Dispatch from the Razor's Edge, the Blog of Michael Stephen Fuchs
Memorial Day 2013



“Imagine that the dusk sky over Germany is lit up with bursts of flak and anti-aircraft fire. You’re the pilot of one of three B-17s that, an hour earlier, somehow managed to get past the swarm of Messerschmitts - wings got sawed off, planes got ripped in half, airmen plummeted to earth and no chutes opened up. Despite the insurmountable difficulties so far, you manage to keep the heavy, lumbering bomber on target through the flak and the artillery fire. As you get closer to the munitions factory you’re supposed to destroy, flak takes out part of the rear and two of the engines. The plane is filling with smoke and most of your men are injured, some may not make it. Calling on every resource you have at your disposal, you somehow keep the plane on course and deliver the payload. Your reward? Unfortunately, there’s no parade waiting for you. You’ve lost too much fuel and the plane is too crippled to make it back to England. You’re too low to abandon ship and jump, plus you have side and ball turret gunners who made it possible to complete the mission, but are too injured to get out. So you hope to find a field to put the plane down and survive the landing. And you know that once you do and once they find you and your men, you’re going to get beat within an inch of your life and taken as a POW. But these men are the ones you call ‘brothers’ and you will never leave their side, no matter what fate awaits you. I don’t know the right word to describe the particular quality or characteristic in a person who would face challenges such as this, or have the ability to do so. My parenting challenges, my challenges dealing with bullshit at work, even personal challenges don’t even come anywhere near the radar. Words like ‘courage’, ‘guts’, ‘dedication’ and ‘bravery’ seem to come up short. Like me, I hope you have a contemplative Memorial Day, one of perspective.”
         - Chad Poplawski




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Dispatch from the Razor's Edge is owned and operated by novelist, technologist, vegan, exercise junkie, classical liberal, rambler, and Londoner Michael Stephen Fuchs.

photo of Michael Stephen Fuchs

Fuchs is the author of the novels The Manuscript and Pandora's Sisters, both published worldwide by Macmillan in hardback, paperback and all e-book formats (and in translation); the D-Boys series of high-tech, high-concept, spec-ops military adventure novels – D-Boys, Counter-Assault, and Close Quarters Battle (coming in 2016); and is co-author, with Glynn James, of the bestselling Arisen series of special-operations military ZA novels. The second nicest thing anyone has ever said about his work was: "Fuchs seems to operate on the narrative principle of 'when in doubt put in a firefight'." (Kirkus Reviews, more here.)

Fuchs was born in New York; schooled in Virginia (UVa); and later emigrated to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he lived through the dot-com boom. Subsequently he decamped for an extended period of tramping before finally rocking up in London, where he now makes his home. He does a lot of travel blogging, most recently of some very  long  walks around the British Isles. He's been writing and developing for the web since 1994 and shows no particularly hopeful signs of stopping.

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