It happens. Companies competing to monetize space? Yeah, that’s Boeing vs. Space-X at least, with the latter winning now, but don’t forget European, Chinese, Indian, Japanese, and other companies. Star Trek communicators? Smart phones can do almost everything Captain Kirk’s device could, although he never had AI on it and you can. (In fact, it will soon be on new iPhones whether you want it or not!) Comsats? Arthur C. Clarke predicted them, but he couldn’t have imagined Elon Musk littering valuable real estate in Earth’s orbital space with his clouds of tiny comsats. Worldwide pandemics? Michael Crichton imagined an alien one in the Andromeda Strain, but Covid proved that human beings can manage to create that without any help from aliens. (And Covid was even bioengineered if you believe it came from that lab in Wuhan, China.)

Surviving a worldwide plague was the theme of The Last Humans, the first novel in my trilogy, “The Last Humans.” It’s yet another example of sci-fi becoming sci-fact, as discussed in the NY Times (9/10/2024) article “10,000 Feet Up, Scientists Found Hundreds of Airborne Microbes,” with the subtitle “Hints that winds may help spread diseases around the world.” That novel’s prediction that a US enemy’s bioengineered virus now unfortunately seems entirely possible. It also means that even the short propagation time it took for Covid to infect the planet can even be shortened quite a bit as the contagion rides in the prevailing winds…like in the novel! Who knows what contagions our enemies are cooking up right now? I made an extrapolation from current science to create a story…and a warning, but we might not be lucky enough to be saved by new vaccine technology (mRNA) in the future. Or will anti-vaxers come to power and ban all vaccines like Robert Kennedy Jr. wants, giving humanity a death sentence if any future contagion is unleashed?

Of course, warnings from sci-fi don’t need to become sci-fact to be useful. Another warning in that first novel of my trilogy (with repercussions there and in the two following novels) was about water management and how massive fires make it even more difficult. 2024 is beginning to look like it will be the worst year in Earth’s history for climate problems, but it was already bad in 2019 when the first novel was published…bad enough for me to make some bold predictions!

Another example of sci-fi becoming sci-fact: I generally treat AI as a technology that’s helpful for humans in my sci-fi tales, but not always. Current AI might be artificial, but it’s not intelligence. True AI can be damn scary (just consider HAL in 2001 and the machines’ takeover in the Terminator series). In combination with other technologies, it might become even scarier. (A. B. Carolan’s Mind Games considers androids with ESP. Now that’s scary!)

Sci-fi plots often are extrapolations of current science…or even the same current science used in an evil manner. The threat of nuclear war, an old one, is often a theme. It’s considered in the third novel of my trilogy, Menace from Moscow. Perhaps we should pay more attention to these warnings from sci-fi authors?

***

Comments are always welcome. (Please follow the rules listed on the “Join the Conversation” web page.)

“The Last Humans” trilogy. A bioengineered virus spreads around Earth and kills billions. An ex-USN SAR and LA County Sheriff’s forensics diver survives and creates a future for her blended family after many adventures in what’s left of the US and two countries overseas. These three post-apocalyptic sci-fi novels The Last Humans, A New Dawn, and Menace from Moscow, blend together warnings about global warming, biological and nuclear warfare, and failed political systems like fascism that will make you wonder about humanity’s future. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold. (The first novel is also available in print format.)

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

[Note from Steve: On this day of remembrance, it’s difficult for me to post just about anything related to the business of publishing books. NYC is the the book-publishing capital of the world, but it’s also where the worst terrorist attack on complete innocents occurred on this day back in 2001 about when I was thinking seriously of retiring from my day-job to write full-time. We lost a dear family member on that terrible day (his eulogy is found in my first published novel, Full Medical); we also lost several friends and colleagues. Terrorists are sick, subhuman fanatics, but let’s remember all their innocent victims today. Read on, if you think it will help you get through the day. Writing what follows was therapeutic for me, so please bear with me.]

***

Every so often, I google “Steven M Moore” to see how well that search engine has kept up with this blog and my publishing efforts. It’s often enlightening. (For example, these blog articles often are listed, but never those from my political blog. Maybe that’s not surprising? Some social media sites claim to be apolitical, which now often means, “Don’t promote anything that appears like a political statement.” Or, it can also mean, “We don’t promote anything that’s progressive because we Silicon Valley VIPs are apolitical fascists!” Take your pick.)

In this process of rediscovering my internet presence, I’ve concluded that when I started my publishing career back in 2006 (with Full Medical)—that was also when I started this website—I should have created a pen name. (You might have realized that I finally got one, but it’s only used for my YA writing.) There are too many Steve Moores around; even too many Steven M. Moores.

