Austin Dragon's Blog, page 15

My July 2015 Summer Reading Offerings to You!

For those in America, I hope you had a great July 4th holiday!

Well, now that we’re back the theme for this month is Summer Reading! I’m featuring three selections for your consideration—two new and one re-release as part of my “triple-feature” campaign.

First is the latest of my ongoing After Eden science fiction series with Pure Conspiracy.

 

Pure Conspiracy (An After Eden Select Novel) is the companion novella in the After Eden science fiction and international thriller series by Austin Dragon—a dramatic mix of politics, religion, and intrigue. The year is 2096. Is there a plot to destroy the Faithers? Niccolo the Sicilian, tek-lords Goli and NIS, and Mr. Yang the ex-Yakuzu–Four men from four different Orders must find out no matter what it takes! But is there a larger conspiracy?–the three global superpowers (The United States, The Islamic Caliphate, and the Chinese-Indian Alliance), two new rising nations (The Russian Bloc and Brazil), or the Internationalists? Every apocalypse has a beginning. It all leads to the explosion of World War III—a hell never seen before!

I wrote this novel specifically as an introduction to the After Eden international, thriller series for new readers. It is a joy for existing readers and fans of the series too because we get to see the characters of the first three novels and get an introduction to characters of the not-yet-released fourth novel all in one book!

Now there are three main novels and three companion novellas in the After Eden Series. Pure Conspiracy hints at all that may be coming next in the saga. (Did you catch that it also introduced a key character and group of the fifth main After Eden novel?) We know how the saga ends—World War III—but we see how this apocalypse begins.

This is a dystopian science fiction series with strong political, cultural, and religious themes. The advancement of technology, both good and bad, is also a primary “character.”

 

Second is the re-release of the first story in my two-part After Eden Tek-Fall series, Metal Flesh. I just love the new cover! And it isn’t a new artist, but the same artist who I collaborated with to create this brand new image and it’s amazing.

Metal Flesh: Tek-Fall (Episode I) is the companion novella in the After Eden science fiction and international thriller series by Austin Dragon—a dramatic mix of politics, religion, and intrigue. The sci-fi, adventure follows the hunt for the elusive “Man Made Out of String.”  But who is this contract killer—or what is he? From the tek-cities of America to the Outlands of the Middle East, the sci-fi adventure thriller continues in the year 2093. Tek-World loves its artificial-intelligent mechanization, including robotic pets and ubiquitous drones. But humans have also created machines in their image—robots—using metal instead of flesh.

The Tek-Fall series is important to the After Eden saga in that it introduces two themes that will play a major—and disastrous—role in the coming World War III—‘thinking’ machines and man-made life-forms. Yes, A.I.-advanced, thinking robots and genetically–created creatures will be soldiers in this global war among the five superpowers.

 

Third and finally is the return to the genre that started it all for me a writer when I was a child—mystery! But to make things interesting I’m doing a hybrid—a cyberpunk detective series known as Liquid Cool. So I introduce the series with its prequel, These Mean Streets, Darkly.

 

If you want to get it free, become a VIP Readers’ Club Member. It will be rocketed to your email box this month ahead of the first Liquid Cool detective novel introducing exciting new characters in this dark, grimy, and rainy cyberpunk world.

 

#AfterEdenSeries #LiquidCool #Cyberpunk

The post My July 2015 Summer Reading Offerings to You! appeared first on Official Website of Author Austin Dragon.

Name Reveal!

My new cyberpunk detective story has a name–Liquid Cool!

Danger lurks around every corner in the fifty-million-plus over-city of Metropolis for our detective hero. It’s my reimagined take on the sci-fi sub-genre of cyberpunk. So is it retro neo-cyberpunk? Or Neo retro-cyberpunk? You decide. The novel and its prequel are on their way.

Enjoy!

#Cyberpunk #ScienceFiction #SciFi

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

Inspirational Artwork: My Upcoming Cyberpunk Series!

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so I’m going to just display some of the inspirational artwork I’m been collecting for my upcoming cyberpunk detective series. I have them all my Pinterest board HERE.

