Geoff Nelder's Blog

Dragut had high intelligence, compassion and a cruel streak.There exists on the web, an image of Admiral Rais Dragut painted shortly before he died in 1565 by shrapnel during the Great Siege of Malta. The painting isn’t in the Public Domain, I can’t find permissions otherwise I would have used it for the cover of Dragut’s Divergence. The Times of Malta used it years ago but without proper accreditation, it seemed to me. It didn’t really matter so much because I loved the photo I took of an ancient door in Valletta. Doors are portals to mysteries as all storytellers know.

I found an artist, Beth-Designs, Ayoo, a young illustrator living in the UK but from Africa and I was lucky enough for her to agree to draw Admiral Rais Dragut for me. The evil one, a cruel pirate, but one who knew cultural history, who spoke nine languages fluently and who could be passionate. He was passionate about invading Malta and Gozo. They held the body of his brother and wouldn’t release it. Everyone’s heard of the Great Siege of Malta in 1565. Fewer have heard of his attempted taking of the island in 1551 and in his failure he raided the sister island of Gozo. Took almost everyone off to sell as slaves in Libya and Constantinople. The revenge of the spirits of those Gozitans is in my Vengeance Island Kindle ebook for the price of a drink and for free on the Maltese Library Libby App.

Dragut’s Divergence is a surreal time take. Dragut is affected by a fierce storm and ends up on a beach in Malta, but in modern times! I had much fun describing his reactions to such as buses, electricity, fashions; as I did with the authorities trying to assess him.

Here is Ayoo’s exquisite illustration. Find her on Twitter (X) at @_Bethdesigns

If you’re not in the Malta Libraries system you can buy both Vengeance Island and Dragut’s Divergence on Amazon Kindle. Universal Amazon links are:

Vengeance Island:  https://mybook.to/VIsland

Dragut’s Divergence : https://mybook.to/DragDiv

Other Nelder News

Opi’s World reached the longlist of the British Science Fiction Association Awards but didn’t go further up. Oh well.

Nelder’s books in chronological order: universal Amazon links

Escaping Reality – humorous thriller • https://mybook.to/EscapeR

Hot Air – thriller set in Mallorca • https://mybook.to/HotAir

ALIEN EXIT a science fiction first-contact novel  ebook   https://mybook.to/alienexit
ARIA: Left Luggage – infectious amnesia scifi  • https://mybook.to/ARIA-LeftL

ARIA: Returning Left Luggage • https://mybook.to/ReturnLug

ARIA: Abandon Luggage • https://mybook.to/AbandonL

The Chaos of Mokii   ebook at  https://mybook.to/Kaos

Revised Xaghra’s Revenge set in present-day and 16th Century Malta and Gozo now retitled as Vengeance Island http://mybook.to/VIsland
Incremental – 25 surreal short stories • http://mybook.to/Incremental  which contains a hole story – Pothole

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I needed to read this SF novel for the Urmston Science Fiction Book Group that meets in the wonderful Urmston Book Shop, the first Thursday monthly.

Set in a far‑future where faster‑than‑light travel is only possible via fixed wormhole gates, leaving most star systems isolated. The story follows Fassin Taak, a “Slow Seer” anthropologist from the gas‑giant planet Nasqueron in the Ulubis system. His specialty is studying the Dwellers—an ancient, enigmatic species living within gas giants, who possess vast, cryptic knowledge but don’t take life seriously, at all.

When the Ulubis system’s only wormhole is destroyed by a hostile empire the Mercatoria (the galaxy’s ruling power) faces invasion. Fassin is sent on a mission to find a possibly mythical Dweller List—a secret database of hidden wormholes that could save Ulubis, and a Transform – a key to de-encrypt the list.

The book starts and ends with Seer Fassin Task talking with HG (Head Gardner) on a rocky, moon planet orbiting around Nasqueron. IE. The novel comes full circle, a kind of authorial conceit and ‘nice’ – I like to do it too.

