All posts by Machine Trooper

Shootout at Dallas “Black Lives Matter” Demonstration

Latest reports are that five police are dead and seven are wounded from snipers who targeted police. Early reports suggest that one suspect tipped off police about bombs planted around the city. Dallas Police used a bomb of their own to kill one of the suspects.

Phrases like “ambush” and “military tactics” are being used to describe the attack, but media talking heads are not known for accurate reporting and too few details are known as yet to describe how it went down.

According to the Chief of the Dallas Police, one shooter stated his motivations included a desire to kill white people and white police, and anger over police brutality in other cities.

Some of us have been warning for years that there will be more and more of these high-profile shootings until disarmament of law-abiding citizens is achieved. Of course this is dismissed as “conspiracy theory” even though Eric Holder’s “Justice” Department was caught red-handed arming violent criminals just for this purpose.

Here are just a couple items this shooting accomplishes:

  • Upping the hysteria for “gun control.”
  • Another step toward a race war that the government will need to rescue us from (at the cost of personal liberties, of course).
  • Distraction from Hillary’s scandal being covered up by Clinton puppets in the FBI and the office of Attorney General.

Again, it’s only going to get worse, America.

Truck Stop Earth by Michael A. Armstrong

A Guest Post by Jim Morris

The most important thing to know about this book is that it’s fun. It is, in fact the most fun I’ve had reading a book in a long time. Other books have perhaps explored more profound emotions but if you want to spend a few hours alternating between a grin, a rolling chuckle, and laughing out loud you probably won’t do better with anything contemporary.

What we have here is the memoir of a screaming nutjob, as told to author Michael A. Armstrong. The nutjob in question, James Ignatius Malachi Obediah Osborn is a multiple alien abductee, fierce fighter in the Resistance movement against the Alien Occupying Government. He can spot ‘em among the general population, because he knows their disguise tricks. Or maybe he’s just nuts, hard to say.

That’s where a lot of the tension in the story comes from. Some of what he believes is pretty convincing. Some of it just seems Loony Tunes.

After a scary encounter with the grays in Florida Jimmo heads for Alaska where the adventure continues. Aside from maybe being nuts Jimmo is a pretty competent fellow who can find work and do it well, fighting fires while fending off alien attacks.

He purports to be a spec ops veteran of Desert Storm, although while others were defeating Saddam he was further out in the desert, hunting grays with Delta Force. Thing is, he still talks the talk right. The guy has definitely been somewhere and done something.

Another thing this books does well is present the society of adventurous spirits who have absconded to Alaska as the last frontier where you can get a decent latte. A more brave and gaudy collection of tatted, pierced and bizarrely coifed expats can hardly be imagined. And, to paraphrase Ronnie Hawkins, Jimmo gets more trim than Frank Sinatra.

Warning: if you have a problem with people who unabashedly talk nasty, well, maybe you should read Jane Austen instead.

Michael A. Armstrong was born in Virginia, raised in Florida, and has lived in Alaska since 1979. He graduated from New College of Florida, and received a master of fine arts in writing from the University of Alaska Anchorage; his master’s thesis, PRAK, was published by Warner Books/Questar as After the Zap. Armstrong has published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Asimov’s, and Analog, as well as numerous anthologies. A writer in the Janet Morris Heroes In Hell series, he most recently was published in Lawyers in Hell.
He now lives in Homer, Alaska.

#

Steel Tiger

Number Two in the Wings of War series, this novel gets its name from an air interdiction operation against a segment of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Author Mark Berent was a fighter pilot in Vietnam who also took the initiative to find out what the war on the ground was like. That means his characters/stories have, as a backdrop, a fairly cohesive strategic and tactical overview (such as a strategic concept was, in Vietnam).

SteelTigerpatchJet jock Court Bannister has finished his first combat tour and has managed to earn a slot in Test Pilot School for the second time. That’s a step toward becoming an astronaut, which is his ambition.

Meanwhile, Toby Parker is also stateside, officially earning his wings. His hoity-toity family is pleased with the enhanced status he lends them by having become a hero, but not so pleased with his intentions of remaining in the Air Force. Given his alcoholism and increasingly rebellious behavior, not everone in the Air Force thinks he should stay in, either.

Wolf Lochert, fighting a whole different sort of campaign on the ground, is an unconventional warrior in an unconventional war who is just too unconventional for the typical snooty brass who are overseeing the lose/lose experimental quagmire in Vietnam.

