AN INDEX WE'D LIKE TO SEE
Table of Contents, plus plot summaries.
INFORMATIONAL FILES
FAQ - An FAQ We'd Like To See
Contains author info, indexes, species info, law enforcement info,
and even a guide to talking in Yttian! Gosh.
SHORT STORIES
0 - Introduction
Short blurb, with introductory history. Sort of a
README.TXT for the series : a must read.
1 - Live Slow, Die Hard
Life in the HAAFF, through a pilot's point of view.
2 - Burning Nonrecyclable Plastic
Two cyberhackers bump into the ultimate computer tool... an
artificial intelligence built to cut other systems. They
make a run on the richest person in the sector...
3 - Where No One Has Really Felt Like Going Before
Pure 'Star Trek' parody, fun, fast, and hard.
4 - The Common Sense
A night in the life of a senses collector on Yttia.
5 - Rebel Without a Spine
An accountant in mid-life crisis decides to join up with a
waprcycle gang, and realizes it's not exactly the career
move he was expecting.
6 - Belief in the Dollar
A religious leader on a Saren colony defends the holy ways
of Capitalism from the dreaded red menace.
7 - 20th Century Park
A demented time-travel parody of 'Jurassic Park', including
fun versions of many overdone scenes.
8 - Todo's Guide to C'atel
View the hot music scene through a travel guide who's used
to a little more out of life.
9 - 293 Channels
A couch potato takes a life-threatening tour of HoloVision.
10 - 37047734 : The Next Generation
A government worker on planet Murf romps through a typical
day of mayhem, chaos, and forms filled out in triplicate.
11 - Tales of the Rainy City Act 1
A computer game designer takes a trip through a game that
could be deadlier than it looks.
12 - Tales of the Rainy City Act 2
A poet bumps into his number one fan, currently wanted for
several murder charges.
13 - Tales of the Rainy City Act 3
An artist strives to create the perfect piece for an art
show, as well as coping with day to day relationships.
14 - Making the Grade
A very confusing teacher's report, which explains everything
there is to know about the universe...
15 - Excitement, Danger and Intrigue
A television producer goes 'on scene' to work up a new
series, but doesn't get what he was looking for.
16 - Interview in Motivated Rock, Issue #234, July
Behind the scenes with C'atel's hottest rock group.
17 - The Shell Game, Pt. 1
A few artifical intelligences strive to find a way into
reality, and succeed...
18 - The Shell Game, Pt. 2
A trader bumps into a colony of very unusual people...
they're not organic.
19 - Bad Trip
A pair of druggies are in search of the ultimate high, and
bump into parodies of every time travel show and movie ever
made.
20 - Junk Drawer
A dark trip through both the recesses of a man on the edge
and his endtable.
21 - Death Before Yielding
A fast ride on the Yttian highway system, where driving is
an exercise in combat manuvering.
22 - New and Improved
A peek into the advertising gurus of the future.
23 - Spatulas of Fury
Video games of the future aren't just candy for the eyes,
but for the rest of the senses as well...
24 - The Bridge
A struggling musician, ready to end it all, meets up with an
odd man...
25 - Real to Real Editing
A music enthusiast dies, but finds himself walking and
talking and breathing, with some sort of editor from hell
looking for him... (Note : A must read to understand many of
the rest of the series.)
26 - The Oracle
A pious monk goes forth to question an almighty Oracle, who
seems to be out sick. (Won 1st place in Humorous
interpretation at a Forensics tournament with this one.)
27 - The Universe, v 2.0
The creators of our universe stop by to say hello and patch
up a few screwups, all the while trying to evade officials
from Reality, Inc. They meet the president, too. Golly.
28 - The Run
High speed, high pressure, high stress delivery with a twist
ending.
29 - The Christmas Episode (rated PC-13)
Deck the halls with human organs, tra la la la la, la la la
la. Garunteed offensive or your money back! Also very,
very silly.
30 - Ah, Drama
Two teenagers in a car break down outside of a spooky
mansion, and, well, you know what else happens.
31 - Gilligan's Matrix
A rather bad, but very silly, series of diary entries from
the minnow.exe.
32 - Profit and Tradition
The traders of Port Hades have made a living on the edge of
space for many years, until someone comes along and buys the
Port.
33 - Research and Design
Space Patrol's crack team of field testers takes on some Bad
Guys(tm) in experimental armor.
34 - Hell
A dark look at the afterlife, which proves that Hell isn't
all its cracked up to be... personal favorite of the author.
