“Oh yeah, I nearly forgot. Mrs McClellan got her baby back. They dropped the charges against her, so we tracked her down to tell her it was okay to come out of hiding. The kid’s got a hell of a pair of lungs. By the sound of it she’s gonna be a banshee-type meta by the time she’s five.”
When the last of the daylight vanished and the stars appeared, Niobe stood and brushed herself off. She had places to be. Gabby would be waiting for her.
“I’ll come back next week,” she said. “I’m sure I’ll have some more stories by then. Everything’s changing so fast. It’s a new world, Carpenter.” She smiled. “See you round, mate.”
The first totara shoots had already started to poke their way out of the dirt. She pulled her mask back on and returned to the car.
She was right; Gabby was waiting for her. A light was blinking on the dashboard when she got in the car. She flipped open the panel to reveal the screen and small keyboard.
—Everything okay? the readout said.
Niobe had to search and peck at the keys to type the response. It was a great system Gabby had come up with, but it’d be easier if Niobe had paid attention in typing class at high school. Another hand would’ve been useful too. She couldn’t wait until Gabby put the finishing touches on the prosthetic hand she was building.
—Yeah, Niobe finally responded. I’m ready. Where are you?
—Look up.
Niobe leaned over the steering wheel and looked up at the sky through the windshield. There, amongst the stars, was a speck of orange flame, and above it, the glinting of silver armour.
—Looking good, babe, Niobe typed.
—We’ve got something coming in. Pile-up on the southern highway. Four cars, a bus, and a fuel tanker. We’ll be faster than the firemen. You up for it?
Niobe turned the ignition and shifted the lever of the new automatic transmission. The car rumbled to life, good as ever.
—Race you there, Niobe typed.
—You’re on.
The fire streaked across the sky. They were the strangers who guarded the world through the night. And they had work to do.
Niobe gunned the engine.
Author’s Note
I love superheroes. There’s something pure and uplifting and primal about the idea of superpowers and saving the world and good and evil. When we live our entire lives in a place where nothing is certain, where everything is a shade of grey, sometimes we need to escape to a world where there are people who are just good, without a reason or a motive or an agenda. I love being able to visit a world where good people have the power to change the world for the better.
For too long, the superhero genre (whatever that is) has been portrayed as nothing more than a power fantasy for young males. But as Kurt Busiek so eloquently put in the first Astro City trade paperback, Life in the Big City, the superhero is, above all else, a symbol, a metaphor. (By the way, if you’re not already familiar with Astro City, check it out. It’s a fantastic comic and requires no prior knowledge of the major superhero universes.) The superhero is incredibly versatile. He can be a symbol of whatever the hell you want him to be. Superhero stories can be about living gods destroying and creating on whims, like the gods of ancient Greek myth, or they can be normal people like us, just trying to get by. They can be stories of young people, old people, male, female, gay, straight, bi, human, non-human, or anything in between. They can be stories of love, terror, hope, action, or wonder. And they can be all of those things at the same time. Are superheroes simplistic and juvenile? Sure, to some degree. But that purity is what makes the superhero such a powerful metaphor. A story about a superhero can be as simplistic or as complex as the writer chooses to make it.
While this book may be gritty, I never intended to write a “realistic” superhero story. Alan Moore’s Watchmen, Nolan’s Batman movies, and many other stories have already explored what happens when you put a superhero in a relatively realistic environment, and they’ve done it better than I ever could. I think it’s pretty clear that in real life, superheroes would break the world. If people with the power of Superman, Green Lantern, Iron Man, or Professor X existed, the world would change completely, and probably not for the better. But I don’t believe that means there’s no room for unrealistic superhero stories. On the contrary, I think one of the strongest drivers of the superhero mythos in the public consciousness is that sense of wonder, that sense of strangeness. And I don’t think superheroes are going away anytime soon.
