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Month: October 2020

Review: Thunder at Kadesh, by Gordon Doherty

Review: Thunder at Kadesh, by Gordon Doherty

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Thunder at Kadesh (Book Three of Empires of Bronze) by Gordon Doherty

Overall Rating: ***** (5 stars)

Thunder at Kadesh is the third (and at this writing, last) volume of Empires of Bronze, Gordon Doherty’s ongoing historical fiction series set in the ancient Hittite Empire. In this volume, Mr. Doherty has produced a powerful rendition of the earliest well-documented military campaign in human history.

Thunder at Kadesh continues to follow Prince Hattu, the younger brother of the Hittite king Muwatalli II. In the years since the previous story, Hattu has become case-hardened by a life of violence and loss. Now the war he has long dreaded is about to begin: an epic conflict against New Kingdom Egypt under its new Pharaoh Ramesses II (one day to be known to history as “Ramesses the Great”).

Ramesses intends to destroy the Hittite kingdom, and he may have the army he needs to do that. On the other hand, under Hattu’s leadership, the Hittites have spent years building up their own army, including innovations in tactics and technology. They gather all of their allies – including some well-known names from their vassal-kingdom of Troy – and march to meet Ramesses.

As always, Mr. Doherty’s careful research pays off here. He has done a careful study of the Kadesh campaign, and of the critical battle itself, based on the most recent research in several disciplines. This novel offers plausible solutions to some of its outstanding mysteries, while still telling a suspenseful story of military struggle and sacrifice.

The plot of Thunder at Kadesh is a bit tighter and more believable than that of previous volumes of the series. The stakes of the conflict are clear, as are the identity and motives of the antagonists. Prince Hattu and his supporting characters deal with their challenges with intelligence, determination, and iron discipline. Even the villains of the piece are more nuanced and well-developed than we’ve seen so far. Only at the very end of the story is there a sudden reversal, setting up a conflict for the volumes to come. As I’ve come to expect from this self-published series, the production is of very high quality, with very few copy-editing errors.

Readers should be aware, of course, that the story is set in a brutal and violent time, focusing on one of the greatest battles of the ancient world. Descriptions of violence are common and very explicit.

I thoroughly enjoyed Thunder at Kadesh and am looking forward to the next books in the series.  Strongly recommended for readers who might enjoy an action-packed war story set in ancient times.

New Presence on Social Media

New Presence on Social Media

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I have a confession to make: I am really ambivalent about social media.

There are a lot of reasons for that, most of which are private and will remain so. Speaking as an author and game designer, past experience tells me that social media eat up time, effort, and attention that could otherwise be spent on writing, all without resulting in much attention for the creative work itself.

Still, now that I am starting to publish original work, it’s probably worth the experiment. So as of today, and until I find that it’s actively hindering my progress, I’ve set up a new presence on Facebook and Twitter.

Here is the Facebook page for Sharrukin’s Palace, where all blog posts made here will be cross-posted. I may post some content there exclusively as well (release announcements and so on).

My new Twitter profile is under @John_Alleyn. As with the Sharrukin’s Palace Facebook page, blog posts from here and the occasional exclusive content will appear there.

All of this is very much in the service of “me as creative” rather than “me as social creature,” but we’ll see how things turn out in the long run.

Short Story Now Available: “Safe Haven”

Short Story Now Available: “Safe Haven”

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I’ve posted a new version of “Safe Haven,” one of my oldest short stories, to the Free Articles and Fiction section.

“Safe Haven” is a tale set soon after the Trojan War, in a world that isn’t quite the same as the one familiar to us from the poems of Homer. Aside from the links on the Free Articles and Fiction page and in the sidebar, here’s a direct link as well.

“Safe Haven” will also be released to my patrons, free of charge.

A Bit of Insight

A Bit of Insight

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I think I may have finally gotten myself unblocked with respect to one of my long-term creative projects. The project in question is the Human Destiny setting.

The premise is that sometime in the middle of the 21st century, an interstellar civilization arrives in the Sol system and (without much effort) conquers humanity. It’s a strangely benign sort of conquest, though. The aliens don’t have any interest in us as slaves, nor are they motivated by a desire to take the solar system’s natural resources for their own benefit. Their goals seem mostly to involve . . . nannying us. Their laws are fairly strict, backed up by almost-universal surveillance, but enforcement seems to be non-violent, completely incorruptible, and even-handed. Meanwhile, all of us are provided a standard of living better than ever before, without anyone being required to work for any of it.

