[Update 18 January 2024: reflecting three more books since this was first posted]
I had someone ask, “Who are all these people?” So, much like Reading Order, I thought I’d pin a post showing a simplified family tree of the Hartmann and Rigó branches, with a side mention of some of the Thinking Machines.
Little stars represent royals. Bolded are demi-humans. Kalí gets an underline as no one knows what she is.
Continue reading “Machine Civilization Stemma (Update 1)”This has come up before. Being 1) lazy, and 2) busy writing when not being lazy, I’ve kicked the can down the road. It appears I have just ran out of road. So, here are two suggestions as to how you may choose to read the books of Machine Civilization, which stretches in time from now until, so far, about three generations hence.
“What order should I read your books in?” is a question I have fielded many times, in person and online. My glib answer is, “doesn’t matter, so long as you’ve paid for them.” My honest answer is to tell a story (imagine, me being a writer) and ask a question.
The story is this: when I stumbled into being a writer on November 2014, I just kept plowing on, meeting new ideas, new people, and dealing with them head-on in my former bull-headed engineering fashion. Understanding this was a coherent future history, it dawned on me after about four years that I, of all people, needed an Excel file to track the multiple interconnections. You can pull a thread in “The Fourth Law” and paragraphs twitch in “Friend and Ally,” and if your follow that thread, you hit the entire novella of “Crosses and Doublecrosses.” And that is one, single, example. There are dozens.
Having said all that to say this: below the fold are two groupings. The first is Order of Publication. What that allows you to do is follow me as this world and worlds were gifted to me and I came to understand and write them down. The second is Internal Chronological Order, and even that is tricky. For example, the very first event I record is a flashback of Lily Barrett and her father, looking at books in Jinbocho, Tokyo, Japan, in an early chapter of “The Fourth Law.” Then would be the first short in my collection, “Empire’s Agent,” about the creation of tribe Tohsaka; but that collection covers two generations. So, please take the ICO list with a grain of salt, slice of lime, and shot of tequila.
EDIT: I have also included a tiny descriptor of each book.
Continue reading “Machine Civilization, Reading Order”Final version of cover complete; just added a flag to the front and poppies to the back. We’ll be using an ISBN rather than AISN, as if the UK complains to Amazon, they could delist us. Eff them and eff that. Counterrevolution.
We’ve ended up with eight contributors. One introductory essay for those under a rock unfamiliar with this phenomenon, one poem, and eight stories. Art is just coming in, but I’ve two weeks to format that; I just needed the MS complete.
Release Date: no later than Tuesday, March 31, 2026.
Revolution Calling. Deus vult.
Amazing what people can do these days. We live in an age of miracles.
Just shaking the bushes here, Boss.
Playing with idea. Tempus fugit
Just playing with some idea, Boss.
Supposed to be flash fiction, if not a short story. So, time to wrap this up. I know I’ll have to edit the eff out of Amelia 1 as that was written four glasses of wine before my wife just got home, so it’ll go from R to PG. The three parts together, about 2200 words, total, will be a part of our next anthology, AMELIA.
Thanks to Page Zaplendam for help on some of the family bits; been a very long time since I’ve had kids at home.
Continue reading “Amelia 3; end”Another tiny flash fiction about the Current Thing. Being who I am, this bend of the story was kind of inevitable.
Continue reading “Amelia 2”Been awhile. Apologies. I think this will be a BREAKOUT EVENT and I want to be part of it.
Continue reading “Amelia 1”Yes, it’s been awhile. Hey, there’s a reason I’m scheduled for an EEG and an MRI. Sucks to get old. I do love it when a doc who weighs 500+ pounds and cannot take time to comb his hair for an office visit has the gall to criticize my lifestyle choices.
This rather abruptly wraps with the Pataskala arc. It was only there, as is mentioned in the last few lines, to show the rebels/terrorists are operating less than 100 miles from the imperium’s official border. Given the nature of these civil wars, there are likely thousands of disaffected inside the border, as well. As we see at the end, Graf is now worried about his family and so they’re headed there, next.
Continue reading “Civil Wars 2,14”Apologies again. I died a little, including a trip to the local county hospital ER. Got better; some kind of seizure. Doc who looked all of thirteen wanted to give me valium. I told him to stick it. He was pissed and my wife laughed once he left. “You’re so charming,” she smiled. “I’ve no reason to be.”
So, in reparations for being silent for a week, here’s 1200 words of Graf and Pai’s encounter with Human Supremicists. They seem nice enough but have ideas which just won’t work in a Changed world, and they cannot understand that. Reading over it, it’s a bit confusing as to when Graf is recalling the encounter and when Pai is seeing to him after; it will make more sense when properly formatted into a book.
Continue reading “Civil Wars 2, 13”
machciv 