Soda Pop Soldier now in print!

SODA POP SOLDIER by Nick Cole is available in paperback from Castalia Direct for $19.99. It is also available via Kindle and Kindle Unlimited on Amazon.

The war starts at 6 A.M., in-game time. By 6:45 we’re losing Hamburger Hamlet as our entire line begins to disintegrate.

It isn’t a total collapse. Pockets of resistance hold out in key positions, buying ColaCorp time, expensive time, to fall back and reorganize. On my right flank, Kiwi holds a high hill overlooking the Song Hua river basin. We call that hill WonderSoft Garage because of the small power station and vehicle spawn depot located there. WonderSoft had made the capture of that hill and power station a primary objective in the last three battles we’d fought at this end of the basin.

And it looked like they were gonna try for it again today.

Over BattleChat, Kiwi swears as he burns through the ammo that an air resupply Albatross barely managed to get through. In my mind, I can see empty lager cans parading around the workspace that is Kiwi’s keyboard and monitor, as ambient in-game sound resounds in a metallic symphony of ammo brass expended in adult-sized doses. If the sound of auto rifles and explosions is a kind of music, and to some of us it is, then Kiwi is Beethoven.

Through graphically rendered feathery willow trees and the game-supposed heat waves of the day, I can barely make out what’s going on up at the top of the hill in brief glimpses. Three fast-attack WonderSoft Goats, their version of a jeep, and a Thrasher light mech are burning. Thick oily smoke belches from the mech, and a moment later it explodes in a shower of sparks. More WonderSoft Goats and Thrashers climb the road to the bridge that leads to our side of the river.

WonderSoft infantry scramble from cover, racing to other cover, as Kiwi fights hard to keep them from crossing the choke point at the bridge and capturing WonderSoft Garage. It’s about to get real intimate, real quick.

“Command, we’re gettin’ killed up here,” shouts Kiwi over BattleChat. His transmission is broken and distorted by automatic weapons fire in the background. “I’m down to three grunts,” he continues. “Request reinforcements or evac, A-S-A-P! If you’ve got fire support, I’ll take it now, but you’d better drop it right on top of my position, your choice, Command.”

Minutes earlier I’d requested Command point two transports of grunts our way as reinforcements. One of our dropships got jumped by a flight of WonderSoft Vampires as they’d approached the LZ. The other, piloted by RiotGuurl, had gotten away.

I hope.

RiotGuurl is as good a pilot as I’ve ever worked with. Losing the first transport hadn’t been an easy choice for her, but when a WonderSoft Vampire caught your electronic scent, there weren’t many options left for a transport squadron other than to split up and run like hell to get away from that wicked ground attack jet.

Since then RiotGuurl was maintaining radio silence. I know she’s chasing every nook and cranny in the jungle-clad hills that surround the basin on all sides, flying her gunship way too close to the computer’s representation of the ground, looking for a route back into Hamburger Hamlet so we can resupply and reinforce the river crossing. Maybe even help Kiwi.

“Be advised, Command, it’s just me now. All my grunts are KIA.” Kiwi again. “Two ammo packs left and multiple Softs inside the wire.” Kiwi never gives up. Even when he’s being overrun. Maybe it’s an Australian thing. Once this war is over, I plan on taking some of my winnings and heading down under to spend some time in Gigaboo Flats at the Wonky Boomerang, Kiwi’s favorite post-battle watering hole. But hopefully the Cola Wars will never end, or else how will I get paid?

“Kiwi, evac not possible at this time. Sorry about that, son.” It’s RangerSix, ColaCorp’s tactical commander. The fact that he’s overseeing our little firefight reinforces how crucial this battle really is for ColaCorp.

Using my targeting monocular, I scan the sloping hills and tall grass behind and above Hamburger Hamlet for our commander’s avatar. RangerSix is the kind of guy who can change a battle with a basic rifle kit and some explosives. As usual I can’t find his hiding place.