What do you think?

 

 

#SciFi #ScienceFiction #Cyberpunk #Artwork #Pinterest

The post Inspirational Artwork: My Upcoming Cyberpunk Series! appeared first on Official Website of Author Austin Dragon.

The Two-Headed Snake Part II: Uber-Governments

Sir Ridley Scott’s 1984 Apple Commercial. — one of greatest commercials of all time (and before he was ‘Sir’)

“A Garden of Pure Ideology…We Are One People…We Shall Prevail!”

 

Now we’re in a world that has depth and reality to me. Not a cyberpunk universe of just evil mega-corporations. A complex cyberpunk universe of mega-corporations and uber-governments. Besides not predicting the cell-phone/smartphone, isn’t that the big oversight of old cyberpunk. But just as they couldn’t predict Steve Jobs, they couldn’t have predicted how massive government would grow under both Democratic and Republic administrations. It is actually quite astonishing and scary when you stop think about it. I would argue the size government to be scarier than any dastardly mega-corporation of fiction, namely because the latter is real.

However, despite my own biases, my upcoming cyberpunk series will have plenty of bad guys in the shadows, good guys in the overcast light, but a lot of grays. Not a detente between the United States and the Soviet Union as in the 1980s, but a detente between the mega-corporations and the uber-government with average people squeezed in between. That’s a world I’m interested in and can write my detective story in. That’s a world I can get readers excited about.

I said I wanted to put a new spin on the cyberpunk esthetic. What else will you find in this new re-imagining of the cyberpunk universe besides cyborgs and digital samurais?

#Cyberpunk #ScienceFiction

The post The Two-Headed Snake Part II: Uber-Governments appeared first on Official Website of Author Austin Dragon.

The Two-Headed Snake Part I: Mega-Corporations

Alien. Robo-Cop. Just a couple of the science-fiction movies where dastardly mega-corporations rule. But that rule is never benevolent–always for profit and power. There is never a concern for the average Joe or Jane on the street. Cyberpunk fiction amplified the portrayal of the corporation (maybe, even capitalism) as the bad guy.

Well, I have never been anti-capitalist. I knew people who escaped from Communist countries and I lived for a year in a socialist one, which I enjoyed but would never live there permanently. Capitalism will never be perfect, but it’s superior to any other form of government. As is always the case, the problem is bad people, not that the system is bad. That is also the case with corporations–most good, some bad, and many in-between, just like people.

But with my new cyberpunk detective series, I want to put a new spin on things. What will my re-imagining of mega-corporations in a cyberpunk universe be? What do you think it will be?

#Cyberpunk #ScienceFiction

The post The Two-Headed Snake Part I: Mega-Corporations appeared first on Official Website of Author Austin Dragon.

Serious Science Fiction: Robots Are Going to Steal Your Job!

For June, 2015 I’m going to continue with cyberpunk as this month’s theme, that sub-genre of science fiction that has a very grim, dark, seedy view of our collective future. I will soon publish my take on the sub-genre which I outlined in my blog post last month titled: Cyberpunk Re-imagined – you can click HERE to view it. Basically, rather than imagine our future from the 1980s, I’d take our knowledge from 2015 and go back in time to the 1980s and imagine (or re-imagine) our future. To coin my own phrase: Retro Neo-Cyberpunk, or should I call it Neo Retro-Cyberpunk?

In all my books, serious issues and themes are a foundation and my upcoming cyberpunk, detective series will be no different. It will explore the society, in all its glory, quirks, and darkness like I so often do. One of those foundational themes that will run through the entire series is the impact of automation on the job market. Put another way: How many of our jobs will be “stolen” from us by machines?

Here’s a great article from Vivek Wadhwa, a technology entrepreneur, author, and academic: We’re Heading into a Jobless Future, No Matter What the Government Does.

I remember the days when you’d go to the mall here in Los Angeles, drive in, do your shopping, and drive out to pay the parking attendants in their tiny booths. They’re all gone. I can’t even remember when it happened, a decade ago? Your only interaction now is with machines, period. All those jobs are gone and they’ll never come back.

