Leland Lydecker's Blog

The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells are based on the concept that part-human, part-machine constructs will probably be just as self-aware as we full humans are. They’ll have their own wants and desires, and they probably won’t enjoy being ordered around by idiots any more than we do. Yet they are essentially a slave class, […]

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Death Engine Protocol by Margret A. Treiber is dystopian science fiction with a liberal sprinkling of body horror. Captain Eris, aka the Death Engine, is a tweak, a human genetically modified to have superpowers. Her superpower is 1) that she’s unable to stay dead, and 2) when she comes back and her body regenerates, she […]

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Something has gotten into the habitat. The spaceport had always had its strange inhabitants, but this was a new, more aggressive form of invasion. A Shadow of Devastation follows Bradley Radco, a not-so-ordinary cargo handler,  and shows a less Baron Cargo-centric (and less human-centric) side of KEL Port. It is the forth installment of the Shadow […]

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2024 was a big year. In some ways it was a tremendously groundbreaking and exciting year for me, and in other ways (particularly on the national scale,) it was a pretty dark year. Here I’m going to focus on the stuff that’s closer to home. Moving Forward One of the things I accomplished in 2024 […]

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This is a letter they’ll probably never read. But in light of national events earlier this month, there are a lot of people who need to hear this. In the wake of November 5th, I have been checking in with friends and coworkers I know or suspect will be affected. Just a quick, “Hey, how […]

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If you’re struggling with the kind of burnout I experienced, or think you might be headed there, this post may help. Here are a couple of things you’re probably going to have to come to terms with, and some helpful tips to avoid winding up where I did and to help heal the damage if […]

The post Part II – How Do You Fix Burnout? appeared first on Leland Lydecker Author.

Shortly after publishing Necrotic City, I returned to traditional employment to rebuild my savings. At the same time, I continued creating content for this blog and working on longer stories. It was sometimes a struggle to find time for all of it, but I still had a dream of fully supporting myself by writing, and […]

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Reading the back-cover copy for Loneliness, it’s not hard to see why I was intrigued. A collision with space debris has left a gigantic hole in Inez Stanton’s ship, nearly crippling it. Inez is a cargoist, that rare breed of adventurer who takes to deep space solo, ferrying valuable cargo for the Tenth Great and […]

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Recently I’ve been rereading Tony Hillerman’s mysteries. These were books I really enjoyed when I was younger but I haven’t picked up since, and I was curious if the writing would hold up. After all, some books I thought were incredible when I was younger are actually pretty bad in the cold light of today. […]

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Your local post office is in trouble. Problem 1: Volume The volume of mail (letters, magazines, catalogs, and especially packages) that the United States Postal Service delivers in some areas has doubled or even tripled since 2015. Officially, First Class Mail and package volume have generally been declining. (Source: Postal Facts: A Decade of Facts […]

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