Massimo Marino's Blog: The Ramblings and the Rumblings, page 10

The Technology of Trailokya ~ By K. Williams

Technological advances usually follow a need based origin. Rarely is anything created simply because it can be. In the hit television show Star Trek, we see this theory carried out. The tech used on the ships and in the lives of the character all have purpose. So, creating a world where sci-fi roots are overshadowed by seemingly fantastical themes can be problematic. However, cross-overs do and should happen between fantasy and science fiction. Where would science be without the minds that fantasized a better way of doing something?

In the text of the first installment of the Trailokya Trilogy (The Shadow Soul), nano-tech and Tesla type free energy is installed among characters that have normally found their home inside of texts that are today dismissed as the antithesis of scientific research. I hypothesize that theology, mysticism and myth were the creation of archaic men and women struggling to explain the natural world and order of things. Was there a literal Zeus? It’s possible that a king by this name existed centuries before any written record was made, and that his stories, cleverly embellished, were tools of socio-political use, as well as philosophical and scientific. Without the basis of curiosity, and these preliminary ideas, humanity might have stalled out along the progress line.

Anyway, that is a discussion for a different arena.

The tech of The Shadow Soul is there to ground the fantastical characters into a plausible reality. It serves more as a backdrop, happenstance, than the focus of the narrative. The tools used allow them to cross multiple dimensions, carry heavy loads of armor unhindered, and it powers their weaponry. My choice not to delve too deeply into the inner workings of the portal system (worm holes?) and nano-tech armor and weapons, was that it would take a long time to explain—perhaps many texts worth of explanation, on a technology that we do not, as yet, have access to.

In the main plain of existence in the book, Zion, everything is powered by free flowing energy of the kind that Tesla dreamed. His quotations at the start of each book are thus rightly placed. The man had some of the most amazing ideas yet to be seen. Were they plausible? You can build your own spirit radio at home and a number of other inventions he left humanity with, and literally find out for yourself. What I was more concerned with was his theory of free energy. I didn’t discuss how it was implemented, I just used it. Aside from bogging down the narrative with things that can be googled, the theories become a forgone conclusion in Zion.

Portals and way-gates are activated by the use of the free energy. A character raises their hand and suddenly a dial of some kind appears in this lurid blue light—they’re called seals; the Samsaran (this is where we live) one resembles an astrological chart. They punch in the coordinates and off they go. Travel in this manner is limited to certain races, so the tech must be access coded. Another form of travel, outside the conventions we understand on our planet, is sliding or blinking. Sliding would be like standing still on a skateboard or surfboard as the world seemingly flies past until you reach your destination. It can be a head rush! That takes a lot of energy to accomplish that kind of displacement. Blinking is much faster—almost like the transporter of Star Trek but without the odd magical sound and light show. Atoms blink regularly when observed by physicists. One moment it is in the north east quadrant of the examining space, and then suddenly it’s moved untraceably to another section. Why couldn’t an entire grouping of atoms that make up a person do the same? How could that be accomplished. I wish I knew, me and my subsequent generations would be wealthy in perpetuity.

The nano-tech armor and weapons are dealt with in the same manner. The duta, a race of beings that humans have come to call Angels and incorporated into theology and myth, wear badges decorated according to the different orders or positions they hold in society. They’re very organized, to the point of having a bureaucracy that can manage the zillions of souls that are sent into the Samsaran Universe without the bat of an eye. True, some burn down, as they call it; fail in their ascension. This badge is called a penannular. Once activated, it produces armor and some limited weaponry. Some duta have armories to augment what the badge can hold. The activation changes the appearance of the penannular and that is because what it is made of has created those items the duta would then be wearing/using. How is that even possible? It’s such a small space. Well physics tells us that the space items take up are mostly empty space. That’s an amazing thought when you pick up a hammer and it feels so heavy and solid in your hands. But that’s how. The spaces are compressed to tuck the armor away, and expanded to put it on.

The most unique bit of technology of which I made use, and this is in my opinion, is the Bio Interface Apparatus, or Skin Suit. Our human bodies, or alien because they wear them too, are suits, like space suits. We’re inserted into one being built by the female apparatus, given half its directions from a male apparatus, and then it is slowly grown in size as we learn and expand to adulthood. The human body is a fascinating machine, most biologists will agree. Bodies are complex machines—so making them out to be tech felt quite natural. Bio tech is a burgeoning field currently, so imagine the future…

In the end, Zion is a world of high advancements, a place you’d imagine Angels living—without illness or the need to literally take in nutrients (they’re fed by the light), unless they’ve expended a great deal of energy accomplishing some task and need to replace it quickly. The necessities of everyday life are met. A discordant Utopia at best.

Synopsis:

The Shadow Soul is the first part of The Trailokya Trilogy, a fantasy series that follows the rise and fall of fabled races and souls at the junction of three worlds: Zion, Earth and Jahannam.

K. Williams weaves a tale that will leave you questioning long held convictions about the human legends of Heaven and Hell. Are you ready to enter the gates of Zion and learn the truth?

Captain Maiel is a duta warrior of Zion, a race of giant, winged guardians and chroniclers of the lesser souls. Maiel’s assurances are shaken when she nearly loses a young human girl to the dark forces of Jahannam, the prison realm where the lowest beings reside. To avoid answering to the leaders of her world, Maiel seeks refuge on Earth, but she is pursued by a baron of Jahannam intent on destroying her. Can she be saved before time runs out? Or will she be sacrificed to secure the borders of Zion and to hide the lie her journey uncovers?

With each step further into darkness, long held secrets are revealed and shadows rise from the past to challenge absolutes.

Read and excerpt on Wattpad.

Born in Saratoga Springs, New York, K.Williams embarked on a now twenty year career in writing. After a childhood, which consisted of voracious reading and hours of film watching, it was a natural progression to study and produce art.

K attended Morrisville State College, majoring in the Biological Sciences, and then continued with English and Historical studies at the University at Albany, home of the New York State Writer’s Institute, gaining her Bachelor’s Degree. While attending UA, K interned with the 13th Moon Feminist Literary Magazine, bridging her interests in social movements and art. Topics of K’s writing include the environment, animal welfare, gender limitations, racial disparities, and the trauma of war.

Published novels by K include the Civil War drama Blue Honor, the Second World War spy thriller OP-DEC:Operation Deceit, and the controversial science fiction/fantasy series The Trailokya Trilogy. In addition to writing novels, K enjoy’s the art of screenwriting and has worked on the screen spec 8 Days in Ireland, and the adaptations of her current novels. Currently, K has completed the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies program for Film Studies and Screenwriting at Empire State College (SUNY), and is the 2013-2014 recipient of the Foner Fellowship in Arts and Social Justice. In 2015, K. Williams became an official member of International Thriller Writers.

K continues to write on this blog weekly, producing commentary Mondays and Fridays on hot topics with some fun diversions for your work week. Whether it’s cooking, learning a foreign language, history or dogs, you’ll find something to enjoy and keep coming back for.  Always a promoter of other artists, K uses Guest Blog Wednesdays to showcase artists from around the web and bring you interesting readings to expand your horizons. A sequel to her second novel, OP-DEC, is in the research phase, while the screen adaptation is being considered for production by film companies.

A devoted dog mom to Miss Sadie Sue Shagbottom, K is also a visual artist, producing the ZoDuck Cartoon, painting and sketching–digitally or traditionally, as well as an accomplished Photographer.

The post The Technology of Trailokya ~ By K. Williams appeared first on § Author Massimo Marino.

