Category Archives: Science fiction

Jack London, Publication day, Science fiction

At the Edge of the Crater

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I’m pleased to announce that the winter issue of Tales from the Crosstimbers is now available on Amazon. It includes my story “At the Edge of the Crater.”

Jak, a newcomer to the mining colony on the asteroid 16 Psyche, ignores his partner’s warning not to travel alone into the asteroid’s Badlands. There’s a rich new vein of iridium to claim, and Jak wants first pick. All he has to do to win the race is to venture into a forbidding impact crater.

I wrote this tale as a futuristic version of “To Build a Fire” by Jack London. In “Crater,” the protagonist lets greed drown out the warnings of his more experienced partner. Space, like all of nature, often overwhelms us with its beauty and mystery but can also snuff out human life in an instant. To understand ourselves, and to grasp our place in the universe, we must realize we are mites compared to the limitless expanse of space. Survival is a struggle, one best waged with friends at our side.

Tales from the Crosstimbers features speculative tales “grounded in strong characters interacting with a gritty, realistic world.” So it’s the perfect venue for this story. I’m honored to be included with this line-up of authors.

Publication day, Science fiction

A Rookie Mistake

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I’m pleased to announce the latest issue of Tales from the Crosstimbers is now available on Amazon. It includes my story “A Rookie Mistake.”

Deputy Malcolm Lamb, the newest member of the marshal’s office on the rowdy mining asteroid Psyche, gets a chance to prove himself to the older deputies when he’s sent to find a stolen minebot. But when he finally catches up with the culprit, he’s forced to question where his duty lies. The choice he makes shows heroic action can spring from simple kindness, from our realization we are connected to others.

I’ve long imagined what mining would be like in the asteroid belt, a vast region rich with precious metals, yet forbidding and treacherous. To me, the combination of grizzled prospectors of the Old West and space exploration is endlessly fascinating. My first foray to the asteroid Psyche was “The Calculus of Karma,” the cover story in the June, 2020 issue of Mystery Weekly Magazine.

The return trip there was long overdue, and I’m thrilled with the result. Check it out! It’s available on Amazon as a Kindle or paperback.

Science fiction, Television

That First Job

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Here’s a picture of me from 1975. I’m at the video board at WGHP TV in High Point, North Carolina. Weekends and summers in high school and college, I worked at the local TV station, running the projector and editing films. I got to see a lot of classic movies, especially the horror and science fiction films we featured on Shock Theater, which aired Saturday at midnight.

That first job makes a lasting impact, often in ways we don’t recognize. Like many truths about ourselves, it often takes an outsider to point that out. For example. I was pleasantly surprised by this review of Aztec Midnight, my first book:

“Tuggle skillfully ends most of his sections with hooks redolent of the weekly movie suspense serials that provided filler between Saturday matinee double features.” — Gordon Osmond, author of Slipping on Stardust

As soon as I read it I realized Osmond was right. I’d absorbed many of the tropes from the science fiction movies I’d edited, and as a kid, loved watching “B” serial films like Rocket Man.

Recreating the fun and adventure of those old classics remains my goal in the stories I write today. And if they get published? Why, that’s just icing on the cake.

Edgar Allan Poe, Horror, Science fiction, Southern Fiction

Happy 216th Birthday, Edgar Allan Poe!

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Edgar Allan Poe

Poe’s influence on world literature is profound and far reaching. He inspired many writers, including H. P. Lovecraft, Stephen King, and Ray Bradbury, and also defined modern horror, science fiction, and crime fiction.

Here’s my birthday tribute to a great teller of tales, Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Premature Burial.”

Science fiction, Southern Fiction

The Baptism of Time

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There’s a powerful and alluring line in Haruki Murakami’s novel Norwegian Wood I’ve always loved: “I don’t want to waste valuable time reading any book that has not had the baptism of time.”

The character meant that in a limited sense; he felt only old books that had endured for generations were worth reading. But I would add that works that acknowledge and explore the deep and often inscrutable influence of the past are also “baptized of time” and make the most moving and inspirational reading. William Faulkner captured that insight perfectly in Requiem for a Nun: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity.”

I’ve long believed the healing power of literature rises from its ability to let us see our deep connections to others, the world around us, and the cosmos. Rachel Carson once wrote that “To understand the living present, and the promise of the future, it is necessary to remember the past.”

