CONTINUITY GIRL

The latest release from BEAT to a PULP and Nik Morton is now available for kindle pre-order. Print to follow.

What has gone before . . .

In our future, Kyler Knightly and his uncle Damon Cole are field agents for Continuity Inc, a private organization that obtained the contract when the government Time Corps was deregulated. CI is dedicated to protecting human history.

They use the Zygma projector to travel through time and must carry a focus object from the period they’re targeting.

Kyler is also a dreamer with passive psychic talents, a precognitive.

The head of the group is an Artificial Intelligence character, Sennacherib, which possesses an organic interface, sharing the body of a two-spot octopus in an aquarium tank! Their offices are in the West End of London, a disused theater.

The third book in the series brings two more exciting time-travel adventures for Knightly and Cole of Continuity Inc.

CONTINUITY GIRL


Kyler is accompanied by the delectable yet mysterious Tertia Beynon. Their mission is to trace an academic who has traveled to Roman Britain in 192 AD. Precog suggests that an interfering event in this past will radically alter the future. Arriving at Hadrian’s Wall in the freezing winter, the pair encounter blood-thirsty argumentative locals and then obtain the aid of Governor Clodius Albinus in their trek on the northern side of the wall. Here they are confronted by Ambrosius, a druid who possesses arcane power.

Nothing seems simple. Action abounds, with brutal sacrifices, deadly swordplay, a fraught chariot chase and an attack by a pack of wolves.

With all this going on, will they be able to save their future in time?

“What an exciting zip back to the past with some really neat time travel twists! The story may be short but it’s packed with plenty of entertaining ‘what ifs’ and action near Hadrian’s Wall. And for good measure, the conclusion just might be something you don’t expect!” —Nancy Jardine, author of 'The Celtic Fervour' series

WE FELL BELOW THE EARTH

Our duo are helped by Tertia and Chief Inspector Irving. Corpses drained of blood point to a clue, a letter from Bistritz in 1897. Kyler and Cole are sent to Transylvania.

The conclusions are inescapable: it seems that the discovery of time travel—even though it’s regulated and Continuity Inc strives to protect history—heralded in a sequence of parallel time-streams. Where before these time-streams were ‘what if’ scenarios, now they’ve split into different realities. In some, fiction is fact.

The deaths, the blood and gore point to vampires being real, and they’re certainly not your idealized romantic sort. The evil blood-suckers are intent on feasting in Kyler’s present and spreading their contagion ...

Continuity Girl

I hope you don't mind a little plug here to let you know the third book in the Knightly & Cole series is on the way soon. It's titled Continuity Girl and is written by Nik Morton and published through BEAT to a PULP books. Here's the first two in the series.

3.14159...

I'm a math enthusiast and love any chance to write an article dedicated to the subject. And stoked even more because March 14 is Pi Day. So here's five films where math is fused with the mystery/thriller and sci-fi genres.

“Contrapasso”

There’s a lot of underhanded business going on in the park that seems to be trickling down from the corporate top. Secrets, deceptions, and inappropriate behaviors are making the rounds. We’ve seen it from the upper levels, and now we’re getting more from the lower levels. 

The two techs—Lutz (Leonardo Nam) and Sylvester (Ptolemy Slocum), who had a run-in with Maeve after not putting her in sleep mode—are back. (I agree with Lutz, he probably did place her in sleep mode … she had just used her count-to-three trick to wake herself up.) They are again with Maeve, and Lutz is feeling a little more than creeped out by her presence because of last time.

*Rest of my review for Westworld's "Contrapasso" can be found here.

“Who in the world am I?”

Did you watch Westworld 1.03: “The Stray” on HBO? Of course, your faithful reviewing bot did and here's a sample of my review:

I guess if you want to gift a robot a thought-provoking piece of literature, then Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) is a fine choice. “Who in the world am I?” Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) reads aloud from the classic that Bernard Lowe (Jeffrey Wright) passes to her in another of their covert meetings.

But it would seem Dolores has an equally provocative “present” in return when she asks Bernard the whereabouts of his son. He dodges the question by telling her it would be too hard for her to understand, but is intrigued why she would pose the question in the first place. To have a conversation, she needs to ask personal questions, Dolores explicates, and it would appear by his expression that she has pleasantly surprised Westworld’s head of programming with her advanced cognitive abilities.

