Michael D. Smith
Writing Inventory

Sortmind.com
Home

Novels | Novellas | Graphic Novels | Stories
Art Inventory


Novels

CommWealth, 2010-
The CommWealth system, introduced just six months previously, has outlawed private property.  Your house or your clothes can be demanded by anyone to be enjoyed for thirty days.  As actors in the Forensic Squad theatrical troupe adapt to this giddy, chaotic society, CommWealth probes their breaking of the Four Rules, and several members find themselves leading a suicidal revolution.
Property, or, the Cup of Fog painting

The Soul Institute, 2010
A major revision of this 1999 work is underway. Draft 4 has been completed.
Himal Steina realizes his recurring dream of a mythic return to the sanctuary of a vast foggy university of Soul when he's appointed Writer in Residence at the Soul Institute and falls in love with one of its numerous faculty goddesses.  But the Soul Institute is splintering under the weight of its unhinged Director and his secret society of Overcrons.  The Director's teenage son consolidates command of the Paint Sniffing Gang as panic and violence build in the small coastal Texas college town.
Soul Institute Images

Nonprofit Ladies, 2010
Ranna Kikken creates The Committee to End Suffering on Planet Earth at her nonprofit Cat Farm, but its first conference in 2020 is destroyed when intruder Joe Commer time travels from 2036 to lecture CTESOPE on the coming breakdown of the solar system and the destruction of the Earth itself in 2033.  Book Three of The Jack Commer Trilogy which includes The Martian Marauders and Jack Commer, Supreme Commander, USSF.

Jack Commer, Supreme Commander, USSF, 2010
Jack Commer brings poor negotiating skills to the war with the fascist Alpha Centaurian Empire, losing his crew to Centaurian brainwashing as he and his wife are sent to be tortured on a barren planet.  Book Two of The Jack Commer Trilogy which includes The Martian Marauders and Nonprofit Ladies.
Jack Commer pastel Jack Commer drawing

The Martian Marauders, 2010
After the evacuation of the Earth's population to Mars, the crew of the Typhoon I spaceship must fight native Martian terrorists led by their new human Emperor, political agitator and traitor Sam Hergs.  But Captain Jack Commer threatens the mission when he kidnaps the Emperor's consort and falls in love with her. Book One of The Jack Commer Trilogy which includes Jack Commer, Supreme Commander, USSF and Nonprofit Ladies.

The University of Mars, 2009
In a dysfunctional 2065 where religious zealots restrict the world to outdated twentieth century technology, eighteen year-old Bill North seeks comrades dedicated to the further evolution of humanity. But is the impoverished university he finds in a bombed-out city just a satire of his urge for transcendence? And are alien beings using the university to research their own psychological flaw?
University of Mars Images | Background Page

The Sortmind Trilogy, 2009
What if the answer to any question could be delivered in a telepathic instant? And what if a database of all our queries and responses were being used to track the progress of the coming apocalypse? High school art students Oliver and Sam struggle to define themselves in the face of urban terrorism and the malfunctioning, reality-altering Telepathic Database. The three books of the trilogy are:

1. The World is an Art Supply
Albert Snuck's Mindwipe through the forest preserve incident
TWIAAS painting

2. Awaken the Sleep Within
The telepathic tablets party through the disastrous NOT ANNA command
ATSW painting

3. A Tour of Raw Architectural Space
Suzanne's kidnapping through Sam's journey to Cuxlacjs
ATORAS painting

Sortmind Trilogy Images

Ocean Singe Horror, 2008
Billy Bolamme, sixteen year-old star Junior Dropout Basketball League player, transmogrifies into avenging avatar Ocean Singe Horror after missing his 500th point in a row. In a temper tantrum he kills a taunting radio announcer with hand grenades, then blows up an entire sports arena along with the ten thousand witnesses to his crime. From here on out his fame and luck can only grow.

Akard Drearstone, 2005
A twelve year-old girl living at a rock commune near Austin, Texas in the summer of 1975 observes the rise and fall of the Akard Drearstone Group as she falls disastrously in love with the group's severely disturbed bass player.

Parts I and II/Notice and Dream Topology, 1992
In Part I a naive and disconnected artist gives a party to celebrate his career, only to find himself drafted that same night into a mindless war; in Part II he becomes a sergeant leading frightened yuppies against an unstoppable Army of Evil. A partial 1992 second draft, Notice and Dream Topology, was revised into a play titled Linstar, which unfortunately proved to be a bombastic failure.  However, NADT, in cutting out Part II, the interminable war itself, has some promise and may be revised.

Zarreich/The Galaxies Groan Within, 1983
An adolescent comes to live in a small town with his grandmother, only to discover that all his memories have been wiped out.  He panics and commits a murder, then finds himself a member of a secret commune remembered only in dreams.
Zarreich Characters - images

Nova Scotia, 1974
Two boys drive a 350 m.p.h. Corvette to Nova Scotia in one night in a demented quest to save the world.

The Fifty-First State of Consciousness, 1973
The Governor of the Fifty-First State, in despair over a failed love affair, begins the Apocalypse at a shopping mall.
The Fifty-First State of Consciousness painting

top


Novellas

The First Twenty Steps, 1996
A ex-convict finds himself mixed up in a motorcycle gang's plans to heist the supercomputer necessary to navigate an interstellar spaceship.
The First Twenty Steps painting

Executed Beauty, 1984
Ninety-seven percent of the earth's population inexplicably commits suicide, ending civilization and leaving scattered refugees struggling to resist their own deaths.

top


Graphic Novels

The Adventures of Tree Leopard, 1985
Leopards build a flying saucer underneath the Municipal Ping Pong Stadium, kidnapping and reprogramming humans to act as their slave technicians.

The Story of Lester Quartz's Fantastic Journey, Volume 1, 1976
A youngster finds himself physically inside the city of another person's brain, links up with urban terrorists trying to destroy that mind, and finally takes control of the mind himself in order to become a rock star.

top


Stories

Starvation Levels of the Infinite, 2008

Perpetual Starlit Night, 2008

33, 1985 (precursor of Parts I and II and "Starvation Levels of the Infinite")

Chapter 32, 1985 (continuation of New Akard 1979 and later incorporated into the 1994 version of Akard Drearstone)

Oliver, 1984 (became part of Sortmind)

Damage Patrol, 1984

The Roadblock, 1981-1984 (from Zarreich/The Galaxies Groan Within)

Zorexians, 1981-1982

The Selector, 1981-1982

Where Eagles Have Unfortunately Landed, 1980 (became part of The University of Mars)

Tollhouse, 1979-1980 (became part of Sortmind)

January 1st, 1976-1984 (from Akard Drearstone)

The 66,000 M.P.H. Bicycle, 1975

The Highland Park Cadillac Races, 1975

Man Against the Horses!, 1975

Space, Time and Tania, 1974-1975 (published in PigIron, 1977)

The Martian Holes, 1974-1975

Alan Ice on Morningcide Drive, 1974

Norman, 1974

Holy/Unholy, 1973-1974 (from The 51st State of Consciousness)

Five-Pointed Stars, 1973-1974

Emerson's Vast Hotel, 1972

top


Sortmind.com Home
07/27/10