Tag: Lions Den

Book Review: Come and Take Them I

FP is the first to review Come and Take Them, by Tom Kratman.

Tom Kratman is one of
today’s premier practitioners of military-oriented fiction. His
“CarreraVerse” SF series and his “Countdown”
just-barely-future series both display his talents in that genre.
Come And Take Them is the latest entry in the “CarreraVerse”
line, wherein retired soldier Patrick Hennesey di Carrera returns to
the colors in service to his adopted home of Balboa on Terra Nova,
against all enemies foreign and domestic, and in so doing reshapes
the politics of his world.

Terra Nova is a
designed world. The hypothesized race that designed it,
conventionally called the Noahs, appear to have intended it for
eventual human occupancy. Whether they knew that Man would bring his
legacy of strife along with him, no one can say. In any case, the
inter-religious and international animosities that gave rise to so
much warfare on Old Earth have found their way to the new world, and
Carrera has been in the thick of them for five volumes with more to
come.
The Timocratic Republic
of Balboa owes its current political structure and much else to
Carrera and President Raul Parilla. That structure depends heavily on
the Legion del Cid, created by Carrera and Parilla to provide
Balboa with a military of high quality. It has also been an
instrument for the transformation of their nation, as readers of the
first three books — A Desert Called Peace, Carnifex, and The
Lotus Eaters — will already be aware.
The other nations of
Terra Nova are not happy about Balboa’s acquisition of such a
powerful, politically dominant fighting force. To Balboa’s west, the
Tauran Union, a multinational alliance in the style of today’s
European Union but with many more soldiers and guns, seeks to
impose its will on the small republic. It’s an effort in which the
Taurans have the support of the orbiting “Peace Fleet” from
Old Earth. Nominally there only to suppress warfare below, the Peace
Fleet has the additional mission of preventing Terra Nova or any of
its nations from becoming capable of threatening the corrupt
hereditary oligarchy that bestrides the mother world. To that end,
its masters would dearly love to see the threat of Balboa put down
for good.
Come And Take Them
concerns itself with events before and during the Tauran Union’s
attempt to evict the Carrera-designed government of Balboa, and to
install a puppet regime biddable by the TU’s masters. Its timespan is
roughly coextensive with that from the end of The Lotus Eaters
through the events of The Amazon Legion. As one might
expect of a novel from a specialist in military fiction, much of the
book is concerned with war and the preparations for it. However,
Kratman has another mission alongside that one: to depict the
swelling of regret within Carrera himself over having militarized his
nation, thus exposing it to the enmity of the Taurans and others.
Carrera has sickened of
bloodshed, and is particularly contrite about the all but certain
high price his nation will pay when it faces off against the Taurans,
as he believes, correctly, it must. However, he’s a soldier, bound to
his profession as much by its ethic as by his aptitudes and
experience. Despite the certainty of mass death, he contrives a plan
by which his tiny republic can defeat the far larger Tauran Union,
and in so doing create a continent-sized political upheaval that
might result in a new birth of freedom for millions beyond Balboa’s
borders.
Come And Take Them
is a big book, replete with plot subthreads and secondary adventures
in which Supporting Cast characters rise to local prominence, whether
they live and triumph or fail and die. There are splashes of highly
colored drama throughout the action. The reader is advised to give it
his full attention, perhaps with the aid of a large map of Balboa and
a lot of little counters to represent the units fighting over it. A
dramatis personae annotated with character sketches and
timelines might also be advisable. Though it must be read slowly and
with concentration to get the maximum enjoyment from its richness,
the effort is amply repaid.
There will be more
segments in the “CarreraVerse” series. The best way to
prepare for them is to absorb this one in all its bright and gory
spectacle, and to reflect on the questions that forever hang over all
tests of arms: How high a price ought one to be willing to pay for
one’s objectives? At what point must a man, a commander, or a nation
say, “Enough,” and act accordingly?
The thrust of the
question may change according to whether the lead is or is not
already flying, but its urgency does not. From the vengeance and bloodshed of A Desert Called Peace and the steady army and nation-building of Carnifex and The Lotus Eaters, Come And Take Them continues the completion of a portrait of patriotism, heroism, and the ultimate price that must be paid in their service. Highly recommended.

Lions Den VI: Tom Kratman

As his fans already know, Tom Kratman has another volume out in his popular the Carerra military science fiction series that started with A Desert Called Peace. One can’t help but like the timely name of Book Five, Come and Take Them, which many readers will recognize as the English translation of the defiant Spartan phrase “Molon Labe”. As usual, if you would like to be one of the three book reviewers, please send me an email and I will send you a PDF for your review.

It is also worth mentioning that two of Tom’s books are free on Kindle Select today, including the first in the Carrera series: A Desert Called Peace and Caliphate

No sense in talking about Vol. V in a series without talking about the series.

