Austin Dragon's Blog, page 12

Will Technology Just Kill Us All? (Part I)

3d render of advanced robot cyborg skeleton

When people think technology, they automatically think of technology—computers, smart-phones, and such, but the post-industrial revolution transformation of the westernized world is far more profound than that. No indoor plumbing, no electricity, no telephone, no mechanical transportation (cars, trains and planes). Yes, for most of the millennia that humans have existed on Earth we didn’t have any of that. You had to go to where water was or had to pay someone to haul it to you. Your bathroom was the outdoors like for Fido the dog, and when we got sophisticated it was using a chamber pot (meaning you had to empty it outside) and outhouses. And forget McDonald’s or any other fast-food or a fine restaurant. You wanted to eat then you had to go hunt it or pluck some fruit or vegetable from outside and prepare it.

We love our technology, and many (if not virtually all) of us couldn’t live without it. We have the amazing positives like medicine—see my Pinterest Page here, but we also have what can only be called the disintegration of basic human interaction and knowledge due to increased technological advancement of the species.

How many people have you seem almost blindly walk into traffic because they were on their smart-phone? Yong people especially who would rather text someone than talk to them in person—they can’t even be bothered with calling them on the phone. The more technology we have gained to connect with people, the less real communication we do with people. Sorry, email doesn’t count and I’m talking about friends, not customers for a business.
Socrates and Plato would have been in Heaven in our times. We (the average person) have more knowledge at our fingertips than kings, queens, emperors, and the elites of all past human generations. But the more knowledge we have access to, the less we know—and the less wise we are!
The ubiquitous internet connects us while it isolates us. The technology both unifies us, but it also fragments us. Another technological paradox.

Technology has made our lives better. Average life expectancy was around 30 millennia ago; we could get it 100 on average in the near future.

But therein lies the possibility of another deadly paradox. The more a human’s basic needs are met (food, clothing, shelter) and leisure time becomes a significant pursuit, equaling or rivaling work, then bad things happen. “Idle hands are the play thing of the Devil,” is the idiom and whether your religious, atheist, or agnostic, the saying is frighteningly valid, especially if you have a growing population of those with bad character and bad (or no) morals.

Enter Science Fiction. Notice how few the examples are of a “utopian” future for humans. Even Star Trek which would be classified as utopian sci-fi is filled with all kinds of battles and wars. Most sci-fi doesn’t have a very rosy view of our future, and some of this has been validated as we are the future.  We focus on the “toys” of technology (tablets, smart-phones, and computers) when there is so much more to it from medicine (genetic engineering and cybernetics), commerce (robots and artificial intelligence), education (online classes), politics (micro-targeting), and the war (drones, lasers, super-soldiers, weapons of mass destruction).

We have the toys, but are we better? Do we control the technology or does the technology control us? Or, are the questions irrelevant? We are and will always be the same human animal; our technology simply amplifies that nature, good or bad, as was examined in the classic 1950s movie, The Forbidden Planet.

Even among my own work, my first series—The After Eden Series—says that our future will be “no Garden of Eden”; it will be bad. Yeah, if we end up with World War III, I’d say that’s bad. My third series—Liquid Cool—though not utopian sci-fi, is far from the dark, bleak worlds and angst-riddled, morally-challenged characters of typical cyberpunk sci-fi. It’s actually funny. Its attitude is yeah, it rains a lot, it’s always dark, there are a lot of crazy maniacs around, but doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun. In one series (After Eden), the glass is always half-empty; the other (Liquid Cool), the glass is half-full, even with the glass being chipped by a pulse bullet.

So we’re left with the question: Will Our Own Technology Just Kill Us All? So much of our sci-fi seems to be saying, “Yes!” But do you agree?

Next Blog: Will Technology Just Kill Us All? The Disgruntled Worlds of Cyberpunk, Biopunk, General Dystopia, Apocalyptic, and Post-Apocalyptic Sci-Fi (Part II)

#Cyperpunk #Dystopia

The post Will Technology Just Kill Us All? (Part I) appeared first on Official Website of Author Austin Dragon.

