Tag: books

The Promethean is an amazingly funny novel exposing the utter insanity of modern academia and the world of technology. An extraordinary tale of ambition, social justice, and human folly, it combines the mordant wit of W. Somerset Maugham with a sense of humor reminiscent of P.G. Wodehouse.

When American billionaire Henry Hockenheimer discovers that conquering the corporate world is no longer enough for him on the eve of his 40th birthday, he decides to leave his mark on the world by creating the first Superman, a robot as intellectually brilliant as it is physically capable. But his ideas are thwarted on every side by the most brilliant minds of the academic world, from the artificial intelligence researcher Dr. Vishnu Sharma to the wheelchair-bound head of the Diversity and Inclusion Committee of Her Majesty’s Government’s Bio-Engineering Research Fund, Nkwandi Obolajuwan, and, of course, Dr. Sydney Prout, formerly of the United Nations, now Special Adviser on Human Rights to the European Union.

And when Hockenheimer succeeds, despite all of the incredible obstacles placed in his way, he discovers that success can be the cruelest failure of all.

Now in hardcover ($19.99) and paperback ($14.99).

From the reviews:

• Anyone who has read Stanley’s previous book can imagine the kind of surreal humour that results. My favourite was the psychopathic Scots Professor of Extreme Celtic Studies…. Daes yer maither stitch, Asimov. If I have a complaint about the book, it’s that too much of it seems like real life these days.
• Reading this you keep forgetting it is a novel and not an autobiography set in our current day. Aside from a bit of computing power and an improved battery what is described in the book as far as technology goes is possible today. On the political and satire side, the politics wouldn’t surprise you if they were to show up in tomorrow’s news, the satire is biting as the motives behind the politics are exposed to the light of day. The academic satire almost doesn’t qualify as satire given you can probably match it at any of our more liberal institutions today.
• I liked this considerably more than Owen Stanley’s previous literary excursion. I imagine part of that is my own experience among academics, whom Mr. Stanley gives here a fine and well-deserved skewering indeed. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoyed The Missionaries. It even has the reappearance of a character or two.
• Mr. Stanley has managed to outdo even his tremendous debut novel with this rollicking satirization of modern hyper-liberalism. A number of good philosophical questions get raised in a very subtle manner, and sacred cows are suitably self-gored. This was a very good, dark satirical story, which I’ll read again. First my sides have to cease hurting from the Gaelic Rules Philosophy played here.
• No Sophomore slump here! If you have ever had the suspicion that the age we live in has gone mad, The Promethean will confirm that that you are not the only one that has noticed.

While I still prefer Owen Stanley’s first novel, in my opinion, The Missionaries and The Promethean are two of the very best novels that Castalia House has published, along with Awake in the Night Land. I’ve been asked to do a Christmas recommendation list of Castalia House books, and I will, but from a purely literary perspective, these are the three that anyone with a proper library will be proud to feature on the shelves.

This is an excerpt from The Wrath of Angels. It is not necessary to read either The War in Heaven or The World in Shadow first. In fact, I’m not even sure if it is advisable to do so. This series is not my best fiction, but more than a few readers have enjoyed it.

Thirty miles south of London, there is a garden park located on the edge of the Sussex Weald. It is a quiet place, and beautiful, graced by a chain of five lakes linked by waterfalls. Only a few paces outside the park’s boundaries, three trees stood next to each other in a single row, two chestnuts and a mighty oak, with branches interlocking and knobby roots digging deep into the rich, loamy dirt of the quiet forest. Such a sight would not normally occasion any cause for comment, except for the fact that ten seconds ago, the area on which they stood had been largely devoid of vegetation, with the exception of a solitary ceanothus, the continued thriving of which looked less than promising in light of how its access to the sun had been unexpectedly curtailed.

Two squirrels, which had been happily occupied with chasing each other’s tails until the sunlight suddenly vanished, pulled up from their sport in some confusion. They were quite familiar with the location of every nut-bearing tree in the immediate vicinity, and even to their diminutive rodent minds it seemed implausible to the point of impossibility that they could have somehow overlooked the massive acorn-producing factory that now towered over their furry grey heads.