Caveat: If you’re a staunch liblepr (liberal-leftist-progressive-red) the odds of you’re getting through the series without suffering a fatal case of exploding brain pan are, at best, fifty-fifty.  This is hilarious, too, because the main character, in the course of creating a one export economy for a small country – the export being highly trained formations of military auxiliaries – finds that he had inadvertently done what most single export economies end up doing, creating a partial “socialist workers paradise.” Nonetheless, every time someone buys one of my books a liberal, somewhere, cries or screams.  And remember: Every time a liberal cries or screams, an angel gets his wings.

I wrote the series to discuss a large number of different things and I wrote it to work at different levels, for different readings, by different people, at different times.  At one level, the first two volumes concerned how the current campaigns should have been fought and why everything has gone to shit.  Note that I predicted that before it happened, well before.  These were also books on revenge and on how one tends to become much like ones enemies.  They also discussed, incidentally, with the Cheng Ho disaster, the failed first attempt at colonization, the likelihood or lack thereof of a colonization attempt that mixed culturally incompatible peoples.

The next volume, The Lotus Eaters, was transitional and political, with a heavy dose of coup d’etat and drug war, the latter of which is a commentary on the silliness and moral cowardice of blaming impoverished Colombians and Mexicans for our societal weakness and idiocy.  The fourth concerned how to turn women into infantry, and get military use out of gays, the old-fashioned way.

Here’s a very brief excerpt: 

“Gather ’round, girls,” Franco ordered. The women, all of them still in something like shock, clustered in a circle. “Sit down.”

He began to pass out red felt-tip markers. When everyone had received one, Franco began to speak.

“Okay. I want you to take your markers and I want you to draw a dotted line just like the one I am drawing on my wrist.”

Franco drew a six inch long series of red dots lengthwise down his left wrist. “Everyone done with that? Good. Now draw another one on the other wrist . . . Done? Good. Let me see. Very good. Now there’s no excuse.

“You see, women threaten suicide and even act it out rather frequently, but you fail so often to carry through that I am forced to question your sincerity and competence as a sex. Therefore . . .”

Franco turned toward the door. He tossed a package of razor blades to the floor on his way out.

“Trujillo!” he called over one shoulder. “Collect up the markers in that box and put them by my office door. Anybody who wants a razor blade, just help yourself.  ‘Cut along dotted line.’”

At still another level – and it’s a shame, you’ll agree, that “literary fiction” is invariable concerned with mere style and never with sophisticated thought – we have something very like the world of today – called with deliberate lack of imagination, “Terra Nova” – engaged in war against the world of tomorrow, Old Earth, a hellish nightmare of UN, EU, NGO, and Quango dominated oligarchy, to prevent that kind of oligarchy from arising on the new world.  At yet another level, it’s about demographic change, and what that does to societies, not merely as a result of who comes in, but also about who leaves.

This volume is about that war or, rather, it’s beginnings.  You’ll have to either take my word for it or read the previous four volumes, there’s no Deus ex Machina in there nor in the next one.  Everything – I mean every goddamned thing – was presaged in the previous books. I doubt there has ever been a novel or series about war on the grand scale as thoroughly staffed as these.

There is one jarring – albeit quite deliberate – thing in there, the degree to which the new world resembles the old, physically and politically.  As said, it’s deliberate and by no means thoughtless or lazy; it was harder to do this than to set up a completely new scheme.  Here’s an edited/redacted version of something I wrote to someone on that:

“[The planet is] a game preserve / wildlife refuge… Again, I would have thought that would be obvious but…well…maybe not so much as I’d thought.

Now if a group has the power to link galaxies (as far as we know), and intends to (as far as we can tell), and intends to set up a wildlife preserve, going so far as to genengineer plant life to poison intelligent life (as far as we know), one would expect them to want the wildlife to prosper, no? That requires similar weather, yes? And so what is surprising about people who can link galaxies also lifting up land masses to get the right kind of weather?

That actually wasn’t going to be the case, but someone pointed me to an article – the title was something to the effect of “We’re all Panamanians” – that made the case that it was changes in weather patterns arising from the rise of the Isthmus of Panama that led to the evolution of, among other life forms, us. Once I started thinking about that, I realized that, yes, if you’ve got godlike power and you intend to set up a wildlife preserve on another planet, you’re going to have to do something about the weather, which will require changing the terrain.

As far as similar names, do you really think that’s unrealistic? I mean, I thought I was born in Boston, named for Boston, England, in New England, named for England, next to New York, named for York, which had once had a city named New Amsterdam, named for….oh, well, maybe I was born and raised somewhere else and it’s all an illusion and people never, never – what never? No, never! – never name a new settlement for home… 😉

The nations didn’t just happen to be settled. If you read with some care, you can see that there was a deliberate movement to get all the old fashioned nationalist types off of Earth. What’s hard about that? They did, of course, try to set up a monocultural planet, but that failed with the Cheng Ho disaster. (Funny how people miss that no one ever answered Rodney King’s question.) Why? Because I would (and did) expect it to fail.

Let me turn that around; given the Cheng Ho disaster, why would they group themselves differently than on old Earth? Why would anyone risk their lives by mixing? Given the desire of sundry transnationalists to get the old fashioned types off of Earth, why wouldn’t they learn from the Cheng Ho disaster and accommodate emigrants’ desire to be with others like themselves? I think the burden’s on you, or anyone, who objects to the scheme to answer those questions.

