Review: "Weapons Grade Snake Oil"

It's been a few weeks since I read this book, and time constraints have not allowed me to write this review any sooner.

For this reason, some of the specific things I may have wished to comment upon while reading the book may have slipped my mind.  Nonetheless, here are my thoughts on the book as a whole.

The Faction Paradox universe has fostered some truly wonderful pieces of fiction.  In fact, the quality level is so high for the series that when I label "Weapons Grade Snake Oil" as middle-of-the-pack for this property, it is in no way a dismissal.

If this book is more "Head of State"/"Warring States" than "Newtons Sleep"/"Brakespeare Voyage" it only means that it is a very good book and doesn't quite hit the heights of those in the Faction Paradox universe that I feel are among the best novels I have ever read.

Like the best Faction fiction, it is full of ideas.  Possibly too many, in that there are so many notions tossed out that I wish would be explored more fully and I often found myself wanting the book to be about some of those ideas rather than the story we were getting.

But then the next great idea would happen, and I'd want to follow that one.  And so on, and so on.

Somewhat unusually for the Faction (though hardly unprecedented) this book focuses mainly on fun.  It is in nature a 'heist' story, though a unique take on one.  Rebellious Faction member Father Christémas has a plan to steal a relic of the time before the anchoring of the thread - an item called the "2nd Second".

To do this, he puts together an unlikely team that includes Faction runaway Sojourner Hooper-Agogo, his own servant Cousin Chaz, and the Time LordHouseworlder called The Hussar with his own assistant Anne Bonny.  There's a lot of double-crossing and conflicting agendas at play, which allows for some very nice character interplay that doesn't unfold as you might expect.

The neatest ideas are not the vaguely-defined concepts like the 2nd Second or Blue Praxis, but concepts behind entire cultures like the cymbiotes [sic - and for a reason] where Sojo comes from, or the gambling society of the Chance Coteries.

My favorites, though, are related to The Hussar and his assistant, real-life pirate Anne Bonny.  This
estranged Houseworlder has gone through elective semantectomy to have his given name removed - leaving only the title of The Hussar.  The implications for the series which Faction Paradox spun off of are quite intriguing.

Also, his relationship with his timeship, the Kraken, is... interesting.  Sadly Anne Bonny isn't as good as the red-headed historical character from another Faction novel (the incomparable "Newtons Sleep") but she is interesting enough in her own way.  She certainly doesn't get as much exposure as Aphra Behn did in the other book, as she is not as central a character.

Each (short) chapter is given a "Dune"-style quotation at the beginning.  Some of these are fascinating; some have the feel of later "Dune" books where Frank Herbert was clearly long grown weary of the necessity he had given himself of coming up with this stuff every few pages.  As there are even some real excerpts among the fake ones (I think?) it lends a real authenticity to the world(s) being created.

If there's a particular failure with the book then it is sadly with the heist plot itself - which is central to the book's narrative.  The rules are vague, the destination unclear, and the resolution abrupt and deliberately confusing.

I get that this is Faction Paradox and there are things we simply will not understand.  But the way it plays out is unsatisfying, underwhelming, and as far as I can tell, not actually set up in any way.  (Though I'm happy to be proven wrong on this in subsequent rereads.)

That this bathetic resolution does not damage the book as a whole is a testament to the fact that everything else is not only done well, but is engaging enough that the plot basically is of little interest anyway.  I do dearly wish we could have spent some more time with the Bankside crew.  I haven't even talked here about Cousin Haribeaux (whose cybernetic nature and nomenclature could lead one to associate him with the Kandyman!) or Cousin Rupert and what they get up to together.

Nor the politics of the Eleven Day Empire, and what Godmother Antigone has planned for Father Christémas.  For that matter, Sojo herself and the future of her society would be enough for a complex and satisfactory novel.

All of this stuff being lumped in together means that none of it gets developed fully, but feels instead like existing realities we get a mere taste of before necessarily moving on.  "Weapons Grade Snake Oil" is a cruise ship where we barely go on shore before it's time for the next leg of the trip.  Sure, we miss the exciting locale we just visited, but there's something just as inviting around the bend.

And I loved all of it.

