My previous post about religion in fiction naturally is a segue into the topic of mortality in fiction. In typical thrillers, protagonists usually survive despite many odds against them, but they might be avenging the death of others near and dear to them. And while the main protagonists often live a charmed life because of luck or skills, secondary characters are often become victims. Most mysteries start with the victims, of course; there has to be a crime for the protagonist(s) to solve.

The novel Mind Games is a classic mystery/thriller in that sense, although it is set in the far future. A.B. Carolan starts with an heinous murder of a man’s adopted daughter, and she swears revenge. The ensuing action is more thriller than mystery, and many readers would just say that the story is just good sci-fi, which was my Irish colleague Carolan’s intention, of course [wink, wink]. I use this as an example to show that even young-adult literature can deal with mortality!

In general, victims can become a problem if readers become too attached to them (although in a mystery, that might be what the author wants because it justifies the revenge motive). An editor of Son of Thunder lamented when a Turkish detective who aided Esther Brookstone…well, read the book. Similarly, a reviewer was upset while reading Aristocrats and Assassins when a friend of Castilblanco’s wife…again, read the book. An attachment to certain characters often occurs, even villains.

I even toyed with the idea of killing off main character Ashley Scott in The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan, just to be radically different. After all, she doesn’t appear in any more novels on that long fictional timeline extending beyond the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series, although her novel can be considered a bridge book to the “Clones and Mutants” trilogy. (There are now a few other stories and series in between!) Yet one can argue that principal characters like Ashley Scott and even Esther Brookstone deserve to retire gracefully, living on in relative peace.

But fiction must seem real, and our mortality is part of our human reality. Good fiction must avoid the “lived happily ever” syndrome of childhood’s fairy tales. Shakespeare knew to include mortality in his dramas, most notably in Hamlet, which is a play that considers mortality in almost every scene. Mortality is also a big theme in Dickens’s Tale of Two Cities, where it’s closely tied to religion.

Fiction authors can add significant meaning to their tales by including mortality as a theme. One can argue that both the morality and religious themes are what separates profound fiction from fluff.

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The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan. DHS agent Ashley Scott witnesses a murder in a riverside park. She and an investigative reporter become involved in the case…and a lot more. This mystery/thriller considers the answer to the following question: What will a future US government do to keep old agents who know a lot of secrets from revealing them when they slip into dementia and Alzheimer’s? You might not like the answer! Available wherever quality ebooks are sold (even on Amazon).

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

With the somewhat limited pomp and circumstances despite his wishes, the Catholic Church and many thousands of admirers and curiosity seekers, Catholics or not, said their goodbyes to a decent man who’ll surely be remembered as one of history’s most memorable popes, the Argentine Jesuit Pope Francis, although some well-known politicians who probably believed he stole their time in the spotlight will be naysayers. Many probably thought of their own mortality and what it means live moral lives.

Because good fiction must reflect reality, one is led to ask: What role should religion play in fiction? Obviously, good vs. evil is a common theme in fiction whether explicitly religious or not. Many readers will enjoy a story containing a clever villain, if only for the challenge he presents for the protagonists. Few stories without the eternal battle between good and evil will resonate, in fact. But including specific references to religion? Why not? If those references add to the storyline, they might be indispensable!

For example, in my sci-fi  thriller Soldiers of God, various religions come into play as well as the unconsummated love between an FBI agent and a Catholic priest. In the sci-fi thriller Muddlin’ Through from the “Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries,”, the protagonist’s religious upbringing plays a big role. And in Son of Thunder, the plot actually revolves around the life story of St. John the Divine, although it’s an “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” mystery/thriller. (By the way, Esther’s paramour and Interpol agent Bastiann van Coevorden maintains a close relationship with Father Jean, a Jesuit priest, and often consults with him. I admire Jesuits and celebrated the election of Pope Francis. They’re wise fellows who aren’t just politicians dressed in priestly garb.) All these example of religion in my prose are essential elements.

The stories we tell in fiction are best when commenting on the human condition. Authors shouldn’t be afraid to include religious and spiritual themes appropriate to their stories. They can add depth and meaning to a plot.

