Location: United States
Member Since: Nov. 15, 2009
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Tom Lichtenberg


Biography

"Author of curiously engaging novellas. His stories are not driven by action but by mood and metaphysics. His premises often begin with fairly standard, often vaguely science-fiction concepts, but he spins those concepts out into melancholy, thoughtful tales in which he explores the emotion and (often) dislocation that people feel when confronted by something outside their normal experience." - Devon Kappa

I've written a whole bunch of strange and wild short fictions and I've been giving them all away like candy. Who doesn't like free candy? The good thing is, if you like one, you'll probably like a lot of them, and if you don't, at least they were free!

My books fall generally into four categories, the fourth being ‘None of the Above’. It’s a pretty sure thing that when readers like a book from Group A, B, or C, chances are they are more likely to enjoy another book from that same group than one from another group.

Group A, my personal favorite, could be called ‘Absurdist Comedy’. It includes the duology of ‘Orange Car with Stripes’ and ‘Missy Tonight’, as well as ‘Renegade Robot’, ‘Death Ray Butterfly’, ‘Secret Sidewalk’, ‘Squatter with a Lexus’, ‘Hidden Highway’, ‘Unwritten Rules of Impossible Things’, ‘The New Guy in Moon Base Twelve’, 'The Lemon Thief's Ex-Wife's Third Cousin', ‘Humanoid Central’ and the ‘All Geeked Up’ collection which includes ‘World Weary Avengers’, ‘Ledman Pickup’, and ‘In Constant Contact’.

Group B might be called ‘Speculative Fiction’, and while these share certain traits with Group A, they tend to be less humorous and a tad more serious. The group contains the Dragon City series (‘Snapdragon Alley’, ‘Freak City’, ‘Dragon Town’ and ‘Happy Slumbers’) as well as ‘Zombie Nights’, ‘Entropic Quest’, ‘Sexy Teenage Vampires’, ‘Time Zone’, ‘Rampant Pheromonix’, ‘Phantom of the Mall’ and the screenplays ‘Jimmyland’ and ;Golden’.

Group C is more mainstream, more traditional fiction, in the ‘Realist’ or ‘Naturalist’ sense, and includes ‘Somebody Somewhere’, ‘Fixture’, ‘Raisinheart’, ‘The Part Time People’, ‘Bobby and the Bedouins’, ‘The Girl in the Trees’, and most of the short stories in ‘Cashier World’ and ‘The Mortal Hole’.

Group D is where I’m putting the stuff that doesn’t so neatly fit in the other categories, such as ‘Fissure Monroe’, ‘Macedonia’, ‘Dawn Debris’ and my little kids’ book, ‘Tiddlywink the Mouse’

My hope is that this sort of classification will help readers pick another book they might enjoy, assuming they have enjoyed one in the first place!

Where to find Tom Lichtenberg online

Website: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3262388.Tom_Lichtenberg
Facebook: Facebook profile
Blog: http://pigeonweather.wordpress.com

