SUPERLUMINARY: The Lords of Creation

Being assassinated once may be an accident. Being assassinated twice is enemy action.

Aeneas Tell of the House of Tell is one of the youngest Lords of Creation. His family rules the Nine Worlds through its control of the ultra-advanced technology that has permitted the colonization of the entire solar System. More gods than men, the Lords of Creation have cheated Death itself.

But even a quasi-immortal god will take exception to being assassinated. Twice. Especially when the assassin turns out to be a someone he thought was a friend.

SUPERLUMINARY is the latest and most outrageous creation of science fiction grandmaster John C. Wright, the Dragon-award winning author of THE UNWITHERING REALM, THE GOLDEN AGE, MOTH & COBWEB, and AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND. THE LORDS OF CREATION is the first book in the series.

Book Club subscribers, don’t go looking for your missing email. I’m waiting for something else to happen before I send out it out to you, most likely tomorrow. But go ahead and pick up THE LORDS OF CREATION today, you’ll still be eligible for the free book. It’s vintage John C. Wright, one part THE GOLDEN AGE, one part CITY BEYOND TIME, and one part science lecture delivered by a bio-physicist on acid.


GOD HATES ME by Richard Cain

Demon is such an ugly word.

Malach prefers “angelically-challenged”. After all, it’s not his fault that he was kicked out of Heaven.

And if you’ll just listen, he can explain everything.

GOD HATES ME: The Diary of an Ex-Angel is a smart, funny, and surprisingly moving tale of a demon who means well and would really like to figure out how to get back to Heaven one day. But how do you make a case for yourself when no one seems to care enough to listen?

The one thing you can’t say about Castalia House is that we’re too predictable. Richard Cain’s new book is… just a little different than you’d probably be expecting. It’s human history told through the perspective of a narcissist who never believes he is to blame for anything.

From the reviews:

  • It’s a zippy tale, told in a lively style that gets the reader leaning into the narrative. It’s a quirky faux memoir like something we might read if C.S. Lewis’s Wormwood had corresponded with Salinger’s Holden Caulfield. A few sections made me honestly laugh aloud, something I never expected to happen when cracking a book about a fallen angel. It’s as if Frank Peretti actually had a sense of humor…as if Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins actually knew how to jettison the proselytizing, cut the brake lines, and just let the story run.
  • Despite what the cover looks like, this isn’t a supernatural romance novel. No, it’s something much better. This is a story of a fallen angel seeking redemption. Unfortunately for him, every good deed he tries to accomplish ends up going awry.
  • In the manner of The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis, this book takes the reader inside the head of a fallen angel/demon. The perspective can be a bit troubling, as some of the more pointed passages about casual sins may hit too close to home for the reader. The author demonstrates considerable knowledge of the intricacies of the spiritual world as well as the foibles of the human psyche, upon which the demons prey.
  • Overall an entertaining and quick read.

The horrors of the LGBT household

Lifesite profiles Moira Greyland’s autobiographical memoir:

The daughter of famed science fiction author Marion Zimmer Bradley has written an autobiographical account revealing the horrors of growing up in a home raised by LGBT parents who repeatedly sexually abused her and her brothers.

“I have heard all the customary protestations. ‘Your parents were evil because they were evil, not because they were gay,’ but I disagree,” writes Moira Greyland in her new book, The Last Closet: The Dark Side of Avalon.

“The underlying problem is a philosophical one that is based on beliefs that are not only common to gay culture but to popular culture. And this is the central belief: All Sex is Always Right No Matter What,” she wrote.

“I had both biological parents in the home, but both refused to act like traditional parents,” writes Greyland. “I needed my father to protect me and to see me as a girl instead of refusing to protect me and seeing me as an amorphous nothing who competed with him for boys. I needed my mother to love me and hold me and comfort me instead of being a terrifying, angry dictator. Worse than that, I was expected to not want them to love me and protect me, or to act like normal parents. I was supposed to be happy that they were doing their own thing, no matter what they did to us.”

The Last Closet has been an Amazon bestseller for weeks as a Kindle e-book, and is scheduled to be published as a print book this month. Over one hundred readers have reviewed it, and virtually all have given it five stars.

The book recounts Greyland’s life with her mother, who was the author of The Mists of Avalon and many other famous works of science fiction and fantasy, and her father, Walter Breen, who was a world-renowned authority on numismatics. Both identified as “gay,” both abused drugs and were involved in occult practices, and both were pedophiles, Greyland says, a claim that has been confirmed by her only surviving brother.

