The Secret Lair

Fables of the Flying City is the tale of Ashe, a young woman from the streets of the flying city of Amperstam learns what it takes to be a member of the Aerial Guard, and finds herself at war with an invading empire and the rulers of the city she has sworn to protect!

Fables of the Flying City is written by Jared Axelrod, with illustrations by Steve Walker and Natalie Kelly.

About Jared Axelrod

In addition to writing the adventures of Ashe and the other denizens of the flying city of Amperstam, Jared Axelrod is the writer of the webcomic “All Write!” for the website I Should Be Writing. His written work has been published in the anthologies Podthology: The Pod Complex, as well as The Sovereign Era: Year One, Salt and End Of Time, as well asNeometropolis and Escape Pod magazines. He was a founding writer for 365 Tomorrows. His illustration work can be seen on the cover of the novel Brave Men Run, and accompanying the original audio version of the novels Playing For Keeps and Cybrosis. He currently resides in Philadelphia with his immensely talented wife.

He is not domestic, he is a luxury. And in that sense, necessary.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:12 — 29.5MB)

Every so often, I find a book so engaging that I absolutely cannot put it down. I find myself skipping the TV shows or video games I might otherwise play, skipping sleep, and feeling tempted to skip work so that I can read just one more chapter. Ready Player One was a book like that.

The year 2044 is a dystopian future in which the economy has grown progressively worse. It is the fourth decade of The Great Recession, and to escape bleak reality, much of humanity lives, works, and goes to school online in a virtual-reality called The OASIS. The OASIS consists of many sectors, each containing many worlds. Some of these are education worlds where kids attend online schools, and others contain dungeons filled with ogres, rancor, or Tron recognizers. There are even worlds created as immersive 3D remakes of Infocom text adventures. The whole thing reminds me of Second Life combined with Minecraft and World of Warcraft, but taking place on Star Trek’s holodeck.

Wade Watts is a hopeless antisocial nerd with no friends outside the OASIS and few friends even in the online world where he spends most of his time.¹ Wade lives in “the stacks” – a trailer park in which the trailers are physically stacked one upon another to save space – but he goes to school in The OASIS, which is good because the school is in a non-PvP zone, and the other kids can’t beat him up like they had in the real world.

When the brilliant and eccentric inventor of The OASIS dies, his will stipulates that his entire corporation, worth billions of dollars, will be inherited by whomever discovers his Easter Egg by solving a series of puzzles based around the nostaligia of his childhood – the 1980s. The effect of this contest is massive, as it triggers a worldwide resurgence of 1980s culture as those who are eager to find the Easter Egg dive headfirst into the pop culture that will help them find The Egg.

Wade Watts is an Egg Hunter, or ‘gunter. He immerses himself in the eighties, learning everything he can about the movies, the music, and the video games of the time. He masters Robotron and Rastan, watches entire seasons of Jayce and The Wheeled Warriors, and studies old Dungeons and Dragons modules and Duran Duran album art.

It’s been years since the announcement of the contest, and nobody has progressed significantly, but when Wade stumbles onto the first clue that leads to The Egg, things begin to move very quickly. Entire corporations have been formed with no other purpose than seeking The Egg, and they will stop at nothing – not even murder – to reach The Egg and take over The OASIS.

Ready Player One has been referred to as “nostalgia porn”, but even without the eighties nostalgia, which I enjoyed quite a lot, it’s a heck of a good story. I was reminded of Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother, which is one of my favorite books. This may have to do with the fact that the big bad in Little Brother is a fascist Department of Homeland Security and the big bad in Ready Player One is a powerful amoral capitalist corporation gone awry². The resourceful and technically-savvy kid taking on a powerful organization despite overwhelming odds is an awfully fun (if not realistic) story seed. Others have compared Ready Player One to Snow Crash³, Scott Pilgrim vs The World, Ender’s Game, or Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Ernie Cline is a new novelist, but he was the writer behind the 2008 film Fanboys, which I really liked. I guess I’m just a fan of his writing style. Some would call Ready Player One a young adult novel, but it’s hard to make the claim that the book is targeted at a tween audience when so much of it is geared towards those who grew up in the 1980s.

