At The Bright Empire....

EMPRESS OF THE DAWN, the first part of which appears today, was inspired by Shadar's outline at Aurora Universe: Other Worlds for the background of a story he never wrote, about a Companion named Kalla working on the planet Andros, long after her indenture. What appealed to me was the idea of her living long enough to have pursued a number of different careers, and to help shape the progress of her adopted world. More about that in "Behind the Stories" – scroll way down there! But I also wanted to shape that imagined world for myself. I was a Byzantine history buff back in high school, and I used that background to imagine the people who called themselves Romaioi – although they weren't Roman – and the kind of society they might create when the Seeders brought them to a new world. Shadar had imagined a world peopled by Greeks from classical times; I had an entirely different idea. Of course, I was fascinated by Kalla herself – enough to give her guest appearances in Part II of Velvet's Homecoming and in "Incident at Madstop," while I was trying to work out the details of her early life. Velvet helped a lot with the opening chapters about her journey to Andros with the Scalantrans and her arrival and indenture and first days with Feodor.

www.brightempire.com/empress.pdf

But there's a lot more to this update than one story. I've been working on a novel, Countdown to History, that is set mostly during World War II and introduces the Velorians and Arions to Earth in my take on the Aurora Universe. Only "Arions" sounds just like "Aryans," although there isn't any connection between the two – in my first drafts, I had Arions hedging their bets by working with both the Nazis and the Communists against the West. So I cast about for another name – one acceptable to Shadar and Tarot Barnes as well as myself – and came up with Aureans. It has a certain resonance, because it sounds as if it comes from the Latin word for gold, and we could even imagine that the Naturalists who exiled themselves from Velor early on considered themselves the real Golden People. But making such a basic change meant going over other stories at The Bright Empire to do find-and-replace – and make other minor tweaks for the sake of consistency between stories. Nearly all of that has been done, from Throne of the Gods through "Incident at Madstop," but there are a few exceptions – notably The High Cruel Years and The Mission. In the first case, the confusion of "Arion" and "Aryan" was a plot point in the story and that has to be rethought; in the second, I'm not happy with the whole tone of what was a collaborative effort, and want to go over it more extensively... when time permits.

Another rant today, albeit a short one. "The Silly Season" is about odd news stories that are appearing out of season, and are not amusing. Also about the media's current obsession with celebrity trivia and the like at the expense of real news.

www.brightempire.com/silly.htm

Finally, although it doesn't relate directly to TBE, I am happy to announce the resurrecton of Infinity Bridge. Created by the late Douglas W. MacBeth, who wrote much of the best Aurora Universe fiction ever, it was brought back by dedicated fans after his death in a plane crash in 2001. Lisa Binkley had been caretaker for the last eight years, but the demands of Real Life had gotten in her way, and there was a problem with the password that should have allowed for a change of ownership. Tyler Spivey donated a complete archive of the original site to the Aurora Universe Readers Group after the site went down, and Tarot Barnes registered a new domain and uploaded the files over this past weekend. It's all there now.

www.infinitybridge.net

Thanks to Tyler and Tarot for getting Infinity Bridge back online!

Is there any chance of AK's stories getting uploaded to the new site?

Thanks to Tyler and Tarot for getting Infinity Bridge back online!

Is there any chance of AK's stories getting uploaded to the new site?

I've tried calling AK at home, but only gotten his answering machine. I'll keep trying. I e-mailed him a while back about the situation, but I don't know if he's still using the Julie of Velor e-mail link. It's been quite a while since he added anything to his site. Maybe he's just gafiated (sf fanspeak for "Getting Away from It All").

Meanwhile, let me know what you think of EMPRESS OF THE DAWN.

Finally heard from AK, and put him in touch with Tarot. Hope they can work something out.

--J.J.

Still nothing further from AKi, although I have an archive of his site from Tyler Spivey.

There's a complete Book of Feodor, first part of EMPRESS OF THE DAWN, at The Bright Empire now. I notice that there are a lot of hits now for other stories in which Kalla Zaver'el apperas, HOMECONING II and "Incident on Madstop."

brightempire.com/empress.pdf

brightempire.com/Homecoming-2.pdf

brightempire.com/Incident pdf

Velvet Belle Tree wrote most of HOMECOMING, which is the most popular series at my site, and she and Tarot Barnes contributed some of the best parts of EMPRESS.