World building Part II: The (Sexy) Cyberpunk Way of Liquid Cool

Atmosphere

In my futuristic After Eden series, there are no hover-craft. Terrorism concerns prevent any future of flying cars in cities—except for quasi ones that simply hover above the street. However, in Liquid Cool, it’s quite the opposite. Hover-cars, hover-trucks, hover-bikes, jet-packed police—the sky is filled with something or someone flying around. Both are futuristic realities and believable, but completely opposite. Why? In Liquid Cool we don’t know everything yet–we’re patient to allow the world to unfold for us, but it’s always rains (yeah, like Blade Runner, but we know there’s something behind it), it seems the very wealthy people don’t even live on the planet anymore, and people “are stacked on top of each other”, so the monolith skyscraper towers indicate that space is a big commodity in this world. If that’s the case, then the expansion of hover-craft technology would be essential for people to live their lives.

Authority

No cyberpunk, even my reimagined version, would be true to sub-genre without some conflict between individual and “the system”. In cyberpunk books and movies of old, megacorporations seemed to replace governments altogether. Well, that’s what dystopian sci-fi writers imagined, countering the wonderful world government sci-fi of such icons as Star Trek’s Federation. But that was over 40 years ago; we know better. Corporations have gotten bigger, but nothing compared to what governments have ballooned into in not only their inability to stop spending money, but getting involved in every minutiae of our lives.

“…megacorporate gangsters and uber-government goons!”

Liquid Cool shows a world where megacorporations and governments fight for control over each other, with crime plotting in the shadows, trying to outdo both.

Cops & Robbers

In such a dangerous city, the police have to be deadly; otherwise, crime would truly run wild in the streets. In this way, the depiction of police authority differs from other dystopian sci-fi. Metropolis is no police state. The police are as “bad as they can be”, but it is directed solely at the really bad, bad guys and sanctioned by the public.

Cruz has never had even a speeding ticket in his adult life, but the moment he begins “playing” detective he has more run-ins with the police than imaginable. He even has a couple of officers–that he affectionately refers to as “Ebony and Ivory” (never saying to their faces, of course), take a special interest in him. Being called out to his office a couple of times to investigate homicides would do that.

There other divisions (or fiefdoms) in Police Central, such as CIC (Crime Information Center) and the Police Watch. Taking a page out of the headlines with the debate on whether we should equip police with body-cams. Well, in the futuristic Metropolis, they’ve done it, but as with most things done by the government, the results are not always as predicted.

Cruz’s relationship with the police evolves into one that’s complicated. You’ll see.

Villains

“…watch out for tech-tricksters, analog hustlers, and digital gangsters—psychos, samurais, and cyborgs aplenty.”

The kinds of clients Cruz will come across are endless, and some are crazy, but so are the criminals he will have to face off. I don’t want to spoil the fun by revealing the bad guys he’ll face, but we already know that in the Liquid Cool world there are a lot of cyborgs–strangely, not too much in the way of robots or androids…yet. There will also be other kinds of bad guys, as the sci-fi universe has a lot to offer.

 

What I Enjoyed Most About Writing LC?

It’s was a new sci-fi, futuristic world to build from scratch. The flash and neon, the sidewalk johnnies and psycho cyborgs, a private eye in a rainy 50-million plus super city with his fancy bright red hover-car. Unlike my other series, there is no ending. So I can continue the books as long as I want.

What’s next in Liquid Cool?

It is cyberpunk, even if it’s my retro, neo-retro, reimagined version. So I’d guess artificial intelligence, robots, space, and VR (virtual reality) are strong possibilities.

Get Your Free Copy of the Liquid Cool Prequel, These Mean Streets, Darkly Here Today.

Get Your Copy of the debut novel, Liquid Cool Here Today.

#Cyberpunk #SciFi #ScienceFiction #LiquidCool

The post World building Part II: The (Sexy) Cyberpunk Way of Liquid Cool appeared first on Official Website of Author Austin Dragon.

