Monday, April 2, 2012

B is for Brandt

...who also happens to be Shayla's brother, so this post could have been entitled "B is for Brother". Any prizes for hitting the letter twice?

Brandt Carver is the technical brains, the backroom boffin, behind the revenge mission. (Look! More "B"s)

Brandt was just as affected by the loss of his home as Shayla was, and they kept each other sane in the following years until they finally made their insane pact to take on the empire.

While Shayla went the Rambo route, Brandt hid himself away on the university Freeworld, Chevinta. By day, a distinguished, if somewhat reclusive, professor of topological number theory, by night Brandt became a hacker extraordinaire.

Few networks were safe from his covert prying. He gleaned and squirreled away vast hoards of illicit intelligence to help Shayla. He also equipped her with an electronic arsenal of hacking tools which she used many times during the course of the story.

In Ghosts of Innocence, Brandt remains very much in the background. Shayla speaks to him a couple of times, thinks about him a lot, but he doesn't make an appearance in person until the last scene in the book.

It is not a happy ending for Brandt, as you can read here.


Note: For the A to Z, I'm posting topics about all sorts of aspects of Shayla's world. Shayla Carver is the main character in my (unpublished) sci-fi novel Ghosts of Innocence.

14 comments:

Pa Ul said...

Interesting B :). Great to know about the Ghost of Innocence. Do check out my B too at GAC a-z

Kimberlee Turley said...

Love the term "backroom boffin."

J Andrew Jansen said...

Hiya, Ian!

Absolutely extra points for multiple hits on the letter (and my opinion is in no way influenced by my April 4th posting).

Of course I had to go ahead and read of Brandt's demise. Powerful stuff. Kudos.

Another great update. See ya' tomorrow!

--j--

Anonymous said...

Multiple B's...good work. Poor Brandt.

Adrienne said...

Your story just gets more interesting! I can't wait to read the rest of your posts!

cleemckenzie said...

If I were giving prizes for multiple B words, you'd have one. Here's to finding out the rest of the story from A to Z!

Sarah Tokeley said...

I just had to go and click the link didn't I? Darn it, I already liked him!

Botanist said...

Hi everyone, thanks for dropping by. A big welcome to newcomers, I will hunt down your blogs in due course, assuming I don't stumble on them first in the sign-up list, which is where I'm off to now...

J, you've got me intrigued now :)

Sorry Delores and Sarah, I'm afraid Brandt had to go. It was great having his cool toys to help Shayla along in this story, but she has a harder time in the sequel and badly feels the loss of his support.

Jeremy Bates said...

While I am not a hacker, nor do I wish to be, I remain fascinated by the covert dealings of hackers. It seems to me that you have your research cut out in a book like that. I'll have to put this on books to read.

Susan Flett Swiderski said...

Your b-b-book is sounding b-b-better and b-b-etter all the time.

Angela Brown said...

So I'm already fascinated that Shayla is an assassin. Brandt reminds me of Neo, the law-abiding citizen by day and the hacker extraordinaire by night.

Botanist said...

Jeremy, I don't think you'll learn anything about hacking from me. The book is set far future, so technology then would be vastly different, and the threats and vulnerabilities different too. I just show the end results of the hacking. Also, the story is from Shayla's POV and she makes a point of stating that she doesn't understand the workings of the tools she uses.

Susan - LOL !!!

Angela, I never thought of Brandt like that. That is certainly a similarity, but where Neo is hands-on and out there in the world, Brandt does everything from afar.

bazza said...

For me, Science Fiction is best when it can be said to be exploring a 'possible future'. I think it's fair enough not to have to explain science which is beyond what we have now and it great that Shayla "doesn't understand the workings of the tools she uses."
As I am not a writer I am going to ask a dumb question: Have you approached publishers yet?
Click here for Bazza’s Blog ‘To Discover Ice’

Mysti said...

Nice one and poor guy! Oh well, we can't have them all happy, can we now? :(

Great job with B.

Mysti

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