Man people desperately want to believe homosexuals Are Just Like Everybody Else. But they are not. Just ask a policeman. Or ask a child of gay parents. Once an individual decides that he no longer has to abide by traditional morality because he has certain urges, it becomes considerably easier to violate even the most outrageous moral norms when he feels the need or even just the desire.

That doesn’t mean that gays can’t abide by traditional moral standards, or that all straights do, only that the probabilities observably differ. A gay man is 14 times more likely to abuse a child than a straight man. Even worse, gay priests are 198 times more likely to abuse children than straight men. One of the ugliest aspects of The Last Closet is the way in which Moira’s parents intellectually rationalized even their most abhorrent behavior. They were not unique in their ability to do that.

You can shriek “bigot” and “homophobe” if you like. But reality doesn’t care. No amount of denial will eliminate the logic, the probabilities, the statistics, or the pain of the abused children.


Stupefying Stories #20

The Original Cyberpunk is giving it away today on Free Release Friday:

To celebrate the release of STUPEFYING STORIES #20, we’re giving away the Kindle edition FREE for the cost of a click—but only for the next 24 hours, beginning at Midnight tonight, West Coast time.

Tell your friends! Tell your family! Tell people you know who aren’t such good friends but still like to get free ebooks! Share the news!

But share it soon, because at midnight tomorrow night, this book goes back to normal price.

» DOWNLOAD ISSUE #20 RIGHT NOW

STUPEFYING STORIES #20 features the gut-grabbing cover story, “Zombie Like Me,” by Clancy Weeks, along with a terrific mix of fantasy, light horror, demons, abominations, vampires, old family secrets, very nasty little fairies, and Bo Balder’s remarkably strange but charming story, “Alien Whispering.” If nothing else, read “Endeavor to Dream on Broken Wings,” so you can someday tell people that you were reading AJ Finley before anyone else had heard of her.

CONTENTS:

  • THEIR NOSTALGIA WILL BE VERY MUCH LIKE OUR NOSTALGIA • by Eric Cline
  • HOW TO BUILD A TRAIN • by Brandon Kempner
  • ENDEAVOR TO DREAM ON BROKEN WINGS • by AJ Finley
  • PILES OF DUST AND BERRIES • by Sadie Bruce
  • ALIEN WHISPERING • by Bo Balder
  • LUCKY FIND • by Lance Young
  • SECRET SEED • by Shannon Norland
  • ZOMBIE LIKE ME • by Clancy Weeks

HAMMER OF THE WITCHES by Kai Wai Cheah

The terror is daimonic. The sorcery is real.

But enough bullets will kill even the most dangerous supernatural operator.

The Hexenhammer underground has aided the operators of the Nemesis Program in their war against the global supernatural terror campaign, but now Hexenhammer is accused of being the terrorist group responsible for carrying out a spectacular massacre in Greece.

Now Luke Landon must decide if Eve and her fellow underground members should be put down or if they have been set up for destruction by a conspiracy so big and powerful that it may have penetrated Nemesis itself.

HAMMER OF THE WITCHES is the second volume of The Covenant Chronicles, the supernatural Mil-SF series by Kai Wai Cheah, Hugo-nominated author of Flashpoint: Titan.

From the reviews of its predecessor, NO GODS, ONLY DAIMONS.

  • This is an excellent fantasy/MilSF book. Fast paced; excellent battle scenes.
  • Cheah does a great job at building this world with lots of details and complexity. It’s a good read and one I had a hard time putting down.
  • Fans of books by Larry Correia and Jim Butcher should find themes in this book that they will enjoy. Character development is stronger than Larry’s earlier but not as strong as his current work.
  • Call of Duty meets Grimnoir Chronicles. If you like Larry Corriea’s Grimnoir series, and the world he has created, you will like the world this book inhabits. 
  • This book came out of nowhere. It’s… very different than anything I’ve read. The author has done some amazing world-building, where magic has been introduced to the ancient world, and changed the course of ancient Persia, Greece and Rome, and the modern world follows from there. 


Appendix N in audio

Appendix N: The Literary History of Dungeons & Dragons is a detailed and comprehensive investigation of the various works of science fiction and fantasy that game designer Gary Gygax declared to be the primary influences on his seminal role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons. It is a deep intellectual dive into the literature of SF/F’s past that will fascinate any serious role-playing gamer or fan of classic science fiction and fantasy.


