Holding your own skull

For some time, I’ve thought that it would be fun to get a CT scan of my head and have someone 3D print a replica of my skull.  Ideally, it would have some weights added in so that the mass would be right.  And painted to look like bone.  I think it would be really cool to be the closest I’ll ever get to holding my own skull. 

At first, that was all, but lately I’ve been wondering what else I could do with my skull replica.  I could get three of them made and try to learn to juggle.  I could have one made from clear plastic.  I’d set it on my desk and keep pens in the eye sockets.  Or, I could have one made from black plastic.  Inside I’d hide a flash drive I could connect through a port in the nostril.  That way I could back up all my stories on my skull drive.

It’s perfectly normal to think this kind of stuff, right?

Year End Ebook Sale!

From now until January 1, you can grab five of my ebooks for free!  The books in question are Political Pies, “The Future is Coming,” “The Most Powerful Man in the World and other stories,” “Lonely Phoenix,” and “Relics.” If you’re looking for short stories, science fiction, and essays about future technology, I have you covered.

Everybody complains about politics, but does anyone do anything about it? My attempt to do something about it is to collect forty of my short stories with a political element into my Political Pies anthology. My stories are either politically neutral or equally condemning of the national parties. Instead of trying to sway you to one ideology or another, my goal is to just get people thinking about politics in the hopes a rose might grow out of all the political manure.

As a science fiction writer, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how technology will change the way we live. I’ve come up with these ten short essays about science fictional elements that will – almost certainly – one day become science fact as a way for people to start coming to terms with them. Because I’ve spent time thinking about clones and AIs, I feel I’ll be okay when they do finally show up whereas most people will probably freak out. I hope these essays will get people to start thinking about the future because, no matter what we do, the future is coming.

“The Most Powerful Man in the World and other stories” is a collection of five, short, scifi stories to provide a sample of my writing.

A being from the distant future with almost unlimited powers comes back to help Ian Steele make the world a better place in “The Most Powerful Man in the World.” One bookstore customer has an entirely different reason for wanting books in “Black Market Books.” “Motherhood” tells the story of Thomas Gillespie, the surrogate mother for a baby AI. “Storyteller” is about an author thinking his book into existence. And “Deadworld” is about the alien world humans are reborn on – in alien bodies – after we die.

In “Lonely Phoenix,” board member Geoffrey Ames is woken from hibernation by the caretaking crew of the Lucian partway to a new colony world. They require him to look into the matter of their fellow crewman Morgan Heller. Morgan’s claims – such as being over 1500 years old – would normally land him in the psychiatric ward, except he can back up some of his other claims.

This work contains some profanity and sexual situations. It is intended for mature audiences only.

A plague that kills men has devastated the world’s population. Only a few thousand boys and men were able to be quarantined. But Mike Shay is the only man known to have a natural immunity to the plague. Therefore, he is practically the only man in a world of women. He spends his days reading, playing video games, and making the occasional sperm donation. Then Dr. Veronica Barrett shows up, disrupting what passes for his life. She says she’s there to investigate his “mental wellbeing,” but is there more to her visit?

Instead of the normal, adolescent, heterosexual male fantasy of being the only guy on a planet of women, “Relics” tries to give a more realistic view of Mike’s life.

Accidental evil?

Yesterday, before getting in my car I leaned in to set some things on the passenger seat.  This simple act turned out to be rather painful, because I rammed that button on the top of my hat right into the top of the door.  This led to the two things that happen whenever you do that of One: feeling like an idiot, and Two: wondering why they put the buttons there in the first place.

As I was driving home, rubbing the sore spot on my head, I started to wonder where the hat button ranks on the list of Most Evil Inventions.  Of course, it wasn't intentionally evil, just accidentally evil.  Or was it?