People often quote Smith as the most common surname (Jack Smith is now a notable one!), but Moore is right up there. So’s the first name Steve or Steven (compared to Stephen). So you’ll find Steven Moores who are critics, economists, felons, pediatricians, politicians, and fiction and non-fiction writers. On the internet, I compete with all of them. As far as book promotion goes, that means you can sometimes peruse ten pages of Google output and still find references to me and my oeuvre (more blog posts now than books, unfortunately).

After publishing forty-plus books, it’s a bit too late for me to change! In fact, the time to choose a pen name was before I published the sci-fi thriller Full Medical. Maybe that mistake is the main cause of my anemic sales figures? I don’t believe so. I think it’s more because people won’t find any of my stories by googling “sci-fi,” “thrillers,” or “mysteries.” Google probably also pays more attention to books published by the old mares and stallions in the Big Five’s stables (i.e., by those old, formulaic authors writing for the big publishing conglomerates, what those publishers consider “sure bets” in the publishing horse race).

No, I can’t blame the lack of a pen name for my low sales figures. That lack may contribute, but there are many other factors, including competition, of course. Now, with more books being published than ever before—self-published, small press, and Big Five conglomerates’ books—and fewer people reading books—computer games, streaming video, and social media numbing the minds of people and pacifying them–publishing has become even more competitive. For readers, that’s a win: Many more books at lower prices (at least from self-publishers and small presses). For writers? Too many of us have to be satisfied with authoring books only because we love storytelling. Lack of a pen name is only a small hurdle out of many an author must jump over, to be honest.

Yet a catchy pen name like Mark Twain might have helped me. Has any MFA student written a thesis about whether it helped Samuel Clemens? (I sort of did that in the eighth grade, but it was just a year-ending writing assignment in civics…and my information came from our public library, not Google!)

***

[No ad today. See my note above.]

I’m not as extreme about my book promotion efforts as James Patterson (he is extreme, in many ways!), but I do have one video trailer (unlike Patterson’s efforts, it won’t interrupt your TV experiences). As Garcia Marquez did with Chronicle of a Death Foretold, I’ll also tell story of the Death on the Danube video trailer in reverse.

First, the improvement in sales figures have been pathetic: This video trailer had 78 views three years ago on YouTube (I have no idea if that’s over the last three years or just those from three years ago—YouTube is a bit lax on honest reporting). Of course, I don’t publicize the trailer. You’ll find its link on a couple of web pages at this website, and that’s it! Doesn’t seem like the epitome of absurdity to even think of publicizing a video trailer, something that’s supposedly designed to publicize a book? In any case, I don’t do it! (Unless you call this article that?)

Second, that video trailer is a bit misleading. In a sense, that’s my fault: I okayed the final version (brought to you by Castelane, by the way, to give a very nice lady due credit); but in hindsight, the novel Death on the Danube comes across in the video as a bit too much like a romantic cozy, one of those fluffy mysteries that many serious readers (including me!) avoid reading. It’s not a cozy, though. In fact, it’s the third novel in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series and the first one that has mostly an anti-fascist and anti-Putin theme. (It led the way for later novels in the same series and the “Inspector Steve Morgan” trilogy.) It’s about a team of SVR assassins loose on a riverboat filled with tourists, including the honeymoon couple of Esther and her Dutchman, Bastiann van Coevorden (modern versions of Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, according to wags in Scotland Yard). (The role of the riverboat is clearer in the trailer; it’s not the “Love Boat,” despite the many couples on it, including the SVR agents!)

Revenge can bite you on the butt when it’s your main motivation: The Last Humans, that a novel published by Black Opal Books, won a book award, a free trailer, but I was in the middle of some skirmishes with that small press about publishing the second novel in the series, so I thought: Why give Black Opal free publicity? (Small presses rarely help authors with book publicity, by the way.) So, I made the swap, and Death on the Danube got the trailer. (The latter’s publication also was a response to yet another tiff between yours truly and my other small press, Penmore—I ended up self-publishing both it and later Brookstone novels, as well as the remaining novels in “The Last Humans” trilogy.)

Penny Castro (the main character in The Last Humans, Black Opal Books, 2019) won more accolades for my writing than Esther Brookstone did by that time (the second novel in the Brookstone series was Son of Thunder, Penmore Press, 2019), so it made sense to make the swap because Esther needed the publicity. While the quality of the video trailer is good, and it took so little of my time and none of my money, it made little difference in book sales figures. I can’t recommend putting such video trailers in your book promo budgets, though. (By the way, James Patterson probably doesn’t pay for his either.) End of the chronicle.

***

Comments are always welcome. (Please follow the rules listed on the “Join the Conversation” web page. If you don’t, your comment becomes spam and is ignored!)

