Joe Vasicek is the author of more than twenty science fiction books, including the Star Wanderers and Sons of the Starfarers series. As a young man, he studied Arabic and traveled across the Middle East and the Caucasus. He claims Utah as his home.
Fantasy often asks what heroes will risk to save their people, but it also asks a deeper question: what does it take to heal a world that has already been broken? In The Winds of Desolation, the land itself bears the scars of ancient wrongdoing. The story follows characters who must confront the past, not merely to survive its consequences, but to restore what was lost.
Where the Idea Came From
The idea behind this story grew from a fascination with how places carry history. Some landscapes seem peaceful and alive, while others feel haunted by the memory of what happened there long ago. That contrast led to a simple “what if”: what if a land could be wounded by the choices of those who once ruled it, and what if healing it required courage from a new generation willing to face that past instead of fleeing from it?
How Healing a Cursed Land Shapes the Story
In The Winds of Desolation, the curse hanging over the land is not just a magical obstacle. It is the result of ancient decisions that reshaped the world and left lasting consequences behind. The storms, the strange magic, and the dangers the characters face are all symptoms of something deeper—a broken balance between power, responsibility, and the land itself.
This idea drives the choices the characters must make. Some want to escape the cursed region and leave its mysteries behind. Others believe the only path forward is to confront the past and repair what was damaged. As alliances form and secrets emerge, the question becomes clear: is the desolation inevitable, or can courage and sacrifice restore life to a place that seems beyond saving?
What Healing a Cursed Land Says About Us
Stories about cursed lands resonate because they echo a truth about human life: our choices shape the world we leave behind. Just as the characters in the story inherit the consequences of earlier generations, people in the real world often find themselves living with the results of decisions they did not personally make. The hope at the heart of this theme is that broken things—whether landscapes, communities, or relationships—are not beyond healing if someone is willing to take responsibility and begin the work of restoration.
Why This Theme Matters to Me
One of the ideas that kept returning to me while writing this story is that the world is never truly static. Every generation inherits something—sometimes something beautiful, sometimes something damaged. I wanted to explore what it means to step into that inheritance with humility and courage, and to believe that even a wounded land can be made whole again if people refuse to abandon it.
The Winds of Desolation is a survival fantasy adventure about a small band of travelers stranded in a cursed land where the wilderness itself seems determined to destroy them. Shipwrecked far from civilization and hunted by enemies who control the fate of the land, they must rely on courage, magic, and loyalty to survive. The result is a tense journey across a dangerous landscape where every decision matters.
What Kind of Reader Will Love This Book?
f you love…
fantasy survival stories about characters stranded in hostile lands
classic quest adventures with magic, ancient prophecies, and cursed places
small groups of companions relying on loyalty, courage, and cleverness to survive
wilderness journeys across strange and dangerous landscapes
character-driven fantasy with teamwork, sacrifice, and high stakes
…then The Winds of Desolation is probably your kind of story.
What You’ll Find Inside
The Winds of Desolation follows Alex, a young sea mage who survives a deadly storm only to find himself stranded with his companions in the infamous Lands of Desolation—a cursed wilderness where few who enter ever return. With their captain dead, their supplies nearly gone, and their most powerful ally mysteriously incapacitated, the group must cross hostile territory while evading enemies who seek to control the land’s ancient magic. The story blends tense survival, exploration, and magical intrigue, creating a fast-moving adventure that feels both gritty and hopeful.
What Makes It Different
Fans of classic quest fantasy will recognize familiar elements—dangerous landscapes, powerful magic, and a group of companions working together to overcome impossible odds. But The Winds of Desolation leans heavily into the survival aspect of the journey. Instead of a large army or powerful kingdom, the story focuses on a handful of characters struggling to survive in a cursed wilderness while unraveling the mysteries behind it. The result is a fantasy adventure where the landscape itself becomes one of the story’s most dangerous characters.
What You Won’t Find
This is not grimdark fantasy built around cynicism or relentless brutality. While the story contains danger and loss, it ultimately focuses on courage, friendship, and perseverance. Readers looking for heavy political intrigue or court drama may also find that the story keeps its attention firmly on adventure, exploration, and survival.
Why I Think You Might Love It
I’ve always been fascinated by stories where ordinary people are forced into extraordinary situations and must rely on each other to survive. The heart of this book is that kind of journey: a small group of companions facing fear, uncertainty, and impossible odds while trying to do the right thing. Stories like this remind me that courage doesn’t come from power or destiny—it comes from choosing, again and again, to stand by the people who need you.
