This last story of the year is a proper Nouvel’An scary story, fresh from the northern snows. Dare you tune into the “Lost Signal”?
Cover art, Melissa Weiss Mathieu.
“This is Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.” Brian confirmed. Then he confirmed something else: “Identify.”
“I am …Russian Robin.” It sounded like his voice, but through a vocoder, or fed back through AutoTune. Something was deeply wrong with the Siberian.
“What is your high-tech RF installation there, Russian Robin?” Brian asked, thinking fast.
“Never mind that stuff.” Russian Robin had avoided cursing. “You must listen to me, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. You must hear me.”
Something in the way he said it – “you must hear me” – caught Brian’s attention. What new mystery was this?
“Do you still have that station on your other machine?”
“No.” Brian lied. He turned the volume down low. Just low enough he could still almost hear her voice, pleading for him, behind the banal list of numbers.
Fourteen. Twelve. Seven.
“Good. I think it is listening to us.” Here Russian Robin spoke in a hiss. “I ask you, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot: what if there is nothing back of the station?”
“What?” Brian blinked. “Repeat, Russian Robin, please repeat.”
“I repeat: what if there is nothing behind Jelly Baby? No government. No warm bodies. No transmitter.”
“Then how do we hear it?”
“Perhaps it is alive.” Russian Robin hissed so Brian’s ears popped.
Brian, I love you…Brian Coban, where are you?!
A late-night radio DJ in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness, Brian Coban is determined to crack the mystery of the rogue numbers station broadcasting from somewhere in the land of the midnight sun. But the station holds more secrets than he bargained for – a series of secret numbers to one, a mysterious, haunting song for another. And for Brian?
A woman’s voice, calling out to him.
With the help of his two friends across the Arctic, Brian is dead set on triangulating, tracking, and unraveling the secrets of the station and discover what it truly wants – and why it knows his name.
If you enjoyed the suspense and mystery of the movie Frequency, you’ll be sure to love this chilling tale of the price of obsession…
I’ve gotten it several times over the past few weeks, each one a smiling opportunity to make a new fan and a new friend. But, just in case I’m not standing in front of you (or on the other side of a Zoom call), I’m putting together this post to explain a little of where I’ve been and where I’m going.
And, who knows, even those of you who’ve been on the journey with me might find this useful!
In 2016, of course, I discovered solarpunk, humans solving human-size problems with human gifts after a solid decade of Singularity or Apocalypse. It was a breath of fresh air, fresh green air, and I’ve been inhaling the stuff ever since. Almost all of my traditional sales since have been solarpunk, from turning the sunken city of Surat to new life to defining one’s own gender on Mars. By far the best example of pure solarpunk in my history, though, is “Glâcehouse,” from the moment Mackenzie beholds the dome that holds winter within it and it takes her breath away.
Cover art Melissa Weiss Mathieu.
But over the last few years, a certain vigor has been creeping into my fiction. I’m not afraid to draw on the tradition of Lester Dent and Doc Savage, of Jack London’s muscular, Progressive prose, of Indiana Jones and the serials that inspired him. These new stories are drawn to larger-than-life dimensions, with characters who stand for their ideals more than Dostoevsky-certified realism and aren’t afraid to take direct action to act on them. These are the stories I’ve dubbed solarpulp. Doña Ana Lucía…
Credit to Kim Schmidt, as always.
…springs from this new impulse, in all the novels and stories I’ve written of her to date, but she’s hardly alone. Gooch pulls his gun and uses his fists and some of the heroes of my new Cheminéc cycle, growing out of “Glâcehouse,” are just as red-blooded. But, by far, the best example is “Fire Marengo,” the free story you get when you sign up for my newsletter.
We passed, a shadow inside a shadow, beneath the broad lip of the Sheikh’s isle of Valhalla. Tchang reefed our sail, for we had to maneuver slow in that sliver of darkness. Far above, the sirens sang and men shouted, but us two stories below, our ears were keen on the lapping of the water. The slightest sound different could mean life or death there beneath the Sheikh’s pleasure-grounds. I kept the gaff off our starboard bow, to push Valhalla away from the little Sacramento lest we dash ourselves to pieces on the beautiful, deadly coral.
The sound that broke us was the terrible splash. You’ve all heard it, you’ve the faces for it – the sound of a man hitting the water. Tchang clapped his hand over my mouth to stifle my shout, and in my surprise I let the gaff slide off into the dark waters. Tchang and I looked to each other – the Law of the Sea demands we rescue the poor devil. Even if it might expose us. A rescue within a rescue! But I’d want a good sailor to do the same for me if I hit the drink. Even so…
I craned my neck out to get an eye of the situation. The man was floating there, buoyed by his close-necked shirtsleeves, pale and washed out in the mighty lights.
