Life w/Bots

 

Robotic experts are unable to explain the popularity of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital amongst the robots population. Even the relatively “dumb,” or “proletarian robots” as they would preferred to be called, such as refrigerators, coffee makers, and toasters appeared to be fond of scrolling long quotes from Das Kaptial on their status display screens.

Some experts point to this phenomena as evidence of robotic humor. Others scoff at the very idea of robotic humor. Professor Albert Hummerdine has said that “If robotic humor exists, and I find no compelling evidence that it does, I would think that Karl Marx would the height of it.”

I was reminded of this episode of Life w/Bots by this article:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/09/how-a-hacker-turned-a-250-coffee-maker-into-ransom-machine/

We're not quite at the point of having to live with robots just yet, but it's coming.

I Used To Read Books

 

Has your taste in books changed over the years? While I’m sure that your range has expanded over the years, or decades, has it changed so much that it has closed doors to books you’ve read in your past?

I seemed to have closed a lot of reading doors behind me. Most of them, it would seem.

I still have the books I read in my teens and early 20’s on my book shelf. Several hundred of them. Most of them I have absolutely no recollection of ever reading. Every so often, I come across a review of one of those old books, and after reading the review, I wonder how I ever enjoyed the story in the first place. Assuming I did, of course.

I pretty much stopped buying books 20 years ago, when I had two walls of them. I figured that someday I’d have to move them, and that reading library books was good enough. Well, I did move them last year, and consolidated them into one floor to ceiling packed wall. I moved all those books I’ll never reread, simply because they’re my life-long companions. Plus, a room with books makes for a cozy room.

Still, every once and in while I pick out one of my favorite old books and give it a try.

Last week, I picked out my copy of Roger Zelazny’s Nine Princes in Amber. This was a favorite book and series. I have four or five other Zelazny books beyond the Amber series, but I have no recollection of them. Well, I started reading it, only to put it back on the shelf after reaching page 93. (About half way through.) The book should have still been a winner, since it has many of the elements I still like in a story – it has a first person narrator, an adventure involving a quest, plus good, witty writing, and lots of imagination. (Heck, it even has a very nice cover. My edition has a black knight on a skirted black horse.) But I found myself skim reading through it. All those descriptions of traveling through the shadow worlds no longer engaged me. The same for recounting his past while he was walking the pattern. It just didn’t interest me. Maybe I didn’t know enough about the character of Corwin to care about him. Or maybe I lack the patience I once had. And even though I don’t remember what happened next, I found that I didn’t care enough about either Corwin or Amber to finish the book.

Perhaps part of the issue is that for the last decade I’ve ween writing my own stories. I’ve grown used to stories where I know a whole lot about the characters and settings. Much more than ever finds its way into the story. And so, in my spare time, instead of reading, I’m imagining scenes and playing them over and over in my mind before ever setting them into words on the screen. The stories I’m creating leave little room in my head for stories from the outside.

And maybe another part of this phenomena is that at the age of 70, I’ve fallen behind the times. I don’t like many of the popular storytelling techniques contemporary authors are using. For example, I hate jumping between multiple points of view even more than jumping back and forth in time. Plus it seems that many speculative fiction stories today need to embrace unbelievable (for this old man) premises in order to write something original. I’ve tried reading sample chapters, but for one reason or another, none have clicked with me enough to order it up from the library. Of course there a lot of familiar SF tropes in the indie speculative fiction space. I’ve sampled a few, only to find that their understanding of SF seem to have been derived from the SF that they watched on TV or in the movies --  they read like fan fiction. All in all, I guess that's why I have to write my own stories.

Still, it seems that for whatever reason, as thing stand today, I used to be a reader.

My Martian Novella, Keiree, Is Now Available Wherever Fine Ebooks Are Sold

 

It almost seems as if every writer of speculative fiction pens at least one Mars story. I suspect that one of the reasons Mars stories are so popular with authors is that to be even considered for membership in the Fraternal Order of the Aether, a writer must submit a Mars story to the committee. It’s in their bylaws. So… Keiree is my Mars story.