Besides, the easy sci fi assumption of monocultural planets may come to pass when there are enough planets discovered to give one to everybody. But when it’s only one? No, it’s going to be partitioned, sort of like the Pope partitioned what we call Latin America.

What point to doing it the way I did? Because I wanted the reader to be able to read the book / series at several different levels, one of which was commentary on the here and now. I said that pretty much expressly in that opening blurb, “Unless you want to.” (In other words, “Yes, go right ahead.”) “

And that’s enough about that.  Read.  Criticize.  If you bitch about typos, this being a galley proof not a final edited copy, you can run but you can’t hide.

Book review: Lights in the Deep

LD provides a second look at Brad Torgersen’s Lights in the Deep:

I went into this with two disadvantages: I wasn’t at all familiar with
the author, and I haven’t regularly read short form science fiction for
many, many years. I ended up enjoying this collection nonetheless.

Diving into these stories quickly reminded me why I’m not as
big a fan of short stories as I used to be–the limitations in form
itself. As a young man I would devour short stories, but just about any
author, but particularly Larry Niven, Heinlein, Zelazy, Keith Laumer,
Robert Sheckley, and other similar authors. Back then, quick dips into
short stories appealed to me, but now that I’m an old man, I find my
tastes trending toward larger sized (huge) Space Operas from Peter F.
Hamilton, Neal Asher, Alastair Reynolds, etc.

The only recent short story collections I had read were by
Hamilton, and those were related for the most part to the various novels
he’s written, so this was my first dive into a collection like this in
years.

I’ll make quick comments about each entry in the collection and then give my summary.

The
Three Introductions – I read them, but I couldn’t tell you a thing
about them now. They were nice, but didn’t contain anything memorable.
Neither a plus, nor a minus to the whole.

Outbound – Quite a good story, one that I would have been
happy to see expanded to novel length. For me the downsides were the
brevity of this story… I wanted more detail about this setting.

Gemini 17 – A nice exploration of a *slightly* alternate history. Fun story with a good, humorous ending.

Influences: Allan Cole and Chris Bunch – I’m not familiar with
either author, but it’s always nice to see the influences in an
author’s background.

The Bullfrog Radio Astronomy Project –
Be careful what you transmit or the Men in Black (or are they) will
come for you. It brought back memories of laughing at the Art Bell show.

Exiles of Eden – Another nice story. I figured out what was
happening before the characters did. It’s an interesting concept that
you’ll be familiar with if you’ve read Alastair Reynolds “Revelation
Space” novels.

Writer Dad: Mike Resnick – More background on the author.

Footprints – A character piece. Perhaps a bit too “literary” for my tastes.

The
Exchange Officers – This excellent story is the polar opposite of most
of the previous stories. It has action, combat, technology, and less
emphasis on memories, and feelings. Perhaps my second favorite story in
the collection.

Essay: On the Growth of Fantasy and the Waning of Science
Fiction – An excellent subject to discuss that’s quite relevant to my
own thoughts and tastes. I’m NOT a fantasy fan. I’ve read Lord of the
Rings once, and that was quite enough for me thank you. I enjoy the Game
of Thrones TV show, but my attempt to start reading the first novel
resulted in boredom and sleepytime. I’m a HARD SF kinda guy, and this
essay covers some of the things that bug me with current SF/Fantasy–I
hate Star Wars, especially the second trilogy, I only liked the original
Star Trek, anyone who likes Avatar is an Ava-tard in my book. My
opinion is that the growth of fantasy reflects the decline of STEM in
modern American society. Fantasy is perfect for those with less than a
firm grasp on science.

The Chaplain’s Assistant – A return to a “character-based”
story. Interesting, but ultimately boring to me. I was not enthused to
find out that the next long story in this collection was a sequel to
this.

The Chaplain’s Legacy – My lack of enthusiasm for the previous
story caused me to put the entire collection down for a few days, but I
had volunteered to review this book for Vox, so I did my duty and read
the story. The good news is that I liked this much more than the
previous short, though in my opinion the size could have been condensed.

The Hero’s Tongue: Larry Niven – Of all of the essays in the
book, this one was the most enjoyable for me because of my own fondness
for Niven.

Exanastasis – Interesting, enjoyable, but ultimately forgettable.

Ray of Light – The final story of the collection and probably
my favorite. There were points in this story where I thought it was
going to break badly, but the story didn’t go in the direction I thought
it would end up, and I enjoyed it a lot.

The last story really brought my opinion of the whole
collection back up from a low spot. I enjoy Torgerson’s writing style,
and I will look up some of his longer work, but probably not the
forthcoming “Chaplain” story.

I’d give this collection a solid 3 out of 5 stars.

Book Review: Tour of Duty II

BW reviews Michael Z. Williamson’s Tour of Duty.

