As part of my author guest blog series I am proud to present another guest blog spot.

Author Jon Mollison has been kind enough to write a guest blog post for Mighty Thor JRS today. I am very excited and I would like to thank Jon for the opportunity to host this Guest Blog.

Would you like to be a part of my author guest blog series? Please contact me! (mightythorjrs@gmail.com)

Now without further adieu here is Jon’s awesome guest blog.

And don’t forget to check out his book:

Adventure Constant: A Tale of the Planetary Romantic

The Future is a Democracy

by Jon Mollison

You get the future you vote for.

Right now, there is no future. There is only a seething, roiling, cloud of chaos – an infinite number of potential futures waiting to be born, and the universe that awaits us depends upon us to choose it from the vast array of potentialities.

Do you want a future filled with virtue and heroism in the face of danger? You can make that happen. Do you want a future filled with hate filled mobs beating individuals for not hating the villain of the week vociferously enough? You can make that happen.

In fact, you can’t NOT make that happen. Every choice you make drives us all toward one future or another. Do you get your morning coffee at Starbucks or Chik-Fil-A? Do you fawn over your hurt child or tell him to rub some dirt on it? Do you sleep late or go for that early morning run? Do you buy a book from the chain retailer or the Mom and Pop? Do you buy a book by the latest celebrity or that random guy on Twitter that you shared a retweet with?

All of these play a role in building the future, and you aren’t the only one making these choices. Everyone around you can’t help but make the same sorts of decisions. And so, we wind up with a future that arrives as a result of our collective decisions – a democracy of sorts. Like it or not, we all decide collectively what sort of future we get.

For a long time, readers trusted those who dedicated their lives to seeking out and finding the best that literature has to offer. They abdicated their responsibility to make good reading choices to other men and women who proclaimed themselves more suited to the task by weight of experience or intellect or moral fibre. For a long time, writers trusted those same self-appointed arbiters to deem them worthy of participating in the literary market. They abdicated their responsibility to fight for their vision of the future, and packed away their pens and typewriters and word processors when the few Choosers of the Worthy did not look upon their works with favor.

In a few rare instances, authors fought long and hard to circumvent the Choosers of the Worthy. Perhaps most famously, Frank Herbert’s Dune was rejected by every major publishing house, and only published when Chilton Press, a small press specializing in technical and trade manuals, agreed to publish the sci-fi epic. It has since gone on to earn a (in this writer’s opinion undeserved) reputation among many as the greatest sci-fi book ever written. Herbert voted for a future where bloated novels filled with uninformed and slapdash allusions to world geopolitics would become the norm in the same way that Edgar Rice Burroughs’ publishing A Princess of Mars (the actual greatest sci-fi book ever written) voted for a future where quick novels filled with romance and heroism would become the norm.

In the 1960s, those who loved Burroughsian sci-fi were outvoted by those who loved Herbertian sci-fi. In the early 2000s, with the help of heavy vote suppression by the major publishing houses, those who loved Burroughsian sci-fi were outvoted by those who love Scalzian sci-fi.

AS we stand here in the 2010s, the question remains – what kind of future do you want?

When you face the decision to turn left into Chik-Fil-A or right into Starbucks, your money determines the future we get. Your dollar will flow into one of two coffers, and help bring about the future preferred by those who honor Sunday as a day or rest or those who honor abortion mills as vital components of a well ordered society.

In the same way, when you face the decision to buy a book from an independent press like Silverlight, Superversives Press, or Castalia House instead of a Big Five publishing house, your dollars will flow into one of two coffers. They might flow into the ever hungry maw of a New York mercantile house, thereby encouraging more writers and editors to lend their talents to the sort of gray goo stories that exalt mankind and nihilism. Or they might flow into the small accounts of grateful men and women struggling to make the world a better place by providing tales that bring hope and light into this fallen world.

Or you might even give your hard won dollars to a truly independent author. A Nick Cole, whose unfeeling machine intelligences recognize the horrors of casual slaughter of unborn children, as in Ctrl-Alt-REVOLT!. A David J. West, whose grimdarkest works still feature honorable mean fighting to save innocents and restore order, as in Brutal. A Karl Gallagher, whose blue collar science fiction showcases the lengths to which men go to recover and preserve lost knowledge, as in Torchship. A Jason Anspach, who readily acknowledges the simultaneous menace and absurdity of communist agents even as he presents an oddly Christian tale of life after death, as in ‘Til Death.

As writers, you face the same choice. What you publish enters the ballot box of reality and directs us toward one of the infinite future’s that lay before us. Make good choices, and good people will come to you. Make the case for your writing that more men of good will might hear and be inspired to vote for your future by paying you for your visions.

While the door to publishing has been barred to wrongthinkers for decades, the window opened by the recent technological revolution stands wide open. Climb out now, while you can, because those who barred the door are doing everything they can to slam the window shut. Their vision is weak, and they cannot survive in an open market, and they know it. They fear freedom for writers, and they fear freedom for readers. They are voting every day against that freedom, and they have considerable powers at their disposal.

But you, dear reader, have a power all your own. You have the power to bring about a better future than the one they have planned for you.

All you have to do it choose it.

When you go to buy your next book, remember that more than your entertainment is at stake. The future of the world hangs in the balance.

Choose wisely.

#PulpRev

Jon Mollison works as scientist and plays as a writer. A proud member of the PulpRev and fan of independent publishers and self-published authors, his latest novel features the sort of square jawed hero fans of adventure fiction have always loved.

Adventure Constant delivers more thrills, laughs, and romance than most novels twice its size:

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by Jon Mollison

Jack Dashing thought being a rocket test pilot was the most exciting career his world had to offer. He was right, but he had no idea it would also open the door to a world where action and adventure always lay just around the corner. Within 24 hours of crashing the experimental FYN-X drive, Jack finds himself swept up in a race across the Pacific Ocean to rescue a kidnapped princess from the hands of the Red Collective’s most dangerous agent. So begins a world spanning voyage across two oceans in a world a lot like ours – but one where daring rescues, thrilling chases, and secret plots aren’t just the stuff of novels, they are a part of every day life. Particularly for a man of action like Jack Dashing, the Planetary Romantic.

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