Black Sails

My fascination with pirate adventures goes back to my first visit to Disneyland around 1971 and riding Pirates of the Caribbean within a few years of its opening. I remember the pirates and the pirate skeletons scaring me on that first visit. I grew up in Southern California and had several opportunities to return to Disneyland. Despite being scared that first time, I always made a point of riding Pirates of the Caribbean and I saw new things every time. I saw the humor, the violence, the hints of history. In short, I became fascinated with the real pirates of the so-called Golden Age of Piracy which ran from approximately 1650 until around 1740. This fascination would ultimately lead me to read Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic novel Treasure Island.

For the last few months, I’ve been working my way through the Starz television series Black Sails, which was billed as a prequel to Treasure Island. The series is that, but it’s also a lot more. The series imagines Captain Flint, Long John Silver, and Billy Bones from the novel as pirates with ties to Nassau who sailed alongside such real-life pirates as Charles Vane, Jack Rackham, Anne Bonney, Benjamin Hornigold and Edward Teach. As the series opens, Captain Flint, played by Toby Stephens, is on a quest to capture gold from a Spanish treasure galleon called the Urca de Lima. Billy Bones, played by Tom Hopper, is a member of his crew. John Silver, played by Luke Arnold, is an opportunist who happens to discover the Urca de Lima’s route.

This is all a fine setup for a high seas adventure, and there is plenty of high seas adventuring in the series, but the series doesn’t forget that Captain Flint needs a base of operations, so early on, we’re introduced to Nassau and the woman who runs the show there, Eleanor Guthrie, played by Hannah New. It’s through the interactions with Eleanor that we get to know the other famous pirates and soon they all have a hand in the adventures as well. As the series unfolds, we soon find that Nassau is more than a home base and a meeting point for our characters, its integrally tied to Flint’s motives and the reason he became a pirate in the first place.

Black Sails doesn’t try to portray pirates as fun or loveable characters out on a jolly lark. It shows us the types of crimes and atrocities they committed. It also shows us how far the colonial powers in the new world went to to end piracy. Of course, those colonial powers were authoritarian and didn’t abide people who attempted to lift themselves out of poor circumstances to a better station and didn’t abide people who refused to fit into socially defined molds. Of course, this was a society where people literally owned other people and kept them as slaves.

Of course, another truth about the so-called Golden Age of piracy is how little we actually know about these “famous” pirates. One theme of the series is that we never really learn Long John Silver’s history and he constantly reinvents his own narrative. The people around him also feed into his mythology. Captain Flint is also a persona built by a former British Navy captain who felt pushed into a course of action by circumstances. In a sense, the series is examination of the importance of story and its role in motivating others.

By nature, I’m a person who asks questions. It’s what led me to a career in the sciences. It’s also what led me to be a writer. I like to explore ideas and I don’t always accept that something is true just because someone in authority told me it was true. I expect an authority to be able to show me why something is true and to be accountable for their actions. I’m not someone who fits comfortably in a lot of the pre-defined social roles. It’s perhaps because of that I find pirate stories fascinating. Black Sails and other similar tales tell stories of those who question authority and live life by their own rules. While there’s a danger in glamorizing pirates, I’ve often found it important to ask what drove people to choose that life.

My Space Pirates’ Legacy series came out of that fascination for real life pirates and one of my goals is to present Ellison Firebrandt as a man who is driven to become a pirate by his life circumstances and the world he lives in and then look at how he finds his way onto a new life path. You can discover his story by reading the books at: http://davidleesummers.com/books.html#pirate_legacy

Con-Fusion

Phoenix Public Library is hosting Con-Fusion, a series of genre-themed mini-conventions at five library locations over five weeks. Each event will feature family-friendly activities and local authors, artists, artisans and performers. Themes include Adventure & Fantasy, Mystery & Horror, Space & Science Fiction, Romance & Poetry, and Westerns & Steampunk. I will be appearing a week from today at the May 20 event at the Ironwood Library in Chandler, Arizona. The Ironwood Library is located at 4333 E. Chandler Blvd, west of Interstate-10. The May 20 event focuses on the Weird and Wild West and will run from 10am until 4pm.

At the event, kids can learn about Native American art and use the same artistic techniques to make their own craft provided with partnership with the Heard Museum . Teens can make book page mobiles. Author panels will be held at 10:00, 1:00 and 3:00. Local author books will be available for purchase, and you may even be able to have the books signed by the authors hanging out in the “Author Lounge”. Local artists and artisans will have Western and Steampunk inspired merchandise for sale. Cosplay is encouraged, but because the event is being held at a public library, the organizers ask you to leave all prop weapons at home.

Among the speakers scheduled to appear are Jeff Mariotte, Bob Nelson, Marsheila Rockwell, Ronald C Tobin, Hal C F Astell, Dani Hoots, and Lori Hines.