I had a blast writing this book. It took me a bit longer than I thought it would and the total word count was greater than I expected, but I’m proud of the finished product. It has been incredibly satisfying to inject a bit of myself and my Kiwi culture into the superhero genre. Whether you guys enjoy reading the book as much as I enjoyed writing it remains to be seen. I owe a great debt of gratitude to all those who helped this book come to fruition. I want to thank Nen and Diana for all their hard work in helping me improve the book. This book wouldn’t have been possible without them. I take full responsibility for any and all errors, at least until I can figure out how to pin them on someone else. I have to offer a big thanks to Kitty for her mad art skillz. Thank you to my friends and family who encouraged me on this crazy writerly quest. And of course, a huge thank you to everyone who helped make the superhero such a powerful figure in popular culture, from Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster, the creators of Superman, to modern day creative geniuses like Joss Whedon, whose big screen take on The Avengers is currently tearing up the box office.
None of the heroes or villains mentioned in this novel are intended to be direct parallels of any existing characters in superhero fiction, but with such long, rich histories across dozens of different companies and writers and universes, some characters have acted as inspiration for my own. There are, of course, many nods to classic superhero tropes throughout the book. The only characters in this book who are based on real people are Robert and Frank Oppenheimer. J. Robert Oppenheimer really was the physicist in charge of the Manhattan Project, and his brother, Frank, was among the many scientists at Los Alamos. Their lives make for fascinating reading, and biographies of them are well worth seeking out. Of course, there was never an explosion at Los Alamos, and the brothers never became superheroes. I have taken a number of other liberties with regards to the brothers and their lives, and nothing in this book is meant to reflect in any way on their real life counterparts.
Thank you very much for reading. I hope you enjoyed Don’t Be a Hero. If you feel like recommending the book to a friend or leaving a quick review on Amazon, Goodreads, or any other site you can think of, I’d be extremely grateful. I sink or swim based on the kindness and enthusiasm of readers like you.
Stay tuned in the future for more stories set in the Atomverse. Niobe’s story may be over, but there are a few billion other people out there trying to make it in a world where superheroes and supervillains exist, and they’ve all got stories to tell. Let’s see how many I can get through before the writer’s life catches up with me.
If you want to keep in touch, check out my website at www.Chris-Strange.com or find me on Facebook or Twitter. If you’d like to know about any new releases as soon as they’re available, sign up for the mailing list at: http://bit.ly/StrangeList
Until next time.
Chris Strange
About the Author
Chris Strange is a writer of urban fantasy and other fantastika. He is especially fond of writing hardboiled stories with a noir influence. His goal is to deliver intense, humorous and sometimes dark stories to his readers.
In his spare time, Chris is an unapologetic geek, spending far too long wrapped up in speculative fiction books, watching old zombie movies and playing computer games. He lives in the far away land of New Zealand, and occasionally he goes to university like he’s supposed to.
He doesn’t plan on growing up any time soon.
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www.Chris-Strange.com
Also By Chris Strange
The Man Who Crossed Worlds (Miles Franco #1)
Heart-pounding, stomach-kicking, and noir-drenched, The Man Who Crossed Worlds is urban fantasy with a twist of pulp and served in a dirty glass.
All freelance Tunneler Miles Franco wants is a bit of freedom and a couple of bucks to rub together. So when the cops haul him downtown for illegally smuggling the natives of another dimension to Earth, he’ll take any chance he can get to stay out of the pen. And funnily enough, the cops have just the job for him.
A mysterious interdimensional drug-smuggler is staking his claim on Miles’ city, and a drug war is about to kick off that will make the city look like the set of a post-apocalyptic horror movie. As a Tunneler, Miles knows all about interdimensional transport, and the cops need his help cutting off the drug lord’s supply before it reaches Earth.
But it doesn’t take long playing police lapdog before Miles realizes this ain’t no ordinary drug he’s dealing with. Snooping around in gang business is a dangerous job in a city where everyone’s on the take and the gangsters play for keeps.
And there are a lot of ways a nosy Tunneler can disappear.
“It’s a hell of a ride.” —Bloody Murder Books
Available now at Amazon.com
And don't forget to check out the prequel short story, The Man Who Couldn’t Be Bought (A Miles Franco Short Story)
DON’T BE A HERO
Originally published by Cheeky Minion 2012
Copyright © 2012 Chris Strange
Kindle Edition
Version 1.0
Cover art by Kitty Gunn
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, and locales are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living, dead, or in a healing coma) is entirely coincidental.
Don't Be a Hero: A Superhero Novel Page 38