Where to buy in print

http://www.lulu.com/tomlichtenberg

Books

Prisoners of Perfection - An Epic Fantasy by Tom Lichtenberg and Johnny Lichtenberg    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 19620 words. Published on April 20, 2013. Fiction.
0.5 star(3.50 from 2 reviews)
All they wanted was to get out of the infinite forest where they'd been imprisoned for what seemed like millennia. Accidental immortals, they were set on revenge. They assumed that the world outside had changed since they'd been locked away, but never in a million years could they have imagined just how much or what bewildering surprises lay in store for them now. Epic Fail, Book Two
La Acera Secreta    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 20260 words. Published on March 13, 2013. Fiction.
Beauregaard Dulce se volvió invisible, pero sus problemas comenzaron cuando de repente volvió a aparecer. Ahora todo el mundo quiere algo de él. Manny el mecánico quiere a su mujer. Sharad LeMaster quiere su secreto. Emma Biggs quiere otra oportunidad en las noticias de televisión, las Cuatro Tribus desean enviarle de vuelta a donde quiera que se hubiese ido, y todo lo que él quiere hacer es comer
The Lemon Thief's Ex-Wife's Third Cousin    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 18430 words. Published on February 4, 2013. Fiction.
YOLO. You Only Live Once. Or do you? Maybe there's another you living your own life somewhere else, right now.
The Girl in the Trees    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 21580 words. Published on September 8, 2012. Fiction.
(2.00 from 1 review)
Twelve year old Miranda Amelia Harden has lived all her life on her grandfather's ranch in the mountains. All she wants is to stay there, but the rest of the world can't seem to leave her alone. She has only two questions. How young is too young to know what you want? How young is too young to get it?
The Von Barkingham Method of Time Travel    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 1830 words. Published on August 6, 2012. Fiction.
0.25 star(4.33 from 3 reviews)
In the future ... well, you already know this (or will), assuming you lived (or will live) through the horror, the misery, the nightmare that was (or is) (or will be) the Von Barkingham method of time travel. May God have mercy on our souls.
Humanoid Central    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 19590 words. Published on August 4, 2012. Fiction.
In the future, humans and androids desperately need to find a way to get along with each other, but they're failing miserably. A hand-picked group of Future Leaders is sent to a special academy, a sort of Blade Runner High School, where the young ones must learn how to just get along. In this absurdist fable, they're going to need all the luck they can get.
Happy Slumbers    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 15040 words. Published on June 24, 2012. Fiction.
When Argus Kirkham disappears, his older brother Alex returns to the city of his youth to join in the search, but finds himself instead at the edge of a baffling mystery he can neither see nor begin to understand, in this fourth and final re-mix of the Dragon City series.
The New Guy In Moon Base Twelve    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 18830 words. Published on February 11, 2012. Fiction.
(4.00 from 3 reviews)
They weren't exactly the crew the President had in mind when he announced his plan to build a permanent base on the moon so the Chinese wouldn't do it first, but there they were, a boring collection of peaceful, happy settlers who couldn't even get a decent reality TV show rating. Life was perfectly dull until the new guy arrived. Now if they could only find out who he was and where he'd come from
The Mortal Hole    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 32710 words. Published on January 19, 2012. Fiction.
A collection of short fictions, including the complete Sexy Teenage Vampires trilogy, The Futile Epikles and other characters, and several previously unpublished stories.
All Geeked Up    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 67390 words. Published on September 8, 2011. Fiction.
(3.00 from 2 reviews)
From their humble beginnings as inventors of a handheld device with basic mind control capabilities, the tech-folk behind World Weary Avengers, Incorporated moved on to develop such gadgets as one capable of recording an individual's very personality and replaying it back into another person. Only a small group of testers stand between these audacious inventors and your very soul.
In Constant Contact    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 22650 words. Published on July 31, 2011. Fiction.
(4.00 from 1 review)
The good folks at World Weary Avengers are at it again. They have a device that keeps you in continual contact with a "professional friend", guaranteed to always be there, whenever you need them, to be whatever you need them to be. Now it's up to Kandhi Clarke and her team to make sure if does what it's supposed to, and not what it's not, before this latest tech-astrophe is let loose on the world