I will be on two of the panels at the event. They are:

• 1:00pm – Mining the Past: How to properly punk the past. On the panel with me are Ronald Tobin, Hal Astell, and Clay Davis
• 3:00pm – Space, Steam & Spaghetti: A look at the takes on traditional “Western” tropes. On the panel with me are Dani Hoots, Hal Astell, Jeff Mariotte, and Lori Hines.

Although I won’t be vending at this event, Duncan Ritschof will be there with a selection of my books. Of course, I’ll be delighted to sign any of my books you purchase from Duncan. In particular, I know he’ll have my Wild West Clockwork Legion Steampunk series, which you can learn more about at: http://davidleesummers.com/books.html#clockwork_legion

Against the Day – Part 3

As Part 3 of Against the Day opens, we find the Chums of Chance aboard subdesertine frigate Saksaul under the command of Captain Toadflax. They’re searching for the lost city of Shambhala. The Chums learn that Iceland spar allows them to use the Sfiuncino Itinerary as a map. They can go inside the map where the distances are marked in the dimension of time. Along the way, they stop at the city of Nuevo Rialto, where they encounter sand fleas the size of camels. The chums also learn that the lost city of Shambhala may not be the main objective of the Saksaul. It’s possible, they’re after oil instead of adventure.

We then return to Colorado briefly where Merle Rideout misses his daughter Dally. He begins a journey to places east and develops a fascination for movies. In particular, he’s caught up in how they manipulate time through the use of light. Meanwhile Frank Traverse has returned to the United States and is looking for his girlfriend Estrella in Nochechita. When he gets there, he has the feeling she’s in town, but somehow can’t see her. The reason Frank had left the United States is that he killed Sloat Fresno to avenge his father. Sloat’s partner, Deuce, who has married Frank’s sister Lake, is afraid of meeting the ghost of Webb Traverse. This fear forces him to admit his part in Webb’s murder to his wife.

We jump from Colorado to London and return to the adventures of the True Worshipers of the Ineffable Tetractys – the TWIT – along with Yashmeen Halfcourt and Lew Basignight. Yashmeen has been obsessed with Riemann’s Zeta Function decides to go to Göttingen. Her professor Renfrew wants her to be on the lookout for a professor called Werfner.

From here we join the steamship Stupendica where Dally Rideout is crossing the Atlantic with her mother Erlys Zombini. Kit Traverse is also there. When he and Dally meet, they remember their time in Colorado and they begin flirting with each other. Their romance is doomed as a result of the bilocation of this section’s title. The Stupendica is also the Battleship Emperor Maximillian with its own destiny. Kit finds himself working below decks on the Emperor Maximillian. After several adventures, he finds his way to Belgium. As Kit tries to figure out how he’s going to get to Göttingen, he is pegged as a nihilist outlaw. He begins to see that Belgium is a pawn of international affairs just as his home state of Colorado is.

The Chums of Chance are now in Brussels where handyman Miles Blundell encounters one of the Trespassers, who are voyagers through time. It’s pointed out that any study of time is ultimately a study of mortality. The Trespassers don’t voyage through time because of any technical knowhow. Rather they became time travelers when time was ripped open. The Chums hope the Trespassers might be able to help them find eternal youth, but Miles points out that the Trespassers don’t have that power.

Meanwhile, Kit Traverse falls in with a group of arms dealers while also falling in love with a woman named Umeki Tsurigane from Japan. The arms dealers realize the Chums’ airship, the Inconvenience is rarely seen. Only the Chums are seen and it seems to be a property of light. Umeki is working on using light as a weapon, splitting it into rays that are ordinary and extraordinary. Kit dreams about the weapon’s power, then tells Umeki about it. Ultimately, she leaves him to go to Japan.

Dally, aboard the Stupendica, arrived in Europe as expected and she travels with the Zombini family of performers across Europe. Eventually, she decides she must make her own way and asks to stay in Venice. Dally becomes associated with Hunter Penfallow, who we last saw associated with the Vormance Expedition in the last part. He tells her a story from the Gospel of Thomas that leads her to realize that one might find order when one expected chaos.

Back in London, private investigator Lew Basnight is put on the trail of an antique dealer named Lamont Replevin who supposedly has a map of the lost city of Shambhala. Lew is able to photograph it. Now, Kit Traverse and Yashmeen Halfcourt have converged in Göttingen. Kit’s funds from the millionaire Scarsdale Vibe are cut off, but Kit also realizes that Yashmeen has an incredible power. She can step outside of time itself. Yashmeen offers to help Kit find employment with TWIT. She also reveals that her father might be another person seeking the lost city of Shambhala. Kit meets with Yashmeen’s father and learns: “As for what lies beneath those sands, you’ve got your choice – either Shambhala, as close to the Heavenly City as Earth has known, or Baku and Johannesburg all over again, unexplored reserves of gold, oil, Plutonian wealth, and the prospect of creating yet another subhuman class of workers to extract it.”