Across the river, WonderSoft artillery begins throwing everything they’ve got at us. Head down inside my command post, I crank my speakers to full ambient in-game sound, cutting off Catherine Wheel’s seminal late-twentieth-century album Ferment. I’m waiting to hear RiotGuurl’s turbines. She’s Kiwi’s only hope now.

“Sixty rounds left. How about fire support, RangerSix?” It’s Kiwi.

“Negative at this time.” I hear the quiet frustration in RangerSix’s smoke-stained voice.

“Die in place again, huh?” grunts Kiwi.

Behind me, in the detailed squat bamboo and stone village that is the game designers’ representation of a fictional Southeast Asian river basin village, a place we call Hamburger Hamlet as a nod to the often bloody struggles for online supremacy that take place there, our armor rolls through, retreating farther to the east. We’ve been holding this side of the river, waiting for our massive Charger IV battle tanks to cross the muddy brown shallows under heavy mortar fire. Now, it’s time to bug out.

WonderSoft Garage has always been the key to control of the river crossing at Hamburger Hamlet. There’s no bridge, but the river’s shallow enough to get most vehicles across. Now that the overwatch Kiwi was providing at the garage is on the verge of being taken, the battle, at least here alongside the river, is lost for ColaCorp. Any of our units on the far side of the river aren’t getting back to our lines without an airlift. The game day still promises more fighting. It’s Saturday, and the network goes big on coverage for the weekend. But to lose good armor this early would spell disaster for whatever Command has in mind for us to do next. We’ve gotten the Chargers back to this side of the river. That’s enough for now. We’ll have to fight another battle somewhere else.

“Afraid so, son,” says RangerSix to Kiwi over BattleChat regarding any kind of assistance. Or to be more specific, the complete lack thereof. “Sorry.”

Kiwi doesn’t reply.

The League of Creeps

In case you ever wondered what SPLC stands for. From “a recently-uncovered court document from the divorce proceedings of a prominent Sexually Perverted League of Creeps figure”, co-founder Morris Dees:

“She went to her room and then went into the bathroom,” the document says. “Looking out the window, she saw Morris in the bushes beside the bathroom window looking in. She said ‘Morris, is that you’, but he said nothing and ran away.”

Two months later, things got worse.

“[M]orris entered [Holly’s] room from [Morris and Maureene’s daughter Ellie’s] room, through the bathroom, the document says. “He was in his underwear and he sat on the bed where Holly was lying on her stomach facing away from the door. He touched her on the back and woke her up. He told her that he had brough [sic] her a present, and he presented her with a vibrator. He plugged it in and said he had brought it to her. He proceeded to rub it on her back and said ‘Let me show you how to use it.’”

According to Holly’s testimony, she declined, but Morris proceeded anyway.

“[H]e started to place it between he [sic] legs when she raised her voice and said no loudly,” according to the brief.

He was wearing only a pair of bikini underwear shorts during the incident, according to Holly.

“About two hours later, she had fallen back asleep and he came back in,” the brief says. “He brought the vibrator with him, plugged it in and said again, ‘Let me show you how to use it.’ He tried to show her again by putting it between her legs, but she raised her voice again and he stopped.

It’s amazing how so many of these self-appointed thought police turn out to be deviants and sex criminals. Being attacked by these creeps should be viewed as a badge of honor. No wonder they’re so terrified of “hate”. Any decent individual of any race, creed, or color is bound to hate them.

Those excellent Minnesota schools

Minneapolis Southwest struggles with its vibrant diversity:

Safety concerns arise as violence continues to escalate at Southwest High School.

On top of an already failing administration, Southwest High School staff are struggling to maintain peace between students. Last Friday, March 2, multiple fights broke out during the school’s second lunch period. Despite attempts to sweep the issue under the rug and downplay the violence, persistent students and parents forced the administration to address the situation.

Videos of the fight posted online forced the administration to hold an emergency meeting.

The highly anticipated fight between two students who have been off-and-on friends for years became physical during lunch last Friday. According to school officials, they knew of the impending conflict at least a week prior. The day of the incident, the administration claims that they reached out to the students “every hour” before the fight broke out. Unfortunately, the efforts were not successful and the violence erupted anyway.

