Welcome to the world of Andrew Vaillencourt’s science fiction!

Here you will find two-fisted tales steeped in the competing flavors of rage and redemption, vengeance and vice, and of course, profit and loss. It’s a rough place. Not big on niceties or manners unless you are the kind of rich that lets you get away with murder.

It’s a rough-and-tumble galaxy out there. Making your way takes more than gumption. You’ll want a granite chin and a nimble gun hand if you find yourself too far from the safety of the closest shining metropolis. If you have the cash, go ahead and hire that genetically enhanced bodyguard you saw an ad for. At least check in with the local fixer, a retired special forces cyborg, before you wander out into the streets by yourself.

Because sometimes the universe decides that today is not your day. When that happens you will need people like the ones in these books . People with the guns, the tech, and the skills to tell the universe to go bother someone else.

They aren’t pretty. They aren’t nice. Some of them are barely even people. But when push comes to shove, these are the ones that are only too happy to push back.

These are their stories.

“WELCOME ABOARD” SALE!

The worlds of THE FIXER and HEGEMONY are filled with insane action and galaxy-spanning intrigue. Getting started may seem like an overwhelming task. Not to worry, help has arrived! Now the opening stories of each series are DEEPLY discounted wherever EBOOKs are sold!

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Start with a FREE EBOOK copy of THE FIXER: ESCALANTE!

Roland Tankowicz arrives in Dockside for the first time. Broken, haunted, and lost, the young cyborg finds himself in the middle of a brewing gang war. Can one good cop and one angry young cyborg killer prevent the endless waves of criminals from ruling the streets?

$1.99 – THE FIXER: ORDNANCE

Established as Dockside’s premier fixer, Roland’s life gets twisted into unrecognizable chaos by the arrival of a mysterious woman with a connection to his past. She was looking for a hero, what she got was a weapon.

$1.99 – HEGEMONY: Sullivan’s Run

John Sullivan didn’t ask to be born, and he certainly didn’t ask to be crazy. But that’s what happens when somebody else gets to pick out your DNA. Even worse, under the Genetic Equity Act of 2141 all artificial modifications granting ‘unfair advantage’ belong to society. As the genetically engineered son of a famous mobster, Sullivan’s physical gifts and illegal provenance condemn him to a life of government service hunting and apprehending others like him.

$6.99- THE FIXER: OMNIBUS

Now grab the first three(!) books in THE FIXER for the ridiculous price of just $6.99! ORDNANCE, HELL FOLLOWS, and HAMMERS AND NAILS clock in at over 1,000 pages of pulse-pounding action. The first major arc in Roland’s adventures, all tied up in one neat volume for your convenience!
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An all-new series from a far-off future is live wherever books are sold online!

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Aloof technological beings with godlike powers have left administration of the galaxy to an elite caste of powerful constructs. With iron fists, these constructs stamp out anything that looks like evolution or high-end computing.

When a random genetic anomaly sets off a massive galactic manhunt, the fates of entire planets hang in the balance. An enigmatic warrior, a miracle child, and a contentious collection of wizards will have to decide if it is time to embroil all freedom-loving worlds in a massive civil war.

MOVIE REVIEW:

Kraven: The Hunter (2024)

Well I did it. I finally watched “Kraven: The Hunter.”

This movie has gotten a lot of bad press. The whole Sony Spider-verse has been taking a beating on quality, and I have to concede that much of it is warranted. Morbius was an unrepentant piece of garbage, Madame Webb was a bad movie about a character no one wanted to hear about, and the three Venom movies are adequate if not stellar action films.

I grade superhero movies on a very generous curve. This is not high cinema, people. These are fantastical characters in a fantastical setting and I expect fantastical stories. Things don’t have to make perfect sense, and in many cases it’s better if they don’t.

It is certainly possible to make an excellent superhero movie, too. Thor: Ragnarok embraced the silliness of its premise to deliver some of the most entertaining moments I’ve ever had in a theater. Captain America: Winter Soldier told a taught action/thriller spy story with memorable characters and well-contrsucted conflicts. It can be done.

Which brings us to Kraven. This was a particularly frustrating watch because about 25% of it was actually very good. Aaron Taylor Johnson looked and felt like a young Sergei Kravinoff, and Russel Crowe chewed the precisely correct quantity of scenery to balance the aesthetic of a comic-book supervillain with the seriousness of a modern movie. The conflict between Sergei and his father was compelling and believable.

Furthermore, the action itself was well-shot. Dodgy CGI aside, Kraven felt like comic-book Kraven when he leapt, ran, and otherwise kicked ass. The Rhino looked terrible, but thankfully he had only a few monutes of screentime. This version of Kraven is somewhat up-scaled from the original, of course. Movie Kraven has super strength and durability well beyond that of the cellulose version. But that is de riguer for cinema superheros these days. (Cap does not have super strength, either, for instance.) But the fights were satisfying and gratifying throughout the film.

The best character in the whole movie was Christopher Abbot’s amazing turn as the ‘Foreigner.’ This suave super assassin with the ability to mesmerize his targets for three seconds warrants his own movie. So naturally, Sony unerutilized him and gave him a highly unsatisfying death. Alessandro Nivola, on the other hand, could not keep his Russian accent consistent, nor could he do much to fix the Rhino’s absoultely terrible dialog. For that I do not blame him. Matt Smith couldn’t fix his Morbius dialog, either. They’re actors, not magicians, Sony.

Which brings us to the real failure of this film: terrible dialog and overall pacing. Virtually every conversation that did not occur between Sergei, Dmitri, or Nikholai (the Kravinoff family) failed to rise above the level of raw, unfiltered, flavorless exposition. A certain degree of narrative economy is to be expected in movies, but this was extreme. It reminded me of Morbius in a lot of places; where people just said things that would have been better shown or implied. Every move of the story was telegraphed in these moments. You could have fielded an army with the quantity of Checkov’s guns tossed around in the first thirty minutes. I knew every turn this movie was going to take in that first half hour.

Despite some high notes and the hard work of several professional actors, I can’t say this was a good movie. It’s not a good movie. Whatever is going on in the writer’s room at Sony needs to be changed, because they keep doubling down on a formula that no one likes. I am not sure if I should blame the studio, the writers, or the directors for yet another wild miss from Sony, but it has the same flavor and characteristics of their other flops. Who is driving the bus, here? And why are they still at the wheel?

Don't miss out on HEGEMONY!

And don’t forget to check out HEGEMONY.

What happens when genetic engineering runs amuck? In a future where two distinct classes of human beings have to live together, conflict is inevitable. Follow the journey of one mentally unstable genetically-modified agent as he uncovers the secrets behind his own creation and the rapidly unravelling state of his world.