World building: The (Sexy) Cyberpunk Way of Liquid Cool (Part II)

Atmosphere

In my futuristic After Eden series, there are no hover-craft. Terrorism concerns prevent any future of flying cars in cities—except for quasi ones that simply hover above the street. However, in Liquid Cool, it’s quite the opposite. Hover-cars, hover-trucks, hover-bikes, jet-packed police—the sky is filled with something or someone flying around. Both are futuristic realities and believable, but completely opposite. Why? In Liquid Cool we don’t know everything yet–we’re patient to allow the world to unfold for us, but it’s always rains (yeah, like Blade Runner, but we know there’s something behind it), it seems the very wealthy people don’t even live on the planet anymore, and people “are stacked on top of each other”, so the monolith skyscraper towers indicate that space is a big commodity in this world. If that’s the case, then the expansion of hover-craft technology would be essential for people to live their lives.

Authority

No cyberpunk, even my reimagined version, would be true to sub-genre without some conflict between individual and “the system”. In cyberpunk books and movies of old, megacorporations seemed to replace governments altogether. Well, that’s what dystopian sci-fi writers imagined, countering the wonderful world government sci-fi of such icons as Star Trek’s Federation. But that was over 40 years ago; we know better. Corporations have gotten bigger, but nothing compared to what governments have ballooned into in not only their inability to stop spending money, but getting involved in every minutiae of our lives.

“…megacorporate gangsters and uber-government goons!”

Liquid Cool shows a world where megacorporations and governments fight for control over each other, with crime plotting in the shadows, trying to outdo both.

Cops & Robbers

In such a dangerous city, the police have to be deadly; otherwise, crime would truly run wild in the streets. In this way, the depiction of police authority differs from other dystopian sci-fi. Metropolis is no police state. The police are as “bad as they can be”, but it is directed solely at the really bad, bad guys and sanctioned by the public.

Cruz has never had even a speeding ticket in his adult life, but the moment he begins “playing” detective he has more run-ins with the police than imaginable. He even has a couple of officers–that he affectionately refers to as “Ebony and Ivory” (never saying to their faces, of course), take a special interest in him. Being called out to his office a couple of times to investigate homicides would do that.

There other divisions (or fiefdoms) in Police Central, such as CIC (Crime Information Center) and the Police Watch. Taking a page out of the headlines with the debate on whether we should equip police with body-cams. Well, in the futuristic Metropolis, they’ve done it, but as with most things done by the government, the results are not always as predicted.

Cruz’s relationship with the police evolves into one that’s complicated. You’ll see.

Villains

“…watch out for tech-tricksters, analog hustlers, and digital gangsters—psychos, samurais, and cyborgs aplenty.”

The kinds of clients Cruz will come across are endless, and some are crazy, but so are the criminals he will have to face off. I don’t want to spoil the fun by revealing the bad guys he’ll face, but we already know that in the Liquid Cool world there are a lot of cyborgs–strangely, not too much in the way of robots or androids…yet. There will also be other kinds of bad guys, as the sci-fi universe has a lot to offer.

 

What I Enjoyed Most About Writing LC?

It’s was a new sci-fi, futuristic world to build from scratch. The flash and neon, the sidewalk johnnies and psycho cyborgs, a private eye in a rainy 50-million plus super city with his fancy bright red hover-car. Unlike my other series, there is no ending. So I can continue the books as long as I want.

What’s next in Liquid Cool?

It is cyberpunk, even if it’s my retro, neo-retro, reimagined version. So I’d guess artificial intelligence, robots, space, and VR (virtual reality) are strong possibilities.

Get Your Free Copy of the Liquid Cool Prequel, These Mean Streets, Darkly Here Today.

Get Your Copy of the debut novel, Liquid Cool Here Today.

#Cyberpunk #SciFi #ScienceFiction #LiquidCool

The post World building: The (Sexy) Cyberpunk Way of Liquid Cool (Part II) appeared first on Official Website of Author Austin Dragon.

World building Part I: The (Sexy) Cyberpunk Way of Liquid Cool

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a WGF (Writers Guild Foundation) event here in Los Angeles. It was a live sit-down interview with writer-producer Frank Spotnitz. He produced/executive produced eight of the nine seasons of THE X-FILES, including writing more than 40 episodes and oversaw the writer’s room.  He worked on multiple series, but of particular interest to me was the amazing Amazon Prime series THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, which he wrote, executive produced, and developed. It is Amazon’s most viewed series ever. Look how the tables have turned within 50 years; in my opinion, the best film is not in the movie theaters, but on today’s television.

