The biggest problem they faced right now was power... ----- Chapter 5. "You sure it's safe there, Sergeant?" "Sure I'm sure," he answered, focusing again at the indicator in his retinal display. "The 300M's got real good shielding. Barely above background levels outside the shell, even when operating. Right now she's down, so the only way it'd be dangerous is if I cracked the shell open and she was still hot inside. I only see about twenty-five service hours indicated on the system, so the lining's [ Continue reading... ]
Castaway Odyssey: Chapter 4
May 30, 2016 By Leave a Comment
Well, it was time for our heroes to start fixing things... ------- Chapter 4. "What next, Sergeant?" Xander asked as they put the wrappers from the ration packs into the disposal. "Yeah, that's the question, isn't it?" Sergeant Campbell glanced around the shuttle's cabin. "What do you think, son?" "I think you're probably better qualified to answer –" "Damned right I am, son, but in this situation we all need to learn to be qualified. We're in an [ Continue reading... ]
Castaway Odyssey: Chapter 3
May 27, 2016 By Leave a Comment
The castaways had been forced to a very difficult decision... ------ Chapter 3. Tavana stared at the screen, where Lieutenant Haley and the severed boarding tube from Outward Initiative were dwindling out of sight, and felt cold horror spreading through him. He'd seen the readouts, known how bad LS-88 was damaged, but this – a living person, now cast away into the endless void so that they could get some systems back online – hammered home the terrible situation in a way that no words could have. He found himself shaking [ Continue reading... ]
Castaway Odyssey: Chapter 2
May 25, 2016 By 1 Comment
Our new cast was in a sticky situation... Chapter 2. "Sergeant!" came a half-panicked call from above, and Samuel Campbell turned from the mostly-unresponsive board. "You see something, Xander?" "It's… It's Pearce Haley, Sergeant!" "What?" Of all the answers he'd expected, that hadn't been one. Given the timing, a part of him had thought that Pearce might have been killed at the interface, but the idea that she was just outside… "Is she alive? Her suit intact?" "Yes, sir." Alive? And outside? [ Continue reading... ]
Castaway Odyssey: Chapter 1
May 23, 2016 By 3 Comments
Here we begin snippeting Castaway Odyssey; expect release of the eARC in July! CASTAWAY ODYSSEY By Eric Flint and Ryk E. Spoor PART I: ADRIFT Chapter 1 "Franky, get strapped in now!" Xander Bird said. "You're not my mama!" the red-haired little boy snapped back in a frightened tone. "You can't tell me what to do! And I'm not Franky! I'm Francisco Alejandro Coronel!" Xander closed his eyes for a moment, ignoring the lifeboat drill alerts, and took a deep breath, running his fingers through his slightly-too-long curly [ Continue reading... ]
Axanar, CBS, and Intellectual Property: My View
May 17, 2016 By 2 Comments
Unless you've been living under a metaphorical rock – or don't care at all about IP issues, which is admittedly a fairly large number of people – you've probably heard of the Axanar-CBS lawsuit. Axanar is the title of a fan-produced Star Trek-based film, intended to show a portion of the TOS (The Original Series) universe history which was only alluded to in the actual series – the Battle of Axanar. The team producing Axanar had produced an extremely high-quality short as a sort of proof-of-concept, titled Prelude to Axanar. A Kickstarter for [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Captain America: Civil War
May 10, 2016 By 1 Comment
Shortest review: Damn good Marvel movie. If you've liked the other Marvel movies, this is one of the best. Still short, no spoilers: While drawing basic inspiration from the comic-book "Civil War" storyline, this movie makes the conflict more personal for the characters, in all directions. As others have noted, while it's titled "Captain America", to a great extent this is the third Avengers movie, picking up a relatively short time after "Age of Ultron". The trailers haven't been too deceptive, though as usual there's a [ Continue reading... ]
Just For Fun: My Favorite Moments, Part 3
April 21, 2016 By Leave a Comment
Continuing answering the question of what my favorite moments in my own works are! Polychrome: My only self-published work to date, Polychrome is a grown-up readership-targeted Oz novel. It is also the only story I've ever had that FORCED me to write it – literally shutting off my ability to write in my contracted novels unless I wrote at least a chapter in Polychrome per week. As such, one can guess that there are a lot of moments in Polychrome that resonate strongly with me; still, I have to pick three, so here we [ Continue reading... ]
Just For Fun: My Favorite Moments, Part 2
April 19, 2016 By Leave a Comment
Continuing the discussion of the things I've liked most in my works... Castaway Planet: Eric and I ended Portal fairly certain that this was the last of the series, but not necessarily the universe. The main cast of Boundary had gotten pretty old to be gallivanting around the Solar System. However, when we thought about doing a space-based version of Swiss Family Robinson or Mysterious Island, the Boundaryverse suggested itself strongly as a candidate. So fast forward a century or two, let the humans learn the interstellar [ Continue reading... ]
Just For Fun: My Favorite Moments Part 1
April 14, 2016 By 1 Comment
I have often been asked what my favorite events, lines, or moments in my own books are. These favorites tend to shift some depending on my mood, and it's certainly hard in many cases to choose just ONE such for any given work. So I thought it might be interesting to describe and talk about up to three from any given work. Paradigms Lost: The first, and probably still my favorite of all, comes at the climax of the section titled "Lawyers, Ghouls, and Mummies", that ends with the simple line: Verne Domingo had come [ Continue reading... ]
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