I've always been a fan of old fashioned space opera. From the hokey, sparks-flying-out-of-the-toy-rocket Buster Crabbe Flash Gordon serials of the 30s to classic 60s Star Trek and then the sci-fi boom of the post Star Wars 70s and 80s, I grew up on a steady diet of the stuff. The original Battlestar Galactica, the new Buck Rogers, even Roger Corman's Battle Beyond the Stars.

As a whole, that genre has fallen on some hard times since then--nowhere more than in the literary arena. Like most sci-fi geeks, as I got older I "graduated" from lasers and space ships to the more cerebral work of Heinlein, Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. But I never lost my affection for old time, shoot-em-up, swashbuckling, action-adventure in space.

Most science fiction today is NOT space opera--and for good reason. The potential for exploring new concepts makes the speculative genres a wonderful playground of ideas. Asimov and Clarke imagined new technologies and the implications they might have for humankind, Heinlein engaged in social commentary and writers like Phillip K. Dick warned us of dystopian futures.

I love them all...and yet....sometimes I still feel like I just want to escape into a world of pure adventure. A world where no one really tries to figure out if faster than light travel is possible, and how exactly you could build a ship to do it. Sometimes I just want space opera.

That's what Xerxes Kane: Space Pirate is all about. This page is my small attempt to offer a return to the future as yesterday imagined it. A series of tales in the tradition of those great, old stories. On this page you'll find the continuing adventures of an intrepid space pirate and his crew of intergalactic rogues.

It's all in fun, and it's all totally free. Enjoy!