Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 27, 1993 TAG: 9302270097
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
SCI-FI MAKES HIM FAN, THEN NOVELIST
Shane Lacy Hensley had never even read a science-fiction novel when he came to Virginia Tech as a student about 10 years ago.Now he not only reads them, he has written and published one. In fact, he will be among the author guests at Technicon 10, this year's science fiction convention at Virginia Tech April 9-11.
"Shatterzone: Sole Survivor" is the middle book of a trilogy published by West End Books, which is also a marketer of role-playing games. The first book was "Shatterzone: The River of God" by Greg Farshtey and still to come is "Shatterzone: Beyond the 'Zone" by Ed Stark.
The three stories are independent, with only their setting in common. They take place in a future where interstellar space travel has run into a barrier, a zone of asteroid rubble offering both mineral wealth and navigational hazards.
In Hensley's book, the conglomerates competing with each other for the minerals find that the Shatterzone also conceals hostile alien life - and some of it is coming through.
"The only thing that's defined is what the Shatterzone is," Hensley said. "But actually it doesn't play into my book at all. . . . They give you a lot of freedom."
His story centers on a space marine, Sgt. Stryker - the same name as John Wayne's character in the 1949 film, "Sands of Iwo Jima," and just as tough. Stryker works for one of the competing companies but finds that human mercenaries are the least of his worries.
Hensley categorizes the story as techno-horror.
"I kind of like a dark setting where my heroes are trying to break free of that. It's easy to be a hero in a bright world," he said.
Hensley, 24, and his wife, Michelle, run the Fun & Games store in Blacksburg along with David Wilson and Angela McCoy. The store, which opened last April Fool's Day, features role-playing games, tie-in novels, magazines, and comic books, which Hensley says "are our bread and butter."
He gets embarrassed when he has to ring up a sale of his own book, but it has sold a good 75 copies at his store alone.
"I've been lucky. All my friends came down and bought a copy," he said.
Michelle, who also is a programming assistant at WDBJ-TV in Roanoke, and he were married last July after dating for about nine years.
They grew up in Dickenson County, in the heart of Southwest Virginia's coal country. Hensley did his early reading in paperbacks bought at a Clintwood grocery. "I got my novels at Piggly Wiggly," he said.
His reading varied from Jules Verne to Stephen King, "but I had no idea what science fiction was," he said.
Some friends introduced him to it when he came to Virginia Tech, where he majored in political science and history. He also attended graduate school there for a year and a half, but decided to work for a while when he found school "getting expensive and I was tired of having my parents pay for it," he said.
"Authors like [Robert] Heinlein and [Joe] Haldeman were strangers to me until I got to college. I hadn't even heard of [J.R.R.] Tolkien until the ["Lord of the Rings"] movies came out," he said. "When I got up here and saw how much there was of it, I started devouring it."
He lists Michael Moorcock among science-fiction authors he enjoys, but the lesser-known John Streakley is his favorite. Streakley's books include "Armor," featuring futuristic personal soldier gear like that in Heinlein's earlier "Starship Troopers."
The influence of those books is obvious in "Sole Survivor," in which humans and others not only go after each other with blasters but duke it out in power-suits.
Bones break, jaws smash and blood spews as Stryker, along with other characters, suffer many injuries that would be fatal with today's medical technology.
Hensley joined the National Guard during his junior year at Tech because he needed money for college. What he learned about the military also shows up in his book.
His wife and a former roommate, John Hopler, are his first readers, he said. Hopler was studying engineering and helped with technical expertise.
Hensley had bought his first Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game from Sears when he was in the eighth grade. He participated in role-playing games at Tech, and wrote one of his own with help from friends who also played.
"I wrote it for our little gaming group and everybody liked it and they said, `You ought to send it in.' "
He did, and it sold. It was a game with a Halloween setting. He wrote it two Halloweens ago.
That was his first taste of professional writing, but he had help from his gaming friends, he said. "I did all the writing but they helped me fix problems."
Most of the game books involve the defining of characters and the rules and setting of each game, but he can include snippets of fiction in them. "Those are the fun parts."
Now he is a free-lance writer of games for outfits such as West End Games, which also published his book, and TSR Inc., known both for its pioneering Dungeons and Dragons game and as the current publisher of Amazing Stories, the world's oldest science-fiction magazine dating back to 1926.
"That's really where I earn most of my money," he said, but he was also interested in writing books. "I love writing. If I'm lucky enough to be able to continue to, I'd like to do it the rest of my life."
He has a good start. Before his novel came out, he also placed a short story in a paperback anthology, "Mysterious Cairo," also published by West End.
His standard reply when asked about his publishing success is "I've been lucky." But it also helped that he completed what he started, and publishers learned they could depend on him to deliver a gaming book or story on deadline.
"The biggest thing is to be on time," he said.