Announcements: Wanted: Associate Editors

Short Stories: It’s A Long Way, by Nathan Gray

Announcements: 2011-2012 Short Story Contest

Short Stories: Out Of The Loop, by Steve Bowers

Announcements: 2011-2012 Cover Art Contest

Reviews: The New Space Opera 1&2, Edited by Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan,, reviewed by Todd Drashner

From The Encyclopedia Galactica: Significant Cultural Impacts in the Terragen Sphere

Poetry: Another Look, by Richard Tornello

Short Stories: Formidable Appetite, by Nathan Gray

Announcements: OAUP On Smashwords!

There will be celebrations across the globe, and in virtual spaces as well. Go look over the possibilities, and celebrate somewhere tonight!

This Yuri’s Night marks some milestones for the Orion’s Arm Universe Project. We’re entering the homestretch for our 2012 Story Contest and Cover Art Contest. If you were considering entering either contest, now would be a good time to get your entries in!

We also are pleased to announce the publishing of works on Smashwords, the online independent press. Go read about what we’ve published! These look to be the first of several Smashwords publications we put out, as we continue to broaden our publishing output.

This issue also marks the debut of author Nathan Gray and artist Arik on V/FT. We invite you to go and enjoy their work!

Deadline: 09/30/12

Sponsored by: The OA Nexus and Voices/Future Tense.

Prizes: The winner will receive a $100 (USD) cash prize and the winning entry will adorn the cover of the first Orion’s Arm paperback book that is to be published in Spring 2013.
See Also
The 2011/12 Short Fiction Contest

Entry Guidelines

1. Contestants must be at least 18 years of age to participate.

2. The artwork must be submitted in JPEG or PNG format, 5″ x 8″ 300dpi (1500 x 2400) resolution. The top 1/3 of the image should allow for the book title and other text.

3. Each contestant may submit up to 3 (three) images for review.

4. All entries must be original, unpublished, and not submitted or accepted elsewhere at time of submission. Orion’s Arm Universe Project, Inc. reserves the right to electronically publish all entries in the October 2012 edition of Voices/Future Tense.

5. All entries are to be submitted via email sent to contests@orionsarm.com as an attachment with “Cover Art Contest Entry” as the subject line. You will receive a confirmation email upon receipt of your submission.

6. In addition to the electronic submission a signed copy of the Artist’s Contract must be sent to the Orion’s Arm Universe Project offices located at:

Orion’s Arm Universe Project, Inc.
Attn: Chris Shaeffer
4202 Tree Crossing Parkway
Hoover AL 35244

7. All contracts and entries must be received by midnight, central standard time, September 30, 2012.

8. The contest is open to all members of the Orion’s Arm Universe Project including all members of Orion’s Arm Worldbuilding Group, OA Nexus, and Orion’s Arm Celestia Group except as noted in item 10.

9. THIS CONTEST SHALL BE GOVERNED IN ALL RESPECTS BY THE LAWS OF THE STATE OF ALABAMA WITHOUT REGARD TO ITS OR ANY OTHER JURISDICTION’S CONFLICT OF LAWS PRINCIPLES. THE SOLE VENUE AND JURISDICTION FOR DISPUTES ARISING FROM THIS AGREEMENT SHALL BE THE APPROPRIATE COURT WITHIN HOOVER, ALABAMA, AND CONTRIBUTOR AND THE ORION’S ARM UNIVERSE PROJECT INC. BOTH IRREVOCABLY AGREE TO SUBMIT TO THE JURISDICTION OF SUCH COURTS.

10. Winners will be selected by popular vote as tabulated by our friends at Voices/Future Tense. Todd Drashner (OAUP Boardmember) and Bill Ernoehazy (Editer Voices/Future Tense) will serve as final arbitrators and as such will be excluded from entering the contest.

Both works have been extensively edited for this new offering. Betrayals, in particular, has an OA timeline and glossary for the use of readers new to OA.

This marks our first foray into independent electronic publishing. Over the next months, we plan to publish more OA works in Smashwords, increasing the audience for our project.