(3.5 stars, rounded up to 4 if we ignore the distracting typos throughout)

Buy the book from Obverse

Review: "Captain Hawklin and the Skyhook Pirates"

Could also be called:

Sky Captain and the Temple of Doom.

I love a good pulp novel - and a good pulp movie serial as well. Here I get something of both.

For while this book is a tribute to the old pulp works, to me it reads more as a pastiche of the cinematic pulp adventures than the written ones. Indeed, the author seems to say as much in the book itself.

Furthermore, I catch more than a hint of the modern tributes to the pulp classics. For example, it feels more like Sky Captain than it does Sky Raiders. More The Rocketeer than The King of the Rocket-Men.

And that's not a bad thing. A modern sensibility to the period-pastiche is a nice touch which I appreciate. And while it does a good job emulating a 1930s environment (I was able to picture the whole thing in black and white) I personally think it has elements of a more contemporary storytelling style that help it remain relevant to today's reader.

It's not too deep, I'll tell you that. Nor is it trying to be. What this book wants (and what it succeeds at) is to be a rollicking adventure drenched in the spirit of 1930s pulp sensibilities. It is pretty steadily-paced with a plethora of cliffhangers, and it never flags.

Some storytelling problems include very uneven chapter lengths (which disrupt the pacey flow a tad) and a very swift ending which follows a late plot revelation that could have fueled much more story beyond that point.

In addition (and this is the only thing that knocks the rating down a peg) there are frequent (and I mean ubiquitous) typos and punctuation errors. If these bug you too much (and they usually do for me) then prepare yourself because they are impossible to ignore. A lot of word repetition finds its way in as well, though this is a stylistic criticism rather than a technical one.

I don't want to seem down on this work as I enjoyed it a lot (and look forward to reading the sequels which this initial book leaves room to improve upon) but the flaws have to be noted. And they do detract - even if less than they might have.

"The Skyhook Pirates" is intentionally derivative. Don't expect much innovation here. The skill involved here was stitching together various elements to achieve a surprisingly cohesive whole. It ought not to be as good as it is with so many disparate ideas masquerading as one story, but it works dammit. The diversity helps make the plot seem fresh as the story unfolds - like each new chapter of the movie serial has its own character, but is telling one overarching story.

So, yeah. Get it if you like old pulp stories. Avoid it if you don't, because it makes no pretense to be anything other than what it is - and rightfully so.

Very entertaining.

Buy the Book

Inspiration (Part One)

Compensation is 99% inspiration, or so they say.

(No they don't.)

But what exactly is inspiration?  For me, at least, it is certainly not wholesale lifting from other sources.

Most often, an character's arc, or a fantastical element, in one piece of fiction will lead me - stepping-stone-like - to a somewhat related idea that I flesh out on my own to create something brand new.

Sometimes (very rarely) it will be about stealing an idea someone else had.  But in these cases, it's more like turning a throwaway comment into a full-blown novel.  Like reading an offhand remark about 'a YouTube comment by a man who never existed', and then creating from that an entire story about someone who was erased from reality, but gained a second life as a sentient online footprint.

It's not about stealing.  It's about great works of fiction stirring your imagination to create your own (hopefully very different) art.

For this post, I want to talk about my series of pulp science-fiction e-novellas: "The Star Travels of Dr. Jeremiah Fothering-Smythe".

I've talked before about the origins of this series, but basically I wrote an unsolicited spec for a defunct series of pulp e-novellas set in 1970s North America.  At the time, a paperback collected edition was being mooted, but as the project was put on hold, my story (which was strongly being considered for inclusion in the book) went to limbo.

But the experience prompted me to realize that I could write (and would have fun writing) my own series of pulp adventures, of a similar length.  At the time, I thought I could bang them out one a month at a decent quality (provided I went into the thing with a sufficient number of ideas) and because of my love of Victorian-era pulp SF, I immediately conceived the story of a gentleman of the era finding himself on a journey through outer space, becoming an unlikely hero as he floundered his way through the cosmos to make it back to Earth.

The action-adventure pulp series I had written for was a main inspiration - but only for tone and format.  The content of my novellas would be quite different.

So what inspired me beyond them?  HG Wells, of course, was a main inspiration, and I sought ought some of his books I had not read up to that point, to immerse myself in the right tone.