Some might say, “Good. Automation should eliminate unskilled jobs” or “they’ll find other jobs.” But even when I was a kid in the ‘80s, I thought this was a bit of silly thinking. Do we really believe that there will ever be a day that all the unskilled workers of the world will just get up and get skilled ones? They said this back at the time of the Industrial Revolution (about 1760 to around 1860). It hasn’t happened yet, but I don’t have to be able to see the future to know that it never will. There will always be unskilled jobs and unskilled workers. But what of it? Are skilled workers superior to unskilled workers? Are we as a society saying that unskilled work has no value? I don’t and have never thought so. All work can have value.

Usually, those who don’t care about people losing their jobs to growing automation are those who feel their jobs are secure. However, that is far from true. Understand that I myself am by no means a Luddite—my first computer in the late 80s, took programming classes in high school, and can figure out most consumer gadgets without the manual. But I also care about the impact of our ‘toys’ on us as human beings. The reality is that most jobs—unskilled and skilled—done by humans can be eliminated by machines; in fact, nearly all. Here’s another great article on the subject: Robots Bad News for Humans, Study Says by Victoria Stilwell.

That is the troubling aspect that society has not grappled with, but will soon be forced to deal with. What jobs should machines be allowed to take from us?

Such inevitability will radically change our world and us. Why an eight-hour work day? Why a five-day work week? Both are throwbacks to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. How about a twenty-hour work week? What the heck will people do with all this free time? I know the answer and actually so do you. Idleness in humans has never led to anything good and that’s the future we are heading to.

In the Star Trek Universe, humans evolve and abandon money, conflict, violence, and all those bad things. Instead they dedicate themselves to the “nobler things in life”—bettering themselves and the society. I am a Star Trek fan, but that is simply ridiculous.  We actually have large pockets in America filled with “idle” people with all their real needs provided for by the government—they’re euphemistically called “inner cities.” Is anyone turning to nobler pursuits? We must never confuse theory (what we want to happen) with reality (what actually happens).

Some people are scared of the rise of drones, others the growing use of AI (artificial intelligence), but leaving both aside, the fear should be what we are doing to our own humanity because of our constant automation of everything—the rise of the machines (sorry for the Terminator reference).

In my current After Eden series, I only touch upon this concept of machines doing most of the jobs. The result is a society consumed by drugs, sex, vid-games (video games), and spontaneous suicide. All this when they’re not persecuting one group or another. But in my new upcoming cyberpunk series, I directly explore this concept. What happens to people when the robots do all the work and only thing people have to do is sit back and…exist?

#Cyberpunk #ScienceFiction #Robots #Jobs

The post Serious Science Fiction: Robots Are Going to Steal Your Job! appeared first on Official Website of Author Austin Dragon.

My Guest Post at Book Obsessed

I want to thank Cécile Sune at her blog Book Obsessed for having me as a guest blogger. It ties in very nicely with my own website’s theme for May–cyberpunk! My guest blog touches on the competing views within science fiction–utopian (ie., Star Trek) versus dystopian (most of the YA books and movies these days).

Here’s the link to my guest post Future Shock: Paradise or Purgatory?

 

#SciFi #Guestblog #Guestpost

The post My Guest Post at Book Obsessed appeared first on Official Website of Author Austin Dragon.

My Cyberpunk Detective Novel

The very first full novel I ever wrote was a mystery. Actually I still have the four of them, written at the end of elementary school and into middle school. (Maybe, I’ll publish them as children’s books) But even back then I loved a good mystery (I was a Hardy Boys reading fanatic), but also loved science fiction to the point that I was actually thinking of joining NASA when I grew up.

In my new series, I get to combine the best of both worlds–a hard-boiled detective in a cyberpunk world. Look at this photo of the late, great Humphrey Bogart.

As a movie buff, I’ve seen more mystery and detective movies and television shows than I can count, but as an on-screen detective, Bogart still—seventy years later—still ranks as one of the best.