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Son of Thunder. As in Rembrandt’s Angel, Esther Brookstone, now retired from Scotland Yard’s Art and Antiques Division, becomes obsessed yet again, this time to prove that the Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli never traveled to what’s present-day Turkey. She’s proven wrong, very wrong, and solving this mystery leads her to the tomb of St. John the Divine. Available in ebook and trade paperback versions from Penmore Press or your favorite book dealer. (Two complete novels in this nine-book series are free PDF downloads; see the list on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page.)

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

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If you’re a sci-fi fan, you’ll know Isaac Asimov’s answer to this question, although he might prefer the word “robots” to “androids.” In his “Robots Trilogy” (really part of the lengthy expansion of his Foundation series), he actually featured an eclectic mix, and I believe he actually called R. Daneel Olivaw an android. What he never considered as far as I know is AI (“Artificial Intelligence”).

Of course, androids and robots require artificial intelligence, sometimes not all that sophisticated, like when a robot does surgery or assembles cars. It doesn’t go the other way, though: AI doesn’t require robots or androids. HAL was just a lot of microchips and software programming (and could still be quite evil in 2001!).

Quality AI could be much more “useful” than robots or androids. Androids could satisfy human beings’ desires to have slaves (or willing sex partners?), but spending a lot of effort on copying the human body seems like a waste of time, especially because there are jobs where the human form isn’t too practical. (That surgical robot arm is an example where only a precise hand is required.)

AI can be a lot more useful because it can provide information and do it rapidly. Current AI is primitive in this sense—not much more than a super search engine that finds stuff and gloms it together (hopefully into something useful, but don’t count on it). In that sense, the AIs in my fictional starships that traverse the alternate realities of the multiverse are much more necessary than the androids and robots even though the human villains in Mind Games want to give then psi powers. Wouldn’t an AI with psi powers be more dangerous? (A bit of criticism never hurts, right, AB Carolan? [Wink, wink.])

Given the era when Asimov wrote his famous robot novels, we couldn’t have expected him to even conjure up a HAL, let alone an AI with psi powers. With AI such a fad now, though, isn’t it time to create such a super-villain. TBD!

Even though I’m an ex-scientist who writes sci-fi sometimes, just like many others, I’m not that keen on using AI. Current AI is primitive, like I said, and it must be trained. What might make a good sci-fi character, though, is one that trains itself. In Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, that scientist turned sci-fi author created such a character, not a villain like Arthur C. Clarke’s HAL 1.0 or like the one in my novel The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan.

Maybe it’s better to avoid that Frankenstein complex. What do you think?

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Mind Games. In AB Carolan’s third sci-fi mystery, Della Dos Toros finds her foster-father murdered and vows to avenge him. In her search for his killer, she discovers a vast conspiracy that could tear apart the government body of near-Earth worlds. Robots and androids with psi powers like Della’s? What could go wrong?

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

Most of my works have end notes where I discuss some of the reasons I had for creating the stories beyond any prefaces, acknowledge those who helped me reach out to readers who might enjoy them, and expand on disclaimers beyond my copyright notices that state I’m not necessarily in agreement with what characters in those stories opine. These aren’t idle words, although I suspect few readers bother reading these end notes.

In that bleak, dark, and strange world of the Big Five publishing conglomerates, a reader is more likely to see end notes for non-fiction works than for fiction works. James Patterson probably should acknowledge his co-authors more, for example, because I suspect they do most of the writing now in that assembly-line process used by Patterson Inc. Other Big Five formulaic mares or stallions might want to explain why their Gone-Something or Fifty-Shades-of-Something aren’t just take-offs on the first original titles in an attempt to sell more books by confusing readers. Or why some little brat can be a better magician than an adult with years of experience?

In brief, I believe fiction authors should include end notes. The authors’ readers might not read them much, but some of us (me, for example) like to know a few things about the writers’ motivations and themes used in their stories. And no author, not even me, who has discovered self-publishing is better than any contract from a traditional publisher or not, is an island. No author writes in a vacuum these days; they’re influenced by so many different things if their fiction has any relevance at all.