When Dolores awakes in her bed (probably a good thing he didn’t give her the mathematician’s sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871), where the conclusion suggests everything is a dream within a dream), she uncovers the gun she had found buried in the ground and now keeps hidden away in her dresser drawer. Hidden? It would seem not much could be kept squirreled away for long with the amusement park’s Big Brother ability to call up and scan specific locales.

*Rest of my article can be found at Macmillan's Criminal Element blog.

What's In A Name: Bob Ford

Dr. Robert Ford. 

Somehow this name didn’t quite register while watching the first episode. I mean I heard it, Anthony Hopkins plays Robert Ford, creator, or rather “God,” of Westworld. But what a choice of a name it happens to be … Bob Ford, the man who lives in infamy for shooting outlaw Jesse James in the back while James was hanging a picture in the family home.

Now, the Westworld park, we are told, is about people finding out exactly who they are and what they are capable of doing, and they can enjoy the freedom of that discovery without consequence—where you can be an outlaw like James or a treacherous ne’er-do-well like Ford. Maybe the show’s architects don’t have an agenda in mind with the moniker “Bob Ford,” but Western enthusiasts will certainly find it curious that the most disrespected individual, arguably, in Wild West history has the highest held position in Westworld … then again, I’d be willing to throw my chips on the table that it’s a tell-tale sign of what we’re going to find out about the park’s creator. 

More of my review of the second episode can be found at Criminal Element. Thanks in advance for taking a look.

The Way Station

My reread of  The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger, chapter 2 is now live.

Pale Mars Cover Reveal

What I've been working on with dMix and Garnett who says it best, "'Pale Mars' is the Atompunk sequel to 'Red Venus.'"

Beauty and Robots

As you can see I've been busy this summer writing reviews beside the usual BEAT to a PULP work. Here's two more that I will thank you in advance for reading. I had the pleasure to get an advance copy of THE BRANSON BEAUTY by Claire Booth which is a refreshing first in a series featuring Sheriff Hank Worth. Also reviewed is Isaac Asimov THE ROBOTS OF DAWN.

The Naked Sun

Like robots? Like detective novels? If so, here's my review of THE NAKED SUN.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

It took me four months to watch the biggest film of 2015—Star Wars: The Force Awakens—and here are a few haphazard thoughts from my first, late-to-the-game viewing last night:

What a strong actor Daisy Ridley (Rey) is in every scene. All the youngers are marvelous but this lady has serious acting chops—looking forward to watching her in material beyond a space opera. And for the returning veterans: Great to see Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Chewie (Peter Mayhew) though Carrie Fisher seemed stiff as Leia—uncomfortably so. And, hey, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), Han sure could have used you a little sooner. (I’m sure that will all be explained in further detail but talk about sitting this one out, right?) That being acknowledged when we do see the last of the Jedi’s, this fanboy, was seven-years-old again, it was 1977, in Dryden, New York, and I was watching the original with my mom and dad at a drive-in. The Force Awakens is what ‘going to the movies’ is all about.

Minor nitpicks: Believe this point has been voiced in numerous fandom circles: found it amusing that Luke, Han Solo, etc., are myths after only thirty odd years. But, who knows, sands through the hourglass may move faster this galaxy far, far away. And I would have liked to have seen more of Chewbacca in a couple of key scenes.

When talent, writing, and direction is packaged fresh, it’s almost eye-opening and awe-inspiring how a plot that has so many borrowed elements from Star Wars: A New Hope can seem born again. J.J. Abrams deserves a ton of credit for paying homage and also providing a fresh direction.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a whole lot of fun that I recommend to everyone … especially us old scruffy-looking nerf herders.

The Witch’s Familiar

My review of Doctor Who: The Witch's Familiar is now live at The Fall Creek Review.

Doctor Who: The Magician's Apprentice

For the most part I liked "The Magician’s Apprentice." My mini-review is up at The Fall Creek Review.

Red Venus

The Cold War just bled into the cold void of space

SUPERPOWERS CLASH on the DEADLIEST PLANET in the SOLAR SYSTEM ... 

Fog-shrouded Venus had refused to give up her mysteries, until the USSR sent their best and brightest on a top-secret scientific mission. Now the crew of the Krasnyy Sokol, led by gorgeous Cosmonaut Nadezhda Gura, must brave a hellish hothouse of jungle swampland crawling with monstrous life. It’s Russians and rayguns against a death planet—and that’s before the Americans show up. 