It was great to hear the behind-the-scenes of this writer’s life and the shows he’s been involved in. THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE is such a great series that at times I felt I was dreaming and kept asking myself, “how did a show so powerful get by Hollywood execs and I’m streaming it on Amazon Prime.” At the event, Mr. Spotnitz was introduced as The World Builder, creating complex series TV series. As a published author of several books now, one of the rewarding and challenging things of bringing a new story to life is creating that new world for the events to unfold and the characters to inhabit. Done well and your audience is immediately sucked in. Done badly and they will never engage with your characters, plot, or themes and simply walk away.

Liquid Cool is my third series, but a needed respite from my first—The After Eden Series. Both are extremely important to me, but while my first series is tragic (it is the events leading to World War III after all), Liquid Cool is just action-packed, funny, and…cool.

There is a state of affairs that afflicts many writers which I’ve never suffered from—writers’ block. My burden is the opposite—the ideas are always flowing. I simply have to set my mind to the new challenge and off it goes, consciously and subconsciously. Two years ago it was to create a new series to incorporate my other favorite genre besides sci-fi, the mystery detective thriller.

However, I didn’t want to do just any sci-fi, detective thriller. I wanted to do something unique. So how about the cyberpunk sub-genre that would allow me to relive and merge the ‘80s with the future? But I went a step further and “reimagined” the cyberpunk sub-genre, which some say died out in the early ‘90s. Great! Resurrect a “dead” sci-fi sub-genre. I’m up to the challenge.

How did I do with my debut novel? Here are some early 5-star reviews:

“Lots of shooting, lots of crazy maniacs, lots of action and fun!”
“I loved this book. It takes place in the future, and what a weird future.”
“A funny, intelligent (and sometimes crazy) main character…playing detective.”
“Cool and Smooth.”
“I had a hard time putting this book down to do things like sleeping and eating.”

Main Character / Cruz, Private Eye

One of the conventions in old cyberpunk was to make the main character an anti-hero, a not-so-good good guy, troubled, and anti-establishment. With notable exception of the character Walter White (played brilliantly by actor Bryan Cranston) in the BREAKING BAD TV series, I usually don’t like anti-heroes. Maybe, it’s fine for others, but I don’t root for bad guys, even the anti-hero kind. No, I was not going to do the anti-hero, but I wasn’t going to write a conventional hero either. Cruz was going to be a contrarian.

Main characters have to be interesting. I think of books, television, and movies as taking a trip to a new world, an interesting place, or a different time. It must be able to positively answer the following question for me, “Was this time well-spent?” The protagonist has to be interesting, otherwise, why is the reader wasting their time with him or her. There are a million other books out there for them to choose from.

Cruz is a classic hover-car restorer, ex-amateur street racer, and owner of his own self-built classic red hover-car—a Ford Pony (Think Steve McQueen in BULLITT). He’s a germophobe living in the grimy, 50-million plus super-city of Metropolis. He’s a contrarian—everyone wears dark colors; he wears a tan fedora and coat. Other cyberpunk stories would have the anti-hero as anti-police, but Cruz, back in the day, did his high school internship at Metropolis Police Central. If anything, he’s anti-people, though everyone likes Cruz. Then he gets flung into the world of private investigation and the fun really begins.

The Supporting Cast / Secondary Characters

“My dear Watson.”

I have no doubt that hundreds of years in the future, there will still be adaptations of Sherlock Holmes, originally created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and first published in 1887. I was a fan of Basil Rathbone portrayal of the movies of the30’s and 40s, then it was bested by the Jeremy Brett version of the ‘80s, and then surpassed again by the contemporary Benedict Cumberbatch UK version. Sherlock Holmes is unforgettable and eternal, but we will also always remember his loyal and trusted companion, Dr. John Watson.

Good supporting characters make good protagonists even better. Not mere side-kicks or simple background characters, but have significance separate from the hero or heroine, add to the story, and we are as happy to spend time with them as we are with our hero.