Both pilots are privileged offspring of wealthy parents, but also way too cowboy for their chains-of-command. By saving another test pilot’s life, along with an expensive aircraft, Bannister is judged unfit for the astronaut program. Parker is an outstanding flier, but his reckless antics get him barred from flying fighters. Both of them wind up returning to Vietnam.

Berentbyjet
The author, back in the day.

A fatal barroom brawl lands Wolf Lochert in military prison, and his fate appears grim.

From available information, it would seem that Berent was a good pilot. While I wasn’t there, hence can’t confirm or deny, I can confirm that he is a great storyteller. Tom Clancy said Berent spun yarns of “good men in a bad war” and that sums up Wings of War quite well. His three primary characters work within the idiotic constraints they are saddled with, and pursue a victory that is forbidden by Washington.

The author interprets the jargon and explains some technical details which might otherwise confuse some readers; but doesn’t interrupt the story flow long enough to be a nuisance. He’s also got some “character sketches” that will probably resonate with anybody who has served some time in the military.

With all this you get a Soviet MiG pilot, a wartime sting operation, plus glimpses inside the Hanoi Hilton and the Johnson State Department.

Steel Tiger is credible, informative, and great fun to read.

Rolling Thunder

Rolling Thunder is the first novel in Mark Berent’s Wings of War series. The title comes from a strategic bombing campaign during US involvement in Vietnam.

Here’s a little about the author:

Lt Col Berent began his Air Force career as an enlisted man, then progressed through the aviation cadet program. He attended pilot training at Columbus Air Force Base, Mississippi and then Laredo Air Force Base, Texas flying the T-6, T-28 and T-33 aircraft and then moved on to F-86s at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada. He served on active duty for 23 years until retirement in 1974. He began his operational flying career in the F-86 and F-100 flying at various posts throughout the United States and Europe. He later served three combat tours, completing 452 combat sorties, first in the F-100 at Bien Hoa Air Base, South Vietnam, the F-4 at Ubon Royal Thai Air Base, Thailand, and then in Cambodia for two years to fly things with propellers on them and through a fluke in communications timing, to personally run the air war for a few weeks.

He has also served two tours at the United States Space and Missile System Organization (SAMSO) at Los Angeles, California working first in the Satellites Control Facility and later as a staff developmental engineer for the space shuttle. In his expansive career he has seen service as an Air Attaché to the United States Embassy, Phnom Penh, Cambodia and also as Chief of Test Control Branch at the Air Development and Test Center at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. He also served as an instructor at the Air Force’s Squadron Officer School.

His decorations include the Silver Star, Legion of Merit, Distinguished Flying Cross with one oak leaf cluster, Bronze Star, Air Medal with twenty four oak leaf clusters, Vietnam Cross of Gallantry, Cambodian Divisional Medal, and numerous Vietnam Campaign ribbons...

Quite a guy. And Berent tells a rip-snorting story of the air war over Vietnam.

The characters are great–Hollywood prodigal Court Bannister, soul sick rich boy Toby Parker, and devout killer Wolf Lochert. Much like W.E.B. Griffin, Berent seems to like privileged, wealthy characters who don’t have to serve, but do anyway and prove to be natural, superb warriors. Not easy for me to relate, but the author did a fine job winning my sympathy.

mapRollingThunderBannister is a jet jock who flies the F-100 Super Saber during his first combat tour. While males all over the USA were finding ways to escape serving in Vietnam, Bannister turned down his dream of Test Pilot and Astronaut training to serve there.

Toby Parker wasn’t even a pilot, but circumstances threw him into a situation where his exceptional skill and bravery earned him recognition as a hero. Unfortunately, a drinking problem might just ruin his career and reputation.

Wolf Lochert is a Special Forces officer and the consummate warrior. He’s no dummy, but one of his most trusted indigenous soldiers is determined to frag him when the opportunity presents itself.

SuperSaberVN

You will probably learn more relevant information about Vietnam in this one novel than you can from any and every history book that covers US involvement in the conflict. I’ve read plenty of fiction and non-fiction about Vietnam, and this has become my favorite so far–just from one reading.

I’ve also read Steel Tiger, the second in the series, and have started Phantom Leader. Reviews are forthcoming. It’s a fantastic series and well worth your time.