In the United States, we follow Frank Traverse as he’s hired to run arms into Mexico. Frank begins to have dreams about his father Webb. At the same time, Frank’s brother Reef has been working as a dynamiter in Europe. He now knows that the millionaire Scarsdale Vibe is connected to his father’s murder and Reef feels compelled to hunt down Vibe. Reef ends up connecting with his brother Kit along with Yashmeen. Kit wants to go to Venice on Scarsdale Vibe’s trail. Kit and Reef attend a séance where the “speak” with their father, Webb, who tries to dissuade them from chasing down Scarsdale Vibe.

This part of the novel wraps up with Lew Basnight in London. He thinks he runs into Professor Renfrew, but it turns out it’s Professor Werfner. After consulting with his friends Nigel and Neville, Lew realizes Renfrew and Werfner are the same person, somehow separated through bilocation.

Keeping track of all these plot threads is definitely a challenge, but it helps to focus on the thematic threads. The Traverse brothers are seeking justice for their father, but justice may find itself tied to international politics. There’s the quest for Shambhala, which might be a quest through time as much as through space. There’s also the very notion of “bilocation.” People and places that may be two things at once, each with different fates. As Dally discovered in Venice, the world appears to be in chaos, but we may find order yet. In part 4, we’ll literally turn “Against the Day.”

As I’ve noted before, I see echoes of Pynchon’s steampunk experiment in my own writing. I see the exploration of the Wild West. I see the worldwide saga and I appreciate Pynchon’s fascination with math and science. To learn more about my steampunk saga, visit: http://davidleesummers.com/books.html#clockwork_legion

Flaming Thunderbolts! Terrahawks, Volume Two!

My commutes to Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona from my home in New Mexico give me great opportunities to listen to podcasts, audio dramas, and audiobooks. Recently, I listened to the second volume of Big Finish’s audio revival of Terrahawks, one of the puppet shows helmed by the the late Gerry Anderson. Like many of Anderson’s shows, Terrahawks told the story of the Earth threatened by an alien menace. In this case the alien menace comes in the form of a group of alien androids under the command of the witch-like Zelda. She has a “family” of androids including her son, Yung-star, her sister Cy-star, and Cy-star’s sometimes-son/sometimes-daughter, It-star. The titular Terrahawks were the organization that stood in the aliens’ way. They’re under the command of Tiger Ninestein and his first officer Mary Falconer. Other members of the team are Hawkeye and pop-star Kate Kestrel. The Terrahawks are ably assisted by an army of spherical robots known as Zeroids, whose personality drive Ninestein crazy. Like many of Gerry Anderson’s TV series, the show was performed with puppets, although the Terrahawks and their opponents were “glove” puppets rather than the more familiar marionettes of other shows. What’s more, while most of Gerry Anderson’s puppet shows were made for an audience of children, most were played “straight” and told serious adventure stories. Terrahawks took a more tongue-in-cheek approach to the material. The TV series ran for three seasons from 1983 to 1986.

The audio revivals were produced between 2015 and 2017 by Gerry Anderson’s son, Jamie Anderson. Freed from the constraint of visuals, he both ramps up the speculative elements and the humor, and overall, it works well. Volume 2 gives us eight new episodes of Terrahawks. The set opens with “Sale of the Galaxy” in which both Zelda and Ninestein are invited to appear on a deadly game show. The host is played by famous British host Nicholas Parsons, who was also the real-life husband of Denise Bryer, the actress who gave voice to Zelda and Mary Falconer. Jeremy Hitchens reprises his role as Ninestein from the TV series, including his signature exclamation, “Flaming Thunderbolts!” The second episode, penned by Chris Dale, is “The Trouble with Toy Boys” and it imagines a creepy ventriloquist dummy named Timmy who bears no small resemblance to one of Gerry Anderson’s original puppet stars, Torchy the Battery Boy. In “Return to Sender” we get a romance story for Sergeant Major Zero of the Zeroids as the robots contend with a NASA probe that has returned to Earth and isn’t all it seems to be. “Renta-Hawks” parodies perhaps the most famous Anderson puppet show by imagining the Terrahawks in competition with a team of handsome young men in rescue vehicles. Unlike the young men of the Thunderbirds, this global rescue organization charges for its services and the Earth government would like the Terrahawks to follow suit.

In the second half of the series, Zelda has gone missing and the Terrahawks are under the gun to cut their budget. When a probe lands deep in the heart of Texas, Mary and Kate are sent on a quest to deal with it. In “Lights, Camera, Disaster” by David Hirsch, It-Star hatches a plot to make the androids look good. He’ll write a movie with the androids as the heroes fighting the villainous Terrahawks. It all looks like ti might work until the producers get their hands on the script and start making changes! In “Count Anaconda’s Magnificent Orbiting Circus” Tiger and Mary are invited to a show only to find this is a circus you would rather run away from.

