Pulp of the Week - Indiana Jones and the Peril at Delphi

Indiana Jones and the Peril at Delphi
by Rob MacGregor


There is a great used book store called Movie World in downtown Burbank that stocks a mountain of books including plenty of Science Fiction paperbacks. The SF books cover a wall ten feet high and fifteen feet wide. In some spots they are shelved 3 books deep.

One day last year I decided to pay attention to the novelizations that were stacked horizontally by the door. The Indiana Jones novels caught my eye and took a look at them. They were not novelizations, but original stories. I bought a pile of them that were written by Rob MacGregor.

Indiana Jones and the Peril at Delphi is the first of MacGregor's books. The bulk of the story takes place in 1922, but flashes back two years briefly for some antics at his college graduation.

MacGregor's series follows graduate student Jones on an adventure that takes him from the dawn of the jazz age in Paris, to the ruins of Greece, and into an adventure and romance or two. As the title states, Indy ends up in Delphi where famous oracles in the ancient past would enter the caves, breathe in mystical vapors and emerge having received prophetic visions.

Indy has been hired (possibly just seduced) into following professor Dorian Belecamus to Greece and into a political, ethical, and potentially fatal web of deceit and betrayal.

Author MacGregor writes a great tale that despite Indy being college age, really feels like an Indiana Jones story, not a Young Indy story. He weaves in a few character building bits and by the end of the tale,  Grad Student Henry Jones, Jr is one step closer to being the Indy that we know and love.

I highly recommend Indiana Jones and the Peril at Delphi. It also features a great cover by Drew Struzan, the fantastic movie poster artist, that did the Raiders One-Sheet and so many more. His cover contributes considerably to setting the tone that this is Indiana Jones. I give the book 8.5 out of 10.

Pulp of the Week - Green Lama: Scions

The Green Lama: Scions  by Adam Lance Garcia

Adam Garcia's third Green Lama tale is a terrific addition to the saga. Scions (and planned future books) are published by Moonstone Books and feature the mysterious Green Lama facing off against a bizarre, monsterous, foe.

The story begins with the crash of a passenger ship into Liberty Island. All on board are dead, save one. Dead long before the crash at their own hands. A bloodbath of unspeakable horror. A portent of Lovecraftian delights to follow in this and other adventures.

The Green Lama is joined in this adventure by Jean Farrell, Lt. Caraway, Ken Clayton, and Gary and Evangl Stewart-Brown all get involved, Jethro Dumont puts in an appearance or two as does reporter Betty Dale (from the Secret Agent X stories). She also refers to fellow reporter Din from the Planet (she is the reporter in the Foster Fade stories) and to the Spider. Adam seems to be having a ball with the references and I found it fun, too.

For those interested in such things, there is a handy timeline in the back of the book that shows where Scions fits into the Lamaverse. One of the nice things about the Green Lama saga is that were only around a dozen original stories published in the pulps of the 1930s (unlike the hundreds of Shadow and Doc Savage stories which gives Garcia much less existing canon a lot of space to work in.

I will close by saying that Adam Garcia has another fun pulp tale and really gets the Green Lama and his supporting cast. I eagerly await future volumes. Enjoy this little excerpt of reporter Betty Dale speaking to Dumont's manservant, Tsarong:

    "When are you expecting Dumont back?"
    "I couldn't say Miss Dale, I am not his keeper."
    "Guess we're just gonna have to wait, then." She dropped down into Jethro's desk chair. She waved at the rows and rows of books lining the walls. "Does he read all those?"
    "Not all at once, and usually one page at a time."
    "Now that's interesting," she said, ignoring Tsarong's quip. "By every account, our friend Dumont is little more than an immature womanizer who won't crack open anything that doesn't have two legs and here he is with more books than the Library of Alexandria."

I give "The Green Lama: Scions" a 9 out of 10 and the cover is an awesome painting of Adam by Doug Klauba.

You can buy Scions in print here
 ebook here
4 wheels here



   

Pulp of the week - Wonderstruck

The beautiful Wonderstruck is written and illustrated by Brian Selznick in the same style as his brilliant The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Wonder Struck ties together museums, silent films, wolves, loneliness, and dioramas with charm, grace and heart.

The tales follows two stories - one in the 1920's and one that is contemporary. In the modern story a boy from Michigan travels to New York searching for the secrets of his past and his identity. He soon finds that a Wolf Diorama in the New York Natural History Museum holds to the key to his identity.

