3089 is a first-person RPG in which you assume the role of an experimental android, sent down to the strange planet ‘Xax’ to be tested on your performance whilst under the watchful eye of a shady omnipotent figure called the Overlord. You’ll be expected to traverse the sprawling, randomly generated world as you complete quests, gear up your character, and eventually begin building your own base on the planet’s surface.

Explosions on my first day…

You begin your adventure by choosing from either one of the predefined classes – ranging from the typical melee, gunner, and thief choices to more unorthodox options like pilot and leader. Being offered the choice on how you want to play is a nice touch to help accommodate different play styles, but there’s way too little information available on this screen for you to make an informed decision on what some of the classes offer. The Pilot class, for example, offers a large boost to the piloting stat which allows you to drive the various ships found on the planet’s surface. Without picking this option and diving in, there’s no way a new player would know what kind of play style they are committing themselves to.

The planet Xax will be your ultimate test, providing you can survive the hostile inhabitants that roam the surface. While you may attempt to seek refuge inside one of the safe zones scattered throughout the world, your safety isn’t guaranteed as alien ships will frequently wander in and begin to slaughter the friendly inhabitants of your town. Luckily, turrets are commonplace in these safe areas so for the most part you can use the shop and workstation nodes without too much fear.

The nodes found in each town are used to purchase new weapons, armour and special gadgets like grappling hooks and hoverboards – the latter of which is highly recommended as it not only makes you feel badass, but makes travelling the world a whole lot faster. While each node serves a specific function, it can be somewhat frustrating to have to constantly run between the huts that house each node, especially when there’s usually a huge distance to cover between each house. It seems odd that the various shops and functions couldn’t have just been gathered together in one place, effectively cutting out this need to tediously trek between posts just to get your gear sorted.

The crux of activities in 3089 are handled with randomly generated quests that you pick up from the safe zones. Each quest is a mash-up of objectives which usually ask you to perform a number of tasks like diffusing bombs, spying on hostile NPC’s or being a courier for important info discs. While the questing system serves a valid purpose to help generate content for you to earn cash – which you then use to upgrade your character – it’s unfortunate that most of the objectives are repeated after completing several quests. It soon becomes more of a chore to complete these necessary side missions just so your character doesn’t fall behind on its progression for bigger and better equipment.

[Spoiler warning: If you want to avoid any story spoilers, skip past the next paragraph.]

Alongside the side quests is 3089’s main plot, centred on the shady goings on with the Overlord, the omnipotent entity that sent you to the planet in the first place. After jumping through a few hoops, you soon learn that planet Xax was once inhabited by another race of creatures, which were all but killed off. With their planet taken, they hid underground waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike back against their attackers.  By enlisting your help, this hidden faction hopes to use you in their secret war against the Overlord. You’ll have to piece together most of the story via transmissions received whilst completing quests and defeating the various boss monsters at each interval as you progress, but the plot is engaging enough to encourage you to push forward and learn more about this secret war.

The Matrix, only with 100% more robots.

How you fight in 3089 depends entirely on your play style. There’s a full stealth/sneaking system in place to allow those who like to flaunt their melee and backstabbing prowess, whilst still accommodating the big guns and awesome firepower gun nuts will no doubt crave. What’s more, weapons are modular, meaning you can swap and change the individual parts of each weapon with newer pieces, allowing you to freely customize the stats of each weapon, or even add attachments like silencers for extra functionality.

Being the experimental robot killing machine that you are, you also come full equipped with a special device that lets you pause time briefly. This allows you to set up elaborate precision strikes on enemies, or perhaps just escape a tricky situation unscathed. This super power is balanced by making you seek out collectible clocks, scattered throughout the game world which replenish the charge that fuels this ability.

Perhaps I can build a bridge outta here?

Once you’ve progressed far enough into the main plotline of 3089, you’ll gain access to the building tools. This equipment adds a whole new layer to the gameplay, shifting away from the character progression and more towards building structures, turrets and useful utilities. This feature is quite robust, and easy to use for the most part with on screen cues helping you to place and shape your structures any way you wish. It’s a strange concept, as for the most part this feature didn’t feel like it was in any way attached to the main concept of the game. It didn’t seem in any way necessary for me to dive into this aspect, and yet I was drawn to it simply because of the new level of control over the world that it gave me.

3089 is a strange mash-up of genres, and one that is quite common place in gaming today with so many titles opting to meld genres in an attempt to mix up the formula and make something interesting. While this is an impressive feat pulled off by such a small development team (a single fellow by the name of Phr00t), it doesn’t quite hit all of the buttons to make it anything more than a fun sandbox adventure to sink a few hours into. The extra gadgets and the handy building tool help liven up the standard ‘run & gun’ aspects somewhat, but with the tedious quests and unnecessary ferrying between shop nodes it is easy to become annoyed at the feeling of repetition.

Overall Rating: ★★★☆☆ 

What does this score mean?

