Alien invasion stories are always a lot of fun so when I read about Out Of The Dark by David Weber in a story about upcoming books for September on one of my favorite Sci-Fi blogs, io9.com, I was interested. So after I finished Acclerando I popped right on the Kobo store and bought Out Of The Dark. Now that I’ve finished it I sorta feel like I wasted my money…

The book opens as a group of aliens, the Galactic Hegemony, spy on Earth in the 1400′s, specifically they watch Henry the Fifth as he slaughters the French at the Battle of Agincourt. As a group of creatures descended from herbivores they are horrified by the actions that humans are committing against each other. They resolve that something should be done about the humans lest they become like the only other warlike species they’ve encounter: The Shongari.

We jump forward to the 21st century and the Shongari are approaching earth ready for a colonizing invasion. They find a much more advanced human race – apparently we advance a lot quicker then everyone else in the galaxy – but decide to invade us anyway. From here it proceeds much like you’d expect an invasion story to go. They bombard the planet and wipe out our infrastructure and kill our leaders and we’re reduced to guerilla warfare to try and beat them. The Shongari take a serious beating but in the end it looks like they’re going to get the upper hand, then Weber pulls the crazies twist out of his butt that he could have.

Don’t get me wrong, I like twists, they can be awesome. Sadly this twist reeks of Weber painting himself into a corner and having no other way for there to be any sort of ‘happy ending’. There is no happy ending here simply because of the sheer weakness of what’s written. It’s sad when you figure out whats going on, you spend a chapter or two hoping that you’re wrong, but you’re not. The entire novel wraps up in a single chapter. The powerful, if somewhat hapless, Shongari are defeated in as little as two paragraphs. It’s a real let down.

If you stop around chapter 35 and make up your own ending you’ll like this novel a whole lot more. For most of the book it’s worth reading but the end will leave you frustrated. Don’t buy this book right now, when it comes down to $6 or so, or if you find it second hand, it might be worth it if you have nothing better to do.

***

Out Of The Dark

This is the hardest review I’ve had to write to date! Accelerando by Charles Stross is one of the most insane books I’ve ever read, and I find myself setting here grasping at a way to properly describe it. The book is written as a collection of 9 separate, but heavily connected, short stories dealing with three generations of the Macx family, from early in the 21st century to the end and beyond and explores the repercussions of humianity finally hitting the ‘technological singularity’, the time when the rapid advancement of technology changes the world we live in so much that it’s almost unrecognizable to past generations.

Normally I’d go though a plot outline but it’s hard to do in this case, we start with Manfred, the patriarc of the family as he travels Europe in the 21st century spreading his ideas freely and ‘living 30 seconds in the future’ as he describes it. Then he gets a phone call from some lobsters and it gets real weird. This book moves a mile a minute for the first 3 sections and if you can’t keep up it’ll lose you real fast. There’s a thousand pieces of technological jargon and even more confusing ideas spewed in these chapters that’ll make your head spin if you’re not already deep in into this sort of thing it’ll leave you scratching your head and re-reading whole pages.

From there it slows down a little and we get the story of Manfred’s daughter Amber as she escapes her ‘crazy’ mother Pam by  venturing off to the moons of Jupiter. It’s becomes more standard sci-fi fare as Amber and the family cat (now a massively powerful AI, later a ‘weakly godlike intelligence’) decode and alien signal and find a router that’ll give them access to the galactic ‘Internet’.  They do this by uploading their ‘state vectors’ to a tiny space ship and launching copies of themselves to the router several light years away. The flesh copies stay home.

The final section deals with Amber’s son Sirhan who’s been mostly raised on his own after the living copies of his parents either die or move away. He’s now living of Saturn with refugees of the inner solar system who’ve been displaced by the Vile Offspring, a huge number of weakly godlike intelligences who are dismantling the inner solar system as part of a project to turn all the matter in the solar system into ‘computronium’, or smart matter, to host a massive computer to run their minds. We’re past the singularity and the world is very different place for the surviving humans. They must now, however, escape what they have made.

As I said, this book is insane, however, it is very well written and the characters come alive as you follow their experiences thought he future of the human race. Stross was a computer programmer (and so am I) and you can really see the influence of our current emerging technologies in his writing. Computers progress from wearable personal area networks, to full neural interfaces, to whole mind uploading thought the course of the novel and Stross paints a very concise picture of where he thinks the future lies. The pace of the novel is as fast as Stross predicts our technological advance and as I said before can lose you if you’re not already in a technological mindset going in. This probably isn’t a book for people who aren’t computer nerds but if you are you’ll enjoy it immensely as it doesn’t try to dumb anything down.