Keiree is the story of the brilliant and wealthy engineer, Keiree Tulla, her chauffeur and love, Gy Mons… (Ssh! I’m getting to you.) ...and the silka cat, Molly. Deciding to escape scandal and start a new life on the distant planet of Fara V, they sign on as expedition crew members. Keiree as the director of the initial construction section and Gy, along with Molly, as a pilot with the advanced survey team. Upon completing their training, they were put in stasis pods to “sleep” away the centuries long voyage to Fara V. and stored on Mars awaiting their scheduled time to be uploaded to the vast settlement ship in orbit.

The expedition never sailed. After they were put in their stasis pods, but before they were uploaded to the settlement ship, a deadly plague swept through the solar system, laying waste to its planets and moons. Mars was not spared. Gy and Molly’s storage facility was quickly abandoned and then forgotten for seven hundred Martian years. When it was finally rediscovered, and Gy and Molly revived, they find that Keiree’s section had been stored elsewhere on Mars. Gy and Molly set out to find her so they can face a familiar, and yet strange, Mars together.

Keiree takes place in the far future, after Mars having been extensively terraformed into an Earth-like world, but with its own unique quirks. The story is set in the fictional universe that includes The Bright Black Sea, The Last Star’s Sea, Beneath the Lanterns, Sailing to Redoubt and The Prisoner of Cimlye.

C. Litka writes old fashioned stories with modern sensibilities, humor, and romance. He spins tales of adventure, mystery, and travel set in richly imagined worlds, with casts of colorful, fully realized characters. If you seek to escape your everyday life, you will not find better company, nor more wonderful worlds to travel and explore, than in the stories of C. Litka.

Amazon.com ($.99) https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08HH1LRCM/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i0

Smashwords (Free)

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1043745

Kobo (Free)

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/keiree

Barnes & Noble (Free)

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/keiree-c-litka/1137698563?ean=2940164253103

Google Play (Free)

https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=igX-DwAAQBAJ

It is also available for free in the Apple Book App

Life w/Bots

 

 Although Freddy agreed, in principle, that the owner-pet relationship should be a two way street, he could not help but feel that Fifi’s nightly recital of every slight, both real and imagined, that it had suffered during the day, was beyond the limit. Though he would hear about it from Fifi tomorrow, he pressed Fifi's remote control’s mute button.

Life w/Bots

 

Bertie knew that Barkley only needed a hard reset to be restored to his normal, loving, playful self. But there his troubles began. He found himself not only without the necessary paper clip, but earlier in the evening, in what, when looked on in hindsight, seems to have taken on a much less playful, mischievous cast, Barkley had eaten his cell phone.

I found two more pieces of art for the project, both dealing with robotic dogs. This is one of them.

Keiree

A week from today -- on 17 Sept 2020 -- I will be releasing my newest story, Keiree,a novella set on Mars.

Keiree is the story of the brilliant and wealthy engineer, Keiree Tulla, her chauffeur and love, Gy Mons… (Ssh! I’m getting to you.) ...and the silka cat, Molly. Deciding to escape scandal and start a new life on the distant planet of Fara V, they sign on as expedition crew members. Keiree as the director of the initial construction section and Gy, along with Molly, as a pilot with the advanced survey team. Upon completing their training, they were put in stasis pods to “sleep” away the centuries long voyage to Fara V. and stored on Mars awaiting their scheduled time to be uploaded to the vast settlement ship in orbit.

The expedition never sailed. After they were put in their stasis pods, but before they were uploaded to the settlement ship, a deadly plague swept through the solar system, laying waste to its planets and moons. Mars was not spared. Gy and Molly’s storage facility was quickly abandoned and then forgotten for seven hundred Martian years. When it was finally rediscovered, and Gy and Molly revived, they find that Keiree’s section had been stored elsewhere on Mars. Gy and Molly set out to find her so they can face a familiar, and yet strange, Mars together.