35 - The Spaminator
It's 'Terminator' and 'T2' and 'Hormel' all rolled into one,
as a Reality, Inc. junior editor tries to save a girl from a
slathering meat-beast from the future.
36 - Dangerous Toys
A plot to kill the Net? New ways to hack into VOSNet? Demons
from beyond space and time? Yeah, they're all here...
37 - Net.Gods
The sequel to Dangerous Toys. What are the demons in the net, and
what really happened at the end of DT. (Longest FWLS story!)
38 - Hard Sell
A twitchy Middle Management type experiences the nightmare that is
rampant consumerism. No, really, it's funny.
39 - Misery Date
I just got to thinking, if AIs could predict the future based on
human behaivors and complex math, why not apply it elsewhere?
Computer-dating humor at its best.
40 - Rain Nor Sleet Nor Snow
A new courier agency opens, staffed by maniacs, violent bloodlust
mongerers and lawyers. And of course, they're all mailmen.
41 - Good Bad Guy
A trader with morals (if there were such a thing) tangles with his
worst nightmare.
42 - On the Writer's Block
Ten years have passed in the FWLS timeline, and a student writing a
speech must summarize or be the laughingstock of the school.
43 - Rock and Roll Will Never Die
A black market biotech doctor has to bring a peculiar patient back
from the dead again... and again...
44 - The Big Time
A programmer trapped in his own personal hell tries to escape from
the evil Protege information service.
45 - Help
An AI automation tries to get her life back from a set of warped
programming routines.
46 - All The News That's Fit to Print
More of an experiment than a story... I wrote an interactive VGA/MSDOS
newspaper, supposedly a daily paper on Macroware's colony world. The
text file is the ascii dump of the paper, the FWLS46ZP.ZIP file the
MSDOS program.
47 - Better Safe Than Sorry (not the original title)
A character from very early on in FWLS is thrown back into the hacking
biz by a rogue novice.
48 - Food for Thought
A mildly disturbed 'thought-eater' stalks a rumor about an AI that
knows everything...
49 - Tales of the Sunny City, Act I
What if you took ordinary teenagers, forced them to become super
intelligent and let them do whatever they want on summer vacation?
AN INDEX WE'D LIKE TO SEE
Table of Contents, plus plot summaries.
INFORMATIONAL FILES
FAQ - An FAQ We'd Like To See
Contains author info, indexes, species info, law enforcement info,
and even a guide to talking in Yttian! Gosh.
SHORT STORIES
0 - Introduction
Short blurb, with introductory history. Sort of a
README.TXT for the series : a must read.
1 - Live Slow, Die Hard
Life in the HAAFF, through a pilot's point of view.
2 - Burning Nonrecyclable Plastic
Two cyberhackers bump into the ultimate computer tool... an
artificial intelligence built to cut other systems. They
make a run on the richest person in the sector...
3 - Where No One Has Really Felt Like Going Before
Pure 'Star Trek' parody, fun, fast, and hard.
4 - The Common Sense
A night in the life of a senses collector on Yttia.
5 - Rebel Without a Spine
An accountant in mid-life crisis decides to join up with a
waprcycle gang, and realizes it's not exactly the career
move he was expecting.
6 - Belief in the Dollar
A religious leader on a Saren colony defends the holy ways
of Capitalism from the dreaded red menace.
7 - 20th Century Park
A demented time-travel parody of 'Jurassic Park', including
fun versions of many overdone scenes.
8 - Todo's Guide to C'atel
View the hot music scene through a travel guide who's used
to a little more out of life.
9 - 293 Channels
A couch potato takes a life-threatening tour of HoloVision.
10 - 37047734 : The Next Generation
A government worker on planet Murf romps through a typical
day of mayhem, chaos, and forms filled out in triplicate.
11 - Tales of the Rainy City Act 1
A computer game designer takes a trip through a game that
could be deadlier than it looks.
12 - Tales of the Rainy City Act 2
A poet bumps into his number one fan, currently wanted for
several murder charges.
13 - Tales of the Rainy City Act 3
An artist strives to create the perfect piece for an art
show, as well as coping with day to day relationships.
14 - Making the Grade
A very confusing teacher's report, which explains everything
there is to know about the universe...
15 - Excitement, Danger and Intrigue
A television producer goes 'on scene' to work up a new
series, but doesn't get what he was looking for.