The New York Publishing Cartel: A Peek Behind the Curtain

Some years ago I passed along some information from a one-time publishing insider, as part of a post at The Two-Fisted Blog:

During a given fiscal year, a tradpub house only has so many books it can publish. First dibs go to the proven heavy hitters like Stephen King, whose grocery list would become a New York Times Bestseller as long as his name is on it. Next in line (and this is nauseating, if not surprising) are the writers who “know people” inside the industry. There is a little more scrutiny/quality control here than for the big name authors, but this is where a lot of the worthless drivel comes from. Next on the pecking order are female minorities. Then male minorities. (Homosexuals have been given quota parity with racial minorities for quite a while. Now they are one of the most powerful special interest groups in existence and I have no doubt this is reflected in the current pecking order.) Then women in general (which sometimes includes men who write for female audiences and/or who write female protagonists, plus men who use female pseudonyms). Everyone not heretofore mentioned is at the bottom of the slush pile, competing for the very smallest portion of the publishing pie.

…Somewhere in there (unless the author is a celebrity with clout), the book must pass the ideology test–the politics must resonate with that of the New York Publishing Cartel, and any characters in the book who believe differently had better be either from the Archie Bunker/Frank Burns/Denny Crane cookie cutter or, better yet, the next Hitler or Darth Vader.

Jonathan Stamm has confirmed that it’s much worse now, in his post at Return of Kings:

I am not joking when I say that one of the best possible investments in your writing career, as a straight male who wants to get published, would be to hire a fat transgender “woman” of color and simply ghostwrite for “her,” or else acquire pictures of one and add “agoraphobic” to your Twitter resume of socially appealing forms of oppression—so no one expects to ever meet you.

No occupational field has inhaled diversity quotas this much. Looking at lists of award winners, grant recipients and editorial board members, made up predominantly of women, one would think that men are half-way illiterate. But in truth, far-left badges are ravenously shared and traded by the NY literary establishment, with many magazines and agents expressing a preference for “underrepresented writers,” not to mention all the literary events based around LGBT youth, minorities, inner-city kids, etc.

This whole “underrepresentation” mantra is blatantly dishonest to the point of absurdity, of course. But in the mind of a creative SJW, they must compensate for centuries of “oppression” with every contract; every book; and every character. The lack of cross-dressing perverts on the bookshelves in days of yore must be avenged!

Witness Garth Risk Hallberg, whose novel City on Fire recently received the possibly highest advance ever given to a novel: $2 million. Right from the first page, Hallberg introduces us to an interracial gay couple comprised of a wealthy but negligent white man who walks out on his long-suffering, paragon-of-virtue black boyfriend.

Or consider the “masculine” baseball novel The Art of Fielding, which revolves around a college dean and his affair with a black male student…

…It’s impossible to know where the virtue-signalling impulse ends and the story-telling begins. Possibly, they are trying to avoid the fate of Jonathan Franzen, who, despite being a bespectacled, militantly Democratic bird-watcher who writes an excess of female characters, faces a wrathful literary establishment who can’t quite countenance a straight male writer who has opinions about things.

It was foolish of me to have ever assumed I could be tradpubbed by the NYPC. And while I never sold my soul to make it past the gatekeepers (write the obligatory “strong female characters,” pander to the sodomiphiles; incorporate anti-American messages; etc.); I really regret watering down my earlier fiction for the benefit of those who would have never appreciated my restraint anyway.

High Couch of Silistra by Janet Morris

Guest Post by Jim Morris

High Couch is a classic. It is also, so far as I know, sui generis. In a long life of writing and editing in which I have written nine books, edited more than two hundred and read thousands I do not know of another book like it, not even remotely. On one level it is an exciting sci-fi adventure. On another it is a sword and sorcery epic, and on yet a third it answers Freud’s famous question, “What do women want?”

A brilliant woman has decided to give the game away, and guess what? Feminists have attacked her for it.

The writing style is heroic, but readable and fun. The characters are recognizable, the plot is satisfying, and the world it creates is like nothing you have seen before, but is still believable. It also contains what I consider the most erotic single sentence in all the thousands of books I have read:

“Flesh toy, come here!”

If that doesn’t set up a scene in your mind then you have no business reading fiction.

I’m not going to give the plot away. I’m just going to recommend it. Highly.

