Shipjack and Other Stories — Robert James Warner

Shipjack is a collection of mini novels that are too short to be regular novels and too long to be short stories The story Shipjack is borderline so it was included in this collection to round it out 1 MARINA MURDER is a murder story set in the Long Beach California Marina where Mr Warner used to work on the fireboat There is a history about Marina Murder so it was left in with the hope that it would be interesting to the public The main character drops a wrench over the side of his boat dives down to get it and discovers he has dived into a den of drug thugs who see him and go after him to make sure he doesn t go to the police He almost didn t make it 2 T P I T N M is the story of a brainy kid and inventor who is the owner and publisher of National Inventor Magazine He helps an old man at an inventor show which changes his life forever 3 THE GOD MAKER is the story of the destruction of civilization by inflation with the help of destructive chaos turmoil disease and starvation All of these things destroy the super powers when the electricity goes off and the oil stops destroying the rest of civilization This is also the story of the man who saves some of civilization and gets it started again 4 MARRIAGE SIMULATOR is another popular Krong The Watcher story A young man and a young woman go to see Krong to ask if the Watchers have some kind of machine that teaches people the skills of marriage and if not can the Watchers build such a simulator which would in principle be much like the simulators used by pilots for training on a new aircraft before they fly it It s a great idea so Krong and the Watchers agree to make the simulator for them Unbeknownst to the young man and young woman the Marriage Simulator has a deadly trap that is just waiting to snare them in its toils 5 SHIPJACK is the story of the shipjacking of the biggest oil tanker in the world hauling one million tons of oil by some Middle East thugs who sail it into New