As a movie buff, I always did like film noir that really elevated black-and-white filming to an art form. The shots and shadows were like another character of the movie to create a gritty world more real than real. The world of cyberpunk is far from only black and white. The colors are endless, bold, and in your face, but it’s all muted its own shadows of mega skyscrapers, ever-dim skies, and much of the time…the rain. The perfect world to create a neo-noir setting for my detective; his friends, “frenemies,” and enemies; assorted clients, and very bad guys. A world filled with a lot of high-tech and a lot of low lives.

So what do you have to look forward to? A Sam Spade-like character with a laser pistol in hand facing off cyborg thugs, corporatist king-pins, and government police soldiers? Maybe. It will be entertaining and true to the cyberpunk genre. But it will also be profoundly different in the best possible way.

Should I talk about the series’ protagonist and some of the main characters in the next post?

#Cyberpunk #Detective #Mystery

The post My Cyberpunk Detective Novel appeared first on Official Website of Author Austin Dragon.

Cyberpunk Re-Imagined

Yes, I’m writing a new science fiction series in a favorite sub-genre called cyberpunk. Authors like Philip K. Dick and William Gibson are the most famous; the singular greatest movie of the genre is Ridley’s Scott’s classic Blade Runner from 1982. A few months back, I surveyed my own list of readers and fans to be surprised by the interest in cyberpunk science fiction. In fact, I was surprised by how often the genre is still regarded when its golden years, at least in Hollywood ended back around 1985—that’s thirty years ago now—though interest exploded again with the Matrix trilogy, but the first Matrix movie was sixteen years ago.

Why the interest in this category of science fiction? Until it came on the scene, most of the science fiction was utopian, “Star Trekian,” man and society evolving into something better.  To many, even the fans of Star Trek, that seemed wishful thinking at best. Remember that back in the ‘80s we were still in the Cold War—America versus the Soviet Union. Science fiction writers can show us the hopeful, but they can also show us versions of the likely, or what they feel to be likely based on the current society. Enter cyberpunk and dystopian science fiction.

The darker side of science fiction is not new. Mark Shelley gave us the first science fiction novel with Frankenstein in 1818 and it was a dark and frightening one. Classic science fiction on television like the Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits more often than not showed very dystopian futures and science (or man) gone awry. But cyberpunk gave us a new twist that endeared not only me, but millions of others and has never completely gone away.

With my new cyberpunk series, I put my on own twist on the sub-genre. How? Construct a future from the current time into a cyberpunkish future. Nope. That’s not particularly creative in my mind. I wanted to re-imagine cyberpunk not as a writer in the ‘80s projecting out to 2015 and beyond. I would be a writer from that 2015 and beyond, pretend I was back in the ‘80s, and write a different dystopian future. Here’s a list of the signature elements of the old cyberpunk and how my new cyberpunk series will be different and refreshing:

1) Old = Mega-corporations. New = Mega-corporations and Uber-governments.

This has not only been a staple of cyberpunk, but many books and movies, especially conspiracy ones. These ubiquitous, all-powerful mega-corporations controlled governments or replaced them altogether.  Well, this is not the ‘80s and it’s okay to feature the dastardly mega-corporation like the Weyland Yutani Corporation from the Alien movies, but we’re missing the big, fat elephant in the room—government! My series has its own Cold War but the antagonists are between mega-corporations and uber-governments—both vying for ultimate control. But interestingly, many people fighting to make sure neither one ever does.

2) Old = Japan rules the world. New = Heavy Asian influence, including cool samurai swords.

Back in the ‘80s, there was also something else happening on the economic stage: the rise of Japan as a major economic global power. The first Die Hard movie, Rising Sun (Michael Crichton’s blockbuster book that became a mediocre movie), and Gung Ho. Americans really did think Japan was going to take over economically and cyberpunk seemed to incorporate this fear. Japan plays a major role in my series because of specific business ventures. But the world of my series will read more like that of the old accounts of the New York urban, ethnic melting pot with one ethnic group dominating specific areas or industries, including China Town and Old Harlem. As for Japanese samurai swords, they’re just cool so they’re in.

3) Old = Digital rules. New = Analog versus digital.

