Icarus Above Dark Earth--the science fiction of Michael Ramalia

I swore that I am getting back to work, and not letting the termination of my Amazon author account (by Meltdown Girl) get me down.  Please enjoy the following flash sci-fi story. Ministry of Tribute and War Loot—A Three Quote Science Fiction Story [Quote 1] “While you are in Cairo, be sure to visit the Hub Museum of the Ministry of Tribute and War Loot, where you can see such treasures as the Mona Lisa, the 1776 American Declaration of Independence, and the Khan Verdant Automaton.” –Granny Charlie’s Guide to New Egypt   [Quote 2] “To this day, tribute and neogild continues to flow into the New Egyptian Space Empire, simply because the Nese are still technically at war with every damn fool nation that declared the Order of the Seven to be war criminals during the panic that followed Ascension Day. While some countries (such as the Protectorate States of America) use the continued existence of New Egypt as a population control bugaboo, most countries have (over the course ...

On Facebook, a friend of mine, MP asked: "I never remember you mentioning the Icarus project , was this something you developed after I left Colorado?" Yes and no. Some of the stories have their roots in ideas that I had since high school, and others are completely new ideas that changed things I had planned to write for years. In my head, Icarus is only a year and a month old at this point (March 2018). It is part of my re-branding and reset of my writing career, complete with a brand new pen-name. When we were going though my mother-in-law's house after she committed suicide, I found that she had kept a couple of pages I did of a "Star-Cops"-like universe a few years ago. It was one of those stories I started, but never finished because of how bad my bipolar got. So when I started to think about what I wanted to do with my reinvention of myself, the idea of doing a Star-Cops story was in the water--if only because more than one person who read the few page...

Mockumentary The school that I attended was a good old-fashioned private religious one that did not believe in teaching the science of the Free American Islands, nor it did not have any trunk with that nonsense that Denver was actually a Free City-State. No, my mom made sure that me and my siblings were sent to a proper school with spankings, scrounging, confession, and enough misread Christianity that you could choke a horse. Anything less would dishonor her and her ancestors who only worshipped one of the three faces of the Jealous God and came from the real America. Someday, the illegal and pirate-ran government of Free Denver would fall and she (not us) would be welcomed back into the loving arms of the only proper way to run a society. Therefore, my siblings and I had to be properly educated, so that we would not bring any shame to her. Part of a proper education was the mandatory annual protest about the horrors and child slavery practiced by the astronauts-soldiers of New Eg...

The other day when outlining a blog post for my Occult Garden Parties blog, a post about why I don't do public speaking, I made a list of what political hot-button issues were in each of my currently planned Icarus universe stories. (And no, at the time I am writing this blog post, the other one has not been finished yet--I am a slow writer prone to migraines.) The Homer Milton Dante stories Astronauts and Snakeheads (original working title-- Mercury Forty-Two ): PTSD, propaganda, civil defense, immigration (merit-based), war crimes. Southern Fried Android : Slavery, AIs, and "human" trafficking. Now with an improved working title and tagline. The Wolfgang Katz stories Axe Murderer of Titan : Reality television, social media, and mental health issues. Hanging Gardens of Jupiter : Economic safety net and apocalypse survival issues. Red Hand : Political/military doomsday policies. The God-King Wolfgang Katz : Political and national mythology.  Stories ...

The "Shied-Wall" in Mercury Forty-Two (Astronauts and Snakeheads) is based on Reagan era visions of the Star Wars Defense Program. And it took me four months to realize that perhaps coming out and saying that would be the quickest way to dispel any confusion about its original inspiration which predates the current government administration. Yes, it killed nine million people when it was turned on, but the surviving one million will never have to worry about nuclear missiles ever again. Of course that makes the New Egyptian Empire super evil--after all, the civilized world supported the use of nukes to keep the Middle East safe from demon possessed rulers such as the First Pharaoh and her six wicked sisters. How many people are you willing to kill to stop nuclear war once and for all?

There are two ways to look at my writing process over the last month and a half. One: Damn you write slow! Or two: Damn you racked up twenty thousand words (and a healthy outline) on the same project! I find one of these statements to be more encouraging than the other one. Encouraging or not?