“The Last Humans” trilogy. Penny Castro, ex-USN SAR diver and LA County forensics diver comes up after locating a body only to find a world gone mad. These three novels follow her post-apocalyptic adventures as she struggles to survive, create and defend her family, and deal with the few leaders who remain on Earth. The Last Humans, A New Dawn, and Menace from Moscow are available wherever fine ebooks are sold. (The first novel is even available in print format, but you might have to buy it from Black Opal.)

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

The simple answer: It’s my literacy project! Baldacci has a more famous one, but he gives away nothing. I figure if I give away my fiction, I can encourage people who can read to actually do it instead of watching the drivel Hollywood producers force-feed us or listening to the blather spewed on TikTok and other social media sites, in podcasts, and Fox News. (Maybe if a certain presidential candidate could actually read a book, he wouldn’t be such a pathetically ignorant and “f&^%ing moron”—the latter is the description of him made by his ex-SecState, not me, by the way. Fortunately, I’ve never met that candidate and have no desire to do so.)

While that answer represents what most motivates me (literacy, not competing with Baldacci, one of the favored stallions in the stables of the Big Five publishing conglomerates), there’s a lot more: A second is that you might like something that’s a freebie enough that you’ll try some of my very reasonably priced books I sell (that includes ebook and print books from two small presses, by the way), especially ebooks. After all, another reason to complain about the price of fast food (those “value meals” from McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, etc.) is that they cost more than an ebook! (Not usually ones from the Big Five, though, which is a type of price gouging they do because they’d rather sell you an expensive print version.) Inexpensive ebooks like mine are like fast food entertainment for the mind, and they cost less than a movie.

Third reason: I refuse to be like James Patterson by turning my book production efforts into an assembly-line factory that exploits readers and authors alike (Patterson’s co-authors). I’m also not going to make a fool of myself on TV ads and other expensive advertising like Patterson either (even if I could afford to do so). In fact, I don’t advertise my books anymore! Why bother? A lot of people are like that current presidential candidate: They can’t even read a one-page briefing! Or don’t want to do so because they prefer chicken wings, cold beer, and football. (Is that the definition of a MAGA maniac?) Of course, Patterson actually got started on his TV ads because he thought he had to compete with Tom Brady (another MAGA supporter who now spends his time saying he’s the GOAT as if anyone now pays attention to what he says). I don’t want to compete against either Brady or Patterson!

My writing now has two goals: Having fun doing it and entertaining a few readers in the process. Those have always been my goals, in fact. I can accomplish both by giving away some stuff. (You might not like short fiction and novels in PDF format, the format for my free downloads listed on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page, but you really have no right to complain. It’s all free!) There might be some new additions to the list of freebies real soon, in fact. Watch for them!

***

Comments are always welcome. (Please follow the rules on the “Join the Conversation” web page.)

Defanging the Red Dragon and Intolerance. These two free PDF downloads are complete novels! They’re the sixth and seventh novels in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series. (Defanging the Red Dragon is a crossover novel between that series and the “Detectives Chen & Castilblanco” series, so it also counts as number eight in the latter series as well.)

In the first novel, the Chinese are after submarine secrets, and Esther gets involved. In the second, Esther helps to solve a cold case from Ireland, to thwart a domestic terrorist, and to capture a crazy man out for revenge.

There’s a lot of sleuthing going on in both novels!

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

What this Comedian Said Will Shock You: Bill Maher, author (2024). Just in time for the 2024 elections…wow! I needed this. An irreverent critique of everything going on, especially the political circus acts. It’s something that grabs you by the throat and makes you almost die laughing at the follies of human beings and their cultural milieu. (The ‘almost” will be considered below.)

We often take ourselves too seriously. Okay, life is serious. We’re now in a dash—no marathons now—for November, 2024 when we must decide if we still want some sort of democracy in America or some sort of awful fascist state where some fascist psychotic sociopath declares himself president-for-life and begins to mimic Stalin’s purges. (Neither Bill Maher nor I can know what kind of democracy either: There are so many things wrong with the current one, starting with the US Constitution!)

But we need to laugh a bit before we begin grieving over our dead democracy, especially at ourselves and our compatriots who are letting it die. If this book doesn’t accomplish that, you’re a brain-dead zombie. (Most MAGA maniacs are, of course, but plenty so-called liberals living in their echo chambers are too.)

Because a serious book review is supposed to contain critiques (verbal equivalents of a sharp elbow in the ribs), let me begin attacking Bill with this one: Your title is very misleading! What Maher states here isn’t all that shocking; I agree with at least 87.765 percent plus or minus 3.923 percent margin-of-error of what he says and have probably said more shocking things in my political blog at pubprogressive.com. (Why are the Big Five publishing conglomerates and TV networks afraid of calling Donald Jackass Trump, J. Done-Nothing Vance, and their cronies fascists? That’s what they are!)

