the fiction and faith of P. Todoroff
Now available at AMAZON ON KINDLE. Read/Reviews would be much appreciated.
Special thanks to Michal Oracz for the cover, Mark at Angel Editing for the clean-up, and a heap of patient readers. I’m grateful.
Part 2 is under the copy-edit scalpel right now.
I recognize my work isn’t ‘Christian’ in the traditional sense. In preparing Shift Tense: Red Flags for release I wondered if it really counts as science fiction in the traditional sense. I gots no wise-cracking aliens, no FTL, Jedi Knights, death rays, or time machines.
Is it cyberpunk? Moreso, perhaps. Its got that ‘high-tech fluff/lowlife’ spice. But there are no big hair/metal-band, leather-clad punks. (You’re welcome) 
Fact is, I wrote Shift Tense to illustrate the friction between First and Third World armies with their widely different weapon systems and soldiers, and the general social, technological and financial inequality that in my opinion will remain and widen.
So is it near-future thriller? Espionage? Vanilla Action and Adventure? Or something else? I’m interested in your opinion.
Side Note – I do love this trailer:
It’s really coming.
Here’s the first stage cover art. Minor changes and “Red Flags” subtitle pending. Each portion of SHIFT TENSE feature a different cover and will be released for Kindle over the next six months. The full novel will be available after in both trade paperback and electronic format. (About time, eh?)
“Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won’t come in.”
– Alan Alda
We all make them. We all run into them/get run over by them. Common ones I have dealt with:
1. I’m male, an artist, so I must be gay. (my wife is always amused at this one)
2. I’m physically disabled so I must be mentally challenged. (One potential client saw me walking with my cane and asked if I was capable of doing her job. I replied it was fortunate you don’t cut glass with your feet. Fact is, one of the reasons I started using a cane in public was the tediousness of people talking to me like I was a three-year-old about to have a seizure.)
3. I’m a Christian, so I must be willfully uneducated, uncultured and hostile toward science, literature, etc. (After all, only stupid, poor hicks believe in God.)
4. I’m pushing 50, been saved longer than ten years, so I must be like Statler and Waldorf, a religious ‘old wineskin’ hindering ‘real’ revival.
5. Because I have a Pentecostal Christian background, I’m a hop, skip and a jump away from prancing about in my undies like King David waving a prayer banner whilst frothing in tongues. (See #2)
*Ahem*
To clarify, it was Iain M. Banks‘ passing and his last novel “The Hydrogen Sonata” that prompted this post. The above have been simmering for a bit – Guess I needed to get them out.
It’s just that the ‘H.S.’ typifies science fiction’s traditional assumptions toward religion, spirituality and faith. And it got me thinking.
Before I go any further, I’m not disparaging Mr. Banks. Far from it. The man was an absurdly brilliant and prolific writer. Would to God I could write half as much half as well. I agree with Neil Gaiman who said ‘his bad books were good while his good ones were astonishing.’ His Culture series novels are sprawling space-operas filled with Red Giant-sized ideas, story-arcs measured in parsecs, tragedy in gigadeaths. If you’re a sci-fi fan, you owe it to yourself to read at least one of his books. “Consider Phlebas”, “The Player of Games”, or “Against a Dark Background” are all good starting points. His work is at once an inspiration, a challenge and a rebuke, all in the best possible way.
Mr. Banks’ assumption was common to the genre: that technology renders religion and faith spurious. That humankind will mature beyond the need for an Imaginary Friend/Sky Bully, and develop the ultimate, prosperous, tolerant, secular-humanist utopia under the new omniscient, omnipotent, and ubiquitous gods of Artificial Intelligence. That thought was the foundation for every novel, a common thread, implicit or expressed.
I couldn’t help but note Mr. Banks didn’t so much discard God as replace him. With all the disdain for religion, future fictional people still require a guiding hand. The A.I.s are as much protagonists as the deities of Greek Mythology. Indeed, they play much the same role in his plots.
I’ve heard it said we’d ‘need to invent God even if there wasn’t one’ for ethical, moral, transcendent philosophical purposes alone. This isn’t so much an essay on apologetics but a question of how realistic is a fictional future without people who believe in God? Odd that as a Christian, I’m accused of wishful thinking and unreasonable fantasy. For the record, nearly half the characters in Shift Tense profess some form of religion, be it genuine, misguided, or manipulative. It’s not simply my preference – it made sense that in depicting the future, people would still be made of the same stuff.