Entropic Quest - An Epic Fantasy by Tom Lichtenberg and Johnny Lichtenberg    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 35380 words. Published on June 22, 2011. Fiction.
(5.00 from 1 review)
In this dystopian fantasy, certain people are stuck at binary ages (8, 16, 32 ...) due to an unknown cause. They cannot age, or change, or become sick or even injured. By turns experimented on, abused, tortured and scorned, they are eventually exiled into a strange prison, an infinite forest world from which there is no escape. There they seek a cure, an antidote, a solution to their problem.
Dragon Town    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 18040 words. Published on April 21, 2011. Fiction.
(3.00 from 1 review)
Argus Kirkham, now 39, is once again dragged unwillingly into an inexplicable situation. Sapphire Karadjian returns to the story as an investigate journalist assigned to a new mystery, a volcanic sinkhole which has swallowed an entire football stadium, and from which a very strange and nameless young girl has emerged, hair and clothes on fire, with a message for Argus. #3 of the Dragon City series
Sexy Teenage Vampires    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 4980 words. Published on March 26, 2011. Fiction.
(4.00 from 5 reviews)
Three short stories offering a novel twist on the 'paranormal' romance thing. These kids live underground, in train stations and subway stops, using modern techniques to extract what they need from packed and tired rush-hour commuters. Sometimes it pays to be more afraid of what you CAN see, what you want to look at, what you can't stop looking at.
Jimmyland    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 17100 words. Published on February 4, 2011. Screenplays.
The settlers were dispatched to a distant planet to build a colony to house the future of mankind. They had everything they needed, except a backup plan in case things went horribly wrong, and there was no way home.
Fixture    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 15640 words. Published on December 13, 2010. Fiction.
0.5 star(3.50 from 2 reviews)
When a city commissioned a famous artist to create a masterpiece for their newly refurbished downtown, they only forgot one thing: to tell him when to stop. Now his greatest work is threatening to take over everywhere. It's a race against time and space and dimensions nobody even knew were there!
Dawn Debris: A Comic Book Without Illustrations    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 4470 words. Published on September 25, 2010. Fiction.
(2.00 from 2 reviews)
When his new idea is stolen, Morris Bevelhead turns to the best finder of lost things in the business - Dawn Debris, Private Eye. After a hearty breakfast, Dawn finds herself trapped in a sinister conspiracy to save the world through orange juice. Can she pull the plug before it's too late, or will the mega company FedCorTron rule the day? (Extracted from the 'Cashier World' story collection)
Unwritten Rules of Impossible Things    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 15690 words. Published on September 13, 2010. Fiction.
0.5 star(4.50 from 2 reviews)
What if someone - or something - stole one of your days? Just one, and you didn't know why, or what they had done with your life in that time? Young Philip Galvez and his friend Marcus Holmes found out for themselves when they decided to discover why there was a giant stuffed moose in a house down the road.
Renegade Robot    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 16970 words. Published on July 31, 2010. Fiction.
(5.00 from 2 reviews)
It's the end of the world as we know it, when the dreaded Singularity finally occurs and happens to be captured, live on tape, by agents of the Frantic News Network, which freaks out, as usual, and causes a lot of trouble for the mild-mannered nanobot exterminator who happens to get caught in the crossfire.
Raisinheart    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 16640 words. Published on April 28, 2010. Fiction.
(3.00 from 1 review)
Three stories of a lonely youth. Jimmy Kruzel's bad luck is that his worst enemies are always his best friends, or is it the other way around, and that sometimes his darkest hours seem to come right after the dawn. In tales more bitter than sweet, Jimmy finds that you can attract more flies with honey than you can with vinegar, but really, who wants to attract flies anyway?
Death Ray Butterfly    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 19440 words. Published on April 10, 2010. Fiction.
(4.00 from 10 reviews)
Inspector Stanley Mole doesn't mind a hard case, but things have gotten out of hand. There's a killer who escapes to a parallel universe, a frozen caveman with a bullet in his skull, a woman who claims to have witnessed her own murder, a toddler assassin, time-traveling dictators, and subatomic-particle sniffing butterflies. For Mole, this time more than just his reputation is on the line.