Naturally, a lot of humans resent all this mightily, but there seems to be nothing that can be done about it. The longer-term question is why all this has happened. What motivates the aliens?

I’ve written and published a couple of stories in this setting: “Pilgrimage” and “Guanahani.” I have two or three more stories in my development pile too. I’m fairly sure there’s a robust series, maybe even a few novels, in there. Yet, even after years of cogitation, I’ve never been able to get the idea to launch.

The main problem is that the setting does away with a lot of human agency just by its premise. Great, the aliens have come along and solved a lot of our problems, including many of the ones driven by human conflict and misbehavior. There are certainly stories left to be told, but a lot of the writer’s tools for plot and character development are set aside already.

It’s probably telling that almost all the stories I’ve written in this setting so far involve breakdowns of the alien surveillance apparatus. It’s kind of like Star Trek‘s transporters – they’re so useful for short-circuiting plots that a writer often has to justify taking them off-line before a story can happen.

There’s also the aliens’ motivation. They’re here because they want us to survive and evolve into the kind of species that actually can play a role on the galactic stage. That means human psychology needs to change. We need to learn to live with each other and tolerate the Other, we need to get better at understanding and preserving the big systems that keep us alive, we need to start thinking on much larger scales in both space and time.

So how do I write stories about that, in which the aliens demonstrate their motivations through conflict and plot rather than by simply telling the reader what’s up?

I was idly thinking about this the other day – a lot of my creative work happens in the back of my mind while I’m doing something else entirely. Then my mind made a connection with what I was doing with my hands and my forebrain at the time.

I was idly playing a game on my iPad, you see.

Terraforming Mars has been out for several years as a tabletop game, and now has a pretty good adaptation as a mobile app as well. It’s one of those wonderfully thematic board games that does such a superb job of making a complex subject playable and interesting to the layman.

Terraforming Mars assumes an era of exploration and colonization throughout the solar system, starting either late in this century or sometime in the next. The centerpiece of that era is a generations-long project to, as it says on the tin, terraform Mars – transform that planet into an at least marginally habitable world, where human beings can live freely with little or no life-support equipment.

Well. Suddenly I could see a lot of possible context for the Human Destiny setting, Suppose the aliens, aside from simply providing a decent quality of life for most humans, also opened the door for this kind of expansion into the solar system? If humans could settle on Mars, cooperate with each other in a project that might not pay off for many human lifetimes, wouldn’t that be an opportunity for some of us to demonstrate the citizen-of-the-galaxy mindset the aliens are looking for?

Right away, my brain started working on ways to get my character Aminata Ndoye – the protagonist of “Pilgrimage” and a few of the not-yet-published stories – involved in Martian terraforming and solar-system expansion. That in turn gave me a whole raft of new ideas about the Human Destiny setting as a whole.

All of which is to say that I might be turning back to that project, finally. My creative plate is rather full at the moment, between working on my Krava stories, and Architect of Worlds, and wanting to flesh out the EIDOLON game system a bit more. Still, as 2020 winds down I think I might be able to revisit the Human Destiny setting, rework the core documentation for that, and start making some of that information available. Readers of this blog, and my patrons over on Patreon, can expect to see some results from that over the next couple of months.

Review: Dawn of War, by Gordon Doherty

Review: Dawn of War, by Gordon Doherty

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Dawn of War (Book Two of Empires of Bronze) by Gordon Doherty

Overall Rating: **** (4 stars)

Dawn of War is the second book of the Empires of Bronze series, Gordon Doherty’s venture into writing historical fiction set in the ancient Hittite Empire of the late Bronze Age. Mr. Doherty has produced another gritty adventure story here, worthwhile for any reader interested in action-adventure in the ancient world.

Dawn of War continues to follow Prince Hattu, the younger brother of King Muwatalli II. After the events of Son of Ishtar, Hattu has earned the respect of his fellow soldiers and the trust of his royal brother, and he is now a successful general in the Hittite army. Unfortunately, the kingdom faces a serious challenge from the one world power strong enough to threaten its destruction. New Kingdom Egypt, under its aggressive Pharaoh Seti, is pressing down on the Hittite vassal states in Retenu (Cannan and Syria). A war seems inevitable, one which will change the fate of empires.

If Son of Ishtar was a “boot camp” story, Dawn of War is a “Special Forces” story, about a military detachment operating far behind enemy lines. Hoping to head off the war everyone expects, Hattu and his men take on a mission despite extreme odds. They must deal with betrayal, the forces of indifferent nature, and combat against far superior foes in order to survive. It’s not clear until almost the very end of the story whether they can attain any victories at all.