The smaller of the two squeaked quizzically at his companion, who sat back on his haunches with an expression of overt skepticism that would have been comprehensible even to an observer who did not happen to be a member of the greater sciurus family. The small squirrel was not to be dissuaded, though, not with the promise of what appeared to be the finest unmarked claim that southeastern English squirreldom had seen in five generations.

His nose quivered, then he cautiously took a step towards the giant oak. Then another, and a third, followed by a little leap that brought him within a single bound of the great tree. An ill-timed gust of wind caused its branches to rustle threateningly, and the second squirrel chirped a warning which encouraged his more adventurous friend to think twice about venturing the giant on the first go. Instead, he scrambled up the leftmost tree, the taller of the two chestnuts, and edged out on a limb that would bring him to within inches of one of the mighty oak’s lower branches.

He never made it, though. Without warning, without even the smallest breath of wind, the limb on which he was crouching twitched violently and sent him tumbling head-over-tail to the ground eight feet below. No sooner had the surprised rodent touched the ground than he was scampering off for the protection of more familiar trees, more proper trees, trees which held still as trees were supposed to hold still, and suffered the pitter-patter of little feet with forbearance. Only slightly behind him was his friend, who was squawking angry imprecations over his shoulder as he retreated hastily.

“Oh, that’s not nice,” commented the tree, now sans squirrels.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to do that,” muttered the other chestnut.

“I couldn’t help it, those tiny claws, they tickle!”

“You have to relax, be the tree.”

“I don’t believe everyone is quite as accustomed to the need to hide from pursuit as you, Puck,” commented the oak in a deep oakish bass. “So, what do we do now?”

“We wait. Beowaesc will be here soon, I’m sure. I told him I might be needing to lie low for a while, and this is a good place to do it. No one ever comes here except the woodland spirits and tempters stuck watching over the occasional eco-freak. He’ll probably have noticed our arrival, and if not, those disgusting little squeakers will probably run right to him anyhow.”

“They’re not disgusting,” protested the first chestnut. “Their feet just tickle, that’s all.”

“Rats with tails,” insisted the other chestnut, shaking its branches. “Don’t be fooled by the cute fluffy act, it’s nothing but a charade. If you’d ever been a tree before—”

“Silence!” The oak commanded an end to the discussion. “One comes.”

An outline of a face appeared on the bark of the chestnut tree. The face resembled Robin’s, in the same way that a face pressed up against a bed sheet resembles the face of the person behind the bed sheet. It was not entirely recognizable, but as Robin had said, Beowaesc was expecting him. And then, Beowaesc was more than a little accustomed to differentiating between one tree and another.

“Ah, so there you are. You don’t know much about trees, do you, Puck.”

“Er… a good day to you, my lord. Why do you say that?”

Beowaesc was a tall forest god, with richly hued skin that shone like varnished beech. His well-kept beard was mahogany and of middling length, and his eyes, filled with the ancient wisdom of the woods, were set deep into his craggy face. He carried a neatly polished staff, and his bare feet were so hard and horny that Robin pitied any poor boots forced to protect the earth from them should he ever choose to wear a pair. Antlers sprang from his forehead, not a great stag’s rack like the Hunters, but a humbler pair of three-tined horns. Like his forest, Beowaesc had a touch of civilization about him, and yet there was a sense of earthy power radiating from him even so.

The forest lord pointed to the blue-flowered tree shrouded by their branches. “It’s quite simple. No ceanothus could ever grow to such heights enshrouded by the likes of you three. Anyone who knows the first thing about vegetation would know something was amiss. Why, even a mortal would have noted it!”

A look of chagrin crossed the bark face. Robin’s lips twisted in an expression of frustration, and in the blink of an eye, the chestnut disappeared and he was himself again, albeit clad in an appropriately woodsy brown robe.

“You make it sound so obvious!”

“It is, if you know what to look for.”

“Very well, what would you advise, then, should we seek to avoid drawing unwanted attention.”

Beowaesc stroked his beard and smiled at Robin, as if he were a favored nephew. “Why don’t you introduce your companions to me first? Then, I shall advise you as to a suitable locale. There is a pleasant glen with a lovely view of the main waterfall not far from here. It’s only about a five minute walk. I’ve spent many a pleasant season there.”

