The Mayans may be right. The world may be coming to an end in a few short days.

Maybe, on December 21, everything will cease to exist. Or transform into a whole new realm of matter. Or the world might just change into myriad rainbow colors, and we’ll all ride around in a yellow submarine…no, never mind, that’s a different apocalypse, isn’t it.

But maybe the world is coming to an end. There’s no other way to explain why Kirkus Reviews decided to take a look at Mecha Rogue, my latest novel under the Brett Patton pseudonym.

Yes, you read that right. Kirkus. Giant robots. Review.

And there’s no other way to explain why, well, the guys are Kirkus seemed to, well, kinda like the book:

In style and violence, a hybrid of the movies Transformers and Independence Day: the sequel to Mecha Corps (2011)…

Slam-bang action with never a dull moment: imagine a 21st century Lensman series, if anybody still remembers E.E. “Doc” Smith, without the latter’s lofty black-and-white moral tone and awful prose.

Yes, that’s right. Mecha Rogue is a New and Notable book on Kirkus Reviews. Check it out!

What’s more, Kirkus decided to talk with me a bit about the Mecha Rogue universe, my writing, and general SF stuffs. You can check out the interview here.

Aaaand…you all know what you gotta do.

The first was for the Edison-meets-Bill-Gates “Panacea,” published on Sci Fiction. This time it’s for “Orion Rising,” published in Panverse Three.

The Sidewise Awards are dedicated to alternate history. And Orion Rising is definitely an alternate—a look at what might have happened if we’d gotten Orion as our space program, rather than Apollo. After a convo with Freeman Dyson at a conference on the commercialization of space, it didn’t seem that far-fetched.

Here’s the full story:

We are pleased to announce this year’s nominees for the Sidewise Award for Alternate History.  The winners will be announced at Chicon 7, this year’s Worldcon, in Chicago, Illinois during the weekend of August 30.  The Sidewise Awards have been presented annually since 1995 to recognize excellence in alternate historical fiction. This year’s panel of judges was made up of Stephen Baxter, Evelyn Leeper, Jim Rittenhouse, Stu Shiffman, Kurt Sidaway, and Steven H Silver.

Congratulations and best of luck.

Short Form

* Michael F. Flynn, The Iron Shirts (Tor.com)
* Lisa Goldstein, Paradise Is a Walled Garden (Asimov’s, 8/11)
* Jason Stoddard, Orion Rising (Panverse 3, edited by Dario Ciriello,
Panverse Publishing)
* Harry Turtledove, Lee at the Alamo (Tor.com)

Long Form

* Robert Conroy, Castro’s Bomb (Kindle)
* Robert Conroy, Himmler’s War (Baen Books)
* Jeff Greenfield, Then Everything Changed (Putnam)
* Ian R MacLeod, Wake Up and Dream (PS Publishing)
* Ian McDonald, Planesrunner (Pyr)
* Ekaterina Sedia, Heart of Iron (Prime)
* Lavie Tidhar, Camera Obscura (Angry Robot)

So go, grab a copy of Panverse Three, and see what we could have had. And no, this isn’t any happy fun-time show.

Let’s see. Winning Mars is about a reality show on Mars, and it’s set in the 2021-2023 timeframe. Wonder where they got the idea?

Just kidding. Maybe great minds think alike. Or maybe we’re both crazy. Who knows? I did predict compression spacesuit technology, the ongoing economic downturn, and now reality shows on Mars . . . so if Winfinity shows up soon, well, hmm.

Actually, there’s been a lot of news in commercial space that I missed. SpaceX was part of Winning Mars, but I didn’t predict the asteroid mining venture (with some significant backers.) And the recent news about the successful SpaceX launch to the ISS is mega-cool.

Hats off to the crazy people in the world!

First, Winning Mars is a Locus New and Notable book for February.

Second,

“Winning Mars is a fascinating story, thought-provoking and insightful. Stoddard manages to evoke authors like Walter Jon Williams, Ben Bova, and Cory Doctorow as he painstakingly examines every aspect involved in heading to Mars in a future not too far removed from our own time period. Certainly, it’s easy to see how we could go from Here to There, given the way the economy, the government, and the entertainment industry have performed and evolved in recent years. 