One of Mr. Doherty’s strengths is his careful research, his ability to tease incomplete knowledge about his period into a full and compelling narrative. He also writes superb battle scenes, bloody and violent but always clear and full of suspense. Dawn of War does not disappoint on either score. For a self-published novel, the production is high quality, with very few copy-editing errors.

Mr. Doherty’s plotting continues to show a touch of weakness, with lead characters who often seem oblivious to plot twists the reader can see well in advance. Dawn of War also renders its antagonists almost cartoonish in their wickedness. The Egyptian characters are often thoroughly vile, yet even they are outdone by a certain group of hill-tribesmen with a familiar name. Readers should not expect complex or nuanced antagonists here.

In any case, I had no trouble getting through the story, enjoyed it from start to finish, and reached the end wanting more. Recommended for anyone who enjoys an action-packed adventure story set in ancient times.

Architect of Worlds – Step Twenty-Three: Determine Atmospheric Mass and Pressure

Architect of Worlds – Step Twenty-Three: Determine Atmospheric Mass and Pressure

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In this step, we determine the atmospheric mass of the world under development. The atmospheric mass is measured relative to that of Earth – a world with surface gravity of exactly 1, and atmospheric pressure of exactly 1 “atmosphere” at the surface, will have an atmospheric mass of 1.

Some worlds will have a Trace atmosphere – enough to provide climate and weather effects on the world’s surface, but not enough to support any form of complex life. Still other worlds will have no atmosphere at all (or at least no atmosphere that can be detected without sensitive instruments). In both of these cases, the atmospheric mass will effectively be zero.

Atmospheric mass depends on a large number of factors: the world’s blackbody temperature and M-number (determined in Step Nineteen), its prevalence of water (determined in Step Twenty), whether it has undergone a runaway greenhouse event (also determined in Step Twenty), the degree of ongoing vulcanism (determined in Step Twenty-One), and the presence and strength of a magnetic field (determined in Step Twenty-Two).

Once a world’s atmospheric mass has been fixed, the pressure of the atmosphere at the surface (sea level or some other convenient “datum”) can also be determined.

Procedure

Begin by building a list of the likely major components of the world’s atmosphere. Refer to the following table, which lists a number of volatile compounds which might make up a large and stable portion of an atmosphere.

Atmospheric Components Table
Possible Major ComponentMaximum M-NumberMinimum Blackbody Temperature
Molecular Hydrogen (H2)220 K
Helium (He)45 K
Molecular Nitrogen (N2)2880 K
Carbon Dioxide (CO2)44195 K

For each item on the Atmospheric Components Table, check to see whether the world under development has an M-number that is no higher than the one given in the table, and a blackbody temperature that is no lower than the one given in the table. If the M-number is too high, that potential component of the atmosphere will undergo thermal escape. If the blackbody temperature is too low, that component will tend to “freeze out” and form liquid or solid layers on the surface. Either way, that volatile will not be available to make up a substantial atmosphere.

Make a list of the atmospheric components that meet both conditions, and then refer to the following three cases.

First Case

This case holds if one or more of molecular hydrogen, helium, or molecular nitrogen meet both conditions from the table.

In this case, roll 3d6 and modify the result as follows:

  • +6 if the world has Massive prevalence of water
  • +6 if the world has undergone a runaway greenhouse event
  • +6 if the world has a Molten Lithosphere
  • +4 if the world has a Soft Lithosphere
  • +2 if the world has an Early Plate Lithosphere
  • -2 if the world has an Ancient Plate Lithosphere
  • -4 if the world has a Solid Lithosphere
  • -2 if the world has a Moderate Magnetic Field
  • -4 if the world has a Weak Magnetic Field
  • -6 if the world has no Magnetic Field

If the modified dice roll is 0 or less, then the world will have a Trace atmosphere, with an atmospheric mass of zero. Otherwise, multiply the modified dice roll by:

  • 10 if the world has undergone a runaway greenhouse event
  • 1 if the world has blackbody temperature less than 125 K and Massive prevalence of water
  • 0.1 otherwise

The final result is the world’s atmospheric mass. Feel free to adjust this result by up to half of the multiplier.

Second Case

This case holds if the first case does not, but carbon dioxide meets both conditions from the table.

In this case, the world will automatically have a Trace atmosphere, with an atmospheric mass of zero.

Third Case

This case holds if neither the first case nor the second case is in effect (that is, none of the volatiles listed on the table meet both conditions).

In this case, the world will automatically have no significant atmosphere, and an atmospheric mass of zero.