As an added bonus, Accelerando can be downloaded for free from Stross’s website.

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Accelerando

P.S.: Warning, if you Google ‘Accelerando’ you’re going to get a bunch of Japanese animated porn…just a heads up.

In the realms of Science Fiction these days the sub-genre known as ‘Steampunk’ has been gaining a good deal of momentum. If you’re not familiar with Steampunk it’s a form of fiction set in an era when steam is still used as the primary power source. Typically Victorian age time frames are used and there’s a lot of brass and iron machines about. Alternate history is often employed to show a ‘road not taken’ approach where we find dirigible airships sailing the skies and other machines that could have been. I like to describe it as Cyberpunk if it was written in the 1840′s.

Boneshaker by Cherie Priest is one of these alternate history Steampunk novels. Set in 1880′s Seattle the Klondike gold rush has happened about a decade early, and the US Civil War has dragged on an extra ten years thanks to interference by the British. In 1864 the Russians are looking for a way to harvest the gold in the Klondike and other parts of Alaska (which they still own at the time) so they hold a contest to see who can make the best digging machine. A genius in Seattle, named Leviticus Blue comes up with a remarkable machine called Blue’s “Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine”, or Boneshaker for short. On it’s first test run however the machine destroys the financial district of the then burgeoning Seattle and releases a strange and toxic gas the people call ‘Blight’. Rather then kill it’s victims the Blight gas turns them into the walking dead, that’s right, it’s a zombie novel. They never say zombie however, they refer to the undead as ‘rotters’. To keep the world safe from this gas the people build a 200 foot high wall around the core Seattle and meek out a meager existence in the Outskirts.

The book starts in earnest 16 years later when Briar Wilkes and her son Ezekiel are living in the outskirts as outcasts. Why? Because Briar Wilkes used to be Briar Blue, wife of the new infamous inventor and Zeke is his son. Zeke has never known his father but being a teenager he has a lot of angst so he sets off into the blighted city to try and find some evidence to clear his fathers name. Once inside the dead city however we find that there is still a population living among the deadly gas and roving rotters. They refine that gas into a drug called lemon sap and sell it to outsiders via smugglers who fly hydrogen filled airships into the city and trade goods for drugs. Briar hitches a ride on one of these ships to chase after her son.

Inside the city there is a strange dynamic going on where the survivors are quasi-ruled by a mysterious doctor who calls himself Dr. Minnericht. He’s a genius inventor who provides the surviving population of the city with fantastic inventions in return for favors and manipulates the idea alive that he just might be Leviticus Blue himself. Briar must confront this doctor and prove to both herself and her son that he isn’t her long lost husband….or is he?

I’ve never been able to really get into Steampunk, I’m not a huge fan of the Victorian era, but I took a chance on Boneshaker because the idea of steampunk + zombies sounded interesting. I’m glad I did. Boneshaker turned out to be a very accessible introduction to the genre. Priest creates a set of characters that are compelling and hook you into their lives. At the same time there is a rich back-story and strong world building going on around them that teases you with the “what if’s” that are presented. Priest also manages to build a strong sense of suspense when the denizens of Seattle are running for their lives from the rotters and you genuinely feel claustrophobic as the filters in the characters masks start to fill up with the Blighted air.

Overall this is a great book and I can see why it’s been nominated for a Hugo award. If you’re looking for an easy way into the Steampunk genre this is it. You’ll also be glad to know that this is just the first book in what Priest calls the ‘Clockwork Century’ setting and her next novel, Dreadnought is due out September 28th, 2010.

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Boneshaker

On Summer vacation this year I needed to get a real, on-paper, book to read while we were at the cabin in the woods so I headed out to the closest ‘bookseller’ I could find: Wal-Mart. If you’ve ever looked at the book selection in Wal-Mart you’ll know there’s a real dearth of anything there that’s not written by Stephenie Meyer but in the ‘bestsellers’ section I found Your Heart Belongs to Me by Dean Koontz. Since Koontz, along with King, is one of my fallback authors I decided to pick it up. I’ve had pretty good luck buying Koontz books at random. Life Expectancy and Odd Thomas were both spur of the moment purchases in airports and they’re both truely excellent books. I can’t say I enjoyed Your Heart Belongs to Me quite as much.