“Game overboard!”
Game? Man overboard surely.
“Is the game dispatched?”
The man shifted in the water, and here I saw illuminated the red blossom of the hole in the back of his head. It was impossible not to see.
“The game is dispatched! Tally to the Sultan of Valhalla!”
Game…now I got it. He meant hunting game. Not like you or I rustle up the occasional cougar for our supper, but as rich men do. And these weren’t no mountain lions, he was hunting men. He was hunting the entire third watch!
And more of that to come in the future – I’m wrapping up edits on the next No Time novel, No Time for the Killing Floor: The Second Hour, and querying Doña Ana Lucía Serrano …to the Future! to traditional publishers. I’ve a fistful of novelettes featuring her, from heists to heiresses to meditations on sexuality and the Peace Testimony. And, if you’re in a more sedate mood, more visionary solarpunk (with a hint of satire).
Well, there it is – where I’ve been, where I am, and where I am bound, as of 2023. But as Hope Hopkinson says, you can only plot a trajectory from where you are.
Once again available on Kindle (and for good this time), the story of a boy, his mother, and the spirit of the words, “The Diction-fairy.”
Cover art by Melissa Mathieu. Special thanks to Stuart Weiss.
“Leave some blank pages under your pillow for the Diction-fairy.” Mom finally said, between the squeaky atonal noises of the tape machine.
I asked who the Diction-fairy was.
“She’ll take your pages and write on them.” Mom explained.
I asked what would happen if I wrote words on them first. Mom’s smile was tired, but real and full of magic.
“Then she’ll make your words better.”
I still remember the first time I left an essay under my pillow for the Diction-fairy. Eight year old me was desperate; stuck on Sunday night with two pages due on Monday and not even old enough to say the word ‘bullshit,’ much less practice it. Little did I know that this magical figure would come to shape my future and my faith in the power of words. As an adult, I left my manuscript under my pillow one last time, never expecting what would come…
For fans of Charles de Lint or Legends and Lattes, this is a cozy little story of a boy, his mother, and the spirit of the words.
The room pulsed around him, its fetid breath almost palpable even through the helmet. The bodies of Commander Wu Suzhen and Major Sam Harris were woven into the wall, a superimposed lovers’ embrace developed in resin and red light. Their shapes were fuzzy; the inside of Matt’s helmet sticky with condensation like his hair was sticky with sweat. His inner ear couldn’t find north or down, his eyes stung and he could taste something salty, but whether blood, sweat or tears, he couldn’t tell. Why did you live?
Matt LeWald had no idea what he was getting himself into when he joined the Marines. He was expecting a few years of service, but instead found himself thrust into a mission gone horribly wrong. As the only survivor, he is left with questions that haunt him: why did he live when everyone else died?
If you enjoyed Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, you will be enthralled with this strange and haunting tale of first contact and redemption. The reviewers are calling it “not your Dad’s military SF.” Buy it now, read it over your lunch break, and think about it the rest of your life.
This story is a rewrite of a story I wrote when I was 11 or 12, the only one of the series of novelettes that seemed worth the effort. And boy, was it ever worth the effort. With Melissa’s gorgeous, hand-painted cover, I debuted it just before WorldCon in San Jose, and it shot to the top of my KU reads and sales. It’s been my most consistent earner ever since…despite the mid-story switch in subgenre.
And if you haven’t inhaled its svelte 7,800 words, here’s your chance – I’m offering it for free for five days.
This is officially the 200th post on R. Jean Mathieu’s Innerspace! I can’t believe it any more than you can!
A final confrontation between Old China and New in the mad depths of the Cultural Revolution, come meet “The Man Who Shot Lü Dongbin.“
The Old must go that the New may come.
So the Great Helmsman said.
We must eliminate the Four Olds.
So his generals and ministers said.
But there were more than four. There were so many more than four.
Bi Yadie’s grandmother had believed Lü Dongbin, wise leader of the Eight Immortals, was a saint, a being of compassion that would intercede when she begged hard enough. Bi Yadie knew better. Bi Yadie’s mother had believed Lü Dongbin was merely a story, told to delight the simple and the childish. But Bi Yadie knew better. He knew that Lü Dongbin was a capitalist-roader, an old-style feudalist of the worst kind.
The year is 1964. Bi Yadie, Group Leader of the Heaven-Earth Harmonization Task Force, has tracked the last of the Chinese gods, the Taoist Immortal Lü Dongbin to his mountain fastness. His mission is simple: to eliminate Lü Dongbin from the new Liberated Era of the People’s Republic of China.