The fight was not limited to the two students, who were reported by classmates to be a Somali-American and an African American. Over 20 students joined the chaos soon after the first punches were thrown and the original videos that surfaced were titled “Somalis vs. Blacks.” The original videos have been taken down due to pressure from school administration. The school’s resource officer was present in the cafeteria. In an attempt to control the situation, school officials put the cafeteria into lockdown for 15 minutes after the allotted 30-minute lunch period, keeping any students from leaving or entering, including the ones not involved. All staff members that were not otherwise occupied were called to action.

The police were not called, but 15 student resource officers from other schools were called for backup. In an eyewitness video taken by a student, the administration’s inability to diffuse the skirmish in a timely, appropriate, and safe manner was made clear.

So much for the idea that an absence of whites would lead to peace on Earth. All they need is to throw some Aztecs in there and things will get really… vibrant.

The name is Arkhaven

As I’ve pointed out before, the Right has no idea how to cooperate or play follow-the-leader:

I’m in Chuck’s comics circle online. I really feel like ALL OF US trying to do our Right Wing comics need to band together to form our own “Marvel” because it’s EXTREMELY hard to make comics without having any name. Here’s my AltRight web comic.

The alternative to Marvel and DC has already been created. We are well into the process of building the necessary infrastructure at Arkhaven. While we’re getting excellent support from both comics fans as well as culture warriors, and while we’re building key strategic relationships with a variety of partners, we still have relatively little support from a) the conservative media, b) the social media stars, or c) the aforementioned comics circle.

Now, just to be clear, that’s absolutely fine. I’m not complaining about it. We never counted on it. We have always been of the Gideon mindset; it’s better to have 300 warriors at your back than 10,000 counter-signaling moderates.

There are a number of obstacles to what this gentleman wants to accomplish. First, the attention-seekers can’t stand for anyone else to be the leader, no matter who it is. See: Comicsgate. Second, right-wingers are individualists who tend to focus on maximizing their personal situation at the expense of building institutions and organizations capable of supporting them. See: Milo Inc’s abortive attempt to create a publishing house. Third, moderates will not accept radical leadership for fear of rejection by the Left whose approval they still seek. See: Diversity & Comics and many indy authors.

Imagine where we would be if all those indy authors and social media stars and Baen authors had been willing to work out mutually beneficial deals with Castalia House. We’d already be in a much stronger position to defend the interests of everyone on the Right. Instead, it’s just more dog-eat-dog competition in a negative-sum game as Amazon methodically drains the pool of available ebook money. It will almost certainly be the same thing in comics, with one or two big winners and everyone else scrambling for the scraps. Again, not complaining, merely observing and analyzing.

Now, there are those who have recognized the situation, bought into the vision, and gotten on board. As for the others, a few will do great on their own, although they will fail to build any lasting institutions, and the rest will muddle along in obscurity. And while not everyone will acknowledge it now, eventually it will become obvious that the right-wing alternative was born on the very first day of the Alt-Hero campaign.

Winning: Arkhaven edition

An Arkhaven reader emails:

My son was recently punished, not allowed to play on his computer. I offered him some comics, because he is always allowed to read, no matter what; I offered him my World War Hulk, Dark Phoenix, House Of M, Decimation, X-Cutioner’s Song (w/ Stryfe), Age Of Apocalypse, etc.

His response: But I Like Fazer!

From Avalon #1: The Street Rules.

That’s winning.

That is indeed. And now it’s time to call upon the Arkhaven fans in the UK. Ingram and Arkhaven are about to launch our mailing campaign to all the comic book stores in the UK, which will put the first two Alt-Hero comics, plus Chuck Dixon’s Avalon #1, in the hands of the comic book store owners so they can see the quality for themselves. The idea is to a) convince all the stores to sign up with Ingram, and, b) convince them to carry Arkhaven’s comics.

If you are a UK resident and you’re willing to call upon a few stores, either by phone or in person, to help follow up on the mailing, please email me with ARKHAVEN UK in the subject and include the name of your local comic book store, if any, in in the body of the email.