The set finishes with an epic hour-long finale, which is arguably the best episode of the set, “My Enemy’s Enemy” by Jamie Anderson. The Terrahawks learn Zelda’s location and learn that both Earth and Zelda’s family are under threat from a common enemy, Prince Zegar of Guk, who’s descended from Zelda’s creator. During the course of the story, we learn the backstory of Zelda, Cy-star, and Yung-star. After that, we’re treated to an epic space battle that will change the Terrahawks going forward.

Volume 1 of Terrahawks on audio felt like a continuation of the series. Volume 2 gave us more of a story arc. If you enjoy light-hearted science fiction where you care enough about the characters to feel invested in them, it’s well worth checking out the Terrahawks audio series. I look forward to seeing what they do with the third and final volume. You can find the second volume of Terrahawks for download at: https://shop.gerryanderson.com/collections/terrahawks/products/terrahawks-audio-drama-series-volume-two-download

Also, just a friendly reminder that May 4 is the last day you can get the Sci-Fi Exploration Storybundle with my novel Firebrandt’s Legacy along with nine other great books. Get all the details at: https://www.storybundle.com/exploration

El Paso Comic Con 2023

El Paso Comic Con is a community-based pop culture experience for all that reflects today’s fandom. At El Paso Comic Con you’ll get to indulge in all your favorite fantasy, sci-fi, and other pop culture genres, such as comics, games, film, television, and more! You’ll also get to attend panels and workshops hosted by creative pros as well as get autographs and photo ops with your favorite creators and celebrities.

The 2023 El Paso Comic Con dates are April 22-24. It will occur at the El Paso Convention Center in downtown El Paso, Texas. The hours of operation are Friday 5-9pm, Saturday 10am-7pm, and Sunday 10am-5pm. You can get more information about the event at: https://elpasocomiccon.com/

Among the guests at this year’s El Paso Comic Con are Michael Rooker, John Barrowman, Sam Jones, and Luci Christian.

Michael Rooker made his film debut, playing the title role in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. He has also starred in some of the most iconic films, such as Mississippi Burning, Sea of Love, JFK, Tombstone and Jumper to name a few. In August 2014, Rooker starred in one of the most memorable franchises in the Marvel Universe, Guardians of the Galaxy, as Yondu, the blue-skinned renegade space pirate and surrogate father to Peter Quill.

John Barowman is best known for his portrayal of Captain Jack Harkness in the sci-fi hits Doctor Who and Torchwood, and Malcolm Merlyn in the TV shows: Arrow, Legends of Tomorrow and Flash.

Sam Jones has over 70 films and numerous television shows to his credit. He is best known for his roles in Flash Gordon, The Spirit, The Highwayman, SG-1’s The Bounty Hunter and for his memorable comedic performances in Ted and Ted 2.

Luci Christian is one of the most prolific anime voice actors in North America, voicing fan favorites Ochaco Uraraka in My Hero Academia, Nami in One Piece, and Honey in Ouran High School Host Club. I know her work from Gatchaman and Bodacious Space Pirates among other shows.

I will be presenting a panel at 5pm on Saturday of the convention called How science inspires my writing. In the panel, I’ll discuss how my work in astronomy influences me and how it helps me be a better and more productive writer. My tips can help anyone juggling a love of art with a day job.

When I’m not on my panel or checking out events with the other guests, you’ll find me at booth A15 in the Vendor Hall, as noted in the map above. I hope all of you in the El Paso and Las Cruces area are able to make it to El Paso Comic Con!

The Sci-Fi Exploration StoryBundle

I’m proud to announce that my novel Firebrandt’s Legacy has been selected for the The Sci-Fi Exploration Bundle curated by Adam Gaffen. In the novel, Ellison Firebrandt and his crew of space pirates visit worlds discovered by NASA’s Kepler mission, learn the fate of lost Earth colonies and even explore a wrecked starship which has crashed into an asteroid in our solar system. All the while, they’re learning the capabilities of a new drive that … uh … came into their possession. With that, I’m going to turn the post over to Adam, who will tell you how you can obtain a pirate’s treasure chest worth of great science fiction novels for one low price. But don’t wait, this bundle will only be available until May 4.

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Exploration.

It’s hardwired into humanity’s genes.

As far back into history you want to go, there have always been people who want to push the boundaries of what we know. Whether that was looking to the stars and wondering where those twinkling lights came from, or what was across that intimidating-looking ocean, or what the purpose of all that red stuff inside the human body, the questions never seemed to end.