Of course, I don’t say it comically; I’m deadly serious. What extremists (fascists come from both the left and the right, moving around that grand circle that’s humanity’s political spectrum to that one single point called fascism) have done to this country (let’s call it “ripping the country apart”) is beyond the pale because its source is the destructive evil lurking there in the dark ready to attack any good people who might be left in the body politic. (Extremists hog the internet with their blathering. Normal people can’t get a word in edgewise, which is why I’m no longer on Facebook or X. In those cases, of course, the extremists also run those websites.)

That leads to another critique: Bill Maher is a bit simple-minded because he can’t imagine any of this country’s problems leading to another civil war. (I think he does mention the possibility of a Nazi-like putsch somewhere, though.) Would he be ready to fight for what’s right and good? I can’t answer that even for myself, but it’s a quandary he should have mentioned…except that it’s not very funny, is it?! (But maybe it’s a better and more practical use for all those damn guns?)

It’s easy to go after Narcissus le Grand and his MAGA maniacs, from the far-right wingnuts who support them, i.e., those evangelicals (unlike Maher, I refuse to capitalize that), Catholics (capitalized only because “catholic” can have a more general meaning—look it up), to white supremacists and a few crazed blacks and hispanics. It’s hard to look the other way at far-left extremists and recognize that they’re also approaching fascism as well, often supporting questionable causes (Hamas in Gaza, i.e. terrorists; eco-terrorists, i.e. tree-huggers who destroy trees; injuring or killing cops, i.e., anyone—everyone seems to hate cops now; believing in communism, with a small c or a big one, is the solution to everything; etc., etc.). Maher wraps all that up in his generic attacks on the nation’s youth (who all too often deserve those attacks of course!), when it’s not about immaturity (unless you want to call old Bernie Sanders “immature”?). The extremes of both political parties push their other more reasonable members toward the middle (maybe a good thing?), but that still allows the extremes to do a lot of damage on their way to fascism, so much so that it will likely destroy our country unless it’s halted.

Okay, I’ve proved myself wrong: What this comedian says is damn shocking because he tries to turn a serious debate into comedy. That should shock anyone who values our democracy. In fact, Mr. Maher is showing his age, not quite the comedians’ Biden yet, but his words seem an awful lot like my father’s. And my father lived in a better time when our family’s Eisenhower Republicans and Truman Democrats could get together for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter and not physically pommel each other. (Maybe go home a bit angry with the relatives, though.)

There are interesting little datapoints sprinkled throughout this book that are significantly serious, though. For example, the tragedy of some Trump MAGA maniacs: Consider Ashli Babbitt, the Air Force vet who needlessly died for Trump on January 6, 2021, believing that if he won, he might help her with the usurious loan she’d stupidly signed up for to save her business. (And Trump said no one died on January 6! She was your follower, you “f&^%ing moron”!) Another tragedy that obviously couldn’t make the publishing schedule for Bill’s book is found in the fireman who attended that recent Pennsylvania rally with his family and took a bullet for Trump while trying to protect his family. Trump doesn’t have to kill anyone on Fifth Avenue in New York City; he manages to do it at his rallies!

These cases and others are doubly tragic because the supporters of that “f%$#ing moron” (an ex-SecState Tillerson quote, by the way, in case you think I made that up) can’t seem to recognize that Narcissus le Grand only cares about himself; he’s a psychotic sociopath. That’s the diagnosis from an ad hoc committee of respectable mental health professionals published years ago. With his advanced age and impending dementia—he’s now the oldest presidential candidate ever!—he’s become even worse!

Unfortunately, Bill, those cases of lemmings among the MAGA maniacal hordes following their fuehrer over the cliffs aren’t comical—they’re an American tragedy in many ways. Treating them as comedy is easy; diagnosing and combatting the reasons why they’ve become mentally ill in that way is complicated and serious work that comedians like you and fiction writers like me can’t possibly do alone. Our society is sick and dying, and it needs some real professional help from many good people to find a cure if it’s going to survive.

And a final (and perhaps more light-hearted?) critique: What’s wrong with Bill’s sense of irony? He writes: “…when a big-game hunter gets trampled by an elephant and then eaten by a lion [it] is ‘hilarious.’” Wrong! It’s simple justice! (And why didn’t it happen to Don Jr.?)