Growing up around Civil War and American Indian sites, I absorbed a deep appreciation of the past, and that is reflected in the stories I write. My latest is “Making a Ton,” featured in the Minstrels in the Galaxy anthology, The protagonist, a pilot in the Asteroid Belt, reflects on his connections to the trailblazers who led humanity into space:

Ray stepped towards the window. “We got to this moon on the shoulders of giants,” he announced. “Pioneers, heroes, every one of them. Giving up would be an insult to their memory. They were men and women who roared into space in ships powered by chemical fuel that could’ve exploded and turned them to space dust. But they did it anyway. They were people with backbones, muscles, and scars, and courage. That’s what space travel is about, not technology. I feel like I’m with them when I’m piloting.”

Riveting adventures, echoes of lives lived well, and guideposts for discovering what makes us what we are — that’s the goal of all good stories.

Publication day, Science fiction

Making A Ton

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Alpha Mercs has published Minstrels in the Galaxy, their latest anthology, and I’m pleased to say it includes my story “Making a Ton.” Editor Sam Robb was very kind in his acceptance letter: “Loved your story. Definite Larry Niven / Known Space vibes.”

The music of Jethro Tull is the theme for this unique anthology of twelve romping tales. I’ve always loved “Too Old to Rock ‘n’ Roll: Too Young to Die!” so it was a natural choice for my story “Making a Ton.”

And that cover art is truly a thing of beauty. Cedar Sanderson outdid herself.

The action in my piece unfolds at an ice mine on Saturn’s frozen moon Enceladus. (Yes, I’ve been there before. I find Enceladus endlessly fascinating.) Ray, an aging pilot who can’t find work, bets his life savings on a race against an alien who not only has a state-of-the-art ship, but an inborn talent for speeding through the Asteroid Belt.

What is Ray thinking? Does he plan to go out with a bang? Could this be the final take?

There’s only one way to find out.

Available on Amazon in Kindle or paperback.

Publication day, Science fiction

Workforce Reduction

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In Another Time Magazine has published my short story “Workforce Reduction.” In her acceptance letter, editor Agatha Grimke wrote, “This was very well written and a fun piece, and we really liked the way you told the story through executive emails.”

Thank you, Agatha! This is my first shot at epistolary fiction, and it was a blast to research and write. Not sure how you’d classify it — dark sci-fi? satire? Whatever you call it, I was extremely pleased how my observations on religion and current events dovetailed into the story arc.

“Workforce Reduction” draws on my days working in Organizational Development for an insurance company, where I analyzed workflow and designed new procedures. That’s where I first learned about Dr. Jerry Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy. In addition to being a science fiction author, Pournelle was an influential OD scientist. His Iron Law says, “In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control.”

In other words, bureaucracies tend to become self-serving. I can attest to the accuracy of that law. Boy, can I ever. My story features creepy aliens and back-stabbing bosses, but Pournelle’s law is the real antagonist in this story.

Available now on Amazon in Kindle or paperback.

Publication day, Science fiction

Only You and I Together

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So thrilled to see my story Only You and I Together published at White Cat Publications. Kay DiBianca, the award-winning author of Time After Tyme, read it and commented, “Very moving.”

The inspiration for this story hit me when my brother and his wife joined me and Julie at the beach, the first opportunity we’ve had in years to spend a week together. We both commented on traits we saw in each other that reminded us of our departed father. Dad’s voice, mannerisms, and wry humor filled a room overlooking the ocean once again, recalling family vacations from long ago.

Later, it dawned on me that the two of us, in a way, had made our father come alive. So this is a story I put my heart into. I still get a little misty when I read it.

The title? I borrowed that from The Waste Land, which is fitting inspiration:

When I count, there are only you and I together

But when I look ahead up the white road

There is always another one walking beside you

My father witnessed the horror of war and death, and struggled the rest of his life to overcome PTSD. Despite that all-but-consuming torment, he made himself into a loving husband and father. He was the most decent man I have ever known. This story is for him.

Detective Fiction, Fantasy Fiction, Science fiction

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Premature Burial”

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It’s Edgar Allan Poe’s 215th birthday! In memory of this great writer of science fiction, fantasy, and mystery, I’m offering my observations about Poe’s creepiest tales, the ones that deal with the ultimate terror of human existence — being buried alive.

My tribute to Poe, “The Premature Burial,” is featured in the latest post at the DMR Books blog.

Science fiction, Television

I Have Awaited A Question

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SPOCK: Incredible power. It can’t be a machine as we understand mechanics.
KIRK: Then what is it?
GUARDIAN: (The doughnut pulses bright in time with the words) A question. Since before your sun burned hot in space and before your race was born, I have awaited a question.
KIRK: What are you?
GUARDIAN: I am the Guardian of Forever.
KIRK: Are you machine or being?
GUARDIAN: I am both and neither. I am my own beginning, my own ending.
SPOCK: I see no reason for answers to be couched in riddles.
GUARDIAN: I answer as simply as your level of understanding makes possible.

The City on the Edge of Forever