Register to vote

Here in the US, the 2018 Election will be a big deal.  Either Congress will remain controlled by Republicans or it will – totally or in part – switch over to the Democrats.  Whatever the result is will have major effects on the country. 

To be part of this election, you have to be registered to vote.  Now there are registration drives every election year – possibly even more this year – but why wait until closer to November 6?  If you’re just turning eighteen, or never bothered to register before, or are unsure if you’re registered, do it now and beat the rush.  There are places like RegistertoVote.org and the League of Women Voters that can help you register.  Or, if you’re uneasy using a third party website, you can also use your state website, which is usually your state name.gov.

I’m sure the majority of people would say that there is substantial room for improvement in the politics of this country.  To get any improvement, the people need to vote.  To vote, you need to be registered.  I know, it’s so much easier to just bitch about things online than to take the most basic of steps to fix things, but who ever said being an adult was easy?

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.

Old time doctoring

Whenever I read or watch something historical, I’ll often wonder what I’d do if while going to work one day a time portal opened and zapped me back to then.  (As if the things you think about to pass the time make sense.)  Anyway, I recently watched some YouTube videos on old time pirates.  One point they made was that if you were a man of learning who was a doctor, it was unlikely you’d choose to sail with pirates.  Unless you were a drunkard or in trouble with the law or something.  So pirate doctors weren’t always the best, and sometimes the “doctor” was just a crewman who could read a pamphlet on how to do amputations and had the stomach to do it.

So I was wondering if I were transported back a few centuries, could I cut it as a doctor.  And I realized that by not bleeding my patients for every little ailment like a stomachache, I might have more of them survive.  This got me wondering if – because I didn’t sleep through eighth grade health class – I’d be a better doctor than a doctor from 1800?  I wouldn’t bleed my patients, I definitely wouldn’t blow smoke up their ass, and if I called in a surgeon I’d make them put their instruments in some boiling water first to cut down on infection.  I mean, I’d even do the weird thing – for the time – of washing my hands. 

Of course, this also got me wondering which of today’s professional knowledge – medical, economic, political, etc. – will seem so stupid to the “common knowledge” of a century or two hence.

Jedi training

Did Jedi have to learn how to do the Jedi Mind Trick?  If so, who do they practice on?  Was there a non-Jedi janitor at the Temple the younglings tried to top one another with what they could make him do?  Or would a Master take their Padawan out to eat and say, "Can you make the waitress give us free coffee?"