Janet Morris began writing in 1976 and has since published more than 30 novels, many co-authored with her husband Chris or others. She has contributed short fiction to the shared universe fantasy series Thieves World, in which she created the Sacred Band of Stepsons, a mythical unit of ancient fighters modeled on the Sacred Band of Thebes. She created, orchestrated, and edited the fantasy series Heroes in Hell, writing stories for the series as well as co-writing the related novel, The Little Helliad, with Chris Morris. She wrote the bestselling Silistra Quartet in the 1970s, including High Couch of Silistra, The Golden Sword, Wind from the Abyss, and The Carnelian Throne.

This quartet had more than four million copies in Bantam print alone, and was translated into German, French, Italian, Russian and other languages.

In the 1980s, Baen Books released a second edition. The third edition is the Author’s Cut edition, newly revised by the author for Perseid Press.

Ethnos Will Rise Against Ethnos

I don’t usually agree with Vox Day concerning race. And since he seems to believe that the solution to every single problem or issue known to man is separatism…we don’t agree on a whole lot of anything I guess.

But then he said this:

Everywhere you go, from San Jose to Melbourne, the race war will find you. Vibrants don’t give a damn that you are a good anti-racist. They could not care less that you deplore racism with every bone in your body. They are totally indifferent to the guilt and shame you feel over the actions of your ancestors. They understand, as you do not, that there is no such thing as racial equality, there is no such thing as a “proposition nation”, and there is no such thing as a Brotherhood of Man.

They hate you for the very simple reason that you are not them. And they will attack you, unprovoked, every chance they get.

Like it or not (and I don’t), he is absolutely correct in his statements here. My personal experience has taught me this, as defeatist as it may sound.

Where I disagree with Vox and his ilk (pun intended) is how inevitable this was. They insist that genetic differences demand set patterns of cognitive conformity, and imply that race alone has brought us to the brink of ruin. But we didn’t have to let the divide-and-conquer strategy work. (Plus, the traitors who pushed America onto the slippery slope were lilly-white–and no dark-skinned boogeyman held a spear to their heads.)

Nevertheless, here we are. Self-fulfilling prophecies have manifested; perverted revisions of history are clung to as gospel; and speaking the truth accomplishes little besides identifying yourself as a target to those who haven’t already targeted you.

You may pride yourself on being colorblind (as I once did). But the “vibrants” are not. They won’t become colorblind, and have no intentions to do so. How much suffering you experience will depend on how stubborn you are about accepting this reality.

"Stick to your own kind."
“One of your own kind… Stick to your own kind.”

You will be judged according to your “skin uniform” and little else in days ahead. If you are white, the “vibrants” hate you already. That hatred is just below the surface and ready to turn violent at the drop of the next catalyst.

I won’t even address Islam here. Anyone with a functioning brain is aware of how dangerous Muslims are–whatever their racial makeup.

islamRight now, as offensive as this concept is, if you encounter somebody of African descent, there is a 94-98% chance they will gleefully destroy your life, liberty and property, and that of your posterity, when opportunity presents itself. Opportunity at the ballot box today or in the bullet box tomorrow. Their education (from all and whatever sources) has taken advantage of mankind’s fallen nature to program them in the direction they desire to go, anyway, and they are absolutely convinced that they are entitled to anything they can get, by whatever means is most convenient for them.

Most Hispanics are the same or similar. And frankly, the rising undercurrent of white tribalists will eventually be no different. (The redneck parasite class already has the entitlement mentality.) Maybe you’re white, but you’re not white enough. Or not the right flavor of white, see? Comment threads around the web are already demonstrating these trends.

"Vox is gonna have his Day tonight..." Sorry--couldn't resist.
“Vox is gonna have his Day tonight…” Sorry–couldn’t resist.

When the cold civil war turns hot, and you encounter somebody of a different color, are you willing to risk your life, your family’s life, and the life of your proven allies, on the 2-6% chance that the individual is the exception and not the rule? Or will you put them in the dirt with 94-98% certainty you did the right thing? Or will you pause to weigh all the possibilities, assuming the other guy will give you a minute to sort it out? Maybe you’re uncomfortable even considering this scenario. Does your discomfort now guarantee you’ll never have to make such a choice?

Vox has been blogging frequently against the “proposition nation.” That’s the “America is an idea” sentiment that I myself have expressed, because Americans are ruled by law, not by men–whatever color the men in question happen to be.

