HAPPY HOLIDAYS 

from the Forlani Universe

May the light of uncounted stars

Bring peace to you and your loved ones

Whatever lifeform you may be

 

Free Holiday Science Fiction Ebook Promotion

Thrilling danger and mystery in outer space. Forlani females Entara and Ayan'we fight thieves, kidnappers and murderers trying to start an interstellar war. 5-star espionage with your favorite marsupial ladies and a host of androgenous, reptilian, amphibian, robotic, and even unscrupulously human conspirators. Go to:

 

Plagues and Sci Fi

     Perhaps the oldest pestilence in science fiction does not do any harm to humans, but it wrecks havoc on aliens.  In H. G. Wells's War of the Worlds, Martian invaders and their tripod machines have easily defeated all Earth's armies, when they fall victim to the simplest organisms on our planet -- they are conquered by the common cold.  Wells's  implicit message is that there is a divine providence in ecology.  It is when humans in their hubris start to tamper with this ecology that they usually begin to run into trouble.  It is no coincidence that such concerns emerged in earnest in the late 60's in the wake of Rachel Carson's The Silent Spring and the great outbreak of ecological studies and legislation.  At first the scientific mistakes are not a direct result of genetic engineering or the conscious development of bioweapons.  Michael Crichton's 1969 novel The Andromeda Strain revolves around the importation of alien DNA into the Earth's atmosphere by a returning space satellite.  Even so, humanity had already taken steps in that direction by developing a super-secure underground facility for dealing with rogue organisms.  This is hardly surprising, since militaries had used plague germs against enemies at least since the Middle Ages, catapulting diseased animals into besieged towns.  More recently, World War II saw bioweapons used by the Japanese in China and, reportedly, by the Russians at Stalingrad.  Some even claim that the USA used anthrax against the Communists in Cuba during the 1960's.  Some credence is lent to this rumor by the revelation that Dr. Bruce Ivins, a scientist working with infectious materials at a government instalation in Maryland, was suspected by the FBI of sending anthrax-laced letters to various personalities in the period after 9/11.  More recently, rumors accused China of developing the Covid germ at a secret test facility.  The first vaccine against Covid, Sputnik-V, was developed by Russian scientists who, already fearful of a coronavirus attack, had already begun extensive research to counter it.  Many major powers already maintain facilities for research into germ warfare, even as their governments stridently deny any intent to ever use such a thing themselves.  

     The movie Children of Men (2006, based on a 1992 novel by P. D. James) examined the possibility of a plague sweeping the planet which caused infertility in the population.   In the years since that novel, a spate of stories and novels have incorporated the threat of pandemics into their plots.  The tragic events of 2020 and the unco-ordinated efforts by individuals and governments to deal with them will undoubtedly cause that number to grow.  However, so far Covid has shown itself to be a deadly but rather fickle disease that lacks the features necessary to spread death at a decimating rate, let alone one that would cause fatalities along the lines of the Black Death.  The possible effects of an optimal power plague still remain, we hope and pray, within the realm of science fiction.

     In our Forlani Saga novels, we postulated the spread of a deadly plague among humans from the outset.  Life Sentence mentions the ravages of a disease that appears shortly after Willie Klein is exiled from Earth to the Domremy corporate colony.  The convict colonists, cut off from most news of their native world, learn gradually of the expansion of this plague.  Their co-inhabitants, the Religious Dissenters, have already departed Earth because they consider it a fundamentally fallen planet, so they are compassionate but not surprised of the dire condition of their species.  

     Between the time Klein clandestinely leaves Domremy to come to the aid of Entara's family on Forlan (after which he spends hard years as an endentured worker on Song Pai) and his eventual return, the plague has obviously proceeded to wipe out over 90% of the population of Earth.  Klein learns some of the bitter facts from his Iranian refugee friend, Barber John, who has seen the horrors first hand before being sentenced to the penal colony.  

     More references to the plague occur in the second volume of the series, Spy Station.  It is through communications from Klein's human daughter Amanda that Entara's now-grownup daughter Ayan'we learns more about the pandemic.  Amanda and her mother have returned from life on the space stations to help with recovery efforts.  She tells Ayan'we that she has used her medical training (formerly put to use in Klein's recovery from near death) to join teams in Greenland, the site of one of many Exclusion Zones, while her mother Helga Pederson plunged into the front lines of decontamination work in northern Canada.  On Earth, other island and isolated areas desperately attempted to save a healthy fraction of the species.  For its part, the nefarious Hyperion Corporation retreated into a zone in the Rocky Mountains, but still intends to reassert its control over the entire globe.  None of these survival initiatives would have succeeded without help from benevolent aliens, especially the mysterious Blynthians.  That uncanny and secluded race not only ferried vast amounts of supplies to the survivors, but somewhow managed to transport a large hollow moon through interstellar space to Tau Ceti, where it serves as a giant refugee facility to over a million human beings, like a Moria migrant center of the future.  