Liquid Cool is such an ensemble work. What an array of diverse and interesting characters we have in Cruz’s world.

China Doll/Dot – Cruz’s girlfriend and fiancée. She’s the consummate fashionista and businesswoman. Do you know what tragic, childhood event technically made her a cyborg?

Run-Time – Cruz’s lifelong best friend and self-made, multi-millionaire businessman. He’s politically-connected and even the Mayor of Metropolis will take his call. Run-Time was the one who indirectly started Cruz on his new private investigator career. Do you know who was murdered in the case?

Punch Judy/PJ – Cruz’s secretary. If you ever have to go into a back-alley fight, this ex-French gangmember and cyborg is who you want watching your back. Do you know the name of her old posh-gang in Paris?

Phishy – Cruz’s associate and former “frenemy”. This “slider” (you’ll get used to Liquid Cool’s vocabulary) is involved in all kinds of street deals, scams, and schemes. Did you know it’s Phishy who outfits Cruz with the tools of the private detective trade? Guns!

These are the supporting characters in Cruz’s world. As the series continues, we’ll meet more.

Interestingly, the Liquid Cool novel starts in the third person and vividly introduces all of the above—after opening up with the main crime of the book, of course. After that, the novel becomes first person Cruz all the way.

 

Next blog: World building: The (Sexy) Cyberpunk Way of Liquid Cool (Part II)

#ManIntheHighCastle #PhilipKDick #Cyberpunk #SciFi

The post World building Part I: The (Sexy) Cyberpunk Way of Liquid Cool appeared first on Official Website of Author Austin Dragon.

World building: The (Sexy) Cyberpunk Way of Liquid Cool (Part I)

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a WGF (Writers Guild Foundation) event here in Los Angeles. It was a live sit-down interview with writer-producer Frank Spotnitz. He produced/executive produced eight of the nine seasons of THE X-FILES, including writing more than 40 episodes and oversaw the writer’s room.  He worked on multiple series, but of particular interest to me was the amazing Amazon Prime series THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, which he wrote, executive produced, and developed. It is Amazon’s most viewed series ever. Look how the tables have turned within 50 years; in my opinion, the best film is not in the movie theaters, but on today’s television.

It was great to hear the behind-the-scenes of this writer’s life and the shows he’s been involved in. THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE is such a great series that at times I felt I was dreaming and kept asking myself, “how did a show so powerful get by Hollywood execs and I’m streaming it on Amazon Prime.” At the event, Mr. Spotnitz was introduced as The World Builder, creating complex series TV series. As a published author of several books now, one of the rewarding and challenging things of bringing a new story to life is creating that new world for the events to unfold and the characters to inhabit. Done well and your audience is immediately sucked in. Done badly and they will never engage with your characters, plot, or themes and simply walk away.

Liquid Cool is my third series, but a needed respite from my first—The After Eden Series. Both are extremely important to me, but while my first series is tragic (it is the events leading to World War III after all), Liquid Cool is just action-packed, funny, and…cool.

There is a state of affairs that afflicts many writers which I’ve never suffered from—writers’ block. My burden is the opposite—the ideas are always flowing. I simply have to set my mind to the new challenge and off it goes, consciously and subconsciously. Two years ago it was to create a new series to incorporate my other favorite genre besides sci-fi, the mystery detective thriller.

However, I didn’t want to do just any sci-fi, detective thriller. I wanted to do something unique. So how about the cyberpunk sub-genre that would allow me to relive and merge the ‘80s with the future? But I went a step further and “reimagined” the cyberpunk sub-genre, which some say died out in the early ‘90s. Great! Resurrect a “dead” sci-fi sub-genre. I’m up to the challenge.

How did I do with my debut novel? Here are some early 5-star reviews:

“Lots of shooting, lots of crazy maniacs, lots of action and fun!”
“I loved this book. It takes place in the future, and what a weird future.”
“A funny, intelligent (and sometimes crazy) main character…playing detective.”
“Cool and Smooth.”
“I had a hard time putting this book down to do things like sleeping and eating.”