Tour of Duty is a pretty decent collection of short stories by Michael Z. Williamson. I enjoyed it. The sci-fi was detailed and exciting. The short stories set in hell didn’t fail to drag out a chuckle or two. Crazy Einar was a particular favorite. If I was a more barbarous man I’d take his advice, find the perfect ax for a large Germanic man’s rampage and enjoy ‘spoils’.

I hadn’t heard of Michael Z. Williamson and his Freehold except in passing, nor, sad as it may be, the Valdemar universe. This likely wasn’t the best introduction to either. There is a lack of context in my mind. I know that there’s some sci-fi things happening, and the hints of the people and events outside the small viewpoint are tantalizing. I wanted more.

His skill seems to be in the military recounting and strong realism. There’s strong organization in the tales. His past in the military comes out in the many science fiction short stories and personal tales. Military people writing fiction about military things adds a feeling that isn’t in non-military writers. Each story has precision to it, no word wasted or gained, which I favor.

As the other reviewer mentioned, this is a difficult book to review, so I’ll focus on my two favorites.

I mentioned the ‘Lawyers in Hell’ before, but I thought that ‘A Hard Day At The Office’ was superior. Hellfrica seems a terrible place, yet appropriate. Anyone can make a story about lawyers in hell, it takes a lot more effort to kill Theodore Roosevelt. Death had to take him in his sleep, after all, and being crushed by a giant hellefino is not exactly a worse fate.

The reason I enjoyed this story was not Teddy Roosevelt, it was the underlying humor of it all. Lawyers on pogo sticks are funny. The hopelessness of always losing your employers to the crazy hell-versions of animals has depth to it. And you’ve got to admit, having to face down something called a hellephant with a pea-shooter has a certain appeal. The best portion of the story are the hunters themselves. Each one somehow aware, or not caring, that they will die. Each one with motivations beyond simply surviving in Hell, making them larger than life, and maybe even more complex characters than the protagonist himself. At the end of the story the protagonist learns little and is no better off than he was before. Perhaps, that is hell.

The second story I felt worth mentioning is the first fiction. For a while I was confused as to the main character’s species and other facets of the story. But as it evolved, I got to see the motivations of the character. I got to look into an alien mind. Usually, those peeks are just giant ‘humans are bad’ or ‘different’ stories with the aliens having human tendencies and feelings. It’s similar to Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s The Mote in God’s Eye, with the aliens being nearly without human traits and needing to imitate us, rather than develop new concepts on shared culture, to interact.

The main characters concepts of ‘duty’ and hunting spoke to me, in a way. It’s a theme of the universe, society cannot survive without those who do their duty. At the same time, it cannot have a hope to achieve victory without those willing to make the sacrifice. The terror of the soldiers was palpable, and the militaristic approach they attempted struck me as very realistic, but I did expect even one of them to survive. All in all, it was a great experience.

I got to admit that while I usually had very little of the overall contexts of the universes he wrote in and for, I did enjoy what little I saw. While I won’t recommend it to anybody. To the fans of Micheal Z. Williamson, go for it you bold beautiful bastards. If you’re not, this won’t be more than an enjoyable sightseeing tour. I’m not going to rate it with a number because of that reason. A couple short stories are a good 5/5, but not all of them.

Book Review: Lights in the Deep I

CL provides the initial take on Brad Torgersen’s anthology, Lights in the Deep:

The SF/F genre is one I’ve enjoyed for years and am a fan of Larry
Niven.  Stories like ‘Ringworld’ and ‘Neutron Star’ captured my
imagination.  So, after reading Torgersen’s self-described style being
like Niven’s, and the hope of finding a great-read in a genre I enjoy, I
took the plunge and volunteered to provide a review.

Lights in the Deep is a compilation of 10 short stories, all previously published.  It begins with 3 glowing reviews of Torgersen’s writing and story telling ability by veteran publishers/editors he has worked with.  After reading these introductory reviews, my hopes for an enjoyable experience were raised even further.

What could there be not to like?  Niven-type Sci-Fi.  Praise from veteran Sci-Fi publishers and editors.  Short stories, which make for quick reading and lots of variety.  Sounds like the perfect setup for either the discovery of a new treasure or deep disappointment.

It is with sadness that the verdict is ‘deep disappointment’. The disappointment stems from three issues and one ironic observation.  The issues: pointless stories, the inclusion of ‘the story behind the story’ after each tale, and rampant political correctness.  The ironic observation will be summarized later.

Having reviewed the disappointments, it must be noted there are positive aspects of the book.  Torgersen writes very well.  Story pace, literary elements and vocabulary are all really superb.  I kept thinking, “This guy writes well.  Maybe the next story will have a message, meaning, challenge, etc.”  But the next story failed to deliver and then it was on to the next.

Of the 10 tales, there are a couple stories that are somewhat engaging.  The issue of “pointless stories” infected every tale.  Whether the story is pure Sci-Fi or alternate history, there is not an underlying moral challenge, message, belief explosion or anything that made me sit back and ponder or question or exclaim.  Each telling concludes and its just over.  No surprises, no deus ex machina, no anger or relief, just an end to the words.