Fassin and 3 friends – Saluus Kehar, Taince and Ilen, explore an ancient ship on a rocky planet ‘glantine. ***Spoiler***Taince witnesses Sal push Ilen to her death. At the end Taince flies into the wreck killing both herself and Saluus.

Main Characters – brief notes

Fassin Task:  Protagonist, (of the Seer Sept Bantrabal, ‘glantine moon, Nasqueron gas-giant planet, Ulibis star and system. P47) human. Girlfriend Jaal Tanderon – rarely mentioned as are few female characters. Ironically, the best described character: gold coiled hair, brown red skin, wide round face.

Dwellers: ancient gas giant beings with a non-linear sense of time. Have huge hidden knowledge. They don’t respect their young and take very little seriously.

Saluus Kehar; childhood friend of Fassin. Now a rich industrialist. Killed Ilen.

Colonel Hatherence: a Septame – globular being, Mercatoria officer. Assigned to accompany Fassin on mission. Killed. Female.

Archimandrite Lesferous: Antagonist, ruthless warlord.

Y’Sul: Dweller friend of Fassin

Valseir: A former Dweller acquiring mythic status, holding secrets and ‘helping’ Fassin

Notes: Slow pacing in the middle would’ve benefitted from serious editing. Fast pace in last quarter. I have trouble enough recalling characters and places without the MC also having memory problems!!

***Spoiler: the equation hidden in the image-leaf tag Fassin had been given by Valseir (p477 – 500) and taken all over the galaxy, resulted in zero for the Transform meaning that the secret wormholes were inside the Dwellers giant gas planets all along. Not sure Ian M Banks understands the meaning of equations but even if the value of an equation is zero, it doesn’t mean it is meaningless. Every equation can be rearranged to be equal to zero.  Even nothing isn’t really nothing.

Notable moments: p39 even off-duty fatigues come with active camouflage.

p150 ‘Prepping’: taking natives and ‘seeding’ them in other systems so to be superior when original people tech finally catch up. This is to explain why when humans finally explore outer space (books, films) they find upright bipeds closely resembling humans. (and speaking English)

p152 Braam Ganserel  chief Seer, walks with head back and chest out as if vowed to NOT stoop in his old age but looks as if he’ll fall backwards! 1700 years old but not say which ‘year’. Sometimes the term standard year is used but not explained. NOTE: One Jupiter Year = 13 Earth Years.

p165 Algebraist term used and scrits = glitches

p197 history of Luseferous (sounds like Lucifer) p200 his philosophy of life is that it is cruel so exploit it since none of it might be real anyway.

p218 best line IMO: Please take a dent.

p230 ‘even money isn’t like money used to be.’

p230 Fassin liked that the Dweller Setstyin could converse with respect ‘over the phone’. Archaic concept now, isn’t it?

p232 If the Dwellers thought something was worth reacting to then it was also worth overreacting to. (cf from a Sheffield uni philosophy course: if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly)

p262 harpoons, gun holsters etc like Space Cowboys

p268 liked the ‘Slow down’ with Fassin’s talk with Jundriance in the library. Quaint they’d still have libraries! Catalogue of catalogues (Russell’s paradox: Consider a master catalogue of catalogues that don’t list themselves. If this master catalogue lists itself, it shouldn’t; if it doesn’t, it should.)

p357 The twins Quercer and Janath say that two AI’s stops one from going mad.

p358 Biggest fictional character? The Clouder being, Holstruem is a light year across! (our solar system is about that)

p407-8 Morbs are an interesting species – doomed to collect corpses as a war-lost penance millions of years ago.

p466+ I get that the Ship’s AI personality was convinced it was dead and couldn’t be persuaded otherwise..

Algebraist is littered with human, Earth, time-originated idioms: eg ‘ring any bells?’, ‘hunted down like dogs’, ‘Are we there yet?’

Final comment and shameful name dropping.