Yes, I know, some readers don’t look for relevance. Addicts of silly romances and farfetched fantasies don’t want a story that makes them think. Nothing wrong with that—people have the right to get the entertainment they want—but I have to wonder why they’re even bothering to read when they can get tons of formulaic fluff from streaming video and video game fantasies. Even reading a silly romance or farfetched fantasy might make them think a bit: There’s occasionally a bit of meat on the bones of a Nicholas Sparks or J. K. Rowling story that might make that happen.

In other words, I suspect that a lot of fiction writers don’t include end notes because their motivation for writing their stories is just to make money selling pablum. Very few treat controversial subjects or themes for that reason, especially among Big Five authors. That’s sad but also evidence for how low literature has sunk into that cesspool of irrelevance.

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The “ABC Sci-Fi Mysteries for Young Adults.” Young adult literature can often avoid being fluff and contain profound themes. AB Carolan’s first three novels take place in my usual sci-fi universe, but even the third, Mind Games, a novel that’s a bit more fantastic for considering ESP, androids, and robots, has enough serious themes to hold the interest of young adults and adults who are young-at-heart alike. The fourth, Origins, doesn’t take place in my usual sci-fi universe, but it treats the disintegration of society now occurring as well as being a lesson on human evolution!

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

Let’s consider the current political situation: Donald Jackass Trump and his whole horde of fascists from the executive, legislative, and judicial branches are bent on destroying American democracy! Maybe drastic measures are required? To help answer that question, let’s see what measures some screenwriters and fiction authors have considered appropriate.

For example, the incredibly original and unpredictable Tom Clancy might be able to offer a solution! The circumstances in Debt of Honor are different, but I’d like to remind everyone that what happens there is appealing, considering the takeover of our country by American fascists, especially in light of the Fascist Party of America’s letting Trump and his minions to literally get away with murder (pardoning those far-right snakes who maimed and killed cops on January 6, 2021, is only one of the orange devil’s sins). In effect, justice would finally be served even if fascist SCOTUS judges still considered Narcissus le Grand America’s king.

What happened in Debt of Honor? A pilot stole a jumbo jet, a 747, and crashed it into the Capitol during a joint session of Congress, taking out a whole slew of inept politicians. A new beginning, I’d call it. I can’t remember the Hollywood version—maybe I never saw it!—but Hollywood producers and screenwriters often destroy good plots and create stereotypical heroes and villains in a way that often annoys me and many others. I do remember Clancy’s book and maybe audience reactions to the movie, so maybe I did see the latter but focused on audience reaction more?

I tend to do that. I’m a fiction writer, so I observe situations and people, even if they’re acting stupid (like the fools at a Trump rally!). I compare audience reactions too. For example, the rest of the Alien franchise couldn’t begin to compare with the shock caused by the first movie’s scene when the alien popped out of that guy’s chest. (Something like America’s wannabe Il Duce and J. Done-Nothing Vance berating and insulting our brave and courageous Zelenskyy.) The audience’s gasp was quite audible over the soundtrack. (I’m sure similar gasps were heard all over the US and Europe as they watched Trump and Vance’s performance.)

More memorable for me, though, were two other movies when the audience actually stood up and cheered: Clancy’s Debt of Honor, and when the aliens destroyed most government buildings in Washington DC—I think that film was called Mars Attacks and featured Jack Nicholson recreating his Cuckoo Nest role (what Trump has turned Washington DC into, by the way!) and playing the US president. (The real one, who’s also hilarious at times, is a vicious fascist pig in comparison.)

I’ll focus on the Clancy story, though. To paraphrase one of his quotes that run across the top of this website, old Tom once said that fiction has to seem real. I’m not sure that scene with the jumbo jet was all that realistic, in the novel or on the silver screen, but the audience reactions I remember in the movie theater were interesting, to say the least. Now I’m thinking the audience’s cheers would be even louder: Maybe we need that jumbo jet!

