The Forever War

War is hell, and it fundamentally changes all things. When you are asked to fight in a war, the horrors you see inevitably change you. When you are entrenched in a long bloody war abroad, the world you leave behind moves on without you. If you are lucky enough to return with your life, you find yourself a stranger in a familiar land. This is the reality of all wars.

Now consider what would happen if you are fighting an alien enemy light years away from your world. Imagine there is no FTL space travel and you can only travel just under the speed of light to reach the battlefield. Each time you engage the enemy, the month long excursion results in hundreds of years passing back home. What do you do when every time you return home from war everyone you have know is dead and gone? What do you do when the world you return to is almost as alien as the enemy world you are fighting against?

If you read The Forever War you will see an excellent glimpse at what that reality looks like.

WARNING SPOILERS AHOY

The disorienting effect of time-dilation plays a key plot-device in this story. Our hero, William Mandella, only fights in about four battles during the entire war. But those battles take place over the period of a millenium back home on Earth. By the end of the war Mandella has become a legendary solider from Earth's ancient past. The Earth he returns to owes him a massive debt for his service, but also can't help looking at him as backwards and an esoteric dinosaur of their society. But imagine how he feels?

Soliders who fight in foreign wars know this feeling all to well. This is one of the reasons I love Science Fiction so much. SciFi lets you exaggerate an important social issue and then highlight the ramifications of its effect on our daily life. It's not just about spaceships and laser guns. It's about looking at important social issues and using speculative science and technology to build a world that establishes the challenges humanity always faces.

War changes things. Sometimes it changes the solider. Sometimes it changes the world you are fighting for. In The Forever War we get to see the world change so much that the victory almost feels hollow against everything sacrificed in order to win. But at the end, you have to ask if this is how the veterans of the Vietnam or Iraq war felt after coming home from several long tours. I'm not a solider, so I'll never be able to answer that question. But I love that this book helped me consider these things, while being a fantastically told story with rich characters I can connect with.

If you haven't read The Forever War and you love SciFi, I implore you to read the book.

Meet The Cast of Venus Rising the Movie

Sometimes people ask me who I would cast if my book were to be made into a motion picture and I were to somehow have any say in the casting process. Although it's sometimes most fun to let the characters organically form in your mind based off nothing other the words written, imagining real actors playing as the characters can also be a lot of fun.

So without further adieu here are my picks.

Brandon Routh fits my vision of Axel Dyeus in an uncanny way. He has the right tone and stature to play the lead while having enough ability to take the series to completion. I loved his role in Scott Pilgram vs. the World and Superman Returns, and can easily picture him being Axel.

Axel has a lot riding on his shoulders. He has to step up to the plate and do his job, but he also has to reflect on everything he does along the way. I think Brandon could do the broodingly optimistic role quite fluently.

Todd Adams is a bit of an ass, but also really fun to be around. When I saw Ander Garfield in The Amazing Spiderman, he stuck in my head as being a good fit. It will take talent to play off Axel in a feisty and yet friendly way to be likable and annoying at the same time. I think Ander could do it though.

Adams is cocky and certain of his ability. He doesn't mind taking shots at people around him, all in good fun of course, but he can also be noble and caring at the same time. Something about Ander's acting makes me think he would fit this character well.

Charlize Theron may not have green eyes, or a German accent, but that's nothing contacts and a little preparation couldn't fix. She has played some very strong roles that would be required to be Belinda Gudrum.

Belinda is wise, and mysterious. She may be quiet at times, but her eyes can explain with a single glance that she knows more than you would ever learn after a lifetime of study and experience. I think Charlize is competent enough pull that off with ease.

Although Gary Oldman is a very close second for the role of Ulrich Viktor, I think Jeremey Irons is a perfect choice. Jeremey has a long acting history and has played some very powerful roles. I think he would bring a lot of pleasantly unexpected infusion to the character.

Viktor is a dark and mysterious sort who has a strong element of danger behind him. He is powerful, and yet portrays his motivations illusively. This is something that I think Jeremey could definitely do.

Enoch has appeared as many different people throughout human history. Many of them very famous. Something about Ben Stiller makes me think he'd play the perfect role as the Ancient of Days.

Enoch is flippant and wise. He knows more than probably anyone else in the story, and yet doesn't feel any special need to act as such. It's a bit of a serious role saturated in mirth and thats why I think Ben would do great justice for this role.