Also - and quite in opposition to the staid pacing of late 19th Century literature - I was greatly inspired by (and wanted to emulate) the flow, rhythm, and structure of the Flash Gordon serials starring Buster Crabbe.  Not the newspaper strips (which I liked as well) but the cinematic serialized adaptations.

If I could somehow evoke the fun of those serials, with their frequent cliffhangers, while also emulating the style and content of early SF works that I loved, then I would be onto a winner (as far as creating what I intended to - I never expected, nor received, financial success from those books).

My main influence, though, was a little loved book called "A Honeymoon in Space" by George Griffith.  First published in 1901 (the same year my Victorian gentleman set out on his celestial adventure) this book describes a dashing man who rescues his old flame from an unwanted marriage in his newly-invented spacecraft.  Together the two take to the stars to see what wonders the solar system has to offer.

In its light-hearted and adventurous tone, its fascination with bizarre alien life and how such societies would evolve, and its utter lack of concern for real-life science, I found something I wanted to emulate in spirit - though not in content.  Its resonances with the concerns of the novel "The Time Machine" gave me much fuel for the fires of my creative writing.

Throw this all together with my love of Sherlock Holmes, adventure serials, Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom books, and with just a whiff of steampunk about the whole thing, and you have a series I was very proud to more or less succeed at producing once a month (for the six months it endured).

If you want to, you can buy the collected e-books for Kindle for $5.99.  "The Star Travels of Dr. Jeremiah Fothering-Smythe" - one of my favorite things I have ever had the pleasure of writing.

Book review: "The Martian Girl"

The Martian Girl
by Paul Magrs
(Firefly Press)


Let me get this out of the way first: it's not quite as good as "Lost on Mars" was.

But given that I rated them both 4 stars on Goodreads, there's obviously not much in it.

Like the first book, it's quite episodic and doesn't feel like the plot really gets going until rather late in.  The first 50% or so of this book is kind of picking up the pieces of "Lost on Mars" and reshuffling them to get to the place this book needs them to be.

Most of this part is still good reading - although I found the ambivalent way the novel treats Professor Swiftnick to be somewhat disorienting.  At one point, it appears as though we're going to be expected to suddenly treat Swiftnick as a friendly character - though this is soon negated again.  It's probably just bad reading on my part, but it feels to me as if Paul Magrs momentarily gets lost in recreating the feel of certain other books and places the character in a role unsuited to him for a brief time.

That quibble aside (and it's a minor one) this is a very enjoyable book from start to finish.  I don't feel it has the strength of the early portions of "Lost on Mars" which had a very nice "Little House on the Martian Prairie" feel - but neither does it have the wrenching quality of that book's episodic format.

This still follows the same storybook format of a series of differentiated adventures, but somehow the whole feels somewhat more "tied together" than before.  To me, "Lost on Mars" somehow only felt as though it had arrived at the real story it was telling when Lora made it to the City Inside.

That location is where we pick up in "The Martian Girl", and remain for the first half of the book.  Even though it still takes a goodly while for this book to wind up at the next phase of the adventure, it is so breezy and fun to read that you'll never feel like the time spent is too long.  Indeed, I could have remained in the City Inside for the entire book and never felt cheated.

But that's not what this series is doing.  No, as I stated earlier, the kind of storybook, episodic format keeps us always rolling along to the next set of circumstances - and here there is a distinctly more pronounced L Frank Baum air to the whole thing than I recall from the first book.  Whether this comparison is intended or the product of my own reading preferences is of no consequence; the similarity is there (for me, at least) and is something I appreciated.

It's a necessity of any sequel, but I felt slightly let down at the fact that some of the odd occurrences in "Lost on Mars" are given explanations here (or at least a hint in that direction) which dilutes the impact of them rather - but only in the way that Poirot revealing the murderer will always be vaguely less compelling than the investigation to undercover him in the first place.

Lora's world is still zany, enthralling and well-drawn, and most of the characters refuse to remain as they are, instead developing as the story goes on.  Plenty of mystery is still left regarding events and people from the first book, and although I am eager to discover the truth I am happy to wait while I enjoy the desire for eventual enlightenment.  There's so much still to find out, things that will no doubt alter the way we understand the world of this Mars.

And Lora herself still has room to grow, to become the woman it seems she is likely to be.