The book is a 384 page character study of an Internet billionaire named Ryan Perry who lives the idyllic life of the ultra-rich. One day while surfing with his girlfriend however he has a major heart problem where he goes cold and his vision almost blacks out. He plays this off as just a one time issue but after a while it happens again and he finds himself paralyzed in his bedroom one night. After that he finally goes to his doctor and they find he has an enlarged heart. While discussing the possible causes of this condition his doctor offhandledly mentions ‘poison’. This sets Ryan off, he externalizes his problem and his mind convinces him his staff, his girlfriend, and his girlfriends estranged mother are all out to poison him. He enlists the help of a private detective and goes off on a chase for the supposed poisoners. His girl encourages him to stay the course and let what will happen happen, but instead Ryan goes behind her back and finds a new cartiologist, the best in the nation, and in a month he has a new heart but he’s lost is girlfriend and most everyone close to him.

At this point we’re 3/4ths of the way though the book and I was left wondering when some action might happen, it starts to pay off at this point as he starts getting messages from somone telling him ‘your heart belongs to me’. This escalates quickly and the plot advances rapidly all the way to a rather hackneyed and somewhat disappointing ending. There’s a bland reveal about Ryan’s personallity that didn’t really get sold very well, and when the final showdown between Ryan and the evil stalker it plays out meekly and the ‘bad guy’ character doesn’t get any sort of real resolution.

While I enjoy Koontz’s writing style and he keeps me turning pages, I even managed to read this book in a single day, this book seems to miss the mark. The entire novel is spent exploring Ryan’s character in order to reveal the supposed awfulness deep inside himself but it doesn’t feel genuine, in the end if comes off as forced. You’re meant to see Ryan as a flawed rich guy who uses his wealth to the detriment of those around him but it doesn’t come though, Ryan has been built up to be too nice of a guy during the rest of the novel. The book is decent, and it’s a good quick read if you’ve got some down time but if you looking for a top flight Koontz novel pick up the fantastic Odd Thomas instead.

***

Your Heart Belongs to Me

Sorry, Zombie lovers, I have to take a little break away from “For Love of Brian” because I’ve reached the end of what I’ve written and have been immersed in a vast deep pit of ‘what should happen next?’ for a long, long time.   While I ponder the fate of Julia and Brian, my hubby has kindly volunteered to have a piece of his first novel posted for you to read.  So, here is an excerpt from chapter two of Second Chance.

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Swish! The doors of the supermarket slide open as Jerry approaches and the cool air from the produce department slides over him, sending a chill up his spine. Determined to find the ingredients for a good healthy meal Jerry picks up a hand basket and strides confidently into the produce section. The light glimmers off the water droplets on the vast array of vegetables spread in front of him. He moves slowly along the refrigerated cases pausing often to survey the item in front of him.

He considers what would make a good inclusion in his meal as he moves along. Would onions fit the bill? No, Jerry detests them with their limp consistency and harsh taste. He moves on down the line. The sprayers come on and a cool mist washes over Jerry.

For the second time since entering the store he shivers. Something seems slightly off, strange in a way that Jerry can’t quite place. He feels like someone is watching him and he keeps glancing over his shoulder as he walks. Thinking it’s just a trick of his active imagination he shrugs to himself and keeps moving thought the vegetables.

The sweet peppers lay before him, green, red, yellow, and the slightly exotic orange pepper. Are any of these good choices? No, Jerry decides, the flavor of the green is too sour, the red and yellow are too bland and he’s never had an orange pepper and the idea of trying something new tonight isn’t appealing to him. He moves on, still with the feeling that someone is watching him.

He glances again over his shoulder and this time catches a glimpse of someone as they move around a corner. A white t-shirt and long brown hair are all Jerry manages to see but it strikes a chord with him. Something about that half-seen form seems vaguely familiar. Another chill runs up Jerry’s spine and a cold sweat starts to break out on his skin. What the hell is going on? Jerry thinks to himself

He shakes his head trying to clear it and focuses on the food items again. Eggplant? Is that even an option? How does one even cook an eggplant? That’s a question Jerry can’t answer. He picks it up and surveys the rotund purple food and puzzles over it. Odd, he thinks, I’m a 32 year old man and I’ve never even seen the inside of one of these things. He puts the plant back down with the others of its species and moves on.

After much fruitless searching thought the produce aisle Jerry finds himself among the meat. A section he’s much more comfortable with. Nichole has been on a push lately for vegetarianism but it’s something that Jerry just can’t bring himself to even consider. He is a meat eater and always has been. Running his tongue over his teeth he looks at the cuts arrayed behind the glass of the butchers counter.