Moreover, Stoddard actually addresses a question I’ve contemplated for years, something which has become something of a reality recently. If government-funded space programs are falling behind, why not privatize space travel? Why not give Disney and Microsoft and Apple the room to do what’s needed to put a Disneyworld on the Moon and a Hilton in orbit? Stoddard’s suggested plan for making it to Mars and back with the aid of interested sponsors is believable and interesting. Some are in it for the publicity, some for the challenge, some for the potential return.

 My final verdict? Winning Mars is a fascinating, entertaining, quite possibly prophetic book, and I had a lot of fun reading it.”

Tor.com, Michael M. Jones

Third, 

“As I’ve mentioned before, I’m totally over dystopias. Thankfully, then, despite worries at the beginning, the world of Winning Mars isn’t really dystopic. It seems like a real world, with both good and bad aspects to it. IMHO, it is a plausible extrapolation, for the most part, at least from our current vantage point (though undoubtedly in ten years it’ll seem completely off-base).

What I enjoyed most about it was its hopefulness and optimism about humanity. Ultimately, it pleads the need for the human imagination and the drive to go forth, making space for adventure and crazy-eyed idealism, taking chances, exploring, pushing, growing. As a child of Trek, this speaks to my very soul.”

Bourgeois Nerd

“Mecha Corps by debut novelist Brett Patton is a sci-fi adventure from beginning to end. Once I started reading this story, I could not put this book down. I have a new favorite sci-fi author and his name is Brett Patton. I look forward to reading his other novels in this series, if not any other sci-fi novels he writes.”

Night Owl Reviews, Dawn Colclasure

“Darn good mech action! That pretty well sums up my review of Mecha Corps by Brett Patton. I read a Gundam series awhile back, and the Robotech novels, and Starship Troopers, and Armor. Other science fiction I’ve read has had powered armor in one form or another. They’ve all been good, but Mecha Corps just freakin’ kills it! This book, apparently the start of series called the Armor Wars, is what all mecha fiction should be like.”

Kevin Bayer, Sporadic Reviews

“Brett Patton has written a thrill a minute military science fiction starring a fascinating hero who learns in training to be part of a cohesive unit which requires him to give up for now his personal goal. Readers also observe the politicians who use and sacrifice Black Ops agents to further their ambitions. Filled with twists and secrets that are not all revealed in this action-packed story line, fans will enjoy staring into combat with the Mecha Corps.”

Alternative Worlds, Harriet Klausner

“Mecha Corps is a fun, fast-paced science fiction adventure. With colorful characters and an exciting plot, this story was hard to put down. This first novel in a continuing series show plenty of promise. While this novel is a successful standalone, with a satisfying conclusion, there is plenty of room for more story and a few unanswered questions.”

SciFiChick.com

“Best new release was Brett Patton‘s debut Mecha Corps. It is a promising new military science series with features from Transformers and the Mech Warrior universe.”

Cybermage.se

Sit back and think about that a minute. And repeat it to yourself. A self-made billionaire who’s revolutionizing space travel and reinventing the automobile has now said, “I will put millions of people on Mars.” It’s like something out of a Heinlein story, from an era when we actually still believed that humankind could go forward, that science wasn’t a Catch-22, and progress was not some silly notion that never actually happened.

And think about what it means if it actually happens.

“Well, Musk probably wants the millions of people up there as slaves,” the cynics will say. “He’s an evil capitalist, nothing good ever comes of them. Probably needs the low-income workers for the factories he’ll put up there. Soon we’ll be competing with cheap Martian imports!”

Or, your internal refrain might go something like this. “Why’s he bothering when we have all these problems down here on earth? Wouldn’t the money be better spent uplifting our own population?”

And some will say, “Well, it doesn’t matter anyway, because Musk is a terrible person, I heard he did XYZ!”

Well, I’ll tell you why it’s not about slaves, and why Musk isn’t bothering, and why even imperfect humans (you know, like every single one of us) can and should do the most amazing things they can. It’s because we stand at a very special place in history. We can either start thinking big again, or we can chain ourselves into a one-world prison. One world, one set of resources, one set of chances. Or many worlds, many resources, many chances.