I can also confirm that Castalia/Arkhaven Direct will begin shipping in the UK before December.

SODA POP SOLDIER by Nick Cole

Call of Duty meets Diablo in this fast-paced, action-packed LitRPG novel from the author of GALAXY’S EDGE.

Gamer PerfectQuestion fights for ColaCorp in WarWorld, an online combat sport arena where mega-corporations field entire armies in the battle for real world global advertising-space dominance. Within the immense virtual battlefield, players and bots are high-tech grunts, using drop-ships and state-of-the-art weaponry to wipe each other out.

But times are tough and the rent is due, and when players need extra dough, there’s always the Black, an illegal open source tournament where the sick and twisted desires of the future are given free rein in the Wastehavens, a gothic dungeon fantasy world.

And all too soon, the real and virtual worlds collide when PerfectQuestion refuses to become the tool of a mad man intent on hacking the global economy for himself.

Soda Pop Soldier is available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited. A Castalia House paperback will be available from Castalia Books Direct later today.

From the reviews:

  • I half-expected a light-hearted romp through modern video games. What I got was something completely different. Something telling about how many of us live our lives online and the anonymity that we expect…. Throughout it all, we see the real world, but in many ways Cole presents this as almost more fantastic and ridiculous than the online worlds that PerfectQuestion plays in. There are scientific advancements that take humans to other planets and planes that seemingly traverse around the world without stopping, but most of that is unavailable to the average person. The more the book explores those areas – the areas inhabited by the rich and powerful – the more the reader finds themselves in foreign territory. In many ways PerfectQuestion is more at home in the war and fantasy of his online games than in the real world.
  • This is a seriously well-crafted book, full of twists, loads of pop culture references, and a remarkable treatise on integrity, conviction, good versus evil, hero versus villain and several other themes. He picks up on everything that was (and is) fun about gaming, problem-solving and the creativity and story-telling that great games AND books have in common, and lectures in a good way about the joy of reading. This is a great story. If you played Pong and other games up to the current genre of first-person shooters, and enjoy a good story, with characters that you can identify with, buy this book. Read it. Share it. If you aren’t a gamer, but rather a well read bookworm, buy this book. Lose yourself in it, and enjoy something that is exceptional.
  • This book blew me away. I went into it expecting little, because it’s from an indie publisher. Big mistake. It feels like a blend between Catcher In The Rye, Blade Runner, and Warhammer 40K. It started off a bit slow and I wasn’t sure where it was going, but it morphs into a compelling story that I could not get enough of. I’d think about this book while I was working, waiting to get home. I went out and bought three more of his books just so I’d have some ready when I finished this one.
  • I love Cole’s work and SPS is probably my favorite one to date. 
  • It’s in my top ten favorite novels of all time, and it’s just wonderfully good.

This book is an absolute must-read for any gamer. People not unreasonably tend to think of Nick Cole as a pulp author due to the success of Galaxy’s Edge, but he is actually one of the better science fiction authors around, and there is no one currently writing who is more adept at playing on the emotions of the reader.

LitRPG has been around since Joel Rosenberg created it in Guardians of the Flame; my abortive first attempt at a novel was a Guardians imitation that very cleverly utilized Traveller instead of D&D. But the invention of the MMO and subsequent blurring of reality and game reality in the real world has transformed and popularized the genre, and Soda Pop Soldier represents the very best of it. If you haven’t read it, I would highly recommend that you pick up a copy and do so.

Castalia House will also be publishing the next two books in the Soda Pop Soldier series.

The globalist war on America

The attack on American nationalism long predates George Soros and Jordan Peterson. From page 143 of the book The Killing of Uncle Sam:

A SUBVERSIVE PURPOSE

In 1957, a congressional investigative committee revealed the following finding: “In the international field, foundations, and an interlock among some of them and certain intermediary organizations, have exercised a strong effect upon our foreign policy and upon public education in things international. This has been accomplished by vast propaganda, by supplying executives and advisers to government and by controlling much research in this area through the power of the purse. The net result of these combined efforts has been to promote ‘internationalism’ in a particular sense—a form directed toward ‘world government’ and a derogation of American ‘nationalism.’ The CFR has become in essence an agency of the United States Government [and its] productions are not objective but are directed overwhelmingly at promoting the globalist concept.”