To be honest, Vox is using the accurate definition of “nation.” God established the nations, and the distinction was/is purely genetic. So a polyglot like the USA is not, technically, a nation.

The USA is a country–a country founded on this conviction:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

The country built on that foundation (that fundamental, you might say) is what I once volunteered to put my life on the line for.  I am an American. I have not consented to change my citizenship to a regime that is destructive of these ends. No such fundamental transformation of my country to such a regime  is legal. Everyone in Congress, the Supreme Court and the White House took an oath to preserve my country and its law. Just because they are lying traitors does not obligate me to surrender my unalienable rights protected by that law.

You may insist that such a country doesn’t exist anymore. Judging by what’s going on, you’d appear to be right. In fact, I have suffered certain infringements myself. But that doesn’t mean I’ve surrendered. It also doesn’t mean I will always suffer, while evils are sufferable. It only means I pick my battles and won’t piss away what I do still have in order to make some martyr statement that two-legged sheep won’t heed or even appreciate.

You can choose to forfeit your own rights. Most North America-dwellers are choosing that, will, or have already. That does not obligate me to do likewise.

I’m an American. I don’t care what you think that means to you. What matters is what it means to me. If you are against the foundational truths summarized in the excerpt above, you are my enemy, whether you look like me or not, and whoever your ancestor was. That’s where my line is drawn. That means one side will call me a cuck; and the other side will call me a racist. Both sides will be shooting at me one day, probably. It doesn’t inspire a warm fuzzy, but I can live with that.

Where is your line drawn? If you think matching skin tones is more important than matters of life, liberty, property, and what god you will serve, sin loi. If you don’t, then please examine the alliances you’re making.

 

Muhammed Ali’s Greatest Contribution

In the past I’ve usually posted something about D-Day when June Six rolls around. This year, however, the death of an iconic heavyweight is all the buzz–and much less likely to confuse and engage the apathy of the historically challenged.

I don’t have a copy of The Great Heavyweights on the computer I’m using right now, so I can’t excerpt from it, so let me sum up Cassius Clay/Muhammed Ali first:

  • The man could take an extraordinary amount of punishment–especially to the body.
  • He was also extremely difficult to hit–probably the most elusive heavyweight there’s ever been, partially thanks to his very unorthodox defensive style.
  • His hand speed was also impressive for a heavyweight–though not quite in the league of Floyd Patterson’s.
  • His lateral movement was the quickest of any heavyweight in his time.
  • However, he did not have a great punch. He wore his opponents down with attrition and head games. He was a master at psychological warfare.
  • Judges and referees consistently let him get away with illegal tactics that no other boxer gets away with on a regular basis. He was also awarded decision victories against fighters who kicked his ass.
  • Despite his claim to be “the Greatest” (regurgitated by every black person on the planet, and plenty of non-blacks as well) he was not the greatest boxer; and not even the greatest heavyweight.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s look at one way he changed sports in the USA.

Watch the little fight promo segment starting around 5:44.

Can you imagine a jock talking about himself and an opponent this way today? And most jocks in any sport spoke this way once upon a time.

I wish I could locate some interview clips of the Rock I’ve seen in the past. Once a reporter repeated some trash talk from a scheduled opponent, then stuck the microphone in Rocky’s face for his reaction. With no change in demeanor or tone, he said “That’s for him to prove on the (date of the fight).”

Keep in mind: this guy was a cruiserweight according to the scales, fighting pros who were 10-20 pounds heavier, all his career. He had very little in the way of skills, and was matched against some extremely tough men–the worst of them were friggin’ tanks. I don’t know if there’s a dude alive today who could take a punch like those guys could. And they were mostly complete fighters–not obsessed with headhunting like those who followed. Yet Marciano fought 49 bouts with 43 knockouts (most of them in the first round) and never lost a professional fight.

What am I getting at, you ask? It’s not just what he said, but what he didn’t say. If anybody ever had excuse for an ego trip, talking trash about how bad he was and how he was going to make a grown man scream like a woman, the Rock was it.

Watch the beginning of this clip. (“Sugar” Ray Robinson is possibly the best pound-for-pound boxer who ever lived. And yes: Ray Leonard and Shane Mosely were called “Sugar” because it was hoped they would be as good as him.)

