planet rasputin

Things I Picked Up While Writing Planet Rasputin And Things That Sublimated Into The Oort Cloud Afterwards

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Ion drives take a while to get going.

Fusion power is 20 years away

Learning Twi as a second language is tougher than expected. Last time I checked, there wasn’t even a google translate option for it.

Slovene has written translation on google, but no audio.

All characters speak native Slovene in Planet Rasputin, so to get around my own lack of Slovene ability, I resorted to repetitive usage of ne vem [I don’t know] and ja [yes], as well as the occasional Slovene myth or idiom.

Atomic Rockets is a godsend [pantheist version] though also very dense in certain places, especially when maths + equations step in.

There could be thousands of dwarf planets out in the Kuiper Belt, still undiscovered. Maybe some big planets too. Planet XXX is currently predicted to be somewhere beyond Pluto, but closer in than Sedna. Predicted as in it should be there, some huge force is influencing the dwarf planets in that area, but has yet to be located.

Rasputin was too busy fucking palace staff to care about Marxist-Leninism. And was already dead by the time it really got going.

Did he fuck the Tsarina? Not sure. Could’ve been a bridge too far, risked his position too much.

Not a lot in the way of Anarcho-Communist sci-fi out there. The Dispossessed was written in the 70’s and was it really anarchist/communist if it was published via a major press? It’s an argument I’m still unsure about. We have to live in the system we have been raised in, survive in it, but at a certain point of wealth or influence, shouldn’t there be a little bit more? An attempt to change the way things are currently done?

I do not dream of having a Netflix adaptation. Do you?

Just googled other anarchist sci-fi and what I get back is all mainstream stuff. A band of utopian anarchists fighting the system/evil regime/demon deer.

Anarchist Library doesn’t have much sci-fi.

How would a future anarchist system work? In Planet Rasputin I had to add a huge shot of absurdism to make it believable that, in 2114, Slovenia and Ghana and a bunch of other countries could function in a semi-anarcho-communist fashion [compromised, of course]. It’s transition that’s always the problem. How do we go from this virus of a system that covers most of the planet to something else? When everyone in power is either a psychopath, a dormant psychopath, a smiling psychopath or a rag doll? When enough of the adult population sees no problem with this? Or no way out of it? Or truly thinks that they themselves are also capitalists? What does the exit ramp look like and how far off into the horizon does it stretch?

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New Release // Planet Rasputin

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Earth in the shallows of the 22^nd Century where viable tokamaks have liberated all [well, most].

On the face of things, Slovenia is part of an alliance of predominantly anarcho-communist nations, but in truth it’s been co-opted by Potočnik, a crypto-tyrant with purple eyes. He dumps Sila, his friend Chu, his ex-friend Gašper, the physicist Nakagami, the militant Aleša and five other dissidents on a [prototype] ship and sends them off on a Mission of Progress; to develop a potential base on Mars.

The ship has strict rules: No out-going messages, no inter-crew communication longer than four hours each day, and no entertainment.

Can Sila & co. convince the ships AI to turn the ship round and ram bridge-first into Potočnik’s HQ?

Will Rasputin turn up at some point?

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This is my attempt at a sci-fi epic with anarcho-communist undertones [or just outright tones, really]. A bit of absurdism thrown in too, mostly to cover my weak science.

Cover is done by the artist chained to my wrist, Soren, over at corpsehaus

You can buy the paperback here but it’s quite expensive so you can also read the PDF version for free

Planet Rasputin [Prologue]

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I’m gonna be putting Planet Rasputin out there on Monday [June 6th], so here’s the prologue to either suck you into, or put you off, buying the whole thing.

To summarise, it’s set in 2114 and features:

an ion-drive ship with Slovene dissidents

Martian bases

Void-Helenism + death

Undiscovered dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt

Anarcho-communism

The Lem-12 Field to circumvent spin gravity

invented social theory

absurdism

and a lot more…

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P R O L O G U E

Roughly Halfway To Mars

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The Martians were indistinguishable from one another by rank, by fashion, by etiquette, all striving to ensure the red vegetation was maintained, working not because they were coerced, but through a deep sense of duty and fulfilment…

‘Why’s the vegetation red?’

…one day, they would work a shift in the clothing factory, the next they would switch to food production, eschewing any form of specialization, though there were some that did exist…

‘They change their jobs?’

…the elder Martian had previously been married to six other Martians, some male, some female, a concept that Leonid attempted to comprehend but with great difficulty…

‘Six people! Will I have to do that too?’

…the corpse of Sterni stared sideways towards the wall, at the poster of the first Martian factory, and Leonid stared too, falling onto the ground and weeping over the stained history, trying to pick up larger puddles of blood and return them to his friend’s body…

‘I don’t like it…’

…but the crime was as old as the first sharpened rock, as hellish as a nightmare based on other nightmares, as evil as the first devil that ever popped into man’s head, and there was no escape from it, not on Mars, not in this red-hued paradise of rotational shifts and unparalleled job satisfaction…

‘Rasputin, stop…’

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