This game was reviewed using a copy provided by the developer for that purpose.

For more information on 3089, check out the developer’s website or Steam page.

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

Released on Steam as an ‘Early Access’ build last month, Maia started as a Kickstarter and Indiegogo project. Developed by Simon Roth, who previously worked in AAA game development and on Terry Cavanagh’s VVVVVV, Maia is a colony-building and management sim set on a hostile, but habitable planet located about twelve light years away from Earth. Taking inspiration from games like Dungeon Keeper, Dwarf Fortress, and The Sims, the player must work to ensure the colonists survive in their harsh new environment. Build shelters, construct power sources, regulate food production, keep a careful eye on the mental and physical health of your colonists–everything you would expect from a good simulation is there. What’s also neat is that, being on a volatile planet, the colonists are not only subjected to the more routine aspects of survival, but also foreign toxins, alien flora and fauna, dangerous geological events such as volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, and extraplanetary hazards such as solar radiation and meteors of a much more violent nature and frequency than that experienced on Earth.

While the construction of the facilities in which the colonists will live initially starts underground, the player will be able to explore the planet’s surface and conduct research and experiments which will expand their knowledge of the planet and their colonists’ chances of survival. Robots and a first-person mode seem like it’ll make this facet of the game extra interesting, especially considering the look of that mode. Despite the fact that I normally don’t care for first-person perspective in games, I’m actually pretty excited to try this mode out when it’s added to the game. The visual style of it is a total blast and I hope Roth introduces more elements which will emphasize its uniqueness.

Speaking of style, there’s more that will make certain sci-fi fans–me included–salivate at the mouth: Maia also takes a lot of influence from the aesthetic and functionality of 70s science fiction. The technology in the game will be reminiscent of the era in many ways, and the look and music will surely bring folks back to their favourite 70s sci-fi movie. I know when I first heard the haunting sounds of the Kickstarter trailer I was flung back to when I first watched Alien.

Anyway, Maia looks to be a highly ambitious game. The map will be 2km x 2km and procedurally generated. The colonists you manage will all have distinct personalities and skills which you’ll have to pay close attention to in order for the colony to thrive. Like any good game that even mentions terraforming, the player will be able to change the environment and change certain settings which will influence the difficulty and direction of the game. But everything will have its trade-off. Want more minerals? You’ll have to contend with increased geological activity which will put your colonists at risk. Playing around with the amount of light that reaches the planet from its star? Plants will grow faster, sure, but that might also attract more wildlife, and where the prey is, there are predators. This attention to detail is incredibly enticing, and I sincerely hope Roth is able to pull off everything he hopes for in this game. Simulation games are great for creating unique stories, and a story about colonists hashing it out on a hostile planet is too good to pass up.

As mentioned previously, Maia is available on Steam as an ‘Early Access’ title, which means you’ll be able to follow its development first-hand and receive future updates to the game directly through the client. A word of warning, though: Maia is still in very early Alpha, so it’s still got a hardy amount of bugs and is far from polished and feature-full. The developer seems to be consistently putting out updates, however, so if you’re interested in seeing the game grow as you play it, check it out on its Steam page. You can pre-order the game on its official website as well as find out more information about it on there and on its Facebook and Twitter accounts.

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

Astrobase Command, a sandbox base-building RPG by Jellyfish Games, is a character-driven throwback to those old 70s style sci-fi ideas of what living in deep space would be like. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and as your crew struggle to make it through the day some will die. Players will be tasked with creating their own species and building up their base any way they see fit using a ‘Lego-style’ module system to slot in various rooms onto the space stations infrastructure.

Alongside the base building elements, Astrobase Command promises some interesting RPG elements as you explore the stars, with procedural content thrown in to help keep content fresh and unexpected. To get a better understanding of what the folks at Jellyfish Games are trying to achieve, we got to throw some questions at them, and here’s what team member Dave Williams had to say.

The Indie Mine: The game appears to have a big focus on the lives and activities of your individual crew members. How deep is the character development system?

Dave: Character development is a major part of the game, so it’s quite deep. The best metaphor is that when I played D&D in my early teens, it was all about min/maxing and getting that character which was completely optimized in his stats and abilities. And this was loads of fun. But what was even more fulfilling was playing D&D in college and as an adult because then it became about the character and solving challenges from the perspective of the character. The stats were there to inform the roleplaying and flesh out one aspect of character development, but they weren’t the be-all-and-end-all.

So Astrobase Command is really based around the premise that the characters living on your station are not just “bags of stats”. but they’re actually people in the same sense that characters in a well-made D&D universe are.

And I think this dovetails nicely with what’s interesting to us about science fiction. While lightsabers and Star Destroyers got me excited about sci-fi, I feel like it’s really the characters that make the genre compelling on a level so deep that fans go to conventions every year, do cosplay, and exhibit an uncanny willingness to wait in line for a day to get tickets for a theatrical release. This isn’t because of the awesome futuristic technology and panoramic shots of spaceships and pew-pew; it’s because of really compelling characters and their stories which take place in a believable sci-fi world (which is where the technology comes in).

