Tag archives for Fiction - Page 25
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Review – The Red: First Light by Linda Nagata
I was recommended this from reading Charlie Stross's blog as the Linda Nagata is guest blogging while Charlie is down under. Military Sci-Fi is something that I tend to enjoy, so much so that I've written some of it and regularly wargame in that genre. This one was a very compelling near future story, told in a first person narrative by a not entirely volunteer US Army Lieutenant. The protagonist is the leader of a 'linked combat squad' who are a sort of specialised infantry with an exo-skeleton controlled by an external skull cap that can read (and affect) their brain states. From what I know of current and proposed military capabilities this is an entirely believable future, just a little into future from now (perhaps a decade or two, but happily non-specific so that we don’t fall into the…
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Games of Thrones by George Martin – Book Review
A bit like the curate's egg really. However the good parts don't excuse the bad in my opinion. What I liked about it was the fact that it was a good political/dynastic story and that we saw things from many different character points of view. This is sufficiently unusual in the fantasy (and in fact in most fiction) genre that it should really get a lot of praise, and I think that might be what made it so popular. However I didn't like the blatantly misogynist viewpoints of some of the characters (at first I thought it was the whole tone of the story, but I realised on persevering with it that it was simply a majority of the male characters). While I can see that this is probably a realistic viewpoint for the characters in that setting, I didn't…
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Marketing the Story – free promo
I was unexpectedly unwell at the same time that the two days of free promo kicked in, so I didn't get to push it, nor to ask those getting a free copy to give me feedback, so I'll just need to hope that some people do. Certainly, if I get a book for free I'll write a review, as I did for Farewell Horizontal (although I quite often write reviews anyway). Anyway, the result was that for the 48 hours that Exodus: Mike's Thread was free, 6 Brits and 127 Americans (or at least people living in those areas) downloaded it. So that means that, I hope, 133 people have read my story. That's a good start and probably more than I hoped without having pushed it much. The next step is to finish off my Maths TMA and when I've made…
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Short Story – Exodus: Mike’s Thread by James Kemp
I've made a short story from my NaNoWriMo 2012 event available as a Kindle book, which is available from Amazon. Exodus: Mike's Thread tells part of the story from the point of view of one of the characters, it isn't his whole story, but tells a large chunk of it and ends on an appropriate point. The gist of the story is that Mike is an officer in the US Space Command, and one of the insiders in a conspiracy within the US military to circumvent the inconvenient parts of civilian control. He tells his story in the first person to the interviewer after the events. The rest of the story is still in for editing, although I won't release more of it until I've got through some more of my open university maths course, I've got some catching up to…
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Book Review: Farewell Horizontal by K W Jeter
Excellent thought provoking and very well put together science fiction with a little twist, which left me wanting a little more from it. Ignoring the setting for a moment this is really a story about the rat race and how it affects people. It is set in a strange, slightly unbelievable, environment on the side of a massive building in a dystopian post-apocalyptic future, probably on another planet. However none of that really matters, and the point of the story, which is well crafted, is that sometimes you need to stop and think about things rather than just striving for the next payday. The primary character is a freelancer struggling to make enough income to cover all his costs, and on the point of bankruptcy. He lives on the outside vertical space of the building while he attempts to make…