     The third novel in the pentalogy, Earth Regained, will focus on the activities of Ayan'we, Amanda, Helga, a pair of robot doctors from Spy Station, the amphibian Fatty who had befriended Klein on Song Pai, and other existing and new characters as they deal with the many dangers still threatening doom to the human home world.  The technical details of decontamination, organized by the Robotic Guild, are only a minor problem, compared to the violent social problems incited by the Plague.  These go from existing criminality gone wild in chaos to unforeseen elements like mutants and re-engineered post-humans.  In any event, Earth will no longer be a planet where humans are unchallenged and exclusive as the alpha organisms.

     One of the ongoing themes of the Forlani Saga is that all life forms, and especially humans, can have difficulties dealing with change.  And in these novels, change can take place on a worldwide scale, from terraforming to conquest to almost instantaneous extinction.  Solutions depend on a lot more than a flash of laser weapons or a few explosions and most often call for incredible forms of cooperation among seemingly incompatible creatures.  Plagues themselves, after all, are in the final analysis no more than another form of creatures both incompatible and all too compatible with us.  We who are used to treating fellow creatures as meat on the hoof are precisely a fine form of meat for plague organisms.  Even as we proliferate, we are loading the dinner tables of the microbes.  Our success as an interstellar species may well depend on developing a long-distance understanding of these phenomena, becoming more like the inscrutable Blynthians in our view of the universe.

     

We've Cracked the Top 50 Bestseller List

Thanks to all our readers for helping us reach this milestone!

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Streaming Towards the New Frontier: Sci-Fi on Streaming Serivces

    

    In 2011, Netflix ordered what would become its first original series, House of Cards. Based on a BBC miniseries, House of Cards was a political drama about Frank Underwood, an underhanded man who would stop at nothing to seize more power in Washington. House of Cards would serve as a design template for Netflix’s live action series for years, encouraging Netflix to value series that had short seasons, a high degree of serialization, acclaimed actors, and explicit content similar to HBO originals. Later Netflix originals would follow the similar formula of “prestige drama” themes and tight serialization, making Netflix dramas true competitors to the HBO slate. It would take until 2016 for Netflix to develop its own unique style of a drama series, and for a Netflix original to become a true pop culture phenom.

    In 2016, Netflix premiered Stranger Things, a scifi/drama series from the young creative team known as the Duffer Brothers. Stranger Things was quite different from the earlier originals created in the “Netflix template”. Its creators and cast were not yet household names, it was strongly oriented towards pulpy horror and science fiction rather than “serious drama”, and it straddled the line between nostalgia for older audiences and a YA-oriented narrative about friendship among a group of kids. And yet, Stranger Things became a massive success because it was so different from the preconceived idea of what a “prestige drama” should be. Its twisty mysteries of Demogorgons and Eleven’s psychic powers were very compelling in its heavily serialized seasons, and its storylines where kids and adults alike were confronted by eldritch powers were like nothing else on television. Stranger Things became the first iconic Netflix original, and proved that Neflix’s “binge model” could generate unique and exciting content.

    Stranger Things was not just a massive boost to Netflix, but to the dream of sci-fi programming making it big on streaming services. Suddenly, everyone trying to get into the streaming game had to have a new, popular speculative fiction series to make a name for themselves. There was Westworld (HBO), The Handmaid's Tale (Hulu), Altered Carbon (Netflix) and The Mandalorian (Disney). Although many sci-fi series have been greenlit, it's a valid question as to how many will have true longevity and be given a chance to stick in the collective memory of the audience.

    The immediate success stories of sci-fi streaming series are readily apparent. Threee seasons of Stranger Things have been produced so far, with a renewal for a fourth, and the series has been nominated for and won numerous awards. The Mandalorian has been renewed for another season, and has become one of the few Star Wars related works other than the original film to be nominated for many awards. The Handmaid's Tale has also ran three seasons and been renewed for a fourth, and received two Golden Globes over the course of its run. Beyond these acclaimed success stories, the record is much more uncertain.

    Streaming series can potentially have a very short life expectancy. On Netflix alone, Altered Carbon and the Mystery Science Theater 3000 reboot were cancelled after two seasons, Amazon cancelled The Tick after two seasons as well, and Hulu cancelled Runaways at three seasons. Many of these cancellation announcements were so quiet that you had to read entertainment industry websites to find out; the cancellations were rarely announced on the sites, and the final seasons were almost never promoted as such. While a series like Stranger Things could easily get a promoted final season, most sci-fi streamers will end their runs little noticed and pass into obscurity without the benefits of network syndication or reruns.