That spirit of exploration has never stopped. It’s alive today, as we push boundaries in space, on the planet, and into the dreams of cyberspace.

We’ve gathered ten notable authors to give you their takes on where humanity’s endless curiosity might take us.

Come with us as our voyage of exploration begins!

“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were, but without it we go nowhere.” – Carl Sagan

Here’s a FEW of the books in this bundle!

OVER THE MOON

Ding Dong, the Technowitch is dead.

As an illegal clone of the murdered galactic princess, Dora’s face would get her killed the minute she steps off her dull farming moon. She spends her days tinkering with gadgets and gears, with Tau, her kitchen-timer-bot, for company. But when forces close in and threaten her family, her escape attempt lands her deep in the Outer Zone — and on top of the Technowitch of Night, crushing her in the process.

Now a fugitive in two solar systems, Dora’s only chance of survival is to find her way to the mysterious Technomage on his Emerald moon. In a place where science has advanced to be indistinguishable from magic, she must accept the help of an unlikely trio: a cryogenically preserved girl with no memory, an obsolete theme park droid, and a bioengineered beast with a penchant for the dramatic.

As Dora realizes there’s more to the princess’s death than what the universe has been told, she must choose — save her family, or risk everything to right a centuries-old wrong.

INTREPID LEGACY

Right after she finishes her BLT, disgraced Major Tanis Richards is off to save the day one more time.

Tanis is looking forward to a long journey in stasis before arriving at the newly terraformed world of New Eden. New Life. New Start. Getting a berth on the Intrepid is her ticket out of the Sol System.

But nothing proves easy for Major Tanis Richards. Nothing is at it seems. What should be a simple trip is fraught with danger and filled with adventure. An array of forces seek to stop the Intrepid—no matter the cost, or lives lost. From competing corporations, to stellar eco-terrorists, no one wants the Intrepid to arrive at New Eden.

Through their journey, the crew of the Intrepid will face rival stellar governments, civil war, and the most wanted serial killer known to the galaxy. Pivoting their role from colonists to saviors.

Perhaps it’s because the Intrepid carries the most valuable secret known to humanity. Or maybe it’s just Tanis’s luck.

ALTERNITECH

“Alternitech” is a company that sends prospectors into alternate but similar timelines where tiny differences yield significant changes: a world where the Beatles never broke up, or where Lee Harvey Oswald wasn’t gunned down after the Kennedy assassination, where an accidental medical breakthrough offers the cure to a certain disease, where a struggling author really did write the great American novel, or where a freak accident reveals the existence of a serial killer. Alternitech finds those differences—and profits from them.

THE GHOSTS OF TANTOR

They think they’re ready for this mission. They’re wrong.

The Terran Federation is finally at peace and ready to begin serious exploration. The TFS Pike is the newest ship in the Fleet, purpose-built for deep space missions. Four kilometers long, with a crew of four thousand, she’s well-equipped for the years ahead. If only the crew was as prepared.

Ensign Nicole Crozier, the former Premier of the Luna Free State, has left politics behind to pursue a career in the Fleet. But her stint as the Artemis Minister of War has landed her in Tactical instead of Science, her passion, and she’s not happy about it.

Everything changes when Nicole discovers a rogue planet, and she’s given command of the landing party. On the surface, an ancient alien artifact emerges from the ice. As Nicole and her team explore the interior, the planet and her team vanish. The crew of the Pike must use all the tricks and tools available to get their missing people back.

When they finally do, Nicole brings aboard a discovery which could change the course of history.

Or end it.

If you’re a fan of Star Trek: Voyager, Battlestar Galactica 2003, Interstellar, or 2001: A Space Odyssey, then this is for you.

All these books – and six more! – available for you in the Exploration StoryBundle.

But don’t delay! This bundle has places to be, and once it leaves orbit, it’s gone for good!

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For StoryBundle, you decide what price you want to pay. For $5 (or more, if you’re feeling generous), you’ll get the basic bundle of four books in .epub format—WORLDWIDE.

• Over the Moon by S.E. Anderson
• Intrepid Legacy – The Extended Trilogy by M. D. Cooper
• The Apprentice Storyteller by Astrid V.J.
• Alpha Centauri: Vol. 1 – First Landing by Alastair Mayer

If you pay at least the bonus price of just $20, you get all four of the regular books, plus six more books for a total of 10!

• Firebrandt’s Legacy by David Lee Summers
• The Meaning Wars by Michelle Patricia Browne
• Alternitech by Kevin J. Anderson
• The Oberon Cycle – Complete Box Set by J. Scott Coatsworth
• Mindstorm by Becca Lee Gardner
• The Ghosts of Tantor by Adam Gaffen

This bundle is available only for a limited time via http://www.storybundle.com. It allows easy reading on computers, smartphones, and tablets as well as Kindle and other ereaders via file transfer, email, and other methods. You get a DRM-free .epub for all books!