Oh - Barbra the Vending Machine finally made it into the story here.  I was hoping it wouldn't take her long...

Buy the e-book on Amazon US

Paperback collected edition available!

Hey Star Travelers!  Long time no write.

Sorry about the long absence.  Busy time of year.

Anyhow, all of the "Star Travels" stories thus far are collected now into a paperback edition!  It's a very nice-looking large paperback, with 522 pages comprising over 150,000 words.

If you can't see forking over the dough for the hardcopy, I have made a Kindle edition also available - which is a vast savings over buying all of the novellas individually.

However you want to read it, get your copy today!

$15.99 + S&H for the paperback

Kindle US - $5.99

Kindle UK - £3.99

If enough of you show interest in this book, there may yet be more adventures for Dr. Jeremiah to come in the future!

Final book in the series released!

At last, it is upon us!  (And only two weeks late...)

Book 6 of "The Star Travels of Dr. Jeremiah Fothering-Smythe" is called "The Free World" and it is now available!

In this, the last of Volume One of the "Star Travels" (I fully intend to come back to the series some day) Jeremiah comes to the planet Mantrika voluntarily, to help aid its citizens in freeing their world from the tyrannical occupation of the Veyans.

Jeremiah has no idea how he could be of use, but he followed the lovely Princess Iltiria here and would do whatever she bid.  But now that he's here, what can he do to help?

In the final stage of Jeremiah's transformation into a hero, he must use everything he has learned thus far in his star travels - and maybe pick up a few extra tricks as well, if he wants to survive this mission.

$1.99 from Amazon US

£1.49 from Amazon UK

Enjoy it!  And who knows?  Maybe one day Dr. Jeremiah Fothering-Smythe will return...

Free promo!

Good news!

Between Wednesday October 7th and Sunday October 11th, you can get the novelette "Introduction to Danger" absolutely free!

Get it from Amazon US

Or from Amazon in the UK

It's a fun and simple story designed to be a great way into the universe that Dr. Jeremiah Fothering-Smythe inhabits.

Check it out today!

Relaunch: all of the new covers

Howdy, folks.

Here it is: the new line-up of covers for "The Star Travels of Dr. Jeremiah Fothering-Smythe".

Pick them all up now, and let your friends know!

Only $1.99 each from Amazon US

Or £1.49 from the UK Amazon store

New covers on the way!

While I begin writing the last installment of Volume One of "The Star Travels of Dr. Jeremiah Fothering-Smythe" I am also starting a "relaunch" of the brand.

New covers, with a new title/logo to better catch the eye.  For now, I will show you the new "Book 1" cover, with the rest soon to follow:

Enjoy!

Book 5 finally released!

It's the moment you've all been waiting for!

Book 5 is called "Capitol Punishment" and in it, Jeremiah finds himself on an entire planet that is the capital of its star system.  On the run from several enemies with differing agendas, he must team up with new and old friends to save his life and theirs.

It's a lot of fun, and I hope you enjoy it!

Only $1.99 from Amazon US

Or £1.49 from Amazon UK

Finishing Book 5, Beginning Book 6

Hey all.

Book 5 - "Capitol Punishment" - should be out in a week or so.  By this point, I ought to be close to getting the first draft of Book 6 done.  Or at least well on my way.

So why can't I start?

It's the last in Volume One - the final installment in the first phase of Dr. Jeremiah's star travels.  There will be a pause while I write other things, projects I've wanted to work on for some time now.  So I want to get this right,

There are things the book needs to accomplish.  The ending is fine (I've know what it is for a very long time now) but making it count is harder.  Earning it, letting it develop naturally and satisfactorily.  That is what the key is going to be.

I could start writing now.  Easy.  All the details aren't worked out yet, but I could make it up as I go along - I've done it before.  So why not do that?

Because I know it won't work.  Won't work well enough, at any rate, to be satisfying as a semi-conclusion to the series.  I need to make sure this one hits all the right notes, and in the right order.  There's a hundred ways this could mostly turn out okay, and only a few that will be really good.

It's one of those latter that I'm aiming for.  And so I keep hunting.  Keep searching, keep outlining.  And soon (with any luck) I'll hit on the right approach and start writing.

Any day now...

Keeping busy

I'm almost ready to start on Book 6 of "The Star Travels of Dr. Jeremiah Fothering-Smythe".

