Tag: short story

Reminder: New Ares Project-Related Mars Stories on Kindle

At $0.99 apiece, they’re steals. Why would you not buy them both?

He Has Walled Me InHe Has Walled Me In

Recently recovered from a crippling illness, Leon Toa sets out on his first solo trip to Port Lowell. For any other Martian settler it would be a routine drive, but for Leon it’s a chance to rebuild his battered self-confidence and demonstrate his regained independence – both to his fellow settlers and to himself. When unseen forces interrupt his trip deep in an unpopulated and unexplored network of canyons, he must uncover the truth about his past before what’s left of his future runs out. An homage to H.P. Lovecraft’s “Within the Walls of Eryx”.

 

Dispatches from Mars – Anatomy of a Disaster: The Mars Environmental Works Catastrophe and the Death of Margaret Steadman

In this Dispatch, freelance journalist Calvin Lake explores the unlikely truth behind the worst industrial accident in Martian history: the destruction of Mars Environmental Works. Going beyond the bare facts and curiously self-interested evasions of the official Mars Development Authority inquest report, Lake’s account uses exclusive eyewitness and survivor interviews to paint a fuller picture of the catastrophe of April 1, 2050. A pun-ridden spoof of several science fiction tropes.

The next short story will be another of Calvin Lake’s Dispatches, this one concerning entrepreneur Jedediah Thoreson and his North Cap Water Pipeline project mentioned in Anatomy of a Disaster. Unlike that story, Pipeline will be a serious treatment of its topic. The Dispatches will be a series of essays on various aspects of life on Mars in the Ares Project fictional universe, written by fictional freelance journalist Calvin Lake (who will also play an important role in the upcoming Ghosts of Tharsis).

Yet More Publishing Disintermediation

This looks interesting, almost like an embodiment in business form of the “human wave” manifestos from a couple months back: Liberty Island

Our new venture, Liberty Island, will identify and publish the best of a new generation of politically independent and culturally contrarian writers. We’re recruiting writers in a wide range of genres, including thriller, crime, fantasy, mystery, adventure, science fiction, satire, historical and political fiction—even western and romance. Independent in all senses of the word, we are starting a cultural insurgency using the tools of digital technology to circumvent and challenge the mainstream publishing establishment. Liberty Island exists to identify, promote, and introduce these new writers to a likeminded audience that shares their tastes and values—specifically the values of liberty, individualism, and American exceptionalism.

Of course, it’s broader than human wave since it also includes non-SF genres, but it seems to have a similar tilt away from the usual cynical, nihilistic flavor of recent fiction that human wave was meant to counter.

Carl and I batted around a couple of ideas this afternoon for an Ares Project Universe short story. Given the site’s interest in American exceptionalism, we decided anything written for Liberty Island would have to take place in the “distant past” of the backstory timeline – like, say, 2018-2020 – when the important events are all taking place on Earth, and the U.S. in particular.

Given time, which is currently in short supply for both of us, we may just write something up and see if they’ll accept it.