This is the tense opening of The Legacy of Pandora, the first book in the Shan Takhu Legacy an exciting new series of hard sci-fi novels from Eric Michael Craig.

Hector: Neptune L-4 Trojan Cluster: Date: 2232.094:

Thirty seconds. The timer scrolled across the bottom of the screen. Relentless. Certain.
Unavoidable.
He sat staring at the display, his eyes unable to focus on the numbers.
He was afraid.
And alone.
Beyond the edges of civilization, with only a clock to watch over his last fleeting seconds.
Weeks ago he’d run out of options, and hope had died soon after. So he made peace with himself and pointed his ship toward the inevitable.
Twenty seconds. The stars ahead blinked out as he dove forward. He could see it, almost visible in the dim light of the distant sun. Dark, ominous, and unforgiving.
The engines behind him coughed once. Then again. The roaring fell away as his fuel supply failed. The last of the reaction mass exhausted, gravity would finish the task, hauling him to his destiny.
He tapped the control to jettison the marker buoy, listening to its thrusters hissing against the outer skin of the ship as it shot off into the darkness. He knew it would remain trapped in orbit as certainly as he had found himself ensnared, but it gave him some solace that his last thoughts and actions might live past his own mortality. If anyone ever came looking for him.
Ten seconds.
He floated free from the seat and closed his eyes.
Counting down the numbers in his mind …

CHAPTER ONE

Jakob Waltz: Neptune L-4 Trojan Cluster:

“Commander, report to ConDeck immediately.”
Jephora Cochrane was not the type to take his duty lightly, but his engineer’s tone made every word an order as she ripped him from sleep an hour early.
Petra “Rocky” Rocovicz always sat third watch alone. No one on the crew wanted to spend time working with her, except as absolutely necessary. She didn’t mean to be offensive, but she had a way of expressing herself that was brutally forceful.
Machinery didn’t care if she spoke her mind. People on the other hand, were less fault-tolerant.
“What’s the problem?” he asked, pulling the seal-edge of his coverlet loose and rolling slowly toward the open air. He tried to keep his frustration from showing in his tone.
“Payload Four is lost,” the chief engineer said.
“How the frag do you lose 500 billion tons of ice?” he asked.
“Is good question,” she said.
“I’ll suit up and be on deck in five,” he said pushing off his bed and over to the autovalet.
Being a native to Juno, his light-world ectomorph physiology would never function well at anything above a tenth-g, and working with a mixed-physio crew meant that he had to be ready at any time for hard acceleration. His Pressure Support Exosuit let him work on an even footing with any of the heavy-grav mesomorphs on the crew by boosting his strength and compressing his extremities and torso with enough force to keep the blood flowing to vital body parts. Like his lungs and brain.
As the suit’s polymorphic liner wrapped around him, he flashed through the familiar sensation of suffocating under tons of water before the actuators kicked in and began carrying his breathing. It was a moment of terror that anyone who’d ever wrapped into a PSE knew.
The autovalet’s arms finished the rest of the dressing process. Contact pads first, then legs, arms, torso shell, and finally neck-support struts all slipped into place. He resented having to wear his suit because every time he put it on, it reminded him why he’d never been given a real command after twenty years in FleetCom.
A nearly inaudible beep told him the process was complete and his augmented body sprang to life. He shoved himself forward, a slug encased in an armor shell. He hated it, but it didn’t matter because without it, he’d be dead at an acceleration level most of his crew could take naked.
He thought about grabbing himself something to eat on the way by the galley, but instead he swung himself feet first up the chute toward the ConDeck. After four years working with her, he could tell that Rocky sounded worried, even through her gruff.
Flipping out onto the deck he stopped abruptly, snapping his maglock boots down with a firm click.

To keep reading you can find the book here.

A Bite of... Eric Michael Craig

Q1: What is the greatest challenge in writing realistic sci-fi?