Large porterhouse steaks jump out at him, bright red with a nice white marbling of fat. Jerry’s mouth waters looking at the succulent cuts of beef but he knows it’s too much red meat for today; he doesn’t have the energy to put into such a nice cut of meat. Beside the steaks is the pork. Fresh, thick pork chops lay three deep on platters under the lights of the display case, a light mist hanging in the air above them, but once again Jerry passes by. Pork was on the menu last night.

Fifteen minutes later and Jerry has exhausted his options in the produce, meat, pasta, and dairy aisles and finds himself in a well traveled location: the snack aisle. Shiny packages of chips, crackers, and pretzels face out at him, mocking his inability to decide on a healthy alternative. The plastic packaging over the high fat snack treats shimmer and shine as Jerry slowly moves down the aisle looking over each bag. He stops and stares at the chips, feeling sorry for himself and his waist line he picks up a jumbo pack of Lays potato chips and drops it into his cart. He then selects a bean and cheese dip to go with it and drops that into his basket as well. Just as the dip hits the bottom of his basket with a dull thwack the lights above him go out.

He cranes his neck back and looks up at the florescent lights above him simultaneously cocking an eyebrow and giving the now dark lights a look of distain. Two banks directly over him have gone out; at the same time the temperature of the air around him seems to have dropped a couple degrees with the loss of light. Another chill runs up Jerry’s spine. He drops his head and catches movement out of the corner of his eye.

He turns to look and as he sees the figure standing about four feet away from him his world swoons for a moment. The edge of Jerry’s vision gets dark and forms a sort of tunnel with the girl at the center. Jerry’s heart is racing and cool sweat has broken out all over his body. He stumbles slightly and has to hold onto the rack of chips to stay on his feet. The basket he’s holding drops from his numb hand and makes a loud plastic smack as it hits the hard floor.

Something about this young girl has affected him badly, something is ripping at the back of his mind screaming to get out but Jerry has no idea what it is. He’s deathly afraid of this little girl.
****

Interested?  Go here for your copy of Second Chance.

Another of my favorite works of cyberpunk fiction is Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Originally published in 1992 Stephenson envisions a 21st century that where the government of the United States has finally ceded all authority to capitalism and the country is now ruled by massive corporations. People live in ‘burbclaves, gated and guarded suburban towns run by corporations that hold their own sovereignty, such as ‘Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong’. Everything, right down to the roads, are run by the corporations that constantly compete for consumers. The US government has been reduced to nothing but a worthless bureaucracy shuffling papers around and wallowing in their own outdated processes.

The novel starts as we meet our main character, the stunningly aptly named Hiro Protagonist, freelance hacker, pizza delivery driver for one of the Mafia run pizza chains, part-time secret agent, and self-proclaimed best swordsman in the universe. Hiro is one of the original programmers of the Metaverse, a virtual reality system that has supplanted the Internet in the future. People jack in and can live out fantasy lives in rendered reality, you can be anything you want to be in the Metaverse as long as you have the money.

Our secondary main character is a streetwise skateboard courier named Y.T. (you don’t find out till well into the book what this stands for and I’m always a little let down that it wasn’t something cooler). Using an electromagnetic harpoon she attaches herself to cars and surfs the traffic to make her deliveries on time.

Together they stumble on a sinister new street drug that is usable both in real life and in the Metaverse called ‘Snow Crash’. Not only just a drug but a computer virus that can infect a persons brain that’s being distributed by a church, franchise of The Reverend Wayne’s Pearly Gates of course. Behind this stands one of the most powerful men on earth, L. Ron Rife (his name a dig at L. Ron Hubbard who also started a crazy religion). This is where it all starts to get a little weird and existential. The drug is a mimetic/biolinguistic virus created by the Sumerian goddess Asherah and defeated by an ancient neuro-linguistic hacker named Enki. Rife has discovered this virus, and it’s antidote, and is using it to his own ends to control humanity. Hiro is contacted by an ex-girlfriend who’s now deep in Rife’s organization to help stop him. Along the way we meet many interesting characters and Stephenson introduces us to many strange and thought provoking concepts.

Snow Crash, like all of Stephenson’s books can be a bit of a daunting read and you really have to read it a couple of times to get what’s going on. There’s a lot of deep and complex theories about the history of language and the idea of neuro-linguistic hacking and the ability to program the human brain like a computer. As a full-time computer programmer the ideas presented are intriguing, but if you’re not a technical person it could take some time to really get though this book. None the less it is a fun ride and a look at what the future could become if we let the corporations have too much power.