Zombie Nights    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 17900 words. Published on March 11, 2010. Fiction.
0.75 star(3.73 from 33 reviews)
Being a zombie, not so easy. That could have been Dave Connor's six word memoir. "At first he couldn't remember how he'd ended up in that shallow grave; he just knew it was hell to claw his way out, and that the taste of its dirt would remain in his mouth for the rest of his time on this earth" ... Expect the unexpected in this existential resurrection thriller.
Tiddlywink the Mouse    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 5490 words. Published on January 26, 2010. Fiction.
(4.00 from 1 review)
A collection of oddly surreal stories for unusual children, featuring a mouse and his friends - a squirrel, an elephant, a limpet and a fish - along with an assortment of mischievous clouds and cowardly mushrooms.
Ledman Pickup    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 29900 words. Published on January 13, 2010. Fiction.
0.75 star(4.75 from 4 reviews)
If you were a sentient gadget, what would you do? Travel? See the world? After overhearing one warehouse worker tell another that 'Green Bay is better than San Francisco', a newly conscious handheld device decides to re-route its shipping destination. From there one hell of a wild goose chase is on as the gadget's designers' agents race to track it down and bring it in before it gets away for good
Phantom of the Mall    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 7250 words. Published on November 28, 2009. Fiction.
The settlers were dispatched to a distant world to prepare the way for the great migration. Everything went according to plan, a little too smoothly, perhaps. Now there's only one thing missing in New Town, just a minor detail. Dystopia in G Minor. The Phantom of the Mall.
Golden    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 21890 words. Published on November 28, 2009. Screenplays.
A man saved by accident from global human extinction is able to travel back in time within the previous century – the only problem is, he’s a black man in 20th century America. A screenplay based on characters from the novel Time Zone
The Part-Time People    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 16180 words. Published on November 25, 2009. Fiction.
(3.00 from 3 reviews)
DeBarrie's Stationery Store needed help again. Somehow, the part-time people never worked out. It was a problem. One after another, the part-time people came and went, and sometimes, nobody ever found out what happened to them. The newest one seemed even more hopeless than usual. His job application announced "there's a man who follows me around and ruins everything I try to do".
Rampant Pheromonix    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 19380 words. Published on November 24, 2009. Fiction.
When an overpopulated city is exposed to an epidemic of clairvoyance, all hell breaks loose. It’s up to the ‘wuns above’ and Science to fend off the forces of both good and evil in a race against certain annihilation.
Fissure Monroe    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 24530 words. Published on November 24, 2009. Fiction.
(4.00 from 1 review)
Dawn Debris is hired to find a possibly-radiation-poisoned leg bone of a high society fashionette who only wants to fit in with the new craze of skeletal transplants that’s sweeping the nation. A store detective, a street musician, a tedious pundit and a suspicious beautician are all involved as market forces compete in a world where beauty is no longer skin deep.
Cashier World    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 39980 words. Published on November 15, 2009. Fiction.
A collection of stories, including the Legend of the Wandering Cashier, the roadside diner Angel of Death, the classic tale of the Bathroom on the Bus, and featuring private eye Dawn Debris in the Land of Many Things
Hidden Highway    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 19730 words. Published on November 15, 2009. Fiction.
Sharad LeMaster ran away from his own cult, and tried to hide from his followers by taking a desk job in a motel in the middle of nowhere, but when a certain lazy ghost from his past reappears, Sharad is lured into a haunted house and becomes the proud possession of the witch Eugenia, and gets caught between rival black-market magic-potion dealers in their fight over a girl.
World Weary Avengers    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 15040 words. Published on November 15, 2009. Fiction.
(3.00 from 1 review)
The good folks at World Weary Avengers Incorporated had a simple idea - changing the world for the better by talking loudly in public. Seemed simple enough, but even with the help of the most sophisticated hand held device ever invented, some jobs are better not left to amateurs. You never know what kind of hell could break loose.
