The Empire's Corps

I like military SF. And I liked the Foundation series of novels by Isaac Asimov. Now imagine if John Christian Falkenberg were to hook up with Hari Seldon and instead of founding the Foundation accompanies him and a bunch of soldiers into exile.

The Empire's Corps tells the story of a bunch of elite soldiers, Marines led by Captain Ed Stalker, who get in some political trouble on a future Earth. The galaxy has been settled with human colonies far and wide, all of them under the rule of the Empire. The Empire projects its will through its Marines. Captain Stalker is given a promotion to Colonel, then sent into exile to a remote colony called Avalon.

Accompanying him into exile is an academic who made the mistake of looking into the Empire's political and economic underpinnings, and discovering the Empire is about to fall. He's had his cushy professorship taken away and his family is forced to live in a bad neighborhood.

Earth is over-populated with tens of billions of people and if you're rich, you live in a nice apartment, and if you're middle class you live in a not-nice apartment, and if you're poor you live in a hellish government housing project. Social control is maintained by threatening the middle class with moving into government housing where criminal gangs run free. Step out of line, get caught, and you're shipped off to a colony world as indentured labor.

This is the Earth that Stalker and his Marines are exiled from. They are exiled to a relatively new colony called Avalon. It has a corrupt central government, rebels in the hills, as well as bandits terrorizing the countryside.

When Stalker arrives he's got a job, restore order. Trouble is that the fall of the Empire is immanent and he knows it. Avalon will be his home and he has to come up with something more stable than the status quo, that won't survive the Empire's collapse.

Happily, the only bad guys are the oligarchs running the show and the bandits in the hills. It remains for the Marines to support the government just enough to let it fall of its own weight. Along the way there are lots of nifty space infantry firefights and bad guys defeated and good guys triumphant.

There is a pretty clear message through the whole book that paternalistic central government control is a Bad Thing and that individual initiative and self-improvement is a Good Thing. I liked the Empire Corps, because it handles the military SF well enough and it provides just enough galactic politics to keep things suspenseful.

All the good guys keep getting thrown into the deep end of the pool and they figure out how to swim fairly quickly.

And if you like it, there are several sequels available. I'll be reviewing them in a little while.

The fall of a galactic empire is a Big Deal and it is a story that gets told from multiple perspectives. One thing to keep in mind is Mr. Nuttall's odd-even scheme of telling the story. The first two novels follow events on or near Avalon. Subsequent novels alternate between the Marines on Avalon, and other parties acting on Earth, in the next sector over, and back on Earth. Clearly, Mr. Nuttall is setting up a climax where these disparate threads are pulled together.

Altogether a most enjoyable read: 5-stars.

Not Another Vacuum Story

A friend, Martin Shoemaker lamented the fact that when one writes near-future hard science fiction stories one risks copying from one of the grand masters.

One of the tricky parts of my preferred writing niche -- near future, near space hard science fiction -- is avoiding rehashing of crises that were already explored by Heinlein and Asimov and Clarke and others 80 years ago. There are some obvious, critical dangers in space, and I'm tempted to write about them even though better writers have already written about them.

Any story has setting, character, and plot, but the science fiction story can make the technology a quasi-character that's worthy of consideration in and of itself. Boy can meet girl in any coffee shop on the planet, but if it's on a space station built into an asteroid, the reader of science fiction will be more interested in the space station than other readers will have in the coffee shop. If the coffee shop is in a space station, the writer may want to put some thought into the problems of zero-gee coffee brewing.

The difficulty that Martin addresses here is how to incorporate a likely hazards near-future hard science fiction that the grand masters already wrote about. Space has vacuum, radiation, and zero-gee. You aren't going to do a better job than the grand-masters if you write a plot-heavy story wherein these hazards are encountered and solved in the same way they solved them.

What I believe the writer should do today is update any science/tech that has been learned since the Golden Age, then make his/her story fresh via unique characters. For this reason, when I wrote High Rail Breakdown, I made the female lead character a convicted murderer with anger-management issues.

Maybe Heinlein, Clarke, and Asimov never wrote stories with the same plot devices I put into my story, but even if they did, I know they didn't have her.

There's a taxonomy of basic plots for stories that date back to Aristotle. And it's been updated many times. Golden Age Science Fiction was unique in that it added fantastic new settings beyond Earth's atmosphere. This freshened a number of stories by making these settings almost a character in and of itself.

We don't have that luxury today. Thus our stories need to rely upon distinctive characters to be fresh. So, take another look at your Spaceman Spiff, and ask yourself if maybe he would be more distinctive if he was a Calvinist.

