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In the late 21st century on Earth, new technology allowed man to create machines merged with the body of their fallen comrades of war. These ?manchines? fought and won the war for the West. Discarded, the manchines learned of their worth and fought back for their own freedom, destroying half of the population of mankind. Now, Saron Bravewind rules the main Earth city of Orland built from ruin after the ban of technology that once was man?s downfall. With his heart set on discovering life beyond the stars, he finally gets his chance when tragedy strikes as his daughter falls into an incurable illness. Saron mans a flight into space with a faith in finding a higher life to help his daughter. What he finds will change the fate of the future mankind. (http://www.raelori.com)...

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This sci-fi smorgasbord serves up 9 retro tales inspired by the pulp magazines of the 1920s - 1940s. It drops you into the deco chiseled cities of alternate Americana, airlifts you to exotic locales, then rockets you to the farthest reaches of yesterday’s tomorrows! Witness the otherworldly genesis of Wild Marjoram in a Chicagoland speakeasy as the violence of the all-female Killdeer Gang reaches vigilante-inspired fever pitch in "The Birth." Flying taxis fight for space over New York as Johnny Grant, Private Eye, sifts streets rife with murder and corruption in "The Maltese Spectrum." It's class-warfare in Citadel City as Pandora Driver and her Car of Tomorrow cruise the shadowy streets in search of one good cop in "Ready Fire Aim." Resources dwindle as aqua farming Region 5 Spaceport Terminus pushes maximum population density, and the balance between man and machine collapses in "Bloom." The fractured politics of the fractured 1920s Aether Age leaves a sheriff struggling to find the truth in "The More Things Change." Would Ace Rango rather be locked in battle with snarling space lizards or a temperamental, little...

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WELCOME TO THE RETRO FUTURE When I started the Dieselpunks website years ago, the word “dieselpunk” was still a curiosity. Sure, it was loaded with familiar tropes like Pulp Adventure, Film Noir, and Weird Horror, but the artists were mashing these concepts together with something different, something a little more contemporary. At that time, the steampunks were just starting to climb their way from the underground and gain traction as a legitimate style, but there was something to be said about this little-known corner of dieselpunk, or "low-brow pop surrealism" as it was known back then. Like the French film scholars who codified Film Noir as a genre years after the movies were in the theaters, I could see a similar thread binding the dieselpunk work together. Whether they realized it or not, these artists were creating work with eerily similar concepts. They were creating a future fueled by the spirit of the Jazz Age. In their world, they wanted to see if old Sam Spade could work in an era of smartphones, or if Dillinger could make a clean getaway in a cherry red hovercar. These artists were writing cyberpunk stories...

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THE 1920s. MID-WESTERN COMMONWEALTH, CHICAGO. “Well if it ain’t that then what was it?” “It was all those damn fool bankers in New York.” “Bankers?” “Yeah, bankers. They’re the ones who caused everything that’s happened. A huge pack of New York bankers got greedy. And the country was the one to cop it in the teeth when it all headed south.” “Nah. It weren’t that.” “It was too. And everyone knows it. Bankers got greedy, they sold Louisiana back to the French and that’s why the Grand Dream of the United States of America is now just a footnote in history.” Mickey thought about this for some time before shaking his head. “Nah, that ain’t it. That don’t explain half the crazy things that have happened.” Mack growled. “Jus’ listen.” He began checking points off on his fingers. “New York sold Louisiana to the French. Which made everyone else really mad. Which made Chicago form the Mid-West militia. Which meant New York had to stop pretending and actually get serious about The Prohibition act. This made the North West secede to Canadia, which made California blame New York and change their name, which made Texas w...

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Welcome to the Retro Future That Sort of World: A Tale of the Aether Age Pandora Driver: Who are the People in Your Neighborhood The Troubleshooter: What the Wise Man Says The World of Mañana: A Friend of Spirits Last Call...

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The magnetic field of the passing asteroid is generating enough energy to pull Grailem towards it. Waking from an aimless sleep he tries to use his precious energy to move closer. It had been aeons since he had stood on, or even felt a solid surface beneath his feet. Grailem had been drifting aimlessly through space since his spacecraft had exploded, maybe a million years ago now. The exploding fuel tanks had thrown him out into the cold of space with such a force that he had almost achieved the speed of light. The clouds of dust and gases of forming nebula he passed through slowed him down as he flew uncontrolled through the cosmos. With no propulsion system to aid him, the friction of forming nebulae of dust and gas eventually brought his speed down to a few kilometres per second. The years passed slowly for him as he had little to distract his thoughts and he had long wished for the release of death. The only part of him that is human is his brain; and this has been incorporated completely into an artificial body. The body had been especially designed to cope with all environments; including the vacuum of space, but with...