Time Zone    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 33650 words. Published on November 15, 2009. Fiction.
(5.00 from 1 review)
This is not your father’s time travel. There’s no machine, no dial. There’s no telling where or when you’ll go. The only thing that can change is you. It will make you what it needs to make you. And if you come back, it won’t be the same you. You’re messing with the nature of things, and the nature of things does not like to be messed with. Welcome to a riddle of change and addiction.
Squatter with a Lexus    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 20360 words. Published on November 15, 2009. Fiction.
(5.00 from 2 reviews)
Pearson Holmes disappeared a long time ago, leaving behind a potentially valuable safety deposit box. Freddy the Freegan is the first to stumble across the mystery, but soon a whole cast of characters are out to find the key and claim the treasure before time runs out and the contents are forfeit to the state. Who will solve the riddle of the Squatter with a Lexus?
Somebody Somewhere    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 24060 words. Published on November 15, 2009. Fiction.
Some psycho kidnaps his would-be girlfiend, gets chased by the cops halfway across the state, runs out of gas right outside your house, where you and your spouse are enjoying a quiet evening at home, and now you’re held hostage at gunpoint and surrounded by police. It could happen.
Snapdragon Alley    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 21560 words. Published on November 15, 2009. Fiction.
0.25 star(3.33 from 6 reviews)
Ten year old friends Alex and Sapphire discover something strange on the city bus map, a street that existed for only one year. As they set out to solve the mystery, they encounter the possibility of another world, another dimension perhaps, in a vacant lot, but they are not the only ones on the trail. Who will discover the truth, and who will pay the price? Book One of the Dragon City series.
Secret Sidewalk    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 19560 words. Published on November 15, 2009. Fiction.
(4.00 from 2 reviews)
Beauregaard Sweet became invisible, but his troubles began when he suddenly reappeared. Now everybody wants something from him. Manny the mechanic wants his wife. Sharad LeMaster wants his secret. Emma Biggs wants another shot at the TV news, the Four Tribes want to send him back to wherever it was he’d gone, and all he wants to do is eat donuts and watch reality TV.
Orange Car with Stripes    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 19600 words. Published on November 15, 2009. Fiction.
(5.00 from 1 review)
On a dare, Gian Carlo Spallanzini set out to discover the deepest darkest secret of a person picked at random. He had no idea what he was getting into. Even a fat, bearded know-it-all ought to know better than to leap before you look. Add a crystal ball, a foul-mouthed parrot, and a cranky atheist talk show host and you'll never guess the outrageous mystery behind the orange car with stripes.
Missy Tonight    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 26170 words. Published on November 15, 2009. Fiction.
0.5 star(4.50 from 2 reviews)
These days it seems like everyone is cashing in on the New Atheism craze, except for lifelong unbeliever Alan Musted. What’s a portable toilet dispatcher to do? Crash the party, that’s what! Join Alan and his friends and enemies in this ground-breaking work of “atheist pulp fiction”, the spellbinding sequel to 'Orange Car with Stripes'
Macedonia    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 24190 words. Published on November 15, 2009. Fiction.
A gang of street kids, an anonymous radio announcer, a detective from the future, a presidential assassination attempt and a frequently mistaken narrator all play a part in this jumble of introductions to an open-source novel inspired by the works of Macedonio Fernandez. Cover painting by Delma Soult.
Freak City    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 24540 words. Published on November 15, 2009. Fiction.
0.25 star(4.20 from 10 reviews)
It’s hard to control your destiny while you’re waiting for the bus. The trouble for Argus Kirkham began when a stranger pushed his way through a crowd at a bus stop and pressed a package into his hands. Inside the package were various random items. As Argus and his friends unravel the clues, very strange things occur in this story of mystery and ghosts. Book Two of the Dragon City series.
Bobby and the Bedouins    by Tom Lichtenberg
Price: Free! 25350 words. Published on November 15, 2009. Fiction.
0.5 star(4.50 from 2 reviews)
Mario Flambeau was once a guitar god, a superstar in the psychedelic heyday. Now he's a burned-out wreck. When a desperate producer finds him in a church basement in a band with other derelicts, he has visions of a major comeback payday. Add a drummer with an anger management problem and a preening drifter diva lead singer, and you've got all the makings of a true rock and roll apocalypse

