C.L. Walker's Blog, page 3

New Release: Dead Men Season 1

Dead Men Season 1 is out in the wild.

I've spoken about this one at length already, so I'll just say that I'm pleased this is out now.

I really like the characters and the world. I like the pulpy action of it. I like the links it has to the Isaac's Story series, despite the difference in tone. I like Captain West.

Amazon is having some problems at the moment, so the description on the product page is screwed, which is awesome. Updates just aren't going through. This means anyone fin...

Workerless Workforce: Feasibility (in my fiction anyway)

How likely is my world?

A core concept of the world of Isaac's Story: London is the automation of everything. All physical labour is done by machines (except combat) and expert systems are able to do most of the knowledge work as well. By the time of The City (book 3) they're even taking over the creative industries.


Let's start with the physical: Could machines really take over all physical labour?

There is nothing a human can physically do that can't be done by a machine. Today we need special...

Advice, or something that looks like it

How am I doing: Editing. So much editing.

No, I asked how, not what: Edits. Just...so many edits.

I'm only barely coherent on this blog-shaped thing at the best of times. I could write pages and pages of stuff about my books, the writing process, the weird shiver of pleasure I get when I hit publish on a paperback, or the awesomeness of holding that paperback in my hands.

(Also, the more awesome feeling of knowing there are complete strangers, out there in the real world, who have bought those p...

Science Fiction Serials - Pros and Cons

As a few people have noticed, I’ve finally put up Dead Men Episode 7. I have no excuse for the delay beyond what I mentioned in the last post: The world needed me, and I rose to the occasion. I’m a superhero (In that I wear my underwear on the outside and lurk in the shadows).

There’s one more episode to go before this season is done. I’ll try to get it out there without a delay.

I wrote Dead Men for two reasons. First, I wanted to publish something more regularly and this seemed to be a way to...

Holding Pattern; Assembling Worlds.

Hi. I’m the guy who normally chats shit in this space. You may have noticed that no shit chatting has been taking place lately. This is because I’m busy.

I’m on a deathmarch to get edits done on book 3 of Isaac’s Story: London (The City), as well as finishing the last two episodes of Dead Men. Both of these are almost done, but then I have to jump into the edits on book 4 of Isaac’s Story: London (The Line), and put together Season 1 of Dead Men.

Also the real world demands my attention, becaus...

On Uplifted Humans. Or Why Cyber-Depp Doesn't Make Any Sense

Last week I did a little review of Transcendence, starring Cyber-Depp. In it I said the movie didn’t make sense to me because there is no world where Cyber-Depp gets beaten by normal people, let alone taken by surprise when they attack. I’m going to expand on my judgement.

Imagine you’ve got a chimp in your lab (I assume you have a lab, of course). You make this chimp smarter using science-magic (the best kind of magic), increasing its intelligence until you can’t really call it an it anymore....

Movie Review: Transcendence

There are so many things in this movie that are wrong. There’s a big one that really ruined it for me (and, it seems, me alone), but we’ll go through a couple of other things first.

In this movie Johnny Depp dies after being shot with a radiation bullet by some anti-technology terrorists. His wife and his friend scan his brain and they manage to boot him up in a computer, apparently in part thanks to a quantum processor.

At this point we are clearly meant to be rooting for him, bec...

I Miss Bookstores

I haven’t been to a bookstore in years. (Bookstores are one of those places with physical books lining the walls. No, not the library, the other one. You know, like video stores, but for books. Video stores? They’re like Netflix, but they don’t have what you want and they’re too expensive.)

I used to love bookstores. When I first moved to London I worked a little way up the road from a bunch of them, and as I started work quite late in the morning I had time to go browsing. I didn’t have any...

Openings: The Bridge

Here's another opening. This time it's The Bridge

Click Read More to...read more.
Chapter 1

The office beyond the stationery cupboard was silent. Howard could almost fool himself into believing the threat had passed, that the tank had left, or never been there to begin with.

‘This isn’t happening,’ Howard whispered, squeezing his eyes shut and trying to block out the world. ‘I’m at my desk. This is a dream.’

‘Then why are you whispering?’ The runes tattooed on the angel's face read "Not a re...

Openings: The Algorithm

Here's the opening to my new novel, The Algorithm.

Click Read More to...read more.
Chapter 1

Screens filled the air around Jon’s head. They jostled each other for attention, oblivious to their relative importance, only wanting more time with his eyes on them.

He reached up and dragged a smaller one closer, almost-but-not-quite touching it, causing the others to rotate like stars falling into a black hole. The screen showed the progress of a smaller hack, an information gathering algorithm re...