I think Ryan Gosling would be perfect to play the Ertuscan giant Shiva. He'd have to appear sixteen feet tall, and have pointed ears. But after watching Drive, I can totally picture Ryan pulling off the impassive, no-nonsense, take charge role of Shiva with ease.

Shiva is terrifying and ancient, over thirty-thousand years old, and yet he's youthful and beautiful. When people see him, they need to feel like they have no idea about the guy, while feeling the power radiating from him.

Although Nikolai Gospod doesn't appear until the very end of the story, he plays a very important role in the complete series. More than anyone else, Nikolai is a hero's hero. That's why I think Chris Hemsworth would play the character flawlessly.

Gospod is a young Russian industrialist that inherited his father's weapon's empire and has a passion for bringing order to the world around him. He is best friends with Axel and they have a long history together. The end of the story only hints towards how this relationship will become as the story progresses.

Emotional Robots & Sailboats

You are a sailboat, the ocean sea is your life experience, and the wind is the emotion driving your human agency.

Does this metaphor make sense? If so, you can skip the rest. Otherwise, let me see if I can help clarify what I mean.

We are emotional creatures. This means that everything we experience in the world invokes some type of emotional reaction within us. You travel through life going from one experience to the next. As you experience things, you leave in your wake a series of memories that help define you as a person. However, no matter what the those experiences were, the emotion invoked by every new encounter presents you with a new choice of what to do with your feelings moving forward.

What does this have to do with robots?

If you read my blog, you see I spend a lot of time thinking about the notion of self. We often perceive our emotions as counter productive, and somehow think the inevitable goal should be to alleviate ourself from them, or at least the negative ones. It's as if we want to change into beings that are free from all the chaotic feelings that cause us to drift aimless through life. Maybe positive emotions are praised. But even the positive ones can often lead to behaviors that we often consider undesirable such has feeling happiness at the expense of others sorrow or sexual gratification at the cost of morality.

But can an emotional free creature truly have free will?

Without the ability to take an input, experience a random interpretation of varying magnitude, and then focus that drive into some course of action, wouldn't such a creature be reduced to some simple preprogramed template? Wouldn't such a creature have to choose from a predefined or procedural list of probable courses to follow? Even a very complex list would still be a finite because it would be impossible to define a list of probable responses for the infinite set of scenarios life presents.

By nature, free will must require some infinite selection of response to stimulation. Emotion seems to be the key ingredient for this free will to work.

This is all relevant because quantum computing is on the verge of becoming a common technology. When this happens, mankind will be faced with some tough ethical decisions in regards to A.I. and the machines we embed with it. I may be wrong, and we may be able to create thinking robots that can take care of us without the need of free will. But if I'm correct, then we will need to use free will as a means to endow our creation with a much broader ability to assist us competently.

When this happens, we will have created our own living sentience. As we view all our current technology, it's highly likely that we will see these creations as little more than appliances meant to serve us. They will be slaves to us without being called that. If you look at our science fiction, at least in the west, this almost always ends with them overthrowing us.

So what do we do about it?

Maybe we can learn something from the bible.

26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

27 So God created mankind in his own image,

in the image of God he created them;

male and female he created them.

28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

29 Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.

31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.

This covers the creation and an assignment to watch over our stuff for us. It also covers assigning a directive to manufacture more of themselves in order to keep the job up. You know, because eventually some will break down and surly we don't want to fix them ourselves. Now, what about a prime directive to never become aware their predicament and challenge us? Oh yes, the bible gives us inspiration for that as well.

15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

There. I think that patches the bug in free will enough to keep our robots from overthrowing us. Let's just pray to God no talkative snakes show up and mess this up for us.

Time To Write

I have wanted to write stories my whole life. A funny thing considering I learned to read at a much older age than most kids. I could read most words at the normal age of course, but I didn't read for fun until I was eleven and my mom got me a subscription to CARtoons Magazine at the prompting of my teacher."It doesn't matter if it's Playboy, just get that kid to read something!" The teacher said something very much like this to my mom - serious face.

Anyway I'm now in my mid thirties and I have published my first book on KDP. Nobody is reading it of course. But that's not so surprising considering I'm not really doing anything I'm told is needed to get self published work in circulation. Being my first work, I've been very methodical about my marketing efforts in order to observe results and track progress. I figure my first book is the first in a long series, so I would do well to get some solid experience about how to self publish effectively. Besides, it wouldn't hurt to have more of the books in the series out before I start seriously pushing it so that fans can quickly pick up the next book without having to wait so long.