Unfortunately, the words didn’t really end.  After each tale, Torgersen then tells another tale about how the story came to be and who published it.  This was like rubbing salt in the wound.  As I was scratching my head asking why I spent 30-60 minutes reading the just concluded story, I then had to endure the history of how the story came to be.

The ‘story behind the story’ can be interesting, if the story itself leaves one: moved, pondering, angry, motivated, enlightened, etc.  But here, I left with the same feeling one gets after watching the vacation slide show of a family you don’t know, “That must have been nice for you, but I don’t really care.”

Next was the rampant Political Correctness.  These ranged from Black-American male and a Soviet-Jewish woman astronauts in the ‘60’s, to female commanders, a female President of the U.S., female battle marines, Asian business owners, etc., etc., etc.  I can take the occasional challenge to stereotypes, especially when it is backed with an underlying purpose, but when most characters are an anti-stereotype it seems to be attacking your basic perception of things as racist or bigoted, for no reason at all.

This feeling arose because there never was a reason why each person had to be identified in the anti-stereotypical way.  There was no background, benefit or reason why the heroine in the first story or the astronaut in the second had to be black.  Why a Jewish woman astronaut in the ‘60’s? How did knowing the businessman was Asian in a later story add anything?  Why a female base-commander?  Because these are short stories, the addition of the anti-stereotypical characteristics seemed forced in simply for the purpose of being P.C. not because they were relevant to conveying a point.

I was left with the impression that either Torgersen majored in women’s studies or feels anti-stereotypes are necessary in order to be published by today’s liberal publishing houses.  Either way, too much PC in any story, but especially in a short story, makes it seem silly.  In one very short story we have a female president, female base commander and female marine.  Rather than Sci-Fi, it felt like Fem-Fi instead.

This brings us to the final point, the ironic observation.  In the middle of the book, Torgersen writes an essay on why he believes Sci-Fi readership is dwindling, even as Fantasy readership remains strong.  He cites two reasons: our technological advances make Sci-Fi less ‘fantastic’ and the secularization of Sci-Fi has resulted in most Sci-Fi lacking an underlying morality or purpose for the story.

What makes this ironic is the lack of an underlying purpose or morality in the stories contained in this book!  There are several attempts to mention God, but they seemed thrown in, rather than meaningful additions to the plot.  So, Torgersen is correct.  One reason Sci-Fi is dying is because many formerly avid readers are longing for purpose and meaning to be conveyed in a story.

However, Torgersen missed another major reason for the failure of modern Sci-Fi.  Namely, Political Correctness, of which these stories are supporting evidence.  Too often today, Sci-Fi authors are constrained by PC to take the story to its logical PC conclusion.  Their worlds are turned upside down, where warriors are women, back-stabbing politicians are women, the random support character has to be gay or a kid with a middle-eastern mother and a Polish father.  The fact the author has to add these character descriptions are proof they are forced.

I submit the real reason Sci-Fi is dying on the vine, is because Sci-Fi has become the realm in which the liberal vision of how humanity ‘should be’ is presented to the public and the public rejects it.  Based on these stories Torgersen has fallen into the same PC failure trap.  If he can escape, and then add the purpose and meaning he notes is missing from Sci-Fi today, then he definitely has the literary prowess to become an excellent author.

Lions Den V: Brad Torgersen

Brad Torgersen is an award-winning author who was nominated for the Campbell, Hugo, and Nebula awards in 2012.  Due to his failure to be sufficiently vibrant, irreligious, or other adjective indicative of the Left’s various totems, he found himself the subject of an SFWA hate campaign to deny him the awards which bore certain similarities to my own experience with that organization. Review volunteers are now in, thank you.

Lights in the Deep is the product of three years of effort, plus one long summer of editing, proofing, packaging, and wrap-up.  It contains ten different pieces of short science fiction, all previously published in either Analog magazine, Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show magazine, or L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers and Illustrators of the Future, vol. XXVI. This collection is my first “best of” album, and features my Writers of the Future award winner, my Analog readers’ choice award winner, and my Hugo and Nebula nominee.

I believe my job is to entertain the reader, and provide the reader with a worthwhile, uplifting experience.  I don’t write stories to shock, challenge, make the reader squirm, or (Lord help us) raise awareness.  I do write stories with the idea that “scientifiction” is about the science as much as it is about the fiction.  Since Larry Niven was perhaps my most influential template in this regard, I try to tell interesting stories featuring engaging characters, set in universes which are plausibly founded on science as we know it.  And if I stray from science as we know it, I work hard to keep my extrapolations consistent, and only bend the rules if it makes sense for them to be bent.

In related news, Larry Correia is lighting a fuse for a book bomb on Mr. Torgersen’s behalf. He explains:

“Why does Brad deserve a Book Bomb?


“First off, he’s actually an extremely good writer. Brad is the guy
who was nominated for the Hugo, Campbell, and Nebula award, all at the
same time, and who was then swiftly attacked, maligned, and sabotaged by
the inner clique of literati douchebags because he was 1. Military. 2.
An outspoken conservative. 3. Openly religious. 4. White and thus
incapable of being a ”real” writer.”

