DREAD Reviews 13
Dad Reads and Examines Authors While Distracted
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Thinking about self awareness.
My son has been a little slow to pick up speech. He goes to speech therapy twice a week.
His birthday happened recently and it was interesting to hear him say a lot of words one associates with birthdays while he clearly had no idea what his birthday really means. And not just “he doesn’t know where babies come from;” he also doesn’t know he’s a year older, that this happens annually, or that it’s an occasion to celebrate his existing.
This is exactly how I go through life, too. I just say words that seem contextually correct to the circumstance I’m in. Sometimes it works, sometimes people look at me funny. And I feel like I cease existing between these experiences.
Then it hit me. We’re both in-development LLMs. Man, and here I thought I was special.
Anyway… check out these neat authors I found:
Man once again dangerously anthropomorphizes one of Earth’s geological features and tries to be intimate with it (the sea, this time - again). As usual, he almost dies - the sea breaks up with him and throws him and his things out on the porch (the beach). At least this time the guy survived. Now that his amygdala has won the logic contest with his cerebral cortex, the man walks off beaten - but still seeing the sea as a hot lady and not a giant body of salty water that throws fools around globally on the daily:
“That’s what fills the space between birth and death.”
When you read a line like this you know you're in for an edgy experience.
Or, in this case, a minecart ride off a cliff straight into the abyss:
Nothing screams “fun” like stealing a nickname from your friend’s dog as you build a false identity for a fun night out. NOFOMO offers a VR experience where your avatar can take over whenever you get tuckered out - and get paid for it. What’s better than partying with a cowboy hat guy who’s lost his horse and a blond ringleader hotter than a Wi-Fi router after a Netflix binge? Shayla - I mean Kiki fits right in with the crowd that comes to her door, dressing like a thrift store unicorn put through a blender. Now I won’t spoil what happens next. But $%!@&, please! The avatar could at least give the rainbow socks back:
I wonder if this place of acid waves and 200 kph storms sells "I survived the volcano guard" t-shirts:
A real wormapalooza, this one. Some kid comes out off the bathroom dragging a conga line of parasites screaming like divas - and here I thought it was embarrassing that one time some toilet paper stuck to my shoe. "Nope, not paid enough for this #@&$" says the nurse. I can relate, but only if I pretend I get paid to read horror stories like this one. Read if you dare, it’s not for the faint of heart:
Two young men whose low dice rolls are as dead as their dating prospects determine the hottest scene on a Friday night is… a dusty library. Here they bust out chips and energy drinks and, of course, their paper and pencil role-playing game.
But then they hear a scream! This is normal for Steve who worries he hallucinates due to his caffeine addiction (energy drinks and potato chips will keep you up all night with farts and jitters, after all). He’s glad that this time someone else heard it too. But you’re still going to die of fatigue and an ass clot, Steve. Change your diet!
Ignoring movie logic, Steve’s friend Carter insists they go investigate. They find a mysterious book. First it’s all mystical symbols, but these transform into a “start your quest” infomercial written in plain English. I mean, you simply don’t say: “Nah,” when Narnia comes knocking - so we speak the magic words like we’re auditioning for Hogwarts and poof: here comes Santa Claus whirling a Dragon Staff +4. Thus begins our adventure:
This is part 4 of John’s serial In Hell’s Shadow. I chose to link this part since it’s where the story picked up for me.
Kate’s having the worst road trip since the invention of GPS - she crashes her car, gets picked up by a guy who’s basically a walking goodwill store of her ex-boyfriend’s stuff, and now she’s playing hide-and-seek in some surreal cabin that’s either the start of a nightmare down memory lane or a portal to a haunted IKEA. At this point she’s unsure whether she’s the ghost in this story. If you enjoy a thrill where you can’t guess what’s coming next, this one’s for you:
Gun and military history nerds will love Jesse’s eloquent story of the evolution to the M1 Garand. I have only one thing to add to this gem of an article, an expansion upon one of his points.
He correctly cites the generals’ and industrial elites' rebuke of introducing more rapidly firing weapons based on their fear of the men “wasting ammunition.” While this notion looks absurd to us in hindsight, it’s important to understand the cultures their soldiers came from as well as an infantryman’s actual purpose on a battlefield (it’s not to destroy the enemy).