Now look at this class act, here:

It’s far from just this individual–pretty much all of them are this way (with rare exceptions, like Evander Holyfield). And it’s not even just boxing–jocks in every sport are full of themselves and ready to talk smack whether asked to or not. They don’t even have to be good; they’ll do it anyway. In fact, it’s not even just jocks. Hang out in the inner city (of any city) and you can’t help but notice overbloated egos on display–and you’ll see it in all races and ethnicities.

What happened between the first two clips and the third?

Ali happened.

Egomaniacal jocks weren’t just accepted after Ali; they were preferred. Pride became a virtue and humility ugly.

Of course there were men with huge egos before–but they had to dial it down in public lest the average Joe see how ugly and petty they actually were. But, in general, even gifted men didn’t indulge in delusions of invincibility; and alpha dogs spoke louder with actions than with words.

Ali elevated smack-talking into its own sport.

Nowadays the male (and far too many females) of the species become experts at self-aggrandizement first, then worry about actually developing skills second…if ever.

The IX by Andrew P. Weston

Guest Post by Jim Morris

The IX is the most inventive science fiction novel I have read since Stranger In a Strange Land. That’s saying a lot. The plot is highly complicated, and yet so clearly and gracefully written that it is easy to follow.

In the far future in a galaxy far far away the Arden are besieged by the Horde and though it will take a long time it is clear that their defenses will eventually crumble and they will be destroyed … unless.

The Ardenese, in an act of creative self-immolation sacrifice their lives to save their DNA, in hopes that someone will eventually reseed the planet with its original inhabitants. Their lead computer, The Architect, also recruits defenders through time and space, specially selected for qualities that are not apparent to the Ardenese, from a far off planet called Earth. They snatch great fighters from different eras just before they were about to die anyway. So they’re thrown into a probable suicide mission with their bonus time.

There are problems integrating fighters who were snatched in the act of trying to kill each other, and from far different times, the IX Legion of Rome and Scottish tribesmen, the US Cavalry and Indian tribes, and 22d Century Royal Marine Commandos and terrorists, all welded into an integrated force.

The ending is to wildly inventive and too brilliant to give away here. Suffice it to say I ended the book with tears in my eyes.

Andrew P. Weston is a Royal Marine and Police veteran from the UK who now lives on thel Greek island of Kos. An astronomy and law graduate, he is the creator of the bestsellers The IX, and Hell Bound, (a novel forming part of Janet Morris’ critically acclaimed Heroes in Hell universe). Weston is also a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, the British Fantasy Society, and the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers.

When not working he devotes spare time to assisting NASA with two of their remote research projects, and writes educational articles for Astronaut.com and Amazing Stories. He has also been known to do favors for friends, using his Royal Marine Commando skills.

A New Publisher in Town

I met author Jim Morris a few years ago, and we’ve been in sporadic contact ever since. It’s just come to my attention that some of his books are being picked up by a new publisher.

I contacted Chris and Janet Morris (no relation to Jim) of  Perseid Press, and they agreed to answer a few of my questions.

VP: What is your story–how did you become authors?

PP: We met when we were 19, actually through the music business.  Each of us had written songs, lyrics and music, independently. Both had begun playing instruments at an early age. Janet had created a school newspaper in the sixth grade and won prizes for poetry even earlier; Chris had worked in bookstores, and started playing guitar when he was 12.  Both families were highly literate, so music and musicals, as well as fiction and nonfiction, were always part of our lives.
Janet could read and write and tell time before entering the first grade; Chris’ influences took a more political path, since his father was a famous photojournalist, and picture editor for the Washington Post and the New York Times. We met in New York City’s Greenwich Village, where we first lived together; and those were heady, sometimes dangerous, times for all involved with the arts and politics.

We began writing songs together, joining bands, and put several bands together, two of which had production interest.  Janet started her first novel at 25, High Couch of Silistra, about the same time Chris started The Christopher Morris Band, and both projects got different agents the same week, and signed unrelated book publishing and record deals the same month.  Chris’ album on MCA and Janet’s first Silistra book, published by Bantam, were each released in 1977.  This led to a redistribution of effort:  Janet wrote three more novels in the Silistra series, later to be called the Silistra Quartet; Chris focused on his band and song writing.  We wrote together, edited and assisted one another.  And still do. In the late 1980s, we each became research directors for a Washington think tank, where we were the architects of the US Joint Nonlethal Weapons program,  and assisted select western nations in starting their own programs; we also led the first defense technical evaluation team to the then-Soviet Union to assess Russian military technology, and supported the US Army and the USMC in various areas, including what was at the time called the Marine Expeditionary Rifle Squad (or MERS).  For a score of years we raised and showed American Morgan Horses, the remnants of the U.S. Government’s only horse-breeding program, and had several World Champions.