I sat next to Ian Banks at NewCon in Northampton, 2008. He was a guest of honour along with Storm Constantine, Paul Cornell and Ken MacLeod. Ian was launching his anthology Subterfuge. I was signing my Exit, Pursued by a Bee (now only available as kindle under Alien Exit). Ian’s queue was huge going all round the fishmarket venue. I sometimes had two people. Every now and then, Ian would say to his queue something like, “Consider stopping by Geoff, here. His book is brilliant, it has aliens doing the opposite of invading Earth.” What a gent!!

Other Nelder News

Latest Nelder’s Flying Crooked series of science fiction novellas

Suppose We -science fiction space exploration https://mybook.to/SupposeWe

Falling Up https://mybook.to/FallingUP

Kepler’s Son   https://mybook.to/KeplersSon

Vanished Earth  https://mybook.to/VEKindle

Opi’s World  https://mybook.to/OPIKindle

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Ebook by Geoff Nelder.

There it was, the island of Gozo, smaller than many British cities, but set like a jewel in a caerulean sea under a near-permanently blue sky. What a fantasy island for rain and grey-soaked Brits and the complications of having to fly to Malta first then a ferry hop to Gozo just added to the charm and helps keep it less busy than its neighbours.

However, such beauty belies a horrendous past. In 1551 the entire population of around 5,000 were snatched by Ottoman pirates and taken to be sold as slaves or taken to harems. My Xaghra’s Revenge novel (Now VENGEANCE ISLAND)  is the only one I know that devotes a whole book to this event and follows the life of one woman, Lidia, and her little family. Stjepan became transformed from a dirt-scratching farmer, to a galley rower, sold in a desert auction in Libya and after a daring escape… spoiler!

The antagonists are the Ottoman sailors and pirates. Much research went into the real lives of Rais Dragut and Pasha. Dragut was highly educated, spoke many languages and was a slave himself for a time. Even pirates have emotions and families and I devote some pages to one in particular.

Stjepan’s  wife Lidia experienced the shame and ignominy of being taken to a seraglio in Constantinople as a harem girl. She has grit though, and made friends with another slave girl to plot their escape.
Blurb:  A modern woman is descended from pirates while her lover came from their abductees? Or the other way round?

Vengeance Island is set in Malta, Gozo, France, Libya, and a harem in Constantinople.
Xaghra’s Revenge ran out of time in its contract with Solstice Publishing earlier in 2020 so after a few revisions I have self-published it as Vengeance Island. An ebook at first it is galleons cheaper than its earlier incarnation at less than a dollar / pound.
If you didn’t get around to reading this gripping true tale, with added extras, now is your chance. If you live on Malta or Gozo you can read Vengeance Island and its companion ebook, Dragut’s Divergence for free on the Malta Libraries Libby App.
It’s available on Kindle Unlimited and Kindle at this link:

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Wisdom versus Youth?

A precursor to Geoff Nelder’s  Opi’s World

 In the far future when a small group of humans crashed onto a Kepler20 planet strange experiences happened as you might have read in ‘Suppose We’. If you didn’t there’s still time and it isn’t needed to enjoy the following conversation.

Gaston, a short, tubby French scientist talks to Opi, a slim young woman with long platinum hair. She is about 20 but no one really knows because Gaston and his wife, Em, thought she was an imaginary friend of their son, Adah, until one day they saw her following him out of a forest.

“Dear Gaston, I am not suggesting that YOU return to Earth.”

“Good, because it took me half a millennium to get away from it, albeit mostly sleeping. Mademoiselle Opi, even though the Kepler tech can get you to Earth in mere weeks, I urge you not to go.”

She pouted such beautiful lips. “But why not? I have the urge to see the land of my forefather even if you adopted me.”

Gaston harrumphed then smiled as his nose caught a waft of the lemon Opi always exuded even though there were no lemons on the planet. “We left the planet in a mess of its own making. Coastal flooding, storms, devastating plague after plague, corruption, rampant piracy, awful, especially compared to the paradise we have here.”

“More exciting you mean. Paradise can be dull, my Gaston.”

He wagged a finger. “Methinks you have alternative motives. Something to do with those experimental squidgy little creatures, the keeps.”

She threw him her most disarming smile. “No harm can happen, surely, Gaston. They’re so small and they are herbivores.”