Right now, while I'm getting it outlined (and figuring out who some of the guest character are) I'm trying to keep the writing muscles exercised not only by redrafting Book 5, but by writing some short stories.

I've got a lot of ideas, and some of them might even be good!  If I decide to publish them, keep an eye out.  It could be something readers of this series will enjoy.

But either way, it won't be long until I can begin the first draft of the final installment of Volume One of Dr. Jeremiah's adventures.

I can't wait!

Preparing for the end

Now that I have finished the first draft of Book 5 ("Capitol Punishment") with still a lot of work left to get it into shape, it is time to prepare for Book 6 (which currently is a very bare bones outline - a fact which frightens me a little).

In doing so, I am forced to confront the fact that Book 6 will definitely be the last book of what I am calling "Volume One".

The character's story arc will effectively resolve by the end of that novella, and it feels like the perfect place to rest the series for a while.

Book Seven begins a new story arc that I am actually quite excited about, so Jeremiah will definitely return for a Volume Two, but there is most certainly a need to pause after Book 6 is released.  (This will also allow me to focus on some other projects which I have been developing.)

I think once you, the readers, get to the end of Book 6 (which, of course, will not be released for almost another two months) you will see why it is a great place to press the 'pause' button.

There is still a lot of excitement to go before then, however, and I hope you will be looking forward to the adventures in Books Five and Six which still lay ahead of us.

Book 4 released!

I'm aware that I haven't been updating this blog.  I have been busy, and been exhausted, and just let it slip.  I shall endeavor to do better in the future.

For now, though, I am posting this to let you know that Book 4 - "Kingdoms of Sky and Sea" - is available to purchase!

Buy from Amazon US

Or from Amazon in the UK

Hope you all enjoy, and I'd better get back to writing Book 5, as there are only four weeks to go until it's out...

Independent Authors Cooperative Press

Hey guys.

If you've noticed a couple of new logos on the blog, it's because I have joined a new group called the Independent Authors Cooperative Press.

Basically, it's a group of indie authors like myself, who are banding together to support one another - both in a creative sense and a marketing one.  It should, in theory, allow us to increase our visibility, as well as improve our skills in writing.

I'm very happy to be in on the ground floor of this venture, and hope that everyone involved in it commits totally to the concept, as it could really be a great thing for everyone.

Of course, the actual writing still needs to be done alone - which reminds me:  better get back to it.

Keeping things fresh

I'm not sure I have ever talked about this aspect of "The Star Travels of Dr. Jeremiah Fothering-Smythe", so as I work on redrafting Book 4 this seems as good a time as any to talk about it.

Basically, although the series is firmly a Victorian pulp SF tale, I am attempting to vary the story style somewhat from book to book.  They remain in the same tone, always first-person narrated by Jeremiah, but the type of story being told should be somewhat unique every time.  To make every book a little bit special.

Book 1, "Enter the Unknown", is lower in incident - being mostly about the introduction of this Victorian man to the wider universe - with a kind of H.G. Wells slant.  A protagonist who is not completely fazed by his placement in such a bizarre environment, and whose focus is on the details of this new universe he has become witness to.

Book 2, "The Savage Planet", has a little more of an Edgar Rice Burroughs bent.  It's not just the arena fight, but the kind of world into which Jeremiah is flung, and the way he is marked out as special among its peoples.  There's not much of a John Carter vibe, but it's in there, and affects the focus of the storytelling.

Book 3, "Beyond the Frontier" is essentially a steampunk Star Trek.  As in Victorian science fiction, I focus on the little details of the technology and its otherworldliness in a nonsensical but hopefully era-appropriate way, but the function of the space vessel and the type of dangers it faces, are very much drawn from Star Trek.  I always felt that the show (and I am referring to the original, here) was very pulpy to begin with.  Very much my kind of series.

Book 4, "Kingdoms of Sky and Sea" will be slightly more Flash Gordon-y.  I endeavored to construct the plot in a way that utilizes cliffhangers every twenty minutes or so, to keep the pace going, and to give that cinema serial feel to the book.  It has more incident and more action than usual, but also makes sure to contain a lot of intriguing details about the alien culture and technology in it.