In the past, the daughter of a flapper is struggling with similar issues and soon the two stories seems locked on a collision course.

The prose is lovely and the story touching. The art is, like in Hugo, sublime. It is the intersection of the two and the placement of the art pages with the text that makes Selznick's work so wonderfully compelling. At times the tension is so tight that you blast through the art and soak in the images eager to see what that next page turn will bring. The control Selznick has with the pacing, by controlling the reader with the art when needed and the text to slow down, to add detail, is brilliant.

Selznick seems to pick topics that I love (natural history museums and the early days of cinema) so I am sure that adds to my joy, but I think it would be the rare reader that would not be charmed by Wonder Struck.

I'll give Wonder Struck a 9 out of 10. This is another brilliant book.

Pulp of the Week - Dark Light

Dark Light by Ken MacLeod

Engines of Light Series - Book 2

Ken MacLeod writes semi-political, high concept, deep SF. In other words, his novels are rich in characters, full of deep, cosmic ideas, and simmering with political situations that have no easy answers.

In Dark Light, published in 2002, The Cairns family that we met in Cosmonaut Keep has achieved a first for humans -- they built a starship. What would they do with an interstellar ship? Pay visit to a god and throw the planet of Croatan into chaos and revolution.

Besides a local human population that seems to be living in 1970s technology (notwithstanding the starship traffic), Croatan is also home to an indigenous population of people that live in a mountain valley near the port city. The port city dwellers are contending with pollution and labor unions and a semi-corrupt government. All their factions are living an unsteady, unwritten truce between themselves and the population living in the wilds.

Rather than relay the intricate plot, I will highlight a few of the thoughts and concepts the brilliant book brings to mind. The native people think of gender in two ways - the equipment between one's legs and the activity, demeanor, and dress of a person. But in their society, the latter is the dominant determining factor. The Cairn ship, Bright Star, causes revolutionary changes merely because of it's existance. It is the first non-saur starship. The immortal Cosmonauts are handled really well, drifting in and out of others people's lives, never aging, but watching others age. They are ideal star travellers. MacLeod also writes the characters astoundingly well.

This is a great science fiction book in all regards and I highly recommend it. I'll give it a 9 out of 10. The covers for this series are by Stephen Martiniere and are spectacular. The last of the series, Engine City, has my favorite of the three.

Comic-Con 2012 - Creator Spotlight - Triumph by Greg Broadmore

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Triumph: Unnecessarily Violent Tales of Science Adventure for the Simple and Unfortunate 

by Greg Broadmore

Triumph, as I shall call it, is the third steampunk book by Weta designer Greg Broadmore. This book contains two comic book stories with 6 pages of adverts for rayguns and rockets in between. The book is a lavish production with huge 8.5 by 12 inch pages of thick paper (nearly cardstock) wrapped in hardcovers. Broadmore's style is bright and bold, with plenty of jokes, one-liners and irony in the dialog.

The stories feature the pompous British adventurer, Lord Cockswain, sporter of bushy muttonchop sideburns, wearer of jhodpers, and lacking both tact and patience with his trigger-finger. Much of the humor and charm of Cockswain is the utter lack of consequences for his often horrific actions as hinted at in the subtitle of the book.

The lavish production values push up the price of the book, but it also pushes it into being an art piece. The stories follow the pompous Lord Cockswain as he rockets from place to place spreading British rule and punishing the local inhabitants with the fallout of his aforementioned trigger finger.

In the first story, "Into the Lair of the Space Wankers," Cockswain finds himself marooned on the planet that makes the solar system's most popular fizzy drink and inadvertently uncovers the secrets of Kuiper Kola. And then causes mass havoc.

The second story follows a psychiatrist following Cockswain on a hunting trip where the shrink is trying to get the adventurer to open up about his emotions. It doesn't end well for said psychiatrist, I must say.

The book does end well for the readers, however. It is a joy to behold and there is much fun in rooting out new humorous touches and background gags with each rereading. And there are Moon Maidens, fake movie one-sheets, beer ads, and did I mention Moon Maidens?

It also doesn't hurt that Broadmore is a terrific chap that patiently sketched and autographed each book for the eager fans.

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Zeppelin Reviewed

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Pulp reviewer and author Ron Fortier has just posted a review on his Pulp Fiction Reviews blog of  Uchronic Tales: The Zeppelin. Here are a few of the nice things he had to say:

"Miller’s writing is pulp-perfect and the action nonstop from beginning to end. Tyler is a great, stalwart champion and the young, lovely scientist a spunky spitfire capable of holding her own when the action kicks into high gear."