This subversive purpose has been verified by Foreign Affairs, the Council’s own publication, which has been called “the most influential periodical in print” by Time magazine. In its inaugural issue (September 1922), the journal condemned “the dubious doctrines expressed by such phrases of ‘safety first’ and ‘America first.’” In its second issue, Philip Kerr, a member of the British Round Table, declared: “Obviously there is going to be no peace or prosperity for mankind so long as it remains divided into fifty or sixty independent states. Equally obviously there is going to be no steady progress in civilization or self-government among the more backward peoples until some kind of international system is created which will put an end to the diplomatic struggles of every nation to make itself secure. The real problem today is that of world government.”

Notice that the attacks on the concept of ‘America first’ predate Donald Trump’s slogan and trade policy by nearly 100 years. This has been a very long secret war waged against America. Ideology is now secondary, the only real struggle that matters is the conflict between globalist and nationalist.

It doesn’t matter if a globalist happens to say things that sound good about open societies or cleaning your room. If you love America, if you love the country in which you live, the globalists are your sworn enemies.

Darkstream: destroying a converged institution

From the transcript of the Darkstream:

Basically, what we succeeded in doing is turning Worldcon into WisCon. Now, here’s an interesting observation: isn’t that what is happening to the DNC? Absolutely it is, and who caused that? Donald Trump is doing the same thing on a larger scale in the political world, what Rabid Puppies did to the
science-fiction world. It’s the same thing. If you apply sufficient force, if you apply a sufficiently strong action and provoke a strong enough reaction, then you can withdraw and allow the SJWs that have been stirred up to devour everything else that’s still there.

Think about this way. Imagine that SJWs are like piranhas, and so you’ve got these piranhas in a fish tank, and there’s the SJWs and then there’s the regular lefty fish. They’re all the enemy, but some of them are a little bit worse than others. So what you do, you know, is you stick your hand in there and then shake your hand around right? Now, the key is got to pull your hand out! Yeah, so you stick your hand in, you stir them all up, you pull your hand out, and then the piranhas are going to attack everything that’s in there. They don’t realize that the other fish in there aren’t your hand, they’re not discerning, they have their agenda and these other people stand in the way of that agenda just like you do, and so, you know, by going in and stirring things up, and then withdrawing, then the whole thing ends up a massive mutually destructive activity.

Merkel’s CDU falling

More Germans have had enough of the worst Kanzler since Mr. Hitler.

Support for German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc, trying to move beyond a bitter dispute over migrant policy that threatened the coalition, has fallen to its lowest level since 2006, a poll showed on Sunday.

The Emnid poll published in Bild am Sonntag showed Merkel’s Christian Democrats and their sister party, Bavaria’s Christian Social Union (CSU), down one percentage point at 29 percent. That compares with 33 percent in the September election.

The CSU faces a tough regional election in October with polls showing it could lose its absolute majority in Bavaria.

The Social Democrats (SPD), who share power with the conservatives in Merkel’s coalition, failed to capitalise on those losses, also falling one point to 18 percent.

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) was unchanged at 15 percent while the Greens rose 2 points to 14 percent, their best showing this year, according to Bild am Sonntag.

Translation: AfD is probably at 20 percent already. Of course, the way in which the parties of Right and Left are willing to work together against the nationalists just serves to demonstrate that ideology does not run as deep as identity.

Once identity enters the picture, all politics is identity politics.

Interview with Chuck Dixon

I don’t know how I somehow managed to miss this interview with The Legend Chuck Dixon – that is how he is addressed in the Arkhaven offices, you understand – by Bounding Into Comics:

BIC: Along with Levon’s War, you are also working on a number of projects with Vox Day’s Castalia House publishing. You’ve got Avalon which is expected to come out this March. The book will feature the crime fighting duo of King Ace and Fazer, what can you tell us about these two?