The Technology of Trailokay ~ By K. Williams

Technological advances usually follow a need based origin. Rarely is anything created simply because it can be. In the hit television show Star Trek, we see this theory carried out. The tech used on the ships and in the lives of the character all have purpose. So, creating a world where sci-fi roots are overshadowed by seemingly fantastical themes can be problematic. However, cross-overs do and should happen between fantasy and science fiction. Where would science be without the minds that fantasized a better way of doing something?

In the text of the first installment of the Trailokya Trilogy (The Shadow Soul), nano-tech and Tesla type free energy is installed among characters that have normally found their home inside of texts that are today dismissed as the antithesis of scientific research. I hypothesize that theology, mysticism and myth were the creation of archaic men and women struggling to explain the natural world and order of things. Was there a literal Zeus? It’s possible that a king by this name existed centuries before any written record was made, and that his stories, cleverly embellished, were tools of socio-political use, as well as philosophical and scientific. Without the basis of curiosity, and these preliminary ideas, humanity might have stalled out along the progress line.

Anyway, that is a discussion for a different arena.

The tech of The Shadow Soul is there to ground the fantastical characters into a plausible reality. It serves more as a backdrop, happenstance, than the focus of the narrative. The tools used allow them to cross multiple dimensions, carry heavy loads of armor unhindered, and it powers their weaponry. My choice not to delve too deeply into the inner workings of the portal system (worm holes?) and nano-tech armor and weapons, was that it would take a long time to explain—perhaps many texts worth of explanation, on a technology that we do not, as yet, have access to.

In the main plain of existence in the book, Zion, everything is powered by free flowing energy of the kind that Tesla dreamed. His quotations at the start of each book are thus rightly placed. The man had some of the most amazing ideas yet to be seen. Were they plausible? You can build your own spirit radio at home and a number of other inventions he left humanity with, and literally find out for yourself. What I was more concerned with was his theory of free energy. I didn’t discuss how it was implemented, I just used it. Aside from bogging down the narrative with things that can be googled, the theories become a forgone conclusion in Zion.

Portals and way-gates are activated by the use of the free energy. A character raises their hand and suddenly a dial of some kind appears in this lurid blue light—they’re called seals; the Samsaran (this is where we live) one resembles an astrological chart. They punch in the coordinates and off they go. Travel in this manner is limited to certain races, so the tech must be access coded. Another form of travel, outside the conventions we understand on our planet, is sliding or blinking. Sliding would be like standing still on a skateboard or surfboard as the world seemingly flies past until you reach your destination. It can be a head rush! That takes a lot of energy to accomplish that kind of displacement. Blinking is much faster—almost like the transporter of Star Trek but without the odd magical sound and light show. Atoms blink regularly when observed by physicists. One moment it is in the north east quadrant of the examining space, and then suddenly it’s moved untraceably to another section. Why couldn’t an entire grouping of atoms that make up a person do the same? How could that be accomplished. I wish I knew, me and my subsequent generations would be wealthy in perpetuity.

The nano-tech armor and weapons are dealt with in the same manner. The duta, a race of beings that humans have come to call Angels and incorporated into theology and myth, wear badges decorated according to the different orders or positions they hold in society. They’re very organized, to the point of having a bureaucracy that can manage the zillions of souls that are sent into the Samsaran Universe without the bat of an eye. True, some burn down, as they call it; fail in their ascension. This badge is called a penannular. Once activated, it produces armor and some limited weaponry. Some duta have armories to augment what the badge can hold. The activation changes the appearance of the penannular and that is because what it is made of has created those items the duta would then be wearing/using. How is that even possible? It’s such a small space. Well physics tells us that the space items take up are mostly empty space. That’s an amazing thought when you pick up a hammer and it feels so heavy and solid in your hands. But that’s how. The spaces are compressed to tuck the armor away, and expanded to put it on.

The most unique bit of technology of which I made use, and this is in my opinion, is the Bio Interface Apparatus, or Skin Suit. Our human bodies, or alien because they wear them too, are suits, like space suits. We’re inserted into one being built by the female apparatus, given half its directions from a male apparatus, and then it is slowly grown in size as we learn and expand to adulthood. The human body is a fascinating machine, most biologists will agree. Bodies are complex machines—so making them out to be tech felt quite natural. Bio tech is a burgeoning field currently, so imagine the future…

In the end, Zion is a world of high advancements, a place you’d imagine Angels living—without illness or the need to literally take in nutrients (they’re fed by the light), unless they’ve expended a great deal of energy accomplishing some task and need to replace it quickly. The necessities of everyday life are met. A discordant Utopia at best.

Synopsis:

The Shadow Soul is the first part of The Trailokya Trilogy, a fantasy series that follows the rise and fall of fabled races and souls at the junction of three worlds: Zion, Earth and Jahannam.

K. Williams weaves a tale that will leave you questioning long held convictions about the human legends of Heaven and Hell. Are you ready to enter the gates of Zion and learn the truth?

Captain Maiel is a duta warrior of Zion, a race of giant, winged guardians and chroniclers of the lesser souls. Maiel’s assurances are shaken when she nearly loses a young human girl to the dark forces of Jahannam, the prison realm where the lowest beings reside. To avoid answering to the leaders of her world, Maiel seeks refuge on Earth, but she is pursued by a baron of Jahannam intent on destroying her. Can she be saved before time runs out? Or will she be sacrificed to secure the borders of Zion and to hide the lie her journey uncovers?

With each step further into darkness, long held secrets are revealed and shadows rise from the past to challenge absolutes.

Read and excerpt on Wattpad.

Born in Saratoga Springs, New York, K.Williams embarked on a now twenty year career in writing. After a childhood, which consisted of voracious reading and hours of film watching, it was a natural progression to study and produce art.

K attended Morrisville State College, majoring in the Biological Sciences, and then continued with English and Historical studies at the University at Albany, home of the New York State Writer’s Institute, gaining her Bachelor’s Degree. While attending UA, K interned with the 13th Moon Feminist Literary Magazine, bridging her interests in social movements and art. Topics of K’s writing include the environment, animal welfare, gender limitations, racial disparities, and the trauma of war.

Published novels by K include the Civil War drama Blue Honor, the Second World War spy thriller OP-DEC:Operation Deceit, and the controversial science fiction/fantasy series The Trailokya Trilogy. In addition to writing novels, K enjoy’s the art of screenwriting and has worked on the screen spec 8 Days in Ireland, and the adaptations of her current novels. Currently, K has completed the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies program for Film Studies and Screenwriting at Empire State College (SUNY), and is the 2013-2014 recipient of the Foner Fellowship in Arts and Social Justice. In 2015, K. Williams became an official member of International Thriller Writers.

K continues to write on this blog weekly, producing commentary Mondays and Fridays on hot topics with some fun diversions for your work week. Whether it’s cooking, learning a foreign language, history or dogs, you’ll find something to enjoy and keep coming back for.  Always a promoter of other artists, K uses Guest Blog Wednesdays to showcase artists from around the web and bring you interesting readings to expand your horizons. A sequel to her second novel, OP-DEC, is in the research phase, while the screen adaptation is being considered for production by film companies.

A devoted dog mom to Miss Sadie Sue Shagbottom, K is also a visual artist, producing the ZoDuck Cartoon, painting and sketching–digitally or traditionally, as well as an accomplished Photographer.

The post The Technology of Trailokay ~ By K. Williams appeared first on § Author Massimo Marino.

Of Godlike Power – Mack Reynolds

In Of Godlike Power, Mark Reynolds quipped on the consumer society (at the time of the novel, they used to call it “affluent society”) by placing in his bulls-eye the organization of work and leisure time—thus also of culture—in the capitalist system, its inequities and absurdities, the squandering of resources, brain, and so on.