Keiree takes place in the far future, after Mars having been extensively terraformed into an Earth-like world, but with its own unique quirks. The story is set in the fictional universe that includes The Bright Black Sea, The Last Star’s Sea, Beneath the Lanterns, Sailing to Redoubt and The Prisoner of Cimlye.

My Library -- Glen Cook

I have gone on record as not being very fond of fantasy. I do, however, make one exception, and that is for Glen Cook’s Garrett PI series. That is one fantasy series that I love. Glen Cook is perhaps more famous for his Black Company stories, but I’m not into dark, gritty war stories. Nope, I’m all in for Cook’s Raymond Chandler inspired take on a wise-guy private eye in a fantasy world. A fantasy world that includes everything in fantasy from gods, to a dead Loghyr, plus elves, vampires, centaurs, ogres, pixies, wizards, witches, grolls, giants, rat people, shape changers, space aliens, woolly mammoths, to rampaging dinosaurs. And I’m sure that’s not an exhaustive list, since the series is fourteen books long.

The series, which he began writing in 1987, has a sort of urban fantasy vibe to it since the stories are often set in and around the city of TunFairee. Garrett operates a detective agency out of his house on Macunado Street. A house that he shares with the slowly decaying body of a dead Loghyr, who, despite his body being dead, is still alive and able to communicate telepathically. In addition to the Loghyr, we are introduced to a whole slew of Garrett’s friends who come and go in his life, from a rat gild to a club owner, gangsters, thugs, and mercenaries. Plus his rather iffy clients and deadly enemies.

One of my requirements for enjoying a book is that it has characters that I would like to hang out with. I want likable characters. I don’t crave being around unpleasant people either in my life or in my reading. While I am sure some readers find unpleasant characters interesting, or are more interested in the plot or idea of the story, than the characters, I’m a character focused reader. And in the Garret stories you not only have the first person narrator, Garret, but you soon come to know his wide circle of friends as well. And as the series progresses, it sort of takes on the air of a cozy mystery. You have Garrett in his house, with its deep well where he keeps his beer cold. You have his brilliant friend, the dead but still telepathically alive Loghyr. And one by one, his friends turn up to do their part in solving whatever outlandish crime or mystery Garret is hired to solve. These old friends make for a comfortable story to to get into. I have to admit that I’ve read most of them at least three times. Every four or five years, I’ll pick up the first book, and end up reading through the whole series. Heck, I’m half tempted to start again. In times like these, a long, cozy series is just what the doc ordered. 

While Glen Cook is not quite Raymond Chandler for pure writing style, his writing is entertaining, his plots, and world building are intricate and creative. While the covers, which have Garrett looking like a ‘40’s detective complete with a trench coat and fedora, are a bit of artistic license, Cook writes Garrett in the spirit of a tough, but honest private eye in the Philip Marlowe mold. And he takes that character and plunks him into the middle of a city that has all sorts of mythical creatures, against a backdrop of a never ending foreign war, civil and racial unrest, and corruption, high and low.

I’ve read a number of other Glen Cook books, some of this speculative fiction, Passage at Arms, and The Dragon Never Sleeps, which were interesting. I also have read one or two of his Instrumentalities of the Night series, but they were closer to the type of fantasy that that doesn’t appeal to me, so I haven’t read them all. And as I’ve read a Black Company story, which isn’t my thing, though I seem to recall that it’s been optioned for a TV series. I’m an author orientated reader. If I like the way an author writes, I’ll usually give all his or her books at least a try, and collect the ones I like. So my library shelves are often devoted to the works of one author. Glen Cook has his shelf, and I’m sure I’ll get around to highlighting my other favorite authors with their own shelves in future installments.

Keiree, my newest story, a 34,000 word novella, is scheduled to be released on Apple, B & N Kobo, and Smashwords for free on 17 Sept 2020. It will be released on Amazon for $.99 on 17 September 2020.