So in my mind, science fiction isn’t about technology itself; rather it’s about exploring the conflict inherent in technological development and how characters meet those challenges. So I think if you dig into it, what’s cool about lightsabers is how this archaic technology (by Star Wars standards) embodies the values of ancient wisdom and tradition represented by the Jedi, and how this fundamentally clashes with the Empire’s need for relentless progress. It is against this backdrop that Vader proclaims “don’t be too proud of this technological terror that you’ve constructed, the ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.” So what’s interesting is the storytelling opportunities afforded by the technology as a backdrop, not the technology itself.

As a result of this notion, we have a heavy investment in the personality trait system which hooks into our AI story engine in specific ways. There are 280 personality traits (so far) and a given character can have up to four. Each trait has a very long list of properties, affinities, and relationships and it’s actually these more atomic units that the AI story engine interacts with. But we wanted the mechanics of the system to be invisible to the player, because he or she should care about the character as an individual — the sum of its parts. It’s the code that does the work to make it believable, and we’ve put a lot of effort into this.

Our test as to whether the trait system worked was being able to construct our favourite characters from various sci-fi universes and have them behave as you would expect. Part of the iterative process was ensuring they could be represented in this system. Because if the trait system could theoretically use its Lego pieces to construct anyone from a believable Picard to a believable Vader, then you can make anything.

And just to be clear, the player doesn’t get to pick the traits of the crew. They develop over time as an outcome of the AI Story Engine. Personalities of characters emerge from the situations the player puts them in.

Much of the fun is taking these deep characters (who may have some great aspects combined with other aspects that don’t fit your playstyle), and figuring out how to best utilize them on your station. The Star Trek example is Lieutenant Barclay. He was an extremely talented diagnostic engineer, and he might have been the smartest human on the Enterprise — his intelligence was at the genius level, even by Star Trek standards. But he also was completely paranoid, an introvert, and plus he was pretty arrogant. And this is what made him interesting. And plenty of TNG episodes explored how his perceived weaknesses actually became an asset. His paranoia actually saved the day a number of times, as did his arrogance to insist that he was right and everyone else was wrong (which ended up being true).

So the idea’s that there are no intrinsically good/bad traits. It’s simply about the kinds of characters the player trusts and what characters best suit the player’s playstyle.

The Indie Mine: How will the player maintain a steady stream of crew members? Since you plan on having several ‘disastrous scenarios’ like alien infestations and accidental deaths amongst the crew, I’d imagine there must be a way to replace those unfortunate red shirts.

Dave: Yeah, there are a number of ways. The most fundamental method is recruits. One of the jobs on the station is Recruitment Officer, and it’s the job of the character in this position to feed the player a steady stream of recruits. Like HR in real life, better Recruitment Officers yield better candidates. Then it’s up to the player to accept or reject the application. Because Crew Quarters are a module that needs to be built/supported, you don’t necessarily want to accept everyone that comes your way. There definitely a danger of “dead weight” — which is something that can exist in any real-world organization, and indeed in Astrobase Command. Sometimes the player is looking to fill a need or role on the station, and then looking at recruit applications and deciding who the best fit is. Other times, a superstar may come along and the player may feel he’s a good hire even if there’s no immediate job for him.

Other than this, there are instances where travellers, or people you rescue, or defectors from other civilizations, etc, will want to join your Astrobase. The story engine determines these moments, and gives you the opportunity to do something about it.

I think red shirts are ultimately characters that don’t yet have a developed personality, nor has there been any particular investment into their skills. Since there’s no emotional attachment, sure they can go explore the Planet of Death because maybe there’s some needed resources on the surface. What’s interesting is that when those red shirts do something interesting, and maybe get a personality trait of it. Then you care about them. And indeed, this is how things worked on Star Trek.

Chief O’Brien is a good example about this. At the beginning of TNG he was a fill-in character, completely expendable. After awhile, you got to know him and he did some things. Then by DS9 he was a primary character. And you really cared about his story, even though he was still a Petty Officer. That’s kind of how things work in Astrobase Command. You want NCOs you can trust, just like you want Commanders you can trust.

The Indie Mine: How much customisation is available when building your space station?

Dave: We use a module metaphor, so the player essentially crafts modules out of parts and then the module has the cumulative attributes, including the relevant duty stations where the characters physically work. The characters assigned to build the modules also play a part, so better engineers will construct better modules. There are no map sizes or hard limits, so you can basically build whatever you want. You can make a Death Star, you can make a Babylon 5, you can make a DS9 — or whatever mash up fantasy is living in your head. These goals are intrinsic.Well, since Astrobase Command is a lot about sci-fi fantasy fulfilment, it was paramount to us to make it feel like you were actually building a believable station.