***

Snow Crash

Dune is a book that leaves you wanting more and Frank Hurbert understood this but it still took him four years after Dune’s publication to release the first sequel in what would become a trilogy, Dune Messiah.

Dune Messiah opens twelve years after the thrilling conclusion to Dune and Paul is now emperor of the galaxy and the jihad he saw before him in the first book has come to pass. His Fremen warriors have rampaged across the galaxy imposing their Fremen religion on all the worlds of the empire and proclaimed Maud’dib a living god. While Paul is the greatest power in the galaxy he is unable to stop what has been done in his name and sixy-one billion have perished at the hands of his regime.

Meanwhile, Alia has grown to the edge of adulthood and leads the church from atop her massive palace in the heart of Arakeen. Behind all this a conspiracy is growing with the Bene Gesseret plotting with the Spacing Guild to assassinate Paul and wrest control of the spice away from him. With the help of a Tleilaxu face dancer and the revived body of Duncan Idaho, how a gohla named ‘Hayt’, they launch a plot against him.

Dune Messiah is very much like The Empire Strikes Back, it’s a series of down notes. Paul is trapped into a future he knows with utter perfection, and hates, but is unable to change it. Throughout the story he loses everyone close to him and ultimately himself. His government is corrupt, the Fremen are getting water-fat and rich off the back of a vicious jihad that has reached a fevered pitch and there’s no end in sight. At the end of the novel we get the one bright spot, the birth of Paul’s children (although even this is surrounded by sorrow) and the hope for a new future of the empire.

This novel takes a lot of flack for being too much of a downer, but I think it works as a good counter-point to Dune, in that book we saw the glorious rise of Paul and in this one we see the shame of a foundation that that rise was built upon, he’s not the supreme being we thought he was he can merely see the future he’s trapped into. At only half the length of Dune this is a quick read but still quite satisfying. It’s a great bridge into the next novel in the original trilogy Children of Dune.

Pick it up, enjoy it.

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Dune Messiah

I’m not too sure where this story came from. It just popped into my head, I swear I’m not an environmentalist…

—-

Moving Day

****

The portals opened about a week before Moving Day. They were small at first, strange glowing circles of light that just hung in the air. Most were outside the cities and some, like the one near my home, showed up right in the middle of downtown between the skyscrapers throwing off that strange light day and night. They made the electronics around them wonky, and they buzzed something awful.

The police came first and cordoned off the area, pushing people back and displacing us from our homes and offices. The containment zones grew and grew as the portals got bigger; the whole of downtown was evacuated a couple days before they came. The army moved in and scientists came to try and figure out what they were. The portals were as tall as buildings and as wide as a city block by then. Massive blocks of light that lit up the sky for miles around. They were all over the world the reports said, on every continent.

They came on Moving Day, without ceremony they began pouring out of the portals. Short fleshy round things tottering on skinny legs, strange bags of meat that looked more alien then I ever imagined anything could look. Big bulbous heads that swiveled impossibly to push their two little eyes this way and that, slack too-wet mouth holes gaping open in their faces filled with a multitude of awful looking teeth. From this nauseous hole poured screeching, chattering sounds that they used to communicate with each other.

Some were clothed in rags, others in finery that I could call opulent if it weren’t so alien. Everyone carried something, strange boxes that seemed to hold their possessions, all they had in the world. They poured from the openings into our world. They came on foot, if you could call what was on the ends of their legs feet; they came in machines the likes of which we’d never even dreamed of. Strange craft that flew by unknown means drifted out and hovered over the crowds entering our world.

They seemed as surprised to see us as we were to see them but that didn’t stop them from coming. They poured in day and night for three days, first hundreds, then thousands, then millions they came and trudged away from the portals into our world. We told them to stop, they didn’t understand us any better than we understood them, we shot at them but the flying machines they brought with them rained a cold white fire down upon our armies that obliterated everything it touched. Our finest weapons of war were swatted from the sky like flies at a picnic. Even many of the ones on the ground carried weapons, strange handheld guns that spit flame at us and tore our bodies to ribbons.