Main Character / Cruz, Private Eye

One of the conventions in old cyberpunk was to make the main character an anti-hero, a not-so-good good guy, troubled, and anti-establishment. With notable exception of the character Walter White (played brilliantly by actor Bryan Cranston) in the BREAKING BAD TV series, I usually don’t like anti-heroes. Maybe, it’s fine for others, but I don’t root for bad guys, even the anti-hero kind. No, I was not going to do the anti-hero, but I wasn’t going to write a conventional hero either. Cruz was going to be a contrarian.

Main characters have to be interesting. I think of books, television, and movies as taking a trip to a new world, an interesting place, or a different time. It must be able to positively answer the following question for me, “Was this time well-spent?” The protagonist has to be interesting, otherwise, why is the reader wasting their time with him or her. There are a million other books out there for them to choose from.

Cruz is a classic hover-car restorer, ex-amateur street racer, and owner of his own self-built classic red hover-car—a Ford Pony (Think Steve McQueen in BULLITT). He’s a germophobe living in the grimy, 50-million plus super-city of Metropolis. He’s a contrarian—everyone wears dark colors; he wears a tan fedora and coat. Other cyberpunk stories would have the anti-hero as anti-police, but Cruz, back in the day, did his high school internship at Metropolis Police Central. If anything, he’s anti-people, though everyone likes Cruz. Then he gets flung into the world of private investigation and the fun really begins.

The Supporting Cast / Secondary Characters

“My dear Watson.”

I have no doubt that hundreds of years in the future, there will still be adaptations of Sherlock Holmes, originally created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and first published in 1887. I was a fan of Basil Rathbone portrayal of the movies of the30’s and 40s, then it was bested by the Jeremy Brett version of the ‘80s, and then surpassed again by the contemporary Benedict Cumberbatch UK version. Sherlock Holmes is unforgettable and eternal, but we will also always remember his loyal and trusted companion, Dr. John Watson.

Good supporting characters make good protagonists even better. Not mere side-kicks or simple background characters, but have significance separate from the hero or heroine, add to the story, and we are as happy to spend time with them as we are with our hero.

Liquid Cool is such an ensemble work. What an array of diverse and interesting characters we have in Cruz’s world.

China Doll/Dot – Cruz’s girlfriend and fiancée. She’s the consummate fashionista and businesswoman. Do you know what tragic, childhood event technically made her a cyborg?

Run-Time – Cruz’s lifelong best friend and self-made, multi-millionaire businessman. He’s politically-connected and even the Mayor of Metropolis will take his call. Run-Time was the one who indirectly started Cruz on his new private investigator career. Do you know who was murdered in the case?

Punch Judy/PJ – Cruz’s secretary. If you ever have to go into a back-alley fight, this ex-French gangmember and cyborg is who you want watching your back. Do you know the name of her old posh-gang in Paris?

Phishy – Cruz’s associate and former “frenemy”. This “slider” (you’ll get used to Liquid Cool’s vocabulary) is involved in all kinds of street deals, scams, and schemes. Did you know it’s Phishy who outfits Cruz with the tools of the private detective trade? Guns!

These are the supporting characters in Cruz’s world. As the series continues, we’ll meet more.

Interestingly, the Liquid Cool novel starts in the third person and vividly introduces all of the above—after opening up with the main crime of the book, of course. After that, the novel becomes first person Cruz all the way.

 

Next blog: World building: The (Sexy) Cyberpunk Way of Liquid Cool (Part II)

#ManIntheHighCastle #PhilipKDick #Cyberpunk #SciFi

The post World building: The (Sexy) Cyberpunk Way of Liquid Cool (Part I) appeared first on Official Website of Author Austin Dragon.

The Winners!

Hope you had a great Easter weekend!

Winners!

Last week we wrapped up our three week Great Scott! Kindle/Kobo Giveaway to celebrate the debut release of my new cyberpunk (sci-fi) detective series, Liquid Cool.

It was our most successful giveaway ever! Congratulations to the TWO lucky winners. Nathaniel L. won a Kindle Fire HD 6, and Cerys J. won a Kindle Paperwhite!

But wait…there’s more. In addition to the Giveaway, we had a “secret” contest that began on 24th. The first person to correctly answer our Liquid Cool questions would win an Amazon Kindle 7 free. We had a winner in less than an hour! Congratulations to Eleanor F.!