Limiting the rate of fire for certain nations was in fact a very important and logical consideration for old empires whose soldiery were peasants with commitment issues. An infantryman, especially by the 20th century, lays down suppressive fire to pin an enemy in place while artillery takes aim and does the actual killing (90% of battlefield casualties in 20th century wars were inflicted by artillery). US Civil War statistics on artillery are often undervalued - the normal misleading statistic tossed around, 12% of deaths from cannons, is strictly from battlefield hospital reports of men who were brought to a bed but later died from their injuries. Artillery of this era was far more lethal than its gunfire, and if we look at the actual distribution of where the dying occurred at battles like Gettysburg, you get estimates ranging from 40-75% of casualties being caused by canister shot, percussive shell, and aerial burst shrapnel at ranges exceeding 200 yards - far outside the the effective range of muskets. Lee’s army made a rather orderly, intact retreat from the exhausted Union Defense, and Buford’s decisive actions gaining the high ground on the first day of Gettysburg’s three day conflict meant the cavalry were in no position to run the enemy down - meaning none of the casualties this far out could have been caused by anything but cannon fire (and maybe a portion of wounded collapsing after a short retreat).
Whether an infantryman could actually hit his target - or a lot of targets - was a secondary consideration to the threat produced by shooting at it. Lazy, fearful, unindoctrinated troops who don't believe in their nation’s cause will use their maximum weight limit to their personal advantage. They’ll fire off all their rounds as rapidly as possible so they can then keep their heads down for the rest of the engagement. This is the easiest way to escape the ire of their sergeant’s accusations of dereliction of duty.
Ask anyone who served in the modern army of a free country - what behaviors did they see taken by soldiers attempting to skip their superior’s endless supply of pointless labor? Imagine this attitude transported into battle. Most modern troops will show more dedication and aggression in battle, but again, it depends - what country do they come from, what are their culture’s martial values, what is the era, and what are the stakes? A 1940’s man from the United Kingdom seeking vengeance against terror bombing and an end to the evil Nazi regime is going to fight differently than an 1914 Ottoman conscript fighting for a decaying, debauched elite that doesn’t speak the same language or have the same religion as his people.
Another contributing factor to the timing of the Garand's introduction as a main battle rifle was the USA’s unique abilities concerning logistics. It's a wonder what committed people from a free society are capable of, and the planet has seen nothing like it before.
Strategists and tacticians who studied the US Civil War, sometimes called “The Last of the Napoleonic Wars,” determined that artillery and small arms innovations had reached a point where the next war would be won with shovels and concrete (the primary way to harden against artillery fire). War transformed from dense formations and volley fire to trenches and bunkers. By the time tanks and mechanized infantry rolled in, the challenge changed to bypassing or penetrating the body of enemy troops to destroy their artillery or supply lines, leading to late WW1 and WW2 strategies of attack, counter attack, and defense in depth. In none of these wars were the infantry expected to deal a great amount of damage - although equipping them with bazookas and more rapidly firing small arms increases the suppression they can inflict, and also makes them feel better:
Can you say “cutting edge?”
Did you know Leonardo da Vinci designed a robot knight? I didn’t - but if someone had asked me, my guess would have been “yes, probably.”
Picture this - Leonardo, taking a stroll through the Tuscan hills doing some bird watching, thinking to himself: “Tonight I’ll doodle a working terminator in my journal.” He designed all the necessary schematics scattered in the margins, leaving playful breadcrumbs modern engineers could piece together like some Renaissance lego set. When they got it all together they slapped the switch and wow, it worked the first time! Meanwhile here I am still shouting 10 times to get Siri to turn the lights off while a Roomba eats my socks again.
Sure you’ve got the modern Atlas, Optimus, Figure 02, Ameca, Apollo and more. But these guys are all using electronics and modern materials whereas Leonardo just had a pencil, some pulleys, and an inventor vibe.
Man, I freaking love robots. One of you fantasy or horror writers out there, write this rope-powered animatronic knight into a story now!
If you don’t, I just might:
You’re stuck on Earth here with me where the coolest thing you can do is fly to Japan and ride a bullet train (pretty amazing, but that’s where earth travel peaks). So J. Kenton Pierce brings you this travel pamphlet from the future to try and cheer you up. I think being sentient would be a curse if we didn’t have an imagination to help us escape to places like this sometimes:
(user) (publication)
There’s a lot of cool concepts in this.