It is important that the game doesn’t push the player to building any particular thing. It’s more that every opportunity is a choice, and every choice is a tradeoff. So you’ll want to build the station that best fits your playstyle and accept the good with the bad. So for example, a Death Star has lots of points of failure. Security is a pain. Its energy needs are extremely high. It is a city that has everything, but this is also its weakness. It needs experts in every field imaginable to be fully operational. Whereas a small science station has a lot less points of failure, but the trade-off is inherent in the narrow focus the player gives it. Simply put, it’s about risk v reward but also playstyle.

So a lot of design has gone into these sorts of natural mechanics. One very simple example of a natural tradeoff is power vs. security. Power is distributed through modules which have resistance, so the farther something is from a power reactor the less efficiently it’s sucking that power. Power reactors have a set output, so in general you want to utilize the output by having modules that are nearby. Incidentally, the code works out the most efficient way for the modules to draw power given the distance and resistance of the modules in-between it and the reactor. The way the algorithm works, if you don’t have enough power then rolling brownouts occur naturally as the algorithm walks though the module list and tries to power everything. This was a validation of the process, because it’s what you would expect. We didn’t code it deliberately, but rather it’s a natural result that emerged from a sensible way to represent station power.

In terms of trade-offs, being extremely power-efficient trends towards a “highly connected” base, which makes sense in real-world terms. But this is the opposite of what you want for a very secure station. Security works by having checkpoints take up some of a module space, and security personnel will work out routes. Super efficient security means having a tubular (or ring-like) station, with choke-points where you can trap enemies. Because it’s a lot easier to sweep an area with just a few access points. So something that’s very efficient for power ends up being very inefficient for security, and vice-versa simply due to a natural outcome of module connectivity. That’s just one example.

The Indie Mine: You say the game features real-time squad-based combat in some situations, so how will the battles play out?

Dave: I could say that battles play out a bit like a cross between Rome: Total War and tabletop miniature games, but in a 3D space. But this is highly dependent on the conflict size.

Unlike Rome: Total War (or RTS games in general) where each unit is identical to others of its type, in Astrobase Command every unit is unique because it is a character. The player creates groups (could be squad sized, or regiment sized) and gives orders at the group level.  For small conflicts, the player is able to really take a hands-on approach and direct every movement precisely. For large conflicts, there’s too much going on for the player to micromanage every small action, and he’ll need to give high-level objectives to Commanders on the ground. The AI will execute those orders using the character personalities. So it’s about promoting Commanders you trust.

A counter-analogy I like to use is Starcraft. I loved Starcraft, but I could never compete at the high levels of play because it ultimately was about clicks-per-minute which required a lot of practice and a huge investment. And I felt like to be able to compete I would have to lessen my enjoyment of the game, and invest a lot of time doing that. Astrobase Command isn’t about how fast you can click — you have Commanders to do this for you, if you’ve cultivated them.

And this means the game scales up quite well. In the early game, where you don’t have a lot of characters and none of them are particularly well-developed leaders yet, you’ll be fighting small engagements and directing every squad yourself in the moment-to-moment gameplay. As you progress and the battles get larger, you’ll still probably focus on one area of the battle where you really want to take personal control, but for other areas where you can’t give your undivided attention you’ll put characters in charge and give them an objective which might be “assault this position” or “take this hill” or “hold my flank” or “bombard their capital ships to distract fire away from the fighters” and the AI will fulfil those orders, to the best of the ability and personality of the Commanders you’ve assigned. This is how we plan to support huge fleet battles and armies, without requiring the character move every unit by hand.

The Indie Mine: Astrobase Command boasts a “robust AI-generated storytelling system”. How will the game keep things fresh and exciting for the player?

Dave: I think one of the weaknesses of rogue-like games is that they often play like a series of disconnected events, where things happen randomly. We feel like that invalidates the concept of meaningful choice. Because a big part of player choice is having outcomes which are a consequence of player action.

The goal in Astrobase Command is to have events which occur in the game world that are a direct result of the actions taken by the player, and by the player’s crew. And that it makes sense when compared to the internal logic used for sci-fi shows. Because that’s the metric: “Could this string of in-game events be a Star Trek episode, and over time when story arcs emerge does it start to look like a season?”

So the idea is that we give the player a maximum possibility space, and ensure the game responds appropriately to his actions within a maximal set of reactions. This in turn prompts the player to make new choices to respond to the new situations. Then, it will always be fresh.

The Indie Mine: What’s the craziest moment you’ve seen when making the game?

Dave: I think being indie is necessarily filled with crazy moments. Obviously, Astrobase Command is very much a technology and systems driven game at its core. And the team composition reflects that, but it also means we won’t have an artist until after the Kickstarter. But part of doing a Kickstarter means showing gameplay, and we got to a point where we needed in-game assets just to proceed. We were like “who has the most 3d Studio Max experience?” and Adam our primary coder had opened it like once, two years ago. He had the most experience, so he’s now also our 3d modeller. We call it our “Inglourious Basterds moment.” Banjerrrno!