Tom Lichtenberg’s tag cloud

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Tom Lichtenberg's favorite authors on Smashwords


Smashwords book reviews by Tom Lichtenberg

  • A Brief Conversation with My Hair on April 24, 2010
    star star star star star
    Like the hero of 'Diary of a Grocery Cart', this collection of deliciously absurd humor is 'overflowing with abundance'- in other words, it's got a lot of funny stuff. I especially enjoyed the proposed zombie movie plots, the interview with Count Chocula, and Calvin and Hobbes by Hemingway.
  • A Letter To Justin Bieber's Hair on July 10, 2010
    star star star star star
    i like it. I guarantee that "his a household name" will be!
  • We Don’t Plummet Out of the Sky Anymore on July 21, 2010
    star star star star
    Definitely worth reading. Although I got lost a bit in some of the comparison shopping, I enjoyed the humor and appreciated the novel approach to one of the more popular futuristic myths of our time.
  • 3 on Sep. 20, 2010
    star star star star star
    I especially enjoyed the first and last of the three stories. I found them thoroughly engrossing, suspenseful and surprising as you're led deeper and deeper into their mysteries, but never feel tricked or deceived. All three of the stories eventually go farther and deeper than you expect.
  • Broken Bulbs on Sep. 20, 2010
    star star star star star
    This is one of the best books I've found on Smashwords so far. The Moxie Mezcal review below sums it up pretty well. It's hysterical and wretched at the same time. I want to throw in a bunch of quotes here from the book but I wouldn't know when to stop. There's just so much good stuff.
  • Mr. Diddles, the Pit of Fire, and The Karate Guys on Dec. 15, 2010
    star star star star star
    This is really good comic science fiction! It's very funny, hysterical at times, and very inventive too, and takes so many unexpected twists and turns it makes you want to hang on to your seat. It has several characters so vivid it makes me wish I could draw - it would make a fantastic graphic novel. I would love to see a collection of readers' drawings of these guys.
  • Scribbling On Foucault's Walls on July 09, 2011
    star star star star star
    A fine feat of imagination, inserting a child into the life of a complex and interesting historical figure. Adding this perspective both brings out the human in that person and highlights his contradictions. I loved the boldness of this approach, and also the excellent writing I've come to take for granted from this very talented author.
  • Coastal on Oct. 07, 2011
    star star star star star
    horrifying, stunning, brutal, impressive, unforgettable.
  • Welcome to Mom's Diner on Oct. 29, 2011
    star star star star star
    What a wonderful story. I loved it. I'd give it ten stars if I could
  • Where The Sun Sets on Nov. 03, 2011
    star star star star
    Good story, well told.
  • The Fear of E on Nov. 19, 2011
    star star star star star
    Wonderful. Excellent. Hilarious.
  • Day Gazing: Weird Shorts on June 02, 2012
    star star star star star
    I loved these intense short stories. In several of them, beautifully sketched characters find themselves drawn, thrown, or simply awakened into inexplicably weird situations. I especially liked the pair called ‘Freedom/Stairs’, depicting protagonists choosing opposite coping strategies (‘Stairs’, especially, is a greatly empathic story). ‘The Protector’ is another sharp tale of unexpected and exciting new possibilities, while ‘Bunker Test’ and ‘White Room’ are in her wheelhouse of personal apocalypse. Highly recommended.
  • The Alien's Luggage on June 03, 2012
    star star star star star
    A fun little story, nice take on flying saucers
  • The Is Shop on June 03, 2012
    star star star star star
    Wonderful! A perfect story.
  • The Ad Agency on June 03, 2012
    star star star star star
    clever take on an original idea, well executed and funny too.
  • Taxbell on June 03, 2012
    star star star star star
    based on a great concept, the story is well told and well thought out.
  • Accident Man on June 03, 2012
    star star star star star
    excellent story, made me wonder what Lady SOL would look like!
  • Generation Next The Real Thing on June 03, 2012
    star star star star star
    nice take on the old alien invasion theme.
  • Yitzi on June 05, 2012
    star star star star star
    A great story by a brilliant writer. Mr. Zaks, as always, has a wonderful way with original and fascinating ideas.
  • Short and Stupid: Ten Somewhat Dark Short Stories for a Rainy Day on June 08, 2012
    star star star star star
    Very funny short shorts. This greedy reader wants more
  • Jonathan: a proper story involving a black coat, a key, and the ramblings of an insane old man. on June 27, 2012
    star star star star star
    A proper story indeed, worthy of an O. Henry or Dickens comparison.
  • In the future this will not be necessary on July 01, 2012
    star star star star star
    This is a very good sci-fi novel. The main story tells of a freelance writer who becomes involved with a sort of techno-guru internet cult due to his previous involvement with the leader's ex-wife. Thus there is a personal element and a general/social element woven together in the narrative. The techno-guru is a computer enthusiast who extrapolates the rate of growth of computing power into a concept of the Singularity involving a leap in human evolution - this is not the same Singularity I'm more familiar with, the idea that at some point machines will design themselves better than we can design them, hence rendering humanity superfluous. In fact, it is an opposite Singularity! Nevertheless, in this new-age age you hear a lot of nonsense about leaps forward in human evolution, so the guru's ideas slide easily into all that. The book rings true to me and reminds me of the time I worked at a bookstore in Palo Alto in the early 1990's. This was at the very beginning of the world wide web, and nearby Stanford University was as important then as it has been since to the development of the internet. In the cafe, there was one young man