Radio

Shannon Redwine doesn’t need a camera any more. She blinks one eye, squints, and she’s on the air.

That’s the hook of Radio, a science fiction novelette of about twelve thousand words.

What is Radio about?

A reporter who becomes her own transmitter. Shannon has always wanted to be a video reporter in the cinema verite style, and an ordinary camera feels too narrow for what she wants to show. With help from a trust fund, she goes to an Elmer. That’s ham radio slang for an experienced operator who mentors newcomers, and this one, named Phi, surgically installs something very special.

What she sees, and what she broadcasts, upsets some powerful people. The villain is Maxwell Burnham, known as Max Burner, a rogue government operative who hunts people he calls squawkers. He’s also a runaway diabetic who uses his excess glucose to power a killing beam. Before it’s over, more than a hundred thousand squawkers are in danger.

Ham radio is one of the old technical hobbies, a world of call signs, licenses, antennas strung up in backyards and conversations with strangers on the other side of the planet. Kenn has written articles about it, and the Elmer tradition at the center of the story is real.

What editions are there?

The ebook came out on April 19, 2016. An 80-page paperback followed in 2017, and an audiobook narrated by Jack de Golia runs about an hour and twenty minutes.

Who is Kenn Brody?

The pen name of a former physicist and computer scientist, and one of the founding members of the critique group I started in Clearwater. He’s the one who first explained the AI winters to me.

Broken Symmetry Publishing, his own press, released Radio the same year as his novels Pa’an and The Sage of Sagittarius.

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