16 - Interview in Motivated Rock, Issue #234, July
Behind the scenes with C'atel's hottest rock group.
17 - The Shell Game, Pt. 1
A few artifical intelligences strive to find a way into
reality, and succeed...
18 - The Shell Game, Pt. 2
A trader bumps into a colony of very unusual people...
they're not organic.
19 - Bad Trip
A pair of druggies are in search of the ultimate high, and
bump into parodies of every time travel show and movie ever
made.
20 - Junk Drawer
A dark trip through both the recesses of a man on the edge
and his endtable.
21 - Death Before Yielding
A fast ride on the Yttian highway system, where driving is
an exercise in combat manuvering.
22 - New and Improved
A peek into the advertising gurus of the future.
23 - Spatulas of Fury
Video games of the future aren't just candy for the eyes,
but for the rest of the senses as well...
24 - The Bridge
A struggling musician, ready to end it all, meets up with an
odd man...
25 - Real to Real Editing
A music enthusiast dies, but finds himself walking and
talking and breathing, with some sort of editor from hell
looking for him... (Note : A must read to understand many of
the rest of the series.)
26 - The Oracle
A pious monk goes forth to question an almighty Oracle, who
seems to be out sick. (Won 1st place in Humorous
interpretation at a Forensics tournament with this one.)
27 - The Universe, v 2.0
The creators of our universe stop by to say hello and patch
up a few screwups, all the while trying to evade officials
from Reality, Inc. They meet the president, too. Golly.
28 - The Run
High speed, high pressure, high stress delivery with a twist
ending.
29 - The Christmas Episode (rated PC-13)
Deck the halls with human organs, tra la la la la, la la la
la. Garunteed offensive or your money back! Also very,
very silly.
30 - Ah, Drama
Two teenagers in a car break down outside of a spooky
mansion, and, well, you know what else happens.
31 - Gilligan's Matrix
A rather bad, but very silly, series of diary entries from
the minnow.exe.
32 - Profit and Tradition
The traders of Port Hades have made a living on the edge of
space for many years, until someone comes along and buys the
Port.
33 - Research and Design
Space Patrol's crack team of field testers takes on some Bad
Guys(tm) in experimental armor.
34 - Hell
A dark look at the afterlife, which proves that Hell isn't
all its cracked up to be... personal favorite of the author.
35 - The Spaminator
It's 'Terminator' and 'T2' and 'Hormel' all rolled into one,
as a Reality, Inc. junior editor tries to save a girl from a
slathering meat-beast from the future.
36 - Dangerous Toys
A plot to kill the Net? New ways to hack into VOSNet? Demons
from beyond space and time? Yeah, they're all here...
37 - Net.Gods
The sequel to Dangerous Toys. What are the demons in the net, and
what really happened at the end of DT. (Longest FWLS story!)
38 - Hard Sell
A twitchy Middle Management type experiences the nightmare that is
rampant consumerism. No, really, it's funny.
39 - Misery Date
I just got to thinking, if AIs could predict the future based on
human behaivors and complex math, why not apply it elsewhere?
Computer-dating humor at its best.
40 - Rain Nor Sleet Nor Snow
A new courier agency opens, staffed by maniacs, violent bloodlust
mongerers and lawyers. And of course, they're all mailmen.
41 - Good Bad Guy
A trader with morals (if there were such a thing) tangles with his
worst nightmare.
42 - On the Writer's Block
Ten years have passed in the FWLS timeline, and a student writing a
speech must summarize or be the laughingstock of the school.
43 - Rock and Roll Will Never Die
A black market biotech doctor has to bring a peculiar patient back
from the dead again... and again...
44 - The Big Time
A programmer trapped in his own personal hell tries to escape from
the evil Protege information service.
45 - Help
An AI automation tries to get her life back from a set of warped
programming routines.
46 - All The News That's Fit to Print
More of an experiment than a story... I wrote an interactive VGA/MSDOS
newspaper, supposedly a daily paper on Macroware's colony world. The
text file is the ascii dump of the paper, the FWLS46ZP.ZIP file the
MSDOS program.
47 - Better Safe Than Sorry (not the original title)
A character from very early on in FWLS is thrown back into the hacking
biz by a rogue novice.
48 - Food for Thought
A mildly disturbed 'thought-eater' stalks a rumor about an AI that
knows everything...
49 - Tales of the Sunny City, Act I
What if you took ordinary teenagers, forced them to become super
intelligent and let them do whatever they want on summer vacation?