Staying fresh enough and educated in enough disciplines to stay ahead of the world we live in. The truth is the world around us is SciFi. Every single aspect of it is impacted by things that were science fiction when I was in school.
In order to stay up on the trends, an author needs to read not just other novels, but technical stuff. Journals and trade publications. And those things have to be broad spectrum. You cannot write relevant sci fi if you only know one thing about science.
A person who was on the cutting edge of biochemistry ten years ago could have written any number of stories that by today would be out of date, and missing something hugely important in electronics (the smart phone). On the other side of that an Electrical Engineer that saw the coming portable communications explosion, might have missed something like CRISPR and the idea of biohacking.
It is almost impossible to stay relevant in a world that will have changed by the time you get from chapter one, to chapter twenty, let alone two years after the book is published.
I chose to move my latest series 220 years into the future and I am praying that they endure a few years before someone invents the warp drive and makes local space colonization irrelevant.

Q2: If you didn’t write science fiction is there any other genre you would like to write?

This answer fits in with the one above. Other than historical romance, most anything set in the real world is now science fiction. The stories I have been writing are a bit across the lines of science fiction sub-genre. Stormhaven Rising is a political thriller/action as much as it is mainstream Science Fiction. My new series has elements of mystery/crime drama, as well as political drama buried inside a harder edged space opera.
Anything I’d write would have to include those elements. Even if I wrote Epic Fantasy, I’d be explaining the magic in terms that made it just technology beyond our human understanding. I think it has to be that way or the reader won’t see and feel the relevance of the story. If you can’t make your world relatable in a real way, it’s pointless to tell the story.
So, having said that, I don’t feel like there’s much of anything around that I could write that isn’t in some way inherently science fiction.

Q3: Which author do you most admire and why?

This question is a real challenge for me. I grew up reading the “masters” like Robert Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, and although I could say they have influenced me and how I think, I have been forced to turn away from that.
The issue is that we live in the Marvel/Disney era of storytelling.
Authors like RAH and Clarke could spend 300 pages developing an epic premise story, and people read them because they were fascinating studies in possibility.
Unfortunately now, authors cannot do that. We do not get to write “epic premise stories,” we have to write “major crisis management adventures.” If the first paragraphs of a novel don’t drive the story into an emergency situation, nobody will read past the first page.
Because of that, I’ve had to turn loose of my heroes and look to the world around me … unfortunately, very few modern writers are more than a “flash in the pan” or formula hacks. I know that sounds harsh, but at the speed the world moves, there is a sad truth to the notion that most readers attention spans vary inversely with the velocity of life.

About Eric Michael Craig

Eric Michael Craig is a Hard Science Fiction writer living in the Manzano Mountains of New Mexico. He is the former Director of Research for a private consulting laboratory in Phoenix, where he experimented with inertial propulsion and power generation technologies.
Fascinated with the “cacophony of humanity,” he dedicated much of his life to observing society and how people relate to each other and the world around them. Ultimately this drove him to write full time.
When not writing, Eric is active in Intentional Community Design, plays guitar and bass, occasionally dabbles in art of various forms, and designs websites. He also owns way too many dogs.
Eric is a founding member of the SciFi Roundtable. The SFRT is an active online group dedicated to supporting indie and traditional authors by networking them with other writers and professional resources.

You can follow him on Twitter, find him on his website and sign up for his newsletter there.

Chinwart studied his brown, stubby toes as he attempted to avoid Mother’s gimlet eye.

“I’m waiting…”

“Well. Y’see ma’am, it were a bet.”

“A bet?”

“Yes’m. Walleye bet me I couldn’t come by a pair of Beetroot’s underdrawers.”

Mother made a choking noise. “Why didn’t you liberate them from the laundry line? It would have been safer.”

Chinwart wrinkled his grubby brow.

“But Walleye said…”

“I bet he did.” Mother sighed and sent Chinwart on his way.

She left Walleye to Beetroot.

That miscreant found himself spreadeagled on the village green. Naked. Save for a pair of pink, frilly bloomers.