“So is the Yersinia Pestis plague bacteria, yet it killed billions.”

She produced three shrimp-like wrigglies from her yellow pinafore dress pocket and kissed them. “Not these harmless keeps. You know that put at least three of them together like this, they have a hive mind.”

Gaston frowned. “Do they speak to you?”

“Of course. You don’t hear them, do you? It takes empath ability as well as fine tuning. Half of their DNA came from Earth. It’s time for them to go home.”

Gaston passed a hand over them. “Mes amis, but there will be trouble. They multiply out of control. You shouldn’t go, or not with them.”

“You thought I was an imaginary friend of your son, Adah, didn’t you? And perhaps I was until something these creatures did together in that forest in an eldritch moment. I have to go to Earth, Gaston. Wish me well.”

He grunted his good wishes though Earth needed those wishes more.

##

What happens when Opi reaches Earth? Find out in Opi’s World.

Art for the cover of Opi’s World is by Kevin Haylett, a retired surgeon, fellow cyclist and a horologist.

The accompanying image that is quite close to the Opi I have in mind is by a German artist, J. Niehus. Permissions granted.

The whole series links here:-

Suppose We -science fiction space exploration https://mybook.to/SupposeWe

Falling Up https://mybook.to/FallingUP

Kepler’s Son   https://mybook.to/KeplersSon

Vanished Earth  https://mybook.to/VEKindle

Opi’s World https://mybook.to/OPIKindle

Geoff’s website: https://geoffnelder.com

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Help! I’ve been invited to be a ‘featured author’ at Chester’s newest bookshop – Books on the Walls – on Saturday July 12th at 2pm for about half an hour.

If you’re free and in the Chester, UK area then you could do worse than turning up to boo, hiss or buy a coffee, cake and books!  The shop is at https://booksonthewalls.com/

I even feature on that website if you scroll down a while.

I am to speak about what inspired me to write and specifically SUPPOSE WE and INCREMENTAL with reading excerpts. In just half an hour! I’ve found the extract from Suppose We about botanist-astronaut Gaston being eaten by a tree; another bit where one of the crew is literally walked through by a native of the planet Kepler-20h, and my favourite short from Incremental, View From where a man wakes up on the ceiling. I have others too but heck it’s hard squeezing so much in 30 minutes. Perhaps they’ll allow an overrun. Of course they will as long as there are people there.

I hope someone comes.

I’ll be cycling there from nearly 50 miles away but don’t worry I’ll bring a change of trousers so you won’t be aghast at my lycra shorts.

In other Nelder news:

Opi’s World, the fifth and last novella in the Flying Crooked series, of which Suppose We is the first, is being released imminently.

The original title of my historical fantasy set on Gozo and Malta was Xaghra’s Revenge. It was revised and re-released as:

Vengeance Island  http://mybook.to/VIsland

Dragut’s Divergence a bizarre pair of short stories related to Malta as a Kindle https://mybook.to/DragDiv

My most recent series is the science fiction novellas of Flying Crooked

Suppose We -science fiction space exploration •  https://mybook.to/SupposeWe
Falling Up  http://mybook.to/FUPpaper

Kepler’s Son   https://mybook.to/KeplersSon

Vanished Earth https://mybook.to/VEKindle

The post I’m a guest speaker! appeared first on Geoff Nelder - Science Fiction Writer.

I had an interesting conversation with a real famous writer, George Saunders, mostly about what inspires us to write and how the unexpected find, sends us on another writing road.

Last night he was kind enough to give me this comment on my historical fantasy Vengeance Island set mostly on Malta and Gozo.

George Saunders

From Professor George Saunders, winner of the 2017 Booker Prize and World Fantasy Award

“I’ve had the chance to carefully go through Vengeance Island, and I have to say, it holds so much potential to connect with readers on a deep, meaningful level. Your voice, your story, it deserves to be read far and wide. I truly believe it could resonate with audiences around the world, finding its way into hearts and minds everywhere.”

Thank you, George, for such an interesting conversation and for endorsing my work.

