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Overview: I’m not exactly a young guy, as you’ll probably figure out when you hear that my writing inspiration started with Neil Armstrong’s first footsteps on the Moon. I was serving in the U.S. Air Force in 1969 when Apollo 11 touched down, and I remember thinking that we had finally made it. I’d been reading science fiction since grade school, and now all those wonderful stories of space travel –as told by Heinlein, Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke — were about to come true. We’d soon be on Mars and have manned missions going to the asteroid belt and the outer planets. Star travel? Well, why not — we’d already met and conquered so many scientific and engineering challenges we’d probably figure out how to get around Einstein as well.
Genre: Fiction > Sci-Fi/Fantasy
1. The Moon and Beyond
Ian Stevens, director of the Deep Space Research Institute, has a hidden agenda. While the rest of the world (including the U.S. government) thinks the DSRI is primarily engaged in pure research, Ian has a few other projects going on, mostly related to manned space travel. With NASA defunct, few scientific probes are being launched, and almost everything that goes up into orbit is government-owned hardware for Earth surveillance. No one even talks about human spaceflight any more and any such projects would be widely condemned, especially when conducted without government supervision.
A billionaire in his own right, Stevens has assembled a crew of the best scientists and engineers he can find, including a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who has unlocked the secrets of gravity itself. With engineering genius Mick O’Hara, ex-USAF fighter pilot Lorna Greenwood, and former Navy Seal Charlie Bender to maintain operational security, the DSRI is secretly building and testing gravity-powered spacecraft.
Now, if they can just manage to get it done without being noticed by the cyber-spies of the NSA, the watchdogs of Homeland Security, the IRS, OSHA, and a half-dozen other government agencies, they might actually succeed. And they do have the world’s smartest computer on their side, one that can fend off cyber-security threats and get them any information they might need from anyone else’s network anywhere on the planet.
Ultimately, Stevens and his crew want to establish a permanent, self-sufficient settlement on the Moon and use it as a base for further space exploration. What’s more, to prevent interference from the U.S. and other Earth nations, they plan to declare their lunar settlement an independent nation… and they are NOT going to apply for membership in the U.N.
Welcome to the Lunar Free State.
2. Someday the Stars
Someday…is now!
It’s been ten years since the Lunar Free State established itself as an independent nation on Earth’s Moon. Since then, other Earth nations have pushed into space, competing with the LFS for the untapped resources of the Solar System, but—thanks to the advantages provided by its gravity-driven spacecraft—the LFS has continued to grow and prosper, and relations with the Earth nations remain…strained, at best.
When the research ship LFS Stephen Hawking encounters an alien probe near Saturn, though, the craft leads Hawking on a merry chase before vanishing into…well, for want of a better term, hyperspace. Now the Lunar Free State must face two undeniable facts: the humans of Earth are not the only intelligent life in the universe and travel to other star systems is possible.
The LFS has to figure out how to get to hyperspace, too, and the time they have to do so is limited. Someone else out there now knows humanity exists, and the countdown clock is ticking until whoever sent the alien craft decides to come calling.
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