Everywhere I look, I see incompetence in government. Sure, the Fascist Party of America (FPA) and their fuehrer, Donald Jackass Trump, are pretending to “straighten out the country.” What BS! They’re only creating chaos, destruction, and human suffering! And the Dems are so flummoxed by their complete mismanagement of their 2024 campaign efforts that they’re acting like deer in headlights. Federal judges are trying to stop the FPA and aid the hapless Dems, but they’ll soon run afoul of the fascist SCOTUS or be impeached by an FPA-controlled Congress.

In other words, all three branches of the US government are dominated by incompetent hacks now, intent on siding with Moscow, and that’s putting it nicely. A jumbo jet crashing into the Capitol during a joint session (gee, one’s occurring tonight, right?) could just be what our country needs: A clean sweep and a new start! Of course, there’s no Jack Ryan to save the day but the idea is appealing…and why all those movie audiences and most likely readers of Clancy’s book cheered!

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Anti-fascism in my stories. That’s been a theme since my very first novel Full Medical, accompanied by the theme of terrorism (the latter is just an extreme form of the former, of course). Trump is both a fascist and terrorist, of course. In my fiction, those who fight for democracy and freedom usually win. (In the real world, that’s always in doubt with autocratic personalities like Putin, Xi, and Trump around.) Pick a story—Legacy of Evil, for example—and get some satisfaction that the good guys can win. You might even get some ideas about how to help them win in the real world? We certainly need to do that, even though the US has abdicated its role as the leader of the free world with Trump in charge.

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

The so-called “gurus,” those people who claim to know what authors should do to achieve success in publishing, often stress the importance of endorsements and reviews. They’re full of you know what!

I’ve written enough reviews and also received enough for my own books that I can state that they’re basically worthless. Think about it: Do you read a book because some stranger, reviewer X, says it’s a good read? Hell no! You might attempt to read a book if you receive a “review” (often viva vos) from a good friend, someone whose opinions you trust and value; but you’re deluding yourself if you only plow through a book because that stranger says it’s the thing to do, that “everyone else” is also reading it. (By the way, X has nothing to do with slimy and swampy Elon Muskrat! He hasn’t yet been able to take it over yet as a generic symbol for something or someone…yet.)

Don’t get me wrong: I’d rather read a good book than watch most anything on TV. I still love books and hate most other forms of entertainment a little more with each day that passes. I get enjoyment from writing my own stories too—that’s the joy of creation. I know I can tell a powerful story, one that a casual reader of fantasy and romance (J. K. Rowling and Nicholas Sparks’ mass-produced trivia comes to mind) might hate (to each his own, I say).

But I’ll never expect readers to read one of my books because some reader they don’t know from Adam or Eve says it’s the greatest thing they’ll ever read; and, as a reader, I don’t care what a damn critic or reviewer says about a book that grabs my attention either, although I might wonder what their BS means.

Authors starting out sell their souls in their efforts to get a number of “good reviews.” (Some PR and marketing sites even demand a certain number as an additional pound of flesh beyond the their exorbitant fees!) That’s all BS too! It’s as stupid as getting publicity from Oprah (when she was actually pretending to work instead of pandering to Meghan Markle), or getting on the NY Times’s bestseller list. (Who the hell even cares about their damn formula? They’re not Coca-Cola, after all. The Times is a an NYC publisher, so they’re part of that NYC publishing mafia. Forget about all of them and the critics they hire who have never written a damn thing that’s worthwhile!) All an author should do is tell the best damn story they can…and then write the next one! (I’ve done that a few times!)

Simon and Schuster, one of those bloated NYC publishers trying to force people to read their formulaic fiction, recently ended their requirement of “book blurbs”—by the way, they don’t think of them as just summaries of books (how most people define them!), but as endorsements of an author and his book made by other authors who presumably have more “name recognition.” The use of these endorsements has always been just more evidence for a “book mafia.” The latter is comprised of that group of publishers, editors, and the Big Fives’ (mostly NYC publishers) old mares and stallions, who are all comfy in their cushy stables, everyone enjoying the many reciprocal pats on the back as they control the competition and slow down any threatening newcomers who are trying to break into fiction’s elite ranks. I used to ask myself: What does a Baldacci or Deaver get from endorsing another author’s book they probably never read? The answer’s obvious: An endorsement for their own next book! I’m not sure if an endorsement increases the likelihood of traditional book publishing’s demise—it’s already in its death throes—but its incestuous nature certainly can’t help.