George Saunders said I should include a Kindle link to Vengeance Island so here it is http://mybook.to/VIsland   

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Booker winning Orbital by Samantha Harvey is to be the subject of Urmston Science Fiction Book Group in February 2025. Orbital is about life on the International Space Station. (ISS).

It reminded me of when I did the research for ARIA: Left Luggage, which begins with the discovery of a metallic suitcase in the struts of the ISS. Nerd that I was and am, I was keen to ensure that those

Leroy Chiao, US astronaut, wearing a Russian space suit on the ISS.

struts couldn’t be magnetic so I found a Nasa engineer’s email and asked him, Leroy Chaio. Imagine my surprise when he confirmed the struts are a thin aluminium, too thin for his liking because he was up there in orbit as we spoke! I don’t know of any other science fiction writer who’d been in live communication with an astronaut in orbit.

If this piqued your interest ARIA: LEFT LUGGAGE, which won the best SF novel by a readers’ poll and features the original premise of infectious amnesia, can be found on this universal Amazon link here:

https://mybook.to/ARIA-LeftL

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SUPPOSE WE has been out for a year or two but unbelievably there are some science fiction readers who do not know about it. So I fell for an advert where a video creator proposed his services – Visdon Media. A 20 second reel for a handful of dollars. So I outlined the basic plot of SUPPOSE WE ie humans crashland on a planet only to find the natives are far in advance of Earth. So far that they ignore the hapless humans. The video was made and offered to me for corrections. Ah, Visdon used Halloween ghosts to portray the humans. No!! Fair enough, they do levitate a little and possess no discernible face but in my mind they are like vertical, amorphous-ish cylinders a bit like skittles. Friends tell me the overall effect is great and they’re not put off by the ghostlike keps though they wouldn’t like to meet one.

What do you think?

Why not grab your own copy?

5* reviews! #firstcontact #ScifiRTG https://mybook.to/SupposeWe

Other Nelder News

Suppose that instead of landing with his 150 corsair ships and attempt to capture Malta, Rais Dragut in 1551 was washed up on a present-day Malta beach? I put myself in his head and examined what I saw: women in miniskirts, men in shorts and T-shirts, cars, buses, smooth tarmac for roads, mobile phones, buildings made of the same mellow, yellow limestone but with large flawless glass windows. Overhead wires, airplanes flying overhead and ships far bigger than anything he’d seen. Dragut was a highly intelligent man, well read, cultured even though a buccaneer and often violent. He would adapt quickly, yet cling to beliefs. That’s my premise and it was great fun to research and write this sequel-ish to Vengeance Island:  link  http://mybook.to/VIsland

Amazon Kindle link from any country

https://mybook.to/DragDiv

for the price of a cracker!

Opi’s World out soon!

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Read all about it!

New release on Kindle ebook only because Dragut’s Divergence is two short stories with Malta as a theme.

When Gaynor and I were in Malta this year (2024) and the bus travelled past the beach that Admiral Rais Dragut supposedly landed in 1551, it made my warped brain flip. Suppose that instead of landing with his 150 corsair ships and attempt to capture Malta, he was washed up on a present-day Malta beach? I put myself in his head and examined what I saw: women in miniskirts, men in shorts and T-shirts, cars, buses, smooth tarmac for roads, mobile phones, buildings made of the same mellow, yellow limestone but with large flawless glass windows. Overhead wires, airplanes flying overhead and ships far bigger than anything he’d seen. Dragut was a highly intelligent man, well read, cultured even though a buccaneer and often violent. He would adapt quickly, yet cling to beliefs. That’s my premise and it was great fun to research and write.

Much help came from Maltese writer, John Bonello who pointed me to an ancient Muslem cemetery, the detention centre for illegal immigrants and other ideas. The extraordinary science fiction author Mark Iles critiqued my early draft as he did the accompanying short story, The Visit, which is stand alone but a kind of sequel to Vengeance Island.

I’d hoped that Dragut’s Divergence would be published as a Kindle ebook in time for Christmas and it was by a whole 24 hours! Haha.