This is a shorter piece, but I really love it. The music really paints a lovely picture of a river as it grows from a small, winding stream into a mighty waterway. I can imagine it passing things like a royal hunt, a village wedding, a stretch of deep forest, some rapids, and finally a bustling city before flowing out to the sea. The composer is also Czech, which is probably why it resonates with me so much. Ahoy!
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein
Dune by Frank Herbert
Skylark DuQuesne by Edward E. Smith
This Immortal by Roger Zelazny
The Actual Results
Dune by Frank Herbert and This Immortal by Roger Zelazny (tie)
Skylark DuQuesne by Edward E. Smith
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein
The Squares of the City by John Brunner
How I Would Have Voted
Dune by Frank Herbert
Explanation
Dune is the most perfect science fiction novel I have ever read. I wouldn’t call it the best—in fact, I would say that Hyperion and Ender’s Game are marginally better—but it is the most perfect, in terms of genre conventions, tropes and archetypes, story structure, etc. It is a magnificent book, but it’s also the kind of book you need to read three or four (or five or six) times to fully appreciate.
My first reading of Dune was when I was still in high school. I almost didn’t get through it, just because the writing was so dense. But I was intrigued by Paul’s prescience and his struggle to avoid the timeline where the jihad happens, so I read it all the way through to the end. But most of the book went over my head.
My second reading was sometime in college. I don’t remember when, exactly—it might have been around the time I read 2001: A Space Odyssey, or when I first discovered Asimov’s Foundation novels. It may have been a year or two after that, when I’d decided to pursue writing as a career and felt like I needed to steep myself more in the science fiction genre. Either way, I enjoyed it much more that time, though still, most of the subtle nuances of the story still went over my head.
I read Dune the third time shortly after I got married, when my wife and I used to read in bed together (this was before we had a crib in our bedroom, which has been the natural state of affairs for most of our marriage now). This time, I finally got all of the stuff that I’d missed, like the politics of the great houses and the galactic empire, the impact of the Butlerian Jihad, the economics of the spice and the importance of the Spacing Guild, and the ecology of Arrakis and how it played into the story. It was amazing. World building on the level of Tolkien, or perhaps even higher. Truly incredible stuff.
Since then, I’ve tried to read most of the other Frank Herbert Dune books, but I gave up midway through Heretics of Dune.Dune Messiah was a really great wrap-up to the story of Dune, though it didn’t feel nearly as epic as the first book. Children of Dune was a fun read, and almost as good as the first one. God Emperor of Dune was a more of a slog, though the ending was fantastic. By this point of the series, I was starting to feel again like everything was going over my head, so that’s probably why it was so difficult.
I do plan to read all of these books eventually, though. And I may even give the Brian Herbert / Kevin J. Anderson books a try, though I’ve heard they’re not nearly as good as the original Frank Herbert books. The next time I attempt the series, I will probably look for some YouTube content to help explain it without giving away too many spoilers. Or maybe I’ll use AI as a reading companion (which would be a super ironic way to use AI, hehe).
So if the 1966 Hugos were held again today, I would definitely vote Dune as the top book. But to be frankly honest, I don’t think I could vote for any of the others, even though some of them are classics in their own right.
Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is the other big classic from this year, but I’ve just never been able to get through it. I’ve tried twice, but each time I’ve set it down in disgust, mostly because of all the weird sexual conventions in the future that Heinlein has constructed. There are some things that I really love Heinlein for, and other things about his writing that I simply cannot stand, and I have learned from experience to avoid any of his books where his views on sex are a major part of the story. But maybe I’ll try the audiobook sometime.
I should probably try to reread This Immortal, too. For some reason, the only Zelazny books I have ever managed to read are the Chronicles of Amber books, and I am currently taking a break midway between books 8 and 9 (or is it 7 and 8?) The first half of that series, following Corwin, were fantastic. Really great stuff. The second half, following Merlin, has been… not as great. I’m still enjoying it, but I constantly feel like I’m lost. But back to This Immortal… to be honest, I don’t remember why I DNFed it, but I think it came down to a combination of feeling lost and not really caring about the characters. But I should definitely pick it up and try it again (though it’s becoming a hard book to find).