Needless to say, I’ve never paid any attention to either reviews or endorsements as either a writer or a reader. I’ve always known enough from a “peek inside” and the book’s blurb (my meaning is “summary”), or the ebook costs so little that I’m willing to take a gamble, that I can decide whether it’s worth buying and reading. (The cost is an indication of quality too—authors like James Patterson exploit other authors and therefore their readers by maintaining an elaborate assembly line that makes Henry Ford look like an amateur entrepreneur.) That filtering benefits me because I can avoid wasting my time reading  a lot of “popular authors” whose plots and prose have become boring, formulaic, and uninteresting trivial rubbish (sometimes that describes their very first book!). So be it. If someone asks if I’ve read so-and-so’s title Y, I often can proudly say no! It also means that I can maintain a high moral standard for my own stories that’s not influenced by greed or pandering to certain sectors of the public that I find despicable.

To those who counter these sentiments by saying that writing is a business, I can reply that writing is an art, and to be true to my art, I must ignore that business aspect as much as I possibly can. Pandering to what few readers are left is a waste of time; pandering to the Big Five’s mafia is prostituting my artistic soul. I’ll do neither one!

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“Writing Fiction.” If you’re an author, especially one who’s starting out, I’ve summarized some of the things I’ve learned along my writing journey. If you can believe it, I started before ebooks even existed! Now that’s all I publish (via Draft2Digital/Smashwords), mostly because of what I described above. I often update this sometimes acerbic and often controversial DIY manual, but I originally offered it as a more believable and useful self-help treatise than King’s On Writing that now has only historical value (if that!). Like all my writing, take it or leave it. And, like a lot of my recent writing, it’s a free PDF download. (See the entire list of free downloads on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page.)

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

I’ve written several trilogies. The “Inspector Steve Morgan” trilogy is the most recent; it’s basically a continuation of the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series, and “Revenge at Last,” a novella in the free PDF download of the same name, almost made Morgan’s trilogy into a series (and still might, depending on my energy reserves). Three other trilogies,, “The Last Humans,” “The Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries,” and “Clones and Mutants,” are quite different. One difference is that they have strong female protagonists (the last one, several).

I considered “The Last Humans” trilogy in a previous article; it’s post-apocalyptic sci-fi. Another difference then can be found in the type of sci-fi. Mary Jo’s adventures are more thrillers than mysteries; and most of the sci-fi is found in the MECHs, cyborg warriors representing tech that China, Russia, and the US all want to steal and are willing to employ evil agents to do just that. Mary Jo prevents that from happening in three different novels. (Mary Jo is an alias for Maria Jose, by the way) “The Clones and Mutants” trilogy is also a sci-fi thriller where new biological advances replace the robotic ones of the cyborgs.

The sci-fi is all different in these three trilogies, but the general lesson is always the same: There are evil people whose greed and desire for power are willing to make good people suffer to obtain it; so, if no one steps up to stop those villains, they will succeed. That important lesson is one we should all learn in real life during these troubling times when an evil and wannabe fascist dictator has grabbed power in our country and is making many of its good citizens suffer. We need more virtuous heroes and fewer evil fascist villains.

What Penny Castro (protagonist of “The Last Humans” trilogy), Mary Jo Melendez, and the clones and one mutant show in these three trilogies is that ordinary humans can step up and overcome terrible odds to defeat the forces of evil. This of course is a major message in a lot of fiction. My “ordinary humans” are also smart women who are mostly Latinas, and that belies the macho beliefs of ignorant American fascists like our DoD secretary that women can’t fight for what’s right and the far-right opinions in our country that “others” who aren’t extreme far-right WASP zealots like them don’t belong in America.

