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New Home for The Bright Empire

08 Mar 2005 11:58 #387 by brantley
New Home for The Bright Empire was created by brantley
It's Interstellar Superwomen's Day at The Bright Empire. By pure coincidence, March 8 also marks the debut of the new home for my site. As most of you know, ubergirls.org is closing down, and can no longer serve as the umbrella for other sites devoted to superheroine fiction, art and discussion. My new home is:

www.brightempire.com

To celebrate the move, I'm presenting Part One of "Homecoming," a sequel to "Companions" by Velvet Belle Tree. Velvet wrote several scenes of the story of Ju'lette and Liz'bet, Velorian companions indentured to different kinds of masters on Nova Iberia, a planet settled by abductees from medieval Spain. Among other things, she made the Scalantran traders her own, contributing to the Canonical History with the first physical description of a race that is truly alien -- although some had assumed them to be human.

Now she's getting into the society, manners and mores of the Scalantrans, with whom Ju'lette has embarked on the Far Wanderer. She wants to reach Velor as soon as possible, to report on what has happened on Nova Iberia, what's she's learned from in, and what the Velorian authorities should learn from it.

Only, the Scalantrans have other priorities: the Far Wander must replenish its ranks, most of the ship's complement having been slaughtered by the Arions. They also see a need to inform their own authorities about what appears to be an escalation in Arion hostilities to their kind. That will take them first to one of their secret meetpoint planets, and then to Andros -- which happens to be the home of Kella Zaver'el, first of the Companions, as well as their own regional factor general. Ju'lette must cope with all this, and with finding her true self as a Velorian.

www.brightempire.com/Homecoming_01.pdf

Also new to The Bright Empire is an expanded Aurora Universe page, with links to the story sites of Alex Vincent and Moxie as well as Shadar and Tarot Barnes, plus the Ordinary Velorians serial that Shadar started and I completed, the Canonical History and related documents, and Tarot's Encyclopedia Veloria. Once I get up to speed with management of the new site, I hope to bring you a lot more.

My eternal gratitude to Shadar for setting me up as an early wedding present (the wedding isn't until July 3).

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21 Oct 2005 10:09 #3154 by brantley
Replied by brantley on topic Re: New Home for The Bright Empire
There's a famous story by Frank R. Stockton called "The Lady or the Tiger," in which an accused man is brought to an arena and asked to choose between two doors. Behind one, a beautiful woman. Behind the other, a man-eating tiger. But Lt. Ken Dahl has no such choice in Evelyn Y's "New Orders" -- it's the Lady AND the Tiger in another chapter of her work-in-progress called Project SG, centering on the genetically enhanced Katie O'Grady. When Dahl's assigned to serve her needs, it may be love or death or both.....

brightempire.com/Katie-orders.htm

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21 Oct 2005 10:09 #3155 by brantley
Replied by brantley on topic Re: New Home for The Bright Empire
There's a famous story by Frank R. Stockton called "The Lady or the Tiger," in which an accused man is brought to an arena and asked to choose between two doors. Behind one, a beautiful woman. Behind the other, a man-eating tiger. But Lt. Ken Dahl has no such choice in Evelyn Y's "New Orders" -- it's the Lady AND the Tiger in another chapter of her work-in-progress called Project SG, centering on the genetically enhanced Katie O'Grady. When Dahl's assigned to serve her needs, it may be love or death or both.....

brightempire.com/Katie-orders.htm

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21 Oct 2005 10:12 #3156 by brantley
Replied by brantley on topic Re: New Home for The Bright Empire
I just linked the final scene to an mp3 of the love song the Novo Recifense opera company performs for James and Bidu. Didn't know how to get an mp3 until Shadar explained it. It's a beautiful song, and I always wanted it to be part of the experience of the story, Now it is.

brightempire.com/Terms.html

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24 Oct 2005 13:19 #3180 by brantley
Replied by brantley on topic Re: New Home for The Bright Empire
As of last night, 3,999 requests for HOMECOMING, Part I, since March 20, and with those from March 8-19, must be well over four thousand.

Rounding out the top five, from March 20 on:

"Companions," 2,946

"Mundane Secrets of the Yo-Yo Brotherhood," 2,736

Andy's "The Harvest," Part I, 2,325

"Terms of Enhancement," 1,922

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26 Oct 2005 22:16 #3211 by MackTheMouse2
Replied by MackTheMouse2 on topic requests
Wow.

So, um, when are you going to fulfill those desperate people's dreams? :)

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28 Oct 2005 13:14 #3227 by brantley
Replied by brantley on topic Re: New Home for The Bright Empire
Which dreams do you have in mind? :?:

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18 Nov 2005 01:22 #3557 by brantley
Replied by brantley on topic Re: New Home for The Bright Empire
Don't know where else to post this.....

If Velvet and I were to organize another superheroine fiction panel at the 2006 Lunacon (March 17-19, Hasbrouck Heights, NJ), how many of you might show up?

It was a bust last year, but we didn't really publicize it. Maybe if we had....

Any suggestions for other sf and/or comic conventions that might be a good place for such a program?

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01 Dec 2005 03:32 #3687 by brantley
Replied by brantley on topic Re: New Home for The Bright Empire
Pegasus Gate is not a superheroine novel. But neither is most of the fiction of Ed Howdershelt and Lisa Binkley.

An e-book in progress by myself and Velvet Belle Tree, it tells the story of men and women from diverse backgrounds who have been chosen by lottery and by fitness to colonize a new world. They have good reason to leave Earth, for Earth some decades hence is not a pleasant place to live: there have been plagues, desultory wars, and general social and economic breakdown.

New Hope is indeed a world of new hope to the few chosen to settle there. And yet it is far from a paradise. Colonists must labor from dawn to dusk to wrest a living from the land, reclaiming it bit by bit from the native ecology – which can strike back at times in terrible ways. There is an odd mix of necessary primitive and necessary high technology, but luxuries are few and far between. Those of New Hope have no one to depend on but each other, as they strive to create a society that will – hopefully – avoid the mistakes that haveplagued their old world.

We have each written chapters and revised each other's. "Widower," in which an ordinary New Hope farmer faces personal tragedy, was begun by Velvet, and revised and expanded by both of us until it took its present form.

brightempire.com/Widower.htm

But to remain true to the primary purpose of The Bright Empire, and with Velvet's help, I have also updated Throne of the Gods, correcting previous unnoticed errors, tweaking details about the Scalantrans in light of her contributions to the canon on that people, and adding a picture of Alisa-zar Kim Vallara

brightempire.com/Throneofthegods.htm

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