At 17K words, RED VENUS is a slam-bang trip on atomic-powered rockets, seen through the eyes of the East. Read it, tovarisch, and experience a part of the solar system that never was. 

* * * * * 

Praise for Garnett Elliott and RED VENUS: 

“Garnett Elliott takes the Cold War into space in this rip-roaring planetary adventure tale that wouldn't be out of place in the browning pages of an old issue of Imagination or Imaginative Tales, two of my favorites from the ’50s. Check it out!” 
—Bill Crider 
Anthony Award-winning author 

* * * 

“Garnett Elliott’s RED VENUS is an exciting science fiction thriller that is at once pulpy yet high tech, crackles with sharp characterizations, a full-tilt pace, plenty of twisty surprises, and action galore … Oh, and did I mention the hostile planet teeming with fierce, grotesque creatures who fly and crawl and ooze out of the muck to relentlessly stalk and strike at practically every turn? Buckle up tight and get ready for a maximum-G thrust into outer space adventure!” 
—Wayne D. Dundee 
Author of Fugitive Trail, By Blood Bound 
and the Joe Hannibal series 

* * * 

“RED VENUS is a solid, old school pulp sci-fi story, equal parts adventure and intrigue. But it’s also an insightful ‘what if’ narrative … a terrifically fast-paced alternate history with great characters and pacing. I loved it, and I'm pretty damn hard to please when it comes to sci-fi.” 
—Heath Lowrance 
Author of Hawthorne: Tales of a Weirder West

Steel

Elijah (“Lije”) Baley is a New York City homicide detective a few millennia into the future. His world is an overpopulated Earth with eight billion people living in massive, layered complexes—caves of steel—enclosed by mammoth domes. Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York have grown to the point where they are almost touching. Humans no longer know what it is to see natural light (except the elite who live at the top) or experience the feeling of the wind on their back. Even the thought of walking outside their enclosed womb of a city is terrifying and many people like Elijah have agoraphobia.

There are fifty known planets, called Spacer worlds, where colonists have established new societies and have become wealthy due to their low population and abundant supplies, leaving Earth as the runt of the galaxy. The aptly named Spacers are deep intergalactic colonists who have returned to Earth, but their integration back on the home planet has its obstacles, the least of which is their fear of the diseased-riddled Earth since their own worlds are devoid of such maladies.

 *Read the rest of my article, 60 YEARS LATER, ASIMOV’S STEEL STRONG, at The Fall Creek Review.

Engines of War

“I’ve faced this in the past, and I didn’t act in time. If I’d only had the guts to do what was necessary back then, things might be very different now. But I’m a different man now. I don’t live by the same ideals. I have a job to do, and this time, I have no such qualms.” —The War Doctor

I had a lot of fun reading Engines of War by George Mann. My thoughts at Macmillan's Tor.com.

Swashbuckling Swagger!

In another time they may have sailed with Blackbeard or Captain Kidd but these anachronistic swashbucklers live in a future of droids, Daleks, and mutants. They are heroes who laugh in the face of death, live to do battle against impossible chances, and know when to toss that one-line quip that sends proceedings up with a wink. Quite often they are hesitant protagonists who seem more prone to shady dealings than noble pursuits, but when the chips are down they rise to the occasion and balance the odds.

Without further ado, I'm at Tor.com with seven science-fiction heroes with swashbuckling swagger!

Free ebook! Carnosaur Weekend by Garnett Elliott

It’s a dirty job …

Policing the timelines has always been dangerous, but the brave agents of Continuity Inc. have arguably the most important job in human history. Protecting human history.

Newly promoted agent Kyler Knightly teams up with his uncle, Damon Cole, to stop unscrupulous developers from exploiting the Late Cretaceous. A luxury subdivision smack-dab in the middle of dinosaur country threatens not only the present, but super-rich homeowners looking for the ultimate getaway.

CARNOSAUR WEEKEND includes the original Kyler Knightly story, “The Zygma Gambit,” inspired by the dream journals of Kyle J. Knapp.

*This book will be a free Kindle download for several days and the print version will be released next week. 

Sonic Screwdrivers, Anyone?

I'm at Macmillan’s Tor.com today with Is it Time to Lose the Sonic Screwdriver Again?

Science Fiction Detective Mash-Ups

My first article for Tor.com on Eight Essential Science Fiction Detective Mash-Ups.