If you want to know more  about Astrobase Command, check out their Kickstarter campaign (In which 30 Canadian dollars will net you access to the beta when it’s released) and the game’s official website.

© 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

When imagining traveling through time, it’s not just about ending up in a different era, it’s often about experiencing a different place and way of life. Untimed takes the reader from modern day Philadelphia to early 18th-century London, 19th-century France, and 20th-century China. The bulk of the story takes place in that London setting and presents the city from the view of young street thieves. Although the characters Charlie meets veer a bit on the outlandish side, the setting itself is vividly painted as dirty and seedy. War-torn Europe in the early 1800′s is brought to life through Gavin’s depiction of the anticipation of battle and the carnage inflicted upon its participants. Without giving too much away, our hero even gets a look at a skewed version of the present when a few historical choices go awry. Gavin certainly paints a picture of the past that makes the reader share Charlie’s desire to get back home.

As a science fiction fan, one of the best parts about time travel is seeing how each storyteller presents his or her incarnation. In other words, finding out what the rules are and what the consequences are of bending or breaking those rules. Untimed immediately draws readers in with how the protagonist details his bizarre non-existence in the eyes of everyone around him. Going unnoticed is something a lot of teenagers can probably identify with, but it goes a step further in that not even his own mother can remember his name. In fact, everyone who possesses the time travel ability experiences this with the “normals”, and the characters often either suffer because of it or use it to their advantage. Another unique twist is that males can only travel backward in time and females forward, though a pair can travel together in the direction of choice. This presents some interesting dilemmas for the characters in terms of how they’re going to travel in the direction they want or need to be going. Charlie is determined not to lose his time-traveling love interest Yvaine by jumping without her. A necessary “cooldown” period between jumps infuses plenty of tension in the more dramatic, frenzied moments of the story. Untimed deals with the consequences of characters running into other versions of themselves, and it also covers cause-effect relationships in terms of the historical timeline. While some of these concepts draw from Untimed‘s sci-fi predecessors, there’s definitely enough of a unique spin to keep this story feeling new.

Author Gavin doesn’t ignore that sci-fi history. Untimed does pay homage to time traveling adventures that have become iconic in the entertainment industry. The story includes numerous references, both direct and indirect, to pop culture series like Back to the Future and Sliders. I also got a strong Dr. Who feel thanks to the existence of seasoned time travelers and the steampunk, robotic villains that repeatedly show up to thwart them. I think Time Lord fans will enjoy Untimed, though Charlie plays more the role of the companion rather than possessing the charm and wisdom of the good Doctor.

Because the story is surprisingly adult in its content for a young adult novel, I think it broadens the range of readers the story will appeal to. The recent success of the Twilight and Hunger Games series have proven that the true audience for a young adult adventure can extend much wider than perhaps it was originally intended. While I did grow tired of Charlie’s lusting after Yvaine in the midst of the far more important time traveling and near-death experiences, it’s hard to argue that it doesn’t capture some of the essence of a 16-year-old boy’s mind.

Untimed is a quick read with action consistently moving the story forward, and the separation of scenes within each chapter keeps the story from ever getting bogged down. While our hero is regrettably the least interesting character in the story, he serves his purpose as the vehicle for the events that play out and the other characters involved. Untimed is a fun read for all of the young science fiction fans out there, and may even appeal to older readers. As the start of a new series, it’ll be interesting to see how young Charlie grows and the fantastical people and places he’ll encounter in his future (and past) travels.

A sample of Untimed can be found on Andy Gavin’s official website, and the complete book can be purchased through any of the links below:

Amazon E-Book ASIN: B006PIMYLY
Amazon Paperback ASIN: 1937945014
Amazon Hardcover ASIN: 1937945006
Barnes & Noble: 1108093415  (on hold for Kindle Select)
Google: 7o8wLIfFUcwC  (on hold for Kindle Select)
Apple iBooks: 494719226 (on hold for Kindle Select)
CreateSpace: 3751712

© 2012 – 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

Team Disaster have released a demo for their game, Captain Disaster In: Death Has A Million Stomping Boots. The game is reminiscent of the point-and-click adventure games of the 80s and early 90s. Captain Disaster has a retro feel to it in both gameplay and design. With 320 x 200 resolution graphics, players take a trip back to a time when adventure games ruled the PC gaming market and the console mascot rivalry was fought between a hedgehog and a plumber.

Captain Disaster was created by Dave Seaman as the protagonist for his ebook sci-fi adventure series, which is full of high antics and slapstick humour. From the demo, one can expect the game to utilize both these themes in abundance. I was particularly fond of the satirical humour that referenced other overused science fiction tropes. The Flash Gordon and Star Wars text crawl intro scene made me laugh, as did the name of the ship from The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, which Team Disaster unapologetically admits to using. And I couldn’t help feeling that the dense protagonist was a clear homage to Roger Wilco of the classic point-and-click adventure series Space Quest.

