Karl K. Gallagher's Blog

Heroes and Anti-Heroes take different journeys. A hero starts out good, but has to learn to be effective. An anti-hero begins as competent, but needs to learn to use those powers for good.

My favorite example: Luke Skywalker starts out idealistic but clueless. He learns better and becomes a Jedi. Han Solo is competent (shooting first) but cares only for himself and Chewie. He’s inspired to join the cause of the Rebellion.

Different journeys to same place.

There’s other definitions of “anti-hero” floating around. Some use it to refer to a villain protagonist. But I prefer my anti-heroes on the side of Good.

Watching the delightful Flight 11 of the SpaceX Starship reminded me of some older thoughts I’d had last year after watching the booster catch. That was an amazing feat, proving the possibility of things I’d doubted.

Wow. I am staggered from watching SpaceX catch the SuperHeavy. I thought they must have had a good chance if they were calling their shot, but it was still amazing to watch it happen. Let me give some context for why I’m so amazed.

Three decades ago I watched Kistler Aerospace present their early two stage to orbit design. One feature was that the first stage had landing gear, but not the second. The second stage would land on a trampoline. They had video of a scale model being dropped on a trampoline with engineers standing around nodding. None of us took it seriously. Kistler eventually abandoned the idea. “No landing gear” was a mark of a design that didn’t make sense.

Other proposals would come down by parachute, which implied lots of difficulty in recovering the stage for the next flight. Delta Clipper went with the default powered landing onto legs, but DCX demonstrated the problems with that by burning when one leg failed to extend.

Now the SuperHeavy has been caught. I don’t expect B12 to fly again. The engineers will probably dissect it. But it’s the existence proof there’s a design that can land and be ready to fly again. That changes everything.

Follow-up: SpaceX made me change my mind again. There’s a space launch concept where a suborbital craft is caught by an orbiting tether, which pulls it into orbit. I always thought the precision needed was more than was practical. (Art by Skyhook1 on wikipedia)

I mean, you have this tether going at orbital velocity, the end moving faster if it’s a rotating tether, and you’re going to arrive in a one meter window at the same time as this ballistic vehicle just exiting the atmosphere? In a world of constant launch holds and scrubs, nope.

But now we’ve seen what level of precision a launch can achieve. That’s hitting a spot within inches, with a prototype. Clearly the precision needed for a tether-assisted launch is achievable. I just hadn’t believed it until I saw it.

If you’re wondering about the first time SpaceX changed my mind, one of my MS program papers confidently asserted turning an expendable vehicle into a reusable one is inferior to building a reusable one from scratch. Falcon 9 proved otherwise.

The second time SpaceX changed my mind: I used to be convinced Single Stage To Orbit was essential to have low cost, because stacking Shuttle was such a major pain in the tuchis. Then I saw the chopsticks just plunk one stage atop the other.

Something I try to keep in mind is that for every piece of advice, there is an equal and opposite piece of advice. Good behavior can go wrong by doing too much or too little of it. This is not new. Aristotle discussed it in his Nicomachean Ethics.

I was reminded of this when considering Heinlein’s Rules for Writers:

They’re great rules, I try to follow them, but is there opposite advice? Yes, if you’re making the right mistakes.

1. Take your hands off the typewriter and say hello to your wife and kids.

2. Enough with the 12-book epic series, go write some short stories.

3. Fix the typos and grammar flaws before you show it to anyone.

4. Don’t sign just any contract that offers money.

5. If no one wants it, shove it in your trunk and write a different story.

I think the original five rules tell us what the aspiring writers hanging around the Mañana Literary Society were like.

Note that Heinlein behaved in accordance with the anti-rules. He took breaks from writing, wrote stories outside his Future History, did multiple drafts of stories, sent “Life-Line” to a different market than the contest that inspired it, and trunked “Free Men” among others.

Wise behavior means sticking to a middle course. You can err by doing too much or too little of something.

Just published: War By Other Means, book 7 in The Fall of the Censor series.

Dozens of worlds have been liberated from the oppression of the Censorate. The only thing they agree on is hating the Censor. Newly appointed ambassador Wynny Landry must convince her neighbors to cooperate—and prevent them from being taken over by a new oppressive regime.
It’s not going to be easy. The Mulians hate the Falxians. The Lompocans can’t get along with each other. The Fierans want some payback for the effort they put into liberating other worlds. And the ex-Censorate governor who brought his whole province into the rebellion keeps showing up when not expected—or wanted. She’d lean on her husband, if he wasn’t missing in action at the front.
Wynny needs to talk the rebels into keeping their guns aimed at the Censor, while hopefully smoothing over the worst of the conflicts. All she has to work with is her parent-in-laws’ ship, her adopted clanfolk, and trade deals for excess missiles. If it’s not enough, the rebellion will fall apart—and the Censor will return, out for blood.

Available on Amazon as ebook or paperback.

If you want to check out the start of the series, see the whole thing here. We’re getting close the end of the series. The working titles for the final two books are Cold Grey Hills of Earth and Death To the Censor.

For a quick taste of the series, you can try some shorter pieces:

“Rebellion on Kiwara” Genetically engineered subjects organizing a rebellion (novelette): https://gallagherstories.substack.com/p/rebellion-on-kiwara

“Proscribed” Discontent in the Censorate’s ruling class (short story): https://gallagherstories.substack.com/p/proscribed

I’m publishing two collections of my short stories and RPG scenarios on Kickstarter.