What sort of character traits do you think belong in your characters in a near future, near space hard science fiction story? I have some ideas, but want to hear yours.

Using Dreams

I have noticed that some of the best stories come from dreams while some of my most boring conversations are listening to other people recount their dreams.

I hope that if I ever tell you one of my dreams, it'll be a one-liner and relevant to you: "I dreamed you were a CIA agent and your mission was to seduce Rani Mukerji." To the contrary, I've found that I'm seldom any more bored than when someone tells me something they dreamed that might be quite significant to them, but it is significant only to them. By keeping things short, I hope that if you are bored by my fevered ravings, you won't be bored for long.

The fact that I dreamed about you can be majorly creepy because it means you have invaded my subconscious and you might not appreciate the unwanted (subconscious) attention. Thus, if you were Rani Mukerji and if I had dreamed about you (I haven't.), I probably shouldn't say anything to you.

If you can relate to what I just said about dreams, what makes you think anybody wants to hear about your writing project?

Particularly, that hot chick or dude you made into the hero's love-interest who bears a creepy resemblance to the hot chick/dude you're talking to. I know a guy who who wrote all the attractive females in his writing group into his stories. Repressed sexual fantasies aside, most people need a more compelling reason to hear about your work-in-progress than the mere fact that you are writing it. World-building is a most enjoyable past-time, but sharing the details of your future-history with someone at a dinner party is a great way to not get invited back.

Talk about works in progress should be confined to strategy sessions with other authors wherein you trade hints and tips about how to get over tough plot points or other mechanical details of bringing a work to completion. If you're in the midst of such a session with another author and think, "what's WITH this guy?" you should do everything in your power to make sure he doesn't think the same about your work. I find it delightful to read conversations between authors advising each other on howto make the magic happen.

Of course, those conversations are more interesting when they are between writers you admire. You might be less enthralled by exchanges between unknowns.

There is a time and a season for you to shout from the rooftops, "Sir, or Madam, will you read my book. It took me years to write, will you take a look," but that comes after your work is at a mature state, or you have a reputation and a following. Until then, I suggest you only tease out the choicest details.

But I said that sometimes the best stories come from dreams. The modern mind doesn't quite know what to do with dreams. I am not one to interpret them, but I will try to mine them for story ideas. I don't try to write up my unconscious mind's jumbled narratives unrefined.

Instead I've had story elements occur in dreams that I adapt into stories. For interest, a dream of my High School (that you'd find boring) was distinguished by the appearance of a certain trouble shooter. He wasn't quite human, and he wasn't quite divine. I didn't understand this character, his motives, or his means of solving problems, but I thought this general impression would make a useful depiction of a "trans-human" character. Such would be dispatched by Serious Adults to Fix Something. That turned into my first novel, which is safely ensconced within a desk drawer.


I think that dreams are a treasure-trove of story-ideas and solutions to story-problems, but they are unruly beasts who need to be pointed in the right direction, and their content never taken at face-value.

Isaac Asimov vs Gene Roddenberry

Isaac Asimov is a Science Fiction demigod. And he was a Science Fiction demigod back in 1966 when he wrote an article in TV Guide wherein he ragged on the science fiction shows airing at that time. In addition to being a Science Fiction demigod, Asimov was also an author of textbooks. I don't write textbooks, but I get annoyed at bogus science when I see it in science fiction stories. In 1966, I was an 11 year old, and I picked up on some of the same errors that he did.

In addition to savaging Lost In Space, Asimov also made disparaging remarks about the other TV show that premiered that fall: Star Trek.

The fella getting disparaged over Star Trek was another Science Fiction demigod: Gene Roddenberry.

And they exchanged letters as described here. You really should read their correspondence. It's amazing.

What I found particularly helpful reading the Roddenberry/Asimov correspondence is how Asimov did not create an enemy with his critical remarks about Star Trek. Instead, Roddenberry came back with a gracious reply to Asimov's criticisms that displayed a great deal of admiration for Asimov's work. (Did I mention that Asimov was a Science Fiction demigod back in 1966?)

Both men were adults and nobody felt so insecure that he got mad or defensive. Instead, they went on to correspond most profitably and Asimov provided helpful suggestions to Roddenberry. I think that it was because both men loved Science Fiction and that could put criticism into an appropriate context.

That's what we should do when someone rubs our fur the wrong way. If there's something wrong with The Aristotelian or Finding Time, then I should hear it, own up to what's real in the criticism, and fix what I can. The fella pointing out the flaws isn't my enemy as much as my ignorance of the writing craft or my laxity in not paying attention to detail.