I tried to read the Skylark series from the beginning, but it was super, super campy and I got bored with it. I can appreciate that it was a formative work during the pulp era of science fiction, and that many of the fans in the generation that started Worldcon and the Hugo Awards were first exposed to science fiction when they read those books as children. The equivalent for me would be the original Star Wars trilogy, and all the classic old Star Wars books by Kevin J. Anderson, Dave Wolverton, and Timothy Zahn. But unless you’re writing a dissertation on the history of science fiction, the Skylark books probably aren’t essential reading.
The Squares of the City is a surprisingly difficult book to find. It’s not at my local library, the library network’s audiobook app, or the BYU Library—which is unusual, because the BYU Library has one of the best science fiction collections in the country (they have all 300 or so of the Hugo nominated books in their collection, except maybe half a dozen). I think the paperback is currently selling for something like $200 on Amazon. But the ebook is available, and relatively cheap, though to be honest I only downloaded the sample. And after reading the first two chapters, that was enough for me to decide to DNF.
There’s nothing terrible about the book, but it just isn’t all that good. It’s about a European (or maybe American?) tourist visiting a fictional South American dictatorship, which is on the verge of a communist revolution. The thing that’s supposed to make the book unique is that Brunner played a game of chess while writing the book, and all of the major plot points are tied to specific chess moves from that game. In that way, it’s a little like Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, where he used some kind of Chinese divination system to come up with the actual plot.
But we don’t remember The Man in the High Castle for the plot, and apprently, we don’t remember The Squares of the City for anything. My guess is that Brunner got nominated because of his politics, which made him a favorite among the Futurians and all the others in the fandom that were trying to turn science fiction into a vehicle for world communism. So basically, the spiritual predecessors of today’s blue-haired crazies who have completely taken over the Hugo and Nebula awards.
In Victors in Liberty, the final book of the Sons of the Starfarers space opera series, characters who have survived interstellar conflict must face the consequences of their past decisions. Redemption here is not an easy reset, but a costly path that requires truth, trust, and the courage to confront the damage the past has left behind.
Where the Idea Came From
The idea behind this theme grew from a simple question that echoes throughout the series: What happens after someone has already made terrible choices? Many science fiction stories explore rebellion, war, and survival, but fewer explore what comes after—the long work of rebuilding trust, healing broken loyalties, and choosing who we will become next. The Sons of the Starfarers series began as a space opera about lost colonies, ancient enemies, and humanity’s place among the stars, but as the characters grew, their struggles with guilt, forgiveness, and belonging became just as important as the battles between worlds.
How the Cost of Redemption Shapes the Story
Throughout Victors in Liberty, the characters confront the reality that redemption is never simple. Past betrayals, divided loyalties, and painful memories still shape the present. The question is not whether the past can be erased—it cannot—but whether people can choose a different path going forward. Trust must be rebuilt slowly, and sometimes the greatest act of courage is admitting that you were wrong and asking for the chance to try again.
This struggle touches nearly every major character in the story. Some are trying to forgive others. Some are trying to forgive themselves. Others must decide whether redemption is even possible in a universe where survival often demands hard choices. The result is a character-driven science fiction story where moral decisions matter as much as starships and strategy. The fate of entire worlds may be at stake, but the deeper question is whether broken people can still become something better than what their past suggests.
What The Cost of Redemption Says About Us
At its heart, this theme reflects a truth about human nature. Everyone makes mistakes, and some mistakes feel impossible to undo. Yet history—and everyday life—shows that people are capable of change, growth, and restoration. Redemption does not mean pretending the past never happened. Instead, it means carrying the weight of that past while choosing to build something better. Stories like this resonate because they remind us that hope is not found in perfection, but in the courage to keep moving forward.
Why This Theme Matters to Me
One of the reasons I keep returning to this theme is because I believe redemption is one of the most powerful ideas in storytelling. The characters in this series face enormous external conflicts, but the battles that matter most are the ones inside their own hearts. I’ve always been drawn to stories where people who feel broken or unworthy discover that their story is not finished yet. That possibility—that a person can fall, struggle, and still rise again—is something I find deeply hopeful, both in fiction and in life.
Victors in Liberty is for readers who want space opera that stays intensely human even when the stakes stretch across worlds. It delivers a tense, emotionally layered finale full of loyalty, sacrifice, found-family bonds, war, freedom, and the cost of choosing who you will become.
What Kind of Reader Will Love Victors in Liberty?
