The Book of Exodi (see its spiffy ember-colored cover on the right-hand side of this webpage) is filled with stories of people leaving or forced to leave their homeworld. The ShadowRun universe tends to focus on the challenge of pulling off “the big heist”. (Just because it’s the future doesn’t mean hardworking mercs don’t have their own financial crises to deal with.)  Mixing the end of the world with the “big heist” creates some interesting conundrums like: you’re risking your life for money, but the world is ending so what’s the use?  (It turns out there are several reasons.)

As I read “A Short Length of String,” I was told about a big heist, Fixers, and people that felt like Runners and Deckers, but the familiar pattern set by ShadowRun was never the same because the team was dealing with the psychological and emotional fallout from knowing that soon, the Earth will be destroyed.
If you haven’t read a cyberpunk story in a while, read this one and it will get you excited again about big guns and street samurai attitude.  And if you’re so  inclined, find some runners with whom to break out the six sided dice and build a run like this one.

But I reach past the mass market paperbacks, and even the thick and sturdy trade paperbacks.  I go right for the hardback book, you know.  I want something that can really knock someone’s block off or stop a bullet in a pinch.

So good news!  If you’ve been hankering for The Book of the Exodi but have been thinking–naw, trade paperbacks don’t make me feel secure–The Book of the Exodi is now out in hardcover, available from Lulu.com:

http://www.lulu.com/content/hardcover-book/the-book-of-exodi/7410605

I like to keep a copy in my car when I travel.  Right between the driver’s seat and the door, where I can get easy access to it if I get into trouble.

The Book of Exodi contains a story written by me called “Memory’s Victims,” which is about the future of the Israeli Palestinian conflict where both sides become involved in a space race to leave Earth and reach the nearest habitable planet to establish their own world-wide state.  It follows a Jew named Arcadie who who lives aboard the generation ship (an interstellar ark), Children of Zion.  Arcadie witnesses the end of their thousand year voyage when they reach their destination and discover it has already been settled by people from Earth who have developed faster-than-light travel during the Children of Zion’s voyage.  Arcadie’s people settle the planet because their ship has reached its engineered lifetime, and they try to build their lives as immigrants rather than as settlers.

They are treated like foreigners and feel like foreigners too because attitudes on Earth had changed in their absence.  The “super luminal” Jews and Palestinians no longer remember their grievances while those on the generation ships carried that history with them and nurtured it.  Arcadie and his people reject the “super luminal” Jews and feel they have a better understanding of the Palestinian immigrants who raced them to reach this planet due to their shared culture of animosity toward one another.  Problems between the Jewish and Palestinian immigrant populations start again.  Arcadie tries to distance himself by following a career in the Space Force, but a hatred between two people strong enough to survive a thousand years and travel within them to a new solar system, reaches Arcadie even when he is seeking solace in the emptiness of interstellar space.

The book is available on Create Space and Amazon.