I won’t spoil the details of the demo here, due to the fact that I believe players should get their hands on it themselves. If you’re up for a sci-fi adventure to satisfy your inner nerd, or even just a promising adventure game, then I would urge you to try the demo for Captain Disaster In: Death Has A Million Stomping Boots.

© 2012 – 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

Perhaps it was the weird, snow-less winter that led me into the New Year reading assorted books on aliens and the unexplained.  I awoke one morning and looked out not at the expected winter palette of white sky, white ground, black trees, but to an other sky: fuschia, striped with purple clouds and dotted with confused migratory birds.  This was a day ripe for alien invasion, I thought, with the logic of the recently dreaming.  I reasoned that a lack of snow and our global warming trend is all too convenient for off-worlders looking to colonize.  The usual cold would slow the joints of their extra, inner mandibles, and snowflakes blur multi-faceted eyes.  Snow could be just what discourages the average alien looking to probe, conquer and vacation.   Aliens are just harder to imagine thrashing about in snow drifts and contending with entire neighborhoods of down-swaddled men wielding snow blowers.  Well… fun to imagine, but harder.

So, for lack of something to shovel, I spent my leisure time indulging in otherworldly fiction.  The recent Kepler finds of planets thought capable of life reinforce the possibility of “others” out there, watching us, coveting our planet for its tasty people and affordable cellular plans.  Like “post-apocolyptia,” (see Old Man and the Wasteland),  alien fiction is a chunky subset of science fiction, rooted in vivid pulp paperbacks that once sold at train stations and in dime stores.  Tales of sky visitors or things from other dimensions were probably a favorite topic of our fur draped predecessors. Imagine them huddled around campfires, sharing fantastic tales with gestures, emphatic grunts and shadows thrown on cave walls.  So, with a nod to my tangle-haired ancestors, I found several fresh, independently published novels on alien menaces.  Us vs. aliens.  Us as aliens.  Angry, unreasonable, invasive aliens. Some with their own livestock.

I first read the ambitious debut horror novel Red Gods , by James Finan. In this short book, the picturesque English village of Fernby Lakes is experiencing both an intense amount of snowfall and a marauding unknown supernatural entity. (Aliens in snow!?!)  History of the area indicates that it may be a worn spot on the fabric between worlds, and something has slipped through.  The creature that becomes known as the Shade is certainly (happily) not native to this world.  As the book begins, a misfit para-military squad is being sent to access and confront whatever caused the recent massacre in the village.  A pecking order is gruesomely established by the squad’s alpha males before approaching the village, and the violence and evident lack of sanity of one of them makes him a suitable weapon for the coming battle.

The book is presented in short chapters from varying, sometimes odd perspectives. The author brandishes a handful of styles to paint his story’s picture as we shift from plot/story to military-style evaluation report, snippets of folksong, astronomical texts and other extraneous background material.  Finan knows his characters and tells the story with enthusiasm, broad vocabulary and sometimes startling dialogues.  Action sequences are well-imagined, and the segments involving insight into the creature’s psyche are particularly engaging.  Red Gods was a fun, quick read, and a good start on my otherworldly reading menu. For me, it suffers a little from the frequent shifts. Longer fiction has leisure time and page count to change narrative without disrupting the reader from the general flow. Red Gods might benefit if it were lengthened, run past a forthright editor who knows the genre, and republished.

Next came Half Way Home, by Hugh Howey.  While this is a stand-alone, Howey is the author of a couple of series of short fiction.  I’ve been enjoying Howey’s current Wool serial, and I may offer a review of those here in the future.  Half Way Home makes “us” the invading force on a strange new planet.  Spaceships are sent out by terran corporations, complete with terraforming and exploration equipment and an entire community of unborn people.  If conditions are favorable on a new planet, these people are formed and nurtured in life pods.  Each potential person is educated and physically trained in vitro from birth to adulthood to perform a specific task in the community when they are awakened.  While they grow, a base is set up, land cleared, crops started all by remote.  If the planet is judged to be hostile, inviable or unprofitable, the entire project is aborted and destroyed.  In the middle of just such a situation, something causes the abortion sequence to stop.  Amid fire and chaos, some pods open and little more than 50 newly born teenagers are poured out prematurely into their new world.

Told in first person from the perspective of a young man, Porter, who was intended as the community’s psychologist, we follow the struggle of their first days as they see to the immediate needs of the community and form friendships.  The survival tale turns to intrigue as someone suffers a fatal accident and the home planet starts making urgent, unreasonable demands on the half-formed community.  Some of the teens mutiny, and leave the shelter to journey from the little known into the unknown on this nameless planet.

