Science Fiction: The Good Stuff!

I've been fooling around with NaNoWriMo for a number of years.  For those who don't know what that is, it stands for National Novel Writing Month and extends from November first to November thirtieth each year.  You win if you write 50,000 words in the thirty day period.

I finished NaNoWriMo in 2009, 2012, 2014, and this year, 2015 finishing finally my first science fiction novel in the tradition of middling hard science fiction.

Hard science fiction is stuff that doesn't depend on violating known science (at least not very much) and sticking close to things that are fundamental and true.

My book is about what has to happen to make man-in-space a going concern.  We actually have most of the technology in hand right now to accomplish that for the earth-moon system but not for interplanetary travel which seriously stresses existing technology.

I had a lot of fun writing the book and it's the first volume of what is envisioned to be a three book treatment of man's expansion into space.  Since I'm not really trying to be a traditional author I didn't go to the trouble of finding an agent or publisher.  I'm 73 years old and don't have the time or patience to fool around with those folks so I just put it up as a Kindle book.  I priced it very reasonably I think, at $3.99 to download to your Kindle or read on a Kindle on line.

You can take a look at it and read the first few pages by going HERE  If you like science fiction I hope you'll try the book and give me some feedback on it.  I'm currently starting work on the next volume whose working title is "Outward Bound" to reflect the capability that the first novel ends with.

I grew up reading the science fiction juveniles of Robert Heinlein and the books of Murray Leinster and many other science fiction authors.  That reading had a great deal to do with my decision to become a scientist.  Reality is a great mystery and scientists are those who explore this mystery in the most direct way.  There is a great story about Robert Heinlein going to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to see one of the big events, the moon landing, not sure which.  He was turned away by the managers and bureaucrats and the engineers protested telling management that if it had not been for Heinlein many of them, perhaps most of them, would never have gone into science.  They got Heinlein in.  After my family, Robert Heinlein is one of only two or three people that had such a large formative impact on my life.