Of course, this is fiction, storytelling that should entertain anyone who’s not a fascist MAGA supporter. Guess what? I’ve known plenty of women who have exactly the positive characteristics of my fictional heroes. My characters have flaws like everyone does, of course—they’re very human, unlike many zombies in the MAGA hordes, but they also have courage and skills. That’s more than the DoD secretary or any other member of our wannabe fascist dictator’s administration has. If there is a God, He’ll be on these women’s side, not the side of the fascist devils led by the Orange Devil. Fiction must seem real, and fiction about heroes can become real if the real heroes in our society receive our support.

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“The Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries.” In the first novel, Muddlin’ Through, Mary Jo is framed and must struggle to prove she’s innocent. In the second novel, Silicon Slummin’ and Just Gettin’ By, Russia and the US are all after the MECHs (“Mechanically Enhanced Cybernetic Humans”) and she’s pursued by a stalker. In the third, Goin’ the Extra Mile, China goes after the MECHs. Readers will wonder how this all ends. All three novels are available wherever quality ebooks are sold (even on Amazon). These are all “evergreen books,” stories as exciting and prophetic as the day I finished the manuscripts.

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

Long ago when I began to write the first parts of Survivors of the Chaos (the first novel in the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy”), I had a premonition that fascist oligarchs like Elon Muskrat, the big Bezos bot, and the other tech fascists attending Trump’s inauguration and kissing his McD’s butt, were plotting to own the world. Later even Hollywood movies like Blade Runner, Alien, and Avatar echoed that fear of fascist capitalism I had and Putin and Xi have now popularized in the autocratic world. (I also predicted that China would found the first colony on Mars. The Muskrat has some stiff competition for that and for many other tech initiatives.)

Do I take comfort in saying “I told you so”? Not really. What temporarily saved Earth in the sci-fi universe of “Chaos” from exploitative fascist capitalism was a very intelligent manipulator of the fascist oligarchs of her time, a little but energetic lady who outsmarted all the oligarchs to establish star colonies in three different nearby star systems. That bold move eventually saved Earth from ET invaders much more dangerous and violent than the human oligarchs! (That story is told in Sing a Zamba Galactica, the second novel in what some have called my Foundation trilogy—I’ve always been an avid fan of Isaac Asimov, another scientist who decided to become a sci-fi writer.)

Sci-fi authors who write anything decent point out possible futures and warnings to their fellow human beings, at least to readers who pay attention, in order to warn us about getting our acts together if we want to survive in a hostile Universe made all the more so by scurrilous humans who often create hells on Earth for everyone and, in the future, off Earth as well. We’re very much in that dangerous place today.

I predicted all this in 2011 in Survivors of the Chaos. The details are slightly different, but the real tragedy for human beings in 2025 suffering under Trump and his oligarchs and the other fascists in our world is much worse. Yes, I told you so, but I didn’t quite see how bad it might become…and readers didn’t heed the warning!

Maybe it’s not too late? We still sometimes pay attention to Brave New World, Darkness at Noon, and 1984. I’ve seen Trump’s machinations called Orwellian. Sci-fi warnings are forever… unless the censors of Fahrenheit 451 take over and erase them!

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The “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection.” In the first novel, Survivors of the Chaos, Earth gets a respite from fascist capitalists because the leader of space exploration efforts in the solar system cajoles Earth’s oligarchs into supporting programs to create colonies in three nearby star systems. In the second novel, Sing a Zamba Galactica, first contact is made with some strange ETs who become good allies in a fight against another group of ETs bent on destroying all other intelligent life to control all of near-Earth space, but a collective intelligence appears that complicates things. In the third novel, Come Dance a Cumbia…with Stars in Your Hand!, a psychotic and sociopathic human industrialist and mega-billionaire causes chaos and  havoc as he attempts to create a stellar empire where he’s the absolute ruler. (Any semblance with Earth’s current fascists was intentional, of course!) This ebook bundle of all three novels is available wherever quality ebooks are sold (even on Amazon).