I read this lengthy collection of comedy gigs in parallel with other more serious books. That’s called multitasking by some; I call it comedic relief from the more serious stuff. It’s not healthy to take life too seriously, but it’s also not healthy for us or the country to go laughing to our graves as American fascists set out to destroy this country and the world. We’ll see who has the last laugh, Bill. I’ve already prepared my “I told you so” speech, Mr. Maher. It’s a short one, and I quote a young acquaintance of mine: We’re so screwed!

***

Comments are always welcome. (Please follow the rules listed on the “Join the Conversation” web page.)

A Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse. To prove I’m not such a serious fellow and that I can write comedy (or be bold enough to attempt it?), this sci-fi rom-com hopefully has given a few smiles to my readers and will do the same for those who missed it and peruse it now. It treats some serious themes, but it’s mostly tongue-in-cheek. And, by the way, it does time travel right, i.e., without paradoxes. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold. (You might even find it on Amazon among all the overly expensive crap the Big Five publishing conglomerates like to sell…like the above.)

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

I’m not talking about weather, although it’s a bear, right? Heat, fires (my home state, California, has been burning), and heat waves have baked the country. As global warming attacks around the globe and climate change does more and more damage, it’s impossible to keep up with all of Mother Nature’s revenge against us.

No, I want to discuss other elements, i.e., have a more esoteric discussion about the elements of writing fiction. (Readers might not care too much—one can argue they shouldn’t have to—but authors must.) What characterizes a good story? A story’s basic elements are: themes, plot, characters, settings, and dialogue. Let’s briefly discuss each one.

Themes. Even the most basic police procedural has a theme, sometimes more than one: drug trafficking, human trafficking, art theft, political conspiracies and malfeasance, legal chicanery, espionage, and so forth. Other themes can be more droll and mundane: religion, marital relations, professional tensions, etc. These themes are needed to wind through and around plots to make them relevant.

Plots. Those plots can range from simple to complex. I prefer the latter, as both reader and writer. (Some genres, like cozy mysteries and sappy romances are boringly simple, though! I don’t read or write those.) You can’t have a story without a plot if want to call your written opus fiction. (In fact, biographies and histories fare better when they follow fictional guidelines.) A good plot makes a good novel; a bad one leads to readers’ boredom…and rejection.

Characters. I’ve read stories that have only one character (more short fiction than novels, of course), but usually there’s more than one, some good, the protagonists (or heroes), others not so much, the antagonists (or villains). A good novel usually has quite a few characters, especially if the plot is complex. The first requirement is that characters should be like real people, not two-dimensional stereotypes. Both plot and characters in a novel must seem real within its settings.

Settings. Your story’s setting or settings (a novel can consider several) can also be simple or complex. It could be Everytown USA or a large city, on Earth or on another planet. Think of your settings as the various stages where the drama and action contained in the plot take place. Like characters, they must seem real (even on that planet far, far away).

Dialogue. Both internal and external, your dialogue should move plots forward. (Internal means what characters think; external means what they say.) A good story has a good mix of dialogue and narrative, with dialogue providing a window to look into a character’s mind, even when spoken. Unlike other elements, it doesn’t have to seem real! A lot of what we say in our daily lives (spoken dialogue) is filled with boring details. “Good morning. How are you doing? Your hair’s all messed up. What humidity, right?” If a conversation at the water cooler extends to five pages of prose in your novel, you’ll lose flocks of readers. (Actually, water-cooler conversations are rare these days because everyone’s looking at their smart phones!)

This post can only be a summary of story elements (which one is more important can depend on a lot of things, including genre). An MFA course or online course about writing could provide a lot more info (a lot of those, like in King’s On Writing, is outdated and/or just plain wrong), but this article should be enough to get a new writer started, or refresh the memory of old hands and remind them about what’s important. (More can be found in the free PDF download indicated below.)

***

Comments are always welcome. (Please follow the rules on my “Join the Conversation” web page.)

“Writing Fiction.” Most of my free PDF downloads are fiction. This one is about how to write it and how to sell it. It also contains guidelines for what not to do. Most of the material here might clash with what a writing guru might tell you (often while robbing you blind!) because, based on my own experiences, I feel I need to be brutally honest. (And I’ll bet most of those so-called gurus don’t have the experience of writing forty-plus books!) Okay, you might think I’m too brutal, so download it, read it, and use what you think is usable in your writing life. I put quite a few hours into creating this little course—being a professor once myself, I felt obligated to pass on my pain and suffering—and it was fun to write. You might find it fun reading as well. It’s had a lot of updates. (The last ones provide a guide to using the Draft2Digital software—self-publishing is very efficient now; even I can do it!—so critics could say I’m targeting those wannabe authors interested in self-publishing (they would be right!). See the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page for a complete list of free PDF downloads, including this one.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Social media is looking awfully over-the-top now as the 2024 presidential election nears. For example, Elon’s X (formerly known as Twitter) put out a Kamala Harris ad, still with her voice but with all the words changed. I don’t know if this was a scurrilous use of AI (more a scurrilous abuse by Elon?), but I immediately logged on to my account and deactivated it. (Apologies to my loyal 1000+ faithful followers there who might have been surprised by my actions, but they know as well as I do that X has been going downhill ever since Elon walked in with his kitchen sink—not the gold one, of course—and I’d diminished my activity on X correspondingly ever since he took over. I closed my Facebook account even earlier!)

