Is it just a myth that people need masters to tell them what to do and extort their wealth?
Every dictator says, “Of course it’s no myth! People DO need masters! How else could the world possibly keep turning on its axis!”
In the US, the current version involves women’s right to control their own bodies. In Taiwan and Ukraine, they’re staring down the guns of other countries that think they don’t have the RIGHT masters. In Haiti, gangs are putting the cops to rout. In Myanmar (Burma) the masters have decided to slaughter and chase out of the country a significant portion of the populace (the Rohingya). Sri Lanka’s masters (government) have wrecked the place, and both India and China are drooling over the economic wreckage. Everywhere there are dictatorial employers.
As a myth, the djinn offer an example a writer can work with. Rub a lamp or an old bottle and get a slave! And no one ever asks the djinn if they’d rather have a different fate.
For the whole first year of the pandemic, I played with that, writing segment after segment of what I decided was a “mosaic” novel, The Last Masters. It’s got slavers and employers and gangsters, and more. There are even a few Tuckerisms.
When I showed it to John Betancourt of Wildside Press, he gave me a contract. Then he put it up on Amazon—and forgot to tell me! It’s been there since April, and only now do I get the chance to blow the horn.
So here it is: https://www.amazon.com/Last-Masters-Mosaic-Novel/dp/1479462144