Having relished this great little book, this reviewer is looking forward to digging into the second titled, “The Horn.”  If it is as good as, “The Zeppelin,” we pulp fans have much to celebrate."

You can find The Zeppelin and the Horn at the links to the right. They are available in print at Amazon, and on Nook, Kindle, and Smashwords.

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Pulp of the Week - Doc Savage 29

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July, 1935 - Quest of Qui

The opening of Quest of Qui is a classic.  A Viking Longship drifts lifelessly alongside an eighty-foot yacht. The passengers and crew of the wealthy ship come out to have a look. Then, startlingly, Vikings pour out of the Longship's hold and swarm the yacht, forcing everyone aboard to trade ships. The yacht cruised to parts unknown and the Longship, after much struggle, arrives at a harbor on the tip of Long Island.

That same night, William Harper Littlejohn was at the movies and saw footage of the ship in a newsreel. His expert eye gave him little doubt that the ship was authentic. He left a message on Doc Savage's answering machine and headed to Long Island in the morning.

Thus begins the 28th supersaga, a story of ice, snow, near freezing and falling in ice crevasses. Oh, and lost civilizations, but you probably already figured that out.

Quest of Qui is more prime goodness from Street and Smith. It was great to see Johnny get the opening scene, using all his archaeological knowledge and to be recognized while he is examining the Longship.

From the scene where Johnny is at the movies - "William Harper Littlejohn was a very erudite gentleman, but he occasionally attended the cinema for relaxation." - we can see that movies then were kind of like television is now. It has the perception of being for the masses, whereas in fact, almost everyone watches TV.

The Hidalgo Trading Company is firebombed, destroying all of Doc's planes.

There is also a rare scene where there is a bit of racism sneaking into the text. Doc asks Ham if he has cold weather clothes. "Brand new," Ham admitted. "Made by the best fur house in the city. No crude Eskimo work on them."

The story also mentions a passenger "Tri-motor biplane." I hadn't heard of such things, but here you go… Well a model of one anyway...

Quest of Qui also features the expression, "Nerts to you!" meaning "you get nothing," or "up yours."

Doc also does one of the most amazing things he has ever done in one of these stories. He shoots the wiring off a plane engine that is circling high overhead. He wanted to bring it down, but at the same time be able to fix the motor and use the plane. That is good shooting!

I'll give Quest of Qui an 8 out of 10. It has some great stuff, but there is way too much floundering in arctic snow. It gets repetitive. And Johnny is wearing just a jacket with blankets wrapped around his feet. While people get cold, there are no repercussions for not being well enough equipped. 

The pulp cover by Walter Baumhofer is a head shot of Doc, which may have been created for other purposes and reused here. The pulp interior illustrations are by Paul Orban. 

 

The Bantam paperback cover is by James Bama and is one of the great Doc covers. There was also a Golden Press edition, which has a beautifully composed cover by Ben Otero.

Once again, a big thanks to Chris Kalb's 86th Floor website for the interior illos...

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Pulp of the Week - Mockingjay

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Pulp of the Week - Mockingjay

by Suzanne Collins

The third book in the Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay, is a mixture of sweet and surprising, thrilling and frustrating. All in all, it is a solid final chapter to her terrific dystopian science fiction series. Once again, the YA section of the book business comes through and is doing some of the best storytelling.

If you have not read these books, stop here. There be SPOILERS AHEAD.

 

Mockingjay follows Katniss Everdeen into the underground world of District 13 and into the Capitol itself. She embraces her destiny and takes on the iconic role of the Mockingjay, that avatar of hope for the people of Panem. She trains as a warrior with Gale and goes into battle (mostly for the propaganda cameras) and takes the battle to the Capital.

She gets aid from people in the capitol and the freedom movement has spread there. A lonely shopkeeper hides them for a time and I can't help but visualize her as Eartha Kitt. A lovely character.

I feel that while Collins' writing is strong, like many third acts, it all sort of feels like a slog to the final showdown between her and the President Snow. But then the book finds some new life and I found their encounter both somewhat baffling, and yet somehow satisfying. The book ends in a somber tone, but after what Katniss has been through, I guess it is appropriate. She is changed forever and war is Hell.

I read the family's hardcover of Mockingjay and will give it an 8 out of 10. It really is a different kind of book than the others. Once again, the cover art is by Tim O'Brien and the cover design is by Elizabeth B. Parisi.