©️jj 2019

Sam got up to man the coffee machine, while Anna loaded the dishwasher. Jim moved his chair away from the table and stretched his long legs in front of him.
“It’s amazing,” he said reflectively “even though Patsy and Anna are all grown up now, and their personal styles have diverged, you can still feel Patsy’s mum’s hand in their food.”
“You can indeed,” Patsy agreed. “It ain’t so much what we cook, or even how we cook it, as the joy we take in feeding people. That’s what Mum gave us, joy and confidence.”
“It is indeed,” Anna agreed. “Joy, confidence and love. My own mother despised me. If it hadn’t been for aunty Pat my life would have been bleak indeed. But she took me under her wing and loved me like one of her own. I owe her a lot.”
“Not according to her,” Patsy said with a laugh in her voice. “She reckons you repaid her with love, laughter, and an enormous son-in-law.”
Sam must have looked puzzled, because Jim laughed.
“I was a sort of protégée of Anna’s and she taught me a great deal of what I know about computers. It was through her I met Pats. I was fourteen and she was sixteen. I fell like a ton of bricks. Fortunately she felt the same – although we had to wait until I was eighteen before our parents would countenance the marriage.”
“We did. But waiting did us no harm. And we’ve been married twenty years now. He was worth waiting for…”
“You too, toots, you were certainly worth waiting for. Though you are right about the wait, it taught us patience and gave us the chance to be sure.”
Then he leaned over and gave her a smacking kiss.
Sam bought coffee and a big box of after dinner mints. “Would a brandy round this off?”
“Oh yes,” Anna said, as she wiped away a sentimental tear. “Wouldn’t it just.”

And so they finished their evening with snifters of Sam’s best brandy.
“Look behind you,” Patsy said to Anna. “Gandalf and Bonnie are sharing a basket, and they are both snoring.”
Anna looked around and grinned.
“Look at the soft buggers. I reckon they are in love. But it’s just as well Bonnie has been done, I don’t fancy a Groenendael/lurcher cross.”
“No. I don’t reckon it’d be a pretty dog. Though I bet it’d be intelligent and trainable.”
Sam finished his brandy.
“Come on Bon Bon. Bedtime pees. And you Gandalf.”
The dogs followed him into the garden, and Jim went with them. Anna and Patsy quickly cleared up the kitchen.
“Blimey, Anna,” I just looked at the time. “It’s nearly two o’clock. S’no wonder I’m pooped.”
“Me too. But it’s been nice since we got our Glaswegian friend sorted.”
“Has. But it was bloody before that.”
“It was. And I didn’t help by having a wobbler.”
“You couldn’t help that. You never had anybody before Sam, and the idea he was in danger just messed up your head. That’s what happens. The first time I thought somebody had it in for Jim, I was so scared I was physically sick. I’ve had to learn that he is big enough to look after himself. Mind you, somebody going after the boys was a hard pill to swallow – though I had to put the fear away. It helps nobody. But I reckon you figured that one out for yourself today.”
“I did. It wasn’t easy. And I guess it won’t ever be easy. But you are so right about fear helping nobody.”
Patsy put a meaty arm around Anna’s slim shoulders. “Doesn’t. But noisy sex does…”

And so it was when the men came in from the garden, they found their womenfolk in each other’s arms almost weeping with laughter.
“It won’t be any good asking them,” Jim said, “even if they do manage to explain, we mere men won’t be able to understand. Best to just lock up and haul them off to bed.”
Sam grinned and locked the front door, before coming back into the kitchen. He threw Anna over his shoulders like a sack of potatoes.
“Come on giggleswick. Bed time.”
Jim grabbed Patsy around the waist and steered her up the stairs in the wake of Sam and Bonnie, and the still giggling Anna. Gandalf settled himself in Bonnie’s bed by the Aga. He wasn’t a dog who was fond of climbing stairs, or of witnessing noisy sex.