Robin tried not to roll his eyes. A season? And more than once? This was not his first time as a tree, nor even his twentieth, but it was a guise he wore only out of necessity. It was mind-crushingly boring, for one thing, and for another, Lahalissa was right. Squirrel feet tickled something terrible. “How very kind,” he answered, leaving his thoughts unvoiced. “This is Lahalissa, in service to… a Shadow Lady of some note known as Dr. Sprite.”

“Indeed,” Beowaesc nodded politely as the second chestnut transformed before him. As Robin hoped, the forest lord had no knowledge of the world of mortal academics and would ask no dangerous questions. Beowaesc smiled in appreciation, though, as the lovely daemoness curtsied to him wearing a leafy woodland outfit that honored his position as well as her figure. “The aspect suits you well, my dear. Be welcome in my weald, Lahalissa.”

“Thank you, Great Lord,” she breathed submissively.

“And this—”

“Oh, no. No, no, no.” Beowaesc’s eyes widened and he backed away from the place where the giant oak had stood only a moment before. “That’s not possible. It can’t be!”

“So you recognize your rightful liege, old friend?” said Oberon, and his voice was like frost running down the edge of a sword blade. “Or perhaps you have forgotten oaths sworn long ago, sworn by Rose and Thorn.”

From the most recent reviews of SJWs Always Double Down, still the #1 Political Philosophy bestseller:

• Great book. I especially enjoyed the portion explaining the fallacies with the given examples. Does tend to be a little dry at times, but a good read nevertheless.
• Vox Day is an excellent author. Subject well researched and presented. I am learning a lot!
• Five Stars. Eye opening. Well written.
• If you have read the first installation in this series – SJWs Always Lie – you know what to expect. But perhaps you might think that you already know what is in this book. Well, yes and no. A lot of the stuff will be familiar to those who have followed the SJW wars, but the tactical and strategic details spelled out in the different chapters on how to identify, resist and deal with SJW infiltrators is worth the price. Even after participating, the section on the strategic thinking behind the Puppies’ takedown of the Hugo Awards was an eye opener for me.
• Knowing how SJW’s infiltrate and destroy organizations from within is invaluable information in an age where virtue-signaling is more important that delivering products and services.

Since Christmas is coming, it may be worth remembering that both SJWAL and SJWADD are now available in paperback, so it’s easy to put them in the hands of family members and colleagues who you suspect may be targeted by SJWs in the coming year. Or better yet, who happen to be in a position to do something about the SJWs already infesting their organizations.

Remember, 2018 is the year that SJWs and the rest of the Left are going to be amping up the rhetoric and the political intensity in the hopes of taking back some of the ground they’ve lost since 2015. We can safely expect the temperature of the cultural cold war, and the number of metaphorical casualties, to rise as a result.

An excerpt from the definitive Appendix N by Jeffro Johnson. Now in hardcover too.

Now… the thief class takes a lot of flak in spite of the enduring appeal of characters like Robin Hood and Bilbo Baggins. Yet not only was it a latecomer that wasn’t even in the original three “little brown books” that made up the original “White Box” rule set, but its system of skills and abilities was seen as taking away from actions that everyone tended to try during the earliest game sessions.2 For instance, fighting-men might take a stab at being stealthy by removing their armor and then scouting ahead for the party. When the thief class came along with an explicit chance to “move silently,” a lot of people leaped to the conclusion the other classes couldn’t attempt such a thing anymore. This made for some hard feelings, and fixing the design issues implied by this class’s existence is such a hassle that maybe it’s best to just drop it altogether!

In the same vein, the cleric class comes in for a good deal of grief in spite of the fact that it was one of the original three classes in the game. In more recent editions, people don’t mind having one in the party, but they can’t always find someone willing to play one. (Few people want to be relegated to the role of a glorified medic; they want to get out front and do stuff, not just play a support role!) But really, the original class is downright odd. They can’t use edged weapons for some reason, and they have a bizarre adaption of the Vancian magic system with the effects drawn largely from biblical accounts. They’re just weird, and the archetype doesn’t turn up in fantasy literature in anywhere near the same frequency as the other classes. For a lot of people, the cleric is the obvious choice for the odd man out.