This “critique” is conducted by the author with a lively writing full of action, dialogue, plot twists—the usual tools of the trade of a “popular” narrative such as science fiction—with an added reflection on the  aberrations in our way of life. The result is a “radical” contestation, substantial, and libertarian inspired that remains a rare event in the science fiction production made in the USA.

In this regard, you might still recall some few examples: some stories of Nat Schachner, who worked mainly in the thirties and who showed a great interest in the problems of the working world; various works of Ursula Le Guin; the “Culture” cycle of Iain M. Banks (but he’s English), with a personal vision that is vaguely anarchist. And then some works of Eric Frank Russell, and Damon Knight (The Galaxy Project novels). And of course some other stories of the Sixties (Sheckley, Pohl & Kornbluth, Tenn, sometimes even Dick … and others).

However satirical these writers are, even when targeting certain aspects of the pervasive “affluent society” (borrowing spree, consumerism, advertising, media excesses, the excessive power of the multinationals, the tv), at their times they were seen as isolated phenomena as if they were the only representative of new trends or new abuses. By contrast, Reynolds never mentioned the proletariat, nor the class struggle, or the Marxist superstructure, nevertheless, his satire is—in fact—”radical”, deep, and uncompromising.

Let us dwell on the plot. Ed Wonder conducts a radio program of secondary importance dedicated to phenomena like UFOs, paranormal, metempsychosis. His work led him to learn of a bizarre individual reported as potentially dangerous by the police, a certain Ezekiel Joshua Tubber. He is a preacher in search of followers to found Elisio, a community outside the consumer society, a vaguely reminiscent edition of Quakers or Amish colonies of the nineteenth-century. Tubber has a vast culture and he’s not an utopian, on the contrary, he has very concrete ideas about the world in which he wants to live.

It happens that during a dialogue between Ed Wonder and Tubber, this last starts a heated tirade against the vainglory of women that leads him to rage and throwing a kind of anathema: I now curse the vanity of women. Verily I say that never again you will find pleasure in the vanity of your person …

From that moment on, something absurd happens: wherever, women can no longer makeup and dress up as they suffer unbearable skin allergies. The phenomenon is unexplained, and only Ed can link it to the fact, as far-fetched as it can be. The story takes then a hectic trend: in successive outbursts and “curses” from Tubber, things stop functioning normally: the radio, television, and films, in the sense that people could watch or listen to media when they feature only programs that are “not frivolous”. A few days after, the curse touches publishing as well: except for the fundamental books, others become unreadable paper. It is the start of a giant landslide that expands in concentric circles to the whole society, undermined in one of its key economic components: the leisure industry. Only very selected few—in the close circle of Ed Wonder—know the real origin of the phenomenon. For everyone else what happens is incomprehensible. Somehow overcoming an initial astonishment, humanity faces a drama: nobody knows how to use free leisure time.

Cinema, radio, TV, press (what’s left), have suddenly lost value for millions, billions of people; people dangle on the streets getting drunk, fighting, destroying the environment.

What happens to a society when an exceptionally developed economic structure is not accompanied by an adequate volume of public entertainment? The average human, the individual-mass of today, is no longer able to self regulate,  he’s not able to think independently about about how to spend his time. In the consumeristic society, he never had the chance. Man, so far, has evolved in such a condition that the time and available resources were handled for him by others. People worked twelve to eighteen hours a day, every day. Or starved. The time they could devote to entertainment was minimal: traditional games, dance, cinema, and other diversions were sufficient. So man never had the time to get bored. Idleness is essential to creative activity. If those who work don’t have the time to do something that goes beyond the activities needed to survive, there will be no condition for a real cultural development.

There is a moment in the novel in which Reynolds opens a discussion on the interdependence between religion and economics; the latter becomes closely knit to the curses of Tubber. This, among other things, leads the novel from the fantasy genre (which seemed to be slipped) to science fiction, or at least to dystopian genre:

Through Ed Wonder, Reynolds mulls about where religion ends and where economy begins, for him an insoluble problem. He reasons that most of the religions of the world have their bases in the economic system of their time. He takes on Judaism: When Moses established his laws, they covered every aspect of the nomadic life of the Hebrews. The same for the religion of Muhammad and Christianity. At first, he tells us, the Romans were persecuting the Christians, but they made Christianity a state religion after they realized that it was perfect for a slave society. It promised the pie in the sky after death. Suffer on earth, eat bread and water and work well, then a reward in heaven awaits you. What better faith to keep in line exploited people? Any reminiscence of Marxism?

Ed Wonder and his colleagues intuit that the capricious Ezekiel Joshua Tubber, who wasn’t fully aware of his powers and the chaos he had unleashed, as he’s holed up in his utopia in construction, could perhaps help in getting things back to normal. In a forest in the US, Elisium is being born and is already made up of dozens of enthusiasts who live a back-to-nature life, work at mansions they like, have adequate leisure time, and enjoy interpersonal relationships that are more open and genuine.

Ed decides that a new approach is possible and goes to the community, hoping that the preacher will be more malleable there and not apt to throw more anathemas. He will attempt to propose a solution.

I do not think it appropriate to reveal the ending of the novel, the result of the youth movement that emerged in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world, creating the Beat Generation, Summer of Love, and the Hippie culture.

Massimo Marino is a scientist envisioning science fiction. He spent years at CERN and The Lawrence Berkeley Lab followed by lead positions with Apple, Inc. and the World Economic Forum. He is also co-founder of “Squares on Blue”, a Big Data Analytics service company.
Massimo currently lives in France and crosses the border with Switzerland multiple times daily, although he is no smuggler.

As a scientist writing science fiction, he went from smashing particles at accelerators at SLAC and CERN to smashing words on a computer screen. Is is now an author with Booktrope Publishing,  LCC.

He’s the author of multi-awarded Daimones Trilogy.

His novels have received the Seal of Excellency from both AwesomeIndies.net and IndiePENdents.org

• 2012 PRG Reviewer’s Choice Award Winner in Science Fiction

• 2013 Hall of Fame – Best in Science Fiction, Quality Reads UK Book Club
• 2013 PRG Reviewer’s Choice Award Winner in Science Fiction Series
• 2014 Finalist – Science Fiction – Indie Excellence Awards L.A.
• 2014 Award Winner – Science Fiction Honorable Mention – Readers’ Favorite Annual Awards

His novels are available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble (Nook), iTunes Apple Store, and many other retailers around the world.

Join his mailing list for new releases, or follow him on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter.

The post Of Godlike Power – Mack Reynolds appeared first on § Author Massimo Marino.

Vulcan’s Hammer – Philip K. Dick

 Vulcan’s Hammer might be one of the lesser works of Dick, true, but it remains an interesting novel narrating of a world ruled by computers as only Dick could do.

In this planet Earth of the future, all major decisions—in every field—are taken by a supercomputer known as Vulcan. The computer processes data are provided by “Directors” of the various states the world is divided into.

But not everyone agrees to be controlled by a computer. The organization or, rather, a political-religious sect of the “Healers” wants man to take the reins back and make the decision process one where all citizens can participate in the management of public affairs. But Vulcan is so powerful that it becomes self-conscious when it faces the danger of being destroyed.