Some books that read as quickly as this one might pass through and be discarded by your consciousness.  But in Half Way Home, I found myself wanting to linger with this group.  To me, that’s one of the hallmarks of a successful book.  I found myself wanting to explore the planet more fully, learn more of its flora and fauna, to watch the community thrive and grow, and see Porter conquer his uncertainties.  There are not a lot of surprises in this book, but the ground it revisits is fertile ground – a new planet ripe for alien infestation – in this case, us.

New Years’ weekend was rainy and chilly – perfect for reading – and I ran across the fun Beyond Armageddon series by Anthony DeCosmo.  It’s a series of five novels (and counting) set on an Earth that’s been invaded by not one breed of alien, but several.  Main character Richard “Trevor” Stone is an ordinary, beleaguered car salesman when the world changes.  Fleeing into the countryside, he meets a mysterious old man who seems somehow part of an even greater conflict.  Stone is given three unlikely gifts – abilities that will help him in the future. Using his special talents to battle or evade alien forces, Stone becomes the one man who can assume the heavy mantle of leadership, gathering what’s left of humanity to him not just to survive, but to fight back.

It’s a very ambitious venture for Stone (and author, DeCosmo) to tackle a total invasion and the total expulsion of alien forces from Earth.  I was surprised by the variety of alien adversaries.  From years of movies and books, one might come to expect a single multi-form beast, sentient ooze, or even a thing riding a sort of pseudo-reptilian dog or mount, etc.  While reading the first part of this book, there’s such a variety of aliens that I said aloud… “did they bring their livestock with them?” It made me smile, reminding me of Teenagers from Outer Space, a 50s movie where humanoid aliens land on Earth, looking for a planet to use as pasture for their giant lobsters.  So few alien flicks give such a reasonable explanation for invading Earth!  But I digress, and Beyond Armageddon doesn’t seem to be about livestock.  Indeed, many of the different aliens are viciously adversarial to one another, like Mothra and Gamera before they teamed up.

I hesitated to review Beyond Armageddon before finishing more of the series.  But after reading the first installment, I was committed enough to know I’ll be wandering into the second.  Book one is an ample 410 pages that reads easily between life’s usual distractions.  The writing is entirely unassuming. The story is told with gusto and at a quick pace as Stone’s band of fugitives carve a pleasant foothold against the alien occupation.  It’s one of those books where it helps to set aside your disbelief, shutter your critical eye and just jump in.  I found it satisfying, like having pizza when you’re hungry for anything but the healthy food you have in the fridge.  And, since reading it made me shirk chores a couple times, I count it as my first guilty pleasure read of 2012.

While I’ve been writing this, nature’s ladled out enough white stuff to insulate me, for now, from all but the most hardy aliens in foul-weather gear.  Their goofy antennaed eyes will be fixed on southern lands instead.  Still, just a glance over smooth sparkling snowscapes makes it so easy to entertain thoughts of other worlds. Armed with a plucky attitude gleaned from these books, I grab my coat and shovel.  “Let them come,” I think, stomping out into the unknown.

The three books I mention here are all available and nearly free on Amazon.  Beyond Armageddon is an older title with current and new additions to the series.  Red Gods was provided for review by James Finan.

© 2012, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

Where does our fascination with post-apocalypse time periods come from?  Does it derive from delicious wonderings of how we would fare in a survivalist situation?  How would we solve the loss puzzle of feeding and housing and procreating ourselves while staving off… well, post-apocalyptic stuff?  There’s such a rich variety of challenge to be had!  Radiation, zombies, mutant bog creatures, feral human gangs, alien clean-up crews and more.  An Armageddon for every taste.  Some stories linger on what the actual apocalypse was, but most just charge ahead into how-we-survived tales as dramatic as struggling Pompeian refugees - death and volcanic ruin behind them and the promise of founding Venice ahead.

That was what I was thinking when I picked up Nick Cole’s The Old Man and the Wasteland.  The genre goes back further than you’d think, and by now it seems a well-trodden path.  I nearly put it aside.  After so many movies and books, after hundreds of hours spent creeping through the colorless wastes of Fallout 3 and countless other games, shouldn’t I be world-weary of whatever world the varied apocalypses gave rise to?

Apparently, the answer is no.  My reluctance to revisit another ruined world evaporated as this simple story entangled me – an homage to Old Man and the Sea.  The tiny part of my mind that likes to keep things tidy looked for props to the often force-fed Hemingway as the rest of my mind just enjoyed the book. 

The Old Man here is never named, and lives in a small village on the outskirts of what was Yuma, Arizona.  It’s been many years since the bombs fell, and as we meet him, he’s a scavenger who’s not brought back anything useful to the village in quite some time.  Many believe he is unlucky.  Still vital and sinewy after half a lifetime of scavenging, the old man is faced with becoming obsolete and a burden to his village and family.   As he packs a small bag of provisions, he dismisses the thought of taking the one book he owns with him.  The Old Man and the Sea.  He’s read the book too many times to need it with him, and sees the parallels to himself throughout the story as he makes his decisions.  He’s become Hemingway’s hero, whose empty nets were seen as a curse by his village, and who goes out into the sea alone to land a great fish. Our old man leaves his village before dawn, heading into the desert wastes in hopes of bringing back something useful that will restore his place in the village and break his streak of bad luck. 

