Tag archives for Exodus
Opening Chapter “Ambush!” – Excerpt from Perfects
'Ambush' is probably the (very short) opening chapter of my novel, which will be edited professionally over the winter. I'm also thinking about re-titling the novel to avoid confusion with the original novella that it was expanded from. Ideas accepted in the comments. Ambush Pandora’s driving scared the hell out of all of us, but the simulator couldn’t lie. She was way safer and faster than any of us, even me. We didn’t buy that though, given how scary she was driving on manual, so I got Han to compare her real driving performance with the simulations. She was slightly slower and safer when we were actually in the car with her, but still faster and safer than any of us could do in the sim. So we reluctantly agreed that she should be the driver. Two Police Cars in Liverpool…
Autonomous Vehicles pt.2
Social Impacts of Autonomous Vehicles Perhaps Autonomous mobile homes will cruise round here: Catford Road (South Circular Road), London SE6 (Photo credit: Wikipedia) My previous article on Self Driving Cars covered some of the technical points, that self driving cars are starting to look safer than human drivers and that there are traffic management benefits to most vehicles being self-driving. But there's more to it than that. For a start there will be more than just 'cars' that drive themselves around, so properly one ought to talk about autonomous vehicles (AV). No More Professional Drivers The most obvious consequence of autonomous vehicles is that those who drive for a living will rapidly be out of a job. The cost base for taxis, truck haulage and bus companies involves driver pay plus the costs of the vehicle. I expect that initially there…
Editing Perfects
Over the last few weeks I've been editing Perfects for a second draft. I finished it over two years ago and it has sat in the metaphorical drawer waiting until I had time between uni courses to focus on it and apply what I learned from A215 to it. As a re-cap, Perfects is an evolution of Exodus, which was my multi-threaded NaNoWriMo 2012 story of a mid twenty first century exodus of people from Earth into space as space travel became an order of magnitude cheaper. I decided when I re-looked at it that there was an interesting world there, but that the strands needed loads of work to knit together. One of the strands became the novella Crisis Point, which I released in 2013. Perfects followed a group of genetically engineered teenagers and twentysomethings living mainly in Cambridge.…
East End Explosions
I've been exploring the world of Perfects with some friends by running a roleplaying session with the Full Moon games group playing the senior officers of a police counter-terrorism group. More details on Operation Hawkeye. I couldn't resist writing some press stories as a result of the session. East Ended! Brave cops foil GM terror group in dawn raid. Silverton residents were woken by automatic gunfire and a bomb blast as terrorists fought off a police raid. Brave officers stormed through a hail of fire to take out the terrorists. One terrorist was confirmed killed by police, although not before two officers were wounded. Another is believed to have blown themself up in a suicide bombing. Commander Coalfield, the Counter Terror Chief, called on citizens to lookout for accomplices to the GM terrorists that may have escaped. Forensic teams are scouring the…
Crisis Point
I'm done editing Crisis Point, my military science fiction novella. Although I'd previously released it I got some feedback from people and I also re-edited it to apply the lessons I'd learnt from having studied creative writing. So this version is a better one than the earlier version, and it is shorter too. It also has the opening scenes of the re-written Perfects in it too. Here's the blurb: Why is rolling news showing footage of US Marines holding off an armed assault on the White House? Where have the Secret Service taken the President and why has the Vice President invoked the 25th Amendment? Why has US Space Command mobilised its strategic reserve and put it into orbit? Crisis point is a stand alone novella set in the same world view as Perfects (due 2015) and tells the story…