Short Story: The Last F$#% Given

Hello hello!

My mentor and friend, Zig Zag Claybourne, over at Rehumanize Yourself said, "I want a short story about the last phuque given." I couldn't help but oblige. A certain Asimov short played a roll in the genesis of this.

***

Tamika stared out at the endless void. The glowing chunks of what had once been Gaia, the blue-green jewel of home, drifted slowly towards the sun. The little grey moon, following like a faithful cat, was no more. It had been knocked away by the comet.

She watched for a long time as the scarlet fury of the sun slowly devoured the remaining shards of Earth. There had been life there, once. And on Mars as well, the russet neighbour. There was a time when humanity had filled the whole system orbiting Sol, had stretched beyond that—

Then came the war. Then another war, and another one. The factions didn’t matter. It had been xenos the first time, genetically engineered hybrids the second, robots, the third time. Tamika distantly remembered a time when it had been the other way around—robots, then humans, then the xeno invaders had waged war. The Shroedinger device had made history an even more confusing proposition than it once was.

She strode across the deck, platinum heels clacking. A captured Singularity glinted around her neck: the last moments of a dying star. She surveyed her ship. The crew were still in their places, polished bones and hardware gleaming. No-one could say she hadn’t taken care of them. Even now, with nothing but auto-protocols left, they were impeccably tidy. Of course, the time-scarabs had helped with that—picking all flesh from their bones.

Tamika’s metal fingers played over the console distractedly. She navigated away from Sol, and faster than a thought, her little ship arrived in the Orion cluster.

Cold and dead here, too, but a better sense of perspective. She looked back at the Solar system—nothing but a few distant glitters, now. Not her problem.

The universe would go dark any day now, she thought, firing up the engines. A few lights were still on, but the house was empty. Perhaps it was time to knock it down, to build something new.

The last living creature in the universe deliberated, staring at her console, and opened the hidden menu. A display glowed before her.

“Activate the Oroboros protocol,” she said, her dusty vocal chords clattering a little. She crossed two of her six legs and waited for the computer to respond.

It flickered for a moment. The computer, too, was breaking down. “Activate the Oroboros protocol? Are you sure? Y/N?”

“There’s nothing left,” said Tamika. “It’s time to start over. Yes.”

The Singularity around her neck burned brightly for a moment. There was nothing but light, pure light, as the Orion cluster, then the spiral arm, then the rest of the Milky Way Galaxy, then the universe collapsed in on itself—

—and then—

“This should be interesting,” said Tamika. “Computer, initiate protocol ‘Beginning’. I’m bored already of all this light. Let’s build something.”

*****

Thanks for dropping by the nest once again. Don't miss any of the phuquerie. Find Michelle on Twitter, Facebook, and on Tumblr, and find her work on Amazon. Check back on the blog to see when one of the irregular posts has careened onto your feed. This is the one and only SciFiMagpie, over and out! 

The New Apocalypse: An Interview with JC Eggleton, Author of Brookhaven

Hello hello!

Well, you have made your pilgrimage to my site once again, darling fans, and you're in for a treat. Tonight, I have an interview with JC Eggleton, author of the one and only Brookhaven. 

Brookhaven, book 1 of the Web of Fate series, can be bought here; and you really should buy it, now, as soon as you can.  It's dark, it kept me up with its waking nightmare world, and it's rather well-written. I can't tell you too much about the plot without giving things away. I will say, though, that it involves a crime plot in a small southern town, plenty of pitch-black humour, and a struggle for a man's soul--and that none of this goes in the directions you'd expect. So, without further ado, give a warm welcome to the warped and wonderful JC Eggleton!

*****

Q: Describe yourself in 20 words or less.

A: Mostly harmless.

Q: Tell us about your novel.

A: Brookhaven is the first novel in The Web of Fate, which at the moment is planned to be a twenty-seven book series. The plot focuses on two policemen using very different methods to solve the ritual murder of a local priest. While this goes on in the foreground, a dark god is operating in the background to drive people to murder and insanity. The story broadens in scope as it progresses, eventually exploring what can best be described as a corner of Hell.
Though billed as horror, it's strongly influenced by urban grit, fantasy, and science fiction. As the series progresses these influences are made more prevalent as a sprawling mythos is explored. My aim was to craft a modern mythology that draws inspiration from folklore, Jungian psychology, and quantum theory.

Submitted by the author. Again, you can buy this book here. It is just as scary as it looks. I loved it. 