A charismatic livestreaming fugitive polarizes the public with memes and a “big brained” persona. The antagonist has turned the theft of people’s retirement fortunes into a reality show. Chasing him is a hybrid space sheriff/counter terrorism/colony security/all the law enforcement things; a one-woman swiss army knife operating on stretched resources and a to-do list longer than a prescription receipt from CVS. Fortunately she brings inherited instincts into this high-tech world, one that mixes automation and aging solar infrastructure.
A number of other cool ideas breathe life into the setting. For example: this world has AI judges, but our protagonist is certain her target will appeal to a human judge (the “ego tax”). The fugitive could choose “Beep boop, fair sentence, done,” but he’s more likely to demand a human judge who will go: “That’s an extra five years for making me leave my couch for work, punk!”
There’s 30 chapters of this, check it out here or click the first chapter below (and it looks like Wyatt’s got two other books, too!):
(user) (publication)
I enjoy L.E. Mullin’s art style and stories. I want to feature him all the time but I don’t really have anything witty to say about his comics. I won’t let that stop me this time - here’s The Condor, a man I hardly understand but I love seeing every time he shows up on my substack feed. I’ve linked the character’s origin story here too, in case you want more:
The Flight of the Condor Volume One
I’m exactly like this other writer, Sylvie. With some… minor differences.
Unlike Sylvie, words don’t circle me like birds - during a storm I’m more likely to be struggling to catch a wi-fi signal, waving my hotspot around like a fool and stressing that the power might go out. Parchment doesn’t stare at me. Instead, the cold white light of a screen blinds me with its judgmental glare: “WRITE, FOOL!” And I don’t go for teacups and scratching quills. Give me my industrial-sounding mechanical keyboard with metal springs and a pair of noise-cancelling headphones blasting the ambient sound of a bomber engine. Um yeah, no rain pattering on the window panes, please. I’ll sometimes switch cacophonous sounds like battlefields or war drums when my blood pressure gets up into the 150s. I’m also not so much “quill hovering, ink shimmering,” I’m rather more “wireless mouse clattering, coffee mug spilling.” She’s got her steaming tea and melting candles like some kind of spa commercial and it’s quite romantic. I’m trying to come up with a counterpoint to this scene that fits me but it turns out I’m completely unmarketable.
But the end, when the work is completed! It’s the same for both of us. Just like me, Sylvie’s glowing, the page is glowing, everything around has gone mute from the shine of unearthly rays - it seems her finished works are toxic and highly radioactive - so are mine!
My top spot (which becomes the bottom when the robot arm on the garbage truck grabs and flips the can over) goes to Ian’s “Pharmakos.” This little gem flawlessly weaves ancient mystical superstition with a futuristic sci-fi setting where civilization learns a human’s death sparks a rejuvenation of life.
This discovery is celebrated with quite the killer party, heheh, get it? The obvious solution to a dying sun is to shoot a giant missile at it full of everyone still hung over from the festivities last night. Said vessel, the Sunflower III, blasts off on a Monday. A mid-morning Monday - because apparently even humanity’s last hope can’t escape a bad case of the Mondays.
My question, though - how do they know this won’t turn the sun into a cosmic chia pet?
Guess we’ll find out:
Are you the kind of nerd that loves a certain universe, whether it be horror or sci-fi or something else vast and full of events or strange metaphysical rules, and can never get enough lore to go with it?
I am one of those nerds. I’ve gone down many a wiki rabbit hole in my time, sometimes into the wee hours of the night, learning everything I can about a fictional battle that occurs behind the scenes in some book or movie, an event that explains a 3-second cameo of some guy in the background who features a facial quirk that becomes a hilarious meme appreciated by exactly 24 people on the internet.
Did this description sell you on why you should read The Reaper’s Audit?
No?
Shoot.
But I’ll link it anyway. This short story takes a look at an awesome villain in the Bellageist universe:
Bellageist: The Reaper’s Audit
The most dangerous being in the Bellageist Universe describes the many civilizations it has destroyed.
Thanks for reading!
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Thanks so much! Getting featured in the only reviews that matter is a real honor, especially to grab the "top spot" in lucky #13. Thanks for all you're doing to support and build community!
Thanks for the shout out! 💙🫶