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... ]
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... ]
The Craft of Writing: When I Ignore Science
September 22, 2015 By 1 Comment
Writing science fiction – especially hard science fiction, where you're expected to keep to what modern science believes is possible, rather than inventing force fields, lightswords, faster-than-light-drives, or other accoutrements of space opera – is a demanding task. It's not necessarily harder than writing, say, good epic fantasy; they're both equally difficult, in my view, just with different areas of difficulty. It does, however, have external demands that other types of speculative fiction don't really have to worry about. In my "day [ Continue reading... ]
Castaway Planet: Chapter 18
December 11, 2014 By Leave a Comment
Things were busy and confusing around here yesterday -- apologies for missing my schedule! Sakura's out exploring... ------ Chapter 18 Sakura cut, perhaps with unnecessary viciousness, at a bamboolike stalk that blocked her passage. The machete—cut and ground down under Whips' direction from one of the pieces of steel that had formed a major wing support—sliced cleanly through the stalk, which fell, spattering her with drops of blood and an explosion of crimson tendrils from the [ Continue reading... ]
Castaway Planet: Chapter 17
December 8, 2014 By Leave a Comment
Time to relax, it's been a long day... ------ Chapter 17 Whips jolted awake as a loud, strident beep! beep! beep! sounded from somewhere above him. That was the camp alarm! Something was coming through the perimeter! The night of Lincoln was, by Earthly standards, pitch-black; even if one of Lincoln's two moons had been up, they were too small to shed very much light. But Whips' ancestors were from the utterly lightless sea of Europa, orbiting Jupiter in the farther [ Continue reading... ]
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