Objective, impartial and hyper rational, Vulcan has all the characteristics to be the perfect ruler. The giant and omnipotent computer decides what policy is in the best interests of all citizens, or at least, that’s the idea. But when the machine—whose rules are independent of chaos and war—begins to lose control over the movement of religious fanatics called the Healers, who preach the destruction of Vulcan, and the active participation of citizens in public affairs, all hell breaks loose. William Barris, Director of North America, is torn by moral conflicts: he is, potentially, the only person able to prevent the battle for control of the power that would destroy the world, but first he has to decide which side to take.

Written in 1960, the paranoid novel by Philip K. Dick imagined a totalitarian state where machines terrorize citizens and freedom seem to predict Hawking’s doomsday warning that humans will disappear when AI will become self-conscious aware. Universally recognized as the best science fiction writer of his time, Philip K. Dick evokes with extraordinary lucidity, through unknown worlds and beyond, the obsessions that still dominate our society and ourselves with an actuality that surprises contemporary readers in each of his novels.

If you believe you’ve never seen/read anything from Philip K. Dick, think again.

Philip K. Dick was born in Chicago on December 16, 1928. In 1955 he released his first novel, Solar Lottery. In the course of a life marked by economic difficulties, he writes masterpieces as The Man in the High Castle which won the Hugo Award, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, that inspired Blade Runner by Ridley Scott, and Ubik, The Minority Report that made to the big screen with the movie of the same title, featuring Tom Cruise,

He died March 2, 1982, of a stroke. The reputation of Philip K. Dick owes much to the film adaptations, including Total Recall (1990), Screamers, (1995) Impostor (2002), Minority Report (2002), Paycheck (2003), A Scanner Darkly (2006),  Next (2008), with Nicholas Cage, based on the story The Golden Man.

Philip K. Dick is considered one of the most important authors of American SF after World War II.

Massimo Marino is a scientist envisioning science fiction. He spent years at CERN and The Lawrence Berkeley Lab followed by lead positions with Apple, Inc. and the World Economic Forum. He is also co-founder of “Squares on Blue”, a Big Data Analytics service company.
Massimo currently lives in France and crosses the border with Switzerland multiple times daily, although he is no smuggler.

As a scientist writing science fiction, he went from smashing particles at accelerators at SLAC and CERN to smashing words on a computer screen. Is is now an author with Booktrope Publishing,  LCC.

He’s the author of multi-awarded Daimones Trilogy.

His novels have received the Seal of Excellency from both AwesomeIndies.net and IndiePENdents.org

• 2012 PRG Reviewer’s Choice Award Winner in Science Fiction

• 2013 Hall of Fame – Best in Science Fiction, Quality Reads UK Book Club
• 2013 PRG Reviewer’s Choice Award Winner in Science Fiction Series
• 2014 Finalist – Science Fiction – Indie Excellence Awards L.A.
• 2014 Award Winner – Science Fiction Honorable Mention – Readers’ Favorite Annual Awards

His novels are available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble (Nook), iTunes Apple Store, and many other retailers around the world.

Join his mailing list for new releases, or follow him on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter.

The post Vulcan’s Hammer – Philip K. Dick appeared first on § Author Massimo Marino.

Star Trek – Alan Dean Foster

Novelizations, i.e., adaptations in the form of a novel of the story of a movie, is a difficult task. Without much circumlocution, they do not always manage to live of their own life. Essentially, they are part of the promotional machine, an attempt to obtain as much dollars as possible from the fame of a film.

The writer of this novel, Alan Dean Foster, is a veteran of similar operations. He wrote novels drawn from the first three Alien movies, and many other adaptations from motion pictures, the latest being Transformers in 2007. Only recently it was discovered that he has acted as the ghost writer for George Lucas in drafting the novelization of Star Wars A New Hope, in addition to writing the Star Wars novel Splinter of the Mind’s Eye (Star Wars), a tie-in the SW saga of, situated chronologically between episode IV and episode V.

For Star Trek, Alan Dean Foster has contributed to the adaptation of the animated series and has contributed to the writing of the script of the first movie, Star Trek The Motion Picture.

He is a writer used to work on commission, so with characters not created by him.

The experience of reading an adaptation is almost always complementary to the vision of the movie it derives from. These products are made almost simultaneously with the movie, and based on a version of the script that presents scenes and dialogues that then, for various reasons, are not included in the final cut.

In this case the differences are few, and might clarify issues in the movie that were left to the intuition of the viewer. Small details of course. Nothing that really leave their mark.

The original movie is a good product, and one does not need to read the novel in order to enjoy it, while the opposite is not true. The novel does not linger on descriptions of characters and environments, and it seems assuming that you have seen the movie. Agile and lean in reading, it is certainly to be considered a suitable “summer” reading, easy and disengaged and nothing more. In any case I feel one needs to have seen the movie.

The writer has written better novelizations, here it seems he limited his effort to adhere to the contractual terms. The cover has the inscription “A Novel by Alan Dean Foster – Screenplay by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman.” What this says is that we have here a novel based on the original screenplay by Orci and Kurtzman, but the wordings is ambiguous and creates a bit of confusion about the authorship of the novel.

For the rest we are confronted with a colorless flat literary style. Surely, the fans of the saga, who have enjoyed the movie, too, will enjoy anyway this adaptation. Honestly, it’s hard to think that anyone who hasn’t seen the movie will instead have the curiosity to read this book, which as reading experience of its own, has little to offer.

Massimo Marino is a scientist envisioning science fiction. He spent years at CERN and The Lawrence Berkeley Lab followed by lead positions with Apple, Inc. and the World Economic Forum. He is also co-founder of “Squares on Blue”, a Big Data Analytics service company.
Massimo currently lives in France and crosses the border with Switzerland multiple times daily, although he is no smuggler.

As a scientist writing science fiction, he went from smashing particles at accelerators at SLAC and CERN to smashing words on a computer screen. Is is now an author with Booktrope Publishing,  LCC.

He’s the author of multi-awarded Daimones Trilogy.

His novels have received the Seal of Excellency from both AwesomeIndies.net and IndiePENdents.org

• 2012 PRG Reviewer’s Choice Award Winner in Science Fiction

• 2013 Hall of Fame – Best in Science Fiction, Quality Reads UK Book Club
• 2013 PRG Reviewer’s Choice Award Winner in Science Fiction Series
• 2014 Finalist – Science Fiction – Indie Excellence Awards L.A.
• 2014 Award Winner – Science Fiction Honorable Mention – Readers’ Favorite Annual Awards

His novels are available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble (Nook), iTunes Apple Store, and many other retailers around the world.

Join his mailing list for new releases, or follow him on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter.

The post Star Trek – Alan Dean Foster appeared first on § Author Massimo Marino.

I Spent the Night at the Hospital

Yesterday, Life reminded me how ephemeral everything we do is and–also because of this–how important and crucial are every moment, every day, from the little smiled “good morning” of your wife/husband/significant other/cat/dog, to the last look at the glitters the silver moonlight blinks at you with from the shattered glass you broke and damned the day before.

Yesterday, I stood up from this same computer, looking at words blossom on the page as these same ones your eyes are following and catching up with in their magical, silent dance across the screen, creating sounds, images, emotions, and connections. Dinner was ready, and the trash needed to be put out, the next morning the garbage collector would pass, reminding you of another hump day that had passed.

Ten meters, or ten yards if you prefer, and the warm evening, the welcoming dinner, the fresh air were no more. A sudden, cold gust of wind struck me, and it was the weirdest of all because it didn’t disturb the leaves and the plants of the garden. The wind came from within, and reached my head, and the world wobbled.

My strength left me, taking a pause from her reassuring support. I managed to reach back the door and walked inside.

“Dinner’s ready in a minute, hon.”