Finally, the fleshy beasts stopped coming though the portals but before they evaporated into nothingness vast machines rolled out on treads to follow the groups moving away. I saw one with my own eyes, it was a thousand feet long and two hundred high, nothing could stand in its way. It ploughed though buildings as if they weren’t there and left a path of destruction in its wake as it moved away with the aliens. I watched on the news as the aliens made their way to secluded areas of our world, the deserts, the arctic, the forests, it didn’t matter they moved away from us and their massive machines finally came to a stop. When they did something amazing happened. The big machine seemed to fall apart into thousands of smaller machines. All moving like a hive they swarmed the ground and started building. Skyscrapers rose, roads rolled out and whole cities were built almost overnight. Industry sprung up and started belching black smoke into the sky as more and more machines were built. They spread like a plague over the land harvesting everything they could find to build their city. Massive open pit mines pried minerals from our soil, huge derricks pumped the oil from deep underground at a furious rate. When it was done massive gleaming landscapes of sky scrapers dotted our world, filled to the brim with the round discolored beasts that had invaded us.

They go about their lives, ignoring us. Taking what they want from our land. Their industry is constantly spewing incalculable toxins into our air; our scientists say it’s the greatest global environmental catastrophe since the industrial revolution. We’ve tried diplomacy, but they ignore us. We’ve tried war but they destroy us without even noticing. They go about their strange lives, ever consuming.

Some have ventured out of their cities in recent years. They haven’t learned our languages but we’ve learned some of theirs. We’ve talked to some of them, they say they came from their world, five hundred million of them but just a small fraction of the billions they had, when they have finally exhausted all their own resources. Their world is dead now and all they left behind is gone, they say they’re not leaving here that we have to just put up with them. They are unapologetic. We asked them where their world was, they point at the night sky, at the edge of the bright galactic span and say:

“There, it was called Earth but its dead now.”

Today we review a 115 year old book, The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. Written in 1895 it was one of the first works to explore the idea of time travel.  It’s told from the point of view of a friend of the main character, identified only as The Time Traveller, who is retelling the story at a later date (presumably to the reader).

The story opens with a group of friends gathering at The Time Traveller’s house where The Time Traveller is detailing his ideas on time travel to his friends. He then wows the assembled group by producing a small model of the machine he has devised and sends it winging off though time. The following week the group gathers together again only to find The Time Traveller late for dinner, when he does finally emerge from his workshop he’s disheveled and has an amazing story to tell.

The Time Traveler details his travels far forward in time to the year 802,701 where he’s found humanity has evolved into a two separate races, a peaceful and happy race of stunted surface dwellers called the Eoli and a deformed race of underground cannibals called the Morlocks. The Time Traveler theorizes that humanity has ended up in this state due to technological advancement that allowed the people of the surface world to live an ‘toil-free’ existance while the underground workers kept their surface machines alive and they eventually evoloved into monsters that fed on the flesh of the Eoli.

The Morlocks steal The Time Travelers machine and he must recover it from them in a somewhat anti-climactic battle and he flings himself forward some 30 million years into the future to watch the death of the earth before he finally comes back to his workshop and relates the tale to his friends.

Since this novel, it’s quite short, a novella really, is so old the language is quite archaic but it doesn’t detract much from the story and Wells evokes powerful imagery of a far distant future. While much of what Wells describes for the future of mankind, and his ideas about how time and space work, misses the mark based on what we know about science these days his ideas are none-the-less interesting and insightful. In the end this work of fiction is a great look at both history and the origins of science fiction and a very entertaining read.

Best of all, since it’s 115 years old it’s WELL out of copyright so can be downloaded for free from all over the place. The copy I read was from Project Guetenburg and very well edited and formatted. You can grab your own copy below. Enjoy

***

The Time Machine

Last week the wife and kids and myself went to the fair. We rode the rides, saw the fireworks and ate crappy fair food. While at a stop at one of the many corn dog booths I noticed that they not accepted debit and credit cards so I elected to pay with my debit card and the terminal device that the lady handed me had a little label that read ‘Corn Dog Two’, it struck me that this might be an awesome name for a starship! As such this story was born, but don’t think we’re in for all fun and games….

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Corn Dog Two

The boy wandered down the dusty center street of town kicking at clods of dried dirt and watching the dun colored dust swirl away ahead of him. The sun blazed white and hot in a cloudless sky and sweat beaded on the tanned skin of his forehead. The little farming town was quiet in the late afternoon, most everyone inside in the air-conditioned comfort of their homes waiting for the sun to dip lower on the horizon so they could come out and finish the work of the day. The only sounds on the street today were the boy’s feet scuffing against the dry ground and the occasional crunch of soil under the big rubber wheels of a delivery bot.

The boy stood and watched the little robots pop from the ejection port on the side of the general store for a while. They would spring out and race off to their destination, a yellow light flashing soundlessly to warn of their approach, only to return shortly after and drop into the retrieval trap to be reloaded.