As a consequence of a very fraught day, a pretty late night, and some extremely noisy sex, nobody got out of bed very early on Saturday morning. First to emerge was Sam, who had a brisk shower before letting the dogs out and putting the coffee machine on. As soon as the beverage was ready, he took Anna a jumbo-sized cappuccino and a couple of digestive biscuits. She was just opening her eyes when he walked into the room, and her nose twitched like a rabbit’s at the aroma of fresh coffee.
“It’s no wonder I love you,” she remarked, “not only are you handsome and sexy, you also make excellent cappuccino.”
He laughed, then cocked his head.
“I think I hear stirrings down the hallway. I shall go and do hostly things while you wake up.”
He strode off, leaving Anna smiling and sipping frothy coffee. Jim was in the corridor looking rumpled.
“Sam. Thank  fuck you are up. Pats needs coffee and my life won’t be worth living until she gets it.”
“Cappuccino?”
“Even better.”
“Come with me, and I’ll provide you with a jumbo cup so you’ll get many brownie points.”
Jim patted him with a heavy hand.
“Thanks mate.”

They went to the kitchen where the dogs were sitting inside the French door surveying a very rainy garden with obvious canine disgust. Sam filled his metal jug with milk and put it under the steam nozzle.
“Here Jim, hold this while I organise cups, and breakfast for the dogs.”
Jim obliged blearily, and Sam shoved a chocolate digestive biscuit in his free hand. He grinned and ate it in one bite. Sam pushed the packet towards him before heading to the boot room where he filled two dishes with kibble.
“Bonnie, Gandalf, breakfast.”
The dogs left their contemplation of the sodden garden and came to eat.

Jane Jago

Rat’s whiskers itched.

“We have to move,” he said.

His mate hissed. “This my home.”

“Who’s Rat around here?”

She subsided reluctantly, and even when his instinct led him to a dry cave high up in the cliff wall she was unhappy and wouldn’t look at him.

But Rat insisted. The males carried the nestlings one by one, while the young females made beds of straw for the infants and the old.

Rat and his brothers caught a fat rabbit and everybody ate that night. 

Then the heavens opened.

In the morning Rat’s mate was gone. 

He thinks she drowned…

©️jj 2019

A poet was feeling so screwed
That he tore all his papers in two
The dread seventeen
Was turning him green
Coz he just couldn’t write a haiku

jj 2018

Taken from The Fated Sky the first book in Fortune's Fools and volume one of Transgressor Trilogy by E.M. Swift-Hook.

The door-flap of her pavilion was thrust back and the Black Vavasor strode in without any ceremony. He was dressed magnificently in a cream shirt with luxuriantly embroidered sleeves, a black jerkin spangled with tiny beads of jet and panels which touched the knee-high gleaming boots. Instead of the sombre riding cloak she had seen him wear before, he had chosen a dark red cape, in some shimmering offworld fabric, also embroidered with gems. His head was unadorned apart from the long, dark, locks of his hair.
This time when he looked at her he did see her. Alexa, who always noticed such things, watched the pupils of his eyes expand and was satisfied. He gave a courtly bow and moved to take her hand.
“Lady,” he said, “you are truly beautiful. I see now why the cities ring with songs about Alexa the Fair.”
It was a pretty enough speech, but disappointingly unoriginal. If that was the best he could manage she was in for a rather dull evening. Alexa let him draw her to her feet, feeling his eyes sweep over her body in mute appreciation.
“I have heard songs sung about the Black Vavasor too,” she observed sweetly and was rewarded by a tightening of his grip and a curious look which became a smile.
“But my songs are not so beautiful, I know.”
Alexa was determined to get her entertainment somehow.
“I am not so sure, Honoured One, the songs they sing about Terzibrand bring tears to the eyes of all those who hear them.”
He had been guiding her towards the entrance but her words brought him to a standstill. Alexa was tall and could meet the gaze of most men as an equal, but she found her head tilting back to meet the Vavasor’s dark eyes. If they held any expression at all, it was one of mild amusement, as he said: “Lady, if you feel we are already familiar enough to trade insults, you should call me Jariq – unless of course, you prefer one of the other names they give me in the songs. But then you might find it just a little embarrassing calling me ‘Baby-Slaying Bastard’ across the Castellan’s dinner table.”
Alexa let her lips curve up into a smile.
“I am sure ‘Jariq’ will suffice – at least for the first two courses.”
“Then may the gods make the third course a dessert dish to keep your tongue sweet,” he said reverently and led her out of the tent, helping her into the palanquin.