Amazon Kindle link from any country

for the price of a cracker!

THE VISIT

…is a short story that I hoped is literary and it starts that way in La Voulte, France. This is a town that my family did a holiday swap to decades ago and its old town on a hill topped by a chateau intrigued me. The door at the old building is represented by the illustration of this ebook. The photo is one I took but of a building in Valetta, Malta, which is fine because the story goes there and to Gozo too.

The original title of my historical fantasy set on Gozo and Malta was Xaghra’s Revenge. It was revised and re-released as:

Vengeance Island  http://mybook.to/VIsland

My most resent series is the science fiction novellas of Flying Crooked

Suppose We -science fiction space exploration •  https://mybook.to/SupposeWe
Falling Up  http://mybook.to/FUPpaper

Kepler’s Son   https://mybook.to/KeplersSon

Vanished Earth https://mybook.to/VEKindle

Opi’s World to be published in2025

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As a writer I often feel awkward writing reviews of established authors in case it looks like sour grapes but there’s more to praise in this book than gripe about.

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood is another post-apocalyptic story. Good, I like those. Heck, I’ve written one, ARIA: Left Luggage, and the plot of Alien Exit travels along that route. I thoroughly enjoyed the word play aspects of O&C even though its dystopia was gloomy. I felt the names for the new GM animals were too silly, Jimmy aka Snowman’s inability to think beyond alcohol-needs even before he worked for Crake, and his narrow juvenile thinking was hard to take. Oryx had too bizarre an upbringing to turn into a cutey-pie teacher for the Crakers, and the sociopathic Crake was simultaneously interesting and annoying. I didn’t really get why Jimmy killed Crake when surely his own immunity to the haemorrhage virus would apply to Crake and Oryx. Retribution for being responsible for the humanity wipeout? I don’t see Crake’s superego letting him be suicidal especially when his creations were developing. The ending was too much a copout too. I enjoyed the read but it seemed unfinished, and not just at the end.

Literary aspects. The non-linearity of the plot appeals to me greatly. Starting at the penultimate week and then to when Jimmy develops as an adult interspersed with more back story and back to the end in iterations would normally irritate me but not the way it is cleverly executed here.

The wordcraft often pulled me up, and I like that.

Examples:

‘You think I was thinking?’

‘so many crucial events take place behind people’s backs when they aren’t in a position to watch: birth and death, for instance.’

‘(Jimmy) was to cudgel his brains and spend ten-hour-days wandering the labyrinths of the thesaurus and cranking out the verbiage.‘ [describes my working day!]

‘a trio of crows perched on a rampart. They exchange a few caws, of which he is probably the subject.’

Great fridge magnets:

Take your Time, leave mine alone.

I think, therefore I spam

Siliconsciousness

Scenarios in an extinction simulation Crake and Jimmy ran:

Microbes that ate the tar in asphalt turns highways to sand.

Escaping Reality – humorous thriller •  http://hyperurl.co/nyjaiv
Hot Air – thriller set in Mallorca •  http://hyperurl.co/di4y0h

ALIEN EXIT a science fiction first-contact novel as an ebook only  https://mybook.to/alienexit
ARIA: Left Luggage – infectious amnesia scifi  •  smarturl.it/1fexhs
ARIA: Returning Left Luggage •  http://hyperurl.co/tgtid6
ARIA: Abandon Luggage •  http://hyperurl.co/26trxv

The Chaos of Mokii   ebook at  https://mybook.to/Kaos

Revised Xaghra’s Revenge set in present-day and 16th Century Malta and Gozo now retitled as Vengeance Island  http://mybook.to/VIsland
Incremental – 25 surreal short stories •  http://mybook.to/Incremental

Flying Crooked sf series

Suppose We -science fiction space exploration •  https://mybook.to/SupposeWe
Falling Up http://mybook.to/FUPpaper

Kepler’s Son   https://mybook.to/KeplersSon

Vanished Earth https://mybook.to/VEKindle

Opi’s World to be published late 2024 or 2025

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