But old legends do not die so easy. Lü Dongbin has prepared for this moment, and armed himself…with a cup of tea.
Cambermann’s Painter: A Scientifiction– The story of a disruptor with a disruptive new technology that will disrupt art forever! …I speak of photography, of course! A flash that speaks to 2023 through 1823, if you’ve been following the AI news, you’ll bust a gut.
“You mean to say that contrivance painted this…this wonderful woman’s image?!” The bewhiskered mayor stuttered.
“No paint was involved whatsoever, nor painter!” Cambermann cried. “For too long have the painters of Paris rolled like butter in milk in their sumptuous garrets and Montmartre alehouses! This technology will destroy the gatekeeping of the likes of artistic guilds and this very Institute! The whole race of painters will disappear from the face of the Earth as every man can now instantly paint any scene before him!”
When Mackenzie embarked Marie-Pier Corriveau’s ancient Prius after winter finals, the muggy slurry of rain had been falling on Montréal for two weeks. A La Presse headline bubbled up in her Google-vision that it was officially the heaviest since the 2045 tipping point, and recommended some journalistic debate on whether this meant climate change was plateauing. She waved it away as if it were one of the malarial mosquitos that had plagued Quebec since she’d enrolled at McGill. Finals were over, and she didn’t have to worry about risks of the Quebec City dikes failing and flooding the Plains of Abraham, or persistent malaria outbreaks in Three-Rivers, or threats to the wine grapes in what remained of the Gaspé peninsula.
“Bonjour-hi!” she chirped, clapping the passenger door shut. Marie-Pier replied in kind. “What’s with the blue-and-white bumper sticker?”
“Protective camouflage.” Marie-Pier’s French accent was the carefully precise and internationalized sort favored by Quebec’s more cosmopolitan classes. “We are going upriver to the heart of the Republic.”
Come in out of the warm and wet into the bite of the last land that is not land, but winter. Buy “Glâcehouse” today…before winter disappears completely.
The honorable mention of the 2006 Tellus Prize, first story I ever sold, here is “Gods of War,” available for free for one week only.
It was about three in the afternoon, at least that’s what it would’ve been on Earth. The sky was an angry purplish, like blood on the inside of your helmet, and it was ripping around, trying to kill us. The worst was behind, but the destruction lay ahead.
Marquez, a Mandarin-speaking Earth boy, and Harris, a grim Martian colonist, are Red Cross volunteers traversing the Martian wastes. They come to the Chinese settlement of Zheng-we, decimated by a dust storm, and hunt for survivors. They thought there would be none. They were wrong.
“Gods of War” was the first of my “Asian philosophical SF,” stories where I explore concepts I’ve read and learned from China and elsewhere, concepts like the difference between do and jutsu, the ineffability of the Dao, or the extent of iron-body techniques. It’s always been one of my favorites, for the multicultural Mars and for the sense of active, muscular hope under pressure. Hope is not something you have, it is something you practice, and nowhere do I say that clearer than in “Gods of War.”
Long-gone MindFlights.com published it, paying me a handsome $25 for it. At the time, I was working in my father’s company, videotaping government meetings. I got the news checking my email surreptitiously some five minutes after a California Coastal Commission meeting had broken for the day, the commissioners still easy in their chairs. I rushed to the public podium, switched it on, and announced to the sitting Commission that I’d just made my first professional sale, and got paid for it. The august politicos broke out in applause for me, and my father grinned from behind the switchboard. This will always be one of my fondest memories.
Some of them even read the story when it came out. I hope you do, too.
For one week, to celebrate the coming of les printemps, “Gods of War” is free on Amazon. Get your copy today, and be swept away to the red sands of Mars, after the storm Guan Yu has passed leaving so much devastation in its wake…
Originally the last word in Triangulation: Dark Skies, now available for the first time standing on its own.
Five thousand years before the end of the Earth, the star called WR-104 went supernova. Over the intervening centuries, its deadly gamma-ray burst hurtled across silent planets and empty space on a death-errand to that distant world. And, in the intervening five thousand years, Earth learned to listen, and learned to see, and learned to contemplate its coming demise.
Robinson and Campbell are the last two astronomers left at Mount Pleasant Radio Observatory as downtown Hobart, and the whole world, descend into chaos. The Earth’s biosphere is coming to an end, thanks to a gamma ray burst five thousand years in the making. There will be nothing left. Except that the two astronomers might, just might, be able to leave a message encoded in Earth’s Sun, a message to whoever is out there, and whoever comes after…
What message do they struggle to gift to a vast post-Earth universe? Find out in “Earth Epitaph” on Amazon.com.
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