Thanks to all who participated!

The post The Winners! appeared first on Official Website of Author Austin Dragon.

“Great Scott!” March 2016 Kindles & Kobo Super Giveaway!

In our last giveaway we asked participants which Kindle we should give away next as we continue our celebration of the release of my debut cyberpunk detective thriller series, Liquid Cool. The Kindle Fire HD 6 and Kindle Paperwhite were by far the most popular choices. But what about our Canadian readers and fans?

Well, rather than trying to figure out which one to give away, we decided to let YOU pick! So it’s decided. TWO lucky winners will get to choose their prize–Amazon’s bestselling Kindle Fire HD 6 tablet or Kindle PaperWhite e-reader or the Kobo Glo HD tablet!  Our March 2016 Kindles and Kobo Super Giveaway begins Thursday, March 3rd and ends Wednesday, March 23rd!

Enter below for your chance to win!

 

Author Austin Dragon’s “Great Scott!” March 2016 Kindles & Kobo Giveaway

 

For those Leaving Comments on this page for the Giveaway, the question is:

What is Your Favorite Sci-Fi and Detective Movies. If Liquid Cool is a genre blend of sci-fi and detective thriller, name both your favorite science fiction and detective movie. (For example: Blade Runner + The Big Sleep)

 

#Win #FREE #Amazon #Kindle #KindleFire #KindlePaperWhite #Kobo #Giveaway

The post “Great Scott!” March 2016 Kindles & Kobo Super Giveaway! appeared first on Official Website of Author Austin Dragon.

The World of Liquid Cool

My “Blade Runner-ish” cyberpunk detective thriller series is here and I couldn’t be happier. Laser guns, jet-packs, hovercraft, cyborgs, and that’s just the first novel. To come will be robots and androids, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and lunar colonies. I feel like a little kid waiting for presents on Christmas Eve. Well, in this case, as the author, I’m Santa Claus and Christmas arrives when I say it does.

Liquid Cool is my third series, but it’s my first foray into both the cyberpunk and detective genres. It is also my first series that has no end. Each book is a new adventure of madness and allows me, as the author, to explore different aspects of the science fiction universe.

In my Cyberpunk Reimagined blog post last year, I talked about how my series would be different from standard cyberpunk.  But now the series is officially here, let’s talk about more about the world of Liquid Cool…

Metropolis. “It’s not a bad place, but it isn’t a good one either.” It is a super-city of two-hundred-story-plus monolith skyscrapers and over fifty million people. The skies are always dark, rainy, and filled with hovercraft traffic. People on the ground are always clad in rain slicker coats and glowing eyewear. That’s our introduction to the world of Liquid Cool—wet, dreary, routine, monotonous, and seemingly meaningless. However, there is always a lot more to this society than the immediately visible.

Power. In cyberpunk novels the power is often evil megacorporations which are either more powerful than government or have replaced government altogether. But again, this is my cyberpunk reimagined. That’s what authors felt back in the ‘80s. If anything, the trend is in the opposite direction. In my Liquid Cool world, both are equally powerful and at each other’s throats. It will be explained in more detail later, but think of the Cold War between the United States and the Old Soviet Union. That is the power here—uber-governments and megacorporations. But there is one more player.

“The Mean Streets”. That is part of the title of my Liquid Cool prequel. We learn that “mean streets” is the common slang for “crime” in this world. There are “good areas” and “bad ones” in any city. It must undoubtedly be true for the super-city of Metropolis—the rich districts and the poor ones; the working class and the perpetually unemployed class; the business and finance districts; City Hall, police and the rest of local government; and those “mean streets”. Our private detective, Cruz, has avoided these areas all his life and he’s man enough to admit he’s scared of them. But he’s a detective now and has to go where the cases take him. He’s avoided crime and criminals, but in Liquid Cool he gets shot at so many times by people from the mean streets and on the mean streets, we wonder if he will even make it to the end of our novel?