It’s also super easy to give the gift of reading with StoryBundle, thanks to our gift cards – which allow you to send someone a code that they can redeem for any future StoryBundle bundle – and timed delivery, which allows you to control exactly when your recipient will get the gift of StoryBundle.

Why StoryBundle? Here are just a few benefits StoryBundle provides.

• Get quality reads: We’ve chosen works from excellent authors to bundle together in one convenient package.
• Pay what you want (minimum $5): You decide how much these fantastic books are worth. If you can only spare a little, that’s fine! You’ll still get access to a batch of exceptional titles.
• Support authors who support DRM-free books: StoryBundle is a platform for authors to get exposure for their works, both for the titles featured in the bundle and for the rest of their catalog. Supporting authors who let you read their books on any device you want—restriction free—will show everyone there’s nothing wrong with ditching DRM.
• Give to worthy causes: Bundle buyers have a chance to donate a portion of their proceeds to Mighty Writers!
• Receive extra books: If you beat the bonus price, you’ll get the bonus books!

StoryBundle was created to give a platform for independent authors to showcase their work, and a source of quality titles for thirsty readers. StoryBundle works with authors to create bundles of ebooks that can be purchased by readers at their desired price. Before starting StoryBundle, Founder Jason Chen covered technology and software as an editor for Gizmodo.com and Lifehacker.com.

For more information, visit our website at storybundle.com, tweet us at @storybundle and like us on Facebook. For press inquiries, please email press@storybundle.com.

The Nemo Trilogy

I first encountered Captain Nemo at my local drugstore when I was a kid. He was in the pages of a reprint edition of the Marvel Classic Comics adaptation of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. My mom bought the comic for me. I brought it home, and read it right away. I remember sitting stunned at one of the last panels, which depicted the Nautilus disappearing into a whirlpool. I couldn’t believe that would be the end of Captain Nemo. I was delighted a few years later to catch Ray Harryhausen’s adaptation of Mysterious Island on a Sunday afternoon and discover that Nemo had survived the maelstrom and had further adventures on a remote island with giant monsters. Sadly, he again seemed to meet his end as that movie drew to a close. Since those early days, I’ve read Jules Verne’s novels and grown even more fond of the character.

When I discovered the graphic novel The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill, I was delighted to meet an incarnation of Nemo who felt like Verne’s Nemo and, what’s more, he’d survived the events of The Mysterious Island. Since the first graphic novel, Moore and O’Neill have expanded the series quite a bit both in the number of volumes and the years the series spans. Alas, Verne’s Captain Nemo is not immortal and they imagined that he would meet an end, but they also gave him an heir in a daughter named Janni Dakkar who takes up the Captain Nemo mantel. Recently, while getting ready for Wild Wild West Con with its Roaring 20’s theme, I started looking for steampunk or related retrofuturistic fiction set in the 20s. This led me to discover the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’s Nemo Trilogy. The Nemo Trilogy comics follow’s Janni Dakkar’s adventures from 1925 through 1975.

Volume 1 of the Nemo Trilogy is called “Heart of Ice” and it opens when the new Captain Nemo steals a treasure from Ayesha, an immortal woman from H. Rider Haggard’s novel She. Ayesha has strong influence with Charles Foster Kane of Citizen Kane fame. He sends the boy adventurers Tom Swift, Frank Reade Jr., and Jack Wright after Janni, who has decided to explore Antarctica. They all end up on a journey through Lovecraftian horrors.

In Volume 2, “The Roses of Berlin,” it’s 1941 and Janni’s daughter Hira has married Armand Robur, son of Verne’s famous air pirate. Armand’s airship is shot down while he’s raiding Nazi ships. Janni and her lover Broad Arrow Jack must go to a Berlin rebuilt in the image of the film Metropolis to rescue their daughter and son-in-law. There, they find Ayesha is collaborating with the Nazis. I found it quite satisfying to have a story where Captain Nemo and her crew take on Nazis along with figures from German expressionist cinema. I also loved that Moore gave us some dialogue in French and German and didn’t translate it for us on the page.

Finally in Volume 3, “River of Ghosts” Janni leans that Ayesha has not only survived the events of volume 2, but there is somehow more than one Ayesha. Janni takes the Nautilus up the Amazon and discovers an enclave of Nazis like the one in the movie The Boys from Brazil. Along for the journey is Janni’s grandson, Jack. Also along for the ride is Hugo Hercules, who was the first superhero to ever grace the comic pages. Their adventure takes to an enclave of creatures from the Black Lagoon to dinosaurs and then gives us an explosive climax. In an epilogue set in 1987, we find that Jack is happy to take up the mantel of Captain Nemo for a new generation.