But AI (even the current primitive forms—see my previous post) changes things, doesn’t it? AI takes bad social media to worse levels. As if that “blue screen of death” seen around the world wasn’t enough—that was on CrowdStrike and Microsoft, by the way, not AI. I wasn’t on the internet at the time, and I didn’t return to it until I backed up my laptop and the “all clear” was given. (What occurred with Delta Airlines seems to be an additional problem…caused by their ancient and sickly software?)

I’m not talking about either X or CrowdStrike/Microsoft here. The first is out of my life (so is Elon Musk); the second can be avoided by minimizing my time on the internet (I already do that!). No, I’d like to discuss a report in The NY Times recently that current AIs are bad mathematicians, as if they were students good in the humanities but terrible at math. No surprise, really, although none of this matters much for authors and readers. (Or, better said, it makes it worse for both equally?)

Unlike most fiction writers, I’ve probably forgotten more math than they ever knew or will know. That’s not bragging. It’s just offered as evidence that I can well believe that The Times is partially correct. The type of recent AI that’s been in development has severe limitations; they mostly stem from the fact that current AI versions are just glorified search engines. Sure, the better ones can create stuff by putting what they find in a search (or what’s fed them) together in a more coherent whole. That’s the artificial part. But there’s little actual intelligence, as in human intelligence.

That’s where the math problems originate: How it puts things together is based on probability, more specifically, a calculation of likelihood that its creation is a correct portrait of reality. You’ve seen that with facial recognition software: Some unidentified face is 69% more likely to be some John Doe than someone else. The rest of math, most of it in fact, lies outside the sphere of probability and statistics, and that’s an exact science, not about likelihoods: Normally, an answer is either mathematically correct, or it’s not. Consequently, current AI can’t do math because it can’t handle exactness; everything’s a maybe, not a solid yes or no. Any AI guru who claims otherwise is a con man. (Or woman.)

But maybe superior AIs in the future can do better? More data too might mean better predictions. Sci-fi writers should have an AI give an answer like the following: It’s probable that X event occurs with a probability of 0.99999 with an error of plus or minus 0.00000342. That might not be exact enough to control a starship slipping through multiple quantum states of the Universe, but for general purposes, it’s better than a paltry 0.69. (Actually, likelihoods differ from probabilities, but you get the idea, right? And the statistics being used to make the predictions can give different results too—Bayesian stats are the most common.)

“What about quantum computing?” you might say. Yep, that could change everything. I’ll let you know after I’m able to purchase my first quantum laptop!

***

Comments are always welcome. (Please follow the rules listed on the “Join the Conversation” web page.)

“The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection.” Futuristic AI plays an important supporting role all through the three novels found in this bargain sci-fi/thriller bundle. The reader can follow human beings flight from a dystopian Earth to first contact on a planet in the 82 Eridani system; an intergalactic war with different and xenophobic ETs; and battles with a deranged human, a psychotic sociopath out to control the galaxy. All the AIs here are artificial (even if partly constructed from living circuitry) and extremely intelligent, unlike current AI software. And man, they can they do math! This three-novel ebook bundle is available wherever quality sci-fi is sold.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

My opinion of Stephen King improved when he testified against the Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster merger. To be honest, though, that was a “safe protest” for the prolific horror writer because it was associated with traditional publishing (and motivated by self-interest?) It made me revisit the oft-thought question: Should authors be political? Especially in these trying times of nasty bickering and division, not just in the US but also around the world, any reasonable answer to the question might have wings.

We usually can’t analyze an author’s storytelling to determine their politics. I express that no-no explicitly in my copyright statements now: Opinions of my characters are not necessarily mine. In fact, mine might be just the opposite! This should be the implicit policy for every author because, in fiction, our characters can be good, evil, or somewhere in between.

While my recent novels certainly reflect some of my negative opinions about fascism and fascist personalities, most are more like morality plays than political statements. That’s because they’re about good versus evil. It’s also because I believe in reasoned and civil discourse that define a true democracy.

Yet there’s nothing wrong with politics in fiction per se. Orwell’s 1984 is a classic that people should pay attention to; Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is a lesson about how dangerous censorship and book banning, currently all too common now in the US, can become; and stories about violence against ethnic groups, women, and gays are important for our times as well. You can live in solitude in the Maine woods, but you can experience in the evil plaguing our country and the world from your armchair by reading a book. Or educate yourself in many other ways!

