M.E. Brines, Cold War Bomb-Maker, Modern Day Solomon Kane
Possibly because he publishes independently, possibly because he’s far too fun for this dour era, M.E. Brines is not exactly a well-known name in modern science fiction.
Brines asks and explores the truly important questions:
- Why do ghosts wear clothes?
- How does one defend against alien abduction?
- What is the best way to tell a lie?
- What are the engineering options for tinfoil hat construction?
- How might a Nazi have employed gothic runes as a practical matter of exerting power?
- When does spiritual embezzlement occur, and how can the lay person profit from it?
He also writes pulp adventure fiction (think Burroughs or Indiana Jones-type stories.)
I like Brines for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is because his work is simply possible, and only a decade ago, it was not. Without the new distribution and digitizing methods available to authors and publishers, the work of people like Brines would be relegated to low-distro ‘zine-style pamphleteering. And forget about finding his longer works (both digital and print versions) on the shelves of a major international bookseller.
Limited shelf space was not the worst problems that authors faced in the bad old days. Twenty years ago, the manager of Waldenbooks wouldn’t have known how to find this guy in any of the available databases of the day, even assuming that the manager was a diligent one willing to play phone tag with a distributor for a couple of hours and had “Brines” spelled correctly!
Today, it is possible for any reader to find a spectacularly unique esoteric niche author like Brines on his own.
And now…you have!
“Possibly because he publishes independently, possibly because he’s far too fun for this dour era, M.E. Brines is not exactly a well-known name in modern science fiction.”
It sounds like the kind of thing I’d like to read, but how did you came to know of him?
Good question. I have no recollection.
In my mind, it is as if his odd books just magically appeared in my libraries. I pick up a lot of stuff Katamari Damacy-style. The new world of publishing just allows for a lot more of the good stuff to stick.
I find–and buy–a lot of authors who give their books away for free.
Two other sf authors that I know I found for sure that way were Randolph Lalonde (Spinward Fringe), Joseph Lallo (Book of Deacon) and Kris Rusch. If I had to bet, that’s probably how I came across Brines. I’ll try to feature some more of these sorts of authors in the coming months.
Oh: also of interest to some is that Brines has developed play-by-post Victorian steampunk wargame rules. I know nothing about it other than that, but I know that some readers here are very much into tabletop and play-by-post.