Tag: science fiction

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Your Ebook of AFTER Life INFERNO is Permafree

AFTER Life, Inferno, the first book in my nanotech-zompoc trilogy, is now permafree everywhere. Find AFTER Life, Inferno by Robert Chazz Chute wherever you get your ebooks and enjoy the free roller coaster ride as brain parasites plus artificial intelligence give the human race a makeover.

http://bit.ly/AFTERLifeZombies (Click the cover for the universal Amazon link. More options follow.)

Available for free on these publishing platforms (clickable links below):

Amazon
KOBO
Barnes & Noble

APPLE

SCRIBD

TOLINO

VIVLIO

  • AFTER Life PURGATORY
  • AFTER Life PARADISE
  • AFTER Life OMNIBUS

Available on Amazon

In AFTER Life PURGATORY, Dr. Chloe Robinson joins forces with Officer Daniel Harmon to contain the AI’s weapon that threatens to overtake Toronto.

In the conclusion to the trilogy, AFTER LIfe PARADISE, the zombie invasion of the United States has begun. Villains will be revealed, sacrifices will be made. Shudder and cheer through the grand finale.

AFTER Life OMNIBUS is Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise in one grand binge read. Get all three books in one big paperback.

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My Top Five Books

Never ask a writer which is the best book they’ve written. That’s like demanding they choose their favorite child. It’s mean. However, gun to my head, here are my personal top five (and why):

This Plague of Days

The global pandemic begins with a killer flu that brings down civilization as we know it. You’re shown how our systems collapse in a very real-world scenario. (This is also my most popular series.)

It’s a slow burn as the virus continues to evolve. New species rise and things get weird. The supernatural toys with the survivors of the cull and our champion, Jaimie Spencer, is a radical departure from the usual heroes in the genre. He’s a selective mute on the spectrum whose special interest in dictionaries and Latin proverbs.

As battles between Good and Evil go, this is genre-bending. TPOD is complex and expansive. No red shirts!

The Night Man

Everyone who reads this prodigal son story loves it (but many haven’t read it). On a medical discharge from the Army, Ernest “Easy” Jack returns home to rural Michigan to train German Shepherds with his father. His high school sweetheart needs help. His dad’s on the shady side of a conspiracy involving dirty cops and a murderous real estate mogul.

The Night Man‘s plot is packed with action, but it’s Easy’s complex issues with war wounds, PTSD, and a checkered family history with his hometown which makes the story work on every level. If suspenseful thrillers are your thing, please do read this next.

Citizen Second Class

This makes my top five now because, though it’s set in a near-future dystopia, the story feels too relevant to what’s going on in the United States today. Kismet Beatriz comes from a military family but her nation has forgotten them. Democracy has collapsed and the hyper-wealthy (AKA the Select Few) have turned the Atlanta into a fortress.

Against a backdrop of food shortages, unemployment, secret police, and massive income disparity, Kismet must journey to New Atlanta. All she wants to do is feed her family, but fate has bigger plans for her.

Despite the grim premise, Citizen Second Class has funny and hopeful notes. The book I’m writing now is in the same world, earlier in the timeline. The next novel is darker, more like Crime and Punishment set at the end of the world. I’m often cynical and paranoid. Given the events of 2020, I wasn’t cynical and paranoid enough.

Amid Mortal Words

Man, this was fun to write, and it’s fun to read! A powerful book falls into the hands of an Air Force officer. Passages from the book can punish the guilty and work wonders for the innocent. This one book could set the world right. It might also condemn humanity to destruction.

This is twisty and fun, but readers often find it thought-provoking. If you’ve ever dreamed of being king or queen for a day, Amid Mortal Words is your next binge read.

AFTER Life

Readers often identify me as a zombie writer, but I only have two zombie trilogies. This Plague of Days was the first. After TPOD, I thought I’d done everything I could do in the genre that would feel fresh. Then along came AFTER, and I received new inspiration.

Artificial Facilitation Therapy for Enhanced Response was supposed to be a medical miracle based in nanotechnology. Weaponized, we get zombies.

The twist: The AI infecting our brains is evolving and wants to understand and improve humans. The action is non-stop, but underneath it all the infected are still conscious humans, horrified at what they are forced to do.

This Plague of Days is a supernatural horror epic. AFTER Life is the journey where science fiction curves right as humanity goes awry. It ends up in a fascinating place at the end of the trilogy. Love it! I hope you will, too.

~ I am Robert Chazz Chute. I write killer crime thrillers and suspenseful apocalyptic epics. My faves might not be identical to yours and that’s okay. I’m proud of all my work.

