Toward the topic: "Small Modular Reactors"

Author's Commentary: "Wizard of Athos"

Truth be told, I don’t have a ton of energy to put into a commentary this week, because frankly, it’s a minor miracle that I managed to get the story up. The universe was definitely testing my resolve, and if there’s somebody out there listening, FYI, that’s about all I got—at least in a 7-day window.

This week the computer I write on died with half the story still in it. Then it became a question of choosing between spending hours and hours trying to recover the conclusion of the story on that dead netbook or spending those hours writing it again. I chose the latter when the former reached diminishing returns. Then, I woke up yesterday and my voice was fried before I’d even started recording—no idea why. It was close. I probably had 20 cups of tea, and recorded piecemeal throughout the day to keep from totally burning my voice out.

I like this story, but I may be prouder of this one than many or most of these sci-fi shorts, simply because I got it done in spite of the obstacles.

I hope the result is a crowd pleaser, because I’ve tied together a bunch of characters who all have great potential in their own spheres. I think they blend well together, but ultimately that’ll be up to the audience. I knew I wasn’t done with our wizard, and I’d been waiting for the right time to delve deeper into his story, because it goes deep. But I wasn’t expecting Transom until I saw the topic of superweapons come up, and obviously the Etterans would need someone to take it out. Who better? And to have him end up as a guest aboard Yankee-Chaos, well that just seemed like too much fun to pass up!

I say fun, but it’s the kind of fun you’re glad to be a passive observer for. I’m not sure about anyone else, but I am sure glad I spent the week with Transom in a fictional universe and not the real thing. Dude is intense, and, to me anyway, funny as hell in a very dark way—the kind of humor that ain’t funny when it’s trained on you, kinda like a bad bad weapon.

We’ve got a couple shades of bad in this story, and because we didn’t quite get to the super weapon this week, we’re going to get to explore these two flavors a little deeper next week. I’m not going to leave it hanging like this!

At least not for that long…

More on that superweapon and that wizard next week. Hope to catch you there!

Thanks for reading.

Rowe