Fiction vs. Fact

https://www.amazon.com/Dissent-Book-Nexus-Thomas-Olbert-ebook/dp/B01CRCEMQG The demarcation between fact and fiction is expected to be clear. Only in science fiction stories of time travel and parallel universes do different people live in wildly divergent realities, one person's reality diverging from his neighbor's. But, life today is not so simple. What kind of reality is it in which the populace of the most powerful nation on Earth can't agree on who won the last presidential election? In which divergent versions of reality conflict on a daily basis? We have a president who refuses to acknowledge that he lost the election. He cries "fraud" without proof. He refuses to hand the reins of power to his successor, impeding the operations of government while scores of people die of an ongoing pandemic. Our president can do nothing but praise himself for a vaccine in development which he claims wouldn't exist had he not "forced" the FDA to advance it. Also, not true, but of course his supporters believe it, as they believe every baseless claim he makes. He tells us the election was rigged in a vast international conspiracy, and his followers - at least a third of the country - believe him. He could probably say the election was rigged by hostile Martians, and they'd load their guns and point them at the sky. (Why not? Orson Welles accomplished that in 1938 and he wasn't even trying.) It's as if, in a science fiction story, an alternate parallel universe has appeared in the middle of our reality. An alternate universe in which real news is fake news and fake news posts that claim child pornography rings are operating out of pizza restaraunts actually bring people out of their homes with shotguns. In which global climate change...the evidence of which is a daily occurence...doesn't exist. In which thousands who have died of an ongoing pandemic never really died at all. Like some twisted quantum double take: reality and anti-reality existing side by side. Which will triumph in the end? The election is over...at least according to the majority view of reality. But, the clash of realities goes on. When the current mad king finally departs, he becomes the rabble rouser leading his followers in the streets. They vote, and the political opposition party now held captive by this newly spawned anti-reality is forced to capitulate. Truth fades, or at least bends, like warping space and time...in some places, but not in others. Can two realities...Two worlds...coexist in a powerful nuclear nation? When a sizeable segment of the population simply refuses to trust authority, whether governmental or scientific...What then? The capacity of the human mind to delude itself seems unlimited, reality merely a matter of opinion. Can civilization survive without a common vision of reality? We'll see.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/star-dancer-tom-olbert/1137460943 https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1037624#longDescription

Star Dancer

 

 

 

In a dark future, the orbiting Mars Platforms are an independent space nation and open trading port where every vice known to man is legally practiced. 

Sabine DeGuerra is a professional concubine with a long list of wealthy clients.  A master of dance, mathematics and martial arts as well as sex, Sabine makes a comfortable living, though haunted by the dark nightmares of her secret past and the dangers of her present.

Sabine’s life changes dramatically when Mirabelle, a young orphan girl fleeing torture and death in a tyrannical Mars colony, seeks her help.  Sabine risks her own life to get Mirabelle and herself off the platforms and out of Mars space.  Surrounded by the cold, black vacuum of space, Death lurks around every corner of the platforms at the hands of the Guard, the merciless security guild.  Sabine has only her courage and cunning against overwhelming and deadly odds…

 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1037624#longDescription

 

 

 

"Star Dancer" is a tale set in a dark and violent future.  A world in which greed has taken its toll.  Pollution and global climate change have devastated the world, the nations waging global war over dwindling resources as whole populations are reduced to near barbarism, slavery again becoming the norm.

Fiction today.  Fact tomorrow?

Who can say, in a time when the strongest nation on Earth is led by a president who denies the reality of climate change and global pandemic?  Who thrives in a political atmosphere of enmity and race hatred?  Could the dystopian science fiction of today become the inescapable reality of tomorrow?

The answer to that question depends on the human capacity to hope.  And, to find the will to change.  The protagonist of “Star Dancer” is a woman shaped by a horrific past and an even more horrific present.  Yet, she dares to hope.  To fight, even at the risk of her own life, to protect hope for a better tomorrow for the next generation.

