My novelette, An Illicit Mercy, is part of a new promotion in June and July, Get the page turners before they’re gone!Nearly 60 books available for free.My latest novelette, “Long Night On the Endless City,” appears in Boundary Shock Quarterly 26: Tomorrow’s Crimes:On the vast ring habitat Ouroboros, Jel and her synthetic companion Marcus search for Arja, the third member of their triad. This quest leads them to a cryptic technology cult with questionable motives. When they suffer a vicious attack, Marcus and Jel join forces with one of Ouroboros’most renowned computer and robotics experts to get to the bottom of the mystery.This thought-provoking sf tale explores artificial intelligence, religion, and the ties that bind families together in a fast-paced story full of action, intrigue, and heart.Get your FREE preview of Fallen!This is a sneak-peek of the first book of a two-part series. The sequel, Risen, is coming soon.Brendan Murphy nearly died fighting for his country.Now he’s trying to stop a war.Five years ago, alien ship appeared in low orbit all around the world and stayed there, waiting. A highly advanced alien race known as the Sabia lingered with little contact with humanity, and the worlds’ governments have been eager for answers – and access- for years.When combat veteran Brendan Murphy is wounded stopping an attack on a Sabia diplomat, he finds himself whisked aboard one of their ships and given medical aid. This rare opportunity finds him walking a tenuous line between burgeoning friendships and secret agenda that will test his loyalties and sanity in ways he can’t begin to imagine.Club Codex is finishing our discussion of the Prometheus Award-winning novel “Cloud-Castles” by Dave Freer in June.Follow along with my thoughts on this novel and contribute your own in the following thread:Click here for more details about Club Codex in 2024. Please join us!The recent premier of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, the latest movie in the Mad Max franchise, provides a good opportunity to correct the record regarding the origin of a couple of popular cinematic characters.A number of science fiction movie franchises have their origins in sf literature. Often, this debt is acknowledged, but sometimes credit doesn’t go the the author who deserves it.Thanks for reading The Cosmic Codex! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.The latter appears to be the case for the popular characters Max Rockatansky from the 1979 movie Mad Max, and Snake Plisskin from the 1981 movie Escape from New York. While it may be easy to distinguish between these two charismatic, post-apocalyptic anti-heroes because of their unique settings, they appear to share a common ancestor in Hell Tanner, the protagonist of Roger Zelazny’s 1967 Hugo-nominated novella ”Damnation Alley”.While I can’t prove George Miller, director of Mad Max, and John Carpenter, director of Escape from New York, read “Damnation Alley”, it seems likely.Consider, for example, one of the first scenes in Zelazny’s novella:He saw the roadblock and turned. They were not sure how he had managed it that quickly, at that speed. But now he was heading away from them. He heard the gunshots and kept going. Then he heard the sirens.He blew his horn twice in reply and leaned far forward. The Harley leaped ahead, and he wondered whether they were radioing to someone farther on up the line.He ran for ten minutes and couldn’t shake them. Then fifteen.He topped another hill, and far ahead he saw the second block. He was bottled in.He looked all around him for side roads, saw none. Then he bore a straight course toward the second block. Might as well try to run it.Reading this is like watching a Mad Max movie in my head. A harried protagonist deals with armed attackers while navigating a high speed vehicle down a perilous road. And make no mistake, Hell Tanner’s driving skills are a match for any character Miller ever created for the Mad Max series.Thank you for reading The Cosmic Codex. This post is public so feel free to share it.It turns out Tanner is running from a deal he made in exchange for a full pardon from the national (you read that right) government of California. He’s been serving time for the extensive rap sheet he’s run up in his 25-30 years of life. But now he’s having buyer’s remorse. To earn his pardon, he has to deliver the vaccine for bubonic plague to an infected Boston before all its residents die. The problem is he can only accomplish this in time by running Damnation Alley, the coast-to-coast route across a post-apocalyptic (like Rockatansky’s Australia or Plisskin’s New York) America. The only person to do this successfully was the messenger who delivered the news of the epidemic to California. And he immediately died of the injuries he sustained en route.A prisoner of the national government is coerced into service facing a hellscape for the greater good. If this plot sounds familiar,...