Pick up a copy of Ready Player One. It’s got my highest recommendation. You can read the dead tree version like I did, get a copy for your favorite E-reader, or listen to the audiobook as narrated by Wil Wheaton⁴.

1. That is to say he’s a lot like I was when I was in 8th grade, although my Commodore 64 couldn’t get onto any kind of actual internet. We didn’t even have Prodigy or Compuserve – I had to settle for dial-up bulletin board systems. [↩]
2. Basically Comcast as they might exist in a world that gave rich corporations license to do anything they wanted [↩]
3. I’m now feeling that I probably should read Snow Crash despite the difficulty I had getting through Cryptonomicon [↩]
4. Oh come on, don’t act like you’re surprised [↩]

As part of our training curriculum for minions learning the fine art of extracting information, we adopted the use of the ten questions made famous first by Bernard Pivot, then by James Lipton on Inside the Actor’s Studio. 

Today we bring you a transcript of Minion #16782′s training session.

File #0002: Nathan Lowell

What is your favorite word?

Ausgeseighnet

What is your least favorite word?

Lastly

What turns you on?

Fun

What turns you off?

Bitchy, whiny people

What sound or noise do you love?

Purring cat

What sound or noise do you hate?

Dentist drill

What is your favorite curse word?

Hell

What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

Male stripper

What profession would you not like to do?

Dentist

If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

Smart ass.

Session Notes

Nathan Lowell has been a writer for more than forty years, and first entered the literary world by podcasting his novels. His sci-fi series, Trader’s Tales from The Golden Age of the Solar Clipper, grew from his long time fascination with space opera and his own experiences shipboard in the United States Coast Guard. Unlike most works which focus on a larger-than-life hero (prophesized savior, charismatic captain, or exiled prince), Nathan centers on the people behind the scenes–ordinary men and women trying to make a living in the depths of space. In his novels, there are no bug-eyed monsters, or galactic space battles, instead he paints a richly vivid and realistic world where the “hero” uses hard work and his own innate talents to improve his station and the lives of those of his community.

Dr. Nathan Lowell holds a Ph.D. in Educational Technology with specializations in Distance Education and Instructional Design. He also holds an M.A. in Educational Technology and a BS in Business Administration. He grew up on the south coast of Maine and is strongly rooted in the maritime heritage of the sea-farer. He served in the USCG from 1970 to 1975, seeing duty aboard a cutter on hurricane patrol in the North Atlantic and at a communications station in Kodiak, Alaska. He currently lives in the plains east of the Rocky Mountains with his wife and two daughters.

Hi, folks. I’m Doc Coleman. Chris asked me to come along and lend a hand with The Secret Lair. At first I was going to refuse, because I thought he wanted help picking the trash up off the floor. Yeah, it needs some help. But then he explained that he had some books to review and I decided that I could probably help out with that.

While horror as a genre isn’t exactly my thing, I agreed to read and review Gary McMahon’s novel “Dead Bad Things”. This is another novel in his Thomas Usher series, although it takes a while before you see Thomas. But even for someone like myself who hasn’t read the previous novel,“Pretty Little Dead Things”, this book makes sense in and of itself. Sort of.

Our story is set in England, in and around the city of Leeds. We begin with Police Constable Sarah Doherty and her partner Benson. Sarah has been having a tough time of it. Her father, the noted Policeman Emerson Doherty died a few months back, but she seems to see his ghost everywhere. The house is filled with his things, and still carries his presence. Her fellow constables all look at her as being Doherty’s daughter instead of letting her stand on her own merits. She remembers her father as an abusive manipulator, but to the rest of the force he was a hero. And then there is that other thing.

Her twitch.

Sarah has been seeing things. Feeling things. Dead things.