How lovely can your loved one’s voice sound when you have—barely—no breath and, still, manage to utter “I’m coming” with the force that only love can give you.

Before collapsing, I reached the couch. I could have lain there for the rest of my life for what I knew. I couldn’t keep my right arm on my chest, and it hung above the wooden floor as if it wasn’t my own limb. My forces had all gone, now, I couldn’t open my eyes, and breathing, raising my chest at every attempt, was an act of will rather than the granted body function we do every two seconds, or so, without wasting a conscious neuron activity about it.

I have rumbles in my ears, like a certain Dan Amenta of my novels, and in those moments rumbles were the only sounds I could hear. My heartbeat accelerated, and I felt it pumping in my throat, and the cold sweat leaving my forehead tickled my ears, but I couldn’t move.

Breathe, one more, do pump my heart, still another one, rumbles let me hear life again.

One hand gripped my forgotten arm and lifted it up, “Amore, what’s wrong?”

I hadn’t noticed she had called for dinner a few times more, already, I hadn’t noticed she had rushed to the couch. I couldn’t open my eyes to look at her one more time. My eyelids, like two soldered metal slabs, refused to listen to my urgent calls for me to look at her, again. “It’s nothing, I only need to rest,” I told her.

Around, a commotion started, my daughter’s  alarmed voice arrived soft, muffled to my ears, she was calling the emergency on the cell phone. “No! the landline,” I heard my wife’s words, and after sounds and more words that I don’t recall with precision, I recognized the voice of a dear friend, Daniela, who lives a few houses away. How did she make to ours so soon? And then bright lights, and other people in uniforms, and firm voices asking me to do things while I only wanted to rest, and concentrate about raising my chest for one more breath, and pray my heart for one more contraction. Does it happen this way, when you’re ready to leave? The real life becomes unreal, and your universe shrinks down to just a couple of dramatic, grave thoughts.

“Sir! Open your eyes for me, sir. Do you have pain in your chest, sir?”

“No, I wouldn’t say so.”

“Sir, I’ll become annoying, keep your eyes open. Is your vision blurred?”

Of course it’s blurred, you keep pointing at me that sharp, light needle, and I can’t see a damned thing! I answered with words that I thought were coherent, I discovered my legs had been raised over the couch pillow. Did I do that?

Hands wrapped my arm with something that started to push, and tightened around my arm, like trapped in a spire. My arm pulsed and it played ping-pong with my heart. I found my mind trying to catch that ball that went from my chest to my arm and back. A mask covered my face and the air felt different, more satisfying. I thought about water. I like it sparkling, and though water is water, when it’s still it does not calm my thirst as when it bubbles down my throat. That’s what I thought, that different air was like sparkling water, and it satisfied my lungs better.

“Sir, we’re taking you to the hospital.”

Take me where you wish, if that’s so important for you. Nausea mounted, but my stomach had nothing to give back.

They strap me on the stretcher. I never realized how bright the light had to be in an ambulance. Why drivers don’t seem to think that the patient could vomit just because of the way they drive?

The nurse kept asking if I was ok, and didn’t let me fall asleep. My head followed the turns of the road and she urged me, “Sir, are you ok, sir.” I could only nod at the too bright light above my eyes, and that that was also the reason why my eyelids were there, shut, to keep protecting me. But she took my nods as yes, and reassured my wife who took the ride with us. “He’s ok.”

Thanks the Lord I hadn’t had dinner. It would have been all over the floor if I did. Probably still edible, too.

I have little idea of the time it took to reach the hospital, but the ambulance stopped, the rear doors opened, and they took me out.

Light, dark, light, dark, light, dark. The intermittent sequence of bright rectangles on the ceiling of a corridor captured my attention with more intensity than the words of the nurse detailing my condition, “Male, white, 54, no loss of consciousness,” and then numbers, my pressure, the oxygenation of my blood, low it seemed. Light, dark, light, dark, light, dark.

“One, two, three!” My body lifted, I left the stretcher and someone laid me on a larger one. Barriers rose to each side, and my feet pushed against a third one.

I wanted to puke, I needed to puke. The world spun, and rose; someone as powerful as a divinity pulled it in all directions. I asked my wife why they had me go through this rodeo, but no one did anything with the hospital stretcher. “I feel like I’m on a boat. I need to vomit.” A pacy chatter ensued, and I was given something they called the ‘vomix’. How cute. A sort of a oblong cup with no bottom, and a plastic bag to collect anything I could have decided to vomix in there.

The rocking boat my body believed to be trapped in had me concentrate on a different, urgent need from my belly, and I thanked the hand of my wife that caressed my front. She kept me firm in place.

Time passed, with laments from other patients. Doctors and nurses paced the corridor, and patients were carried away, or in. My wife left for the paperwork and the admission. A nurse approached. “Sir, can you roll over? I’d move you into a more comfortable bed.”

“I sure can.”

“Wait!”

I had started to roll, and she and the barriers stopped me. She explained me how the change of bed would happen, and that I needed to do it only when she said so. I thought she had just did that.

At least, the new bed was indeed more comfortable. She helped me and my wife, who had just returned from the admission, to take off my shirt and trousers, and put on the hospital gown.

Let me lie on this bed, I only need to rest, I only want to rest.

Light, dark, light, dark. The bed moved. “They’re taking us to the ER rooms. A doctor is with us,” my wife said.

The doctor asked me things, I replied, he seemed satisfied, he left. Nurses attached me to more monitors and devices.

“What time is it?” I asked my wife.

“Don’t worry.”

“How much is this going to cost?”

“Don’t think about it, don’t worry. How are you?”

“I’m exhausted.”

My forces recalled that I was still alive, and had decided to come back. They must have realized they existed because of me. I could now open my eyes but light was too bright, still. I was attached to cables, and monitors showed my vitals. My wife read the numbers to me, and the low pressure seemed too low even to my non medical-educated ears. The rumbles in my ears had calmed down a bit, and the rocking boat had become a lulling waterbed. Something wrapped around my left index bothered me, a rubbery clamp with a red light inside.

Nurses and a doctor came. “Follow my finger.” I followed. “Look at my nose.” It was a regular nose, what’s so special? “Stretch your arms, palms up, touch your nose.” Again with this fixation with trunks, muzzles, and probosces. My blood was taken. “We’ll have results in an hour. In the meanwhile, we’ll keep monitoring you.” I nodded. You must have more urgent cases, I thought, and it reassured me.

The curtains around your box in the ER hide the view, but your neighbors sound so close that they become part of your box, too. The fact I could notice other’s lives and struggles was the sign I was on the way to recover, at least a bit. I told my wife, “I feel better.”

Her hand grabbed mines. I opened my eyes. Had I told her yet how beautiful she is, today?

To my left, a grasping sound, like that of a broken mechanism, kept interrupting an old lady who called “Madame Nurse, madame nurse.” It wasn’t a mechanism. Her voice sounded human only when she spoke in between the raucous wails that her body forced her to emit, cutting her words. She never stopped thanking the nurses for what they were doing for her, nor the grasping sound that I believed, at first, to be artificial, between the thank you’s, ever stopped.

To my right, I heard the nurses prepare a man for surgery. “Where do you live, sir?”

I couldn’t hear his feeble replies.

“On the street? You don’t have a permanent address?” Silence. How silence can be that more explicit than any explanation? “You have broken the neck of your femur. Did you hear the crack and then you fell, or did you fall and then heard the crack?” Uttered sounds. “Ok, we need to do surgery and implant a prosthesis. Don’t worry, it’s taken care by the social services. You don’t have insurance, do you?”

