Solar System Blues began as a spoken-word element of a band show for The Fest, a music and arts festival that my brother and his friends used to put on in Lancaster, PA every July. It’s the first thing I consciously created a First Draft for, and circulated said draft for comments from friends and family. That was back in 2009, and I’ve futzed and tinkered with it ever since.

To the particulars: the story is set in the late 22nd century, in a dystopian/cyperpunk future, when six or seven leviathan superstates battle for dominance with terrifiying weapons. One wounded soldier of these wars, employed on a secret project to enable humanity to survive nuclear war, instead steals the ship, and with a self-aware computer, a store of frozen genetic material, and a teenage first mate born in space, goes in search of a new planet for humanity to live on. Everything goes according to plan, except for what doesn’t.

For me, this book is less about future shock and more about human community: how it is destroyed, and how it can be restored. Is it really possible for humanity to have a mulligan? Or would we just make the same mistakes under different stars?

Anyway, it’s available in paperback and Kindle form. Hie ye to Amazon and buy (Think of it as “Hitting the Freaking Tip Jar,” as a wise man of my acquaintance once said). Darling Daughter needs new shoes.