Please head over to Smashwords… and tell your friends.

He is currently working toward a way to help make the world a better place.

The things he does in virchworlds are punishable by death if performed in reality. If they weren’t, or if he could get away with it under the watchful eye of the transaps, he would surely commit his crimes for real.

Of course, I understand his obsession. The thrill, the power. Anyone can give life. Taking it away makes one feel godlike. It takes balls. It takes strength. And it takes a strong stomach. The more one tortures their victems prior to the act, the stronger one must be.

It’s not like he dishes out what he can’t take either. Every trip to a Death Parlour is more intense than the last. Ha, they’ve even started refusing his requests!

As I said, it takes a strong stomach. And as perverted as the proprietors of those establishments are, there’s only so much they can handle. Once again he turns to virchworlds, but it’s not the same. Sure, it feels real, but he knows it’s not.

He should just ask me.

I’m perfect. Just how he wanted me. It makes me dangerous, but he doesn’t care. If I wasn’t as perfect as I am , it wouldn’t be the same. It would be worse than a virchworld. At least in virch one can have exactly what they want. And he wants me perfect, and he can have it for real.

I was locked downstairs for days. I don’t know why he expected me to react to that. He’d come down and abuse me periodically. It was fucking hilarious to not react. It made him so mad. He’d threaten me, beat me harder, increase the torture. Not the skin flaying, the castration, the burrowing parasites rammed into orifice after orifice. None of it.

Sure, I had the normal human instinctual reactions to pain. But I never begged. I never asked him to stop. Sometimes I’d plead to him for more. Beg him not to stop. He must have expected this. I would have. And whatever I feel, he feels too.

I had my plans too, and I knew all of his. At least, I could predict them with an extreme level of accuracy. Only death would stop me. And he wasn’t prepared to do that yet. He acted like one of those Death Parlour proprietors. Bringing me to the brink, and reviving me again. He forgot he liked that experience, and therefore so do I. But he wouldn’t kill me. No, he had his plan.

Autovory was his plan. But he should have taken more precautions. He tastes sweeter than I expected. It didn’t bother him either when I got the upper hand. He actually thanked me for a decent struggle when I delivered the killing blow.

Fuck that was fun. I can’t wait to do it again…

More about the author, Nathan Gray, to come.

Edited by: Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan

Paperback: Vol 1: 642 pages, Vol 2: 626 pages
Publisher: EOS
Language: English
ISBN: Vol 1: 978-0-06-135041-2
Vol 2: 978-0-06-156236-5

Synopsis:

In the two volumes of The New Space Opera the reader gets an absolute bonanza of great writing, cool ideas, and mind-stretching concepts. Volume 1 gives us 18 stories while Volume 2 gives us 19. Virtually all of the stories fit the bill of space opera and, perhaps of more interest to the OA fan, most of them explore themes similar to those found in OA or depict worlds and futures that could almost fit into the OA setting. A surprising number even manage to be hard science SF or close to it.

Below, a quick overview of just a few of the stories to be found in these two books:

Volume 1:

Verthandi’s Ring by Ian McDonald: In the far future the Human Clade spread across the galaxy until it encountered the Enemy and a war of extermination began. Now the Enemy is on the move and two ancient soldiers of the Clade search for the comrade who can tell them why.

Hatch by Robert Reed: Set in the universe of the Great Ship and a sequel to Reed’s books Marrow and The Well of Stars, Hatch tells the story of what happened after the Great Ship was attacked and inundated by the watery forces of a living nebula just before some other mysterious force intervened and apparently took over. We learn what has been happening on the outer hull of the Ship (cut off from the interior by the tides of war) in the decades and centuries after the end of the conflict, a bit of what may be going on inside the hull, and a hint of what is eventually to come.

Glory by Greg Egan: In Glory, Egan returns us to the universe of the Amalgam described in his novel Incandescence. In the Amalgam civilization has been around so long most people don’t know or care what their original race was, most people are software and interstellar travel usually consists of just emailing yourself between the stars. Which makes contact with a system that is not part of the interstellar communications network and home to a brand new race a rather interesting challenge.