They took him away, and the box filled with another case.

I was tired to my bones. Amid the scratching sounds of the lady to my left, and the laments of the new case to my right, we asked a nurse if my wife could rest with me on the hospital bed. He smiled, “I’m closing the curtain.” He left. I fell asleep with my head resting on my wife’s shoulder, and it was the best place on Earth.

Massimo Marino is a scientist envisioning science fiction. He spent years at CERN and The Lawrence Berkeley Lab followed by lead positions with Apple, Inc. and the World Economic Forum. He is also co-founder of “Squares on Blue”, a Big Data Analytics service company.
Massimo currently lives in France and crosses the border with Switzerland multiple times daily, although he is no smuggler.

As a scientist writing science fiction, he went from smashing particles at accelerators at SLAC and CERN to smashing words on a computer screen. Is is now an author with Booktrope Publishing,  LCC.

He’s the author of multi-awarded Daimones Trilogy.

His novels have received the Seal of Excellency from both AwesomeIndies.net and IndiePENdents.org

• 2012 PRG Reviewer’s Choice Award Winner in Science Fiction

• 2013 Hall of Fame – Best in Science Fiction, Quality Reads UK Book Club
• 2013 PRG Reviewer’s Choice Award Winner in Science Fiction Series
• 2014 Finalist – Science Fiction – Indie Excellence Awards L.A.
• 2014 Award Winner – Science Fiction Honorable Mention – Readers’ Favorite Annual Awards

His novels are available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble (Nook), iTunes Apple Store, and many other retailers around the world.

Join his mailing list for new releases, or follow him on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter.

The post I Spent the Night at the Hospital appeared first on § Author Massimo Marino.

Starship Troopers – Robert Heinlein

Science fiction is made to provoke controversy. No other genre has the same capability to choose future worlds, alternative utopias and distopias of all kinds, and  the ability to generate fierce battles in the fandom.

If we were to elect an author who represents well this trend Robert Anson Heinlein would be a good candidate, among his works Starship Troopers emerges as the prototype of the book can trigger heated discussions among fans.

In a not too distant future our planet, reunited under one government called Earth Federation, comes into contact with alien races, humanoid and not, and it is soon on the competition for planets to colonize.

The novel opens with a scene of action, the protagonist Juan Rico, said Johnny, is launched on the planet of Skinny, humanoid allies of Aracnoids in the war against the Earth, and thanks to his enhanced suit he fights sowing panic and destruction behind the enemy lines.

With the first in a series of flashbacks, Heinlein returns to Rico’s last year of school who, after graduation, ends up working with his father and, quite by accident, finds himself applying for the military Federal Service.

The young man is drafted into the Space Troopers and, to be honest, through a not exciting selection process description, he is sent in the middle of nowhere, along with hundreds of other young soldiers destined to form the body of the Federation assault.

In the central part, the novel narrates of the training of the young Filipino, and makes us aware of the particular political system emerged after a war that has led the world to the brink of self-destruction.

The Federation is a representative democracy but, in the future world imagined by Heinlein, only those who have served voluntarily for two years can vote, the others are excluded political life in all its forms.

And the Federal Service, as anyone who has the right to be admitted, is not a joke, as Rico realizes right away. His training is dangerous, and there are accidents and deaths, also the instructors seem to have fun in making life unbearable for the recruits, and force them to leave. Survival of the fittest.

Once this terrible period is over, Rico is catapulted into the middle of a war against the arachnids, insects breed of a sharp intelligence and hostile to the highest degree. The have destroyed Buenos Aires, and the initial isolated skirmishes have become open conflict. The last part of the novel interweaves the private stories and events Rico faces with those with the larger scope of a terrible interplanetary war.

The young man begins a brilliant military career, with fighting scenes, twists and unexpected encounters; the goal is the survival of the human race, co-star in the novel is the enhanced suit, Heinlein’s invention that amplifies movements and makes the wearer able to incredible actions, so the foot soldier returns to occupy a central position in war in space.

Starship Troopers was published in 1959, and inspired the film of the same name from director Paul Verhoeven, although there are very few points of contact between the novel and the film work, apart from the name of the main character and the presence of spiders.

Each reader purchasing this book thinking of reading space adventures based on fights to the death will remain baffled, in reality the training and the flashbacks from the school years take up most of the novel. Heinlein explains his political vision and it does so in a particularly extended way, telling both the origins of the Federation and its current political ways, quite brisk ones, actually, which is how the Federation exercised justice.

Why reading this book, then?

First of all to be able to participate in discussions that periodically light up among fans of this classic, and in real battles (verbal) between those who argue that Heinlein is a fascist and those who reject this interpretation.

Secondly, Starship Troopers is a piece of history of science fiction, it is the first in a series of war novels that include masterpieces as The Forever War by Joe Haldeman and Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, and has spawned comics, board games, role-playing and electronic, as well as a series of films for the big and the small screen.

But above all the novel is to be read for the diabolical storyteller’s skills put on display by Heinlein, his style, only apparently simple, that drags the reader and makes him swallow philosophical discussions and infodumping that when read from other authors they would cause immediate rejection crisis.

Typical novel based on the theme of growth and reaching adulthood, with the main character who runs through the different degrees of maturity requirements in Heinlein (naive young man who knows how things are going and then he also knows why things happen), Starship Troopers is a staple of science fiction; you may agree with the worldview of the author, or hate it, but it’s hard to resist the allure of soldiers who throw themselves on planets infested with deadly arachnids.

Massimo Marino is a scientist envisioning science fiction. He spent years at CERN and The Lawrence Berkeley Lab followed by lead positions with Apple, Inc. and the World Economic Forum. He is also co-founder of “Squares on Blue”, a Big Data Analytics service company.
Massimo currently lives in France and crosses the border with Switzerland multiple times daily, although he is no smuggler.

As a scientist writing science fiction, he went from smashing particles at accelerators at SLAC and CERN to smashing words on a computer screen. Is is now an author with Booktrope Publishing,  LCC.

He’s the author of multi-awarded Daimones Trilogy.

His novels have received the Seal of Excellency from both AwesomeIndies.net and IndiePENdents.org

• 2012 PRG Reviewer’s Choice Award Winner in Science Fiction

• 2013 Hall of Fame – Best in Science Fiction, Quality Reads UK Book Club
• 2013 PRG Reviewer’s Choice Award Winner in Science Fiction Series
• 2014 Finalist – Science Fiction – Indie Excellence Awards L.A.
• 2014 Award Winner – Science Fiction Honorable Mention – Readers’ Favorite Annual Awards

His novels are available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble (Nook), iTunes Apple Store, and many other retailers around the world.

Join his mailing list for new releases, or follow him on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter.

The post Starship Troopers – Robert Heinlein appeared first on § Author Massimo Marino.

Farnham’s Freehold – Robert Heinlein

We are back to Robert Heinlein with a novel that mixes a post-nuclear future, time travel, and alternate realities, three classic themes of science fiction, treated in hundreds of novels and short stories, but rarely all together.

It also reminds me of some of the post-apocalyptic survivors’ themes of my “Daimones Trilogy.”

Farnham’s Freehold starts in the United States of the sixties, a country under the threat of a nuclear war, during one of the many diplomatic crisis with the Soviet Union.

Hubert “Hugh” Farnham is at home with his wife and children Grace, Karen, and Duke, with their friend’s daughter, Barbara, and Joseph, a black man, employed by the Farnhams.

A quiet evening soon turns into tragedy: the unthinkable happens, the Cold War heats up, and the dreaded atomic attack strikes with a sudden fury.

