The Horror Channel on Freeview shows old Star Trek in a kind of never-ending cycle and currently they’re doing The Next Generation so I’m watching it again. In the modern era of gore and terrifying drama it is…well, nice. Klingons are annoying and the episodes set in the Holodeck don’t do anything for me but about half of it is pretty good.
In a coincidental collision of fiction this week I watched the second series episode ‘The Measure of a Man’ where it’s decided that Data is more than a thing. This reminded me of my favourite Heinlein story ‘Jerry was a Man’ and then I received the latest On Spec and read Al Onia’s excellent story ‘Rising Cold’ in which chimpanzees are being frozen in a Cryo lab. They’re human enough to be used for experiments but not so human as to have rights. This sort of thing happens now, sadly.
Android rights may be an important issue in the 21st century. Human rights are already a bone of contention. Some reactionaries like Heinlein thought you couldn’t just vote yourself the right to a nice life, you had to earn it.
Author: Eamonn Murphy - Writer
Eamonn Murphy has published over seventy stories in small press magazines and collected them into small, cheap volumes for posterity. They are available at all good eBook retailers and libraries. In his spare time, he writes reviews for sfcrowsnest. Retired now after years of hard labour (building sites and call centres), he lives near Bristol, England, with a nice lady, a nasty Jack Russell, an untrainable loony Labrador and some ducks. He has a BA (Hons) from the Open University but very little common sense. Find out more at eamonnmurphywriter.com.
I used to be a bloke
I used to be just an ordinary bloke.
Now I’m a stereotypical unreconstructed white heterosexual cisgender male member of the oppressive patriarchal knobocracy and feel a bit guilty all the time.
As Joe Walsh sang ‘everybody’s so different, I haven’t changed.’
Royalties!
I finally got my first 6 months worth of Royalties for The Brigstowe Dragons, put out last September by the estimable men and women at Alban Lake Publishing. Their terms are quite generous as I get 20% of print sales and 60% of any e-book sales – not bad at all in the sometimes cruel world of publishing. They sold 3 paper copies and 1 e-book.
My royalties were…..$4.62
I’m hoping it will be a slow starter like Harry Potter. Otherwise, as my dad used to say, you’d make more singing outside the Odeon, even with my singing. Alban Lake presumably has other more successful works out there as sales from mine wouldn’t even cover the printing costs; or the cover for that matter.
Oh well. I like writing so I might as well carry on. Short stories still sell for $20 – $50 so I’ll keep doing them.