Reading Poul Anderson’s The High Crusade, however, it quickly becomes apparent that, if you’re going to be faithful to the game’s medieval roots, then the two core classes would have to be the fighting-man and the cleric—a stark difference from Steve Jackson’s The Fantasy Trip. This just isn’t in line with how most people view the game though. This is ironic given that the earliest iterations of what would become Dungeons & Dragons were actually a fantasy supplement to the medieval miniatures rule set Chainmail. It was an explicit goal of those rules to inspire people to gain a greater familiarity with the actual history of the Middle Ages.3 This aspect of the hobby gradually faded into obscurity when fantasy gaming took on a life of its own. Of course, the fewer medieval elements you incorporate into your game setting, the less sense the cleric is going to make.

Fans of the oft-maligned class will be gratified to discover that The High Crusade is actually narrated by a cleric. Purists, on the other hand, will be disappointed to see that he wields a battleaxe during the first chapter. At first glance, it’s hard not to jump to the conclusion that this title made Gary Gygax’s “Appendix N” book list because of its likely part in inspiring the game’s tendency to fuse science-fiction and fantasy elements together. Indeed, the cover looks like something straight out of “Expedition to Barrier Peaks.” But Poul Anderson has done much more than provide an unusual theme for a dungeon adventure. He’s turned the standard alien invasion on its head by having the humans thwart the would-be oppressors on first contact. An alien scout vessel is quickly overrun… by medieval Englishmen! When they get their hands on high-tech weaponry and figure out what they can do with it, their first thought is to gather up the entire village, board the spacecraft, and take an extended vacation that would include invading France and taking back the Holy Land!

When the narrator is tasked with teaching the sole surviving alien Latin so that they can force him to explain how to properly “sail” the ship, hilarity ensues:

“You brought this on yourself,” I told him. “You should have known better than to make an unprovoked attack on Christians.” “What are Christians?” he asked. Dumbfounded, I thought he must be feigning ignorance. As a test, I led him through the Paternoster. He did not go up in smoke, which puzzled me. “I think I understand,” he said. “You refer to some primitive tribal pantheon.” “It is no such heathen thing!” I said indignantly. I started to explain the Trinity to him, but had scarcely gotten to transubstantiation when he waved an impatient blue hand. It was much like a human hand otherwise, save for the thick, sharp nails. “No matter,” he said, “Are all Christians as ferocious as your people?” “You would have had better luck with the French,” I admitted. “Your misfortune was landing among Englishmen.”

This is some seriously funny stuff, very nearly in the same vein as the best material of Douglas Adams. The fact that it is a straightforward science-fiction story with realistic medieval characters only makes it funnier. While one might expect this sort of tongue-in-cheek delivery to get tiresome after a while, the plot moves along quickly enough that it gradually fades into the background. The Englishmen are soon (and inadvertently) deep in the process of taking over the alien empire that would have otherwise subjugated humanity. And while the reader naturally identifies with the humans as he reads, it gradually becomes clear that there is an additional angle to Poul Anderson’s handiwork:

Actually, the Wersgor domain was like nothing at home. Most wealthy, important persons dwelt on their vast estates with a retinue of blueface hirelings. They communicated on the far-speaker and visited in swift aircraft of spaceships. Then there were other classes I have mentioned elsewhere, such as warriors, merchants, and politicians. But no one was born to his place in life. Under the law, all were equal, all free to strive as best they might for money or position. Indeed, they had even abandoned the idea of families. Each Wersgor lacked a surname, being identified by a number instead in a central registry. Male and female seldom lived together more than a few years. Children were sent at an early age to schools, where they dwelt until mature, for their parents oftener thought them an encumbrance than a blessing. Yet this realm, in theory a republic of freemen, was in practice a worse tyranny than mankind has known, even in Nero’s infamous day. The Wersgorix had no special affection for their birthplace; they acknowledged no immediate ties of kinship or duty. As a result, each individual had no one to stand between him and the all-powerful central government. In England, when King John grew overweening, he clashed both with ancient law and with vested local interests; so the barons curbed him and thereby wrote another word or two of liberty for all Englishmen. The Wersgor were a lickspittle race, unable to protest any arbitrary decree of a superior. “Promotion according to merit” meant only “promotion according to one’s usefulness to the imperial ministers.”