Despite centuries of predictions, the sheer number of religious people is telling. God is far from dead. If a writer’s job is to construct a credible fictional universe, how plausible is it to discard religious faith? In the context of an unknown future/exploring an unimaginably vast universe, is it reasonable to think people will leave God behind?
If anything, I suspect religion will be cherished, will be preserved even more for inspiration, guidance, comfort, certainty, rationalization… Just like today.
Heard from my editor: Part One is finished. Waiting on the cover, then it’s off to Amazon/Creatspace. Til then, here’s a taste:
***
PART ONE: RED FLAGS
“Mars is not an aesthetic God.”
Confederate Commander John Brown Gordon, at Shiloh.
CHAPTER ONE – Mini Puka Boy
Somewhere on the Gulf of Aden.
Abdi was sure he was dying.
His head was dizzy, loose on his neck like a door with one hinge. His stomach clenched with every wave, every jump and roll the boat made. He had nothing left to throw up. He felt empty, crumpled as a paper sack. Surely the angel Azra’il stood ready to escort his soul above the skies.
Thirteen years old, he couldn’t remember ever feeling this bad before.
It had started the second day out at sea. He had spewed hardbread and goat over the rail, and after that, he couldn’t keep anything down. The older soldiers, all SPLM men, had laughed, dubbing him Mini Puka Boy. Now, they sang out the name whenever he came near and wouldn’t let him sleep in the bunks below. Instead, they shoved him toward the ‘puke nest’; a makeshift tent on the bow made from an old tarp and big coils of greasy rope. There, they said, he could vomit over the side whenever he wanted.
Veteran pirates, the older fighters were full of advice, telling him it would pass on the fourth day, that he must stare at the sky not the ocean, claiming that smoking jaad or chewing khat would make him hungry, make the sea-sickness stop.
But nothing helped. The shakes, the weakness, only grew worse the farther out into the Gulf they went. Three days later, all he could do was lay on the deck like a limp rag.
Last night, one of the SPLM men, the one with the dirty pink rubber hand, brought a bowl of mishaari and spooned the corn mush into his mouth. Abdi managed five bites before it went all over his boots. Pink Hand gave up in disgust, and the older soldiers had cackled even louder. Abdi didn’t even have the strength to get mad. He simply curled up and bit his lip when he wanted to moan.
He has felt better briefly, earlier that morning. He’d woken from the metal stock of his old AK-47 digging in his ribs. Shifting, groping in the dark, his fingers had found a half-filled tin cup beside him. One of the younger boys must have brought it sometime in the night. The water smelled dusty, but Abdi sipped its coolness and kept it down.
The world had been silent save the low wind and the soft lapping of waves. He had actually managed to stand for a minute or two, steadying himself on the rails at the very front of the boat.
The Gulf had spread out around him like a great dark field while the stars shone like hard, bright sparks; a thousand thousands of them spilled across the dome of heaven. Wobbly, stretched thin, Abdi had nevertheless sensed something vast in that moment. Perhaps that was what the Hand of Allah felt like.
He must have fallen back asleep, because the sun was high when he opened his eyes again, and the water tasted like boiled sweat. His gut was in knots once more, so he lay there under the tattered blue tarp and tried to muster up hatred for the captain of this torture voyage.
His cousin Ghedi had lied to get him on board. Abdi was sure of that now.
Ghedi had found him at Dhubbato with their grandmother. Like most other members of the Isaaq clan, the massive UN refugee camp was the last safe place in Somaliland. Teeming, filthy, filled with crime and poverty though it was, at least the Hangash, General Dhul-Fiqaar’s secret police, or roving units of elite Duub Cas, the Red Beret Regiment, couldn’t come and slaughter them at night. Not with so many Peacekeepers watching.
Abdi’s cousin was shahiba, a gang-banger, and Ghedi ran with a crew of other Somali teenager boys, all of them orphans, angry, and Isaaq. A year ago, they had gotten their hands on some old army rifles and started calling themselves the “Harimacad”, the Cheetah militia. Soon after, they had disappeared into the bush to join Professor Hamid and his rebel Somaliland People’s Liberation Movement.
Then, all these months later, Ghedi had barged into their tent as if he’d only been gone a day. Mouthing big talk, he claimed he was no longer a shahiba; the Professor had made him a very important man. A captain. Abdi was suspicious, but Ghedi wore tiger-striped fatigues and had two gold pins on his shirt collar. And he flashed a huge wad of Euros. That was very different.