Book Review: Tales of a New America II

DL provides a second look at Gunther Roosevelt’s Tales of a New America:

Tales of New America by Gunther Roosevelt is a
collection of short stories/vignettes set in a post-economic collapse
America where too many decades of an expanded welfare state and cultural
decline have taken it’s toll. The stories contain several recurring
characters, but they’re not intended to follow the stories of a set
group of individuals, but rather to communicate the process of the
transition from the USA to the NAR, or New American Republic. For me,
this fast paced style, and my own interest in the subject, made
compelling reading and I finished the book in short order.

The book is set far enough in the future to avoid the
conflict that will arise when the government can’t pay for all of the
post-retirement benefits it’s promised to employees. As a resident of
Illinois, this is something that is of great concern to me. I work in
the private sector, but I wonder what the reaction will be from all of
those public employees who have not saved for their own retirement will
be when their employer can’t make good on promises made during boom
times.

I couldn’t help but compare this to another
post-collapse novel I’d recently read, Flashback, by Dan Simmons, an
excellent book by the author of Hyperion. Tales of New America charts
out what I would consider to be an absolute best case scenario for the
collapse of Progressive American Culture and the start of a new
culture–a culture aware that the previous culture was suicidal.
Flashback on the other hand charts a much more pessimistic, and I’m
afraid to say, realistic scenario.

“Tales” charts the fall of the old and birth of the new
by a rich industrialist who is tired of dealing with the regulation
involved in the oil business. His circumvention of the law, and the lack
of reaction from the clapped-out regulatory agencies gets the ball
rolling. Others follow his lead by “going Galt” and the NAR is
established. It was quite easy to imagine this scenario based upon the
quite common concept of Diminished Responsibility that’s so common
amongst government workers.
Themes of the US Government in free fall are common, with
a good sense of “the body’s dead, but the head doesn’t know it yet”,
The old bureaucracies are established, nominally running, but they’re
running on fumes, only still moving at all because the personnel
involved are doing their work as part of a routine and not much else.

Scenarios of non-NAR citizens becoming aware of
untenable nature of how they lived in the past, and lessons being
learned are common, but not to the detriment of the story.

Some
of the things that touched me the most were the way this novel handled
race relations. It pointed out my own preconceived notions that in many
cases I didn’t know I had. My own life involved growing up in a tough
part of the south side of Chicago, followed by a move to a working class
suburb. My subsequent life has been a career in IT, and because of my
hard work I’ve always been able to live in areas that were safe, stable,
and less than vibrant. Virtually all of my contact with Vibrant
Americans has been work related, and positive. If I didn’t still live in
the Chicago area, with constant reminders of the dangers of vibrant
culture, my knee jerk reaction to this novels take on race relations
would have been “Racism!!”, but I was able to remember that this was a
novel, and within the confines of this novel and our current culture,
what was portrayed was understandable. I’m also familiar with the
concepts, which I first encountered in Peter F. Hamilton’s Night’s Dawn
trilogy when he introduced the concept of “Ethnic Streaming” for
off-world colonies.

I did have some issues with the novel. It appeared to me
that every personality connected with the NAR was beyond temptation and
bribery–something I know never to be the case when human beings are
involved. As the NAR conquest of the west coast moved forward, there
were no major setbacks, no huge obstacles, and at every turn NAR
technology provided an almost magical advantage. The concept of “no
battle plan survives contact with the enemy” just never reared it’s ugly
head. All the NAR forces were good, incorruptible Boy Scouts, and the
enemy were simply rabble propped up to be knocked down. A semi-competent
enemy would have been nice.
Some of the characters stories were left to wither and
die, some went on in too much detail for my taste. A good editor might
have been helpful in this and other areas.

Overall, I
enjoyed the book, and it was compelling enough for me that I pretty much
read it straight through. Using the Amazon scale, I’d give it 3 stars.
I’d certainly be willing to give something by this author a try in the
future. If you’re going to read this, I’d also recommend picking up
Flashback to compare and contrast life in Post-Obama America.

Book Review: Tales of a New America I

Tom Rhodes reviews Gunther Roosevelt’s Tales of a New America:

Tales of New America (ToNA) is a series of related vignettes to describe the idea of what/how a new conservative America might look and be formed.  From the description I started out thinking I’d enjoy the book and it would offer additional insight into both libertarian and Christian thought. ToNA starts out feeling like some stereotypical pro-white-supremacist-extremist-christian-conservative Idaho utopia to counter dystopia leftist urban failure and never escapes that stereotype. If I hadn’t promised to review it I wouldn’t have read past the first vignette.  Not because I disagree with the patent facts presented but because I found the means of presentation not only lacking as a literary work, but uncompelling.