Yes, after being the butt of so many jokes and tongue-in-cheek remarks, our “primitive” narrator has a few observations to make about the culture of the alien people he is so cheerfully invading. The shortcomings of the alien society are in fact almost painfully familiar to the typical reader of the twentieth century. Poul Anderson has deftly turned the tables on us: we are the punch line. It is thought provoking, to say the least, but it’s a mere prelude to the coming knockout blow:

“Well?” demanded Sir Roger. “What ails you now?” “If they have not yet gone to war,” I said weakly, “why should the advent of a few backward savages like us make them do so?” “Hearken, Brother Parvus,” said Sir Roger. “I’m weary of this whining about our own ignorance and feebleness. We’re not ignorant of the true Faith, are we? Somewhat more to the point, maybe, while the engines of war may change through the centuries, rivalry and intrigue look no subtler out here than at home. Just because we use a different sort of weapons, we aren’t savages.”

Granted, the tale depends on a great many implausibilities, but the fact that there’s an element of truth here is the key to what makes it so funny. You see, it’s not just that medieval people can be interesting if they are portrayed a little more faithfully to their real-life character and attitudes. It’s that they may even have been better than us in ways we rarely contemplate. And maybe the things that seem the strangest about them now were actually perfectly reasonable cultural adaptions that addressed the essential problems of their time! Whether you agree or not, it’s certainly an audacious premise—exactly the sort of mind-blowing concept I look for in a good science-fiction novel.

This is an excerpt from one of my two favorite stories from THERE WILL BE WAR VOL. VIII. It’s a very clever explanation for one of the great mysteries of history.

Dinosaurs
by Geoffrey A. Landis

When the call came in at 2 A.M. I wasn’t surprised. Timmy had warned me it was coming. “Today or tomorrow, Mr. Sanderson,” he’d said. “Today or tomorrow for sure.” His voice was serious, far too serious for his age. I’ve learned to accept his prognostications, at least when he was sure, so I had my people ready. When the colonel called, I was already reviewing what we could do.

Timmy has a gift for time. He can, sometimes, see into the future, and a few days into the past as well. Perhaps because of his particular talent, he has a passion for paleontology. He’s got quite a collection of fossils: trilobites and fossilized ferns and even one almost-intact dinosaur skull. He’s particularly interested in dinosaurs, but perhaps that’s not so unusual. After all, Timmy was only eleven.

He has one other talent as well. I hoped we wouldn’t have to depend on it.

I found Timmy in his room. He was already awake, passing the time sorting his collections of fossils. We’ll be joining them soon enough, I thought. Maybe in a million years the next species will be digging up our bones and wondering what made us extinct. We walked in silence to the conference room. Sarah and January were already there. Sarah was still in her bathrobe and fuzzy slippers, sipping coffee from a Styrofoam cup. Jan had managed to throw on a pair of rather tight jeans and a faded Coors T-shirt. A moment later, Jason, our hypnotist, arrived. There was no need to brief them. They already knew.

Sarah was my number two talent. We found her while testing people who claimed to be able to locate subs underwater. We didn’t find any, but we found her. She’d been one of the controls. Instrumentation for the control group had failed a lot more often than for the test subjects. Perhaps another project team might have ignored this, but I’d instructed my team to investigate the inexplicable—in any form. So we investigated the controls and finally came up with the cause: Sarah. She was a feisty, forty-year-old divorced housewife who had the Murphy talent, an ability to make complex equipment screw up. After some training, she’d even gotten to the point where she could control it. Some.

My third talent was January. She’d shown an ability to enhance the rate at which things burn. With a little more training, she might be the most dangerous one of all. Now, though, she was just a college student with an untrained talent.

I had a handful of other people, with an erratic smattering of other talents. Nothing that might be useful against what was coming, though.

“Sarah, how you feeling?”

“Burned out, Danny boy, feeling burned out. Never was good for much after midnight.”

“That’s not so good. Let’s see, you work best awake. Jan, how about you?”

“I think I’d better go under, Dan. I’m too nervous to do any good awake.”

“Right.’’ I nodded to Jason, and he went over to put her to sleep. “How about you, Timmy? Ready to go under?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How are you feeling?”

“I’m feeling really hot tonight, Mr. Sanderson.” He grinned at me. “Real good.”

If so, he was the only one.

Once I’d thought that being assigned to Project Popgun was the last stop in a one-way journey to obscurity, a dead-end directorship of a make-work project. But even if I was relegated to a dead-end project, I resolved to make it the best-run dead-end project in the government.

