An “evergreen book” and series…
After a quick review of my oeuvre recently (I often do this to avoid repetition, for example), I had to wonder, “Did I really write that?” Some readers might think that’s just an old scientist being nostalgic about his research papers written long ago during an effectively previous lifetime. But I bet if you’re reading this blog post, you’re thinking about the later version of Steven M. Moore, this crazy author of mystery, thriller, and sci-fi stories.
One of my favorite novels in that fictional oeuvre is The Midas Bomb, the first book in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series (and that’s also one of my favorite series). In this novel, the reader meets NYPD homicide detectives Rolando Castilblanco and Dao-Ming Chen for the first time in a very prescient story. Why prescient?
The Midas Bomb was first published in 2009, just after the bank collapses of 2008; it was my very first mystery/thriller (my previous works were both sci-fi thrillers). Set in what at the time was the future world of 2014 (i.e., six years in my future), it soon became the beginning of a fictional timeline of alternate reality through necessity, my “future history” extended super-series. (That fictional timeline now contains several additional series: “Esther Brookstone Art Detective,” “Inspector Steve Morgan Trilogy,” “Clones and Mutants Trilogy,” and “The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy,” along with the bridge books The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan, Soldiers of God, and Rogue Planet.)
I rewrote and republished a second edition of The Midas Bomb in 2015 with few changes but making an effort to match the style of the following books in the series (where Castilblanco is in first person), so, by that time, events between 2008 and 2014 had become real history. However, The Midas Bomb still remains a prescient tale!
Today’s readers will find in this novel some logical predictions about what’s now occurring in Trump’s second term: Yes, Putin’s a monstrous villain; yes, terrorism’s still a quintessential threat after 9/11; and yes, ICE is putting fear into the hearts of illegal immigrants and separating them from their families. New readers won’t find a crazy NYC mayoral race, though. (Right now, if I lived in the city, I’d probably be voting for Sliwa only because the other three are so bad!) I couldn’t imagine everything that has gone wrong, but I didn’t do too badly!
Readers will find an attempted presidential assassination. They will also find a NYC plagued by crime and violence due to budget restrictions and lack of qualified NYPD personnel. But what does that damn title mean? Maybe readers still wonder about that?
FYI: The Midas Bomb is one of my best titles…if not the best. That’s because those three words completely summarize the main plot! (I’ll leave to future readers the happy chore of figuring out how it does that.)
Some of my titles frankly suck. Come Dance a Cumbia…with Stars in Your Hand!, the title of the third novel in the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy,” is quite a stretch; appropriate and summarizing, yes, but far too long! Angels Need Not Apply isn’t too shabby, though, for the second “Chen and Castilbanco” title.
All of my “evergreen books,” a class that includes all my oldies, are as fresh and current as the day I wrote them, but The Midas Bomb is the evergreen book par excellence because it predicts an imagined and truly ugly fascist future that’s far too close to what has actually occurred in our very crazy and dangerous real world. For that reason, The Midas Bomb will keep its new readers turning the pages; and those who have already read it, might want to do so again!
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Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
