Hatsumi has entered the ring.
After Dark – Hatsumi is Here
Author: A. Sherman Karlsson
A Name Change
Before we do a launch, it was time for some cleanup including a title change – from Syndicate Helios to Syphon Continuity.
Why the change? Mostly so as to leave the door open to a wider scope of stories within the same world, within the Syphon Continuity.
After Dark – Discretion is the Better Part of Valor
The sensible reaction.
Description
For anyone stopping by and wondering what this account is about – it’s a novel that we’ve been working on! Here’s a short description:
The Butterfly Koi
Japan’s magitech industry is taking off, leading the world in the production of personal devices that never require something so mundane as electricity. But Eika Fujiwara feels like the only person worried about the dark side of this technological revolution: magic doesn’t work for everyone. As heiress to a mining empire and a household name, she’s read the heart-breaking letters describing her family’s corporate misdeeds and seen how technology can cause harm to humans and the environment alike. Filled with a humble hope to change the world, she decides to thwart her family by funneling her trust fund, her fame, and her personal connections into a charitable initiative, Replenish.
Eika’s best friend, Misora Toyama, is a brilliant magitech researcher driven to prove that she’s more than the reluctant heir to her father’s criminal empire or a decorative red carpet accessory for her boyfriend. Together, Eika and Misora have concocted a groundbreaking innovation that could change the industry forever: the next generation of magic, this time accessible to all.
The two will find their progress helped and hindered by a diverse crew: an American magitech engineer forced to relocate after the US bans magic; a journalist wrestling with both her temper and the tangled web of the Tokyo underworld; a charismatic Korean actor who might be working for the competition; and an acerbic and magically-limited criminal more interested in unearthing valuable information than help from idealistic Eika.
But when the project hits a development roadblock, the pressure is on to use any tool, legal or not, to continue the work. Eika and Misora will face a moral quandary: what trade-offs are they willing to make in order to keep the Fujiwara family from pulling the plug on an invention that could change magic forever?
Hot Take
Hot take:
Futuristic fantasy stories that DON’T quantify and rationalize magic to some measurable degree (midichlorians, aura, power levels) are actually Badly Written because, and hear me out: people quantify everything. Calories, acidity, solubility, decibels, milliliters, the Scoville scale tells you how hot a pepper is. Ancient fantasies, myths, and post-apocalyptic stories can get away with vague rules because they don’t know how to close an electrical circuit so they can light a room, let alone measure radiation wavelength. If you want me to buy that your civilization has been practicing magic for ten thousand years in a flourishing empire with magic academies, there had better be a thermometer they can stick in your mouth to see how many magic points you are putting out right now.
I see you and raise you “a magical distribution curve”