Maybe I should explain what Project Popgun is. Popgun is a tiny government agency set up to study what the military euphemistically call “long shot” projects. What they mean is “crackpot.” Psychic assassins, voodoo priests, astrologers, tea leaf readers, people who claimed to be able to contact UFOs. Nobody really thought any of these would pan out, but they were each carefully investigated, just in case. Dogs who could foretell the future, children who could bend spoons, gamblers who could influence the fall of dice. There were always new crackpots to investigate as fast as the old ones were dismissed. After all, with the defense budget numbering hundreds of billions, a few million to check out crackpots is considered a bargain.

The psychics, the palm readers and fortune tellers, none of them turned out to be worth the investigation. But here and there, in odd nooks and by-ways across the nation, I’d found a few genuine talents. I’d begged, bribed, coerced, and flat-out hired them to come work for me here in Alexandria, where we could study them, train them to use their talents, and maybe even figure out what they were good for.

Strangely enough, as long as I had reported negative results, I was commended for rigorous work and carefully controlled test procedures. Once I started to report something worthwhile, though, we were accused of sloppy research and even downright falsification. The investigating committee, although not going so far as to actually endorse our results, finally suggested that our findings “might have legitimate defense applications,” and recommended that I be given limited scope to implement near-term applications. So I’d asked for—and received—a hardwire link to the threat evaluation center at NORAD, the North American Air Defense command. Voice plus video images of the main NORAD radar screen, carried on EMP-proof fiber-optic cables.

This is an excerpt from Young Man’s War by Rod Walker

The man in charge of my first combat patrol was named Captain Jonas Howard.

Captain Howard had been in Afghanistan and Iraq, which he was willing to talk about, and some other places that he was not. He spoke in a slow Alabama drawl, rarely raising his voice, and constantly chewed sunflower seeds as a means of keeping nicotine addiction at bay. He had learned the truth about the Dark the same way that so many others in Black Division had—on patrol outside Kandahar, a hole ripping itself in the air, and then a horde of giant stinking alien bug-things swarming out to kill everything in sight.

Or so Captain Howard put it. He had bit of a flair for the dramatic.

Bull and I reported to Captain Howard’s HQ as ordered at 0500 one dark, dry morning. Howard’s HQ was a large tent with a space heater, since Castle Base had gotten a bit crowded since Invasion Day. I had heard rumors that Black Division had facilities elsewhere, and that General Culver was taking in more regular Army bases under his command, but I hadn’t visited any of them yet.

Howard stood outside his tent, watching as his men loaded up their armored troop carriers. There were already a dozen sunflower seed shells around his boots. If he wasn’t careful he was going to need dentures by the time he turned fifty, assuming any of us lived that long.

“Sir!” I said. “Corporal Roland Kane and Corporal Rufus Bullock reporting for duty, sir!”

We saluted. Howard sized us up, then saluted back after a moment.

I should have mentioned that. Listeners started at corporal rank, since in the heat of combat we sometimes had to tell privates to move quickly to avoid a Darkside attack.

“You two look too young to be corporals,” grunted Howard. He pointed at me. “You don’t look old enough to drive.”

“I am seventeen years old, sir!” I announced. My birthday had passed while in basic training. Maggie had scraped together enough flour to make me a cupcake, which had been nice.

“Don’t shout unless I tell you,” said Howard. “Some of those drones have ears like bats. Let me guess. You got bit by a zombie, the Division found you in time, and now you’re a Listener?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

Howard’s gaze shifted to Bull. “And you. You’re a big fellow, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir!” said Bull with enthusiasm. “I am excited for the opportunity to bring destruction upon the Dark, sir!”

“You’re not bringing destruction to anyone,” said Howard. “You’re staying in the vehicles. The General himself will rip me a new one if I get one of his Listeners killed.”

“Yes, sir!” said Bull. “Then I am excited for the opportunity to bring destruction to the Dark vicariously, sir!”

Howard blinked and his lips twitched. I suspect he almost laughed. “Let’s hope you can retain that enthusiasm, Corporal. Both of you, report to Sergeant Mendez and do whatever he tells you.”

“Yes, sir,” Bull and I chorused in unison.