I felt like this series released between 2013 and 2015 got stronger as it progressed and it proved to be a solid entry in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen saga. More importantly, it does my heart good to know Nemo’s story didn’t end in the Maelstrom off the coast of Norway. In fact, Jack Dakkar or his children could still be sailing the Nautilus through Earth’s waters today. Mobilis in Mobile!

My character Captain Onofre Cisneros was created as a tribute to Captain Nemo. The best place to learn about Captain Cisneros and his adventures is in my novel The Brazen Shark. Learn more at: http://davidleesummers.com/brazen_shark.html

Sleepless in Marine City

The first time I flew on an airplane, I was in the third grade. My parents and I flew to Seattle to visit my brother who had moved there for college. My most vivid memory of that trip was visiting the Pacific Science Center and the Space Needle at the Seattle Center. I was especially excited to see a Gemini space capsule at the Pacific Science Center. Not only could you look at it, but you could sit inside and flip the switches and pretend you were on a real space mission. I had already read all about the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions, so I had a very good sense of how special this display was. I would later learn that the capsule in Seattle was an unflown mockup, but it still had been built for the Gemini program and it helped to ingrain my love of space exploration.

The Seattle Center as we know it today started as the fairgrounds for the Century 21 Exposition of 1962. Among the exposition’s notable visitors was Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov. This real history along with the Cuban Missile Crisis serve as the inspirations for the fourth volume of Keisuke Makino’s Irina: The Vampire Cosmonaut, which was recently translated into English and released in the United States.

In this volume, computer engineers Kaye Scarlet and Bart Fifield are sent to a space conference at the Exposition in a Seattle fictionalized as Marine City. Kaye is a dhampir, a person descended from both humans and vampires. Bart is human. In the previous volume, they marched for dhampir rights in the United Kingdom, which is this alternate world’s version of the United States. They soon learn that their heroes, cosmonauts Lev Leps and Irina Luminesk, are scheduled to speak at the conference. Like Bart, Lev is human. Irina is a vampire.

The goal of the conference is basically twofold. The first objective is to hash out two competing plans to land people on the Moon. The second is to discuss cooperation between the space programs of the United Kingdom and the “Zinitra Union.” Bart and Kaye have studied the two competing plans for lunar landing and have come to the conclusion that neither will work. There’s a third plan rejected early on due to a technicality they think can work, but they have to sell it to their bosses. While all of this is going on, the United Kingdom discovers that the Zinitra Union has been building missile silos on a small island not far from the UK’s shores. This world’s version of the Cuban Missile Crisis threatens to shut down the conference and our engineers and cosmonauts begin to despair for the future of space travel and the fate of the world. As all of this is going on, Bart and Kaye begin to understand the feelings they have for each other.

All in all, Irina: The Vampire Cosmonaut continues to be a satisfying retelling of the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union. Aside from changed names and slightly changed dates, this volume tends to stick close to the historical events. That said, events at the ending suggest that this world’s history may diverge from the history we know. This world’s Nikita Krushchev isn’t removed from power in 1964 and a would-be assassin fails to kill this world’s John F. Kennedy. So author Keisuke Makino has now neatly set up a world as it might have been. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next.

Vampires navigating interpersonal relationships and working to understand their place in the universe are hallmarks of my Scarlet Order Vampire series. You can learn more about those books by visiting: http://davidleesummers.com/books.html#scarlet_order

The Marco Polo

I’ve posted a few times about Germany’s Perry Rhodan series. This series of space opera stories began in 1961 and has been running continuously ever since. It started as the story of an astronaut named Perry Rhodan who goes to the moon with three other astronauts and discovers a stranded star vessel inhabited by aliens called Arkonides. Rhodan then sees an opportunity to unify the people of the Earth and begin a new era of deep space exploration. Around the same time, certain humans have begun to exhibit mutant abilities such as teleporting or mind-reading. Overall, the series has elements of Star Trek, Doctor Who, and the X-Men while predating all of those franchises. For the most part, I’ve been reading the Perry Rhodan NEO series, which was a reboot started in 2011.

My explorations of the Perry Rhodan universe led me to discover that in 2000, Revell released four model kits based on vehicles from the books. As far as I know, these are the only kits ever made by a major model kit manufacturer based on vehicles that appear exclusively in print media. I knew I wanted to build one of these kits both as a tribute to my enjoyment of the series and because these kits were based on books rather than movies or television. It was a little tricky to know which kit to pick. All were a little difficult to come by since the kits are no longer manufactured. I was tempted to build the Sol because it appeared in the comic series “The Cartographers of Infinity” and “Battle for the Sol” that I had read. However, I ultimately decided to build the Marco Polo, mostly because it’s the one that most resembled the ships in the novellas I had read so far. Here’s the Marco Polo ready to launch for its first mission.