Much of the science fiction of that era was very prophetic. The big thing they missed was the pervasiveness of the cell phone/smart-phone, but no one could predict Steve Job so that can be forgiven.  Also, since those writers were in the dawn of the computer age, they correctly foresaw past the Analog Age to the Digital Age, even if their view of digital was stuck in an old Atari game framework (a la the movie Johnny Mnemonic). The power of digital technology is quite astonishing, but so have the dangers. Hackers have gotten into the credit card records of major companies and even into the secret systems the United States government. Though the debate is over, we are in the digital age and we’re never going back to the analog age, but my series will do an interesting thing. It will have both technologies in its world fighting it out in the consumer marketplace and will provide a means to have some poignant examinations of technology as it relates to our daily lives.

4) Old = Robots, cyborgs and synthetic humans. New = No synthetic humans, but robots and cyborgs galore.

In the next book of my current After Eden series, there will be a scientific group that sets out to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that there is no God. They end up (according to them) doing quite the opposite. In cyberpunk stories, man is able to create biological humans and androids indistinguishable from actual humans. Man is also able to create robots with such advanced artificial intelligence that they inevitably have to be classified as sentient beings. I personally believe we never will be able to create life. Unfortunately, I believe we will be able to cheat and create all kinds of things that we shouldn’t and will pay a heavy price for it. Futurist and theoretical physicist Michio Kaku said it best when he described our most advanced robots as having “the intelligence of a retarded cockroach.” On the machine side, we will continue to advance, but to get to the point of sentience, I think not. That is not say that we won’t turn over large parts of our life to some version of artificial intelligence—oops, oh wait, too late, we already do—and will continue to expand that. We will also advance our cybernetic technology. I do look forward to that day when we can say we’ve eliminated paralysis, blindness, and deafness from the world. Yes, we will achieve those things. “Brain-reading” technology is science fact, not science fiction anymore. But plugging brains into machines and downloading a person’s life essence into a robot will remain science fiction. In my cyberpunk series, they spend no time on notions of creating life, but in the practical (and profitable) realm of improving life through technology, especially mechanical. The “higher end” fixes involving genetic engineering and manipulation is reserved for the Upper Class.

5) Old = Flying cars. New = Well, yea!

There are many, many reasons why even if we could make the technology economically sound that we would never have the flying cars as seen the Fifth Element movie or any of the Star Wars films. For one simple word: terrorism. In my new series, they find a way to make it feasible for the simple reason that they have no choice. They just too many people packed into their urban cities that roads have to be the skies. There are also other peculiarities of their metropolis that make this path the one their society embraces which doesn’t apply to us.

6) Old = A dark and rainy world. New = Same, but for different reasons.

The movie Blade Runner has done more to burn an image of an authentic cyberpunk world into our minds than any other. It’s strange because the movie was not a box office success when it was first released, but became the cult classic from…video and DVD rental stores (remember those). I keep this tenet but the reasons are different. In cyberpunk stories of old, the dark skies and constant rain speak to environmental damage of us humans. In my series, the reasons are quite different and have nothing to do with environmental catastrophe but from millennium old struggles of social class.

But even separate from the reason for the look of a cyberpunk world is the fact it fits the cyberpunk underlying theme of “high tech and low life” – a slummy, grimy, neo-noir landscape where the powerful lord over the powerless people (automatons) below.

This is all part of the world of my upcoming cyberpunk detective series.  Name reveal coming soon as well as the amazing cover!

If you aren’t already a VIP member, sign up to my list HERE and get the ebook prequel as soon as it’s available.

#Cyberpunk #ScienceFiction #BladeRunner

The post Cyberpunk Re-Imagined appeared first on Official Website of Author Austin Dragon.

Pure Conspiracy and the After Eden Series: Advocacy Fiction?

Well, I’m back from my writer’s “vacation.” 