It is a short book – so I won’t detail any of the challenges the man faces on his journey - but the author does a great job of managing the tension in this walkabout through a predominantly empty environment.  Both the scenery and the quest seem remarkably fresh.  There is still beauty in the rugged landscape, and the man’s appreciation of small, vital things: fresh water, fire, and food (even if it’s rattlesnake) made me want to follow this man to the end.  His reality before the apocalypse had become much like a dream to him, affording very little time for thought of loss but guiding him with landmarks as he wanders the shattered highways, seeking the old desert cities.  Along the way, his instincts, learned survival skills and cunning prove much more valuable than anything in his pack.  While he could survive alone for the rest of his life, he is driven to return successfully to his village or die having tried to be useful, and it endows this ordinary man with a mantle of nobility that acknowledges survival of the human spirit.  That is the cleansing punchline, or should be, to all such dusty wasteland tales, and the author achieves it here with a light hand.

A book like this is a great way to spend an afternoon.  I looked up from its last pages satisfied, and I appreciated, for a moment, the shelter around me and the least can of beans in my cupboard.  Okay, only for a moment.  Then I ordered take-out. 

I’ll keep an eye out for Nick Cole’s next book

The Old Man and the Wasteland, by Nick Cole. Published in paperback April 2011 by CreateSpace ISBN 1461076382. Also available for Kindle and Nook

© 2011, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

To his credit, editor David Lee Summers has assembled a very capable stable of authors who have an obvious love for the subject matter. Accomplished writers and editors like Patrick Thomas and Danielle Ackley-McPhail bring experience and brevity to work that would otherwise collapse under its own weight. Every work Summers chose to include is easy to read and to enjoy, and there’s no danger of being distracted by made-up terminology or faux military processes.

But this brevity only serves to accentuate how well-trodden these paths are. We’ve already seen the alien invasion, the hopeless last stand of an abandoned outpost, and the salvage mission gone wrong. Even more recent tropes are well represented, like the robot impersonating a human or the lone survivor trapped with no hope of escape. Just about every story in the book has been done as a 1950s cliffhanger serial or a Star Trek episode. That doesn’t take away from the quality of the writing in any way, but it’s hard to recommend the book as a whole when it’s all so familiar.

A notable exception would be Dana Bell’s “Chosen One”, a story of an alien encounter told from an unusual non-human perspective. Bell’s story is truly original and has the added benefit of being well-suited to the medium. Some science fiction concepts simply can’t be filmed or animated, and Bell uses her eight pages of dense prose to maximum effect. If only the story weren’t so short, it might be worth the full price of the book for that one work alone.

Full Throttle Space Tales 4: Space Horrors, edited by David Lee Summers. Published 2010 by Flying Pen Press, ISBN 978-0-9818957-6-5. 284 pages, softcover.

© 2011, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

One part Planet of the Apes and one part X-men, Laura Anne Gilman’s Dragon Virus is exciting but bleak, a provocative view of a future built on genetic engineering. In a world where evolution can be controlled, are human beings worthy of moving around their own building blocks? It’s not an original concept, but Gilman tells a compelling and concise story by relating brief vignettes over a century of speculative history.

The premise of Dragon Virus is an interesting synthesis of existing science fiction concepts, where anxieties about genetic modification color everyday concerns about religion, adolescence and community. A series of mutations results in still-born babies with physical qualities that seem to be drawn from old mythology. Wings, gills, and extra arms inspire equal parts religious fervor and scientific curiosity among ordinary people. Over time, advances in medicine allow these children to survive and to thrive, and the world must adapt as its people resist change.

The strongest content appears in chapters 2 and 3, which follow the experiences of one of the first doctors to research the phenomenon, and a circle of friends who are  mutated schoolchildren that must rise up against prejudice. While these figures have little opportunity to grow beyond their brief and sketchy appearances, Gilman’s strength as a writer is her ability to draw sympathetic characters quickly. Their reactions to conflict are extraordinary in that they are so ordinary, and not predictably dramatic or heroic.

Gilman borrows a trick from horror writer H. P. Lovecraft, in that she allows the writing to be seamlessly smarter than her characters. As they narrate, even casual readers end up knowing things that the people of that changing world never learn. It’s an efficient way to impart a story that few other writers do well. On the downside, Gilman makes up futuristic slang that is appropriate for the setting, but difficult to read. Thankfully, the language doesn’t distract from the powerful ideas.

Dragon Virus, by Laura Anne Gilman. Published 2011 by Fairwood Press, ISBN 978-1-933846-25-5. 102 pages, softcover and limited-edition hardcover.

© 2011, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.