The Marco Polo has appeared in numerous Perry Rhodan novellas. It first appeared in episode 450 published in 1970 called, “Departure of the Marco Polo.” Unfortunately, this story hasn’t been translated into English, but it is available for download as a German-language ebook in the United States.

We see the Marco Polo right on the book’s cover. Also, you can see, a sizable ship launching from the Marco Polo, which in turn is launching a fighter. Set in the year 3437, the novella opens with two humans, Mentro Kosum and Menesh Kuruzin, approach a giant ship, two and a half kilometers in diameter. In the second chapter, they meet Colonel Toronar Kasom who explains that the Marco Polo is a Carrier Class Ultra Battleship. They soon set off for the Sombrero Galaxy, NGC 4594, the home galaxy of a race called the Cappins who seem to have set their sights on the Milky Way.

As it turns out, the Marco Polo is a much bigger ship than the spherical ships I’ve encountered in the earlier Perry Rhodan NEO novellas, but I’m happy to have built it and I will definitely need to read more about its adventures. The model itself was somewhat challenging and involved careful painting and decal work. Still, I took my time with it and I’m pleased with the final result.

As it turns out, I have published a novel with a ship called the Marco Polo. The novel is Upstart Mystique by Don Braden. In Don’s universe, the Marco Polo is a colony ship en route to a new star system. However, it gets drawn off course to a planet where many of the inhabitants have uploaded their consciousness into the planet’s computers. Now it would seem the planet would like to add the human colonists to the data banks as well! You can learn more about Don Braden’s Upstart Mystique at: https://hadrosaur.com/UpstartMystique.php

Infernal Devices

Last weekend, I was at Wild Wild West Con in Tucson, Arizona. One of the people I was on a panel with was K.W. Jeter. In 1987, Jeter sent a copy of his novel Morlock Night to Locus Magazine along with a letter that suggested there should be a collective term for “gonzo-historical” speculative fiction like his novel and the works of Tim Powers and James Blaylock. Given the popularity of cyberpunk at the time, he made the tongue-in-cheek suggestion that the three of them were “steam-punks.” Since that time, assorted authors have tried their hands at Victorian-inspired science fiction and fantasy including yours truly. However, in the early 2000s, steampunk became more than a literary subgenre. It became a whole movement of makers, musicians, and costumers. As I put the finishing touches on a batch of gonzo-historical stories for eSpec Books recently, I realized I’d never actually read any of the works by the man who coined the term Steampunk. I decided to dive into the novel Infernal Devices, which Jeter published the same year as his famous letter in Locus.

Infernal Devices opens when a mysterious man appears at the shop and residence of one George Dower. George’s father was a brilliant clockmaker who was also known for creating automata. When the famous clockmaker died, the younger Dower inherited the family business. Although George was capable of some basic work on watches and clocks, he lacked his father’s genius. The mysterious stranger, who George refers to as “the Brown Leather Man,” leaves a mysterious machine reportedly built by George’s father. Later, two more strangers appear at the shop. One is a man in blue-tinted glasses called Scape and the other is a woman named Miss McThane. They indicate their interest in devices built by George’s father. They also prove to be anachronisms, speaking more like people of the late twentieth century than people of the nineteenth. Later, George’s servant, Cref, catches them breaking into the house. It soon becomes clear they’re searching for the device left behind by the Brown Leather Man. This leads George on a quest to find out what the box is. His only clue is a coin depicting a fish-headed man left behind by the Brown Leather Man.

George eventually finds himself in a neighborhood of fish-headed people and meets the person who made the coin. When he returns to talk to the man who made the coin, George finds the man dead and is nearly killed himself. Escaping that fate, he comes across Scape and Miss McThane again and finds them in a church where George’s father had installed an automata choir and priest. They’re setting up a service for the fish-headed people. The man leading the service for the fish-headed people is a mysterious Lord Bendray. Eventually, George learns that Lord Bendray once was a patron of his father’s. Among the devices George’s father built for Lord Bendray was a machine that could destroy the world.

Over the course of Infernal Devices, George Dower is shuffled from one adventure and set of colorful characters to another. As it turns out, George himself is rather drab and really just wants to get back to his own quiet life, but finds himself learning more than he wanted about his father’s legacy. One interesting element in the novel was that Jeter introduces a way for certain characters to glimpse possibilities from the future. I also gave characters a glimpse into the future in my Clockwork Legion series. Neither Jeter nor I give our characters a perfect view. In my case the characters only know possibilities might work. In Jeter’s, some characters have caught rapid-fire glimpses of the future. In both cases, seeing the possibilities has a profound effect on the relevant characters.

All in all, I found Infernal Devices a fascinating read. You can find a copy wherever fine books or ebooks are sold.

In the meantime, you can learn about my Clockwork Legions series at: http://davidleesummers.com/books.html#clockwork_legion