If you love …
character-driven military space opera with deep personal stakes
long-form science fiction series where relationships matter as much as battles
stories about loyalty, identity, duty, and the search for freedom
found family, reluctant alliances, and wounded people trying to become whole
epic series finales that feel both hard-won and emotionally intimate
…then Victors in Liberty is probably your kind of story.
What You’ll Find Inside
Victors in Liberty follows Reva, Isaac, Mara, Aaron, Ayesha, and the wider cast of Sons of the Starfarers as they face the final consequences of everything the series has been building toward: war on a planetary scale, divided loyalties, the pressure of leadership, and the question of what kind of future can be saved without losing the soul of the people fighting for it. The emotional journey is tense, bruised, and deeply personal, yet still hopeful. The result is a fast-moving, character-centered space opera finale that blends military action, telepathic mystery, moral struggle, and a persistent belief that endurance, mercy, and human connection still matter.
What Makes Victors in Liberty Different
Like the best military and character-driven space opera, this story offers fleet action, political danger, and high-stakes survival—but what sets Sons of the Starfarers apart is how much it cares about inner conflict, chosen loyalty, and the spiritual and emotional cost of war. This is not just a series about ships, battles, and empires. It is also a series about fractured people trying to build trust, keep promises, and find freedom without becoming monsters themselves. Even at its largest scale, the story remains intimate, with the fate of worlds constantly tied to personal choices and relationships.
What You Won’t Find
You won’t find hard science fiction focused mainly on technology, nor a detached military thriller where tactics matter more than people. You also won’t find a grimdark finale that treats human attachment as weakness. This series goes to painful places, but it keeps returning to loyalty, conscience, healing, and hope.
Why I Think You Might Love Victors in Liberty
I think this story matters because it feels earned. It carries the weight of a long journey—both for the characters and for the series itself—and that gives the ending a sense of promise fulfilled. More than that, it is a story for readers who care about perseverance: not just surviving hardship, but continuing to choose responsibility, love, freedom, and meaning when the easy path would be to give up. That sense of endurance, commitment, and gratitude is part of what gives this finale its heart.
I’ve passed the 50% mark of the rough human draft for Captive of the Falconstar, which means that I’ve got about 40k words left to go. Since I’ve been averaging between 2,000 and 2,500 words per hour, I only need about 20 writing hours to finish it.
I also have to finish the AI draft, which is somewhere around 80% done, but that shouldn’t be too difficult. Add maybe another 5 writing hours for that. Also, I plan to do a full human revision draft, and a final polished draft, which I will probably start this week. Those should each take between 16 – 20 writing hours.
So let’s see:
AI draft: 5 writing hours
Rough human draft: 20 writing hours
Revised human draft: 20 writing hours (conservatively)
Final polished draft: 20 writing hours (conservatively)
So all I really need is another 65 writing hours, and this WIP should be done and ready to move into the publishing queue.
Here’s the thing, though: I only get between 1-2 writing hours per day. I usually watch the kids while my wife is at work, and since we’re in March now there’s a lot of outdoor work that needs to get done, like pruning the apple trees and prepping the garden. So it’s going to be really hard to squeeze out any more writing hours than that. I do usually get more like 4-5 hours on Saturdays, though, while my wife watches the kids. But since we keep sabbath, I don’t write on Sundays.
So realistically, I can only get about 10 writing hours each week. Which means that I probably won’t finish this WIP until the second half of April. I was hoping to finish it by the end of this month—and if I had a solid week where I could write full-time, I probably could—but realistically, it’s probably going to take longer than I would like.
However, the good news is that it’s all going really smoothly. No writing blocks, no major story problems or hangups. Just a lot of putting in time and doing the work. And even with the chores and outdoor work, I do still get a good amount of writing time. My wife is really good about watching the kids in the evening, and it really helps to get out of the house to write.
So I am very confident that Captive of the Falconstar will be done by the end of April, enough that I will probably put it up for preorder in the next couple of weeks. As for the next book, I plan to work on it in the fall, but it probably shouldn’t take more than 3-4 months, even at my current pace.
This may be a hot take for some of you, but I think we are reaching a point where the greatest obstacle to the Christian revival in the United States is the politicization of Christianity, or what many call “Christian Nationalism.”