Right now, the plan for Book 5 is for it to be even faster paced - with a touch of Star Wars influence - weaving three plot strands together in a way that keeps the action moving ever-forward.  I should begin work on this story next week.


Throughout all of this, despite the attempts to give a different feel and focus to the story of the month, I am trying to have same basic approach to the character and the tone.  A very H.G. Wells/George Griffith way of exploring the environment at least as much as the events.  And above all of that, developing Jeremiah slowly from a self-centered and aristocratic coward into something that retains his basic sense of self but which has a new purpose and recognition of inner worth.

I hope it all comes across.  And I hope it keeps the series fresh and exciting, but consistent.  It's up to you all to let me know how that succeeds!

Book 3 now available: "Beyond the Frontier"

Hey, Star Travelers!

The wait is over:  Book 3 is now released!

In this installment, Dr. Jeremiah Fothering-Smythe is serving aboard a space freighter trying to make his way home - but nothing ever runs smoothly in his world!

The ship faces dangers both within and without, and Jeremiah must rely on his wits and his friends to make it out of this calamity alive.

$1.99 on Amazon US

£1.49 on Amazon UK

State of Affairs

Hope everyone got their copy of the promotional novelette ("Introduction to Danger") while it was free!  (If not, in another 85 days I'll be able to make it free for a further 5 days.)

Book 3 ("Beyond the Frontier") will be out in less than two weeks now.  It needs a little more touch-up work, but it's in great shape!  I also need to start work on the cover...

I've also completed the first draft of Book 4 (title undecided).  This one will need a lot more work to whip it into shape!  But I think it'll be a good one once it's all done.

Among the other work I'm doing (developing that YA series I posted about the other day) I need to figure out the plot for Book 5.  I know the main characters, but none of the events as of yet.  Similarly, Book 6 will need to be plotted out.  I know the ending, and the probable setting, but little else.

It's extremely likely that (unless the series really picks up in popularity) Dr. Jeremiah will take a pause in his star travels after Book 6.  I know what happens in Book 7 that kicks off a new and exciting story arc, though - so don't fear!  He's not going anywhere!  He just probably needs a bit of a rest from his monthly schedule of fast-paced adventures before resuming the fight once more.

So that's where everything stands for right now.  Don't miss "Beyond the Frontier" when it makes its debut a couple of weeks from today!

Some more pictures

Just for fun, a handful of images I threw together in my downtime today.

Writing in a Victorian SF style

One of the chief difficulties for me in writing "The Star Travels of Dr. Jeremiah Fothering-Smythe" is not the deadlines (a 20,000 word novella every month), coming up with ideas and so forth.  No.  The problem is the juggling act of tone.

You see, I want it to feel like a genuine Victorian/Edwardian sci-fi story.  And yet, I also want that thrilling edge of later pulp works like Flash Gordon (the strip or the serials).  And also, I want it to actually be enjoyable to a modern audience who may not be familiar with the classics, might not (yet) understand the conventions.  (They can learn that as we go, but if they are going to stay for the ride it has to appeal to them off the bat.)

The conventions of early pulp SF are varied, but for my purposes there is one thing that I am mostly talking about.  I'm talking about the protagonist as explorer.  About the focus not on his personal adventure, but on the things, events, and cultures that he witnesses.

Take a look at HG Wells' (rightfully) famous work "The Time Machine".  Spoilers ahoy, but the plot is essentially this:  the (unnamed) time traveler goes forward to Earth's far future.  He encounters some friendly little guys and hangs around them for a while doing nothing.  Soon he decides to check out what's underneath the city, but immediately doesn't like the vicious guys he sees there so quickly goes back up top.  Later, he journeys to a far building with one of the nice guys in tow, gets threatened by another of the bad creatures, and decides it's time to go home.  The end.

Almost nothing happens in this book.  There are almost no events in it.  No incident.  Not even any real character development.  The time traveler doesn't get a name.  He doesn't get too affected by the things he's seeing or getting caught up in - besides a "these guys are quite sweet" and "oh no, don't like these guys!"  Because that is not what the book is about.

Like many other early sci-fi books, "The Time Machine" (look also at "Flatland" or "A Honeymoon in Space" - or, to a lesser extent, "A Princess of Mars") the point of this is showing us an alien world.  In this instance, that world is Earth in the future, but that is not usually the case.  What is important to these authors is showing us how a different society could function.  Inventing a unique culture and just extrapolating from that, explaining it.  If such-and-such were the case, this is how it would develop.  It's about the imaginative creation of another reality.

