Royce's Random Thoughts

 Summary: A thousand years ago human civilization collapsed, from a combination of environmental damage and the madness of a distributed AI known as Pax Machina. The surviving humans retreating to flying cities held aloft by massive anti-gravity generators, leaving the world below to Pax Machina and a near uncountable variety of genetically uplifted animals.

Forty-five years ago one of those flying cities, Ambara, crashed to the earth, killing almost all of its inhabitants, and leaving its bones to be picked over by the zoomorphs. In response to this disaster, the fractious human cities formed the Reclamation Project alliance, to try to contain and exploit the Zoomorph population, as the floating cities find themselves growing short of food and other resources. Now both sides maneuver around each other in a cold war for supremacy of the Earth, both of them constantly looking over their shoulders for threat of Pax Machina and wasteland raiders.

Review: It's a little hypocritical for me to review this, given I've got a story in here, but I'm going to anyway. This shared world anthology edited by John "The Gneech" Robey was pitched as "Thundarr the Barbarian meets Solarpunk," and it pretty much fits the bill. Though several characters suffer personal tragedies, the overall theme is of hope and change for the better. There's a variety of styles within, from rollicking adventure, to contemplative philosophy, to determined cyberpunk style passive resistance, so there's something for everyone.

I'm not going to review the stories individually, aside from noting that while a couple of stories didn't grab me, aside from one outright clunker (fortunately the shortest story overall) the writing was ranged from competently done to engrossing. My own tale was probably one of the more conventional ones, not adding much to the worldbuilding and being a pretty standard adventure with a little mystery added. Also, despite the elevator pitch, my story was the only one with a barbarian in it. ;p [1]

Anyway, if you like furry stories with some post-apocalyptic sci-fi adventure, The Reclamation Project more than suits the bill. I'm hoping it proves popular enough that Furplanet will make it an annual publication.

The Reclamation Project, Year One is available through Furplanet, and Amazon

[1] Note to Self: Make sure Hamia shouts, "What sorcery is this?!" in his next appearance. 

Both found on Amazon for the Kindle.

The first is one of james_nicoll's (ahem) personal favorites, H.Beam Piper's Space Viking, about a man who avenges the death of his wife by becoming an even worse threat to society himself. I'm not sure about the copyright on this one. AFAIK it isn't up on Gutenberg, but the confusion about what copyrights are still active on HBP's works means this may or may not be a legally published copy.

Next is a very early work by Robert Silverberg, titled Starman's Quest. This early edition definitely is out of copyright. Unfortunately that's mostly due to an oversight of Silverberg's part, and as you can see in the reviews he's not really happy about it.

Gacked from james_nicoll

How David Weber orders a pizza.

Amazon has The Green Slime for sale, a movie I haven't seen since the Sunday Monster Theater on Channel 20.

For mjkj 's prompt of "Something concerning the Red Vixen ." Also featuring lilfluff 's Madeline and Charles.

( Cut for minor suggestiveness )

Summary: Bob Howard, government IT specialist with a license to exorcise, is sent out once again by the Laundry, Britain's primary defence against Things Man Was Not Meant to Know (But Screws With Anyway) to defend The Realm. This time around he's sent out to stop the plans of a billionaire megalomaniac determined to bring up a Deep Ones artifact from the ocean floor, using Howard Hughes' resurrected Glomar Explorer, before it's Too Late.

Now if he could just figure out why vodka martinis taste like shit.

( Spoilers under the cut )

In this early series of stories by Hogarth (aka haikujaguar), we explore the universe through the eyes of the Pelted, genetically engineered "furry" slaves who eventually fled their human creators and spread throughout the stars, forming a thriving federation and leaving Earth to fall behind them.

"A Distant Sun"

Summary: Kellen Grove is the new Pelted teacher at Silvergate Academy, a private school where he teaches both Pelted and humans the harsh history of the Pelted's myriad of races. Unfortunately that history becomes personal when he's confronted by the collapse of a student and has to face the fact that some pieces of history cannot be gotten over.

Review: A nice moody piece that points out the problems inherent in genetically "improving" on Humanity, which is that a lot of your work is going to be flawed in ways that won't be understood several generations down the line, and that your creations are going to have ot live with your mistakes, both physically and emotionally.


"Dark Lighthouse:

Summary: Commander Taylitha Basil, seen earlier as a newly minted ensign in Hogarth's Second, is now a ship's commander delivering supplies to a distant monitor outpost, where she meets the human station commander and an enjoys with him a mutual love of good food and very esoteric fencing styles. Unfortunately she finds herself confronted by her own prejudices as they express their mutual interest in the latter.

Review: A short, sad read, as Taylitha tries to work past her own assumptions, and proves that prejudice isn't always a one way street.


"Stormfront"

Summary: Isidore Wyatt is a human ship commander on loan to the Pelted Federation, who finds himself bonding tightly to his crew when they go after a pirate ship marauding innocent freighters.

Review: A short, relatively light read, but nicely heavy on the action. I'd like to read more about this fellow.


And we move on to a couple of non-Pelted stories, before coming up to the last in the bunch.


"Living the Moment"

Summary: Simon Voar is an art (read: one step above porn) photographer who specializes in photographing The Moment, when the act of sex turns into an act of transcendence. But finding himself bored with human subjects he goes offworld to the home of the Tsipia-aliens, whose unique three sexed biology should provide new Moments to capture, assuming he can let his own walls of defense down.

Review: Despite the subject matter this isn't really a porn story. It's really about intimacy, and letting oneself become open to experience, rather than standing a distance and being merely a unaffected observer. Like any good story examining an alien culture it's not an automatically easy read either, but I recommend it.


"The Blade to Your Hand"

Summary: Zalen is a young lady pirate living with her adoptive "father" a cruel pirate captain who would likely cut off her head (or worse) if he discovered her true gender, who takes a chance at freedom when her pirate ship raids the wrong town.

Review: A nifty furry pirate tale, which turns out to be intensely frustrating because Hogarth stuffs at least a novel's worth of plot into less than 10k words. We meet Zalen, her crewmates and cruel father, and the lady cheetah who might be her savoir, and then rush along to the ending before the story has barely begun. This story begs to be expanded into a proper novel, because frankly as just short tale it's too over too quickly to really appreciate it.


And now for the real problem child of the bunch, Hogarth's early Pelted novel, Alysha's Fall

( Cut for spoilers, language and rape triggers )

Since I haven't really been writing much here aside from posting story updates and stupid video and news links.

1 – How did you first get into writing fanfic, and what was the first fandom you wrote for? What do you think it was about that fandom that pulled you in?

My first fandom, I'm pretty certain, was Star Trek TOS (The Only Series back then) when I was pre-teenager. I din't know I was writing fanfic at the time, just that I ended up writing a short scene with Kirk, Spock and McCoy going on a roller coaster for a creative writing assignment in class. I got into the show because back in the late-seventies if you were a young science fiction fan who wanted The Good Stuff to watch on TV, it was Star Trek, The Twilight Zone or nothing. Okay, once PBS showed 2001: A Space Odyssey, but even back then I knew that was beyond weird.