Jesus Christ taught that His kingdom is not of this world, much to the chagrin of many of his disciples (including Judas Iscariot, who probably betrayed Him in order to force His hand and make Him come out in His power and glory). They were looking for a political messiah, and when He died on the cross, even His most ardent apostles like Peter were totally lost. But He didn’t come to save the world from the Romans, or the Sadducees, (or the Democrats, or the left)… He came to save the world from sin and death.
But that’s not the message you hear if you go to some of these conservative evangelical churches that have draped themselves in the flag. To many of these Christians (a surprising number of whom are less Bible-literate than some atheists), voting the wrong way might as well be a greater sin than Trump’s adultery. This is hypocrisy, plain and simple—and I say that as someone who voted for Trump.
If Christian Nationalism wins, the revival will fail, because its reach will be limited to conservatives. In order for Christian revival to sweep this country, our Christianity needs to become separated from our politics. Salvation doesn’t come from Congress or the White House. Christ never promised that He would save us from the tribulation of this world. Instead, He told us to take cheer, because He had overcome it.
I do believe that God’s hand is moving this country. I believe that it was divine intervention that saved President Trump from the assassin’s bullet back in Butler Pennsylvania. But I’m not so sure that He saved Trump in order to make America great again. I think His plans run much deeper than that.
Will the Republicans lose the midterms? Will the MAGA movement end with Trump’s presidency? Will the economy collapse, or the Iran war turn into a quagmire? Will the left come back to power and do all the terrible things that the conservative right fears? If so, I can see how all of these things will ultimately serve to humble us and turn us to Christ. Indeed, I suspect that a major humbling is becoming increasingly necessary.
Fantasy stories often explore the idea of protecting hope in a dark world. In The Widow’s Child, that struggle becomes intensely personal. The story follows Elara, a widowed mother raising her daughter Seraph in secrecy, knowing the child’s unusual gifts could draw the attention of dangerous powers. When the wider world begins to close in, Elara must decide how far she is willing to go to keep her daughter safe—even if it means sacrificing the fragile life they have built together.
Where the Idea Came From
Many fantasy stories revolve around prophecy, destiny, and the rise of powerful heroes. But I was interested in the quieter question behind those stories: What does it feel like to be the parent of a child caught in something larger than herself? The idea for The Widow’s Child grew out of that tension—between epic destiny and the ordinary, human instinct to protect a child. I wanted to explore what happens when a mother’s love collides with prophecy, power, and the dangerous ambitions of those who would use a gifted child for their own ends.
How A Mother’s Love Shapes the Story
From the beginning of the novel, Elara’s choices are driven by one priority: keeping her daughter Seraph safe. She lives in isolation, hides their past, and carefully controls the small world Seraph grows up in. What might look like caution or secrecy to an outsider is, in truth, a form of devotion. Elara knows that the world beyond their quiet refuge is dangerous—and that Seraph’s unusual gifts make her especially vulnerable.
That love becomes the engine of the story’s major decisions. When strangers appear, when the past threatens to catch up with them, and when darker forces begin to move against Seraph, Elara repeatedly faces impossible choices. Again and again she chooses the same path: protect her daughter, whatever the cost. Her love is not passive or sentimental. It is fierce, protective, and sometimes painfully sacrificial.
This also shapes the emotional core of the book. While prophecy and magic swirl around Seraph’s future, Elara never sees her first as “the chosen one.” She sees a child who deserves safety, warmth, and a chance to grow up. That tension—between destiny and motherhood—runs through every major conflict in the story.
What A Mother’s Love Says About Us
Stories about heroes often focus on strength, power, or destiny. But the deeper truth behind many heroic journeys is love—the love that makes sacrifice meaningful and courage possible. A parent’s love is one of the clearest examples of this. It asks people to endure hardship, take risks, and face fear for the sake of someone else’s future.
In that sense, The Widow’s Child reflects something universal. Across cultures and histories, the willingness of parents to protect their children has shaped countless acts of courage. The novel asks what happens when that same instinct enters a world of prophecy, magic, and danger—and whether love might ultimately be stronger than the darkness gathering around it.
Why This Theme Matters to Me
Before I became a parent, I could imagine heroic sacrifices in the abstract. Afterward, those sacrifices became personal. Suddenly the idea of protecting a child—even at terrible cost—felt real in a way it never had before. The Widow’s Child grew out of that realization. Beneath the magic and adventure, it’s a story about the fierce, stubborn love that parents feel for their children—and the hope that such love might still matter in a dangerous world.