Chuck: King and Fazer are just a part of a larger ensemble cast of super-powered heroes and outlaws. To say King and Fazer’s relationship is complicated is an understatement. King Ace is a kind of Superman type, a big beefcake who’s bullet-resistant, super-strong and can leap long distances. Fazer has the ability to pass through solid objects. They’re powers complement one another even though their personalities are very much at odds.

We also have Cash, a mercenary crimefighter who battles evil for tips and Vendetta, a female vigilante, whose motives and mission provide much of the core story for the first six issues of the book.

But the true star of the book is the city of Avalon itself. It’s an east coast town that’s seen better days and getting rather tired of being ground zero for super-fights between good guys and bad guys.

BIC: You will also be working with Will Caligan. Have you figured out which novels you will adapt into graphic novels?

Chuck: We’re adapting Swan Knight’s Son by John C. Wright. The novel really lends itself to comics. Loads of great eye candy and a story that gets off the blocks on page one and never slows down.

BIC: Will also lost his job because of his very personal Christian and conservative beliefs. There have been a number of people who hold similar conservative and Christian beliefs who have also had their careers threatened or lost. Do you see this as a serious problem in the comic book industry?

Chuck: Damn right. A lot of great talent is either unemployed or underemployed because of either their personal religious or political beliefs. Their personal beliefs. The blacklists are very real and a lot of careers have been damaged. And as bad as this kind of discrimination is, the effect of silencing other creators who fear for their livelihoods is even more far-reaching. It’s intimidation, pure and simple; a radical core of far-left editors and publishers forcing their ideologies on the creator community as well as the readership.

Most damaging, in the long term, is the hiring of staff and assigning of freelancers based on their political beliefs rather than any kind of merit. The result is the current crop of, frankly, mediocre efforts from companies that used to be the industry leaders. It’s hard to find even a competently written and drawn comic let alone anything that could be called exemplary examples of the medium.

We’re all paying for this with depressed sales overall and the loss of readers who may never come back.

BIC: Blacklists seem to be a pretty hot topic right now. One Twitter user even created a pretty lengthy list for customers to boycott certain professionals. He labeled these professionals as the “main contributors… to the declining quality” of comic books. What are your thoughts on this list?

Chuck: I don’t like lists of any kind. Blacklists, redlists, enemies lists or ****lists. While it’s true that a number of people on the list I saw are guilty of writing agenda-driven comics, a few on that list are vocal personally on political matters, but not in their work. The declining quality of comics is due to creators who prioritize their ideology above their professional standards. So much of the stuff I’ve seen is simply poorly crafted comics. They call attention to themselves by doing crap work. No lists needed.

BIC: I also read Marvel has had you on a blacklist for over 15 years. Is that true? How do you go from writing one of their best-selling comics with Punisher: War Zone to completely blacklisted?

Chuck: When you don’t fall in lockstep with everything Axel Alonso believes. Of course, which of us is still working in comics today?

BIC: Where do you see the comic book industry in the future. Do you see it sticking with the tried and true DC and Marvel or will we start to see it fracture along political lines?

Chuck: I think it will become like the music industry. Garage band kinds of comics that will find their own audience. The big comic book publishers have never really known, or tried to really market their product. Now that, for all intents, the major publishers have skipped a generation of readers, they’re going to have to work to get them back. And I don’t think they have the first clue as to how to do that.

We’ll be looking at more and more creator-owned, creator-marketed comics that don’t do huge numbers but are financially rewarding enough for the creators to keep doing what they love.

Nice little shiv there, with a twist. This is just an excerpt, read the whole thing there. Believe it or not, the machine that is known as The Legend Chuck Dixon has already scripted the first EIGHT issues of Chuck Dixon’s Avalon. #2 is being colored now, and we’re bringing on a second illustrator in order to get the entire 12-issue series out in a reasonably timely manner.

And yes, Vendetta is back and doing her thing.