Congrats to the contest winners, whose stories will be purchased for a future EP flash episode!
In first place, Four Tickets, by Leslianne Wilder
In second place, Life Sentence, by Ben Hallert
In third place, The Future Is Set, by C. L. Perria
See the full announcement here.
And coming soon- the Editor’s Choice awards!
I’m not a huge fan of military SF. But I am a fan of post-apocalyptic SF. I’m not a huge fan of augmented-humanity SF. But I am a fan of humans-aren’t-the-most-powerful-people-in-the-universe SF. So when author Jonathan C. Gillespie put out his new novel The Tyrant Strategy: Revenant Man I wasn’t sure if it was going to be my cup of post-apocalyptic, augmented humanity, military-style, humans-aren’t-so-great tea.
That’s an awfully complicated blend, by the way. Not too many people sell it.
Rated 13 and up for language
The building sat in a small clearing in the jungle, its stone walls radiating solidity and the midday heat. Giant statues of warrior-gods crushing skulls beneath their feet flanked the doorway. Xnab looked from the ornately carved keyhole to his customer and back again.
“And the key is where, exactly?” he asked.
“In the treasure chamber,” the big man said in a small voice. “We had just finished putting everything away and, well, it had been a long day. I think I must have put the key down on the altar or something. The problem is, the place locks automatically, and our entire fortune is in there. We had a few locksmiths out to work on it, but they didn’t get very far.”
Xnab nodded. He had already noticed the blood spatter around the keyhole.
“So that’s why we called you. Everyone said that if anybody could get in there, it would be you.”
Xnab accepted that, not as a compliment, but a statement of fact. He was a specialist the design and construction of booby traps, deadfalls and other, largely fatal, security options. He was a small man, thin and wiry, his shaved head still smooth and unwrinkled despite years of working in the sun. Despite making a very good living, he wore a plain tunic and no adornments at all. In his business, he considered it a bad idea to have anything extra hanging around, and he was very good at his business. In fact, anyone who knew anything considered Xnab the best death trap designer alive.
Which typically would have been reason enough to turn down a job like this, but in this case it was actually why he was there.
“How long have you owned the temple?” he asked the man, who had introduced himself as Tuak.
“Just a couple of months, actually,” Tuak admitted. “It’s not really a temple. I think the statues of the gods are just there for show. The family who used to have it used it to store their treasures and they spared no expense on the security.” He sighed heavily and stared up at the tiers of stone vanishing into the jungle. “It seemed like a good idea when we bought it.”
Wow. How do I conclude 25 articles about TNG? I’ve talked about pretty much everything, haven’t I?
The day before I wrote this conclusion, I went to a meeting at my daughter’s school and it reminded me of how, when I was still a student, a lot of chapters or books had suggestions for further reading. Thing is, I’ve already told you about the tie-in novels. But where can you go if you haven’t had your fill of TNG?
I’ve got some suggestions.
Before I get started on the second part here, I want to make sure I give an Honorable Mention to “Yesterday’s Enterprise” (3.15). Remember how yesterday I said I had this other list that somehow had eleven episodes on it not corresponding to my main top-25 list? And how I showed you that list a few days ago? Well, somehow “Yesterday’s Enterprise” didn’t make it on either of those lists, and the worst part is, I’m not sure why. It’s one of my favorite episodes.
So, instead of redoing everything, I’ll just give it a spot right here at the top of the article before continuing the countdown.
Well, this is it: my top-25 list of TNG episodes. You may not agree with them all, but that’s why this is my list — emphasis on the my. And if you’re wondering why any of the expected episodes are missing, here’s a partial explanation.
Here we go.
So, what episodes are left that could possibly be worse (or at the very least “less good”) than the 15 I listed yesterday? Let’s find out.
Not so much changes as clarifications. Also, I added a too long, didn’t read version. Highlights are below:
TL:DR Version
It’s pretty easy to just say “oh, yeah, that episode was terrible”… but why? Why was it a bad episode? How bad was it compared to others? Was it just that opportunities were missed, or was it truly a cluster of massive proportions?
TNG had all of these — in spades — and it was a lot of fun for me to put together a list of the 25 “worst” episodes of the show’s seven-year run. There were some surprises on the list, as well as several you’re probably expecting.
Let’s take a look.
Rated 17 and up for language and adult situations
I knew Wing’s idea was stupid. But we were all so goddamn sick of quarantine that it sounded great anyway.
“Chinese New Year on Halloween night, huh?” I asked him. We sat on his broken futon and some folding chairs, passing a bottle of Captain Jack among the eight of us. Someone leaned on a car horn outside our apartment. When they didn’t stop, my buddy Matt leaned out the window and swore at them in Mandarin. Matt was loud–even a flu mask didn’t muffle his bellowing. I swear, even though every restaurant in San Francisco Chinatown had been closed since February, tourists still cruised the streets. Even a pandemic couldn’t stop them completely.
“Dude. Someone will shoot us,” said the guy from 4B, who I think was named Jimmy Li. We all lived in the same nasty building on Grant Street above a dim sum place owned by our slumlord. I knew Matt, who’d invited me, and my little brother Jian of course. Wing lived here in 3A. I’d just met the Chao twins who had different haircuts, and then Jimmy and some dude Xiang. At twenty-three, I was pretty sure I was the oldest guy here.
“That’s the point,” said Wing heavily, as if he’d explained this a hundred times when he actually hadn’t. “We’ll be in costume. First off, all the riots will be in the Mission, so that’s where the cops will be. Second, no one’s going to shoot a New Year’s lion. Dude. It’s Chinatown. All the old cops here are superstitious. Can you imagine how much bad luck it would bring? Even if some cop got itchy on the trigger, he’ll think about it long enough for us to run away.”
“No one’s shooting anyone,” said Matt. “For God’s sake, this isn’t Montana.” He pushed his mask aside, swigged the Jack, and passed it to Jian. I snagged the bottle out of his hands. No freaking way would I let my little brother drink from that bottle. Who knew where the other guys had been? They might pull off their masks and drink, but damned if I let my little brother do it. Jian glared at me, but didn’t fight back.
I passed the bottle to Wing. “They might shoot if things get out of hand,” I said. “It’s Halloween. Everyone’s twitchy. But you’re right, I heard a bunch of people are gonna swarm the Mission. That’s where the cops will go.”
Wing took another swig. He wasn’t wearing a mask; that was only Matt and Jian and me. Wing went to the kitchen and reappeared with a stack of well-used disposable cups and washed straws. He swiped an unopened bottle of Jose Cuervo off a shelf and handed it to me.
I thanked him and poured myself way too much tequila. I knew I wasn’t supposed to peel the mask off, even for a minute, but it’d been a bad week. My parents were getting evicted and Jian’s antivirals were out of stock everywhere. Pissed me off–HIV drugs did crap against the flu, but people were desperate and they got prescriptions from quacks. So my little brother might develop full-blown AIDS thanks to those selfish jackholes.
(Continue Reading…)