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Pulp of the Week - Embedded by Dan Abnett

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Dan Abnett is most famous for his novels set in Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000 universe, but here he sets forth with a science fiction original, and a good one at that. This is the first novel by Abnett that I have read, but I am looking forward to reading more.

Embedded follows reporter Lex Falk on frontier world Eighty-Six, a world rich in minerals and natural resources and devoid of an intelligent species. There are some thematic ties to Fuzzy Nation, but not an intelligent native species one. Corporate greed, political machinations, and the plundering of natural resources are the common ground.

There is conflict on Eighty-Six and things escalate while Falk is on a drive along with some ground troops that turns out to be far more eventful than the military had planned.

Falk does some digging and feels that he is on the cusp of a story, a big story. In order to get closer to that story he agrees to be part of an experimental program where his consciousness is embedded into the mind of a volunteer grunt. Falk can see and hear everything the soldier can.

The soldier is shipped out to the frontier and all hell breaks loose. At this point there are a few nice twists and Falk finds himself in deep shit and the scientists can't extract him. He is along for the battle and totally out of his element.

I liked many things in Abnett's book. Falk is a great character. The world is interesting and believable. He writes the combat extremely well and his scenes and characters are compelling. However, in the end I was a bit underwhelmed by the resolution of Falk's dilemma and of the BIG REVEAL. I would have liked another 30 pages following that reveal, but no. Book over. I'm not sure if Abnett is saving it for a sequel, or if he just chose to not say more.

 

I give Embedded a 7.5 out of 10.  The cover is by Larry Rostant.

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Hugo Awards 2011 - Novel Nominee - Cryoburn

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Nominated for Best Novel:

Cryoburn

by Lois McMaster Bujold

Cover Art by David Seeley

Cryoburn is the 15th science fiction novel in the Miles Vorkosigan series. In this novel Miles visits the sparsely populated world of Kibou-daini for a conference. Kibou is dominated by the cryocorps that dominate the political and economic landscape. It is common for people that are chronically ill or reaching the age of body degradation to cryogenically freeze themselves until treatments or cures are devised. There are upwards of a million and a half people on ice in the cryocorp underground vaults.

After escaping an attack, Miles meets young Jin, a runaway that lives on the roof of an abandoned building. Jin keeps Miles alive overnight until the drugs wear off.

A series of events finds Miles fighting off the cryocorps and for the rights of the frozen dead. There are political and ethical questions and daring rescues. Jin and Miles' head strong-arm, Roic are great supporting characters.

Cryoburn is a thrilling SF adventure novel set in an interesting world. I enjoyed it and would be interested in reading other novels by Bujold. I have not read any other books in the Vorkosigan saga, so perhaps that has something to do with my lukewarm reception to the book.

In terms of my Hugo voting, The Dervish House is still my choice.

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Hugo Awards 2011 - Novel Nominee - The Dervish House

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Nominated for Best Novel:

The Dervish House

by Ian McDonald

Art by Stephan Martiniere

The Dervish House is a spectacularly well written novel set in 2027 Istanbul, Turkey. Numerous characters are centered around the ancient Adem Dede Square. The occupants of a old dervish house and the shops on the square are woven into a tale that starts with a bang — a terrorist attack on a train.

Necdet is on the train and sees the woman's head explode. He staggers home, forever changed.

A boy, Can Durukan, hears the explosion and sends his toy remote controlled robot out to see what is going on. He finds or than he bargained for.

An antiquities dealer, Ayse Sarioglu, is on the trail of a fabulous artifact, an object so odd and curious that I had never heard of it before, and now that I have, I'm a little creeped out.

Ayse's husband, Adnan, is a commodities trader with the deal of his life coming up.

The author, Ian MacDonald, has come up with such a new (to me, at least) SF idea for the technological leap in this story, that I will leave it for readers to discover for themselves. It is very cool. The world created in the novel is believable and perhaps inevitable. I was reminded a bit of Paolo Bacigalupi's Windup Girl, due mostly to the unusual and similar setting — old world meets high tech. The cities each have their own unique feel.

While I ended up loving the book, I'll admit had a hard time getting into it. The first hundred pages seemed to take forever to read, with numerous unusual character and place names, some of them similar, to untangle and sort out. There were also pages of history (both regional and personal) to fight through.

The middle hundred pages saw the characters and story taking over and I started to enjoy where MacDonald was going. The boy, Can, is the stand out character for me.