And I for one think we need a new frontier. In this pressure-cooker world, are we at each others’ throats more and more simply because there’s no way for the more adventurous to get away? Is it because everything is too planned, too safe? Is it something programmed into us over millions of years? There’s powerful evidence that early human ancestors’ upright posture was to provide a more energy-efficient way of getting around. We were literally born to walk, to run, to explore. To see past the next hill, and discover what’s in the next valley.

Maybe this is one of the single most powerful things driving us? What if our love of travel and speed has its roots in our evolutionary past? What if we need to keep going, even after we’ve explored every inch of this planet?

“Crazy ravings of a marginal science fiction author,” you might say. Or, deep down, you might look out your window, at the horizon, and feel the pull of what lies beyond.

No matter the case, my hat is off to Elon Musk. I’d really enjoy buying him a drink someday. And perhaps talking about how the low end of his Mars trip budget lines up well with what I had in mind for Winning Mars.

Well, hey, I have Winning Mars out, y’know. But I can’t deny things have been somewhat slow on the new release front.

I could use the usual excuses: too busy, too many things changing in my life, coudn’t find a Starbucks to write in, had to feed the dog, etc. But the reality is that I’ve been working on some new things on the writing side. One still isn’t ready for prime time, but this one is.

So, meet my alter ego: Brett Patton.

He writes for ROC. And he writes about a bunch of fun stuff that doesn’t fit in, say, a near-future book about scheming entertainment execs and a reality show on Mars. Things that include several flavors of interplanetary empires, wacky instantaneous point-to-point spaceship drives, dead races and giant robots. Yes, I said giant robots. Except they aren’t really mechanical. But I’m getting ahead of myself–

“Wait. Are you saying that you’ve written a mass market science fiction novel under a pseudonym?”

Yes, I’m saying exactly that. Well, sorta kinda. Because it’s not just a good old-fashioned golden age space opera. It isn’t just about pointing the trigger and shooting. There’s a lot of hidden stuff going on. It’s not so black and white. And you know what? Writing Mecha Corps was a lot of fun.

And it has giant robots! It even made Library Journal’s “Mass Market Paperbacks of Note” for December 2011. 

You know what to do:

Buy on Barnes and Noble
Buy on Amazon

Here’s what they have to say:

In a future where the art of “linear entertainment”—better known as TV shows—is giving way to interactive, massive multiuser online gaming (MMOs), producer Jere Gutierrez conceives of a “reality show” set on yet-to-be-colonized Mars. Eleven players, divided into teams that are each assigned a different goal, travel to the Red Planet to compete in a $50 million contest while the world watches on a five-minute time delay. The risk: a high probability of death. 

VERDICT 

Stoddard’s highly original story draws on the latest trends in reality TV and tension over U.S. vs. Chinese control of space travel. Powerful storytelling, a minimalist prose style that does not diminish the three-dimensional characters, and a keen ear for dialog add to this novel’s many pleasures.

Read more here–>

Can I be more thrilled? No. Not possible. Simply beyond the pale. Thanks again to Prime Books for reaching out to me!

Delighted? Skeptical? Amused? Have some lunch money laying around? See for yourself—buy Winning Mars:

At Prime Books
At Barnes & Noble
At Amazon
At Powell’s

The first, Panverse Three, features my novella, Orion Rising. It’s an alternate history, based on a short conversation I had with Freeman Dyson at a conference a few years back.

Now, you’ve probably put together, “Orion” and “Freeman Dyson,” and you’re thinking, “Oh crap, he’s not going there, is he?” Well, yep I did, but probably not in the way you expected. And it’s certainly not warm and fuzzy, cute and cuddly, or even strange and happy. Read it. You’ll see.

And if you don’t like my stuff, get Panverse Three anyway. There’s some great stuff in there, and we need more venues for long fiction in our twitterpated age. Or maybe we just need to write Twitter threads. Or maybe we need a shared writing experience like The SCP Foundation. Or maybe we need to all write movies and games. Or . . . well, nevermind.

The second, Winning Mars, is my first novel from Prime Books. I’ve been working with Paula Guran, their wonderful editor, and I think we ended up with something fairly amazing.

