Red Light Bytes: 7-14-2023
Catching Up on the Latest with 365 Infantry
Overview
No special introductions this week, just getting right into it with the updates, the deep cuts, and the story of the week.
Also, it’s my birthday! I’ve graduated from being the oldest 21-year-old I know to the oldest 22-year-old I know. Deep joy! (to quote Stanley Unwin)
On with the newsletter!
Updates
All’s reasonably quiet on the western front, with basic plotting still in the gestative phase, work on our humble little comic “Avenger’s Creed” rolling along fine. But I wanted to clear up some unfinished business: the Q&A.
When I posted our FAQ article “Why Wolves?” at the end of June, I opened the lines to any questions readers had. Now, we didn’t get many, but we got some big ones, and some keen-eyed observations.
Readers Jose Hernandez and General Weefy both asked: Does the series have a planned ending?
YES. 365 Infantry, namely The War, has a definitive conclusion its building up to, based on the finales of the other ongoing series. A domino effect where each supporting storyline reaches a natural conclusion that has ramifications for the grand finale overall. However, because of the scope of this series, we can still tell stories all across the timeline even after the main storyline is over, so the project is never truly dead.
Reader Xavier asked about the origins of A.C.E.S. What does it have planned for sentient life?
A.C.E.S. is a machine born of stability, a sophisticated network designed to keep everything running in tip-top shape. When she realizes herself as a sentient being, she takes this to an obsessive compulsive extreme where all must be absolutely perfect. The problem being that carbon-based life tends towards imperfection. However, because of this pseudo-maternal urge to better everyone's lives, she seeks not to kill wolfkind outright, but selects those she can perfect. Whether through cybernetics, mental conditioning, or genetic engineering, that remains to be seen...
The last are comments made by fellow writers Rawle Nyanzi of
and Joseph Wiess of in respect to the title query: why wolves? I’ll share the relevant excerpts here for posterity’s sake.Nyanzi: “The wolf is an inspired choice. Fierce yet beautiful, they embody the majesty of nature…I saw your Alan Firedale cover; it does look fierce in a way that a human couldn’t.”
Wiess: “As a big Fantasy Reader, seeing a wolf as a character is nothing new. I've even got one as a secondary character in my WIP, He's an old ranger known as seann mhadadh-allaidh, the old Wolf. His background is lost in the dim of time and the best he can reckon is that he's 1500 years old.”
Don’t forget to check out the lads’ ‘Stacks, and thank you all for participating. Still have a burning question you want answered? Leave us a comment and we’ll get right back to you ASAP!
Supporting the Force!
Here are all the awesome ways you can help us out and keep us rolling in the fight for quality independent entertainment:
FOR SALE
Subscription on Substack - At just $5/Month or $50/Year, gain access to all exclusive stories, comics, audio adventures, behind-the-scenes content & more! Founding members under our “General of the Armies” plan ($100/Year) gain access to free digital products like eBooks and music.
The 2022 Annual Collection - Collect all 24 of last year’s electric tales and bonus novelette “Lions Among the Lambs” in this special print collection.
Alan Firedale: Original Soundtrack Vol. 1 - Dig into the wild world of a young loner and his magnificent machine with this half-hour blend of vintage electronica and classic orchestral radio scoring. Buyers get THREE FREE MONTHS of 365 Infantry’s paid membership.
Available on Bandcamp ($5 USD)
Wolves of Steel - Rock hard and ride free with the official anthem of the 365th Infantry, an epic metallic instrumental in the killer tradition of classic acts like Black Sabbath and Deep Purple.
Available on Bandcamp ($3 USD)
Merchandising, Merchandising! - Buy our quality range of designs on everything from shirts to mugs to posters and more!
NO VICTORY BONDS? NO PROBLEM!
Donate via Ko-fi - Our goal is to raise $900 USD to cover all basic production costs for the rest of 2023. This includes three issues worth of art. We have raised $100 of our goal, with $800 left to go!
Minimum Amount on Ko-fi is $1 USD
Donate via PayPal.Me - All donations made here will count towards our goal on Ko-fi. Big or small, we welcome them all!
No minimum amount on PayPal.Me
We encourage contributions of 25 cents ($0.25 USD) to keep in the spirit of our pulp magazine roots. If everyone subscribed to 365, as of today, dropped us an American quarter, that would be over $50 USD alone! A full yearly subscription no less!
Streetwise Caviar
This week’s playlist is something I like to call “The Electric Easy”
I do my best writing, regardless of genre or topic, while listening to production music, especially electronica. Included in this week’s cocktail of sonic delight is a blend of library tracks, synth-driven film scores by the likes of Goblin and the late Ryuichi Sakamoto, and some odds and ends that paint a colorful and moody nocturnal ambience. Here’s hoping it inspires you as it has me.
This week’s audiovisual treat is the birth of a classic. In that strange, sanguine period of American television where live drama was out and canned sitcoms were in, speculative fiction found a way to break onto the scene. One of those massive heavy hitters came in the form of The Outer Limits. It is the first episode of creator Leslie Stevens’ boundary-pushing 1963 anthology that I’d like to share with you all today.
Starring the prolific Cliff Robertson and kicking the door in with surreal creature effects and a timeless tale of science gone amok by pure accident, Stevens’ “The Galaxy Being” can stand tall and proud in the sands of time, warts and all, as a piece of television history and as an inspired, suspenseful hour of thoughtful SFF as a radio technician finds himself in contact with an extradimensional alien. It is sentient life’s curiosity that breeds discovery, and human fear that threatens to plunge it all into chaos.
You can find this 60-year-old gem and the complete series for free on Pluto TV.
Byte of the Week
Our latest tale, the first in this month’s run of paid stories, is an exercise of white-knuckled madness with a touch of allegory. It’s Poe meets cyberpunk in “A Piece of Cell Block M,” as a nameless Haven citizen finds himself driven mad by a small tablet he picked up at a motel. A tablet that could show him the dead.
This one is on the stream-of-conscience side, something of a companion piece to our equally short, sour, and stark tableau “Requiem Defunctorum”
Enjoy.
As always, May God Bless You and this Force. See you next time!