Q: What, or who, inspired Marcus Dodd's character?
*****

A: Marcus Allan Dodd was sort of always there. I always saw him as an avatar of my own anger. He lacks the means to save the world so he makes do in any way he can and these ways are normally a tad ruthless. He looks at our society, with Honey Booboo and Jersey Shore on the tube, and sees a culture that's eating itself alive to kill the stupidity.

Q: "Brookhaven" is a fairly dystopic, dark novel, somewhat in the style of HP Lovecraft. What led to its darkness?

A: Like HP Lovecraft, I write what I dream and, also like Lovecraft, I dream dark. As a sufferer of Asberger's Syndrome, I've always seen myself as being on the outside looking in. No matter the situation, whether at home or work or school, I've never felt like I belonged. These feelings of alienation and loneliness tend to make me dream of exaggerated and monstrous caricatures of people that have malevolent intent. Being an outsider, you look at the world from a macroscopic view and wonder how any of these people think they're sane. That may sound arrogant, but honesty is my only virtue.

Q: Humanity: a) Ultimately evil, b) ultimately good, or c) other?

A: I choose c) other. Human beings are a balance of the animal and the divine. At one end of the spectrum, you have chaos and barbarism. At the other, you have order and law. Most people would say that there is no virtue in chaos but I don't think that's true. The animal is a creature of passion, capable of great violence but also great love. The divine is a creature of logic, a skilled protector of what it is to be human but is also devoid of compassion. Recently, a woman beat a man into a coma with a baseball bat. Open and shut case in a court of law, but she was avenging her ten year old daughter the man had raped. What she did was illegal, vigilantism, but was it wrong? Was she not justified in her actions? Logic would say no, compassion would say yes.

That's what separates humankind from the animals and what separates us from machines. One of my favorite books was A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, a true artist. The meaning of the title was lost in Stanley Kubrick's film, but Kubrick, though a phenomenal filmmaker, had a habit of missing the point (Ask Stephen King what he thought of The Shining). In In Burgess's work, he wrote that every man was capable of great horror and inspiring virtue. We are what we choose to be. We're not clockwork oranges, appearing alive on the outside but peel the skin away and observe the cogs and gears at work. I like to think there's more to us than simple good or evil.

Submitted by JC, picture of the author. This is definitely his 'scary' face.

Q: What do you plan to write or publish next?

A: I'm actually hard at work on the sequel to Brookhaven, The Red.

Q: Which foods do you absolutely hate?

A: Anything that comes from a box. Most of what we eat is about as nutritious as a strip of cardboard that's been soaking in grease and this makes me a sad panda.

Q: Where would you hide a body?

A: I've never been one to hide my mistakes. Weekend at Bernie's, anyone?

Thanks for dropping by the nest once again. Don't miss any of the good kind of crazy. Find me on Twitter, Facebook, and on Tumblr. Don't forget to check back for short stories, more politics, analysis, scraps of science, and even some reviews. (And no, I haven't forgotten those extra reviews I promised you...they're coming, really. Cross my heart.) There will even be more interviews. This is your darling SciFiMagpie, over and out!

It's The End of The World as We Know It (And Why That's Fine)

Hello hello! Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Radio SciFiMagpie, your source for goofy reviews, insight, genre fiction, and quotable fuckery related to all of the above.
Today, we're talking about dystopian fiction: I have mentioned my love for it in previous posts, and since the Hunger Games is still warming the front shelves of book store windows, I figured it was time for a review of why some of us love talking about the end of the world.
Dystopian fiction--Wait, what?: Sometimes also known as social science fiction, takes its roots in the idea of a dystopia, literally a "bad world" (Greek "dys", meaning bad, and "topia", world). A story centred in or around a dystopia tends to have a hint of horror or suspense, but is generally more psychological than action-packed. It is very seldom, if ever, that you will get a propery fantasy seting with this fiction type. Sometimes the setting will be post-apocolyptic; it is pretty impossible to distinguish them, since disasters of various kinds are usually the driving force behind the development of a dystopia. The old stuff was generally centred around a world that was ruined by government control, but technically any vision of the world that is a) bad and b) vaguely futuristic or "not right now" counts as a dystopia. And lately, of course, the hottest trend in teen literature has been a re-tread of the "star-crossed lovers" theme with the state or world acting as Romeo and Juliet's interfering parents. We'll get to that in a minute. Have some theme music first.

