Aurora 4x
Off Topic => Game/Book Reviews => Topic started by: the-isz on April 05, 2012, 09:12:46 PM
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Recently I finished the first draft of a military scifi book. A major help in the research of the book came from my experience playing Aurora over these last few years.
With a bit of luck, I hope to get the book out later this year, whether that be through traditional publishing, or self-published. Either way, I've got a long slog ahead of me.
Note: a big thank you to Tanj (one of the contributors of Aurora fiction in this forum) for doing the initial read through of the first draft and providing great feedback).
The reason I'm posting here is that I've created a website around the book. My goal is to see what the level of interest is out there in the military sci-fi community and anyone who might want to sign up to be notified when the book is complete.
The website contains a goodly amount of detail, as well as the first draft of the opening chapter.
The site can be found here:
http://www.solwarone.com (http://www.solwarone.com)
If you like it, sign up! If you (really) like it... spread the word!
Also, if you have comments, let me know.
Thanks!
- The Isz
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Enjoyed Chapter 1, and signed up looking forward to release good work.
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I'm interested in what you've written, but I find the anti-matter engines on the drones out of place in a generally not-too-distant future environment. Mentally, I associate anti-matter with Star Trek era technology, as well as questioning exactly how much would be left of a 200-300m ship if an anti-matter fueled drone kamikazes into it.
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Thanks for the comments!
On the propulsion... I went back and forth on the choice of propulsion for some time when researching the book. It essentially came down to antimatter and VASIMR.
Antimatter:
http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/home/antimatter_spaceship.html (http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/home/antimatter_spaceship.html)
VASIMR:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_Specific_Impulse_Magnetoplasma_Rocket (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_Specific_Impulse_Magnetoplasma_Rocket)
I think both options could be in use by the 2200's, with the VASIMR much more likely. However, I believe that economic factors (companies looking to shorten flight time) would drive the market very quickly for something along the lines of an antimatter system once the colonies were established.
That all being said, I'm totally open to comments/suggestions, as I make no claims of being a rocket scientist. :)
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If you can find it, read "The Iron Sun", by Adrian Berry. It's an old book, so some of the science has been superseded now, but it proposes using Bussard ramjets as a primary propulsion method to build interstellar capable craft. Also, building manmade black holes to use the Einstein-Rosen bridges in the singularities :D
>> Antimatter
Theoretically, we could start commercial production of AM now. Of course, the cost per gram would be several hundred million $$$ / £££ / ???, but if there were a real market for it, the cost would fall dramatically if we really committed to the technology
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Thought I'd pass along an update on the "Day One" book project. The final draft is complete and a book cover design has been rolled out.
You can see the latest info here: http://www.solwarone.com (http://www.solwarone.com)
It's been a lot of back-and-forth since this spring, working out the kinks. A thank you to Tanj (contributor in this forum) for finding a few bugs in the final fleet battle. Required a re-write of 2 critical chapters, but the result was much better.
Rather than go through the long slog of trying my luck at traditional publishing (average of 2 years or more to see it through), I've decided to go the self-published route. My goal is to release the project in September of this year.
It's been a long, fun project (with much help in play-testing via Aurora) and I'm finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. When it gets close to the release date, I'll post an update.
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If you can find it, read "The Iron Sun", by Adrian Berry. It's an old book, so some of the science has been superseded now, but it proposes using Bussard ramjets as a primary propulsion method to build interstellar capable craft. Also, building manmade black holes to use the Einstein-Rosen bridges in the singularities :D
>> Antimatter
Theoretically, we could start commercial production of AM now. Of course, the cost per gram would be several hundred million $$$ / £££ / ???, but if there were a real market for it, the cost would fall dramatically if we really committed to the technology
you underestimate the cost somewhat:
Scientists claim that antimatter is the costliest material to make.[37] In 2006, Gerald Smith estimated $250 million could produce 10 milligrams of positrons[38] (equivalent to $25 billion per gram); in 1999, NASA gave a figure of $62.5 trillion per gram of antihydrogen.[37] This is because production is difficult (only very few antiprotons are produced in reactions in particle accelerators), and because there is higher demand for other uses of particle accelerators. According to CERN, it has cost a few hundred million Swiss Francs to produce about 1 billionth of a gram (the amount used so far for particle/antiparticle collisions).[39]
It also depends what you mean by "commercial production". I absolutely would not consider the amounts we can produce "commercial" by any standard.