    While streaming has granted many sci-fi series with interesting concepts a chance at success, and new series continue to be greenlit at a rapid rate, it is not without its flaws as a strategy. New series have numerous competitors for attention and have to draw and audience rapidly and maintain a fanbase between long season breaks. This will result in more than a few series going the Altered Carbon route--or simply getting dropped while in development, the sad fate of Amazon's series based on Iain Banks' Culture books. Our best hope is that series like Stranger Things and The Mandalorian will have long, stable runs, allowing streamers to generate a loyal audience of sci-fi fans and a catalogue of back content. In the best case scenario, streaming will be a place where sci-fi can regularly gain acclaim, mass audiences, and award nominations, making the world a better place for sci-fi fans, authors, and showrunners alike. 

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The Killer Shrews

This 1959 B-movie is one of the earliest cinematic examples of what may be dubbed "eco-sci-fi."  The subgenre can be tentatively defined as a story that posits an apocalyptic perspective based on earth-centered biological and environmental dangers independent of alien invasion or influence or nuclear radiation.  In this case, a Scandinavian biologist has acquired a remote island where he and his associates conduct experiments on high-metabolism shrews with a view to altering humans and other species to avoid starvation on an over-populated Earth.  The group includes the leader's saftig daughter, as well as a nerdy fellow zoologist, a Hispanic servant, and an ill-intentioned overseer played by Ken Curtis, the future Festus Haggins of Gunsmoke's later years.  They are visited by a supply boat skipper (James Best, eventually to play Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane of The Dukes of Hazzard) and his African-American crewman, Griswald.  Unfortunately, instead of shrinking humans to lessen their environmental impact, miscalculations have caused the ravenous shrew population to develop into giants possessing a poison even more lethal than the original, tiny beasts.

It makes for an amusing 69 minutes of viewing for many reasons.  First, the predictability of a plot that borrows unabashedly from better films: tropical isolated from the various Isle of Dr. Moreau versions and claustrophobia reinforced by a convenient hurricane as in Key Largo.  The black man, the Latino and the nerd all die first, in that order.  The alcohol-slurping scientists are remarkably unterrified by the obvious failure of their research and its effect on the hired help.  The nerd actually expires while typing out the effects of his own poisoning after being grazed by a passing shrew.  Curtis provides just enough naturalistic relief as Jerry Farrell, the nervous, unreliable, scheming, and pusillanimous messy character.  

The most hilarious elements are definitely supplied by the "shrews" themselves.  These monsters are obviously a pack of German Shepherds enhanced with clumps of extra hair.  Their fangs are so loose that they always seem on the verge of falling out.  One can only imagine how much of the attack footage wound up on the cutting room floor.  They are never filmed in the act of actually devouring -- or even biting -- a victim.  When the humans are mobbed by the creatures, cameras cut away before the crucial moment.

One of the odder features of Killer Shrews is that this biological apocalypse has a built-in sunset clause.  The shrews are permanently confined to their island because they cannot swim.  Moreover, they are on the edge of eating themselves out of house and home, since they have already consumed all animal life on the island apart from the science group.  Even if they can manage to consume these few humans, they will quickly run out of food and resort to cannibalism, resulting in extinction.  They are the victims of the same biochemistry that has produced their gigantism.   Thus, their threat to the human race never really materializes.  This is not quite Monster a Go -Go's anticlimactic ending of "There was no monster," but it's certainly in the same league.  

Other examples of B-movie eco-sci-fi gigantism are generally due to atomic radiation.  One can mention Them, The Attack of the Giant Leeches, even Shrews' double-feature partner, The Giant Gila Monster.  Spectators would have to wait for 1972's Night of the Lepus or 1976's H. G. Wells-inspired Food of the Gods to find a parallel in terms of population, consumption and biochemistry.
In such other early giant animal films as Tarantula and Beginning of the End, biochemistry is altered for the sake of research, but radiation is used in the  experiments.  The atomic threat quickly displaces problems of population and nutrition as the central focus.  Another film with a near-ecological theme, Wasp Woman, never really engages the dangers of population because the experiments in question  involve mainly the rejuvenation of feminine beauty.  

One almost has to venture into the realms of outer space to find a movie comparable to The Killer Shrews.  Soylent Green, based on the wonderful Harry Harrison novel Move Over! Move Over!, projects human overpopulation to the point where people, rather than shrews, begin to practice cannibalism as a last survival strategy.  The cult classic Silent Running eventually will show earth outsourcing its ecological treasures onto floating spatial domes.  Humans have taken up so much space that the national parks circle in lonely orbits, tended by Bruce Dern and his companion robots, until stingy Earthlings decide to pull the plugs from these last, expensive bits of natural flora.