Here, have some examples!: Say "dystopia" and the one most people think of is 1984, George Orwell's famous work about a communist police state. It's nightmarish, violent, dirty, and grimy: this is not a shiny future filled with fast cars and elegant technology. In contrast, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World has the shiny technology and a tidy, beautiful world, but the darkness comes from the lack of freedom from the caste system and the meaninglessness of the lifestyle there. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, a.k.a Blade Runner, and pretty much everything else Phillip K. Dick has written are also good examples of dark, ugly worlds torn by ideological conflict, environmental ruin, and class war.V for Vendetta or The Ballad of Halo Jones by Alan Moore are graphic illustrated dystopias, in case you want something with a little more visual detail. If Politics don't turn your crank, Nick Sagan's Idlewild series and Feed by M.T. Anderson are fast-paced, short, and teen-friendly options in the 'world sucks' area. There are also more anime and manga options than can be safely mentioned by a sane person, if you want something other than the Euro/American flavours.
Before you fall asleep or skip back to the blog about Space Boobies, I ought to mention that the dystopian perspective is not restricted to rectangular paper things or those files that are clogging up your Kobo. Portal and Portal 2 are both, technically, dystopian games. Everything in the Resident Evil series would also count, as would the world of Bioshock, Metro 2033, and, of course, the beloved Fallout games.
(If you aren't familiar with any of these games, google "Steam games", find the game website, and buy all of them for your computer. Alternately, find a friend who likes them and have them play while you watch. Or, if you're a lazy fuck, and shame on you, go read about them on Wikipedia. Each one of them represents a fine and rich gaming experience and excellent story-writing, or in the case of the the Resident Evil games, writing so bad, it's good.)
So, now that we've established what dystopias are, and that there are lots of good ones for you to enjoy, why the hell do you care? A lot of people find them unpleasantly hopeless. Darkened settings are part of sci fi, but a dystopia is something a little more hopeless and strange and distant than the usual faraway planet or not-so-distant future. They have come in and out on a regular basis since the 1980s, more often in books and games than movies, but a really pure dystopian story isn't all that common. Or rather, it wasn't, but they've gotten a lot more attention recently.
Why? Between environmental destruction and its effects, rapidly more apparent, and political uncertainty, we have the basic ingredients of the end of the world. (I'm not going to derail this into a political rant, because you can probably judge the importance of those factors for yourself.) And yet, there are billions of us, the technology of movies and television has become real enough to hold, and there is a sense that we, humanity, are too big and heroic and important to fail. It is impossible to picture the end of the world as it is now, because so many endings are possible. The urge to explore the method of our own destruction is irresistible, the human impulsive curiosity about death. Like Narcissus, we stare into the pond's mirror in fascination, unable to abandon the deadly and tempting image of ourselves.
Of course there are less serious reasons: the technology is damn cool. In the pre-assembled world of developed countries, jury-rigging ersatz tech and clothing is cool as all get out. Alternate times have always interested us; the idea of magic or a now-and-not-now world compelled us as soon as our brains were complex enough to think about it. A world really and truly working against the hero is both more relatable and a higher-stakes game than usual. it is more fun to be in love when the world is falling apart, too, because the struggle of the characters seems more important and less so at the same time, a pleasing contradiction. Maybe it is even related to the joy in destroying things: everyone loves a good disaster.

Source. Ahhh. a destroyed New York. It is as soothing as peting a fluffy kitten. Made of rainbows.
Or, just maybe, it is because we are playing through our nightmares and trying to defeat them. One theory about dreams suggests that the brain creates them partly to play through its fears and develop alternate coping strategies, solutions. Dystopias, strange as it may sound, are always about surviving. If you can think of a dystopian story with a genuine unhappy ending, bring it back. The rest of us will wait.
As for me, I love thinking about, experiencing, and talking about every possible way the world could end, and what it would look like. I love it. Odd technology, traumatized characters, personal interactions that matter to survival instead of just existing to amuse, a cut-throat world, and, ultimately, a crazy kind of hope that makes protagonists persevere: these are ingredients of epics, both great and minuscule, and in the dystopia, they get a special sharpening. I think what keeps me coming back to the end of the world is a mixture of all of these things, of the factors that make us as people long to explore them, and the challenge of making it realistic. Expect more end-of-the-world/evil world settings as you keep reading my releases.
Well, every love song needs a coda, and I have come to mine. Unless the world actually ends, and we end up huddled around campfires again, you can expect a steady supply of these settings in entertainment for years to come. Until then, I'll be working on this hydrogen-cell-powered double-engine deathmobile, just in case. Actually, before you go, could you pass me the duct tape?
Thanks for coming to visit again. More hilarity and occasional brilliance can be found on Twitter, at SciFiMagpie. Until then, this is your SciFiMagpie, over and out! Unless, that is, you want to trade some fuel cells for sexual favours and this cabbage...