Eight years now since the creation of THE BRIGHT EMPIRE, and in today's update there is more of THE POPCORN WAR, a story originally conceived not long after TERMS OF ENHANCEMENT. It was originally a collaboration with Jordan Taylor, who has since gafiated. But it wsa okay with her for me to carry on with it:

<www.brightempire.com/Popcorn.pdf>

Not part of the update, but as an added bonus here, is some Brazilian classical music, Novo Recife having been originally settled by people abducted from the Brazilian Nordeste:

<>

The AURG's own Brazilian authority, Jecel Assumpção Jr., dserves a lot of credit for vetting the language, and he even approved some of my embellishments, such as a proper Brazilian term for "enhancees."

Not new but improved, at least from my point of view, are Episodes 1-6 of THE MISSION, a collaboration with Robert Nagle that got out of hand, at least from my point of view. It was impractical to rewrite them entirely, but I tried to tone down the greatest absurdities:

<www.brightempire.com/The Mission.html>

A Blog update link and a number of recommendations for older and perhaps neglected stories by authors other than myself can also be found at:

<www.brightempire.com/new.htm>

--Brantley Thompson Elkins

So it's been more than a year and a half that I've been away. Some time soon after my last post here, I started having problems with the log-in or forum access or both -- I think this was long before the virus crisis I've seen mentioned elsewhere.

Anyway, I clicked on the SWM link by chance yesterday, and suddenly I was back in. A lot has happened at The Bright Empire, so perhaps the best approach now is just to post the What's New link again:

www.brightempire.com/new.htm

You'll see I have a couple of major unfinished projects, The Popcorn War and Book Two of Empress of the Dawn. I'm embarking, with help from Shadar, on yet another, Surely Some Revelation, which was inspired by discussion about the Warp Drive at the Aurora Universe Readers Group. Why isn't there any Warp Drive in the AU, now that a NASA scientist says it's feasible? Some conspiracy of the Galen, about whom we know little and what we "know" ain't necessarily so!

Be nice to have some guest writers, especially if they're willing to study up on the AU, which isn't easy -- especially my version, in which there are all sorts of cross connections between stories set even centuries apart. I picked up that trick from one of my favorite sf writers, Cordwainer Smith (He has a wikipedia entry.).

Glad to be back!

--Brantley

www.brightempire.com/Showcase.htm

Today is the last recurring number date of the 21st Century, and I just couldn't resist picking it to put up Lisa Binkley's "Questlings" as a Showcase feature.

Part one of a projected three-part saga about the flawed protector Nov'ayul, it first appeared in 2001, before I'd even heard of the Aurora Universe. A few years later, it was put up at Fictionwise, a commercial e-book site, but for copyright reasons had to be revised as a non-AU story. Barnes & Noble bought out Fictionwise a year or so ago to eliminate one competitor to Nook, but it turned up its corporate nose at "Questlings" and a number of other works and deleted them. That left only a single chapter of the original version at Lisa's site. Until she can get around to updating her site (and, hopefully, adding to the saga), I'm offering it as a Showcase item. The text is exactly as written 11 years ago, although some of the consensus background of the AU has changed since then. It's a true classic.

--Brantley Thompson Elkins

So Im looking for a particular story which was on Julie of Velor site. It was about a lab assistant, who was working for Lex Luthor. Luthor's plan was to lure Superman to a warehouse, and use a beam to steal his powers and infuse them in three of his henchmen, however it stead Supergirl comes. There is a fight, and the girl manages to turn the beam on Supergirl and transfer all of supergirls powers to her. The girl then beats up Supergirl, late she meets Lex, and beats up and rapes Superman. Any ideas on this?

starfury483 wrote: So Im looking for a particular story which was on Julie of Velor site. It was about a lab assistant, who was working for Lex Luthor. Luthor's plan was to lure Superman to a warehouse, and use a beam to steal his powers and infuse them in three of his henchmen, however it stead Supergirl comes. There is a fight, and the girl manages to turn the beam on Supergirl and transfer all of supergirls powers to her. The girl then beats up Supergirl, late she meets Lex, and beats up and rapes Superman. Any ideas on this?