She was borne up to the Castle to cries of: ‘Make way for the Vavasor of Reva and the Caravansi Alexa’, for the night of the Bride’s Banquet was also a night of carnival for the common people and the streets were crowded with a festive throng. Peering between the drapes of her palanquin, Alexa was glad that she had a good guard. In places, the soldiers had to ride forward and beat people away with the flats of their swords and once she saw the Vavasor on his black pony, threaten a group of rowdy youths with his pistol before they drew back and let the small cavalcade pass through.
As they began the climb to the castle the noise of music and shouting died away below. Soon after, they passed through the gates and the palanquin was set down in the torch-lit courtyard near where a long carpet, finely woven with scenes picturing dancing and festival, had been placed over the steps that led up to the Great Hall. The sounds from within were of revelry little less restrained than that of the city. The drapes were pulled back and the Vavasor smiled down at her offering his arm. She returned the smile and accepted the arm, rising gracefully to step out onto the carpet.
“You have never attended the Bride’s Banquet before?” he asked as they walked together up the steps.
“Is it that obvious?”
“Not at all. But I had better warn you that it is not an event for those of delicate sensibilities. Towards the end, it can get quite – um -“
“Interesting? Entertaining?” she suggested, her eyebrows arching interrogatively.
The tall man laughed.
“I was going to say ‘hazardous’ but perhaps you are right. We can leave once the Castellan’s family have withdrawn if you like. It should remain relatively civilised until then.”
“I do hope not,” Alexa said with great sincerity and the Vavasor looked at her with an obvious amusement.
They were given seats next to the High Table as befitted the Vavasor’s noble status and Alexa was frankly delighted to find herself seated above the rest of Alfor’s merchant community. She also quickly realised that her concern of being overshadowed in such a glittering company had been unfounded.
Without a doubt, it was she who drew the marvelling eyes of the men and envious glances from the women, particularly when they recognised her escort. Even the Castellan’s wife, in her magnificent costume, still looked plump and dowdy by comparison, together with her plump, dowdy daughters. The Bride was very pretty indeed, but in this company, her youth and freshness were hidden beneath an air of nervous awe.
Alexa looked around the room, recognising many of the merchants and acknowledging them by the slightest tilt of her head. At the high table, apart from the Castellan’s family and the Bride, she recognised by sight only one other figure and that was Qabal Vyazin himself, who was already looking bored, as he made polite conversation with the young lady sitting to his left.
The table opposite where she sat was obviously set aside for the family of the Bride. They sat stiffly, as if ill at ease, dressed in their sadly inadequate best clothes and talking together in whispers. Only the girl’s mother seemed happy and she kept bestowing proud and adoring glances on her favoured daughter, who sat beside the Castellan. The father looked utterly miserable as if he were already regretting the high cost of seeing that his daughter secured this prize. If they were lucky their investment might be repaid through the girl making a good marriage to some minor noble. They were not a poor family, but from their dress and demeanour, Alexa guessed that they could ill-afford to waste money on such a gamble.