who held court offering techno-predictions to a coterie of fellow travelers, and I remember at the time thinking that this could well turn into a cult much like the one described in this novel. That it did not is more a testimony to the uber-rationality of most computer geeks. They are often enthusiastic and cult-like (witness the Apple phenomenon) but usually don't end up wearing identical Nikes and storing exact change for the spaceship lurking behind an approaching comet. They want to be here to see it all go down. The personal story becomes more dominant by the end, emphasizing the "novel" in "science fiction novel", which also brought to mind the recent, interesting movie 'Sound of my Voice', in which the central character is also an outsider who becomes strangely entangled, emotionally, with a cult figure. Another similarity with that film is the idea it gave me that you don't have to "like" a character very much in order to appreciate a story told from their point of view. I liked a lot of things about this book, and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys a thoughtful, intriguing, and worthwhile book.
  • The Hardest Word on July 02, 2012
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    This story of a kidnapping would make a great one-act play. The action is concise, the dialog compelling, as three men, frustrated with how the white-collar bankers who caused the recent financial collapse have gotten away free and clear, decide to teach one of them a lesson. Soon it's not clear who is teaching who, or what the lessons really are, or even if anyone can truly teach anyone else anything, so tenaciously we all cling to our opinions and belief systems. The story manages to capture all these aspects in a fast-moving, tense and compelling drama.
  • The Backward Approach to Ebook Success on July 11, 2012
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    A plain-speaking, straight-forward, no-nonsense survey of the current state of self-publishing and e-books from someone who has been through it and provides solid advice from real-world experience.
  • Stories for Airports on July 17, 2012
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    This collection of great stories is set lovingly in my own hometown, San Francisco. It's a book of sights and sounds, traffic and fog, populated by distinct and very real characters. The stories vary wildly in tone and topic, resulting in quite a satisfying assortment of flavors. I especially enjoyed the very funny tale of the facial rash shaped like Guadalupe, and the onion-layered regression of Clang Clang Clang.
  • Blue Tent on July 19, 2012
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    One of the things that annoys me about most dystopias is the way they usually just start from a blank slate. They'll wipe out everybody on the planet except for a handful of white, english-speaking young people and take it from there. Often, the back story of 'how we got there' is treated pretty lightly, leaping right over the realities of the struggles and the suffering that had to occur, but it simply isn't that easy to get from here to there. Even the Black Death killed only about a third of the population of Europe, and those who died suffered horribly while those who survived were devastated in many ways. There's no great 'survival of the fittest', 'uberman-libertarian' stuff going on. It's miserable and hard and there are no shortcuts through it. If you want to know what dystopias are really like in this world, you need look no farther than countries in the midst of civil war. In such conditions, the lowest of the low are kicked the hardest while the strong dominate with ferocity and terror, and they, the strong, are also the rich, meaning those who are rich now, not you or me in our Horatio Alger fantasies. The rest of the people, the ninety nine percent as it were, are those who are going to feel the pain. The only way out for them is to band together and fight, but such unity is difficult to come by and the fight is often to the death. Divide and conquer is a proven ruling methodology, and so is outright brutality. You can witness the former first hand right now through the phony 'red states' versus 'blue states' in the USA, when conditions are not even so bad, and the latter, as of this writing, in places like Syria. Imagine, then, that the current trends towards greater inequality and higher base levels of unemployment and permanent underemployment of the youth continue on the course they're on now. The next Great Depression is going to look different from the last, but who wants to think about it? We don't see it in our fiction or in our films. We'd rather blow right past all this reality stuff and get to the wild primordial wilderness. But somebody's got to tell it like it is, or rather, how it could be. We've relied in the past on books like this - "1984", for example, or "A Handmaid's Tale", or "It Can't Happen Here". They are rare enough, but stories that reflect the way we're headed as in a truth-telling mirror are often startling and stunning. "Blue Tent" is like this. It's a powerful story, one that I felt in the pit of my stomach as I got to the end. The characters are vivid and more than believable, as are the settings and events. This is no "do-over dystopia". It's a real one. Highly recommended.
  • The Color Of Things on Aug. 16, 2012
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    these stories of the world as seen by little lenny helzerman are characterized by great writing and brilliant moments when you just have to reach for your highlighter pen. It's a complete world of its own, built with brevity yet fully realized and familiar.
  • Another Bookstore on Oct. 12, 2012
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    Nicely done story in the great tradition of Poe, O Henry and Borges.
  • Dead Birds on Oct. 13, 2012
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    Dead Birds is a story of dark prophecy, featuring a homeless drunk tracking down some random and scary portents; beheaded pigeons and rings of blood on alley walls. The trail leads him to fascinating encounters with opaque, mysterious characters. An interesting story all the way.