The sound of its approach started as a distant pop, like a firework. The boy heard it and looked to the sky, holding one hand up to shield the unyielding sun. Like all children of the outer colonies he knew the sound of something entering the atmosphere and blasting past the sound barrier but try as he might he couldn’t find the tell-tale streak of ionized air that would accompany an off-world visitor. Dejected he kicked more dirt and moved on down Main Street.

He’d reached the big field at the edge of town when it hove into view over the horizon. It was moving fast trailing black smoke behind it and flashing with a cacophony of lights and rending the air around it with rippling heat. Like some kind of demonic rhino it blasted fire out of its nose to slow it’s forward motion, the boy stood rapt watching the thing approach. The sounds of its engines hit him first, a low rumbling that he felt in the pit of his stomach more then he heard. The deep base note ratcheted up a notch as its landing thrusters kicked in and it belched flame and more black smoke from its belly.  The boy had never seen a starship this close, he was awed by it, wide and fat with stubble little wings on either side of it, and the whole big rusty body of the thing was covered by flashing multi-colored lights that blazed even in the omnipresent sunlight. As it came closer and closer to the town it fired more and more thrusters to control itself, each now blasting the boy with a hot wind and bits of earth, despite this he stood his ground and watched, mouth agape as the massive ship slowly orbited the field.

With a sound like hell opening the belly of the beastly ship split, unseen wheels and gears screeching and clanking, to reveal a strange assortment of cubes of all different sizes. As it slowly orbited the field it began dropping the cubes in a pattern the boy couldn’t grasp. Each cube trailed a long cable back to the ship that unraveled from somewhere deep inside. It kept this up until all the cubes had been deposited into the field and it looked to the boy like some strange maze had been setup. The ship hung for a moment, a massive squid trailing more than a hundred black tentacles from its belly, and then slowly slipped behind the strange maze it had created and extended wide landing struts that it settled onto with a wheeze that reminded the boy of his grandfather.

The air was suddenly dramatically quiet again as the ship powered down, nothing could be heard but the sound of the wind and the ticking of the metal as the ship cooled. So quite that when the ship thumped open another set of panels the sound of it made the boy jump half a meter off the ground. A long fence was run out of the ship to enclose the entire field of cubes, the two halves meeting in what the boy was sure was a ticket booth. What happened next was even more astounding as the field of cubes suddenly turned into a field of flowers. Each cube was blossoming open, panels folding back and out and revealing what they held inside. Some were larger structures that began assembling themselves, long arms with pods on the ends, covered in more lights. Massive wheels propped in the air painted in dazzling colors with brilliant signs. Smaller cubes opened to expose expanses of games and prize racks.

“Oh wow!” the boy said to himself, “the carnival’s in town!”

That evening as the sun hung low on horizon the field outside of town blazed with light. Rides whirled in the sky and the carnies called from their games to the meager townsfolk who came out to see the attractions. The children’s screams of delight filled the air as they rode the thrill rides and the boy begged his parents for a few Imperial credits to ride the rides and play the games. The boy wandered the aisles of games watching the people of his town try and win prizes; he finally selected a game he figured he could win. They’d set up three empty bottles and you had to knock them down with a ball. He’s always had good aim and was the best pitcher on his ultra-ball team.

“Oh boy, here comes a ringer.” said the girl who ran the game, eyeing him up dramatically and giving him a sly wink. She was tall and rail thin with spiky blue hair that jutted from her head at all angles. She tossed a ball lazily in her hand as the boy approached.

“Just two credits for three balls.” She said cocking a grin at the boy, “knock down all three and you can win that lovely Imperial Yacht model up there, it’s an exact 1:50 scale replica of the Emperors own!”

The model was spectacular; the boy had never seen anything like it. He could make out all the individual windows, and under the massive mid-ship dome he was sure he could see the artificial rainforest inside.

“Okay, I’ll give it a shot.” He pulled a grubby ident card from his pocket and ran it through the little reader on the side of the game, it gave is static filled beep to let him know he had enough money and the spiky haired girl handed over the balls.

“Good luck” she winked at him again.

His first throw was wide and just grazed the top bottle making it waver a little but it didn’t fall.

“Oooh, so close!” the carnie said with mock suspense in her voice. The boy blocked her out and concentrated on the bottles. He threw with all his might and hit the top bottle square in the center but to his dismay the lower two didn’t budge.

“Almost got it kiddo!”

