Publication of THE NEXT STAGE

I am pleased to announce that my science fiction short story, THE NEXT STAGE, was published in the Aurora Wolf magazine recently. If you are interested go to www.aurorawolf.com and take a look.

I first wrote the story for a writing contest in 1993, but I did not win. I set it aside to write some other stories, but I never ended up publishing any of them. Last summer, I dusted my old stories off and started revising them for publication.

This has been an interesting process. Lots of impersonal and terse rejections to contend with, but people from a few publications have encouraged me and given me some pointers on how to revise so as to increase my chances. One of the latter was from Aurora Wolf and soon after, he published my story. I have high hopes with another publication too as well - I sent off that revised story about a week ago and should hear back soon.

If you are interested in publishing your writing but don't know where to send it, try the duotrope website. It is very helpful and even gives an idea of what the acceptance rates are for each publication, how fast they respond and whether they will make (helpful) comments if they reject you.

I'll keep you posted on how things go.

Null-A Continuum

This is a review of Null-A Continuum by John C Wright.

In case you didn't know, this is the finale of the Null-A series started by the late A E van Vogt. The first three books were written by van Vogt and this last by Wright after van Vogt's passing to complete the overall story. The first three are THE WORLD OF NULL-A, THE PLAYERS OF NULL-A (aka THE PAWNS OF NULL-A) and NULL-A THREE, although not everyone likes to count this third one, since it was written by van Vogt when he was very ill and has some "issues"; Wright ignores much of what happened in NULL-A THREE. It helps to have read the first two books before starting the last; Wright does give a good summary of the first three before he begins in any case.

I first saw the present book over a year ago, and this is how I learned about van Vogt's work. It took me a while to get to the first two in this series (I am skipping the third), and I also read SLAN by van Vogt in the meantime (which is pretty good and has a later sequel by another author as well). There are many, many other van Vogt books as well if you like his style.

The plot of the series is somewhat complex, so I won't try to explain it in detail here - Wright's summary is good if you need more. Readers should note that the books follow a sort of progression of scope from interplanetary to galactic to intergalactic, then beyond.

The main character is Gilbert Gosseyn and the series features his development of a second AND a third brain which allow him to do some fantastic things; he also seems to have amnesia and is apparently immortal. There is a (seeming) femme fatale of sorts, Patricia, who turns out to be good in the end, and an evil Emperor, Enro, who wants to rule the galaxy and maybe beyond, as well as other recurring characters.

Null-A refers to non-Aristotelian logic; van Vogt was a fan of General Semantics from which this logical system derives or is an integral part. This system is intertwined into the plot to some extent, but it is explained or kept in the background enough so as not to confuse readers previously unfamiliar with it.

As the series progresses, it is like an ever unfolding conspiracy is revealed. Hint: it actually goes beyond time and space. Get ready for more than a few surprises and twists, especially in this last book. Involved is a surprisingly long history of and basis of the very of the existence of mankind and the universe itself - it is handled fairly well too.

Keep in mind that the series started in the 1940's, so the terminology for technology may seem a little dated and strange. Wright used van Vogt's terms for things for continuity, but he went beyond for things that came up in this last book that had not been touched on before. I am not sure, but it seems that Wright has made quite a study of actual modern physics and related philosophy before writing this book; if not, he made it seem like what he was saying was based on this at least.

Like some other people, I did not like all the jumping around in this last book. Things get very convoluted and difficult to follow. Some of it was necessary for the story I guess, but too much of a good thing can be bad as the saying goes. The book was a bit long for what it had to say as well. Some readers may find that it was too long on explaining via narration and did not use the characters enough to tell the story instead. It was not easy reading in many spots. This all killed a possible 5 of 5 star rating from me.

Actually, I nearly gave the book only 3 of 5 stars because of these last points, but Wright did give a satisfying ending that tied things up well, so I went with 4 of 5 stars in the end.

This book is worth reading as it ties up the series well, but it is not light reading by any means.