Science Fiction

An "Ice Jockey," in my book, is a spaceman who goes out into the Kuiper Belt, locates large, water-rich asteroids, and "jockeys" them on an orbit towards Mars. The protagonists, Bob and Holly, have a somewhat unconventional romantic relationship. But that's all in the story.

One way I had a lot of fun was in analyzing in detail exactly what kind of equipment would be required to mount a fusion engine to an asteroid and sending it to Mars.

The ship itself is fusion powered, and carries twelve fusion engines on its exterior (so it looks nothing like the beautiful ship the cover artist made for me). When one of the engines is used to mount on an asteroid, that unbalances the ship, so how can balance be restored? That provided a marvelous logical puzzle, and I spent hours with diagrams working out the details. This isn't belabored in the book, but there's enough there to engage readers who like puzzles.

There are bad guys, and conflict, but that's all in the story. But to me there is a third main protagonist, usually hostile, and that is space itself; specifically, zero gravity (or "free fall"). Most of the actual action takes place in zero gravity, where objects have no weight but still plenty of mass. Most science fiction readers will understand this intellectually, but I think the events and descriptions in the book support a gut-level understanding. I worked hard to get everything exactly right; how to live inside the ship, how to work outside.

I'll be the first to admit that plots are my weak point. (The book has a plot, okay? What more do you want?) My characters don't have any hidden traumas or deep secrets; in fact, I only write sensible, competent characters that make reasonable decisions. Why? Those are the kind of people I know and like, the kind of people in my own life. I may not be great at plots, but at least my characters don't do stupid things in order to keep the plot going.

The ship's pilot is an AI, but that's hardly science fiction any more.

Also, by the way, sorry about the subtitle, which I admit sucks.

Here's the plot. Scientists develop life extension, then government outlaws it. In order to keep using it, two billionaires build a starship, staff it with a hundred competent people, and fly to a distant planet. The natives realize how much of a long-term threat this is, and plan to destroy the human colony. In the end, peace is achieved.

Now you know the plot, so why bother reading the book? It's like the romance novels my wife reads (she shares the best ones with me): You know how it's going to end, the fun is in getting there.

The natives (who, by the way, look like human-sized geckos with an extra pair of arms) are not bad guys; they are gentle, peace loving people who really don't like the fact that they have to kill all the humans.

I really enjoyed crafting the aliens. Their biology, and in particular their means of reproduction, makes a possible to have a conflict-free society, in a way that humans can never achieve. Their planetary conditions determine the limits of their science. They are as intelligent as humans; they, not the humans, figure out how the two species can communicate with each other. (No miracle "universal translators" here.)

In Mirror Dance by Lois Bujold, one of the characters states that "All true wealth is biological." This describes the natives. The title of the book should really be All True Wealth, but I didn't want it confused with financial books.

A little girl is the real hero of the story, but nobody notices that (and less alert readers will probably also miss it).

A lot of the fun is in the human-native-human interactions. Let's face it--I love my characters. Even Gunnar, who was supposed to be a minor character but somehow managed to screw things up (he gets what he deserves.) I like intelligent, competent people, even if they're aliens. (Or goats. It turns out that goats are pretty amazing--who knew?)

Oh, and music is fundamental to the plot.

This is a sequel to All True Value. Sixty years after the events in that book, a second starship arrives, headed by a cult leader (Jacob) with the crew as his flock. Jacob refuses to treat the natives as other than animals, and fears losing control of his flock. (This was written before Trump came to power, so any parallels are coincidental.) Jacob comes into conflict with both the natives and the original colonists. As in the first book, there isn't a conventional happy ending--nobody wins completely--but is the best that might realistically occur.

Jacob is a Bad Guy. I don't find characters very convincing when they do bad things "because they're bad guys," but Jacob is a complete narcissist who has a sweet deal going, so he has a lot to lose.

The main characters are Helen, her brother Troy, and their companion Music Explainer. The central problem is to find a way to neutralize Jacob, but most of the story is about our heroes meeting and getting along with (or not) the cult members, some of whom have their faith in Jacob shattered by events. They are (almost) all good people.

This isn't Earth; problems have to be solved the way the natives solve problems, and Helen and Troy are deeply involved with them in doing so. The solution they find is in part uniquely human, in part uniquely native.

This book has a lot more action and a lot more plot than its predecessor.

This book isn't published yet, and may never be. As you can guess from the home-made cover, it's not exactly serious science fiction. The field needs more tall tales, and Pappy is here to fill in for Paul Bunyan. But scientifically, of course.

J.R. Papperlapapp ("Pappy" to his friends) is a spaceman prospector, always on the hunt for gold. Sometime he gets it, sometimes he doesn't, but he never keeps it for long.

I love that name. When I was hunting for the right name, I discovered that "papperlapapp" is German slang for "balderdash." And "Pappy" really fits my character. He is based on an old western actor, Gabby Hayes, whom probably no one nowadays has even heard of, and that's a pity. I am all but certain that Gabby Hayes is the inspiration for the character in Blazing Saddles, Gabby Johnson, who speaks in "authentic frontier gibberish." If you've seen the movie--well Pappy isn't usually that angry, but I don't know of a more similar character.

So far there are a couple of dozen stories. Did you know that on blue gas giant planets, it might rain diamonds? Pappy will be there. Or that gold is produced in colliding neutron stars? Pappy will be there. I like to take a standard science fiction trope and twist it until gold drips out, but the right ideas are difficult to come up with. So there's also the occasional gold-hoarding dragon, or a leprechaun who needs to get rid of a rainbow.

The biggest problem I see to making a book out of these (once I have enough) is the same problem that books of jokes have. No matter how funny the joke, after reading several in a row, they lose their appeal. Now, if a major science fiction magazine wanted to run a series, you have my email address!