Taking a deep breath and steadying himself the boy threw again, it was a perfect shot right between the lower bottles. Both spun around and the left hand side one tipped and fell over. The right side bottle leaned, and leaned, the boy held his breath, willed with all his might for it fall over but it fell back on to its base, shuddered and remained standing.

“What?!” The boy yelled in indignation.

“Ohh, sorry kid, but here, you win this.” She handed him a stuffed creature.

“What’s this?” The boy asked.

“Outter Banks Mutant spider. Cute isn’t it?”

“Let me try again.” The boy swiped his card and the tinny speaker beeped at him again and the girl handed over the balls.

“Sure thing kiddo, win another small and I can upgrade you to a medium!”

“I want that ship.”

But try as he might the result was the same. The last bottle wouldn’t fall and the girl replaced his stuffed toy with a slightly larger and equally as foreign one.

“Thems the breaks kid.” She shrugged her shoulders at him as he stared disgustedly at his prize.

“This game is rigged!” he pointed his finger at the offending bottle, “I should call the Inquisitors down here to shut you down!”

“Now, now son.” A voice said from behind the boy, “Let’s not be rash. Corn Dog Two runs honest games.” The boy turned to look at who spoke. Behind him stood a short man in a bright red coat that reflected an iridescent haze around him. He had greasy black hair slicked to the side over a pallid face.  Bushy eyebrows shaded beady eyes that narrowed as the boy scowled at him. A pencil thin moustache was set over a set of livery lips that looked just a touch too wet for the dry air.

“And besides,” he continued, “we both know the Inquisitors don’t bother with these outer rim worlds.” He favored the girl running the game with a wink and the boy didn’t notice how she shrunk back from him and refused to meet his gaze.

“They sure do, just last month my uncle called in….”

“Oh yes, I’m sure a Brother and Sister will pop right up at your call, but like I said Corn Dog Two runs honest games. We’ll submit to any scrutiny.” The greasy man said tucking his thumbs into his belt and challenging the boy to try again.

“You’ll see I’ll… wait… what the heck is a Corn Dog Two?” The boy asked knitting his eyebrows together in puzzlement.

“Why that’s my ship of course!” The man swept his arm in the direction of the hulking mass of metal that sat just behind the fair.

“Your ship?” The boy swallowed hard, a real live ship captain standing before him!

“Of course. I am Thaddeus Jacob Schwartz bin El Hajjib, operator of Corn Dog Two and master carnival promoter.”  He took a deep bow and continued.

“I travel with my band of loyal carnies from star to star bringing joy to children and adults across the galaxy.” He whirled around and wrapped an arm around the girl, “Isn’t that right Gauge?”

“Yessir!” She yelped with a wan smile on her face. The boy was too young to read the fear in her eyes and he never noticed the device she worn on her ankle.

“Wow.” The boy said quietly. “A real starship. What happened to Corn Dog One?” he asked.

“Ha! An observant one this. Well,” the man leaned close and spoke in a low conspiratorial tone, “some say she still travels the stars full of the ghosts of dead carnies, others say she crashed into a star when her navigator forgot to take his shots before launch. But you want to know the awful truth?” The boy nodded, eyes wide.

“The truth is… there never was a Corn Dog One!” The man leaned back and barked wild laughter into the sky, “I just figured it’d seem like a bigger operation if this ship was number two. Wild hey?” The boy cocked an eyebrow and nodded slowly.

“Would you like a tour?” The man leered at the boy.

“Could…could I see the control room?” He asked with hope in his voice, a vision of vast arrays of bizarre starship controls laid out before him filled his imagination.

“You bet son! I’ll show you the whole ship and we’ll forget about all this Inquisitor business alright?” he stuck out his hand to the boy.

“Okay! Deal!” The boy said with excitement and gave the man’s clammy hand a shake.

“This is going to be the adventure of a lifetime son.” Thaddeus Jacob Schwartz bin El Hajjib said as he put his arm around the boy’s shoulders.

As they walked off toward the ship the boy glanced back at the girl running the game, she had a strange sad look on her face and mouthed something at him that he thought might be “Don’t go” but before he could think about it Thaddeus started talking about the star drive and he forgot all about the look on the girls face.

A single tear drifted down her cheek as she watched them go.

***

The next morning the sun rose on an empty field, nothing left but the impressions in the dirt from the massive landing struts marked where the carnival had been. A pair of figures stood in the morning sun, their shadows running long down the rise that overlooked the dusty little town.

“They took a young boy this time Brother.” The woman said to the tall man beside her.

“Yes they did Sister, yes they did.”