/or senior members of the crew.

This product requires a Star Trek Adventures core rulebook to use. This is a PDF product; upon purchase you will be emailed a link to access it. There is no print version of this product. You will receive a standard version of the PDF with dark text on light background.

TM & © 2023 CBS Studios Inc. © 2023 Paramount Pictures Corp. STAR TREK and related marks and logos are trademarks of CBS Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved.

As usual, I was asked to write a blog column discussing my ideas and process behind the game, which you can read here:

https://www.modiphius.net/blogs/news/lurkers

Lurkers is available as a downloadable PDF at:

Modiphius (US)Modiphius (UK)DriveThruRPG

Watch this space for more STA news, since I have a couple of other standalone campaigns in the works, though it’ll probably be a while before they’re released.

“Though Worlds Divide Us” now up on AMAZING STORIES’ main page

As promised, “Though Worlds Divide Us,” my flash fiction debut story in Amazing Stories, which premiered on the magazine’s Patreon site last week, is now available for free on the main Amazing Stories site:

Though Worlds Divide Us by Christopher L. Bennett – FREE STORY

The link includes both the print version of the story and an audio version read by a text-to-speech program (which mispronounces the main character’s Yoruba surname, saying “ah-yo-deal” instead of “ah-yo-deh-leh”).

I should have some story notes up soon on my Original Short Fiction page, though there isn’t enough material in this very short story to warrant a separate spoiler annotation page.

I should mention that this week’s Amazing Stories Patreon story, entitled “The Age of Existential Machines,” was incorrectly credited to me when it was published at 4 AM this morning. Fortunately I’m an early riser these days, so I was able to alert the editor less than two hours afterward, and hopefully the correct author will be credited as soon as possible. EDIT: This is fixed now.

Announcing “Though Worlds Divide Us,” my AMAZING STORIES debut!

This is a busy month for me. I’ve just released the first chapter of my 5-part Guardian Angel serial on my Patreon site, and my newest and longest Analog contribution, “Aleyara’s Descent,” should be out sometime in April, as soon as the May/June issue is released. But I’ve got one more story coming out in between.

“Though Worlds Divide Us” is my first sale to Amazing Stories, debuting today, April 3, on the Amazing Stories Patreon site at https://www.patreon.com/amazingstoriesmag, accessible to subscribers at the $1 level and above. (Direct link: https://www.patreon.com/posts/though-worlds-us-80497954) The story will become available for free on their main website at https://amazingstories.com/ from April 10 onward.

This is my second story in the “Braneworlds” continuity begun in my self-published Patreon story “What Slender Threads,” involving interdimensional travel among parallel worlds that are not quite alternate Earths, inhabited by beings that are not quite humans. “Worlds” is a tight character-driven story set generations later, focusing on a proud Mars colonist who isn’t happy about the impact of easy multiverse travel.

Amazing Stories is a magazine that’s had various forms under various owners for nearly a century, making it the oldest science fiction magazine title, though its current, mostly online incarnation has only existed since 2012. I’ve made various attempts over the years to sell to one incarnation of Amazing or another, and I finally made it with this story. This is also my first “flash fiction” sale, not quite 1500 words, though my self-published story “Safe Hex” is short enough to qualify as “flash.”

It’s amusing that my shortest and longest short-fiction sales are coming out in the same month. Not only that, but “Aleyara” has had the longest interval from writing to publication for any of my non-Patreon fiction (26 years), while “Worlds” surely has the shortest (a little over 3 months). Anyway, I’m just glad to have new short fiction coming out somewhere other than my personal Patreon again. It’s been too long.

Announcing GUARDIAN ANGEL, a new Troubleshooter serial on Patreon!

It’s finally time to debut that new Troubleshooter content I promised a while back for my Patreon Original Fiction tier! It took longer than expected, but I’m trying something new here, and I wanted to put extra care into it.

Starting today, I’m publishing a 5-part serial, Guardian Angel, focusing on Only Superhuman supporting character Koyama Hikari/Troubleshooter Tenshi. In hopes of attracting new readers, I’m offering Chapter 1 to all Patreon subscribers at the $1 level and above, while the remaining four monthly installments will be at the usual $10 Original Fiction level. As usual, the story comes with annotations at the $12 Behind the Scenes tier. Here are the links:

GUARDIAN ANGEL Chapter 1: “The Angel and the Panther” 

GUARDIAN ANGEL Chapter 1 annotations 

Guardian Angel is actually the self-contained B plot of a planned second Troubleshooter novel (still untitled), but since I’d run out of original material to post on Patreon, I decided to write and publish it as a standalone serial, thereby getting half the novel out of the way while keeping my Patreon alive a while longer. The story picks up a lingering thread from Only Superhuman, but everything the reader needs to know is explained within the serial.

Kari/Tenshi is a character I’ve always been fond of and wanted to do more with, and I felt the tragic backstory I gave her in Only Superhuman was rich with potential. However, now that I’m much more familiar with Japanese culture from my years of watching tokusatsu and other Japanese TV/film, I find that my portrayal of Kari in OS feels a bit naive in retrospect, based on somewhat cliched archetypes (a Japanese heroine who’s an expert martial artist from a Yakuza background) and some inaccurate assumptions. So I wrote Guardian Angel to flesh out Kari and her cultural heritage with (hopefully) more dimension, depth, and authenticity.  I even tried to capture Japanese phrasings and idioms as best I could in the scenes where characters speak or think in Japanese, “translated” into English for the readers’ benefit. Thanks to Yumiko Bendlin for consulting on Japanese language and cultural elements, and thanks to Keith R.A. DeCandido and Yoshiko Lane for getting me in touch with her.

The serial is also an opportunity to pay homage to Japanese superhero fiction, much as I’ve done in my Tangent Knights audio novel series. Tangent Knights was an attempt to do for tokusatsu superheroes what Only Superhuman had done for American superhero fiction, to homage it and justify it within a scientifically plausible setting (although TK is for a young adult audience and above, while the Troubleshooter series is for mature readers). It seemed natural enough to use Tenshi as a vehicle for bringing the same kind of homage into the Troubleshooter universe.

My hope is that this serial will generate enough interest to bring in more subscribers for my Patreon. The more readers I gain, the more motivated I’ll be to write more content in the future. So please consider giving this first chapter a try by signing on at the $1 level or above.