My novelette, An Illicit Mercy, is part of a new promotion in March, SciFi and Fantasy MegaGiveaway.
Check out nearly 90 novels, excerpts, and short stories, available for free.
My latest novelette, “In the Country of Free Men,” appears in Boundary Shock Quarterly 25: Gulliver’s Other Travels:
In this thrilling tale, Granuaile Moore, the great-granddaughter of Lemuel Gulliver, travels to the mysterious Moon. There, she gets caught up in an adventure beyond her wildest dreams.
When her scout flyer is attacked and destroyed, Moore finds herself at the mercy of the cruel ruler known as the Drummer. Imprisoned in his decaying palace, she befriends Tichollo, a young servant boy, and hatches a desperate plan to escape back to Earth.
Pursued by the Drummer’s soldiers, the two race across a bizarre lunar landscape in a bid for freedom. They must reunite with the island-ship Lemuel II, if it's still there!
Moore’s quest to explore new worlds has led her into grave danger. But with courage and cleverness, she might live to sail the skies once more.
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Jason “Key” Rokku has just been released from prison after 10 years. Dumped back on the moon, Izanami, of his origin planet (Izanagi) he struggles to make it back into society. No one is willing to handle an ex-convict. That is except Apollus Tuck, a businessman who owns a few restaurants across the resource rich moon. Key comes to Tuck's attention when he prevents a kidnapping and as a result Tuck offers him a position as a bodyguard.
Tuck's political ambitions are in jeopardy when he is blackmailed by a former friend who has an embarrassing tape of a drunken Tuck at a party. He sends Key to retrieve the tape, but the opposing political party is also after the tape in the hopes they can end his campaign before it starts. They have hired a Freelancer from the infamous Empire-free VokGuild to mediate with Tuck's ex-friend and safely courier the tape to them. Key will have his work cut out for him if he hopes to get the tape before it’s too late.
As I recall, I first learned of Vernor Vinge a year or two out of college. My friend Karl had stopped by after visiting our local used book store. He’d picked up a copy of Day of the Triffids as a gift for me. He’d also donated his copy of Vinge’s Hugo Award-winning 1992 novel A Fire Upon the Deep. I told him I’d never read it. In fact, I had never heard of it.
Karl proceeded to describe the overall premise of the novel, his excitement obvious in his voice and manner. He finished by telling me,
“You have to read it! I’m going to go buy it back and give it to you. Just promise me you’ll donate it back again when you’ve finished it.”
I was a bit skeptical I would enjoy the book as much as Karl did. But it sounded like a good space opera, so I was game.
I shouldn’t have doubted. Not only is A Fire Upon the Deep one of the best space opera’s I’ve ever read. It’s one of the best science fiction books I’ve ever read.
Vinge posits a universe where the laws of physics change the further one is from the center of the galaxy.
In the center (the “Unthinking Depths”) computers and even biological brains have trouble functioning.
Further out, in a ring (the “Slow Zone”) around the Unthinking Depths, life has no problem evolving intelligence, but true artificial intelligence is impossible, as is faster-than-light travel. This is where ancient Earth is located, but humanity has left it long ago.
In the outermost ring (the “Beyond”), science fiction societies abound, with intelligent computers, megastructures, faster-than-light starships, etc.
Surrounding the Beyond, at the outer fringes of the Milky Way (the “Transcend”) super-intelligent godlike (or demonlike) beings think imponderable thoughts and do unknowable things.
It’s magnificent, and won its author the 1993 Hugo Award (his first of three.)
Vinge taught computer science at San Diego university until he retired in 2000 to concentrate on writing. His area of expertise shows up in his work, as in the galactic version of Usenet that ties the civilizations of the Beyond together. And in A Deepness in the Sky, a prequel to A Fire Upon the Deep, where a back door written into a version of Unix/Linux with centuries-long pedigree plays a crucial role. I was privileged to be present in 2000 when Vinge received the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Deepness at the Campbell Conference in Lawrence, Kansas. The book also won Vinge his second Hugo.
Vinge’s background in computer science led him to propose his most famous idea, the Singularity. His article “"The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era” appeared in a 1993 issue of the magazine Whole Earth Review.
Vernor Vinge died on Wednesday from complications due to Parkinson’s Disease, at the age of 79. We have lost his voice, but his ideas remain with us, and seem more relevant than ever.
Questions or comments? Please share your thoughts!
A singular writer