The biggest limiting factor in the large-scale production of antimatter is the availability of antiprotons. Recent data released by CERN states that, when fully operational, their facilities are capable of producing ten million antiprotons per minute.[33] Assuming a 100% conversion of antiprotons to antihydrogen, it would take 100 billion years to produce 1 gram or 1 mole of antihydrogen (approximately 6.02×1023 atoms of antihydrogen).
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Thought I'd pass along a new update. Book is going through final edit and scheduled to be released this fall.
I also have a video "trailer" out for it:
For those interested, I used a program called "Celestia" for the planet flybys. The ship was done in Google Sketchup, which if you go back to my earlier posts here, the ship was built out of components I created for Aurora.
Enjoy!
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"Day One", my new military scifi novel is now out!
(http://www.solwarone.com/portals/0/Images/Day%20One%20-%20Cover.jpg)
Available at Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Day-One-Sol-War-ebook/dp/B0099UYMXI/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1347735564&sr=1-1 (http://www.amazon.com/Day-One-Sol-War-ebook/dp/B0099UYMXI/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1347735564&sr=1-1)
A brief introduction:
September 15, 2241.
Near Mars, a traitorous admiral opens fire on a fleet he’d once led, and a Navy he’d once loved.
In Earth orbit, a drone pilot stands over the poisoned bodies of his co-workers, crying out in triumph as nine hijacked drones slam into their unsuspecting targets.
36,000 kilometers below, citizens in the mega-city of Atlanta Georgia look to the sky as a massive ship plummets from orbit, the dying remains of the largest deep space warship ever built… now the largest bomb ever conceived.
So begins “Day One," the first book in a riveting, multi-book military sci-fi series that chronicles the Outer Colony’s war of independence against Earth.
From the history of the Outer Colonies to the riots on Ganymede and a secretive plot for war, “Day One” presents an in-depth account of mankind’s path leading to Sol War 1, as well as an unforgettable look at the events of the war’s horrific opening day from those who experienced it: from fleet admirals and intelligence agents to technicians, refinery workers, and those who not live to see the end of Day One.
If you read it, don't forget to post a review on the Amazon site!
Thanks and hope you enjoy it.
- John
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Is it also available in ePub for the Kobo?
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Gonna buy it as soon as I get paid - I really enjoyed the first chapter . Good job m8 !
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This is a review of the book "Day One" and all of this is personal view and opinion.
Firstly, I have done a bit of trolling through the masses of cheap e-books available and I have to say that the one I bought was considerably lower in quality than Day One. It is hard to sort out if even free is worth it in many cases but this e-book was worth the price of admission. In terms of grammar, spelling and formating I don't recall seeing anything that stood out as errors or issues. The book is well written, grammatically correct and properly formated for an e-book reader. So if you are wondering if you are paying for schlock I can assure you the author put some effort into the book.
The story is about day one of a war between the outer colonies and earth. The bulk of the book is actually background material about how the conflict came to be. Here is where the problem may come up for some people. A lot of it is like reading a history text, I think the authors intent was such but it may not be everyones cup of tea. It reads like the plotting C.J. Cherryh does for her future earth series and is often times fairly dry. As I read books on WW2 for enjoyment I didn't mind these parts at all. They were well done, I thought the build up to the war parts were logical and had no obvious plot holes in them. I do find the fact there is any conflict at all a bit harder to follow. But regardless, the author doesn't make the error I've seen in the past of using the book to make thinly veiled political-economic statements. I have to admit that for me is about the fastest turn off there exists. His portrayal of the politics and such rings true, and you can see how the whole situation got to where it did. Basically the background material leaves no gaps you can maneuver a DDG through.
The characters suffer one real problem. That is the story is told from many points of view so each person in the book is only given a short time in front of the reader. In several cases they don't even survive that short exposure. This makes it hard to judge them. The one thing I noticed though was that there were no obvious idiots in the bunch. The attack plan works not because the one side is composed of buffoons who could not find their ass with both hands and a navigation system but because they had no reason to expect an attack. But because each character is in front of the camera for what amounts to a short time it is hard to say that these are people you will care about. I expect that "Day Two" needs to really work on this. As it stands they are human, interesting, and believable.