If you’ve read the original novella from Interzone 196, or even the creative commons book, you’ll find that this version of Winning Mars has evolved fairly dramatically. Most notably is a new character, and she’s by far the smartest and most interesting of the . . . but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Plan for a December launch–and plan for a re-release of Saving Mars, the novella that bridges Winning Mars and Eternal Franchise, at the same time.

And–I gotta say, I love the Winning Mars cover!

No, I haven’t accepted a multimillion dollar offer to stop writing forever.

No, I haven’t been abducted by aliens and replaced with a perfect facsimile. At least I don’t think so. But then again, how would I know? I mean, if the facsimile was really perfect . . . but I’m getting off track.

What I have been is insanely busy–and the writing I’ve been working on has largely been invisible, or much longer-term. So, for those of you who like my stuff, this is a quick notice: it’s coming! What it won’t be coming in is small, easy-to-digest pieces. And some of it may not even be coming in book form.

Here’s what I can say: Winning Mars is headed your way. As is another novel. Can’t talk about that one much. And . . . Willpower . . . well, I can’t say much about that either, because what’s done isn’t done until it’s done, and even then it may not be done. But it’s been a long strange road, and let’s say that Willpower has an, ahem, interesting shot at much broader exposure.

In the meantime, you can look forward to Orion Rising in Panverse Three, coming September 2011.

But, in any case, I’ll be more active here in the months to come!

What is it?

Nothing less than a group of crazy Danes shooting off a rocket capable of sending a human on a suborbital joyride, a la SpaceShip one.

Here’s the kicker: they are all amateurs, they all did this on their own time, and they did it for less than $100,000.

And they’re towing it out to launch on a hand-built pontoon gantry with the submarine they also built themselves.

Read that again: they’re launching a (potentially) manned suborbital spacecraft they built themselves from a floating gantry they built themselves, towed by a submarine they built themselves.

This, my friends, is human spirit.

This is what we’re so close to talking ourselves out of, forever, with every bit of pessimism we wallow in. Look at this, and think, What could we accomplish if everyone thought the way these guys do?

Here’s a link to their site.

Here’s a link to a thread with more photos, with information on the Open Space Movement, which is actively supporting Copenhagen Suborbitals.

If you can’t make your own spaceship, maybe you can help them out with a donation. I did.

But this is one of those days when I ask, “Why the hell do you do this?” Deep in the middle of a book (50k words in), deep in the middle of multiple client projects, deep in the middle of production issues that remind me why I got out of manufacturing in the first place, I have to ask: Why work so damn hard?

The top-level answer is simple: if you are not a trust-fund baby, or have the incredible good fortune to be early into a company with excellent stock options and liberal divestiture requirements that just happens to be successful and go public, this is how you become successful: through many, many years of hard work. Insanely hard work. You laugh at your friends when they complain they have to work a 10-hour day for the same salary, you laugh at people who carp and bitch about having their pension moved back from 50 to 55, you laugh at people who say they work hard, when they have the luxury to call you in the middle of the day and talk for an hour. And that’s all totally cool, that’s their choice, and that’s what they signed up for. I have signed myself up to far to0 many things, and now I’m paying the price.

And that is cool, too, in the long term. But now is not the long term. Now is when everything is so finely balanced that the smallest change in the schedule cascades through everything else, and jeopardizes every deadline. Now is when “time off to relax” means working on the house. Now is when the long days transform into long nights, and long weeks, until you can’t see the end.

So I sit and wonder: What can I let go of?

Writing? No. Much to the chagrin of the people who don’t like my stuff, I’m a compulsive writer. I have to write. If you read it, that’s great. If you love it, that’s even better. But even without an audience, I have to put words on the screen.

Marketing? No, that pays the bills. And it’s a lot of fun being a creative. I’d lie if I said I didn’t love it. And yes, perhaps that makes me a crass lapdog of the commercial interests, but it also makes me the willing lapdog of some very cool clients which include Albert’s Organics and The Garlic Company. I’m loving food. The lack of bullshit and politics and posturing is refreshing, and we’re doing some of our best work for food clients these days. Perhaps some day we’ll pick up some more tech accounts, which are a lot of fun on a totally different level. But both share the same lack of believing our own bullshit which is the hallmark of big corporate and entertainment. Good riddance to them; let someone else dance to your tune.