If you’re a feminized politically correct irrational thinker you will quickly dismiss the book and the ideas presented as misogynistic patriarchal racism, and use it as proof of your politically correct beliefs about white men. I am not only not PC, but enjoy non-PC writings but although ToNA is politically incorrect but the method it was written seems as though it was purposefully written to piss-off the politically correct thinkers as much as possible, and discredit the politically incorrect ideas it presents.  If I were a liberal trying to write a book to discredit libertarians and Christians, I might write ToNA as a way to discredit objective truth. That said, finding some small nuggets like this make it an interesting if uninspired read

“Okay, Captain. I’ll bite. What was it you wanted me to observe?”

“The milk of human kindness.”

“Huh?”

“You and I, you probably more than me since you’re so much younger, well, we’re going to do a lot of cruel things by the time we’re finished. When the war comes, you’ll be called up. You’ll do things you won’t look back on fondly. It doesn’t mean you weren’t right, but doing the hard things, things that make others suffer — that doesn’t feel good either. So I want you to see that if you get the chance, not stupidly or recklessly, but just a chance, you try to do some good when you can. Something you can look back on and be proud of having done.”

“Those women, I know them. They won’t subvert the Region with the way they live. We’re always going to have such people around. Our own children sometimes. Who knows? There’s a certain level of variation from the norm that we’ll always have. We can be tolerant. We just can’t let people be stupid about it.”

The core of ToNA is to attempt to expose politically incorrect but objective truths.  It accurately describes the differences in how men and women think and behave, and the arguments against universal suffrage are clear and valid. The reading however comes off adolescent and condescending. In the end I found that not only was it difficult to relate to the cardboard characters but I found myself not caring if they succeeded or not.  What both the book and characters lack are charisma.

ToNA attempts to explore harsh truths that most of society doesn’t want to address. It has some insights and wisdom that demand further exploration and discussion.  Although some wonderful nuggets like, “for men like to pretend they’re immune to being hurt, yet nurse grudges forever, and rarely forget a slight.” can be found, overall it is not a convincing read.

Gunther Roosevelt fearlessly addresses race and racism as ToNA’s dominant theme.  A huge contradiction from observable truth undermines the hypothesis he presents. The entire football related sub-story pushes the idea not only are whites as strong, fast, and capable as blacks, but are smarter.  This ignores the observable fact that genetically some races of people provably have better abilities in some areas than others, and implies that whites are superior in every aspect to blacks and only reverse-racism allows the disproportionate distribution of blacks in football and other areas. This obviously flawed position does much to make other valid points appear equally invalid.

The reality that blacks have not and do not maintain modern civilization anywhere they are in control, as is observed from Detroit to Zimbabwe.  ToNA does acknowledge and present interesting arguments to illustrate the more primitive tribal nature to which blacks revert, but the inference that the white race is superior in all things, even in aspects that they are observably as a group less capable, undermines the validity of the factual arguments on racial differences.

Other simple errors like saying Kennewick is south of Yakima, (which is like saying Tampa is South of Orlando), further make any arguments seem less valid.  FYI – Although nominally south, in the drive from Yakima to Kennewick you take I82 east, just as Tampa is nominally south of Orland, you get take I4 west.  It’s a small trifle thing but it generally makes all of the author’s ideas appear poorly researched and thought out, decreasing the overall credibility of the book.

I liked the ploy of using a female character to define female imperative and emotional nature of women and win a debate on why woman’s suffrage is not part of New America.  The clear point that even though a woman can recognize and articulate logical reasoning their emotional desires override rational thought.  The cameo character, Christian psychologist Rhonda Martin, says: “Now, women by nature are emotional and will be ruled by their emotions unless they’re taught to develop reason and judgment in a way that isn’t used simply to support emotion and feeling, but actively challenges emotionalism itself. The fact is, more than likely, that’s not going to happen, so you’ll get plenty of smart women who can argue a million ways ‘til Doomsday over what they want, but never figure out that what they want is just plain wrong.” and foreshadows Kevin’s girlfriend Janet rejecting her own logical arguments and the breakdown of their relationship.

Besides feminism and race the unifying theme of how a society that valued and required individual responsibility, and what it might look like.  I enjoyed the presentation of the idea that even in government people should be accountable for their actions.

“Finally, just as private citizens had always been liable for damages and injuries to others, public servants were also. It tended to make them less arrogant, power driven, and stupid when violating anyone’s civil rights or failing to do their jobs in a timely manner. If a bureaucrat responsible for approving your passport and creating the document failed to accomplish the task by the scheduled date costing the applicant time or loss due to plans being interfered with, that bureaucrat could be sued for triple damages. Threat of serious accountability put a little spring in a public employee’s step.”

Overall as a literary work it was mercifully short, and although the major themes presented are objectively true the delivery reminded me of a lot of “Christian” fiction.  Preachy and ineffective, it fell prey and read exactly like the Hollywood Entertainment vignette.  I’d never recommend Tales of New America to anybody I actually wanted to have a rational discussion on feminism, racism, or libertarian ideas, as it will only make those who expose objective truth look like dumb white Nazi’s.   Even at the paltry sum of $3.99 to purchase Tales of New America, I’d have felt like I wasted my money, at best it’s a 99¢ ebook.