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

Despite the attacks from Bezos and his bots that screwed up the Amazon listings of the first two novels in the series, the post-apocalyptic novels found in “The Last Humans” trilogy don’t do badly at their job in portraying a possible and terrible future most of us who are sane wouldn’t want. In that sense, they are a warning of things to come.

Consider the worldwide contagion that wreaks havoc in the first titular novel The Last Humans  (Black Opal Books 2019). Readers won’t learn its source yet, but it’s bioengineered by a US adversary (readers find out which one in the second novel), That lethal contagion that first hits the west coast of the US propagates around the world like Covid did. (After the book was published. A beta-reader even a year earlier thought that was unlikely, but then Covid came along and supported my thesis! And Covid might have been bioengineered as well in that lab in Wuhan, most recently posed by the US CIA! We’d have to grill fascist President-for-Life Xi about that…as if that SOB would admit the truth!) That’s the first prediction for the future this post-apocalyptic sci-fi trilogy posits..

In the aftermath of the apocalypse in that first novel, my protagonist Penny Castro travels around SoCal trying to survive attacks by feral humans, wild dog packs, and the fascist remains of the US government. (They’re bent on retribution in the second novel; and in the real world, we now know there might be a lot more fascists who’ve come out of the closet since 2019.) That SoCal landscape is mostly an arid and fire-burned inhospitable place. I don’t mention how those fires occurred, but the recent ones in SoCal propagated by 100 mph Santa Ana winds certainly qualify. And Penny and her newly acquired family’s trek from the coast over California’s coast range of mountains to I5 was the same one I took many times going home from college to my parents’ home in the Central Valley for the holidays. That’s the second prediction for the future.

What hasn’t yet come true in that first book is the takeover of the desalination platforms by fascist villains who want to control California’s water. As far as I know, these platforms haven’t even been built yet or even planned, but lack of potable water will soon become critical worldwide. (Our fascist president might even support such a measure since he’s so damned worried about water!) California, SoCal in particular, has a huge population, and most of the state would be a desert without irrigation. In fact, the air force base, where Penny’s family ends up as refugees seeking asylum (labeling them criminal migrants and refugees wasn’t even considered because the agri-workers the state’s economy needs died from the contagion as well), sends out tanker trucks to transport water from the San Joaquin Valley’s irrigation pumps.

The other two novels in this trilogy have “predictions” that might come true as well, but those first two mentioned here from that first novel (i.e. two out of the three) isn’t a bad start. Just a sci-fi author’s luck…and my desire to tell a few good post-apocalyptic tales. Sci-fi predictions can also be warnings, of course. Future plagues and consequences of global warming (including blizzard-like snowstorms in southern Texas and Florida!) are clear and present dangers that we shouldn’t ignore (unless you’re our repeat fascist president)..

But back to Amazon’s screw-up: If you go to my web page “Novels and Short Fiction,” you will be able to read about what happened to those first two novels in this trilogy, thanks to the fascist oligarch Bezos and his bots. To this date, Amazon has never fixed this problem despite my pleas to do so. Until they do, readers will have to work a bit harder to buy and download these ebooks. This cock-up is one reason I no longer list my new ebooks for sale on Amazon. In general, your best bet as a reader is to use Barnes & Noble or some other online ebook distributor, not Amazon. (With Bezos joining the other oligarchs kissing the president’s fat butt now, you’ll be a lot more patriotic if you don’t do business with Amazon at all. Your choice.)

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“The Last Humans” trilogy. In the title novel (paperback and ebook published by Black Opal Books), Penny Castro survives an apocalypse. It’s a worldwide bioengineered pandemic that kills millions. She also manages to create her adopted family and unreluctantly fights for what’s left of an ineffective and fascist US government. In A New Dawn (ebook published by Draft2Digital/Smashwords), what’s left of the US government seeks revenge against the plague’s creators, forcefully recruiting Penny and her husband for their plans. In Menace from Moscow (ebook also published by Draft2Digital/Smashwords), she and her husband are forcefully conscripted again, this time to recover nukes from a US submarine in a watery grave just off Cuba…but the surviving Russian government also covets them. (All three ebooks are available wherever quality ebooks are sold, but the third novel isn’t on Amazon.)