His cousin boasted he and his militia had been ordered to go on a secret mission for the SPLM. But he needed more men. Was Abdi interested? Ghedi promised a handful of bills and an AK-47 if he came. A real gun, a man’s gun, all for a quick boat ride, he had said.
Abdi hesitated. Then Ghedi had pulled out a nice red shirt. Almost new. It could be Abdi’s right then as a bonus.
That clinched the deal.
Abdi looked down at his new shirt now, all foul and puke-stained. Ghedi had bedeviled him. If he’d known the truth about being a budhcad badeed, he would have grabbed that shirt, kicked his cousin in the stones, and run as fast as he could. Now it was too late.
His cousin had only promised those things because this was his first time pirating and he wanted to impress the SPLM men by bringing his own fighters along. Lying wacaal.
Abdi was going to tell their grandmother about this swindle the second they got back to shore. May Allah bring that day quickly. The thought of their grandmother beating Ghedi with her old belt strap like she used to raised a smile on his cracked lips.
A sudden wind shook his little tent and he peered out across the deck of the pirate ship.
It was one of four that had been towed out to the deep water by a much bigger boat. An old twelve meter, Italian fishing boat whose name was long-buried under layers of paint, the nets and winches had been replaced with battered Dushka 12.7 heavy machine guns. The motors were new and strong however, and Abdi had heard them growling in the back. Originally meant for fifteen men, almost two dozen were packed in for this trip: thirteen SPLM veterans and ten of Ghedi’s Cheetah militia.
Twenty-three fighters, five days, the hot sun, endless slapping waves, the stink of diesel, bodies, and vomit… this was misery. The Dhubbato camp was better.
Waiting made everything worse. Abdi couldn’t understand why they didn’t just attack one of the big cargo ships right now. The SPLM men said there were dozens of them passing through the Strait of Hormuz every hour. Pick one, fire the engines, and converge on the massive target like jackals on a buffalo. Problem solved.
Unless the Russian or Indians had a frigate nearby, all a pirate had to do was circle a few times, fire off a RPG, then go aboard. The men said the shipping companies paid most ransoms within a week. The trick was not to ask for too much. The executives figured pay-offs were cheaper than delaying the cargo. That way, no one suffered.
Abdi couldn’t have agreed more. Even getting shot at was better than getting bounced around and roasted like peanuts.
But no. Ghedi insisted his mission had come from SPLM Headquarters, from Professor Hamid himself even. They would wait, starving, vomiting, baking, until a certain ship came by. The Mashona Breeze. No other would do. Ghedi even had a laptop that sent him messages and pictures from planes high in the sky.
Abdi doubted the commander of the entire rebel army was emailing orders to his cousin, but he was pretty sure the dozen fighters had come along to make sure Ghedi carried them out to the letter.
The boat jumped. Abdi swallowed sourness at the back of his throat. No more after this. insha’ Allah, he prayed. Please. Only dry land from now on.
Abdi shut his eyes and let his head roll with the Gulf’s motion. He had dozed off when a burst of rifle fire stuttered loud and close. He sat up, heart in his throat.
Ghedi stood on deck, rifle in hand.
“It is time,” he shouted. “Commanders send the signal to me. The ship is close. We must go, go now.”
Ghedi ripped another burst into the sky for effect. “Crazy fast. Quick. Quick,” he screamed. “The revolution needs us and we will not be late.”
Abdi heard ammo belts clinking, the clatter of weapons being chambered. Brown, shaved heads scurried to pull the anchor. The motors throbbed deep and low.
Thank Allah, Abdi thought, and sank back. Then he saw Ghedi staggering towards him.
Abdi tried to stand, but a wave hit. He fell back, tangled in his frayed blue tarp. He flailed, swept it aside and looked up. A shadow was there; his cousin standing over him, red eyes and little captain gold badges shining. The fat muzzle of Ghedi’s AK-107 was pointing down at his chest.
“As Captain Boss, I order every badass gangsta have his finger on the trigger.” A grin, filled with stained, crooked teeth. “A dog that refuses a bone is not alive. Are you alive, little soldier?”
Abdi nodded.
Ghedi jerked his gun up, fired into the air. Abdi flinched. His cousin laughed.
“We are the fierce lions of the sea,” he screamed. “We will bring this Mashona Breeze down. Strike a blow for the people of Somaliland.”