Ultimate Conclusions has 14 short stories, including three new stories in the Torchship universe, looking at the end of the war of the AIs and how to deal with the forcibly uploaded people. There’s also another dozen gaming articles, including the RPG scenarios which became the plot of Torchship.

Unmitigated Acts has 17 short stories, previously published on my Substack. You can receive both of them as ebooks for $5, or have paperback or hardcover copies of them. I’m also offering hardcover copies of all three books in the Torchship trilogy.

The Kickstarter runs through April 10th. Check it out!

Because I’m terrible at marketing, I failed to update this blog with my spring release, so here’s the announcements for books 5 and 6 together.

Swim Among the People: Fiera’s victories angered the Censor into deploying the force needed to retake his lost worlds. Marcus Landry is now trapped on an occupied world, trying to fight back against the Censorate. Can he win without hurting the innocent civilians trapped in the crossfire, including his wife and child?

Trouble In My Day: Cut off by an enemy offensive, Marcus Landry must take his ships behind Censorate lines, fighting to find a way home and find new support for the rebellion.

If you want to check out the whole Fall of the Censor series (6 of 9 books are out), they’re available on Amazon as ebooks and paperbacks. The first four have been finalists for the Prometheus Award for Best Libertarian Science Fiction Novel.

Book seven will be War By Other Means. Wynny Landry tries to form newly liberated worlds into an alliance strong enough to preserve their freedom. Updates on the work in progress will be posted on my SubStack for paid subscribers. Or subscribe for free to receive monthly short stories.

I’m starting a mailing list to give away a short story each month.

The first story, “Justice,” looks at how far Supreme Court packing could go.

Check it out, and please subscribe if you’d like more.

There’s some writers out there who push a conspiracy theory that “John W. Campbell murdered pulp fiction”. JWC didn’t kill the fantasy adventure pulps. They were destroyed by something else that happened at the same time JWC took over Astounding: World War Two.

The war took millions of readers away from their pulp collections and sent them overseas to fight the war. When they came home Conan eviscerating a zealot wasn’t exotic and thrilling. It was a reminder of when their buddy’s belly was opened by a German shell or Japanese bayonet.

While at the war they discovered the greatest warrior didn’t have as much of an impact on victory as a radar operator.

Combine that with soldiers dropping from the sky, artificial harbors at Normandy, encryption becoming “Magic,” rockets flying across the North Sea, and all the other inventions that made the GI a small part of “combined arms” and readers weren’t looking for hand-to-hand action. They wanted to know what the next totally unexpected superweapon would be. They were still shocked that a single A-bomb could destroy an entire city. They wanted to know if nuclear war could be avoided.

John W. Campbell’s Astounding (later Analog) magazine offered the answers they wanted, in fiction form. Heinlein, Clarke, Asimov, and many others wrote about how to avert nuclear war and what new technologies might be out there. That’s what readers wanted.

21st-Century readers are leading safe lives without fear of world war or atomic destruction. They’re “Too wonder-stale to wonder at each new miracle.” So many of those readers prefer 1930s pulp to 1940s hard SF. Unsurprising. And not worth demonizing John W. Campbell over.

(And, of course, many pulp readers switched to watching television when it was available, but I’m mostly talking about the science fiction/fantasy pulp magazines here rather than the larger markets of Westerns, romance, etc. pulps.)

Niko Landry needs to infiltrate the Censorate to find a weakness before it launches its next assault. The Censor bans maps of hyperspace, forcing freighters to find their way by word of mouth.

He and his crew will pretend to be ordinary traders while finding out all the secrets they can. Any mistake could leave them broke . . . or executed.

Captain Trader Helmsman Spy is now available on Amazon.

This is the 4th book in the Fall of the Censor series, which begins with Storm Between the Stars. A simple hyperspace survey let Niko Landry find a connection to the rest of humanity–and more danger than he’d imagined.

I’m pleased to announce that my novels 𝐵𝑒𝑡𝑤𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝐻𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑅𝑢𝑖𝑛 and 𝑆𝑒𝑖𝑧𝑒 𝑊ℎ𝑎𝑡’𝑠 𝐻𝑒𝑙𝑑 𝐷𝑒𝑎𝑟 are finalists for the Prometheus Award for Best Libertarian Science Fiction Novel.

𝐵𝑒𝑡𝑤𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝐻𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑅𝑢𝑖𝑛 is the struggle of a newly discovered free world to survive against a government that erases history to suppress any challenge to its rule.

𝑆𝑒𝑖𝑧𝑒 𝑊ℎ𝑎𝑡’𝑠 𝐻𝑒𝑙𝑑 𝐷𝑒𝑎𝑟 shows the battle-scarred Fierans striking back, liberating an oppressed world. Can the two worlds cooperate enough to hold their freedom?

I congratulate my fellow nominees Kazuo Ishiguro, Wil McCarthy, and Lionel Shriver. I hope the voters enjoy reading all our works.

All full members of the Libertarian Futurist Society are eligible to vote for the Prometheus Award.

In other news, the revised draft of Captain Trader Helmsman Spy is in the hands of my editor, and should be out soon. I’ve had some medical followups and it looks like I’m doing fine, for which I am relieved and thankful.