Unsure of what is happening, Sarah has been seeing echos. Of the future, of the past, of the dead. She’s been able to rely upon them on the job, but the rest of the time she just wants them to go away. So she drowns them with booze, and with sex, and curses her father for screwing her up so badly. And then her twitch led her to find a small boy with holes drilled into his skull.

Thomas has been in hiding. He’s been sticking to the grey zones, areas the living have forgotten, where even the dead won’t bother him. But someone wants Thomas badly enough. He gets a call from a mechanical voice. A clockwork voice. A voice that wants to hire Thomas to find someone. A call that came through on a dead phone line.

Trevor Pumpkiss had seen better days. Days when he went by his stage name, Trevor Dove. In those days he was a professional psychic, but now his gift, and fame, have deserted him. Trevor lives on, trying to find some satisfaction with young male prostitutes. But none of them compare to his dead brother Michael. Michael who committed suicide to escape Trevor’s sexual abuse. But now, now Trevor’s gift seems to be coming back to him. A spirit is calling him from beyond the mirror. If he can help it, perhaps it can help him find Michael again? Or at least find revenge against the man who took his gift away, Thomas Usher.

“Dead Bad Things” follows these three characters, as they search for their own goals in a dark world of sex, abuse, blood, and murder. Three characters spiraling in to an inevitable collision. The book is dark, gruesome, and unnerving in its examination of alternative realities.

For some folks, this book will not be a good read. Not only does McMahon change the point of view character from chapter to chapter, he shifts from first person to third person and on to other narrative styles that I’m sure have names but aren’t really worth naming. For some folks, this changing point of view will drive them up a wall. If you can get past this, the story is intriguing and has a number of surprises. One of which is how bleeding long will these characters go on before they meet up? Well, I guess I kind of spoiled that. It does take quite a long time before our characters meet up. I began to wonder if the author had something else in mind.

I give this story a 4 out of 5. Blood, gore, and gruesome isn’t exactly my cup of tea, but I found the characters to be consistent and relatively honest about their own dysfunctions. While the actions were drawn out over the course of the book, they remained believable and true to the characters. If you’re good with the changing viewpoints, and you’re into gory tales, I believe that you’ll probably like “Dead Bad Things”.

 About the Reviewer

Doc Coleman is a writer, blogger, podcaster, and voice actor. He is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Nifty Tech Blog (http://www.NiftyTechBlog.com), a technology review blog focusing on the best of consumer technology. He is also a regular on Flying Island Press’ Galley Table Podcast, and produces his own weekly podcast: The Shrinking Man Project (http://TheShrinkingManProject.com), a weekly journal documenting his personal weight loss journey. For news and information about Doc’s latest projects, check out his website athttp://www.DocColeman.com.

When Doc isn’t juggling projects, making his living as a Web Engineer, or mainlining podcasts, he is a gamer, an avid reader, a motorcyclist, ahomebrewer and beer aficionado, a fan of renaissance festivals, and frequently a smart-ass. He lives with his lovely wife and two Maine Coon cats in Germantown, MD.

These are dark days indeed in Victoria’s England. Londoners are vanishing, then reappearing, washing up as corpses on the banks of the river Thames, drained of blood and bone. Yet the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences- the Crown’s clandestine organisation whose baliwick is the strange and unsettling- will not allow its agents to investigate. Fearless and exceedingly lovely Eliza D Braun, however, with her bulletproof corset and a disturbing fondness  for dynamite, refuses to let the matter rest..and she’s prepared to drag her timorous new partner, Wellington Books along with her into the perilous fray.

For a malevolent brotherhood is operating in the deepening London shadows, intent upon the enslavement of all Britons. And Books and Braun- he with his encyclopedic brain and she with her remarkable devices- must get to the twisted roots of a most nefarious plot… or see England fall to the Phoenix.

I’ve been meaning to write this review up for a while, considering how quickly I read the book. So let me get to it now.