The battle and technology is realistic. Many may find that a bit boring, but it is refreshing to see. I take exception to the minimal number of CISW on a ship like a cruiser. Basically all ships seemed to have 2 rail and 2 laser systems outside of the ships designed for antimissile close defence (there is a ship listing and details in the appendix of the book). To me this is a bit strange, given how lethal combat is, I'd have expected a higher emphasis on final close in defence. Otherwise I enjoyed the battle scene in the book.
Pacing, again may be an issue. After the first section the book changes to the textbook format to give the background. These are a lot more like an After Action Report then a novel. So the middle parts of the book are a bit slow going, then it picks back up again for the end. It does seem to end at the end of day 1, so it is a cliff hanger and I have to admit felt rather abrupt.
I enjoyed the book, and look forward to day 2. I've read far worse first novels over the years and this one certainly seems far superior to any of the cheap e-books I've seen. I suspect pretty much anyone on this board would enjoy the book. Wider audiences is harder to judge as it is "hard" science fiction rather than space opera or science fantasy. I would say that if you enjoy C.J. Cherryh you are likely to enjoy this book as well. It is obviously the result of a lot of hard work, and for a first novel it is of high enough quality to put the author on the buy another book list for me.
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Hey Paul,
Great review. Honest and unflinching. Glad you enjoyed it!
A couple points to add. I definitely did write it in the style of "historical" fiction along with first-hand accounts. For that reason, in the first book, character development is pretty light. That does get expanded in the 2nd book (which is in development). So less non-fiction, more charcters. That being said, I realized early on that this wasn't going to be a mainstream-style book, as some people are going to object to the historical portion. That's OK, as I think the hard-core military sci-fi people will enjoy it, and... perhaps more importantly, it's something I just enjoyed writing and longed to see in military sci-fi. I like the nitty gritty details of the how and why.
One last thing: don't forget that on the http://www.solwarone.com (http://www.solwarone.com) website, there is a teaser opening chapter for the 2nd book.
Again, thanks for reading it. And feel free to spread to word! This is one of those books that word-of-mouth is going to be far more important than any adveritising/PR efforts I pursue.
- John
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Thought I'd pass along an update on the book. Sales have been great, so far! Its already exceeded my expectations. I think a lot of that has to do with the response from you guys in this forum, so thank you!
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I read it, it was very good if a bit hard to get used to in the first few chapters.
I used the kindle app on my iPhone4 and did notice one thing - not all of the references seems to have a corresponding link within the main text in the first part of the book.
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I read it, it was very good if a bit hard to get used to in the first few chapters.
I used the kindle app on my iPhone4 and did notice one thing - not all of the references seems to have a corresponding link within the main text in the first part of the book.
I will look into that, thanks! Before publishing I tested it out and it seemed to work, but maybe something happened to it during the conversion. Thanks for the heads-up.
Also, if you liked the book and you get a chance, feel free to write a review on Amazon. As a first-time author, I need all the reviews I can get. :)
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Just finished reading this.
I liked it overall but as others have said it was a little strange in the way you jumped from a dry narrative to the first person perspective.
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Glad you liked it, Jakor.
Yeah, it's a bit different in its formatting, and I knew I might get some pushback from it. The idea with Day One is that its the first book in a multi-book series about the war. The first book is mostly told in non-fiction (part 1) and then introduces several characters (part 2) that I then begin to follow in each of the following books.
Right now I'm working on the second book, which follows the story of Mantega, Coughlan and Hutchins specifically. No non-fiction in that book. Also, the second book is written so that you don't necesssarily have to read the first book, which - in essence - is a prologue to the series.
The hope is that people will read the future books and then, if they want to learn how the war got started and really get into the detail, will go back to read Day One.
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Makes sense. I am looking forward to the rest of the series :D
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I've finally gotten around to reading it now. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and didn't have the problems with transiting between the "history text" and "story" sections nor some rather obvious repetition. For me at least the repetition helped establish threads linking what was just said to the present and tying everything together instead of just making up a noodle past that has little bearing on the present. Characterization overall was probably the story's weakest point. There's only a few characters who we get to know decently which is fine for this story's target, but there were a few places dialogue came out strangely. (One example was coughlan and Hutchins just before the fleet action.)