After not writing a word of fiction in over fifteen years, what made me pick up the pen (or the laptop) in 2011 with my first novel, Thy Kingdom Fall? Was it an idea tormenting me to put it to paper? Was I burning to make a point? A story was dying to be told from within the depths of my creative mind, but it actually was one of many. The uniqueness of the After Eden Series is that it attempts to do something different in science fiction. It attempts to directly link current affairs and project them out, in this case, seventy-plus years in the future. I have been very good at predicting trends all my life and doing so with this series shows a very realistic and dystopian world.

So every dystopian saga has an underdog. What group would be the underdogs in such a futuristic world? One doesn’t have to manufacture them. They already exist—the religious people.

Let me back up a bit. As someone who has been in politics for a long time (going from one side to another), I learned a long time that different backgrounds and ideologies see very different things when looking at an identical set of facts. It amazes me that there is still even a United States of America because the activists and elites of these two sides are truly incompatible.

Here is a quick snapshot of my worldview. I was born in the super-diverse New York. I live in the super diverse Los Angeles. And I lived in Paris, France for an entire year. I have been immersed in the melting pot of the world for forty years. I have a very simple assessment of people: good people and bad people come in all races, ethnicities, religions (or lack thereof), nationalities, classes, political ideologies, and both genders. Good guys and bad guys change over time and does those who are persecuted.

Two major themes exist in the After Eden saga: America will become a majority atheistic nation and the persecution against religious Americans will grow. Europe will become a majority Islamic region and the remaining secular Europeans will have to flee. But guess what? Though it features heavily in this science fiction series, it is not science fiction. It’s fact. The transformation is happening before our own eyes.

No, this is by no means what I want to happen. American Christians have proven to be, in the last twenty years, politically pathetic in the public square (I’m a Christian by the way) and one would think the growing cultural and political attacks would light a fire under them to at least push back in some way, after all, Christians make up over 80% of the population, but nothing doing. We cannot even get a public show of condemnation for the persecution, enslavement, rape and murder of Christians at the hands of radical Islam all over the world. Christian leaders are all hiding under their desks.

The Jewish state of Israel seems to have a genetic inability to combat the lies spread about its nation around the world. I don’t mean the Muslim world, but  I’m speaking specifically about America and Europe; especially on college campuses. If Israel can’t do this now, even in the face of naked anti-Semitism and actual murder, then what do they plan to do when all of Western Europe becomes Islamic in about the next quarter century? This is not my own personal political ideology or pessimism, it is simple math: Islamic Europeans and immigrants have lots of kids, secular Europeans don’t. The Muslims that will “transform” Western Europe are already born; they’re all sweet little children now, but babies grow up and the Islam they are being exposed to is not the “nice” kind.

So is After Eden supposed to be advocacy fiction?

I thought of that the other day, but the answer is no, even though it can be used as such. My main point of the series is that the future will not be so wonderful after all. America becoming anti-religious and Europe falling to radical Islam are only two of a long list of things that those of us living today, regardless of politics, religion (or not), will be quite disturbed by. By looking at ourselves and our current culture, the signs of what is to come is already here.

So is After Eden religious fiction? Or religious science fiction?

That is up to you to decide. For me, it is an international science fiction thriller (though I will speak more on this in my next blog post). The After Eden saga ends with World War III in which religion is a major part–the Islamic superpower wishes to make the entire world Islamic and two anti-religious atheist superpowers (America is one) wish to wipe religion from the entire world. All the technological advances (consumer, robotic, cybernetic, biological, genetic, etc.) will be used in this global Armageddon.

If there is any point I wish to make, it would be as a warning to both religious and atheists alike. Jews and Christians better wake up and stop the cultural, political, and murderous persecution of their peoples. Atheists need to reign in their crazy, anti-religious atheist zealots (numerically small in total number but still have tremendous political power), and Muslims better have their Reformation within their religion just as Jews and Christians did. It is the absence of all three of these things, not Global Warming, that will have catastrophic consequences for the entire planet. The After Eden Series is fiction. But sadly, I don’t believe much of it will stay that way.

[This is my first #WordSmack blog post–articles with an edge]

#AfterEdenSeries #Dystopian #Religion

The post Pure Conspiracy and the After Eden Series: Advocacy Fiction? appeared first on Official Website of Author Austin Dragon.