There’s a whole universe of political statements, of course. Ayn Rand’s are probably the worst, but military fiction that overly celebrates violence and killing can be over the top as well. And then there’s porn. Yet historical truth cannot be neglected: The Romans were brutal and cruel, as were the Nazis. Is portraying them correctly in the historical sense wrong? Clearly the borders between good storytelling and political propaganda are often blurry and change with the times. Fanny Hill was initially scandalous; the “Fifty Shades” series made it look rather tame. But most prudes, especially in red states, would probably ban both. Huckleberry Finn isn’t racist; it’s only a reflection of Mark Twain’s milieu, which was (and, in many of those red states and elsewhere, still is). To Kill a Mockingbird is racist; it’s author probably wasn’t, and was a friend of Capote. Ender’s Game was homophobic but maybe not as much as the author, but it’s one hell of a story (and much better than other books in the series). Etc. Etc.

A good story can be created by anyone, irrespective of their politics. But let’s not forget that politics can also make a good story!

***

Comments are always welcome! (Please follow the rules listed on the “Join the Conversation” web page.)

Rogue Planet. The intense political theme of an evil theocracy that murders anyone who fights against it doesn’t occur often enough. (Iran and its sycophantic groups in Gaza and Lebanon represent the obvious model, of course.) This stand-alone novel can be considered a logical extension of the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy” to a planet that suffers under such a theocracy that takes over after murdering the old king. Unfortunately for the religious fanatics running that theocracy, they failed to eliminate the old king’s son who becomes the rebellion’s leader. Call it political sci-fi, military sci-fi, or Game of Thrones-like fantasy, it’s still hard sci-fi (there are no dragons…) that might remind you a bit of Dune (…yet no sand worms), and a sci-fi adventure about a rebellion on a strange planet. Available in ebook and paper format wherever quality sci-fi literature is sold.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

The US does it. The UK and the rest of the Commonwealth countries do it too. English is more than evolving; it’s being destroyed. I noticed this a lot more while writing my British-style mysteries: It seems like every region of the UK (comprised of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales), and even smaller regions, has local variations of the king’s English (who hardly speaks English well himself!). Eliza Doolittle’s Cockney still exists in the back streets and slums of the Old Smoke, and many in Scotland and Wales mix another language freely with what seems to be English if you concentrate on what’s being said.

Back in the USA, I have a hard time understanding a Texan, especially when they try to speak English and not Spanish. And this isn’t a new phenomenon: I grew up in California where American English (whatever that is!) was heard along with Armenian, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Vietnamese, etc., etc. In other words, the US is as bad as (or worse than?) the UK when it comes to using dialects and slang. Only a few UK authors help US readers like I do, creating a glossary; and few US authors (including myself, I’ll admit) ever help UK readers by doing so, most likely because the US has a larger population so it’s harder to keep up with all the variations that so often become acceptable: “pretty” instead of “very”; “way” in place of “too”; “weren’t” instead of “isn’t” and “wasn’t”; “bad” in place of “good,” but meaning the same thing; etc., etc. Most Americans don’t even notice the many corruptions of English, but they must drive our English friends across the pond mad. They can drive me crazy! (“Mad” in the UK often means “crazy” in the US.)

From Belfast to Southampton, you have language variations; from Boston to El Paso, you have them as well. Some publishers insist that their editors demand “standard English usage,” whatever the hell that means. For my small-press published novels, I often fought with these editors and their futile demands that I use “standard English.” Anyone that believes there’s only only one version of English must be smoking a lot of pot (weed, MJ, …) or snorting a lot of coke (blowing powder, snorting dust, …): There is no such thing as standard English, either here or across the pond.

As I stated, in my British-style mysteries, my feeble attempt at peacemaking takes the form of a glossary. I started to include one more to help me write the short stories in Sleuthing, British-Style. (That first collection is one of three and available in ebook format most everywhere; the other two are free PDF downloads—see the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page for a complete list.) I wrote those stories more as a bow to or in celebration of this subgenre because those British-style mysteries saved my sanity during the Covid pandemic when I read entire series sheltered in place.

Maybe these variations in English would never have occurred if there’d been an official committee appointed by the royal family to maintain the purity of the English language? The French have tried to do that with their infamous Academie (was that a creation of Napoleon, like the metric system?—that little corporal was a smart cookie, except when it came to Wellington), but the French’s task is much easier: Not as many people speak that language! (But French in Quebec sounds like sixteenth-century French to me, and French in Switzerland differs from French in Lyon, Strasbourg, and Paris.)