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Mankind had been incorporating humans with artificial limbs and internal organs for generations. The more that Man depended on technology, the physically weaker the human race had become. Many humans were regularly being born with disabilities like missing limbs, blindness and also the inability to speak. Substituting the missing limbs with man-made ones and combining computer technology, the blind could see better than with normal healthy eyes (though mechanical and lacking any sign of emotion), and the disabled could walk and run. To have a disability proved to be an advantage in this new world; as the replacement limbs and internal organs were far superior to that created by nature. All those who could afford it had mechanical hearts and kidneys. Some had arms and legs deliberately amputated so that they could be fitted with far superior man-made ones. Life expectancy became measured in centuries rather than years. After three thousand years the human part of the body mysteriously changed, making the body susceptible to disease and death. Not many people lived beyond three thousand years; it was as if the body had an inte...

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Table of Contents Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen The Author...

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The Great Galactic Treasure Hunt follows a number of individuals who for some reason or the other didn’t make it in the densely populated, highly civilised worlds of the big states; often consisting of a large number of inhabited planets with many billions of citizen on each world. There, life is safe and orderly, well-regulated, tidy and highly controlled. The vast majority of individuals of all described species lives on such worlds; and they like their life there. Yet, some just don’t fit in or feel that they don’t and some just can’t make it there. These take to the free areas of the galaxy, here anyone with the will to succeed can make it and find happiness; or the premature violent end, death by accident or predators, illness or starvation. Anyone can go there and be lucky to quench the thrust for freedom, success, and gold, or die by the plain old thirst of water. The Great Galactic Treasure Hunt begins with a few such adventurers who are on their way to new exploits, trying to test the limits of their luck again. Soon, some of them come together to better pursue their common interest with mutual support and travel together t...

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When the gigantic trans-galactic cargo ship Ostia entered the hyperspace Arcus Stream, it was high noon local time right under it on a planet named Vato Lehibe. She had left the stationary orbit around Vato Lehibe early in the morning. Vato Lehibe was a booming mining planet. Its rock was of a deep red colour and contained high concentrations of aluminium and other metals. As the resources’ deposits began just under the surface, scrap mining was possible and profitable. The Arcus Stream was a kind of swift canal through hyperspace that allowed very fast travel, even for hyperspace terms. Outside the strong wall of the huge spaceship, wavelike trails of misty appearance rushed by. Actually, it was the Ostia that rushed through pas them. She was not only one of the biggest spaceships ever built but also one of the fastest. The Ostia carried passengers, good, and even other, smaller spaceships. Going at a rate of eighty to hundred light years per hour under good to optimal conditions, the Ostia was several times faster than the smaller spaceships she carried as cargo in her huge belly. Sometime in the afternoon, the Ostia was sched...

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Apparently, there’s been an underground, cold war going on, not noticed much by humans, between “good” vampires—those who have altered their biological needs and can use synthetic blood—and “bad” vampires—Rogues who actively enjoy hunting, draining and butchering humans. Now Sheriff Hudson and his friends are in the middle of the war, which has gone above-ground and hot. The chase to catch and stop—kill if necessary—the Rogues consumes Hudson and his crew, as they struggle for their lives on the platform. The good vampires help as they can, but Hudson’s not sure he trusts them completely either. The war spills over, involving Earth and the Navy Space Force, as the hordes of Rogues and their Servants come forth openly, killing hundreds of humans as they try to obtain the materials they need. Hudson and his friends—Doctor Holly Marten, an old Navy friend from “back in the day”; Max, Hudson’s former platoon corpsman; Cal, Max’s boyfriend; Helga, Doc Marten’s assistant—have to first get their minds around the almost unimaginable, then deal with the crisis as it spreads from the mining platform to a solar system war. ...