Also, I must add that I love my children equally and that fact drives them both crazy.

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All I’ve got for you

I have witnessed police act like thugs and bullies to the citizens they were sworn to protect. Last night, two NYPD police SUVs rammed into a crowd of peaceful protesters behind a barrier. Ordinary citizens are having to step up to protect their neighborhoods. To be perfectly honest, I don’t have a lot of hope at the moment.

The murder of George Floyd was a horrific act, but of course it is not isolated. Sandra Bland, Amaud Arbery, Tamir Rice, Breonna Taylor, and Eric Garner come to mind first, but that’s just off the top of my head. (Here’s more if you need reminding.)

Over and over, through the night and across the country, we saw more video of the kind of actions that are being protested. Although Seattle police were ordered to turn off their body cams, there is ample evidence that many bad actors have no fear of being filmed while they commit criminal acts. They aren’t helping their cause. They’re often making things worse. They’ve discarded their oaths. They are neither serving nor protecting. Remember when we used to call them peace officers? Instead, they’re often militarized and failing to deescalate.

Don’t tell me policing is a hard job. Surely they knew that when they signed up. You know what’s hard? Being an unarmed black man, woman, or child trying to live and get by without harassment, fear and subjugation.

There have been a few bright spots. One senior police official told those under his command that if they’re okay with the mistreatment and murder of George Floyd, they must turn in their badges immediately. The police chief in Louisville marched with the protesters. That’s a good way to go, but there’s a lot of distance between what ought to be and what is.

It’s frustrating to watch America dissemble and disassemble, but this was all too predictable. Rebellion comes from a perfect storm of several variables and systemic racism is only one component. Health care failures, failure of leadership, the coronavirus, the rent crisis, tossing Americans $1200 that was supposed to somehow last ten weeks. Many Americans didn’t even get that $1200 and no more relief is in sight. There are more Americans unemployed than there are Canadians on Earth. You can’t demand the oppressed to be patient forever without offering some hope of real change.

For your consideration:

Mike Schmidt’s latest podcast episode is called I’m in the Club. It’s about what’s happening to his country right now. Mike’s great at articulating frustration. I recommend it. It’s NSFW, but neither is America.

A while back, I recommended the podcast called It Could Happen Here, a thoughtful take on the potential for America falling into rebellion and ruin. Here’s the link:

And here’s the link to my most recent recording, “The Face of Victory.”

Taken from one of my anthologies, All Empires Fall, this audio short story was meant to be near-future science fiction about a peaceful protest that goes very wrong. Today it feels all too prescient.

For a longer read and a deeper dive:

For a novel about the gap between rich and poor and what it means for the soul of America, check out Citizen Second Class. It’s about what happens when the rich press the poor down for so long and so hard that, in desperation, they are forced to rise up.

I take no pleasure in watching what is happening in the United States. I have so many friends and readers who live there and I am worried for them. Future historians will spend their entire careers and write many books about the Trump era generally and 2020 in particular.

Frustrated and helpless, I can offer my best wishes for their safety, but what is that worth, really? It’s a civil war and a horror. It’s a rebellion. Thoughts and prayers are insufficient. Only change will do, but I see no path forward at the moment.

I can offer podcasts to articulate the crisis. I can offer fiction to provide distraction and stress relief. I’m so sorry that’s all I’ve got.

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Enjoy your audio sample of Citizen Second Class

Citizen Second Class
Available from Amazon in ebook and paperback
Listen now to the first chapter of Citizen Second Class

Click the play button to hear the first chapter of Citizen Second Class

About the Citizen Second Class:

The revolution is about to begin!

America has fallen to fascism. The rich have retreated behind the walls of the fortress they call New Atlanta. They won’t give up their power easily.

Oppression and starvation gave birth to the Resistance, but every rebellion needs a champion. Desperate to save her grandmother from starvation, Kismet Beatriz must make the journey to infiltrate the stronghold of the Select Few. 

From the author of This Plague of Days comes a near-future thriller built for fans of Nineteen Eighty-four and The Handmaid’s Tale. 

BUY CITIZEN SECOND CLASS ON AMAZON NOW
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A Review of Netflix’s Into The Night

In quarantimes, sometimes you stumble on something easy to distract you from the real-world disaster outside your windows. So it is with Netflix’s recent addition of Into The Night. End-of-the-world science fiction is quite a mixed bag. Budgets are rarely up to the scale of a global apocalypse. I enjoyed Into The Night quite a bit. This Belgian production is very watchable, especially if you don’t think about it too hard.