Engineering? No. Again. I love to make things. And the tiny company I started shows every signs of becoming larger. Not large. But larger. Hell, Wired and CrunchGear and Gizmodo picked us up. Thankfully, I have people to help with that one, or it would eat my life. Such that it is.

So, am I complaining? No. More than anything, this is probably an internal monologue, set to the rhythm of a blog. It’s me, reminding myself why I do things. Why I’m overworked. Why my life is a little crazy.

And there you go. If that helps you get where you’re going, so much the better. If not, tune out for a while, and I’ll have some more thoughts on writing, being positive, or other relevant stuff . . . in a while.

Until then, keep writing . . . and keep working hard. It will take you places. It is worth it.

Or at least I keep telling myself.

In the meantime, I have a couple of new stories I’m shopping, so you may see something on that front sooner than later.

The other reasons are simply more functional. I just launched another company, and I’m also busy taking care of business at the company I started 16 years ago. Call me an evil capitalist. Blame me for the destruction of all that is True and Right and Good. But hey, I like to make things.

I wish I had more time to write. Maybe someday . . .

In the right hands, advertising can change the world. Look at Google. A lot of us forget Google’s grand empire is built entirely on advertising. Those sponsored links, and text ads you see in blogs have brought in billions of dollars. Now, Google has expanded out into display ads, rich media ads, mobile ads, and even television ads (did you know you can buy a television ad campaign on Google?

And what has Google done with this revenue? Largely great stuff. Huge categories of stuff that we would consider costly a decade or so ago are now free. Office software. Unlimited phone number and voicemail. Mapping and turn-by-turn navigation. Mobile phone (and tablet) operating systems. Hell, Android is less than free. Manufacturers using it on their devices get to participate in Google’s ad revenue stream.

Yes, you read that right. Instead of paying a hefty Windows license, Google is paying manufacturers to use Android.

All from ads.

Now, of course, there’s always the chance that Google will turn truly evil in the future, turn into Skynet or something, and make us all live in slavery forever, for whatever twisted reason, but for the moment, the equation holds: Google + Ads = Good Free Stuff for People.

On the other hand, we have broke California. Eying Google’s success with ads (and perhaps taking a look at my tongue-in-cheek Outshine Twitter about advertising on paper money), they’ve come up with a brilliant idea: replace all the license plates in California with electronic license plates that can display ads.

And yes, you read that right. Electronic license plates that display ads.

“Well, hell, that’s gonna be distracting!” someone immediately says. “Going down the freeway and seeing a thousand blinking, screaming ads all flashing at you? How will that work?”

“No problem,” California confidently says. “They’ll only display when the car hasn’t moved for more than four seconds. And with the ability to buy ads at your friendly, helpful DMV, we’re sure to have customers lining up.”

Okay, let’s try some harder questions. Like: “What happens when the inevitable 14-year-old hacks the system and puts pictures of dicks on every license plate? Or worse?”

“Notgonnahappen,” California says. “We’ve designed the system with a bazillion gigabit security system, not hackable for . . . oh wait, it’s been hacked. Erghh, look at that.

Yeah, that’s what we thought. Or how about this: “Hey California buttheads, my car battery’s dead from your friggin ads. Pay up!”

“Well, of course there will be a failsafe system rendering this impossible, designed by NASA scientists . . . oh wait, you mean the real world is different than a lab?” California says. “You mean some people have cars they don’t drive for days at a time? Ah, wait . . .”

Or, the biggest question of all: ”If you’re advertising on my car, where’s my cut? When I choose to let Google put ads on my blog, I get money.”

And that’s the point that California missed. Google works because it’s voluntary, and because there’s an incentive to use it. Ads on license plates . . . uh, not so much.

At the turn of the century, when the quest for a “flying machine” was running like the first dot-com revolution, he was the person most favored to develop the airplane. He had boatloads of money from the US government, had a seat at Harvard and worked at the Smithsonian, hired the best people money could find, and everyone was rooting for him.

But, in the end, he lost to Orville and Wilbur Wright. Two guys with no college education, who funded their dream from the proceeds from their bicycle shop.

The TED talk above makes the case that this is because the Wright brothers were pursuing a central idea, a why, where Langley was pursuing, well, the cash.

