Elegant Threat

Elegant Threat

On the Demise of Captain Fantomas Patton-Guerrero and Loss of La Amenaza Elegente

Order Information

Available Now on Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, and Powell's.

Future History

In the story Best Gift, from Hadley Rille's Return to Luna, readers first glimpsed a slice of this future history, in a tale about Sterling Suits, Neo-Dromedaries, and the persistence of love, trust, and faith on the lunar surface.

The next peek into the timeline came in M-Brane SF #5 with the story Abraham Discovers an Artifact Impenetrable to All Harm.  At the peripheral of the emerging war between human and post-human, one unique family struggles for survival.  But what cost security?  Filled with both the dark insight and familial hope typical of Bell's stories, and set against a backdrop aware of it's own SFnal mythology.

And now, the first of three self-contained sequences that will form Bell's first novel, we arrive in orbit around the moon Shanama aboard La Amenaza Elegente.  Crewed by kelpie wranglers called slicks, they'll spend the next several drops collecting the fauna of the lowtide seas to bring back to orbit.  Until a betrayal splits the entire crew.

Dramatis Personae

Captain Fantomas Patton-Guerrero -- A bear of a man, who calls himself Amr's godfather, while professing to disbelief.  He is easy to laugh and a fair captain to work under.  

Khalid Sujjad -- First Mate of La Amenaza and father of Amr.  He is a man of faith, but tends not to identify as either Shaivist or a follower of the New Madhi.

Pristina Patton-Guerrero -- The captain's wife, ship's mum, on assignment for Dar al-Salam University, filming a documentary about slick life and labor.

Cancer Patton-Guerrero -- Eldest of the Patton-Guerrero children, and angry to be on the expedition.  She'd much rather be back in Dar al-Salam  among her friends back at school.

Toro Patton-Guerrero -- Youngest of the two daughters, Toro idolizes her father and wants nothing more than to be a slick like him and her mother.  As long as she can play a periodic song on her violin.

Amr Sujjad -- Mr. Sujjad's son and ship's boy.  In his mid-teens, he is slightly younger than Cancer.

Nilay -- Ship's Foreman.

Boski, Evar, Gustavo, Nirav, and Wasseem: The crew leaders for the slicks.

The Big Idea

The M-Brane Double Series seeks to revive the tete-beche style exemplified by the Ace Doubles, featuring short novels, back to back and upside down to each other, with a separate cover for each novella.

Here's a classic example:

And here's the covers for the M-Brane Double #1 (cover text not finalized):