The Blind Mystic – A Short Sci-Fi Story on Mercury

“The mercenary Myrilla Nakamura made her way through the garage of Habitat 5. She was wearing a silver spacesuit given to her by the Religious Council of Mercury. She held a big round helmet and had a stun gun hidden in a Velcro holster sewn inside the bib of her coveralls. Myrilla went over the gig in her mind. Meet her new partner at lot X25. Take the supplied ATV. Go to Twilight City. Find and capture the popular mystic, Noor. A madwoman who was making people look at the sun.” (Read the rest here)

There’s not a lot of science fiction stories that take place on Mercury—mainly because it’s a burning hot rock next to the sun and who the hell would live THERE?

But as you have seen on my World Building on Mercury, a story on Mercury could also provide an intriguing new sci-fi setting people aren’t used to.

I am fascinated with the Dan Brown style of combining two seemingly unlike things. For him it was the Vatican and CERN’s atom smasher. For me, it was Sufi Mysticism and Mercury.

I was inspired by the Sufi wisdom in The Way of the Sufi Kindle by Idries Shah.

I’m also intrigued with the stories of veterans (partially because I have a lot of veterans in my own family). While military fiction can often look at what happens during the war, I often find it more interesting to look at the philosophical battles that take place after.

I’d to thank Bullet Points magazine (a magazine for military fiction) for reprinting my story. I’ve also done an interview with them about military fiction on this site.

Links:

Bullet Points Volume 10 (Read The Blind Mystic in this volume)

Read The Blind Mystic Online Here

“The Bee Wrangler” – New Military Flash Fiction

Ines deals with the war by wrangling bees.

For those of you who are interested in reading or writing military fiction (the same genre which brought us Starship Troopers and Ender’s Game), check out Bullet Points Magazine! They are accepting submissions!

They are a military fiction magazine that captures the complexity, tragedy, and hope of warfare and violence in human and nonhuman society.

My story, “The Bee Wrangler,” just made it into their AI edition.

The 9th edition of Bullet Points Magazine explores AI in warfare from multiple angles: AI run amok (in some very unexpected ways), the loyalty of AI on the battlefield, or more reflective uses of AI after the fighting has stopped, and sometimes, the real fighting begins (as explained in the magazine’s introduction). There’s also a funny story about sentient bullets.

“The Bee Wrangler” depicts the tale of a former drone operator trying to overcome the trauma of war by using the military tech installed in her brain in a quite unexpected way—to save the bees!

Read Bullet Points Edition 9 Here on Amazon

Read “The Bee Wrangler” for FREE here!

An Image I Made For “The Bee Wrangler”