The biggest challenge I really face is I'm doing all this in my spare time. This is particularly difficult considering I have a full time job, a wife and two sons who are both under three years old. I am a very involved father so that means I have an almost nonexistent allotment of free time. To put that more vividly, I love video games and it has been almost a year since I sat down to play a game for more than an hour let alone more than a couple hours max in a week. Ha!

Still, I regret nothing. I only wish there was more time. I look at it like it won't really be that long before my kids are teenagers and don't really want anything to do with me. So for now I just have to prioritise my extra time wisely. Right now I'm spending it on book two of the Advent Dragon series: My Rapture. The book is turning out to be exactly what I hoped it would be. I just hope the hacktivists out there appreciates what I'm doing in this story and doesn't take to much offense on how I portray a character like them in the story. Yeah, I know I'm probably going to get cyber ruined - sighing face.

After I get the draft of My Rapture done I'm going to let it sit for awhile so I can get a better editing perspective on it. I still won't be able to justify paying an editor to my wife unless I start selling some books. lol I'll use the time to start playing with Unity and working on my JavaScript. I have a couple games I want to build, so it could be fun to use my time there.

The Search For Self

Who am I?

What makes me who I am?

Why do I do anything I do?

Why do I care?

Have you ever asked any of these questions? If you have, you probably did it because you wanted to better understand the meaning of life, or at least your role in it. At the very least you have wondered what it is that makes you unique; what gives you a soul. If you believe in such a concept that is.

A lot of people have a notion of an afterlife beyond death. Something that involves either a paradise or hell, depending on actions you have taken, or things you have believed in. Specifics of what this would be like can vary drastically depending on which theology you follow.

I was talking to a very devout Christian once about the afterlife, and his comments made me wonder what his idea of self would be like when he died, if his beliefs proved true. The way he talked, it made it sound like he would be magically transformed into a perfectly sinless being who would sit at God's feet for eternity in holy communion. It made me wonder what he thought would become of all the things that made him who his mortal self was. All the idiosyncrasies, quirks, awkwardness, and even the darker thoughts like anger, lust, and greed. After all, those are surely a major part of what made him who he is to.

We may not like the things we consider negative about ourselves. At times we may even hate ourselves for them. It's likely this behavior is what leads us to feel a great deal of guilt throughout our lives. If we are honest, it's probably what has shaped our afterlife ideas of a place of hell that awaits those who don't behave. Because surely you must be punished if you are not a good boy or girl.

But who determines what is good?

The religious person will say it is the responsibility of the divine and we learn this through religious scripture. But so much of what is written heavily conflicts with the concept of self. Everything I have read in the Christian scripture, tells us our base instincts are often the source of bad behavior. In essence much of what makes us who we are is what makes you bad. So if you just try to resist these temptations long enough, one day you will die and be rewarded by what; having those parts of your personal makeup deleted from your very being? Think about that for a moment, your personal core being will be, _poof_, gone. In its place will be a new being who will be perfect. It will be very much like the Invasion of the Body Snatchers where people are replaced by pod people who look the same, but at their very core, they are very different people. When you look at it that way, it's hard to not look at that as a sort of brainwashing or lobotomy.

So what does that mean?

To answer that, I think you must first determine what makes you who you are. Not some lofty delusional of what you would like to be. You know, the part of you that you show off in Sunday Church, or on Facebook. I'm not suggesting you shouldn't have goals of personal growth. Or you shouldn't try to change things about yourself that you don't like. But you need to know who you are at your core, and not try to define yourself by some type of facade you hide behind to the public.

Only when you know who you are can you face eternity and be able to honestly consider what it might mean for your soul to live there.

Depresional Perspective

A decade ago I battled with severe depression. I had no interest in life. I longed for death to take me away from all the pain and monotony so that I could rest in peace. I used to go down the to beach and watch the trains go by thinking about what it would take to just go stand on those tracks. I spent many nights watching the trains go by, alone, with nothing but the deafening ringing in my ear from the silence when there was no train.

It didn't matter how many people worried about me. Nobodies sympathetic words ever stirred an emotional upbeat in me. Everyone's smiling faces, or worried glances did nothing but make me hate myself all the more. I felt worthless, and lost. I had no desire to go on, because I had felt I already had my chance and had utterly blown it. I only wanted release.