Surface Atmospheric Pressure

To determine the atmospheric pressure at a world’s surface, multiply the atmospheric mass by its surface gravity.

Examples

Arcadia IV has blackbody temperature of 281 K, an M-number of 5, Extensive water with no runaway greenhouse, a Mature Plate Lithosphere, and a Strong Magnetic Field. Major components of the atmosphere will include both molecular nitrogen and carbon dioxide, so the planet falls squarely into the first case. Alice rolls an unmodified 3d6 and gets a result of 9, so Arcadia IV has an atmospheric mass of 0.9. Since the planet has surface gravity of 1.05, the atmospheric pressure at sea level is abut 0.95, very comparable to that of Earth.

Arcadia V has a blackbody temperature of 226 K, an M-number of 6, Moderate water with no runaway greenhouse, a Mature Plate Lithosphere, and no magnetic field. Major components of the atmosphere will include molecular nitrogen and carbon dioxide, so this planet also falls into the first case. Alice rolls 3d6-6 (modified due to the lack of a magnetic field) for a result of 7, so Arcadia V has an atmospheric mass of 0.7. The planet has surface gravity of 0.82, so atmospheric pressure at the surface is about 0.57.

Status Report (17 October 2020)

Status Report (17 October 2020)

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A quick note to assure everyone that I’m still alive. I’ve been working on a lot of things this week, with the result that none of them have been pushed through to completion. Hopefully this weekend will help change that.

  • About finished with the next bit of Architect of Worlds, which will start establishing a designed world’s atmosphere and climate.
  • Still working on reviews of the second and third books in Gordon Doherty’s Empires of Bronze series, which will bring me to my goal for this first month of reviewing other people’s self-published books.
  • Picking out another piece of short fiction, to post here and send as a free reward for my patrons.
  • Also working on promotion for The Curse of Steel, and pushing forward with the first draft of The Sunlit Lands, both of which are important but aren’t likely to be visible here. Watch that progress bar, though!

Look for some results from that list over the next few days, I think.

Review: Son of Ishtar, by Gordon Doherty

Review: Son of Ishtar, by Gordon Doherty

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Son of Ishtar (Book One of Empires of Bronze) by Gordon Doherty

Overall Rating: **** (4 stars)

Son of Ishtar is the first of a planned series of six books, with the overall title of Empires of Bronze. As one might expect, the setting is the late Bronze Age, specifically the realm known to us as the “Hittite Empire.” The Hittites are less well-known to a modern audience than, say, New Kingdom Egypt, but archaeology has managed to uncover a wealth of detail about this enigmatic culture. Gordon Doherty spins a rollicking adventure tale out of those details.

Son of Ishtar is a coming-of-age story about Prince Hattu, born about 1315 BCE as the fourth son of King Mursili II of the Hittite Empire. Suffering from ill health and childhood tragedy, young Prince Hattu seems to lack promise, overshadowed by his domineering father and his robust older brother, Prince Muwa. Struggling to earn respect, Hattu insists on being trained as a Hittite soldier, subjecting himself to the trials of a fierce Bronze Age boot camp. Winning over his fellow trainees, going with them to his first military campaign, he sets himself on the path that will one day lead him to the Hittite throne.

Readers will want to be aware that this is a story about a brutal and violent time. The combat scenes, in particular, are downright Homeric – recalling how lovingly the Iliad describes violent injury and death at every turn. Ethnic hatred and slavery are common to the period. There’s plenty of earthy dialogue and some implied sex as well.

I was very favorably impressed by Son of Ishtar. The production is very high quality, with clean prose and a minimum of editing mishaps. Gordon Doherty has done meticulous research, and it shows. I’m familiar with the period myself – in fact, I suspect Mr. Doherty and I have read some of the same sources – and I spotted a lot of authentic detail. Not to mention a great deal of foreshadowing, by way of a prophecy of the goddess Ishtar, of events to come. Later books in the series seem likely to cover some of the most important episodes of this critical period.

The story itself is suspenseful, and the battle scenes had me on the edge of my seat more than once. The identity of the “hidden” villain is possibly a little too obvious to the reader; I found myself grumbling at the characters once in a while for their obliviousness. Even so, I had no trouble getting through the story and reached the end wanting more. Recommended for anyone who enjoys a solid adventure story set in ancient times.

Architect of Worlds – Step Twenty-Two: Determine Magnetic Field

Architect of Worlds – Step Twenty-Two: Determine Magnetic Field

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In this step, we will estimate whether the world under development has a significant magnetic field.