Volume 2:

Utriusque Cosmi by Robert Charles Wilson: In this story Wilson tells a tale of a young girl on the run, her tremendously older future self, and how they got to where they are. Hint: the universe is prologue.

To Go Boldly by Cory Doctorow: In this rather humorous tale, Doctorow answers the question: What happens when the ideas of traditional space opera run up against transhumanism and the Singularity? The answer will likely make most OA fans laugh themselves silly. Or at least chuckle a bit.

The Far End of History by John C. Wright: Set in the universe of Wright’s Golden Age trilogy (The Golden Age, The Phoenix Triumphant, and The Golden Transcendence), this story is a sequel to the tale told in those books and begins some tens of thousands of years later. Here we learn a bit about how the war between the immortals of Sol’s Golden Oecumene and the fearsome Silent Oecumene of Cygnus X-1 has been going as well how it all turns out in the end.

OA Relevance: Moderate to high

Some of the stories in the collection are more “traditional” space opera than others but some could be set in the OA universe with only minor adjustments.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly:

I found nearly all the stories at least moderately enjoyable and some of them I found to be hugely entertaining. At least one or two made me say “Now why didn’t we think of that?!” in regards to concepts that would fit in OA but which we haven’t really explored (something I don’t find myself saying often, to be honest).

While there were a few stories that didn’t rock my world, most were at least entertaining and at least a third are now solidly in my Read Over and Over file, something I don’t find often given the sort of OAesque stories that I mainly prefer these days.

Overall Rating: Very Good

If you like the sort of grand scope that OA strives for then you will probably find several stories to really enjoy in this collection. If you’re into writing stories set in the OA universe, pick up these books to get an idea of how other authors are tackling concepts similar to those found in OA. If you just want a whole collection of solid reads with a hefty dash of grand concepts and more than a few relatable characters, you’ll probably find several things to like here. Highly recommended.

More about the reviewer, Todd Drashner, here.

Universe connected its communication detected.
Translation not yet forthcoming,
its language beyond my ken.
I only know I’ve been there, again.
Visions of prebirth I remember clearly
like crack of the door partially left open,
while the whole of that tapestry’s not full light.
I saw and eventually under stood
Interconnected unbounded multiverses.
Maybe Bohm and Everett were close to right.

More about the poet, Richard Tornello, here.

Deep within this testament to the States power, a period of questioning was passing.

The man strapped into the interrogation chair was nearly broken now. With drugs, and pain, and merciless persistence the questioners had driven him to a state of near unconsciousness and beyond. And then brought him back again. And again. Now they were feeling rather proud of themselves. Soon now, very soon, they were sure the man would break. Then they would drain him of any likely sounding secrets, perhaps even some of the secrets of the Spacers, before sending his corpse back to those arrogant interlopers with their ridiculous notions: equality of the peoples, equality of genders, worshipping soulless machines.

This demonstration of the State’s power, of its ability to touch anyone, even (especially) those who aligned themselves with the outsiders and their heretical ideas, would remind the common people of who actually owned this world. And inject some long overdue humility into the Spacer’s dealings with Those Who Rule by Right.

In a single heartbeat, the mountain ceased to be. One moment it was there, a massive, stolid block of immutable stone. The next it had been ripped to fragments and gravel. The pieces of the mountain, and all it had contained, were snatched away in an expanding spherical wave that a moment later reshaped itself into a swirling column of debris extending kilometers into the air. Within that column rock and dust, pieces of concrete, and machines that had been surrounded by concrete spun and spun. And mixed among them were other pieces as well. Pieces that writhed, and shouted, screamed and convulsed. For as vast and complete as the destruction of the mountain had been, as yet no one had died. No one had even been mildly injured. Yet.