Then the doors of the hall were closed as the last arrivals took their seats and the Banquet began in earnest. The noise was, of course, tumultuous: the hubbub of voices, the clatter of plates and goblets and the drone of the inevitable musicians made it very difficult to talk even to your neighbour at times. But Alexa was quite content to sit quietly and observe. She noticed that the Vavasor, too, seemed little inclined to conversation. He was diligent in seeing that she lacked for nothing, but his mind was clearly elsewhere and occasionally she would catch him in an unguarded moment looking strangely pensive. Although he kept her platter and goblet filled he ate sparingly himself and only sipped at his wine.
At one point his expression hardened and she followed his gaze to where it was resting on a curly blond head. Its owner had his back to them and was drawing the undivided attention of several tables at the lower end of the room, as he was playing on the thirteen-stringed lysigal and singing. Although the musicians nearer at hand made it impossible to hear what he sang, the reactions of those who could hear seemed to suggest it was humorous in the extreme, most were laughing – some uncontrollably.
The third course came and went and Alexa found that she had as yet encountered no opportunity to use the Vavasor’s given name or any other. She decided that it was mildly insulting to be escorted by one of the most notorious and desirable men in the Western Continent and not be the sole object of his thoughts. With malicious intent, she leant towards him.
“Would the Baby-Slaying Bastard care for some more wine?” Her voice was deliberately pitched to be just loud enough to make heads nearby turn towards them.
The Vavasor glanced at her with distant dark eyes as though scarcely aware she was there and then seemed to come to himself and gave a crooked smile.
“Lady, you take your revenge unfairly,” he said softly so only she could hear.

E.M. Swift-Hook

My wife’s Father. A remote authority figure who poured charm on all outside the family and scorn on all within it. The day he left, his children breathed a sigh of relief, and began to learn to be happy.

But their mother died, bringing them back into his orbit where they suffered his sadistic humours and his wife’s cold indifference.

Susanna was seventeen when he decreed she should marry the son of his oldest friend. Me.

Three months later, he met with a fatal accident whilst out shooting with me.

It was the first time I saw my wife smile…

©️jj 2019

My love is like a grouchy bear
That someone asked to dance
My love he really does not care
For kisses or romance

Yet what’s left of his hair is fair
And very blue his eyes
And he will be about somewhere
Till all the bars gang dry

Till all the bars gang dry of beer
And all the wine is gone
Yes I will love you still my dear
And bore you with a song

So goodnight, my friend goodnight
And sleep now for a while
And in the morn I’ll look a fright
But you’ll still make me smile

©️jj 2018

.... or 'How To Speak Typo' by Jane Jago

beilliance (adjective) – of elderly ladies the belligerent desire to hit people with their walking sticks

cazenda (compound noun) – Charlie and Danni from the trailer park. You will find this written over the windshield on Charlie’s truck

dence (verb) – to move to music in a very refined manner

differnet – (noun) the weird Internet

excitigns (adjective) – of rocks, prone to giggle and wet panties

fangipan (noun) – sweeties with added blood

hersute (noun) – business garment belonging to a woman

migth (noun) – furry stuff on the teeth of vagrants and others who can’t be arsed with dental hygiene

noccyer (proper noun) – rurally owned mobile phone company

oka (noun) – small rodent inhabiting the underarm area of very fat people

papperbok (noun) – erudite antelope

prasie (noun) – small ego-sucking insect

qweer (adjective) – asexual specifically of frogs 

ratehr (noun) – what your plumber charges per minute

sill (adjective) – not actually interesting enough to be called silly

teasco (noun) – a disaster in a shopping mall

Disclaimer: all these words are genuine typos defined by Jane Jago. The source of each is withheld to protect the guilty.

Grandad was minding the children, while upstairs mother laboured to bring a new baby into the world. Gran hurried into the room. 

“Bert, babby’s presented wrong. We needs to turn ‘n.”

The old man went and scrubbed his hands.

Dad came and crouched at the fireside. His face was sober and worried.

Alice laid her hand on his leg.

Dad’s face grew greyer and more worried, and when they heard a thin cry his grip on Benjamin’s shoulder grew vice tight. It may have been minutes, or hours, until Gran came in.

“You can go up. They’m both doin’ fine…”

  ©️jj 2019