Wellington Books and Eliza D. Brawn have a problem. Wellington wants a quiet life in the archives, and Eliza wants anything but. After Eliza is assigned to the archives after being deported from her home country and sent to London, they’re stuck together. It seems that the two of them are destined for a miserable life at work, until Eliza’s infectious curiosity pulls Books into an adventure when her former partner is killed.

The book begins with a flashback, hooking the reader with some action and showing a bit of the personalities and capabilities of Books and Brawn. Having known Mr. Morris’s and Ms. Ballantine’s work for a while now, I could hear their voices coming through the characters, sniping and playing with each other. This definitely in not a bad thing, and added in my mind, to the relationship that Books and Brawn develop throughout the novel.

Later, as the two archivists investigate the murder more closely they find that the murdered agent had been working on a case on his own time. We find out that Ms. Brawn had a thing for her former partner, and is compelled to follow the leads he left for the case. The mystery unfolds as the two of them investigate, at times being chased through the streets of London, going undercover as a married couple, and infiltrating a secret society.

The book is humorous, campy, steampunk at it’s best. The authors wanted to capture the feel of the old Avengers and Wild Wild West tv shows, and they hit the tone perfectly. It’s a quick read, not easy to put down, and in the end leaves you wanting the second book to arrive sooner rather than later.

If you are a fan of steampunk, and have a humorous bone in your body, then I believe you will enjoy Phoenix Rising.

Before I leave you, and if you haven’t yet decided on it, I’ll leave you with a trailer for the book that fits the tone of the book quite well.

[amazon_enhanced asin="0062049763" /]

When the BBC decided to take Doctor Who off the air in 1989,  one of the scripts that would never see production was Marc Platt‘s Lungbarrow.  It was later turned into a novel and published by Virgin.  The subject matter makes it one of the most sought after novelizations; it tells the story of the childhood of The Doctor.

As a fan,  I’ve been looking for this book for years.  I did not find out about it until it as long out of print,  and I either never had any luck finding a copy at a used bookstore or was unwilling to pay the high prices that collectors pay for such rarities on eBay.  Recently, a copy came into my possession and I was finally able to read what is considered one of the most revealing stories in the canon of Doctor Who mythology.

The story revolves around the Gallifreyan House of Lungbarrow, one of the ancient “families” of Time Lord society. Note the quotes: to understand the story, you need to know that, in the continuity of the New Advenstures books (which picked up where the T.V. series left off), it was revealed that, when Rassilon completed his revolution against a Sisterhood who ran the planet, the leader of that Sisterhood cursed the Time Lord: they could not reproduce. The result was that Rassilon and a shadowy figure from the past called The Other created the Looms: new Gallifreyans are woven from genetic material into full grown adults, and this is where regeneration comes from: more lives because they cannot reproduce easily.

The Doctor is a member of the House of Lungbarrow, having been woven from the Looms, but he is odd from the first. The head of the House, Quences, casts him out for his rebellious nature. And thus, the wandering vagabond we know and love was born. Except…when Quences dies, he hides his will…and only the Doctor can find it.

The story has much more going on than the simple plot I outline: this is a rare portrait of the most basic workings of the Time Lords: the family unit. It’s bizarre and twisted, as much Mervyn Peake as Terence Dicks or Russell T. Davies. Sentient furniture, crazy relatives, dark corners and fabulous monsters are all elements of the tale, mostly to good effect. Platt states in his introduction that he wanted the House to be suitably alien and he succeeds in this, but his success is double-edged. At times, it can be hard to follow the action with the need to describe and explain the alien nature of family life amongst the Time Lords.

Complicating this is the subplot which serves to segue into the 1999 Doctor Who Movie. This novel was to be the last of the New Adventures before the Fox movie, and as such, needed to set up the Doctor’s trip to Skaro to retrieve the remains of the Master. The integration of this subplot seems to me to be overly complicated and byzantine, running around the main plot in such a way that it muddies the main plotline.

Overall, if you read this book, be sure to get a copy with the author’s notes: you’ll find them invaluable. As much as I enjoyed learning the story about who the Doctor was and is in relation to his family, without the notes, I would have been lost.