Tom Rhodes is a chemist who formerly worked as a public school chemistry
teacher and computer programmer, is the current vice chair of the
Libertarian Party of Citrus County, and the Chair of the Libertarian
Party of Florida Platform Committee.

Lions Den IV: Gunther Roosevelt

Now that the Lions Den series has been introduced with some more or less established writers, I thought it would be good to start bringing some new writers from the burgeoning independent publishing scene into the mix as well.  I don’t know anything at all about Gunther Roosevelt, except that it is obvious there is no chance in Hell that his anthology, Tales of a New America, would be published by any mainstream SF/F publisher, with the possible exception of Baen Books.  As always, if you’re interested in being one of the three two one volunteer reviewers of the book, please send me an email. We are all set for reviewers.

After 9/11/01, I had hoped that Americans would rally against one of the most vile and long standing enemies of humanity, Islam; but neither the experience of the wholesale slaughter of thousands of innocent Americans nor the glimpse of an unveiled totalitarian and psychotic Arabian evil could hold the sociopathic Left in check for long.
Combining the Bush administration’s incompetent foreign policy, the President’s absurd belief that ancient places with tribal peoples filled with simmering animosities and rabidly violent inclinations could embrace impartial  institutions and liberal democracy, along with the Left’s program of political correctness, destruction of Christian morality, indoctrination of the young, and corruption of all American institutions and triumph of crony capitalism — I realized that America was over.

Voting Republican, Libertarian or anything else was useless. Nothing could stem the tide of America’s financial and social destruction anymore than our elected representatives wished to stem the invasion by Mexicans, Asians, Africans, and Muslims regardless how many Americans were killed, raped, molested, robbed, and maimed by the illegal and legal hordes.

What could be done? Politics was hopeless. The people had no voice nor advocate no matter who they elected, and half were co-opted anyway and part of the scheme of government growth, employment, or benefit. The answer was as clear to me as it was to the Founding Fathers — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.

It was also clear that moaning and complaining about the present situation was a waste of energy and trying to organize incremental reforms to re-establish a coherent and sane society was futile in the extreme.

What is needed is revolution, but before it can begin, people need a vision of what a saving remnant might accomplish in carving out a territory within America and building a new nation and ethno-state. People would need to see what a New America might look like where they could thrive as they once had, and if determined, might return to conquest in driving out invaders and their collaborators from ancestral homelands

Hence, the Tales of New America that offers that offers twenty-three snapshots from a period fifty years or so years into the future.

The Tales present a new society in the making, its cohering into a state with religious foundations, its gathering of people, and organizing of institutional machinery and an advanced military. You meet a border guard in a key outpost with the power of life and death trying to maintain his humanity while enforcing laws with harsh penalties.

There are athletes, soldiers, hardware store salesmen, foreign spies, Berkeley refugees, Mexican gang bangers trying to hang on to their territory, ghetto dregs when the well’s run dry, Leftist peaceniks facing their folly, mindless government bureaucrats revenged upon, and a movie producer helping to create a new Hollywood who make up some of the characters in the stories.

The reader will find that some stories are better written or more engaging than others, but that’s the beauty of an anthology like this — readers will disagree on what they most liked or didn’t enjoy as much.

Tales of New America is a panorama through time of possibilities for a thriving and prosperous future for civilization, the Northern European kind, that has done more good for more people and would continue to do so were it re-infused with great purpose and common identity.

Book Review: Impaler I

Impaler is a well written alternate history, marred with some
unfortunate anachronistic insertions of modern sensibilities. I would
also add that it is not for the faint of heart; fight sequences are
brutal and gory, torture is a regular occurrence, and pederasty forms a
foundational portion of the story.

Paulk effectively captures the
feeling of the time period for the most part, both its religiousness as
well as its savagery. She makes Vlad an understandable character,
while not shying away from the reality of of the violence of the times
and what was necessary for the man who would be king.

The primary
criticisms I have of this book is that while it for the most part aims
to be a gritty, historically based tale, it has a few elements that
break the willing suspension of disbelief. First, Vlad forbids the rape
and pillaging that regular accompanies a conquering army. This is
almost believable, and I would have given it a pass, had not other
issues come into play.

Towards the end of the book, some of the child
victims of pederasty engage in homosexual behavior. Not only does Vlad
give them a free pass, but he actively argues both an Orthodox priest
and a Catholic priest into submission. This is so absurd it is beyond
description. Further, he references in his arguments with the priests
his well-read nature in the Scriptures as well as having compared
translation notes. It is unlikely that most priests were even so
conversant in the Scriptures at that time, let alone the nobles (who
were in turn taught by the priests). A well educated noble would have
been able to read and perhaps do his own accounts, but not engage in
Scriptural debates. Similarly, a little later, he also reveals he is
conversant in Jewish treatises as well. Simply put, this is laughable
for the time.

Those criticisms not withstanding, Impaler was an
interesting read and cleverly written. I would not recommend it for
the tender hearted due to the violent content, but fans of historical
fiction and alternate histories will likely enjoy it.

NB: This is the first of the three volunteer reviews.  This one was written by DK.