The final hundred pages was a dervish of action, suspense, and a fitting and spectacular conclusion. I highly recommend this book and it is a strong contender for my vote in the Hugos.

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Pulp of the Week - The Hunger Games

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The Hunger Games
Written by Suzanne Collins
Cover art by Tim O'Brien
Cover Design by Elizabeth B. Parisi and Phil Falco

The Hunger Games may very well be the best selling science fiction book (with over 2.5 million copies in print) in a very long time. A movie is on the way starring Jennifer Lawrence (Oscar nominee for Winter's Bone) and Josh Hutcherson.

The premise of the novel is not groundbreaking, but it is a solid SF idea. In the future the USA has collapsed after an ecopocalypse (trademark pending), leaving the nation of Panem with 12 states and the capital located in the Rockies.

Panem is not a democracy. The blue collar class has been expanded and oppressed. Katness Everdeen is the main character and narrator of the novel. She lives in the Appalacian District 12 of Panem. They are mainly coal miners and Katness and her friend Gale supplement their resources by gathering and hunting in a nearby forbidden woods. This aspect reminded me of Robin Hood hunting in Sherwood where hunting is forbidden by the king.

Every year Panem chooses 2 "Tributes" (one boy and one girl) aged 12 to 18 from each District to compete in the annual "Hunger Games", a televised bloodsport held in a vast outdoor arena that can have only one winner.

When Katniss' frail sister Prim is chosen, Katniss finds herself volunteering to be the Tribute in her place. The boy tribute is an acquaintance named Peeta. I'm not sure if that is a reference to the animal rights group PETA or not.

The Tributes are gathered in the Capitol, given training and set out in the arena to fight. The bulk of the novel takes place there, in the arena, with the 24 Tributes. Each evening, the Tributes that died that day have their images projected on the clouds so that the survivors know who is left.

While deathsports are not new to science fiction - I happen to be a fan of The 10th Victim series - ones that have children as combatants is a narrower field. Battle Royale in particular comes to mind and I wonder if Suzanne Collins had read that book, or seen the movie, or manga that came from it. The author says the idea for the Hunger Games came to her while switching between a competitive reality show and Iraq war footage.

Regardless of its genesis, the novel is a taut thriller that doesn't pull any punches and treats the premise seriously. Collins has written a gripping and emotional novel that is followed by two sequels - Catching Fire and Mockingjay complete the trilogy. You can visit Collins' website here. 

Katniss is a terrific character and there are hints that she is going to be a key character in upsetting the status quo of Panem society. The people are hungry and she is clearly destined for great things.

I give The Hunger Games an 8.5 out of 10. The score is probably lower than it should be, but until I see how the trilogy pans out, I hesitate to award a higher score for its potential. My son, on the other hand, loved it and gave it a 9.5 out of 5 on his blog, 6 out of 5.

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Pulp of the Week - Author Spotlight Interview - Diving Into the Wreck

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Diving Into the Wreck

Written by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Cover painting by Dave Seeley

I picked up this book after hearing an interview with Kristine Rusch on the Dragon Page: Cover to Cover podcast in January 2010. The author described the story as a throwback to good, solid SF. Space adventure fiction. Well, that is something I like, and after reading Diving Into the Wreck, I know she is absolutely right.

While the book echoes back to classic adventure stories like the Chanur series by CJ Cherryh, Arthur C. Clarke's A Fall of Moondust, and Lester Del Rey's Attack From Atlantis (the first SF book I read as a boy), it is also a completely modern piece of SF.

Rusch's tale follows a 'wreck diver' - adventurers that explore and salvage ancient starships. She is known only by her nickname, Boss. Through fluke circumstances she discovers a Dignity Vessel - a type of ship made long, long ago in Earth orbit and containing Stealth technology. In the intervening 5000 years that technology has been lost and the ship is impossibly far from Earth - no ship of that era was ever known to have ventured out that far - so how did it get there?

The secrets of Stealth tech are extremely valuable and eventually people find out what Boss is up to. A mysterious woman named Riya Trekov convinces Boss (with an epic pile of cash) to travel to the legendary Room of Lost Souls where Riya's father disappeared. This oddity in space has a place in Boss' past, too and she reluctantly agrees to go. After all, she already agreed to the mission and took the money.

What follows is a terrific adventure exploring the Dignity Ship, the bizarre Room of Lost Souls, as well as Boss' past and her relationship with her father.