If you enjoyed the mythology of Gallifrey in the days before Russell T. Davies blew it up, you’ll enjoy this book. If you are new to Doctor Who (meaning only started watching it in 2005), you’ll need to get a bit more background in the old T.V. continuity before reading this novel.

The colony planet of Eighty-Six looks as dull as all its fellow new worlds to veteran journalist Lex Falk, but when a local squabble starts to turn violent, and the media start getting the runaround from the military high command, his interest is seriously piqued.

Forbidden from approaching the battlezone, he gets himself chipped inside the head of a combat veteran – and uncovers the story of a lifetime. When the soldier is killed, however, Falk must use all his resourcefulness to get back home again… and blow the lid off the whole damn thing.

Eighty-Six looks like a dull colony/mining world to Lex Falk. Falk is a long-time journalist who’s lengthy travel between worlds, and years of reporting has worn on him. His bitter and cynical outlook shape the reader’s perceptions of Eighty-Six and the cast of characters that Falk interacts with.

The book starts off slow, and Falk’s perspective tinges everything and everyone in it with his cynical eye. Falk wants out of his life, and sees Eighty-Six as a possible last story for his career. This cynical bent to things almost got me to stop reading early on. Eighty-Six holds more of a story than he realizes though, and as he gets wind of it, his interest, and my own in the book, picked up.

As Falk digs deeper, he’s offered the opportunity to become embedded into the mind of a soldier going out on a mission. He’ll ride along mentally inside the mind of the volunteer soldier, truly an embedded journalist. It’s an experimental procedure, but Falk is willing to give just about anything to get the story. Things go bad though when the soldier’s squad gets ambushed, and the soldier is nearly killed. Falk is forced to take over the body in order to survive.

This is the point in the story where I was most interested. I’m a fan of military science fiction, and this is where the book seems to shine. The small squad action, and Falk’s attempt to convince his new squad mates that he’s the soldier they all think him to be kept me going through the story. The lengths the squad needs to go to, and the troubles that hit them, kept my interest up that wasn’t there in the beginning.

If you are a fan of military science fiction, and are ok with a slow buildup to the meat of the story, then you might like this book. I found this book was perfect for reading on my commute in on the train, and look forward to more from Mr. Abnett.

The short story was once, perhaps, the cornerstone medium for telling genre fiction tales. It’s no secret that as of several years ago, there was concern about whether the market for speculative short fiction was dying a slow death, with a number of publications disappearing and dwindling subscriptions to old stalwarts like Analog and Asimov’s. Of late, there seems to have been a resurgence of paying venues for science fiction and fantasy short stories, from podcast audio magazines like Escape Pod to e-book and traditional print media. But this reinvigoration of the short story comes at a time when the publishing industry is in an unprecedented state of flux, as the general public is slowly but surely moving away from paper and towards digital text in their reading habits.

As we are looking at this week in The Lair, Angry Robot Books is tackling this changing business with excellent tales and innovative ideas, and their approach to short fiction is no different.

In December of 2010, Angry Robot debuted their short fiction store, where they have available Nano Editions: short fiction authored by novelists in the Angry Robot stable. There are currently 27 Nano Editions available which cross the entire spectrum of authors and genres in the Angry Robot catalog, providing a good way to explore a particular author in short form before trying out their book, or discovering new stories by an old favorite. The pricing scheme is very competitive at £0.59 apiece or 10 for £3.49, and all of the files are in unrestricted DRM-free ePub format, which the website provides helpful instructions on converting to reading on a Kindle if that is your gadget of choice.

As I’m still exploring many of the authors that call Angry Robot home, I decided to check out one of the Nano Editions by Guy Haley. Both stories were swift and thoroughly enjoyable reads, and I look forward to delving in to some of his longer work as a result.

• Man of Stone – A grizzled veteran of countless battles, embroiled in his last fight, stumbles across a god; neither are what they each expect the other to be, but both are what the other needs.
• Kasimir Larkin’s Final Sale – On a remote mining world, a shopkeeper’s daily routine is interrupted by what might very well be his second to last customer.

