Michael R. Johnston

What Rough Beast

The sequel to The Widening Gyre and The Blood-Dimmed Tide, praised by Locus, ScienceFiction.com, Booklist, Library Journal and more!

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Michael R. Johnston

Born in the San Francisco bay area and raised in Napa, California, Michael R. Johnston grew up steeped in everything Science Fiction and Fantasy from Asimov to Zelazny, as well as endless terrible SF TV shows he still has a slightly embarrassed fondness for. He currently lives in Sacramento, California, with his orange tabby, Rory. When he’s not writing or teaching, he spends time with his daughter, plays video games and tabletop RPGs, and...

Books

What Rough Beast

From the series: The Remembrance War

The sequel to The Widening Gyre and The Blood-Dimmed Tide, praised by Locus, ScienceFiction.com, Booklist, Library Journal and more!

As the Zhen Empire descends into civil war, Tajen, Liam, and Katherine each have their own part to play in the final conflict between the human race and the Zhen Empire. As Tajen searches the outer regions in an...

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The Blood-Dimmed Tide

From the series: The Remembrance War

The sequel to The Widening Gyre, praised by Locus, ScienceFiction.com, Booklist, Library Journal and more!

Reclaiming Earth from the Zhen was only the first battle. Now Tajen Hunt and his fellow colonists must fight for their fledgling colony’s survival. Tajen’s mission to seek aid from the Kelvaki Assembly is cut short when the Zhen invade...

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The Widening Gyre

From the series: The Remembrance War

Eight hundred years ago, the Zhen Empire discovered a broken human colony ship drifting in the fringes of their space. With only a third of the original colonists left alive in their cryo-pods, and the ship’s computers damaged beyond repair, there was no way to know where the humans were from. The Zhen gave them a place to live and folded them...

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Series

The Remembrance War

The Widening Gyre, The Blood-Dimmed Tide, and What Rough Beast

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Blog

October 25, 2025

State of the Author

Despite what some of my reviewers think, I've never been a straight man writing gay characters. I'm going to digress here, and say that nothing would be wrong with that; straight men and straight woman are free to write gay characters any damned time they wish. I wish more of them would.

But I am not, nor have I ever been, straight.

I identified for many years as gay. Then I met a woman, married, and identified as Bisexual. And now I'm getting divorced, partly because I realized that the...