Sergeant Mendez turned out to be a Hispanic man in his middle thirties with a scarred face and tattoos that were occasionally visible when he took off his jacket. He looked like an enforcer for a drug gang, but he ran a tight ship. I suspect the fact that he looked like he could murder you with his bare hands without blinking helped him keep order.

“All right, you two,” said Mendez. “You’ll be with me in the second carrier.” He pointed at the second of the six M200 armored personnel carriers that would make up our patrol. “You’re new, so shut up, keep your ears peeled, and do your thing. You detect even a hint of Darksiders, you speak up right away, got it?”

“Yes, sir,” Bull and I said in unison.

“There’s going to be trouble on this patrol, so stay sharp,” said Mendez.

“How do you know there will be trouble, Sergeant?” I said.

“General said so,” said Mendez.

By now I had realized that most of the men of Black Division regarded General Culver as something like a prophet. It was well-known within the Division that Culver had been trying to warn Washington and the Pentagon about the Dark for years, and that he had been warning them something like Invasion Day was going to happen sooner or later. The Pentagon had ignored his warning, save for occasional demands to increase the number of female combat troops in the Division.

Well, General Culver had been proven right. It also helped that he seemed to be one of the few powerful people left with an actual plan other than hiding in a bunker someplace and hoping that his canned soup didn’t run out.

An excerpt from The Heretics of St. Possenti, a novel by Rolf Nelson.

“Prophet or not, Mohammad had a good grasp of the psychology of what motivates young men—and people in general—and structured things accordingly. Praying five times a day is a powerful psychological conditioning tool. Saying all your sins are forgiven if you die for the cause is a powerful motivation when they are constantly harping on all the sins people commit. They have the sword on their flags, and they are martyrs for their cause of taking over the world!”

“They are deluded fools,” replied Thomas sadly.

“Any more so than a third-century Christian choosing to get thrown to the lions rather than recant? You call them martyrs, too, do you not?”

“But that’s different!”

“Is it? You don’t arm yourself, you preach peace, and theirs is the way of the sword. If you were a testosterone-filled young man, which symbol would attract you more, a gun, or a lamb? I mean, unless you wanted to shag the lamb, slaughter it, and roast some kebabs afterward? Same for gang-bangers. They see the cops don’t let the good guys pack heat and tell folks to not fight the bad guys. Let the cops go after them. Let the insurance cover the losses. The guys in the hood see the law-abiding as weak, chumps, nothing but chumps or—if you’ll excuse the expression—sheep to be shorn.”

“But nonviolence works in the long run. I mean, look at Gandhi. His nonviolence worked very well—within his lifetime!—and freed India from England.”

“But he also said… Wait. Just a second. Got the quote… right… here.” He found it on the screen of his tablet. “He who cannot protect himself or his nearest and dearest or their honor by nonviolently facing death may and ought to do so by violently dealing with the oppressor. He who can do neither of the two is a burden. He has no business to be the head of a family. He must either hide himself, or must rest content to live forever in helplessness and be prepared to crawl like a worm at the bidding of a bully. Even your number-two hero knew that some people can’t be reasoned with, only dealt with at their own level.”

Finnegan added, “He also said that nonviolence would only work with a just and moral people like the English, and The sword makes men equal. Clearly nonviolent protest and letter-writing didn’t help the kulaks against Stalin.”

“But that isn’t Jesus’ way.”

“Hey, I didn’t bring up Gandhi.”

“Well, yes. But that isn’t the path of the Bible.”

“Truth isn’t always comfortable, Padre. It is what it is.”

“But guns are a symbol of violence,” said Cranberry firmly.

“No, they are not,” shot back Finnegan, just as firmly.

“Sure they are.”

“No, they are a symbol of worldly power. An amplifier of the intent of the user. In the hands of a nongovernment employee with a good heart, a symbol of freedom. In the hands of a good government, they represent law and order. In the hands of an evil man, a symbol of oppression and crime.”

Thomas had never considered that particular distinction. The vast majority of the previous conversations he’d listened in on had been of much more technical nature. “Possibly, but that doesn’t feel right. Far too many murders, wars, robberies, and suicides happen with them.”

“All of which happened before gunpowder showed up. Jaw of an ass sound familiar? The fact that… Wait. Let me get Old Testament here, I know I’ve got that quote somewhere…. Ah, here. Maimonides. Truth does not become truer by virtue of the fact that the entire world agrees with it, nor less so even if the whole world disagrees with it.”