The cruelties and failures of the past are not easily forgotten.  But, hope lies in the capacity of the human spirit to overcome all obstacles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New Reality...

Science Fiction creates imagined realities.  Whole new worlds, based on the author's visions, fears and aspirations.  But, what reality do we perceive in the real world?

As our nation celebrates another birthday, one cannot help but feel a strange new reality dawn.  A reality of pandemic and race conflict.  Of a nation fighting to find its elusive and evolving soul on this, the anniversary of its birth.

Multitudes march through the streets demanding justice, in the wake of still more police killings.  The best and the worst of us emerge in tides of anger.  In fire and looting.  In peaceful protest.  In embrace.  In hope.  In the toppling of monuments.  In the changing of names and symbols.  We confront our past.  We confront our past romanticizing of it.  We seek to find ourselves.  To heal wounds.  To find the path that brought us here, and a new path forward.

With Liberty and Justice for All.
 For All. 

Those are the words we seek to earn the right to call our national creed.  Some of us do.

Not the man who currently calls himself our leader.

He's not about healing or unification or truth.  His power grows from the antithesis of these.  Anger.  Fear.  Hate.  Self aggrandizement.  Truth twisted into any form that suits the deification of self.  Of nation. And, above all, of him.

 

As reality shifts into places we've seldom been.  As life seems more a science fictional dream of masks and distancing.  As scientists issue grave warnings amid mounting death tolls...

 

Our rabble-rousing megalomaniacal leader dismisses it all as mere fantasy and exaggeration. Life is wonderful, he tells us.  It is everything we wish it to be, because he presides over it.  He takes credit for victories which have not happened.  He ignores deaths which occur daily.  He utters not a word of injustice or police brutality or killing, because these things do not exist in his flawless kingdom.

 

He acknowledges those who cry out for justice only as evildoers who would dare deface our mighty monuments.  Who would dare see our nation as anything short of the kingdom of heaven.  His is the imagined reality.  Some follow it, while others seek a higher reality of justice.  One not yet born, except perhaps in the minds of science fiction writers who envision utopia.

 

 

A reality that never was...a childish melodrama of heroism and blazing glory...contends with an aspiration for a better world; a world in which we are all equal in justice, and in which ideals of freedom and truth are living things that grow into a brighter future; not relics of a half-imagined past  to be blindly worshiped, but never understood.

Happy Birthday, America.  On this birthday, you are offered challenges of hardship to test your mettle.  And, you are offered a choice of realities.  Truth, it has been said, is clothed in thorns and hardness.  Lies in soft, comforting offerings.

Choose, America.  The future is watching.

https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/175537-science-fiction-microstory-contest

 

https://www.amazon.com/Dissent-Book-Nexus-Thomas-Olbert-ebook/dp/B01CRCEMQG

 

https://www.google.com/search?source=univ&tbm=isch&q=Goodreads+-+Lillicat+Publishers+-+Visions&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj62a_6h7rqAhWVoXIEHZV7BtYQ7Al6BAgKEBk&biw=1249&bih=752

 

https://mochamemoirspress.com/catalog/dark-mocha-bites/

SLAY!

Attention:  Lovers of vampire fiction...

Coming soon from Mocha Memoirs Press:

SLAY
Stories of the Vampire Noire
an anthology of vampire stories from the African Diaspora

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/slay-stories-of-the-vampire-noire/x/23267103#/

 Vampires have been a part of the horror genre since the beginning but for all the varied vampire tales, few of them speak to the beautiful diversity present in humanity. To the point, this anthology will focus specifically on stories from the African diaspora, tales of the vampire noire. From vampires to hunters, this anthology celebrates Black vampires in all their beauty.

 

Mocha Memoirs Press is currently accepting submissions for Slay: Stories of the Vampire Noire until March 31st. If you are interested in writing for this anthology, please find find submission guidelines here.