Now that's all well and good (I love those books - why else would I be seeking to emulate them?) but in my own craft I am not interested in world-building.  No, strike that: I'm not primarily interested in world-building.

I do enjoy the imaginative exercise of inventing a whole other planet, a whole other ecosystem, but for myself personally if I'm not using that to tell a story then I am just not interested.

This is where the Flash Gordon thing comes along.

The other aspect I love about pulp is the pure storytelling part.  This is not relevant to the Victorian SF genre (for the most part) but is a big part of the type of pulp I love to read.  Something like The Shadow or Doc Savage.  Something fun and adventurous, that really moves.  Not great literature, but great excitement!

So how does that square with the Victorian exploratory SF genre?  That's what I'm trying to figure out as I go...

Both pulp story types have a similar approach to the main character.  Basically, he's there to be either a non-entity or an archetype, not personally affected much by events because there's no time for an existential crisis while an adventure is going on!  I try to modulate this in "Star Travels" by giving Dr. Jeremiah a personality and a development arc that is worth reading, but which doesn't interfere too much with the next big adventure incident.

But tone and pace, these are things that are tricky to juggle when trying to be both the world-building genre and the fast-paced adventure genre.  I keep picking on Flash Gordon because I love it (especially the Buster Crabbe serials) but also because it does a lot of what I want to do:  big, bold locales and environments, explored in short bursts of adventure by an Earth man out of his depths in a journey across space.

And I want to do that while honoring and continuing the more Victorian focus on exploring how these strange environments work.  And also having the kind of character development and interactions that a modern reader might expect - without doing too much that will weaken the period pulp pastiche of the story.

Even dialog poses a problem.  I want to stay true(ish) to the Victorian period pattern of speech.  More than that: Dr. Jeremiah Fothering-Smythe is essentially the kind of insufferable upper-class arrogant type that Bertie Wooster was.  He's not supposed to talk like your typical Englishman at the end of Queen Victoria's reign; he's supposed to sound like an arrogant toff whose experiences bring him down a peg or two.

But that leads to readers not enjoying the phraseology of the work.  (It's all first-person narrated.)  I also allow myself to indulge my penchant for flowery phrasing, and endlessly diverted sentences stuffed full of paranthetical asides.  It's all part of Jermiah's thought process, and so quite justified.  And it just so happens to be a slight exaggeration of my actual writing style, so yay.

My initial intent was to leaven this with more modern talk.  That the galaxy would be full of people who did not need to hold to Jeremiah's stilted Victorian speech patterns.  Thus far, however, I have not found myself resorting to that - and still do not know how well it would mesh with the style of the series.

I'm definitely easing up on the over-emphasis of the Victorian mode of speech.  A reviewer called my period writing sometimes a bit "too cod for comfort" (a criticism on point, and magnificently worded) and subsequent books (this was written about the first) do indeed try to lessen that factor.

Some of it is, of course, purposeful.  I want Jeremiah to at time be an annoying Bertie Wooster type.  In "Enter the Unknown" Captain Kraylik (the aggressor) speaks in a melodramatic Shakespearian mode of dialog.  But do the readers recognize this intent?  With so little actual speech, Kraylik probably comes across less as deliberately grandiose, and more as ridiculously over-written.

The book I'm writing right now has a species who speak in a similarly archaic fashion - and I hope it does not grate too terribly.  It's again on purpose (to mimic the speech patterns of a race who have not had contact with the rest of the galaxy for quite some time) but I recognize that it could annoy the reader.  And so I must make certain to include some characters (I know which ones) who speak in a less formal and distancing fashion.

Anyway, it's a constant struggle, trying to figure out how far in a certain direction to go each time.  I like to think that I aid in this by mixing up styles somewhat.  Book 1 was very HG Wells (in intent) while Book 2 is far more Edgar Rice Burroughs' "John Carter of Mars" in style.  Book 3 goes for steampunk Star Trek, while Book 4 is Flash Gordon filtered through George Griffith.

I hope I am getting the balance right more often than not.  Let me know how it reads to you folks!