“Maimonides wasn’t Old Testament. He was Middle Ages,” Cranberry pointed out. “And Jewish.”

“Ah, whatever. So was Jesus. Exact year is irrelevant. He’s an old-time scholarly dude. And he’s right. Doesn’t make a tinker’s fart in a tornado how the truth makes you feel. True is true. It may be inconvenient that three plus three is six, but there it is. Lifeboat math and figuring out who gets tossed over or fished out is never easy for a sane man.”

“But good men of Christian faith should not murder.”

“Agreed. But killing isn’t necessarily the same as murder. The commandment is Thou Shall Not Murder, not Kill. One is not just. The other is. Do cops and soldiers, even Christian ones, carry guns?”

“But soldiers and police are different!”

“Nope. They are people, too. Same rights, same commandments. Did the Knights Templar and the other chivalric orders carry swords much as the Saracen did or rely only on prayer while blessed by the Church and fighting to keep the Holy Lands safe for Christians? Did William Marshal, first Earl of Pembroke and pinnacle of the chivalric ideals, carry only words when asked by the pope to protect the young heir to the English throne to prevent war? He was so bad-ass even into his 70s that nobody was willing to challenge him to combat, so he secured the life of the future king of England and the Magna Carta. He was even offered a plenary indulgence for any sin he might ever commit in the future in exchange, for God’s sake! A spiritual blank check to do anything he wanted. But he turned it down. He was a good man and carried a sword doing his knightly duty for many long years.”

“But that was a long time ago!”

“So was Jesus. Does that make his words any less true?”

“Point taken.”

“Is the Church of today exactly the same as it was fifteen hundred years ago? Any new developments in that time?” Mickey asked.

“Well, yes, of course! Benedictine Monks and the Dominicans, Franciscans, Jesuits, and the various nuns’ orders. We adopted local languages in place of Latin. Other practical things like that. Times change, but the Word does not.”

“Not to mention some guy named Martin Luther…. But let’s not go there right now. So why were the monastic orders founded?”

“Monastic history is not my strong suit,” the bishop said, “but as I recall, once Christianity became the more-or-less official religion of the Roman Empire under Constantine, it wasn’t a great act of courage to be Christian. Some sought the hard life of a desert hermit to prove their devotion to God. Early Benedictines attempted to recreate that ascetic life, at least to a degree, and imitated Christ, who fasted in the desert before he started his ministry.”

“So a new order was founded to meet an unmet need?”

“Yes, I guess that is one way to look at it.”

“And the Templars?”

“To keep Pilgrims to the Holy Land safe, as you said, and retake it from the Islamic conquest. But this is totally different.”

“Maybe so. Maybe not.”

Bishop Thomas Cranberry finds himself at a loss when he is confronted by a thief and realizes some disturbing truths about himself. The experience sends him in search of the men who are increasingly absent from the Church, who find themselves at a loss in a world that has gone increasingly feral, and who feel that they have nowhere to go and no one to whom they can turn for support. In listening to them and attempting to understand their plight, he finds an unexpected mission.

THE HERETICS OF ST. POSSENTI is for readers who want the backstory of the story and for those who want to know how one inspired man can make a difference in a fallen world. It is a novel for those who need inspiration to get them though the day and those who look for unusual ways to accomplish the mission. It is for people who understand and respect the old ways but know that sometimes a seed cannot grow without splitting the pavement.

Rolf Nelson is the author of BACK FROM THE DEAD, the first book in The Stars Came Back series. This is how Rolf described the connection between the two books.

The first book written in this series of related stories was The Stars Came Back. It had a small but important part played by a somewhat mysterious order of monks, the Order of St. Possenti. It was also said they had a small but significant role in the past as they helped save, metaphorically and physically, the fully self-aware AI aboard the warship Armadillo. It was an unusual order of monks, and it raised more than a few reader questions. It also piqued my own interest: how could such an order of rifle-toting Christian monks come into existence? A fascinating plot device to use as a fully developed entity, but… How?

So I set about exploring the idea. I learned much in the process about Christianity, Catholicism, popes, monks, schisms, and more. I hope you enjoy the results of that labor.