The Many Deaths of Joe Buckley Read Online Free PDF

him as a reviewer version of Don Rickles.)
    I showed some of them to Jim Baen to see what he thought and Jim frankly hit the roof. But Jim was rarely mild in person or online. 
    After some thought I decided that Joe needed a lesson in manners. The scene below from Gust Front originally had a randomly chosen name of “Peterson” for the character described as “Lefty.” After the Peanut Gallery Incident I just hit “Find/replace: Peterson/Buckley.”
    I’m sorry, I didn’t know what I’d started!
    David, as mentioned, had previously killed Joe in the Cuttthroat . But when I went full-on psycho on the character, the avalanche was rather beyond anything intended.
    Joe, fortunately, takes it all in stride and finds it rather amusing.
    And now: to the killing fields!
    When the Devil Dances : Except as an example, Joe Buckley doesn’t appear in Gust Front . But he’d survived what happened to him in Gust Front . So he was still around. When I needed a viewpoint character for the grunt perspective of the events in When the Devil Dances , well, Joe was just sitting there . . .
    Cally’s War : My co-author for the series, Julie Cochrane, hadn’t had a chance to kill Joe Buckley. Yet. The problem being, in that universe Joe Buckley is already dead. But, to quote Lovecraft: All are not dead that sleeping lie, and in strange aeons even death may die.
    See if you recognize a certain pessimistic character in the AI. If you use an iPhone, you get Siri. If you’re on the Discovery One you get HAL. If you use a Buckley . . .
    Sister Time : Snork.
    Honor of the Clan : I’m a stinker, ain’t I?
    Eye of the Storm : Same universe, same AI but with a bit more expansion as the Buckley personality finally is seen in start-up mode.
    Poor Joe.
    Citadel : By the time this book was written, I pretty much use Buckley every time I want to discuss in third person some sad-sack character who died or did something boneheaded, or both. This was getting on to forty books and you tend to get a bit lazier and more cynical by that point in your career . . .

A Hymn Before Battle
    JOHN RINGO
    For the next few hours soldiers and NCOs were contacted and units worked out. Personnel who were mobile were sent to free thoroughly trapped comrades. The grenade idea worked well except in the case of one unfortunate private who discovered after arming the grenade that he could not retract his arm. Fortunately GalTech medical technology could regenerate the missing hand if they ever got back to friendly lines. Given that the pain was quite brief, the suit sealed the breach and pain-blocked the damage almost instantly, it caused a certain amount of black humor at his expense. It only got worse when he told them his last words were, “This is gonna huurt.”
    * * *
    The explosion tore the space cruiser in half, vaporizing the facet against which the material had been placed and blasting two separated pieces of ship away from each other. One was blasted sideways into the nearest megascraper, which was already coming apart from the nuclear wave front. It slammed into the top of the mile-cube building and smashed half of it to the ground, taking out two more buildings as well before it finally ground to a halt.
    The other section of the massive ship was blasted nearly straight up. It rose on the edge of the mushroom cloud, a black spot of malignance on the edge of the beautiful fireball, and finally curved back downward to smash into another Posleen-held megascraper.

Gust Front
    JOHN RINGO
    “Well, come on in when you want. Where to begin?” mused Mike, taking a sip of bourbon.
    “At the beginning is usually best,” commented General Horner dryly. The dozen or so Absoluts had seemed to effect Horner not at all. Mike had heard he had a hollow leg. Now he believed it. The only way to tell he was drunk off his ass was that his normally sober expression had become like iron. Way drunk.
    “Yeah. Well, Buckley was one of the guys caught under Qualtren. Now, we had