Premise: Jump on a jet and head west to outrun the sun because if sunlight catches you, you’re dead. We don’t know why, it just does, okay? Cue the crazed Italian soldier with insider NATO knowledge taking over a plane with a bunch of people onboard to begin the race against sunlight. The hardy and not-so-hardy group of passengers striving to survive are a diverse group from several countries. A few will struggle for leadership of the band. Not everyone will make it. At least one person will ruin the quest for safety, but justice and injustice will be served.

Pros: This is classic out-the-frying-pan, into-the-fire stuff. Every problem demands a short-term solution that causes another problem and the clock is always ticking. Season One of this series reminded me very much of The Langoliers.

Remember that Stephen King story from Four Past Midnight? Remember the limited TV series where Bronson Pinchot played the weasel you loved to hate? Wasn’t that fun? This is, too.

Into The Night is based on a Polish Novel, The Old Axolotl by Jacek Dukaj. What the six-part series gets right, I’m going to attribute to the author. For instance, yes, when the oxygen masks drop, the air supply doesn’t last long. It’s only meant to buy time so the pilot can get to a lower altitude. Such details, the interpersonal drama, and a glimpse of passengers’ back stories are the quality stuff. Jason George, of Narcos fame, must be the other power behind what’s good about this show.

Cons: There’s not much to complain about unless you’re some snobby film critic who writes for Slate. The audio is in English. Shut off the subtitles because the difference between the dialogue and what’s printed on screen is a bit of a distraction. Sometimes the geography makes no sense. You don’t land in Nova Scotia and head to Alaska over the Pacific. Another hiccup: To bounce around the globe as they do, Canada couldn’t be that much bigger than Lichtenstein. It really isn’t, not by a very long walk.

But really, that’s picking nits and who cares? We’re here for the fights, twists and the reversals. This is fun bubble gum for the eyes. Even with a few flaws in logic, the premise is a great big idea: The sun will kill us! Stay in the dark! Out fly the spin of the Earth and race the dawn! And, holy shit, what now?!

So many apocalyptic movies are done so badly, this is better than most by far. I would say it’s all well-acted, too. Pop the popcorn and enjoy. Each episode of Into the Night will fly by.

~ I’m Robert Chazz Chute. Besides killer crime thrillers, I write apocalyptic fiction. My end-of-the-world books are This Plague of Days (trilogy), AFTER Life (trilogy), Amid Mortal Words, All Empires Fall (anthology), Citizen Second Class, Robot Planet, Wallflower (time travel) and the Ghosts and Demons Series (Haunting Lessons, Death Lessons, Fierce Lessons, and Dream’s Dark Flight).

Please check out all my books at the links down the right side of this blog.

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The AFTER Life Meet-up

A rare visitor appears on the porch.

This really made my day. Andrew lives 75 minutes away. He’d read AFTER Life Inferno and wanted to dig into the rest of the trilogy, Purgatory and Paradise. He jumped in his car and made the journey to our world headquarters in Other London. Now he’s got them all!

We had a good long chat, too. Of course, we maintained our distance. (This shot was taken through the glass of the door.) I so appreciated that he made the journey to buy books, I mean, 75 minutes to me, 75 minutes to get home? That’s a reader, man!

It’s funny how connections get made. I attended a performance by director Kevin Smith years ago. I came home and wrote a blog post about how inspiring it was. Andrew was in the audience that night and picked up what I was putting down.

Enjoy AFTER Life, Andrew! So glad you made the drive. You’re in for a happy ride.

Andrew Butters is an author, too.

He writes a cool blog called Potato Chip Math.

Here’s a link to his books.

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What to do during the apocalypse

Aside from planning a vegetable garden to supplement my supply of  M&Ms…

I don’t anticipate leaving my blanket fort (where I write and work on audiobooks) until about two weeks post-Vaccination Day. So looking forward to Vaccination Day!

Wee Beasties will kill me if they catch me outside so here’s how I’m spending my days in isolation:

I’m making a concerted effort to drink more water and work out daily. When in need of comfort, I make a mean focaccia. Not too much or too often with the bread. If I do that, why bother with exercise? There’s plenty of ways to get a heavy sweat on without venturing out into the Badlands. These walls are my world.

I figure a lot of dudes go to prison and come out buff. That’s my plan.

How are you spending your time in isolation?

P.S. If you’re looking for something fun to read, AFTER Life: Inferno, the first book in that zombie apocalypse trilogy is free today (April 3, 2020).

AFTER LIFE INFERNO
mybook.to/AFTERLife1