The possible cases for a world’s magnetic field will be sorted into four categories: None, Weak, Moderate, and Strong, defined as follows.

  • None: The world has no detectable magnetic field and is completely unprotected from the stellar wind. Examples: Venus, Earth’s moon, Mars, most of the gas giant planets’ major satellites.
  • Weak: The world has a detectable magnetic field (about 1% as strong as Earth’s), but it offers no significant protection from the stellar wind. Examples: Mercury or Ganymede.
  • Moderate: The world’s magnetic field is strong enough to offer limited protection against the stellar wind (about 10% as strong as Earth’s). Examples: None in our planetary system.
  • Strong: The world’s magnetic field is at least comparable to that of Earth, sufficient to provide adequate protection against the stellar wind. Examples: Earth, the gas giant planets.

A world’s magnetic field seems to depend on several items:

  • The world needs to have a hot, liquid outer core of significant mass, composed largely of iron
  • There must be convection taking place in that iron outer core, causing rising and falling currents
  • The world must rotate on its axis

If all three of these conditions hold, the iron outer core forms a dynamo which creates a significant magnetic field. This, in turn, helps protect the world’s atmosphere from being stripped away by stellar wind, and also protects the surface of the world from some harmful radiation. In our own planetary system, only Earth and the gas giant planets have strong magnetic fields.

Note that the third condition – that the world must rotate on its axis – is almost universal. Even a tide-locked world still rotates on its axis, and physical modeling seems to indicate that even slow rotation is enough to support a working dynamo. The existence of strong convective heat transfer through a world’s outer core seems to be the critical factor.

Procedure

To determine the strength of a world’s magnetic field at random, roll 3d6 modified as follows:

  • +4 if the world has a Soft Lithosphere
  • +8 if the world has Early Plate Lithosphere or Ancient Plate Lithosphere and also has Mobile Plate Tectonics
  • +12 if the world has Mature Plate Lithosphere and also has Mobile Plate Tectonics

Refer to the Magnetic Field Table entry for the modified roll.

Magnetic Field Table
Modified Roll (3d6)Magnetic Field
14 or lessNone
15-17Weak
18-19Moderate
20 or greaterStrong

Examples

Arcadia IV has a Mature Plate Lithosphere and Mobile Plate Tectonics, so Alice rolls 3d6+12 and gets a result of 25. Arcadia IV has a Strong Magnetic Field.

Arcadia V has a Mature Plate Lithosphere but has Fixed Plate Tectonics. Alice rolls an unmodified 3d6 and gets a result of 13. Arcadia V has no significant magnetic field.

R-Day Plus One Week: Site Changes and Reviews

R-Day Plus One Week: Site Changes and Reviews

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Well, The Curse of Steel has been on the market for about a week now. Sales have not been overwhelming, but I didn’t expect them to be. In any case, the book has already earned me more in royalties than my last two ventures into self-publishing put together. This is a slow business, which doesn’t reward you for obsessively checking your KDP reports.

(Have I been obsessively checking my KDP reports? Yes, yes I have.)

So, on to next steps.

I’ve started work on the first draft of the next novel in the series, The Sunlit Lands. Progress on that can be tracked in the sidebar.

Meanwhile, I’ve been working on promotion for The Curse of Steel. One thing I’ve become aware of is that there’s a whole ecology of reviewers for new books, and especially for self-published books. New books that don’t have many professional or customer reviews don’t do as well, but as you might expect there are always more new books coming out than there are available reviewers.

After thinking about that problem for a while, I’ve decided to add a new thread to this blog: reviews of new self-published fiction.

I’m going to try to have at least one substantive review of an indie novel or series per month. Those reviews will be posted as blog entries here, and if the book(s) being reviewed are being published on Amazon I’ll cross-post the reviews there too. Look for the first of these by the end of October – I’ve already found a very promising novel series that will almost certainly get a review.

This is something of a departure for me; this blog has never done many reviews in the past. It will involve some formal work over the next few days as I set things up. I’ll have to develop and post a review policy, and I’ll also be advertising this blog on some of the review-clearinghouse sites to attract more attention to the project.

As another point, I’ve just taken some steps to (hopefully) make this site a little easier to navigate. You’ll notice the white top-bar now provides several menu options. These links will take you to some of the most important (or popular) pages on the site, notably the Architect of Worlds landing page. I’ll be expanding that menu a bit over the next few days, possibly converting a couple of the items into drop-downs to further improve navigation. There may be some tweaks and additions to some of the pages as well. Feedback is welcome as to ways to improve all of this functionality.