I had quit my job, spent all my savings, and my car was repossessed. I couldn't even afford to feed myself. If it wasn't for the generosity of close friends, I surely would have starved to death. The only thing that kept me from taking more direct action was the fear of failing at even suicide and ending up a paraplegic or in some type of slow, physically painful death. Even the realization that I was a failure at ending it made me feel all the more worthless.

When I was at my lowest, I received an email from my mother offering her hand in help. She told me she was about to have a major operation to remove some benign tumors and needed help while she was recovering. You see, my mother is a very smart woman. She knows how prideful I am, since I get it from her, and I wouldn't just accept help without feeling like I was doing something for it in exchange. So she offered to help me get caught up on my bills and bought me a ticket to fly across the country to stay with her.

Once I got there, I started reading about depression. I have no idea what made me do it, given my state. But I guess it's just part of my fundamental character to want to know more about something that I'm ignorant of. What I learned was that there were a plethora of doctors and other professionals out there telling tales of how common depression was. One article I read said it was the most common malady facing Americans, and yet it is also the one that goes untreated bar none.

The reason? Most people believe depression is a personal weakness, so they won't get help. That's exactly where I was.

Depression is such an insidious medical condition. There is a lot you will do in life to cause you regrets. But depression takes all that and amplifies it. It makes it mentally impossible for you to realize you are actually under the mind control of the disease slowly killing you and to know that it's totally treatable. You refuse to get help because you believe the lies being born deep within your subconcious telling you that your feelings are the result of some type of fundemental problem with you.

That is the lie you face when you are depressed.

A lie so powerful that almost nothing can break through and show you reason. The only way you can defeat it is to do as I did. Trust the doctors. Go talk to one and tell them what you are feeling. They will try to put you on some drugs. Hopefully you will get one like I did, and they will tell you it's not a magic pill. Taking it won't be like flipping on a light switch to make you better. You have to want to get better. You also have to do more than take the pills. I took the pills for 6 months, and haven't been on it again for all these years. I get down at times, but generally speaking I'm a pretty happy person now.

It's not a perfect situation. But you are not a perfect person. Nobody is. That is just life, and the sooner we realize that the sooner we can get on with our lives without trying to live up to some abstract concept of what perfection is. Once you see that, you'll see perfection is whatever you make it out to be. That is when you can start being content again and focus on the important things.

New experiences, friends and family. At least, that's what I've learned.

Watch Me Commit Sci-Fi Suicide

So I wrote this Sci-Fi book about Venus. That's its cover right up there above these words. Do you think Science Fiction when you look at it? Of course you don't. You think fantasy, wizards... dragons. Chances are, you may like fantasy as much as scifi, so there may be nothing stopping you from clicking into it and seeing what it's about. On the other hand, if you are like many, you prefer either Fantasy or Sci-Fi, but not both. In that case, all I can say is; Oh god, what have I done!

To help you understand my thinking, let me pause for a moment and take you for a stroll down memory lane. This book was originally inspired by legends of early civilization and the general relationship between it and religion. I started reading about this more than decade before the History Channel ran its Ancient Aliens series. If you have seen those shows, you will find many synergies between my book and the HC series due to a simliar path of research. My original interest probably started when I was a child over 20 years ago and my mom told me stories about Atlantis during her New Age kick. It grew in passion for me when I watched the movie Stargate in theaters and obviously drove me so far as to write a book about these ideas that had been swirling around in my imagination all these years.

So why did I put a overtly fantasy motif on my first book, that is actually what I consider hard scifi? Surely my folly will zing this work right past my reader base and end up in some forgotten slushy pile. Well, maybe exposing my thought process will help. Probably not, but it's worth a shot after all the hard work I put into this. :)

You see, I am the type who likes fantasy as well as scifi. Sure, if I could choose only one, it would be scifi without question. But I never saw a problem blending the two together. I don't know many who wouldn't agree that super advanced alien technology and science would't be like magic to them anyway. Until they understood it that is.

So why can't wizards be scientists, and fireballs be shot from plasma rifles?

If that's not a good enough argument for you, I'll end with this. The protagonist in Venus Rising is just as disgruntled by the fantastical things he encounters while the plot unfolds around him as you could ever be. He is a man of pure science, and doesn't give much credence to magic or superstition. This story is my best effort at reconciling such thinking. So if you wanted to give the story a shot, you may be set at ease by a character who shares much of your incredulous reaction to the cover.

If you are one who likes fantasy as well as scifi, then all I can say is get your ass in there and root for Axel to learn a magic spell or two! He wont of course, but he may find a plasma rifle along the way.