One thing that I would enjoy seeing them incorporate into the Nano Edition store is a feedback or rating system to help new customers overcome the potential intimidation of a long list of stories, and make a more informed selection if they are new to the authors involved. This aside, I think the way that Angry Robot is handling it’s short fiction is an excellent compliment to their novels and other offerings, and I have no hesitation in recommending you to check them out for a quick fiction fix.

In H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, a man creates a device and travels to the future, where he finds that humanity has evolved into two different species: The peaceful Eloi and the brutish underground-dwelling Morlocks. He returns to his home in London of the late 1800′s and tells the tale to some good friends before leaving for the future one last time.

K.W. Jeter’s Morlock Night is the tale of one of the men who heard the scientist’s fabulous tale. On the walk back to his rooms, he is met by a pale man called Dr. Ambrose who poses the following question: “What would happen if the Morlocks that the scientist met were just the footsoliders, not the intelligent types that kept the underground machines running? And what would happen if they got a hold of the time machine?”

Before long, our protagonist finds himself embroiled in an adventure spanning time and space, where the Morlock’s of the future meet the mythology of the United Kingdom and the great mysteries of London herself.

Jeter’s tale is a good time. It written in a the style of Wells, and one could see this book being published as a serial, just as The Time Machine was. Each chapter is a cliffhanger, each stands alone in such a way that it is difficult to put the book down. The action pulls you forward, waiting to see what happens next.

It is not a complex book, and I mean that as no slight. What I mean is that, unlike other modern books which owe much to complex subplots and alternating chapters, Morlock Night is a straightforward adventure tale start to finish. It is an ideal read for those people with busy lives who want to relax at the end of a long day (which, incidentally, is exactly how I enjoyed the book).

There are surprises in the book. With the tropes of steampunk being somewhat predictable and almost codified these days, Jeter’s book is a breath of fresh air. The plot steers clear of many of the modern devices to embrace an almost 1960′s love of legend and mythology — there is poetry and magic in this book as well as steam and brass.

If you enjoyed Wells’ book, and would like to see what might have happened next, I highly recommend you grab a copy of Morlock Night. You will not be sorry.

I picked up The Art of Manliness for two reasons: the first is that I’m researching etiquette for a novel and the second is that I was curious to know just what modern day folks think it means to be “A Man.” In this age where men’s and women’s roles are profoundly changed from what our grandparents and great-grandparents would have recognized, which things still hold true and which need to be chucked by the wayside? Let’s face it, classic manliness is an endangered species right now, and rudeness runs rampant as people fire up cellphones in restaraunts or check their email in the middle of a one-on-one conversation. Yet, somehow, we blithely accept this as some sort of new norm, when in reality we should be demanding better from ourselves and our peers. How should the modern gentleman behave?

This book was surprisingly good. I was unsure what to expect from a book claiming to impart All Things Manly, but at the end, I found myself not only agreeing with the authors, but learning a few things as well. Its companion website is chock-full of all manner of advice to take you beyond the pages and into real life. 

The main thrust of the book is to look at the character and skills of “manly” men from the past (specifically focusing on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) and impart what sorts of things we can do today to emulate those qualities. This runs from fatherhood to being a leader to core values to etiquette. Highlighted are the principle that Benjamin Franklin strove to perfect in himself, as well as Theodore Roosevelt’s own point of view on industriousness and what it means to live a full life.

At first, the tone of the writing feels a bit tongue-in-cheek, and it would be easy to mistake this for some sort of ironic jab at bygone ideals long since faded. Once one moves beyond the introduction, one can see just how the topics are covered in earnest, with real detail, allowing for practical use.

This is not a selection of moral tales or any sort of religious or political guide. This is more about what the world used to expect from a gentleman, and how we can translate that into making ourselves more like that ideal today. In a world where we are growing manchildren on gaming systems and computers like fungi in their mother’s basements, this book is a welcome breath of fresh air.