Cyborgs, robots, and androids. A recurring part of the Liquid Cool world will be the abundance of cyborgs. They come in all kinds of configurations–both legal and illegal (criminals). Cruz has to tangle with both. In this novel, we don’t see the robots and androids yet, but do get plenty of anti-robot sentiment from people (“Them robots are stealing our jobs!”) Future novels will be as heavy with robots as with cyborgs. It is both of these factors that will be the reason for the over-representation of the Japanese in this world; they are the “kings” of cybernetic and robotic production in the world and America is desperate to surpass them from its #2 standing.

Space. Do you know you get to see spaceships in Liquid Cool? Humans are in space in the Liquid Cool world—space colonies and lunar colonies. It’s all very indirect. We hear about Up-Top all the time, but are never quite sure exactly what it is until the end, and even then we’re not sure. We’ll learn more about these “spacemen” in Liquid Cool.

Politics. We will get our fill of politicians in Liquid Cool, but surprisingly there will be very little politics (as with my After Eden series). The politics in Liquid Cool is all about power, not political ideology. Oh, I’ll cleverly get my politically incorrect points in, but it will always be subtle. Cruz is not my any means political, but his best friend, Run-Time, as a leading Metropolis businessman is the one who introduces Cruz to this scene with both good and bad results.

Race and Ethnicity.  Think of New York on steroids. In most science fiction, there is almost never any ethnic diversity. We have Caucasians, but in Liquid Cool, it’s Italians, Russians, Jews, Irish, etc. In other science fiction you may see a black person or two; in Liquid Cool, you have black, Jamaican, West Indian, etc. In Liquid Cool you see everything—Lebanese, Chinese, Salvadoran, and Cruz is Puerto Rican. I just love that about the series–an extremely culturally diverse metropolitan city set centuries in the future. It’s genuine diversity not superficial tokenism and, more importantly, it is never a big deal. Again, something you don’t normally see.

Comedy. Liquid Cool is Blade Runner meets the Maltese Falcon (or The Big Sleep is my favorite Dashiell Hammett hard-boiled detective movie starring Humphrey Bogart).  There are gun battles with laser guns, fights with cyborgs, and all kinds of mayhem. But I’m warning you. You will burst out laughing more than once reading this novel. The situations that Cruz finds himself in are absolutely ridiculous, and the “cast of characters” around him only add to the comic relief.

All of the above and more to come in future novels make Liquid Cool a very special science fiction series indeed. Enjoy!

The Liquid Cool prequel: These Mean Streets, Darkly

Liquid Cool, The Cyberpunk Detective Series. (Novel #1)

#Cyberpunk #ScienceFiction #BladeRunner

 

What blog post/article would you like to see about the new Liquid Cool series?

The post The World of Liquid Cool appeared first on Official Website of Author Austin Dragon.

New Release! Liquid Cool (The Cyberpunk Detective Series)

The wait is over! My debut cyberpunk detective series, Liquid Cool is here! On Amazon and Kobo today; everywhere else tomorrow–Apple, Barnes & Noble, etc.–on Wednesday. The sci-fi/cyberpunk series has it all: mystery, action, and laughs. Enjoy!

(If you haven’t already, don’t forget to get the prequel short, These Means Streets, Darkly for FREE. Read it–just 50 pages–before you dive into the debut novel.)

The post New Release! Liquid Cool (The Cyberpunk Detective Series) appeared first on Official Website of Author Austin Dragon.

Valentine’s Day 2016 Kindle Fire Giveaway

We had so much fun with our giveaway last month, let’s do all over again.

To celebrate the long-awaited February 13th release of my debut cyberpunk detective thriller series, Liquid Cool, one lucky winner will get Amazon’s #1 bestselling Kindle Fire Tablet, 7″ Display, Wi-Fi, 8 GB, in Black! Our Kindle Fire Giveaway starts this Monday, February 1st and ends on Saturday, February 13th. Just in time for Valentine’s Day.

So enter below for your chance to win!

And for those Leaving Comments on this page, the question is simple:

Which Kindle do you think we should give away next time, and why?

 

Author Austin Dragon’s Valentine’s Day Kindle Fire Giveaway

 

#Win #FREE #Amazon #Kindle #Giveaway

The post Valentine’s Day 2016 Kindle Fire Giveaway appeared first on Official Website of Author Austin Dragon.