Perhaps 1959 was simply a time when threats to the ecology had not yet formulated sufficiently in the popular imagination.  Although the movie dimly envisions a world of ever-tightening biological alternatives, it too easily transforms itself into a more traditional man-versus-nature tale.  Homo faber falls back on ingenuity and technology to impose himself, jerry-rigging a kind of shrew-proof armored vehicle by welding discarded metal drums together and conquering the threat of savagery.  James Best sums up the displacement of ecology pretty well in the film's final words, as he embraces the shapely Swede he has rescued and plans to marry: "I'm not going to worry about overpopulation just yet."

Did "We" Go to the Moon?

Despite massive international proof, many Americans are still tempted by the conspiracy theory, notably represented by the 1977 film Capricorn One, that manned space missions were staged simulacra rather than real events.  How, scientifically-oriented people ask, can such attitudes persist and grow?  There are several reasons for this that are worth noting, mostly having to do with a sense that many Americans did not have much skin in the game.

1) "We" did not go to the moon.  The humans who did were an exclusive group of white, male, military, "well-rooted" Americans.  The "right stuff" was too restricted.   Although NASA has made considerable efforts to represent a wider population base since the moon landings, female, non-white, and foreign-associated Americans remain a minority that cash-strapped NASA has done little to publicize, as Hollywood movies have recently stepped up to emphasize the ground-based contributions of minority women in the space race.  This exclusivity promises to become more exaggerated again as NASA is replaced by the military Space Corps that has just been founded.  Meanwhile women, African-Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos and others have grounds to feel "left behind" in the race to the stars.

2) The devaluation of corporate-controlled American mass media has caused an erosion of confidence in traditional sources of public information.  It's no secret that the owners of TV and newspapers -- an increasingly restricted group -- exercise censorship of all kinds over daily events, while flooding the airwaves and print pages with Happy Talk delivered by smiling faces and would-be pundits who often have little idea what they are talking about, or else too much prejudice from a set of political and financial agendas.  This bombardment of mush saps the public trust in a system funneled mainly through the AP wire service and forces citizens to open up to a wider range of true or false information spread on the Internet.

3) The secretiveness of our space program encourages doubt and disbelief.  The fact that our govenment maintains unapproachable bases, unadmitted types of aircraft, black ops missions in space, dubious financial transparency, and so many other veils to truth makes many in the public wary of accepting even those bits of information that are factually supported.  Of course, some secrecy within the heart of the military will always be present.  However, the sheer volume of undercover activity and the flimsiness of the cover stories, going all the way back to Roswell, makes it difficult for the public to fix the boundaries of what is real, plausible, or possible.  Obfuscation of programs like the X-37B can only add to simultaneous skepticism and gullibility to unlikely fantasies.

There may be additional factors, but we feel these are among the most prominent.  In short, it lies within the government's range of options to address this area or to provide even cloudier information in the realm of space.  If it chooses the latter, it is inevitable that the American public will become more dis-invested in space programs and less willing to give them wide support.

Free Audio Access Codes

We have some free audio access codes to the Audible edition of Life Sentence read by the Hollywood actor Andrew Thacher.  All we ask is that you give us an Audible review when you've heard it.  If you want one, you have to COMMENT on this post, indicating whether you want a US or UK code and I will send you one on Facebook Messenger.

READ OUR LATEST

Hey, sci fi fans!  Our latest short story has been published in the journal El Portal.  It involves a first contact a bit unlike most you've seen and read about.  Check it out beginning on page 63 at this link: https://elportaljournal.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/el-portal-2019-fall-final-web.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1SEnp5AHxWOPOGqjmq4mcNgHiy3_BdPuEABXPPhLIRVG3dNww-8a2NFdY

We're on our way to Mysticon 2020!

This is one of our favorite annual events, held for 3 days in February each year in Roanoke, Virginia.  This will be our fifth year in attendance and we look forward to a great time with the panels and the featured guest, Larry Niven.  Mysticon also features lots of gaming and cosplay and fun in general.  Stay tuned for big promotional savings on our novels after we return.

A Great Time at Marscon

We're just back from Marscon 2020 at Williamsburg, where we had lots of fun interacting with fellow authors and fans.  We hosted a launch party for the audio edition of Life Sentence where several folks won free Audible access codes in the drawings and were able to listen to selections from the book read by our stalwart producer Andrew Thacher, while munching on cheese, cold cuts, and brownies and enjoying some beverages.  Marscon had loads of activities, from cosplay and gaming to readings and panel discussions.  Our panels included the following: Why We Love Antiheroes, Philosophy of Science, Pseudo-science of Dr. Who,  and Binge Watching.  We're looking forward to the next one.  Our favorite costumes?-- probably a GIGANTIC Wompah and a terrific Chewbacca.