Seeking refuge in the atomic shelter built with patience by Hugh, the group, and the cat family, feel the devastating effects of three atomic explosions, without being able to do anything but wait for their fate in the bunker.

The stocks of air coming to an end, there is no other choice but to leave the shelter. A big surprise awaits the group. The survivors find themselves surrounded by a lush nature, without any evident sign of radioactivity and destruction, but also without any human presence; yet, it quickly becomes apparent that they are exactly where stood Mountain Springs, their city, they are still in Colorado, but not in the Colorado who knew.

Hugh began to organize the survival, succeeding, thanks to continuous efforts, to make their stay pleasant and even acceptable, despite the problems caused by the alcoholism of his wife and son.

However the calm will not last long, death will stretch out his hand, and soon after comes the shocking discovery that this world is home to a very advanced society, at least from a technological standpoint.

Hugh and the others are captured by the men of Ponse, one of the aristocrats who rule the world, the representative of a society where the ruling class is made up of black people, who took power after the nuclear war.

Unfortunately, the new social order, modeled on the principles of the “Black Muslims”, has whites ’employed’ in different degrees of slavery, and this is the role that awaits Hugh and his loved ones.

Farnham’s Freehold is divided into two parts, the first deals with the problems related to the survival of a group of people, almost shipwrecked, deprived suddenly of support provided by a highly organized society, and their initial struggle to preserve sanity and keep the group together, as in my first volume, Daimones.

Here Heinlein puts to good use his experience in the Navy during the construction of its anti-nuclear shelter, and manages to render well many of the difficulties and problems faced by Hugh to survive in a wild nature.

The story takes a completely different turn than in the Daimones Trilogy when the group is captured by the dominant humans and taken to the residence of Ponse: apart from the black home employee, Joseph, who is co-opted by the new masters, the others finds themselves in slavery, and the problem is no longer how to survive but how to find a way to be able to throw off the heavy yoke of Ponse.

The initial interactions between the characters, and especially the conflict between Hugh and his son, are a foreshadow of Heinlein’s classic theme of rebellion against an oppressive power as narrated in the second part, but this time the fight seems hopeless, given the absolute disparity of forces.

The novel, written in 1964, has no shortage of interesting ideas, the role reversal between whites and blacks, certain things about incest, and on how democracy is harmful in certain situations seem to be made to trigger hot controversy, something which Heinlein has accustomed his readership.

The pace of the novel itself is mixed, the first part is quite slow and heavy, while in the second the pace quickens, but I found some contradictions in the behavior of Ponse, to the detriment of the character’s development.

The style of Heinlein is, as usual, deceptively simple, its characters are multifaceted and complex, Hugh is far from being a superman, on the contrary, his life was a partial failure, Barbara is recovering from a divorce and clings to Hugh to find a stable point, Duke has a troubled relationship with his father, while his mother Grace is an alcoholic.

Karen and Joseph also have some flaws between them, but they are the ones I liked best, not surprisingly they fall in love and are about to getting married (probably with a ritual celebrated by Hugh, given the lack of priests in the area), but fate decides otherwise.

With Farnham’s Freehold, Heinlein gives us a good novel that will delight fans of the great American writer, and could also be a good introduction to those who still don’t know him.

Massimo Marino is a scientist envisioning science fiction. He spent years at CERN and The Lawrence Berkeley Lab followed by lead positions with Apple, Inc. and the World Economic Forum. He is also co-founder of “Squares on Blue”, a Big Data Analytics service company.
Massimo currently lives in France and crosses the border with Switzerland multiple times daily, although he is no smuggler.

As a scientist writing science fiction, he went from smashing particles at accelerators at SLAC and CERN to smashing words on a computer screen.

He’s the author of multi-awarded Daimones Trilogy.

His novels have received the Seal of Excellency from both AwesomeIndies.net and IndiePENdents.org

• 2012 PRG Reviewer’s Choice Award Winner in Science Fiction

• 2013 Hall of Fame – Best in Science Fiction, Quality Reads UK Book Club
• 2013 PRG Reviewer’s Choice Award Winner in Science Fiction Series
• 2014 Finalist – Science Fiction – Indie Excellence Awards L.A.
• 2014 Award Winner – Science Fiction Honorable Mention – Readers’ Favorite Annual Awards

His novels are available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble (Nook), iTunes Apple Store, and many other retailers around the world.

Join his mailing list for new releases, or follow him on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter.

The post Farnham’s Freehold – Robert Heinlein appeared first on § Author Massimo Marino.

Are you an Amazon KDP Select Advocate?

I recently saw and commented an article (linked below) from Derek Haines on KDP Select (publishing only and exclusively on Amazon) as THE way to go for self-publishing authors. From the article:

“Unlike myself, my old friend Derek Haines (and a few other writers I know) constantly hop in and out of bed with whichever publisher they decide is the flavour of the month at the time, only to cast them aside later like an ex lover, when they decide they hate them for some reason or other. God only knows why they do it. It’s not that difficult to work out – stop acting like prima donnas. Chose one and stick with them!

View the original: Should I Publish Exclusively With Amazon?.

The problem with the article is that it reads as based on outdated information. You don’t need to have multiple file versions for the various distributors. One is enough (unless, as one commentator complains, you put links to your books on Amazon in your eBooks)

What you really want is to upload yourself to KDP so you have the dashboard, and to Smashword for the Premium catalogue and the wide distribution to the other vendors.

I sell daily and in the hundreds per month on both Amazon and Barnes&Noble + iTunes.

This part of life is not at all complicated.

Besides, with Smashwords, it is a breeze to do giveaways and promotions for all your titles, and it is the only way to have Amazon have one of your book (let’s say #1 of a series) as a perma-free to capture more readers.

Smashwords—and its grinder, the file converter—does not require the special “Smashword edition” copyright note as an additional page, so you can have One File to Bind Them All.

You can also upload ePub on Smashwords, and as Kindle format on Amazon which is actually the best method of all because—this way—you have the control of what you will sell to your readers, and you’re not using a bloated word document (whatever format, .docx or .doc).

You can use Vellum to produce your eBook and upload those, rather than Word documents. (or the free product Calibre).

What’s your take?

PS

Once you get a manuscript ready for Smashwords, you have a template valid for all subsequent books. Really, it’s not particle physics.

Massimo Marino is a scientist envisioning science fiction. He spent years at CERN and The Lawrence Berkeley Lab followed by lead positions with Apple, Inc. and the World Economic Forum. He is also co-founder of “Squares on Blue”, a Big Data Analytics service company.
Massimo currently lives in France and crosses the border with Switzerland multiple times daily, although he is no smuggler.

As a scientist writing science fiction, he went from smashing particles at accelerators at SLAC and CERN to smashing words on a computer screen.

He’s the author of multi-awarded Daimones Trilogy.

His novels have received the Seal of Excellency from both AwesomeIndies.net and IndiePENdents.org

• 2012 PRG Reviewer’s Choice Award Winner in Science Fiction

• 2013 Hall of Fame – Best in Science Fiction, Quality Reads UK Book Club
• 2013 PRG Reviewer’s Choice Award Winner in Science Fiction Series
• 2014 Finalist – Science Fiction – Indie Excellence Awards L.A.
• 2014 Award Winner – Science Fiction Honorable Mention – Readers’ Favorite Annual Awards

His novels are available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble (Nook), iTunes Apple Store, and many other retailers around the world.

Join his mailing list for new releases, or follow him on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter.

The post Are you an Amazon KDP Select Advocate? appeared first on § Author Massimo Marino.

