Category Archives: science fiction

Reset

reset button

Image: Under the Tapestry

“Hurry, Terry. Everyone in quantum reality Epsilon 1450 just died, and the frequency of reality deaths is increasing.”

“I’m trying Kate, but as we get closer to the Nexus, it’s harder to filter out all of the interference from the different quantum realities. I can barely see the center, and we’re dead close.”

It’s generally believed that our universe is the only universe, but Terry Pliskin and his sister Kate found out otherwise when they accidentally fell through a rift near their home in Brooklyn and discovered a different Earth. Unfortunately that one event started a chain reaction, destabilizing first those two universes and then all the others.

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The Five Billion Year Love

ancient mars

Image: NASA.gov

Juan Villanueva’s name was often mentioned in the same sentence as Sir Richard Branson and Elon Musk, and yet all he really wanted was to be alone. The thrill of starting one company, amassing a fortune from his work, and then selling it for another fortune had lost its allure, at least since Carrie died.

Carrie, his beloved Carrie. How could he go on without her?

But he did, because that’s what Villanueva was all about, overcoming challenges, even grief and death.

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Time Line Twisted

time travel

Image: BBC News

The Third Hunter and Ellison Time Travel Adventure and a direct sequel to In Search of the Time Traveler.

“I have a bad feeling about this, Josue.”

“Stop that! This is serious. This isn’t when we are supposed to be.”

Josue Hunter and Wyatt Ellison thought they were finally closing in on Heloise Amanda Westcott, the mysterious and elusive time traveler first detected in 1885 England. They’d found H.G. Wells, author of the famous novel “The Time Machine” and confederate of Westcott in Texas in 1940, and persuaded him to reveal the place and time they could locate her.

Wells wrote it down on a pad of paper with the letterhead of the hotel in which he’d been staying. Friday, 15 August 1994, 8150 Olive Avenue, Huntington Beach, California.

“Checking the unitool.” Hunter’s all-purpose utility device was disguised as a wrist watch. He set it to review the most recent log of their trip back in time.

“Damn.”

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Legend of the Sky People

shepherd

Image: BBC.com

Gunter and his two sons, Phillip and Tang were tending the grazing sheep in the meadow a few kilometers from their village, as they had the past several weeks. Soon, it would be the season to take them in for the shearing, and while that would cause them much effort, it would be a pleasure to sleep indoors again.

They huddled close to the fire, cloaks pulled tightly around them.

“Lad, another ale if you please.” Gunter held out his mug to Phillip, his eldest, who had the flagon by his side.

“As you will, Papa.” Phillip, always cheerful (and the light buzz from the ale was adding to that), readily lifted the flagon and filled Gunter’s mug to the brim.

The trio could afford to relax a bit. The dogs were stationed around the flock and the sheep were at rest for the night. The hired hands would be back from the village by morning.

“Look, Papa!” Tang, two years Phillip’s junior, pointed up into the moonless night sky. The constellations were beautiful and brilliant, but something among them was disturbing their orderly progression.

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She Who Endures

rain forest

Image: ABC.net.au / Rocky Roe

The plague struck swiftly, perhaps not by human standards, but certainly quickly enough to sicken three-quarters of the people of the Earth within fifteen years. At first the disease seemed very widespread and indiscriminate, but five years into the plague, the CDC’s Chief Epidemiologist, Dr. Sandra Fry, determined that it was most virulent in high population centers with a heavy industrial base.

The nation with the largest number of deaths by year five was China, which correlated very highly to their level of pollution and generally poor environmental standards.

However, as the plague progressed, the Euro-Asian continent fell, as did North and South America. By year ten, four billion people were dead. Disposal of the bodies in any civilized manner was impossible due to the shortage of manpower and resources, so they were bulldozed into mass graves.

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In Search of the Time Traveler

Welles and Wells

Orson Welles and H.G. Wells in San Antonio, Texas, October 28, 1940

The Second Hunter and Ellison Time Travel Adventure and immediate sequel to Tracks Across Time.

“Seventy percent of all archaeology is done in the library. Research. Reading.”

“Thank you, Wyatt. I recognize the quote from the 1989 film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. One of Harrison Ford’s lines I believe.”

“Of course you recognize it, Josue. That’s why I said it. Only a Historian would have understood what I meant.”

“Which explains why we’re here, the library I mean.”

“Precisely. We’re here to find our mysterious Time Traveler.”

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A Film Review of “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”

rogue oneMy two sons, my grandson, and I went to see the Star Wars movie Rogue One last night. We had to slog through snow-covered streets and icy parking lots, but we made it to the theater in one piece.

I’ve been anticipating this film for quite some time, and have heard that it’s one of the best, if not the best Star Wars films ever.

I enjoyed last year’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens very much, but after repeated viewings, came to realize it was just the first three Star Wars films rehashed. J.J. Abrams can’t seem to produce original content for either the Star Wars or Star Trek fanchises.

But Rogue One had a different director and an interesting premise, so I had high hopes.

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Saving Julie: A Time Travel Story

broken timeWhen Andy found the abandoned time machine, he immediately decided to save his sister’s life.

Ten years ago, Julie had been 15 and he had been 10. He adored his sister, which seemed pretty unusual because at his age, most boys hated their older sisters, but not Andy.

Mom had died when he was a baby and Dad did his best, but Dad’s idea of parenting was working hard at his job so he could pay the bills. He really didn’t know how to comfort him when he skinned his knee at age 3 or to praise him when he came home with two A’s and three B’s on his first grade report card.

Julie knew how, even though she was so young herself. Julie and Andy only had each other and for a long time, that was enough.

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Tracks Across Time

time machine

Malcolm McDowell as H.G. Wells in the 1979 film “Time After Time

“The Temporal Event Indicator’s lighting up. Looks like we have another trip in our near future.”

“Or our far past, Josue.”

Wyatt Ellison walked over next to where his partner Josue Hunter was gazing down at the screen of the Indicator. It actually wasn’t a screen in a conventional sense. Both men were looking at a holographic projection inside a spherical depression about the size of a bowling ball (and they were among a very small group who still knew what a bowling ball was) set in a table top.

“The Sky Disc of Nebra, Hunter mused. “We can’t actually let these two morons find it.”

“That’s our job. Suppress revolutionary discoveries that would take the course of this time line on a different trajectory, Josue.”

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Daedalus One

rocket

Image: Space.com

August 29, 2064, Cape Canaveral, Florida

“There it goes. All our hopes for the human race surviving on another planet.”

Chester Menkin put his arm around his wife Helen’s zaftig waist as they watched the launch of the Daedalus One probe together. It was quite literally a “hot August night” as the Orion rocket’s enormous engines erupted with man-made fire, so like the gift of Prometheus, thrusting the space craft away from the launch pad and the surface of our world.

“We’ll eventually go extinct here on Earth, Chester, but we send the best part of ourselves to the stars.”

Dr. and Dr. Menkin were a brilliant Genetics team and responsible for successfully encoding human DNA onto bacteria so “we” could be sent on the long interstellar voyage to the new planet.

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