It’s well-worth watching the TED talk, even if business isn’t your thing, and even if the Apple example at the fore might not be your cup of tea. This is about finding your why, and includes examples that include Martin Luther King.

So, what’s my why? Well, there are a ton of micro-whys. Why do I write? Why do I run my current business? Why do I launch new ones? These are important, but is there an overall why?

I think there is. And I think it’s why I’ve been called everything from a pro-business anarcho-capitalist to a raving socialist and everything in-between. I don’t wear my politics on my sleeve–and, indeed, much of the time politics seems like two children squabbling over equally wrong answers. I don’t address the crisis du jour, because, well, it’s du jour. It will be different in the future.

But I’ll take a shot at an overall why: Because we are each capable of grand things, despite the obstacles. Because imagination moves us forward, while second-guessing holds us back. Because we have never advanced by putting limits on our advancement.

Because we should dream grand dreams, and act to make them real.

What’s your why?

1. SpaceX was started by Elon Musk, the creator of PayPal and an early internet entrepreneur, who is now turning his wealth into visionary ventures like this and Tesla Motors.

2. The cost of the launch, per SpaceX’s published rate card, is about 1/10 that of a shuttle launch. While Falcon carries only 1/2 as much payload to LEO, it actually is more capable than the shuttle at boosting payloads into GTO. And yeah, apples and oranges, etc, but the fact is: Falcon is WAY cheaper for supplying the ISS.

Second, we have 6 crazy guys getting in a can to simulate a 520-day trip to Mars and back, to see how well they do in isolation and cramped quarters. Yeah, again, apples and mangoes–they’re not going to be suffering the effects of zero-g, they don’t have the uber-cool experience of walking around on Mars at the halfway point, etc, etc–but a cool experiment nonetheless.

And finally, something I joked about in Overhead: a Japanese company is proposing ringing the moon with solar panels, using robots and native Lunar materials as much as possible, and beaming energy back to earth, to serve the world’s entire power needs. Nuts? Sure. So is quantum computing. I wish them massive success.

Or, well, not.

In actuality, I agreed late last year to extending the release date with Prime Books, and that was never reflected on the Amazon site. The new release date is September 2010.

(And, just to be clear, this version of Winning Mars is substantially different than the one I released under a Creative Commons license a few years ago. Time marches on, the world changes, and I felt that significant updates were needed. So, if you want to experience the best Winning Mars out there, you’ll have to shell out some bux.)

You can also look forward to the Winning Mars countdown, starting August 2010, where you’ll have a chance to win some really cool Mars-related stuff. More details as they are available . . .

I shouldn’t have worried. Tyler not only kept his cool, but asked great questions, and, over the course of an evening, the two gained much mutual respect. I can imagine them going on to be fast friends.

One of the things Tyler said was, “I always challenge my assumptions. I come away with stronger belief in my ideas, or discover new, better ideas. Either way, I win.”

And what was truly amazing is this: he was willing to change, rather than rabidly defend. He was willing to look calmly at the other side of an argument, rather than simply go on the attack.

Are you ready to challenge your assumptions?

If so, pick up The Rational Optimist, by Matt Ridley. This is a book full of challenge, no matter your political or ideological stripe. This is a book that upends the “doom is just around the corner” crowd. This is a book that explains why we (as a whole) are so negative, when the reality is that things are getting better. This is a book that takes a serious look at the past and what has fueled human advancement, identifies the forces that have held us back, pulls the rug out from under people who say that there has been no progress, stares the crises du jour in the face and makes a strong case that they will soon be non-problems, just as many other doomsday scenarios that have never come to pass. This is a book that not only gives reasons to be optimistic, it outlines why we should be optimistic.

Is it a perfect argument? No, but The Rational Optimist makes a very strong case that we can and will have an amazing 21st Century, where things get better all around the world.

Do I agree with everything Matt Ridley has to say? No, of course not. But his position is strong enough that I’ll have to examine the points on which I disagree–which will lead to me either changing my mind, or strengthening my current positions.

So . . . are you up for a challenge? Have you been living in a monoculture of bad news and pessimism for too long? Are you old enough to remember those days when we all knew we’d end up being wiped out in a nuclear war? Or knew we’d live in warrens eating Soylent Green? Or knew we’d hit peak coal in 1865?