VP: Both of you’ve been writing SF/F for a while, now. What would you say makes your “brand” unique?

PP: Our books are not for the faint of heart, or the politically correct, nor are they dumbed down. They are challenging and meant to be so. We explore the human condition, and what relationship and responsibility an individual has to self, society, and planet.  Just as our deep experience with horses informs our books about ancient cavalry fighters, so do our futuristic books have a basis in technology areas that will shape our future. But most of all, the books we write are the books we want to read.  By pleasing ourselves and writing honestly, we bring a directness to the topic areas we explore, whether those are nuclear war, time travel, genetics and behavior, or questions about government itself, good and bad.  And we hope always to meet our own standard.

VP: Are there recurring themes you deal with in all or most of your books?

PP: We examine the heroic model, the importance of individual struggle in service to an ideal. In Greek mythology, philosophy and ancient history, we find lessons that can help people today, whether those lessons are presented allegorically or directly. We are particularly interested right now in hero-cults and how humans deal with crises, as well as considerations of metaphysics, mortality and morality.

VP: What motivated you to become a publisher?

PP: We stopped writing fiction when we began writing in the national and international security area.  This meant walking away from burgeoning careers as novelists, but we thought it important to serve as we did.  When, in 2009, we felt the need to write a new novel, which became The Sacred Band, we talked to our agent about sending it to the usual suspects, but we wanted to keep our e-publishing rights.  Under those conditions, a 21st century publishing deal of substance would be difficult, and this was the final deciding factor:  Rather than give up our e-publishing rights, we started Perseid Press, where we can control the covers, print size, book length, and production values as we had never been able to do when published by New York behemoths.

VP: Was it difficult establishing a publishing house; or with your contacts/network, was it just a matter of making a few calls?


PP: Anything worth doing is difficult. Perseid Press evolved, rather than being established.  We provided some backlist titles, our agent facilitated some e-publishing for us under Perseid’s name to begin with.  We revived our Heroes in Hell series so that we could help showcase emerging talents.  We conceived our “Authors’ Cut” editions so that we could go back and revise and expand books we felt deserve digital immortality. Writers came to us, people we knew and people we didn’t know.  So we have become a very small press, publishing what we like from writers who “write dangerously,” which is, in a nutshell, what we ourselves do.  Often the books we buy and write don’t fall into existing marketing categories.  And that doesn’t scare us.

VP: (Just a personal note, here: As a young GI (“cherry” in the unit-specific dialect) I quickly learned an axiom popular at my first duty-station–that there were probably 80 males for every female for a 50-mile radius around Fort Bragg, NC. It might have been an exaggeration, but it was true enough for practical purposes. Whenever time off was granted (but not enough to drive beyond that 50-mile radius), I got away from the barracks as fast as possible, even if I didn’t have a plan for what to do. Two of my favorite haunts were Ed McKay’s Used Books off Yadkin Road, or the news stand/bookstore in the Cross Creek Mall. At the latter, I remember seeing a few of your Heroes in Hell books. I almost bought one a couple times, but reading about anyone in Hell wasn’t quite the escape I was looking for. I was worried I might be on the road there, myself.)

What are your ambitions for Perseid Press?

PP: Our main goal for Perseid is that we not lose quality as we grow.  Perseid wants to be bigger than we had intended, and we are keeping a very tight rein on it, but new opportunities are hard to resist.  We have a website that functions as a bookstore of sorts, and a network of people who believe in what we’re trying to do.  In one sense we are a couple of fingers in the leaky dike holding back the flood of illiteracy; in another sense, we are curators selecting books we think should survive. In yet one more sense Perseid is a literary triage effort, for a society which has lost its cultural compass and lies close to intellectual death. This is an uphill battle, perhaps, but as Tempus said in The Sacred Band:  “We make the world better one battle at a time.”

VP: I hear you on the illiteracy deal. It’s been the bane of my existence for a few years. Do you plan to remain focused on SF/F?