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Bought it this morning and just finished it . Verdict - 8/10
While the history introduction does take a bit of time it did manage to get me up-to-speed with the events that lead to the actual action . The combat scenes are quite well done and most important they read ... real enough , and the characters are well enough fledged for me.
That being said there were two issues that made me downgrade it from a solid 9 or 10 :
- The fleet deceleration part was flawed - a ship with half its thrust units off would not decelerate sooner but on the contrary , it would not be able to decelerate as fast as the rest of the fleet.
- In some parts the lack of a proper editor/spell check is obvious , with double negations used wrong. But that's nitpicking on my side , it doesn't hurt the actual writing which is solid.
Will surely buy the next one as well - keep up the good work!
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Glad you enjoyed it, Niflheimr.
And you are absolutely correct on the deceleration detail. It was missed by myself and my beta readers. Every little detail was researched to death, but that one (which seems obvious) totally slipped through the cracks.
With the beauty of digital publishing... that can be remedied. :)
Thanks again for reading it. I'm hard at work on the next one which will be out in 2013.
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Hey guys!
It’s been a while since I’ve posted in here, but thought I’d pass along an update.
Sales for my military sci-fi book, “Day One” has been awesome. Never expected the reception it’s getting. I even get fan mail from as far away as Europe which is stunning. A big part of that success is the initial boost I got in this very forum last fall, so THANK YOU!
In December, I started work on the second book in the series. I’m about halfway through the first draft, with an expected release by the end of this year.
The second book also now has a title (and a cover design). It’s called “Sol War 1: Incursion”.
If you’re interested, check out the updated website, www.solwarone.com (http://www.solwarone.com). It’s got information about the second book, the new cover, blog and the opening chapter of the second book.
I’ll pass along more updates when things get closer to completion.
Thanks again!
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I'm as far back there as Europe goes (Romania) - you kinda need to set your time back about 500 years to fit in as well :D . That being said , I'm eagerly waiting for the next one as I'm sure the rest of us do as well. No rush though!
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If you’re interested, check out the updated website, www.solwareone.com (http://www.solwareone.com). It’s got information about the second book, the new cover, blog and the opening chapter of the second book.
Minor typo in your URL. You put sol WARE one. for anyone looking it's http://www.solwarone.com (http://www.solwarone.com)
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Minor typo in your URL. You put sol WARE one. for anyone looking it's http://www.solwarone.com (http://www.solwarone.com)
Blerg! Thanks for the catch. I edited my post with the revised link.
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Will you be releasing the second (and further) book(s) in epub format for other E-readers or will it be kindle specific?
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Will you be releasing the second (and further) book(s) in epub format for other E-readers or will it be kindle specific?
The second book I plan to release in more formats. For the first few months after the second book's release I plan to keep "Day One" within Kindle, but will eventually migrate that over to other formats as well.
Side note: I'm a little over 2/3 way through the first draft of the second book. Still on track for release late this year!
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Thank you for the information. I'll keep my eyes peeled for when I can get book 2 for my kobo then.
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The first draft of the second book is now complete! And for your viewing pleasure, I now have a video trailer for the second book.
Check it out! If you like it, spread the word. :)
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Excellent, I enjoyed the first book (Especially its factual style) so have been looking forward to this.
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Hey,
Would you mind filling me in on the details about publishing an ebook like this?
In particular, is this the first time you did something like this, have you tried to sell it via the traditional route, and how many readers do you think you've had so far?
I'm currently in the process of trying to sell a book to publishers (not sci-fi, more of a very-slightly-supernatural thriller/mystery) and it's not going anywhere, which I sorta expected. I'm trying to figure out what to do with it, and most importantly whether I really want to go through amazon or just set up a donation system myself.
I would rather have a lot of readers than a lot of money, if that makes sense.
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Finally got around to reading this. Really enjoyed it. Ideal reading material on Kindle for PC while waiting for Aurora to process turns :)
I can see why others commented on the history vs current events split but I thought the history really sets things up, especially for a multi-book series.
Looking forward to Book 2!
Steve