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“Man, I’ve never seen anything like this,” I mutter to the screen in front of me. The stale smelling air in the office circulates slowly around me as the electronics hum in the background. “You know? I’ve been in this business a damn long time and never…” Max grunts as he looks over the vid I’ve sent him. “Spirit! Me neither. What the hell happened? Someone making some crazy juice up there? Found any?” He glances back to me from the other screen, grimacing. He’s been in the cop business longer that I’ve been so my instincts were right—if it upsets him, it’s gotta be as bad as I thought it looked. I’m no fainting pansy myself but jeeze…I shudder. “Nope. Doc says no trace of drugs. There was some grass in the compartment, but it was only the company-issued crap they give out for anxiety. The little green pellets. Nothing else. Nothing but this.” I look down at the vids myself, displayed on my desk. They show… They show what used to be a human, although you’d be hard pressed to guess that at first. There are parts everywhere in the compartment; the man was literally pulled limb from limb and then the limbs were, well, destroy...

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Space Force Grunts is a Science Fiction novel playing several generations into the future. After the human race has invented hyperspace flight, thousands of planets are colonised. Those new societies maintain their independence until the human race encounters an alien civilisation that also masters space flight and hyperspace travel. Being so very different from the human race, those aliens are at first not even recognised as an eminent civilisation commanding over impressive, seemingly sheer unlimited means and a proficient use of advanced technologies. When the mistake is discovered, it is too late already for avoiding a clash of civilisations and a violent conflict has already started. The worlds settled by the human race gradually unite ever more under the leadership of a political movement. Conscription is introduced to provide for the military forces’ need for soldiers. People with sufficient means can purchase freedom from conscription and escape the draft. The funds obtained by the administration via that purchase of freedom are used to supply the military with materials means like weapons and to pay the soldiers who get dra...

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Base 18 on Planet DN-DU-144/5 was a place that could only be found on detailed military maps. This planet was circling a sun situated at the border between our Local Bubble of stars in the Milky Way and the much bigger Loop 1 Bubble, another assembly of suns and planets. DN-DU-144/5 was the fifth planet in outward direction, when counted from the local star as centre. Base 18 now consisted of a dozen bunkers, a few deep wells and a couple of cisterns appendant to them, a makeshift front-line spa, and most importantly a maintenance station for fighter robots and combat drones. Base 18 on planet DN-DU-144/5 was in principle a bleak place. Though at that moment it was officially day-time at the location of base 18, there was actually just a little twilight. The far sun, going by the less-than-poetic name of DN-DU-144, illuminated only the abundant clouds enfolding the planet decently. Little light ever made it through to the surface. ‘I just love it’ Master Sergeant Koon had sarcastically said when arriving at this place, together with all the other soldiers of the 5th company. They had taken this base over from a unit that had suffe...

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Space Force Grunts (Second, Revised Edition) tells the story of soldiers conscripted to defend the Human Alliance, a civilisation that has spread over thousands of worlds after the invention of hyperspace flight. They are fighting an enemy they don't understand in a war they did not choose. Space Grunts is told mainly from the perspective of the rank and file of the Human Alliance ground forces, who face an eminent foe, commanding over far superior means. Space Force Grunts tells about the feelings and thoughts of these soldiers, reports their talks and the trials and tribulations they have to go through, as well as the little pranks they play to each other and their superiors. - See more at: http://gutenberg.us/wplbn0003468521-space-force-grunts--a-science-fiction-novel-by-potsch-ingo.aspx?#sthash.GxmYw9Wd.dpuf...

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Base 18 on Planet DN-DU-144/5 was a place that could only be found on detailed military maps. This planet was circling a sun situated at the border between our Local Bubble of stars in the Milky Way and the much bigger Loop 1 Bubble, another assembly of suns and planets. DN-DU-144/5 was the fifth planet in outward direction, when counted from the local star as centre. Base 18 now consisted of a dozen bunkers, a few deep wells and a couple of cisterns appendant to them, a makeshift front-line spa, and most importantly a maintenance station for fighter robots and combat drones. Base 18 on planet DN-DU-144/5 was in principle a bleak place. Though at that moment it was officially day-time at the location of base 18, there was actually just a little twilight. The far sun, going by the less-than-poetic name of DN-DU-144, illuminated only the abundant clouds enfolding the planet decently. Little light ever made it through to the surface. ‘I just love it’ Master Sergeant Koon had sarcastically said when arriving at this place, together with all the other soldiers of the 5th company. They had taken this base over from a unit that had suffe...