Atom Punk Inspirations

I've always been a fan of retro-futurism. One of my first exposures to the genre was the Buck Rogers hardback collection I found in my father's library. I was 8 or 9 years old, and I broke the spine on that thing, reading it over and over. Dad was pissed, but kind of proud, but more pissed I think.

So, fast forward to 2015, and I find an old Tom Corbett story as a free e-book on Kindle. Space Cadets fighting T-Rexs in the jungles of Venus. I mean, come on. How awesome is that? I'm not sure which number book in the series it was, but you definitely got the sense that the world and characters were established, and they had been through many adventures together. Too much fun to leave it alone.

A couple of weeks later, I started writing my own Atom Punk adventure, complete with a battle-weary captain (Rex Kane of the Zerotroopers of Mars), a burly, hot-headed engineer and comic relief named Buck Gibson, and Dr. Eleanor Simms, cosmophysicist and navigator. Goofy banter was added in abundance to play up a sense of playfulness, and I added editor's notes commenting about previous episodes (which don't exist . . . yet). The notes mentioned a recurring villain named Alyx Saprovorn, the kingpin of Mars. I added in just enough camp to keep it playful and light amidst all the danger, and attempted to balance out the technological anachronisms with far-fetched physics. I had a ball with it.

I didn't have any plans for this story. I had written it solely for the love of the genre. Later that year, an anthology put out a call for entries, and that inspired me to finish the story and tighten it up to fit the word count constraints of 4K, but that anthology never happened, but I kept at it—polishing, refining, and enhancing. Whatever. I decided I'd self-publish it if nobody else wanted it. So there. It was fun.

I sent it off to a few more anthologies (by now, the story had grown from 4K to 8K and qualified it for a 'novelette' by some publishers' standards), and started planning out the next episode involving these characters, and plotting out the previous episodes mentioned in the editor's notes. Weeeeee, worldbuilding!

Episode 10: A Moon Called Terror: A Rex Kane Adventure has just been accepted for publication in the anthology GASLANDIA. Details to follow.