The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger

I recently saw the movie, and was intrigued enough to look for the book.

At twenty-eight years old, Henry DeTamble meets Clare Abshire along the aisles of the Newberry Library in Chicago and is immediately mesmerized by her. What leaves him puzzled, however, is not the attractiveness of the young red haired twenty-something, or at least not only that; it’s the way she treats him, with a familiarity he cannot explain, and the revelation he receives not even a minute after he sees her for the first time.

Although Henry still cannot know it, Clare saw him the first time when she was 6 years old and he 36. Impossible? Not for Henry, who—as a child—suffered of a genetic disorder known as chrono-alteration: encoded in his DNA is the secret of time jumps, often uncontrolled, and without a precise criterion. And that is how he met his wife when she was a ten years old child, and she already remembered him for seeing him first at six (plus an unknown number of other times in the meantime).

Past and future, for Henry, are mixed in an eternal present. 152 dates, written in a notebook with the calligraphy of a child,  retrace his visits to the young Clare between 1977 and 1989. But he, when for the first time he sees her in Newberry in 1991, can not yet remember their appointments down in the fields behind the estate of Meadowlark, the things that were said and what they did together, for the simple fact that he has not yet experienced them. They are in his future, but are in the past of Clare. That’s why she loves him, before he discovers he love her, too. And that he has already married her.

This is the idea in The Time Traveler’s Wife, an incredible story of love and time travel narrated gracefully and in a compelling way by Audrey Niffenegger: a novel that keeps the reader glued until the last page, and amazed me for the ingenuity and the maturity of the narrative (it is a debut work). Written between 1997 and 2001, the book has been rejected by 25 literary agencies before being disputed by several publishers in New York. In 2002, though, Niffenegger decided instead to accept the proposal of a small publisher of San Francisco, and the novel came out with MadAdam/Cage in 2003.

Scott Turow promoted the novel at the morning talk show NBC’s The Today Show and has helped to turn it into a literary event with two and a half million copies sold in the US and UK. Niffenegger demonstrates how readers are still attracted to a nice love story, but she does more: she shows how one can still write a good time travel story, fitting it into one of the most prolific strands of the genre, and among the most popularity in science fiction. Starting with The Time Machine by HG Wells (1895), the novels of Wilson Tucker (worth remembering The Year of the Quiet Sun, 1970), through the story A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury (1952), The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov (1955), Time Patrol Poul Anderson (1955-1990), and countless novels and short stories by Robert A. Heinlein and Robert Silverberg, without forgetting Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (1969) to which The Time Traveler’s Wife was also compared to, more than a subgenre the “time travel” has been a gold mine to many major fiction writers, sooner or later unable to resist its blandishments.

Nothing is more difficult, in short, to begin with a title that claims to be part of this tradition. We must therefore acknowledge that the American author (born in 1963) has achieved something even more than difficult; it certainly would have been impossible for a writer with little or no knowledge of the mechanisms of the gender. The secret of her success can perhaps be sought in the courage to dare the unheard, or remove from the time travel what has always been his mainstay: the cause of a timeline paradox. There is virtually none in this novel. The story of The Time Traveler’s Wife follows the tracks of  a strict logic, trapping the protagonists in the cage of their actions.

On purpose, Audrey Niffenegger blows away the field from any possibility of deception: she does not believe in the hypothesis of multiple universes, and she makes her protagonist say so. The conflict between free will and predestination relives as transfigured in the pages of the love story between Henry and Clare and cannot be an accident from an author who admits to having received a Christian education. But in the end, the gimmick is nothing but an interesting review of the theme of memory, its persistence and its relationship with the unconscious.

Crucial to this end is the psychological characterization of the two protagonists. All other characters tend to merge with the background, just for the needs of the the scene in which they take part. They are shadows on a cave’s wall, and this serves to keep Henry and Clare under the spotlight.

The story is told as a counterpoint of their two voices: in the first person, always in the present tense, sometimes from the point of view of Henry, others from that of Clare.

Henry jumps back and forth in time, attracted by the gravitational centers of his existence. The terrible death of her mother in a car crash when Henry was not yet six years old is the first fulcrum, the first destination of his time jumps. He has lived, and continues to relive the scene so many times that now the icy highway on which the tragedy is consumed is crowded by versions of Henry of all ages, to cover all possible angles. Clare is the second center of attraction of his involuntary temporal pilgrimages: it is her love that helps Henry to become the man he is, from the special guy, but still inconsistent that he was up to his first meeting with her.

It is Clare who helps him find a meaning to his life: that reason has the eyes and the black hair of Alba, their daughter, long desired, and suffering, just like Henry, from the strange genetic syndrome. She is a person who grows chronologically disoriented, but in a world that—thanks to the experience of Henry and the tests conducted on him by Dr. Kendrick—has learned to accept and, perhaps, even to control the disturbance of spontaneous displacement in time.

Of course, in a world subject to this strict rules of malignant nature, where everything has been, a love story can only end in a tragedy. It is no coincidence either that, among the various literary references that hover on the writing of Niffenegger, critics has cited influences going from Rainer Maria Rilke to Antonia Byatt and Henry James, and found also a place of honor for William Shakespeare. The debilitating tragedy to that Henry DeTamble ends suffering, our hapless time traveler, also serves to place in perspective his extraordinary faculty, both a gift and a curse.

But can such a book be called science fiction? It might, in my opinion, with caveats. And not just for the great respect and knowledge of the kind demonstrated by the author and testified in her interviews, but also for reasons of strictly technical nature. Science fiction is a kind that leads to hybridization. It is not surprising that for once the romance has taken the role of the crime in the fiction. If the heart of the story is the love story between Henry and Clare, but what make it so special is this angle of the science fiction theme. Henry’s incursions into the future will reveal very little of the world that awaits us, which is always sadly all too similar to that in which we live. The cut, the perspective from which Audrey Niffenegger frames the story, would have been impossible without the time travel element. This is why I dare to say, in relation to The Time Traveler’s Wife, that this is indeed time travel science fiction. An abstract science fiction by its specific context, reduced to the essence of its imaginary reference and applied to an intimate sphere, but still able to make the most of that for which it was born, with not much struggling with an unusual subject, even in the eyes of readers not, yet, necessarily fans of this genre. After all, what could be more wonderful than a love married to the prospect of eternity?

Worth noticing the second novel by Audrey Niffenegger, Her Fearful Symmetry,  a title that recalls a famous verse of William Blake, a gothic story set in a haunted house.

Massimo Marino is a scientist envisioning science fiction. He spent years at CERN and The Lawrence Berkeley Lab followed by lead positions with Apple, Inc. and the World Economic Forum. He is also co-founder of “Squares on Blue”, a Big Data Analytics service company.
Massimo currently lives in France and crosses the border with Switzerland multiple times daily, although he is no smuggler.

As a scientist writing science fiction, he went from smashing particles at accelerators at SLAC and CERN to smashing words on a computer screen.

He’s the author of multi-awarded Daimones Trilogy.

His novels have received the Seal of Excellency from both AwesomeIndies.net and IndiePENdents.org

• 2012 PRG Reviewer’s Choice Award Winner in Science Fiction

• 2013 Hall of Fame – Best in Science Fiction, Quality Reads UK Book Club
• 2013 PRG Reviewer’s Choice Award Winner in Science Fiction Series
• 2014 Finalist – Science Fiction – Indie Excellence Awards L.A.
• 2014 Award Winner – Science Fiction Honorable Mention – Readers’ Favorite Annual Awards

His novels are available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble (Nook), iTunes Apple Store, and many other retailers around the world.

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