If so, as Tyler would say: Challenge your assumptions.

But let’s start with the reviews:

From SF Revu, Liviu Suciu:

For me this was the best story of the anthology and not surprising it is the one that involves exploration of Outer Space, namely a colony on the dark side of the moon – so it stays out of touch with humanity except for regular deliveries of technology and people that want to join – where humanity can “reboot” if needed and where the rules are designed to create a better society. In a past thread that mixes with the current one and explains how the colony came to be, we follow executive Roy Parekh setting up an insurance company with a twist. Sense of wonder, memorable characters and a superb ending made “Overhead” a story that induced me to follow Mr. Stoddard’s career from now on. I would love a novel that would expand this story since I think the necessary depth is there.

From Speculative Book Review,

While I greatly enjoyed almost all of Shine’s stories, a handful of those really impressed me. Jason Stoddard’s Overhead was one of them. It was a brilliant story written with a beautiful style. In Overhead, Stoddard uses flashbacks very intelligently to build his story on two alternate threads. The present thread develops the story while the flashback thread gives the reader more background helping her to understand the present thread. Furthermore, Stoddard manages to keep the suspense until the last page.

From Suite 101, Colin Harvey:

‘Overhead’ by Jason Stoddard shuttles setting between Earth and the Moon, and an embryonic lunar colony. Stoddard raises the stakes, bringing an intensity absent from much of the other fiction, making the payback all the greater. Highly Recommended.

From Financial Times (!):

But there are some strong stories: “Overhead”, Jason Stoddard’s sketch of a moon colony, is the best; Holly Phillips’s “Summer Ice”, set in a greener future metropolis, and Kay Kenyon’s “Castoff World”, also satisfy.

Author comment: is it surprising that financially oriented peeps would think a story about an insurance salesman is the best?

From SF Crowsnest, Stephen Hunt:

Jason Stoddard’s ‘Overhead’ is only partly set on Earth, the other part of the action is on an idealistic, experimental lunar colony. The colony develops from a dubious insurance company in the kind of unexpected development that typifies many of this anthology’s stories. Technology and social developments that are often assumed in SF to have a negative future have been turned on their head to great effect.

From SF Signal and The Huffington Post (!!):

Two warily pet the woolly mammoth in the room: space exploration. Of these, Marie Ness’ “Twittering the Stars” (despite its gimmicky structure and grating title) is absorbing and complex, whereas Jason Stoddard’s too-earnest “Overhead” lets its most exciting premise – Europan life – lie totally fallow. In compensation, the latter contains the sole character in the anthology who’s instantly memorable: a heroic-despite-himself version of Henry the Navigator.

There are a lot of other reviews that don’t mention Overhead specifically, which I’ll take to mean one of the following:

a. The reviewer hated it and was being polite.
b. It made no impression on them at all.

Which is fine . . . ya can’t please everyone.

Now, the question from Jetse de Vries, based on Gardner Dozois and Rich Horton’s lukewarm-to-cautiously-positive reaction to Shine in the April issue of Locus magazine (not online.)

I suppose we can agree to disagree about the ‘greatness’ of certain stories, but I do wonder why an anthology full of stories where people try to change things for the better needs to be ‘approved’, while anthologies where the population is decimated, the Earth is brought to the brink of destruction (sometimes beyond) and nihilistic characters gleefully engage in violence get that stamp of approval by default. Maybe this says something about the current mindset of written SF?

My opinion: for every negative thing happening in the world today, there are one or more equally positive things. Spend some time on PhysOrg. Look at the crazy people at Copenhagen Suborbitals or the Open Space Movement. Check out the amazing beauty of Festo’s robotics. We’re on the edge of some truly amazing breakthroughs — and, no, they aren’t all going to be used to propagate the agenda of large, evil organizations.

So, to the naysayers, fear-mongers, and doom-merchants: Stand aside, and watch us make a future worth living in!

Three of the most exciting things I’m working on I can’t talk about.

If things seem quiet on the writing front, this is why. No worries. You’ll hear more from me soon enough — perhaps more than you’d ever want to.