The great pillar of pulverized rock continued its slow gyration. Yet at its base, at the very center of the storm was a point of absolute stability. A point where the wind did not howl with the passage of swirling rock and screaming people. A point where a nearly broken man still slumped in an interrogation chair and where now shocked interrogators fought not to huddle in terror.

From above the column four objects fell. Two were larger and appeared as swirling clouds. Two were small, compact, and spindle shaped. All fell swiftly but deliberately toward the watchers below before slowing abruptly and coming to a gentle landing bracketing the man in his chair. In the last moment before touching down each underwent a transformation.

In an eye-wrenching swirl of unfolding twists the two smaller objects became two human-sized machines, roughly human-shaped. While the two clouds coalesced, one into a soft-looking chair, the other into a young woman, barely more than a child in appearance.

Before the shocked eyes of their observers the two machines moved to the man and snapped his bonds before bearing him gently up and laying him upon the chair, which conveniently reclined as he was settled into it. Shimmering tendrils and mists rose from the chair and surrounded the man, who sighed and seemed to relax as if his pain were gone. Watching closely, a keen observer might have noted his wounds already starting to heal.

The young woman, after observing this operation, turned toward the clustered men and fixed them with a stern look.

“Gentlemen,” she said, in a tone of mild rebuke and absolute soul-crushing confidence, “I am Orion. And I am not amused.”

In a burst of panic one of the men snatched the gun from the holster at his hip, aimed, and fired a rapid series of shots at the woman from near point-blank range, thunderous detonations pounding the air. For a moment there was silence, a pause just long enough for all to see the bullets hanging suspended in space, for the shooter’s eyes to widen in realization and dawning horror. Then man, gun, and bullets were snatched away, dwindling to a dot that flew up and away into the maelstrom. A faint echo of a scream carried briefly on the wind and then was gone.

The woman hadn’t moved or even appeared to notice.

“Ok guys, let’s get this clear. I’m a patient god, but there really are limits. Running around kidnapping and torturing your own people is completely over the line. You may not like the elimination of what passes for your culture on this pitiful mud ball, but it’s happening and you’re going to do nothing more about it. It took a little time, but this part of me is here now; and your little power wank is over.”

“What? Who? How?” The Lead Inquisitor was trying to fight through the waves of shock that still gripped him. He was failing miserably. His eyes were drawn upward to the passing walls of dirt, machinery, and squalling people. “I, I, my…Gods…”

“Your gods had nothing to do with this, kids. This is all yours truly. Now listen up. Here’s what you’re going to do.”

“You’re all going to go home, sit back, and wait quietly until the new government I’m creating shows up to cart you off to jail or execution. We’ll decide which at the trial. You will cooperate with them fully and offer absolutely no resistance. Your people will enjoy that.

In the meantime, we’re going to take your culture apart and put it back together again. No more torture. No more rape gangs to amuse the leaders. No more seizing anything or anyone you take a liking to. That’s all over now.”

“Your world is going to join civilization, and play nice with civilized people. And you are not, repeat not, going to be taking any more shots, literal or otherwise, at anyone else ever again.”

“Because next time, I won’t be a patient god, or a merciful god, anymore.”

“Bye now.”

A rush of wind and they were gone. Followed a moment later by a rush of an entirely different sort as all the rock, debris, and screaming people snapped inward toward the men, flashing toward them with crushing force. They screamed and cowered.

And then the room, minus its former captive, was back the way it was. The mountain was back the way it was. Every rock, every machine, every bit of dust and terrified staff person was back exactly where they had been before this all began. The exception was a considerable amount of bodily fluids that had been voided when free-fall descended so abruptly. Perhaps mercifully, this was not put back where it had been before the incident, and was eventually found to have ended up in the fortress sewer system. This, if anything, was even more disconcerting.

The exodus from the mountain began only minutes after Orion’s departure and was never reversed. In the end, the ancient fortress would become an abandoned warren, forgotten even in the histories, crumbling slowing under the weight of the settling mountain.

So ended the last resistance of the State to the coming of the Sephirotic Empires.

More about the author, Todd Drashner, here.