The motors roared from the back and as the boat swung north, bucking in the waves, Abdi’s stomach knotted tighter with each passing second.
The first from someone in Portugal who wanted to let me know he really enjoyed Running Black and was looking forward to Shift Tense. The wonders of the internet and ebooks. The second from an agent I queried six months ago. Six months for a rejection. I’m not sniveled, really. It’s just no wonder indie-publishing is on the rise.
Mr. Todoroff,
It is with kind thanks that we respond to your submission to Kimberley Cameron & Associates Literary Agency. We apologize for the long delay in our response–the number of submissions we received in 2012 far surpassed our capacity to review and respond. We thank you for your patience as we work to amend this. Please be assured that we have carefully considered your project. Unfortunately, we don’t feel the manuscript is right for us at this time.
Because we receive more than two hundred submissions per week, it is necessary to be extremely selective on a very subjective basis. We wish you the best of luck. There are numerous excellent agents that might be the right fit for your manuscript. Don’t give up!
Sincerely,
xyz…..
Quick Announcement that SHIFT TENSE Part One – Red Flags will be available sometime in June. The manuscript is at the editor and Michal Oracz is working on the first of three new covers, one for each installment. He should have the first completed soon. So if all goes according to plan, the full novel will be released in both trade paperback and ebook at the end of the year.
I’ll post the cover art as soon as I get it.
Thanks.
The intrepid bunch at Crossover Alliance are doing a giveaway.
Specifics Here Enter for free copies of member’s books, including a signed trade paperback of Running Black. Tell a friend. Thanks and good luck.
Seeing the upcoming Hollywood biopic, documentary, and books are going to generate a whirlwind of interest, (and controversy) around Mr. Childers, I wanted to weigh in on this in regards to a character in the upcoming Eshu International novel, SHIFT TENSE.
Shift Tense is set some 50 years in the future in what is then the quasi-nation of Somaliland. The crew of Eshu International is caught in the crossfire of a nasty civil war around the increasingly valuable mineral resource COLTAN. There’s killer robots, pirates, child-soldiers, crazy dictators, hostile rival mercenaries and a lot more, but that’s the gist of the story. A number of the characters from RUNNING BLACK show up again, as well as a new character named Pim Visser.
A rather delusional Dutchman, Herr Visser firmly believes the mantle of Sam Childers has fallen on him decades later, and he has inserted himself in the warzone, ostensibly to rescue children from a short, brutal existence as conscripted fighters for the SPLA, or Somaliland People’s Liberation Army. A noble and hazardous calling… Only hitch is while the children he’s trying to rescue have been starved, terrorized and in many cases orphaned, they haven’t been kidnapped, brainwashed, or forced to fight. They are volunteers with a cause.
The current President-for-Life of Somaliland, General Dhul_Fiqaar, is pursuing a social revitalization plan straight out of the Khmer Rouge handbook. He’s ordered government troops to systematically slaughter dissenting towns and villages. They’ve done so in a rabid blood-soaked zeal fueled by decades of tribal animosity, usually employing the old-school machete and mass grave method, but more recently with the help of advanced remote robotic weapons systems supplied by Dhul-Fiqaar’s corporate partners. 
A majority of the children who survived these attacks are relatively safe in the squalor of several UN IDP Camps. (Internal Displaced Persons, i.e. refugees) However, a number of them join the SPLA to avenge their families and overthrow a corrupt and appallingly vicious regime. Right or wrong, they are – for lack of a better word – volunteers.
Writing-wise, I need to go on record with the fact that I outlined the novel’s plot and created the deliberately ambiguous character of Pim Visser over a year ago. In my novel, he’s one of those self-appointed posers prompted by a convoluted mix of ego, compassion, and delusion that has gratuitously inserted himself in a complex and violent situation he utterly fails to understand. He is a pale imitation who knows only enough to make himself dangerous to everyone.
I want to make it clear that from what I’ve learned about Sam Childers through interviews, videos, and similar sources, I have only the utmost respect for him and his work in Sudan. If a sociopath like Joseph Kony kidnapped my grandson and Sam said he could get him back, I wouldn’t care one bit how he did it. And if he managed to put two in the hat of the guy that grabbed him, I wouldn’t loose any sleep over it.
I’ve already got a copy of Sam’s BOOK and I plan on seeing the film. For the record, the fictional character of Pim Visser is in no way a slight or an off-hand cheap shot at Sam Childers or his efforts.
Hot Space Station Justice 