"Hope Immortal" and "Solo"

I know what you are thinking. That Katz guy is a great writer, but where are the spaceships? Can he even call himself a Science Fiction fan? Well, I have good news for you, my SF-demanding (and totally not hypothetical) reader: the SF has arrived. The year’s end saw not only one but two of my Science Fiction tales hit the (e)shelves.

First up is my story “Hope Immortal” in Earthbound Fiction’s Dark Stars anthology. What's it about? Well, we start with dear Naryk waking up, alone, on a ship hurtling through space. And the air is running out. I'll give you the first small section as a little sampler:

Naryk woke and could not breathe. He was pressed against an unyielding barrier, 

and black spots danced against a darker backdrop in his eyes, like stars. He realized he 

was standing up, his hands crossed over his chest and his legs tight together.

There was a button, wasn’t there? Men in crumpled uniforms had told him, told 

all of them, about a button. 

What button?

There was no air. His fingers were intertwined, and he didn’t have the space to 

separate his hands. He was dying; he would die here in the dark, alone.

His hands were wrapped around the button, that’s where it was. A button for 

emergencies right beneath his intertwined fingers. 

He pushed it.

The glass slid away, and a hissing filled the air, a lone harbinger of sound almost 

unbearable after the silence that had come before. Naryk fell into a new world of light 

and pain.

Alone.

I wrote "Hope Immortal" a long time ago, but I think that it's held up extremely well, and I hope that you do too. Of course, it's not the only piece in the anthology. For your three bucks, you also get tales by Samuel Mae, Deborah Walker, and a whole host of others.

Then there is the matter of "Solo," which is a quirky little piece that I quite like. Interstellar Fiction has it up to read, and for free, so there is really no conceivable or earthly reason to not pop over right now and devour every delectable sentence of the thing. It is, to give the briefest possible account I can, a Science Fiction reenactment of Lovecraft's themes that aims to both effectively execute them and to be downright silly and a great deal of fun throughout.

Enjoy!