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OVERLORDS (FOUNDERS/EDITORS)
Johne Cook, L. S. King, Paul Christian Glenn
Matthew Winslow
 
Book Reviews Editor 
Shannon McNear
 
Lord High Advisor, Grammar Consultant, Listening Ear for Overlord Lee
Paul Christian Glenn
-
PR, Executive Tiebreaker, Desktop Publishing 
L. S. King
-
Lord High Editor, proofreader, beloved nag, muse, webmistress
Johne Cook
-
art wrangler, desktop publishing, chief cook and bottle washer 
Submissions Editors
John M. Whalen, Alice M. Roelke. Jenn Silva, Martin Turton
Cover Art
“Real Air Force”
by Martin Steil
Bill Snodgrass
Site host, Web-Net Solutions, admin, webmaster, database admin,
mentor, confdante, liaison – Double-edged Publishing
Special Thanks
Ray Gun Revival
logo design by Hatchbox Creative
v53b
 
I’
ve been thinking a lot about theconcept of hope. What it doesfor us, how it harms us, and it’s rolein the stories we write and read.
Of course it’s possible to cra
hopeless tales, but let’s face it, thosestories don’t capture the hearts,
minds and imaginaons of great au
-diences. And even many ostensibly
hopeless tales ulmately capvate
their audience with the subtle no-
on of mad hope (or, as Gandalf 
might put it, “fool’s hope”) in the
face of unstoppable desny. Take,for example, the “Terminator” lms,
which are predicated on an overtly
dark and fatalisc idea, yet driven(through four lms and a television
series) by characters that choose to
struggle in conscious fulity against
a predetermined future. Not many
people would describe those lms
as necessarily “hopeful,” but there
it is: hope in acon. Is it any coin
-cidence that the latest chapter, byfar the most dour and despondentinstallment, has already become an
epic disaster at the box oce?
Let’s contrast that with the sum-mer’s biggest hit thus far: “Star
Trek.” Here is a tale that is overtlyhopeful (as the franchise itself hasalways been). The acon is kicked
into gear by the hopeful goading of 
Captain Pike, who senses potenal
T
he melted controller unit lay ex-posed amidst twisted machineryand crashed mining scoopers. My
ngers trembled as I adjusted thehigh-res visual feed transmied byspacecams over Delta. Staon Delta
had been my star performer, my most
protable mining unit, and one of 
the best in the belt. I had mailed in-
numerable cost-juscaons to mybosses at Realtor to t it with state-
of-art machines. Now everything wasrubble.“Earth, Jerry! I never knew a roguecould be so...brutal.” Cheng, standing
behind me, said soly.I winced and connued to experi
-ment with view-angles and zoom tostudy the ruin; I needed to under-
stand the rogue’s aack algorithm to
design a workaround. I clicked on thedata dump sent by Delta’s interceptorbefore it succumbed to the rogue.
“Now, Jerry?” Cheng’s voice quiv
-ered.
I glanced at his pale face. Staon
-
head AX-1 was Cheng’s rst posngaer his training at Ceres; he prob
-ably fancied himself as a glamorous
adventurer ashing laser cuers, rip
-
ping asteroids apart, and transporng
ore in sleek ships to grateful colonies.
Our temperamental equipment and
ongoing struggle to extract ore fromugly lumps must have shocked him.
And now, this aack.“Rahul will repair the staon.” I had
sent Rahul to Delta to restart mining
immediately aer the aack yester
-day. “Meanwhile, I must shield our
remaining staons.”“Is Rahul in danger?” Cheng asked.
“No, rogues don’t—”Beeps erupted around us. Redlights pocked the panel, and new data
ooded my monitor. My stomachclenched; some staon’s interceptprogram was reporng intrusion. An
-other rogue strike.
Staon Beta.
Cam-feeds from Beta showed ro-bots smashing into each other, scoo-pers screeching to a halt, and pickersdropping rocks. Crazed machines tan-
gled and collapsed. Hex code from the
interceptor streamed on my monitor.Cheng gasped. “What the—”
“Damn.” The data dump stoppedabruptly. The visuals died secondslater. In less than ve minutes, my sta
-
on was reduced to a pile of garbage.I’d never seen such swi savagery,
human or automated, in my nine de-
cades of belt mining. Typically, roguesdisrupted work by aecng a coupleof machines. This was annihilaon.
greatness in a shiless young ruf 
-
an, and is carried to it’s climax bythe irraonal hope of an old manwho refuses to sele for anythingless than what could be. The lmpraccally vibrates with opmism,
and has spellbound millions of fans.
The rst queson, then, is why?
Why do we seek hope in the sto-
ries that live with us? The answer isobvious: con is, to some extent,
escapism, and when we cheer theexploits of the U.S.S. Enterprise,what are we escaping from, if not
the uer hopelessness of the worldwe live in? In the real world, hopeis rarely rewarded, or even jused.
People are wicked and broken and
confused. Good never completely
triumphs over evil. Failure is the
rule, not the excepon.The second queson, then, issckier: Is cous hope a good andhealthy thing? Or is it naive, dan
-
gerous and irresponsible to ll ourminds with such fantasc noons of hope? From a purveyor of space op
-
era, a tradionally hopeful genre, itis perhaps an odd queson, but I’m
curious to see how other fans of thisgenre feel about it.
Are we beer served by cheering
for Captain Kirk and Luke Skywalker,
or gring our teeth with John Con
-
nor?
of 00

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