The Greatest Spectacle in Science Fiction is back with a vengeance, just in time for the Indy 500!
As promised, John C. Bodin and I have managed to get this machine out to the starting grid, so now it’s time to start the engine and put the right foot down. 5 Days in May, a collection of fun and furious short stories is available in both electronic and print versions today (what a great way to celebrate my birthday!)
You can pick up a copy here:
AMAZON: US – UK – DE – CA ($2.99 eBook/$6.99 in Print)
BARNES & NOBLE (Search me later today!)
KOBO
SMASHWORDS
CREATESPACE ($6.99 in print)
As I noted above, this also happens to be my birthday! (Yay me for living so long,eh?). As a special present to Typosphere readers, here’s a deal!
Bump Day $1.99 Special
at Smashwords
(33% off – Good Thru 5/17)
Use Coupon Code AN99P
As always, thank you so much for your support. Early sales are very important to the success of a new book, as is good word of mouth. If you pick this up and find our high-octane, pulpy SF take on racing is fun, please do let others know. Every little bit helps.
“But,” you say, “I already have Four Days in May!”
Since you’re a previous reader, this is an “update” from last year’s release wherein you get one more story (dare we call it a pit stop to take on more fuel and a new set of tires?). So let us help you out. Email me at ron@typosphere.com and get a free e-version upgrade to 5 Days. (Be sure to note your preferred format!)
I think I can speak for John when I say that this is one of those pure fun, “for the love of the game,” kind of projects. We hope you enjoy reading them as much as we enjoy writing them. To give you a little flavor of how we think about it, I’ve pasted our Introduction below:
Pod racing in Star Wars aside, you don’t find much science fiction focused on racing. That is a shame, of course. Racing, you see, is about all the things that make for good science fiction.
It’s about technology, of course—ask any race team in the world what they are working on and you’ll get one of two answers, either an immediate flow of excited discussion about wind tunnels or horsepower optimization, or whatnot, or you’ll get a steely eyed stare that more than suggests you’re an idiot if you think he or she is going to spill the beans on anything that might give the other guy a leg up.
Racing is about time, and time is something that science fiction people have always found fascinating. Time is the ultimate gas, gas, gas, after all. It’s compressible, extendable, twistable, and moldable. Our memories change as we move through it. Science fiction plays with time as no other literature can, while racing measures time in ways that no other sport does. Time in the pits. Time behind. Time until the next race.
Despite all the advances in safety over the past fifty years, racing is still, of course, about danger. And fire. And screeching rubber and banging side-by-side runs. Racing is about playing on the edge of capability, the edge of what is known. This is what science fiction at its best has done since the days of Jules Vern.
And, finally, racing is about people who rise above themselves, and about teams of people, the lot of which—though totally reliant on those individuals—are stronger than any one of those individuals. Racing is about that perfect moment when all the work and tears shed in preparation come together to result in victory. And racing is about finding the message inherent in the human condition for when all that work and those tears do not result in victory. In this way, racing is life. And so is science fiction. In fact, science fiction is, perhaps, the most human of literatures. It is in science fiction that one can lift a person out of the mundane existence of the real world and explore the depths of who they are.
So we say to the world that there really ought be science fiction focused on racing, and since if it is to be, it’s up to me, we’ve taken it upon ourselves to create this little nook of the world. We hope you like it. When we began this three years ago, our intention was to add a lap to this race every season—and it seems we’ve managed to keep the wheels on and the car on the road well enough that now we’ve got five good ones under our belt. And we expect to go the distance—whatever that means for us. These Indy stories are great fun for us, and we still intend to write one new one story each season, a story set sometime in the past or the future or the whenever.
Will you like it?
We hope you will.
Or will the idea crash into the wall at 200 MPH?
Who knows?
All we can say for sure is that it’s going to be straight-out, pedal-to-the-metal fun. And that, too, can be said about racing as well as science fiction.
John & Ron
Updated May 2015