The story is well written, the great characters are faced with surprisingly large personal stakes. The book is written in first person from Boss' perspective. It took me a while to realize that it was also written in present tense - my natural writing voice. Kristine Rusch's Boss has a strong and consistent voice that I really enjoyed.

Before I started reading, I noticed that portions of the book had previously been published "in different form" in Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. When I finished the first part and started the second, I was disappointed because it seemed that I was started on a separate novella with Boss. I flipped ahead and sure enough there was a third part. I was thinking that three novellas had been packaged as a book.

However, it soon became obvious that the parts were inexorably linked together and the book was indeed one story.

The characters are great and I thought Diving Into the Wreck was a terrific adventure and apparently Pyr Books did, too. I give Diving Into the Wreck and 8.5 out of 10.

The sequel is out now...

Kristine Rusch can be found online here and the artist Dave Seeley's site is here.

I took the opportunity to ask Kristine Kathryn Rusch a few questions about writing and Diving into the Wreck.

How would you describe the type of stories that inspired Diving Into the Wreck? Are there any particular authors that inspired your delving into the 'space opera' / star faring adventure genre?

I love space opera/space adventure.  I was a big Andre Norton fan as a kid, and as the editor of F&SF, I tried to buy space opera/space adventure whenever I could. The problem was that not many people were writing it.

The book is written in an interesting style. You have chosen first person present tense. What led to the decision to write the story this way?

Here’s some mystical writer talk.  My characters dictate how I tell a story.  And this one had to be first person present tense because Boss tries very hard to only live in the present.

I have used that style and received negative feedback on it. People (online reviewers) say that cyberpunk killed it, which I find ridiculous, but I am wondering if you have gotten a reaction to writing or publishing present tense stories as a author or editor.

Here’s what I think:  Conventional wisdom is hooey.  If the story demands present tense, write in present tense.  If it demands past tense, write in past.  Clearly the people who are complaining to you don’t read outside of the sf genre.  Mainstream novels (which some call “literary” novels, as if other novels aren’t literary) use present tense all the time. So do bestselling novelists, like Robert Crais, who switches from first to third person, present tense to past, within the same book.  If readers didn’t like that technique, then he wouldn’t be a bestselling writer.

Writers have to write their stories.  Readers will decide if the stories work. Writers who write according to criticism end up diluting their stories until the stories aren’t theirs any more.

But that’s just my opinion.  I’ve written that way my whole life, and it works for me. :-)

I may be wrong about this, but as far as I can tell, you never name the main character and the other characters only refer to her as, "Boss." What led to that choice?

Again, mystical writers talk. She never told me her name.  In fact, I just finished up the third book, Boneyards, and I was going to have a big reveal scene where you learned her name.  I came to the scene and couldn’t write it.  I may never know her name, and if I don’t know, the readers won’t know either.

So now we know that Kris is not holding back the name from us; Boss is holding it back from Kris.

After finishing the Room of Lost Souls why did you not submit the third part to Asimov's?

I don’t write in order for one thing, so the next thing I wrote was the opening section of City of Ruins (where Boss & crew go to Vaycehn).  Then I wrote another section of City. Then I wrote the end of Diving, and it doesn’t stand alone like the original novella and Room of Lost Souls. That opening section of City doesn’t stand alone either, but the next section did, and just appeared as Becoming One With The Ghosts in Asimov’s.  Then I wrote yet another novella as background, and that became Becalmed, also in Asimov’s.  Only so far, Becalmed is not part of any upcoming novel.

How different are the first two parts from the version that is in Asimov's?

Very different. They’re much more fleshed out, more setting, more background, more detail, and a bit more plot.

Well, as I mentioned in my note, I was going to ask if there was a sequel in the offing, but now I already know it is. Could you tell us about that and if the sequel was planned before Diving Into the Wreck was published?

Oh, yes. This is a very big world, and I have a lot of stories to tell.

Can you give a little tease about City of Ruins?

City of Ruins takes place five years after Diving.  City does stand alone, so readers can start there if they want.  (I’d still recommend starting with Diving, though.)  Boss & crew make a discovery on a planet called Wyr that changes everything in their universe—and I do mean everything.

Thanks you Kris, I appreciate the time an interview takes out of an author's day and I'm looking forward to City of Ruins and Boneyards. If my readers are headed to Amazon to buy these, please use the link at the top of the blog. 

I have been reading Kristine's husband Dean Wesley Smith's blog and their thoughts on writing and the state of publishing are fascinating and appreciated.

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