PP: We love sf in the true sense:  speculative fiction with a moral component, but not a moralizing component.  We will always look at well-thought sf, if the adventurous literary quality is there.  We already have published a rigorous historical by Janet, I, the Sun, about the greatest king of the Hittite empire, and that character has much to say that applies to life today. We are publishing a magical realism/literary book called Truck Stop Earth by award-winning author and journalist Michael A. Armstrong, whose novel Bridge Over Hell we have already published; we have published a memoir about an ex-patriot in Peru, Reckless Traveler, by Walter Rhein. We are publishing Andrew P. Weston, the author of The IX, Exordium of Tears, and Hell Bound, in both fantasy and science fiction; Andy is a former Royal Marine and is still active in the security area.  A new addition to our roster is Jim (James Franklin) Morris, author of the bestselling War Story; we are honored and excited to be publishing Jim’s alternate history/magical realism novels, beginning with Tahlequah, and republishing at least three of his nonfiction books, including War Story.  And we’re readying our first entry in the paranormal-suspense area, Schade, by  J.P. Wilder, also a special forces graduate.  And of course, we continue the Heroes in Hell series, and have begun a new shared concept series with Heroika 1: Dragon Eaters, to be followed by…  you guessed it…  Heroika 2: Shieldless.

The Perseid Press website is: http://www.theperseidpress.com/

VP: Somewhat involved in the book biz myself, I’m impressed with what an increasingly tough racket it is. The pool of potential readers seems to be shrinking all the time, while the number of published authors grows rapidly. POD publishing and ebooks have revolutionized the industry, which is a double-edged sword: It’s easy to break into the business now, but it’s harder than ever for readers to find an author’s books (at least when that author is an indie, and doesn’t have some sort of platform to exploit). Frankly, so much of the indie fiction out there is poorly written, that the stigma indie authors are saddled with is understandable. Yet the Big  Five are in such trouble financially these days, there is speculation that indies and micropublishers will be the only game in town one day. As professionals in the industry, I’d love to hear any insights or opinions you have on the state of things, the future of publishing, etc.

PP: As far as insights into publishing as it changes: along with the rest of humanity, we are trying to deal with the information overload of the internet, which in its turn is reducing literacy and attention span. We see audio books as a possible mitigating factor, but no such factor will make up for the simple lack of education that is so pervasive, coupled with the pernicious assurance that the uninformed opinion is as important as the informed opinion.  We go forward based on our own goals, prejudices, and perspectives, hoping to attract a growing readership of like mind.  When we edited books or anthologies for the big NY publishers, we learned that you, as an editor, are looking as hard for a writer to excite you as that writer is looking for a simpatico editor.  When the two meet, sometimes magic happens, but not often enough.  We’re concerned by the “dumb like me” attitude we see growing, by poor-quality books proliferating — but then one remembers Henry James, who coined the term “trash triumphant” to describe publishing at the end of the 19th century. Literature survived those days; it will survive these days. There always will be bad writing, self-indulgent readers, and those who only want to hear ideas with which they already concur, literature that ratifies their pre-existing tastes.  We simply have more people today.  The ones who choose video games rather than books are not our readership.  We’re not serving the reader with a five-hundred word vocabulary, but we have no quarrel with those publishers or authors who are doing so, now that the slush piles of former days are all available free of charge.

VP: Please explain the “dumb like me” expression–I haven’t heard it before.

PP: “Dumb like me” is a phrase describing the attitude of those who consider reasoning a chore, a stressful exercise threatening to revisit dearly held notions of reality, worse, to overturn them with a priori observation, undermining ‘blissful’ ignorance. We won’t use it again in any way implying that we harbor such a view.

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” -Isaac Asimov

VP: Sounds a lot like what I routinely encountered in school, and on Facebook.

As I’ve found out first hand since throwing my hat into publishing, there are hundreds of reasons an author might fail to gather a following, and many of them seem to be completely random wrong time/wrong place kind of reasons. I have my own short list of authors to whom I am grateful because of the books they’ve written; but for whatever reasons they have not enjoyed the success I believe their writing deserves. Two such authors from the tradpub era are Len Levinson and Jim Morris.

Jim Morris has been slept-on for long enough. Now his latest book, Talequah/Battle of Sorcerors and some of his classic non-fiction (including The Devil’s Secret Name) have found a home where they’ll be getting new covers and some adept marketing. Virtual Pulp wishes him phenomenal sales, and thanks Perseid Press for taking the time to respond.

I can’t say exactly when, but we’ll be reviewing some Perseid Press books here in the future.