To paraphrase Tom Clancy, fiction has to seem real. And part of our world’s reality is that languages evolve and develop local variants, especially when they’re used a lot. I probably worry about it more than I need to. (Clancy, on the other hand, probably never did…and, in his ignorance, was probably “pretty” happy avoiding the whole problem!) I’m absolutely certain that publishers and their editors shouldn’t make a big deal about it, though. They could suggest my same solution after all: Tell their authors to include a glossary! Hell, they could even add some new jobs to the publishing bureaucracy where a publisher hires blokes who specialize in creating glossaries. They probably would rather force authors to do that than have authors create glossaries on their own initiative; they love to boss us around. after all!

***

Comments are always welcome. (Please follow the rules on the “Join the Conversation” web page.)

Two overly edited small-press novels? The Last Humans (the first book in “The Last Humans Trilogy”) and Son of Thunder (the second book of nine in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series), the first novel from Penmore Press and the second from Black Opal Books, perhaps earned this distinction. Whether the over-editing made them better is questionable; both edits did damage to this author’s voice, but that’s just my take. Readers might not care, of course, because the stories are interesting.

The first novel is a post-apocalyptic sci-fi thriller about how a worldwide pandemic changes the world and the life of the protagonist, an ex-USN diver working for the LA Sheriff’s Department. (Yes, I wrote it before Covid, but a lot of things occurred during the Covid pandemic that occurred in this novel, and maybe Covid was manmade too?).

The second novel is Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code done correctly (i.e., more historically accurate), a mystery/thriller novel that’s also historic fiction as Esther Brookstone sets out to prove Sandro Botticelli was never in Turkey, or that he was and found St. John’s tomb! Available wherever books are sold in ebook or paper format. Enjoy!

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Which books deserve to be called classics? Anthony Scaramucci in From Wall Street to the White House and Back (probably the strangest self-help book you’ll ever read!) touts reading classics, defining them as works that have stood the “test of time.” (Surprised I read this book? It’s a profound and yet sometimes hilarious book that I can strongly recommend despite not sharing the author’s political proclivities.) I suppose that definition is okay as far as it goes…but whose test, how long a time, and fiction or non-fiction, including types?

In several of my “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” stories (both novels – nine of them! – and short fiction), I point out that Esther in her Masterworks Gallery features pre- and early Renaissance paintings because she believes they are works that could have been masterpieces (art’s version of “classics”) but for fickle fate; she restores and sells them in the gallery, making a good living at it there on the Old Smoke’s West End.

What goes for painting also goes for books! Readers should look at the books that are considered classics just like we do, for example, at van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” etc., and decide for ourselves if a more detailed study is warranted because it will bring more meaning to our lives. I’m sure there will be books and stories that critics have passed over, readers finding meaning that no erudite literary expert has ever noted!

Example: I’ve found a lot more meaning, let’s call it profoundness, in Deaver’s Garden of Beasts and Follett’s Eye of the Needle than in these authors’ other books. Those other books are entertaining but not of the same quality for me. In Mr. Scaramucci’s defense, he does recommend “picking books at random to see what’s inside.” That’s exactly how I discovered the two books just mentioned. In fact, most of the books on the “Steve’s bookshelf” web page are what I would call classics. Critics and those erudite literary experts probably won’t agree with me, but to hell with them! What’s amusing is that none of the books in Scaramucci’s reading list at the end of his book are called classics by so-called experts! They are for Mr. Scaramucci, though.

It’s unfortunate that reading is being replaced by computer games; streaming video; Fox News or CNN and MSNBC, usually Fox or CNN/MSNBC but not both; Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X (formerly known as Twitter), etc.; and far too many echo chambers catering to competing tribes. We can find more meaning in our lives, understanding of others, and eternal truths in the fiction and non-fiction we read. We can do that in other media as well—art and music, for example—but books have all the other media beat.

Books offer personalized discovery. I would have gone on considering Anthony Scaramucci to be a lightweight MAGA maniac, for example, if I hadn’t read his book; he actually offers lessons about how to give meaning to our lives. Of course, other authors have offered similar lessons, even in fiction. But my life was enriched by having a conversation with an author by reading his book. If anything, that’s a valuable lesson!

***

Comments are always welcome. (Please follow the rules on the “Join the Conversation” web page.

Free fiction! (Hey, I have to compete with Prime Days somehow!) It’s time you examined the list of freebies on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page. All you have to do is click on the file name to download your free PDF! For writers, there’s also the self-help guide “Writing Fiction.” No, I don’t tell you how to write a good story…that’s on you! But you might enjoy and learn a few new tricks by reading about the errors I made in publishing mine. These are all free…so what can you lose?

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!