Author Jeffro Johnson, an expert role-playing gamer, accomplished dungeon master, and three-time Hugo Award finalist, critically reviews all 43 works and authors listed by Gygax in the famous appendix. In doing so, he draws a series of intelligent conclusions about the literary gap between past and present that is surprisingly relevant to current events, not only in the fantastic world of role-playing, but the real world in which the players live.

Appendix N: The Literary History of Dungeons & Dragons is narrated by Brandon Porter and is 10 hours and 22 minutes long. This is a deep and fascinating dive into the fantasy and science fiction literature behind the landmark role-playing game.

Free Stupefication

The Original Cyberpunk has an announcement:

To celebrate the release of STUPEFYING STORIES #19, we’re giving away the Kindle editions of both our latest book (issue #19) and our oldest book that’s still on Amazon (issue #12) FREE for the cost of a click—but for today only.

Tell your friends! Tell your family! Tell people you know who aren’t such good friends but still like to get free ebooks! Share the news!

But share it soon, because at midnight tonight, these books go back to normal price.

» DOWNLOAD ISSUE #19 RIGHT NOW
» DOWNLOAD ISSUE #12 RIGHT NOW

STUPEFYING STORIES #19 features the remarkable cover story, “Communion,” by Fi Michell, along with  a terrific mix of fantasy, light horror, superheroes, alien invasions, space adventure, and I don’t know what to call “More Crackle Than Music” but I love it. The book ends with Harold Thompson’s dark but charming story, “Dogs and Monsters,” which I’m hereby going to go out on a limb and christen an entirely new sub-genre, “post-Human steampunk.” Clifford Simak would have loved it.


Lawdog in audio

LawDog had the honor of representing law and order in the Texas town of Bugscuffle as a sheriff’s deputy, where he became notorious for, among other things, the famous Case of the Pink Gorilla Suit. In The LawDog Files, he chronicles his official encounters with everything from naked bikers, combative eco-warriors, suicidal drunks, respectful methheads, prison tattoo artists, and creepy children to six-foot chickens and lethal chihuahuas.

The LawDog Files range from the bittersweet to the explosively hilarious, as LawDog relates his unforgettable experiences in a laconic, self-deprecating manner that is funny in its own right. The audiobook is more than mere entertainment, it is an education in two English dialects, Police and Texas Country. And underlying the humor is an unmistakable sympathy for society’s less fortunate – and in most cases, significantly less intelligent – whose encounters with the law are an all-too-frequent affair.

Narrated by David. T. Williams, The Lawdog Files are 4 hours and 29 minutes of genuine Texas hilarity. You really have to listen to the audio sample. His voice is just about perfect for Lawdog.


Blowing the lid off

An article entitled New Book Blows the Lid Off the Dark World of Child Sex Abuse in Sci-Fi Fandom is now trending on PJ Media.

Moira Greyland is the daughter of famous authors Marion Bradley Zimmer and Walter Breen. She has written a memoir about growing up in a “queer” family and suffering hideous child abuse. In The Last Closet: The Dark Side of Avalon, Greyland details the horror of being a helpless child trapped in a far left fantasy world. The world constructed by her mother, author of The Mists of Avalon, and her father, author of Greek Love (a book literally detailing why pedophilia is fine and even good) was a dark and frightening world. Unfortunately, though many saw how unhappy Greyland and her siblings were, no one stepped in to stop it and, in fact, turned a blind eye.

Greyland’s description of her family’s philosophy is chilling. “All sex is always right no matter what.” This philosophy forced her to endure being raped by her father at the achingly innocent age of four and molested by her mother throughout her childhood. Both her parents insisted she was gay because they believed that every person is naturally homosexual and will be homosexual if not corrupted by heterosexual experiences. Through the exposure to two gay parents and relatives and their friends, Greyland developed a theory about homosexuality that is very unpopular.

“It is my belief that homosexuality is a matter of IMPRINTING, in the same way that BDSM fantasies are,” she explains in the book. “To the BDSM’er, continued practice of the fantasy is sexually exciting. To the gay person, naturally, the same. However, from what I have seen, neither one creates healing. My mother became a lesbian because she was raped by her father. My father was molested by a priest–and regarded it as being the only love he had ever experienced. There are a vanishingly few people who are exclusively gay, but far more who have relationships with people of BOTH genders, as my parents and other relatives did.”

This, of course, is not allowed to be discussed in the age of the Gaystappo, which must be praised at all times. But do we not owe it to the children raised in these environments to hear their experiences? Does the #MeToo craze include the children of gays who did not have idyllic experiences?

Read the whole thing. It’s a remarkably in-depth article about Moira Greyland’s The Last Closet.