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

“I’ve no use for fascists, no matter how they’re labeled.”—Detective Rolando Castilblanco in The Collector (Carrick Publishing, 2014).

Sometimes readers send me more personal critiques of my stories, although the more public reviews can be snarky as well. Any author has to have a thick skin, of course–there are a lot of trolls out there!—but both kinds of critiques, the personal and public ones, often make me wonder if maybe I should call for someone to do a mental health intervention, maybe offering to send the critical troll with a straitjacket?

A prude who complains about too much sex and strong language is more amusing than harmful. An author can just reply (not recommended for a review), “Hey, you don’t have to read the story!” Someone who complains that the story is out of touch with reality deserves the same answer; obviously they’ve never read Weir’s The Martian or Rowling’s The Deadly Hallows.

Political critiques often have a different tone, sometimes even threatening violence. We live in a very polarized society, so a political theme can make some readers angry and others cheer (for the latter, just send money). In fact, in these times, if an author assumes their readers cover the entire political spectrum (a big assumption because the extreme left and right only read what’s spoon-fed them in their echo chambers…if they even read—MAGA maniacs aren’t known for that because most, like their hero fuehrer, can hardly read or write), there’ll usually be a lot of people upset. (For example, an anti-Semitic ass might have a problem with Sullivan’s Beneath a Scarlet Sky, although I’d bet the author or his publisher carefully chose that title to avoid controversy.)

What the Big Five publishing conglomerates do to avoid this is to mostly publish pablum, of course, i.e., books that avoid all controversial themes and politics. The authors they choose to publish hide their opinions and must be willing to geld themselves to create this pablum. Big Five authors, in other words, with only a few exceptions like Gerlis and Sullivan, must work hard to make sure they write nothing of consequence. They have to treat all topics with kid gloves. “Offend no one” begins everyone’s business model when dealing with these hypocrites.

This always reminds me (showing my age, I guess) of Lucille Ball not being able to say the word “pregnant” when she was exactly that during her fifties sitcom. Or the couple portrayed in that otherwise hilarious Dick van Dyke show sleeping in twin beds. What we have now from the Big Five and their authors is still hypocritical political censorship!

I can’t believe that serious readers approve of this practice. But PR and marketing efforts—especially the thousands spent by the Big Five pimping their pablum—are effectively convincing even serious readers to purchase their fluffy fiction, and they never realize that more serious literature even exists.

Okay, maybe I’m naïve if I consider what I write to be “serious literature.” But I’d be willing to bet that any reader would be hard-pressed to find the quote found at the beginning of this post in a Big Five book! Neither Baldacci nor Patterson nor any other old mare or stallion in the Big

Five’s stables of “sure winners” (who jealously guard their privileged stalls, by the way!) would dare write that and run the chance of bringing a publisher’s wrath down on them! Hell, even most US news media avoids using the word “fascist”! Clearly my anti-fascist themes were on display even long before Trump turned the Good Ole Piranhas into the Fascist Party of America.

I don’t read pablum; never have, never will. So, as a consequence, I rarely read any Big Five fiction story. (I might do a non-fiction book, especially if I get it as a gift.) I suggest you do the same, if only to broaden your horizons. To paraphrase Tom Clancy (whose only decent book was Hunt for Red October, by the way, because the Big Five ruined him as well, once they got their talons into him), fiction must seem real. Pablum isn’t real; it’s a swindle. Be selective in your reading!

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

The Collector. This novel considers stolen art and how it might be used to finance human trafficking and sexual exploitation. NYPD homicide detectives Chen and Castilblanco have to deal with yet another complex case. They get some help in Europe from Esther Brookstone and Bastiann van Coevorden (as a prequel to Esther’s own long series). There are some winners in this raw mystery/thriller, but not many. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold (even on Amazon).

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