Maybe you could find it at the Wayback Machine Archive of Julie of Velor:

web.archive.org/web/20080216121115/http:....infinitybridge.com/

Or Geek Seven might know. He seems to be in touch with AK, the man behind Julie of Velor.

--Brantley

brantley wrote:

starfury483 wrote: So Im looking for a particular story which was on Julie of Velor site. It was about a lab assistant, who was working for Lex Luthor. Luthor's plan was to lure Superman to a warehouse, and use a beam to steal his powers and infuse them in three of his henchmen, however it stead Supergirl comes. There is a fight, and the girl manages to turn the beam on Supergirl and transfer all of supergirls powers to her. The girl then beats up Supergirl, late she meets Lex, and beats up and rapes Superman. Any ideas on this?

Maybe you could find it at the Wayback Machine Archive of Julie of Velor:

web.archive.org/web/20080216121115/http:....infinitybridge.com/

Or Geek Seven might know. He seems to be in touch with Kiyoshi, the man behind Julie of Velor.

--Brantley

No, I never knew Kiyoshi, but from the description the story sounds like 'The Superior Girl'. One of the later chapters was in the storybank, but the wayback machine is probably your best bet for earlier chapters.

That's the story "Superior Girl". thanks everyone the wayback machine had it.

fats wrote: just to let everyone know, I have a full backup of Julie of Velor all 235 story files, Anon now has the files and will be adding them in due course.

Fats

Didn't realize that there were this many files from Julies place. Sorting them all in might take a while.

julievelor.tripod.com/UM/um1.html

Above is a link to a story presumably byAK that appears at what seems to be a ghost his old site (If you try the URL of the site without the story link, you just get a message saying the site is a subdomain of Infinity Bridge, but that's way, ay out of date. Only this particular story is relayed to a Geek Seven story. What sayeth Geek Seven?

--Brantley

brantley wrote: julievelor.tripod.com/UM/um1.html

Above is a link to a story presumably by Kyoshi Akima that appears at what seems to be a ghost his old site (If you try the URL of the site without the story link, you just get a message saying the site is a subdomain of Infinity Bridge, but that's way, way out of date. Only this particular story is relayed to a Geek Seven story. What sayeth Geek Seven?

--Brantley

I love that story; it was also an inspiration for my story 'The Skylark', but other than that I have no link to Kyoshi. If memory serves, there was another story featuring German supergirls in WW2 that he said was inspired by the epilogue to my story 'Liberty Belle'.

I've never had any direct contact with Julie/Kyoshi, but obviously his work has been an influence on mine, and in a couple of cases I was an influence on him.

Deleted

A New Year begins, and what better way to begin it than with another update of Book Two of EMPRESS OF THE DAWN, the story of Kalla's career on the planet Andros. But I have to be honest, and also give credit where credit is due. I had planned to make this a Winter Solstice update Dec. 21; only when Velvet Belle Tree read my original draft of the new chapters (in Part Three, "Kyros Tromeos") she told me in no uncertain terms that they needed work – they were too sketchy, too pompous, too much "tell" instead of "show." She was absolutely right; I'd gotten lazy, or at least inattentive. So I've been back over it for the last 10 days, trying tomake it a better story (I'd already addressed some other problems others pointed out to me, such as details of technological progress – and a certain painted statue...). A few final edits by Velvet came just this afternoon:

www.brightempire.com/Empress-2.pdf

It took a while; there've been distractions like my day job with a trade magazine, catching SKYFALL (maybe the best Bond movie ever), THE HOBBIT (dreadful) and LES MISERABLES (a classic, really moving), Christmas shopping... oh, and COUNTDOWN TO HISTORY, the story of Earth's Protector Kira during World War II::

www.brightempire.com/countdown.htm

I hadn't done any work on that for quite a while, but I let friend I saw SKYFALL with read what I had. He's not an Aurora Universe fan, but he knows the popular fiction market as co-author with his wife of a successful mystery series, and he thinks it could sell. So I'm workikng on that again; I've added new scenes and revised others. The new excerpt has all the new material, all in continuous narrative.

--Brantley Thompson Elkins