*and his awesomeness! =)*

 *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Now please let’s welcome the guest post & be on the look out after for my review!!!

Thanks for joining me on the Incursion virtual book tour!

Feeling lucky?

I’m giving away three prizes to commenters on any of the blog tour stops.

Comment on this post (feel free to ask questions!) and you might win!

Enjoy!

The Allure of the Space Opera

I’ll admit it. My first major exposure to science fiction was Star Trek. I followed that show religiously, and, as kids do, made up my own adventures or slightly twisted existing episodes and made them longer and cooler (and at times bloodier) in my head. We’re talking the old school Star Trek (what I believe is now called “Classic Star Trek”). It was that sense of wonder and adventure, all the cool stuff that happened, and I desperately wanted to be Spock. You just can’t beat him for sheer coolness.

Of course I also followed the various spin-offs and revamps. I loved the Borg. A collective machine/human hybrid intelligence that looked a bit like the Cenobites from Hellraiser, and my adolescent self also thought of the implications of all the latex and potential cyber-kink. Then Star Wars came along, and I liked the mythological dimension of that. As a fairy tale set in space, Star Wars is unbeatable.

As I grew more cynical, I managed to grab the tail end of the cyberpunk sub-genre (if you were really cynical, you could say we’re living in a cyberpunk world now), with its corporate politics and human augmentation and the idea overall that we can’t win for losing. Economic decline, a huge wealth gap between the 1% and the rest, corruption, media manipulation and banks hurling trillions around the globe without seemingly being accountable to anybody. Riots on the streets of London, burning shop front, and public suicides to protest austerity packages. Damn, I like me some cyberpunk.

But what I really enjoy is new worlds and concepts, and I think my favourite story of them all is Dune by Frank Herbert, a book that won the Hugo in 1966, nine years before I was even born. I was entranced by its world building and ideas, from the vast scope of space and time to the Bene Gesserit’s litany against fear, which every self-respecting sci-fi geek has learned by heart:

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

Even though the homophobia of Frank Herbert troubled me a great deal, the work itself to me still belongs to the very best of space opera. I’d never dream of occupying the same shelf as Herbert (or William Gibson), but I’m trying to give my writing the same sense of history and depth (though I’m not nearly as good at world-building). Even in a fictional dream, things have a history and a larger picture, and Dune taught me that. Whenever I look at my own work, I glance back at my space opera favourites and remember that sense of wonder, that slack-jawed awe that I felt when I discovered one of my favourites, and he very thing I’m looking for when I pick up a new sci-fi book.

In “Incursion”, I enjoyed the scale of the setting. There’s the Commonwealth, a human-run political entity currently under threat from a totalitarian military society (the Doctrine), and, if the situation weren’t tense enough, I threw aliens into the mix—shapechangers that have only recently appeared and nobody knows what they want or what they are capable of. The stakes are high—unknowable alien spies threaten from the inside (and you can never know what they look like), while a militarily superior foes is just waiting for the best moment to make its move. While we don’t see that the Doctrine is getting ready to conquer the Commonwealth, the fact that it’s there and threatening lends a sense of urgency and tension to the story.

And then we come back to what I love about space opera. Often in space opera, one heroic (or anti-heroic) character can make a huge difference. The big dramatic questions can come down to one man. In Incursion, that’s Kyle Juenger, an outsider, an ex-pilot on social welfare, a disabled man battling cynicism and thoughts of suicide. He’s tough, but he’s in a bad situation, but he dares to hope that catching the shapeshifting spy will turn his life around.

And it does. Just not quite as expected.

BLURB:

When the local authorities ask Kyle Juenger to hunt a shape-shifting Glyrinny spy, he can’t refuse. After all, he can use the reward to replace his paralyzed legs with cyberware, and maybe even to return to his home planet. Besides, he hates the morphs—those invasive, brain-eating monstrosities whose weapons cost him his legs.

Kyle’s best lead is the Scorpion, a mercenary ship armed to the teeth. Grimm, the Scorpion’s pilot and captain, fascinates Kyle. He’s everything Kyle lost with his legs, and he’s from the same home world. He’s also of the warrior caste—half priest, half savior. But Grimm’s been twisted by life as a merc, and Kyle’s stuck undercover as a criminal on the run.

That doesn’t stop Grimm from coming on to Kyle, or from insisting he’s more than the sum of his past and his useless legs. But Kyle has other concerns—like tracking a dangerous morph who could be wearing anyone’s face. And as if things weren’t complicated enough, Kyle can’t tell if Grimm is part of the solution… or part of the problem.

Biography:

Aleksandr Voinov is an emigrant German author living near London, where he makes his living editing dodgy business English so it makes sense (and doesn’t melt anybody’s brain). He published five novels and many short stories in his native language, then switched to English and hasn’t looked back. His genres range from horror, science fiction, cyberpunk, and fantasy to contemporary, thriller, and historical erotic gay novels.
In his spare time, he goes weightlifting, explores historical sites, and meets other writers. He singlehandedly sustains three London bookstores with his ever-changing research projects and interests. His current interests include World War II, espionage, medieval tournaments, and prisoners of war. He loves traveling, action movies, and spy novels.

Visit Aleksandr’s website at http://www.aleksandrvoinov.com, his blog at http://www.aleksandrvoinov.blogspot.com, and follow him on Twitter, where he tweets as @aleksandrvoinov.

And remember… Always keep it Dirty, Smutty & Hussy!