  • A Crack in the Wall on Oct. 16, 2012
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    A mystery that remains a mystery through the end is hard to pull off, but is well done here. Another impressive 'module'.
  • Newt Run on Oct. 21, 2012
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    Newt Run is a fascinating story that grabbed and held my attention all the way through. The central fact of the novel seems to be a convergence of more than one parallel universes, any or none of which may be considered "real", though when you think about it, to anyone in a given universe, all others would have to be thought of as unreal, which may be the main conception behind the novel. Numerous characters are interwoven among and into each other, sometimes sharing voices, faces, bits of memories, and bodies, as events conspire to complicate the relationships between these various worlds. Gateways, or holes, between the worlds are painted, built, constructed, attempted in different ways, but incompletely, incompetently and usually rather violently. Different interested parties are constantly in conflict and serve to complicate and interfere in each other's plans to such an extent that none of them can ever succeed. In the midst of this are people that can't be seen, or can only be seen under certain circumstances, and a girl with a very special egg. My favorite bits are the narration by an old man at a bar, which is written with a wonderful sense of authorship. Speaking of bars, there are far too many of those for my taste. As someone who doesn't drink, and doesn't like to hang around with people who do drink (or get high all the time), I got a little bored with all the alcohol in this book. To me, it was one of the two biggest weaknesses - the other being the all-too-common appearance of girls with "great legs" who are always willing to spread them for the protagonist. This touch of classic sci-fi could be edited out completely to great effect! Likewise, the drinking could be cut down on - always a good suggestion! Drunks are never as lucid or as quick on the trigger as these guys in this story are. On the whole, the world of Newt Run is beautifully constructed - a town that shouldn't exist and barely does, built on broken half-assed steam technology (I loved this touch), full of miners and students and bars and coffee shops and buses and hockey rinks and pits down deep in the mines. There are many mysteries here, in a place that came as fully alive for me as an Edward Hopper painting. Recommended.
  • Ink on Dec. 27, 2012
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    Another intense, compelling installment in the Newt Run series. Each of these 'modules' are like windows into another world, a place you want to know more about. The author sets about laying these threads for you to follow, a trail of crumbs. The reader has much in common with some of the characters as we search these stories for clues and answers.
  • Tesla's Secret on March 03, 2013
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    It is well-known that Nikola Tesla was an astoundingly brilliant inventor-engineer-scientist whose true life story is quite fascinating and well-worth reading about. He is also a great character for fiction, especially science fiction, as it's easy to believe him to be capable of anything, After all, he was decades ahead in many ways, including his concept of a global wireless broadband network. Who knows what incredible gadgets he may have tinkered with and left behind in some basement somewhere? That is where this short story, Tesla's Secret, by Carla Herrera, begins. A woman and her daughter come across such a device in a hotel whose owner wants nothing to do with the crappy-looking ancient machine. Messing around with it, they accidentally find it to be a sort of seance generator, able to bring back the spirit and form of dead people, but only for a brief period, a few minutes at most. I love what Carla does with this idea. Naturally, the first thing you think of is, who to bring back to talk to? The mother and daughter have very different ideas, and their disagreements and mutual disapprovals make for a very funny and entertaining story. The nature of the machine itself, its limitations and side effects, are also interesting. Highly recommended!
  • The Pick Up on March 25, 2013
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    As any contemporary father can tell you, there is a certain caution he has to take around young children these days, much more so than a contemporary mother must. A father, watching his children at the playground, is likely to be among more mothers than other fathers, and those mothers aren't always so club-welcoming. A man is a suspect around young children, any man, including male elementary school teachers, any male youth sports coach, any man, anywhere, due to the confluent factors of rational probability and media hype. On the one hand, when there are crimes against children committed, a man is more frequently at fault. On the other hand, the percentage of crimes against children versus men interacting with children is not very high, but most of us have been conditioned to think otherwise,. Whether we like it or not, the stories bombard us daily and we cannot help but absorb them all out of proportion to their actual occurrence. All of this is by way of preamble to the story told in The Pick Up, which focuses on this issue. A father watching his child and his child's friend in a playground has a brief and utterly innocent interaction with someone else's child, but soon finds himself embroiled in suspicion. accusation and scandal. As a father who has spent the last several years around young children, I was easily able to identify with the protagonist and the themes in this story, so it had emotional resonance with me. Also, I think Paul is an excellent writer and every new story of his is an event for me, so I grabbed it from Smashwords and read it as soon as I heard about it, and I'm very happy to recommend it to anyone who appreciates a good story, well told.