"Peer Through Time"

 

David T. Pennington (davidtpennington.com), who works as a computer data analyst in San Francisco, has deep roots in Paradise. According to correspondence received from his mother, Mikki Ashe, "(married to Terry Ashe), formerly of Paradise (yes, of the Terry Ashe Recreation Center)," their son graduated from Paradise High in 1986.

 

Pennington has written a mind-bending science-fiction thriller. "Peer Through Time" ($12.99 in paperback, self-published; also available as an audiobook and in Amazon Kindle format) is the first of a planned series ("Gravity's Loop" is already published). The story mixes several science-fictional plot devices (wormholes as time portals; mind transfer; the creation of synthetic humans) into a complex tale of murder and mystery.

 

A small Northern California town named Heaven's Highest Hill (Triple H), a couple hundred miles from San Francisco, plays a key role since, as a news announcer puts it, "the body of resident Sara Drake was found early this morning inside the local branch of Peer Therapies." It is 2079; Peer Industries provides memory simulations for clients so they can relive past moments, and Peer Therapies provides a psychotherapist android, named Kass (now accused of murder).

 

The town is also the source, in a nearby creek, of a wormhole and its other end that can take a person back in time or into the future. The way it works is that one does not meet one's earlier (or future) self, but displaces that person. Spencer Westmoreland (Sara's ex-husband) discovers the wormhole and, according to one Carmela Akronfleck, "Spencer said he met me in the early 1980s. I was an old woman and I lived in a house known to the neighborhood kids as the Witch's House."

 

But in 2079 Carmela (whose real name is Carrie Dolphin) is twenty-eight. Yet to come is a long trip back to the late 1930s where she falls in love and receives a series of cryptic messages, the killer's hit list which now targets her mother and sister in 2079. When Carmela discovers who the real killer is, she is able to track down a woman pregnant with his ancestor. What should she do? Can she absolve Kass?

 

It's a wild ride, and it's not finished yet.

 

"Revelation"

Consider: Somewhere out there in space, humans have come to a planet they call "Home World," fleeing the military-industrial complex on their "previous planetary home," a place in which war seemed to be the answer to every question. The colonists "resolved to bring with them only the technology that rewarded the peaceful solution of differences of opinion." 

Over the next five hundred years only one war flares up. "When it was over, everyone ... agreed that killing each other was stupid." That was long ago; now, though, some of the countries on Home World are again amassing technological power with an eye toward the wealth of a planet known as E47. The "healthy technological and moral environment for human evolution" is about to be shattered.

For Chicoan Andrew Hanson, retired Professor of Education at Chico State University, and now a first-time novelist, the solution comes in the form of what might be called a "conspiracy for peace," led by Mark Sturgis, a rich and mysterious figure recently returned from E47. 

He convinces Adrian Prescott Museum Director Eric Harris, and Assistant Director Rachel Johnson (who fall for each other), that he is indeed the late Adrian Prescott in a transplanted body. Can they convince Adrian's grandson, Jerold Prescott, Chairman of Prescott Industries, before Jerold makes a decision "that will jeopardize the future of our planet"?

"Revelation" ($14 in paperback, self-published; also for Amazon Kindle) focuses in the first part on Mark's (cinematic) E47 experiences involving friendly Hill People, the unfriendly "People of God" tribe, five orphans (the "Sherpas"), telepathic wolves, the Witness Tree (which is a kind of space and time transport), and a People Mover machine which allows Sturgis to escape.

The second part details a series of meetings among the conspirators reporting on peace movements they are encouraging. Will humans get another chance to be welcomed into a peaceful galactic community?

As Mark reports, "It's becoming increasingly clear that advocates for peace must do more than sponsor initiatives and rallies. Warmongering politicians with financial interests in arms industries must be exposed, and colluding arms manufacturers put out of business."

Questions of war and peace continue to resonate as the United States celebrates its own founding.

"Beware The Boojum"

In "The Hunting of the Snark," a nonsense poem by Lewis Carroll, one of the hunters is given a warning: "But oh, beamish nephew, beware of the day,/ If your Snark be a Boojum! For then/ You will softly and suddenly vanish away,/ And never be met with again!"

The Boojum, then, is particularly dangerous; no wonder that Bracken MacFie, stationed on an asteroid named Hope, characterizes his own dangerous work as boojum hunting. And when one is found? Therein lies a science-fictional tale by freelance writer Eric Witchey (ericwitchey.com), a recent Butte College visitor and conference presenter.

"Beware The Boojum" (IFD Publishing; available from e-book retailers including Amazon Kindle) imagines the discovery of extraordinary crystals "from the pre-birth of the universe," made of "pre-baryonic matter."

MacFie holds one in his space-suited hand. "The crystal looked like clear, faceted quartz. Thread-like, golden impurities twisted, joined and radiated inside. Unlike quartz, the pre-baryonic matter was so transparent that every edge teased his eye to strain harder to resolve it. The harder MacFie focused, the more the edges and angles faded away, stretching thinner until the surfaces slipped between the fabric of space-time and hid in folded dimensions where mortal vision couldn't see."

It's "the elusive, crystalline residue of the Big Bang."

It turns out these crystals are the key to human travel throughout the universe. For certain unique individuals, "pilots," holding a crystal can instantly transport a person to a given location. There's only one rub: One must give up one's sanity in order to achieve the result. MacFie's wife, Astra, has become a pilot, pressed into service by the corporate state in the form of project manager Dr. Maxwell Craig. She is also insane. And unpredictable, as is the boojum crystal.

MacFie is a miner of the scarce crystals; he, too, has given up his sanity to do the job, contending with the voice of "Steve" and fending off a scrub jay on the airless asteroid. 

In order to open the universe to humans, the transport process must become predictable. Craig embarks on a devious plan that plays on MacFie's love for Astra--but human emotions bring an unexpected consequence in this mesmerizing yarn.

"Evolved"

Chicoan Jesse Lawson works in Information Systems at Butte College; a U.S. Marine, he's served as an intelligence analyst. He's a singer-songwriter; host of the "Coping with Creativity" podcast; and the author of "Evolved" (self-published for Amazon Kindle; visit lawsonry.com for details), a sci-fi thriller that begins quietly at Chico State University.

That's where Dr. Lexa Rogers, a lecturer in archaeology, is on the cusp of getting a full-time position when, out of the blue, government agents from the Department of Homeland Security whisk her away, supposedly for a weekend, on a super-secret mission.

At Chico Municipal Airport the agents drive right up into the belly of a cargo plane for the long flight to San Felice Circeo, home of one of the most important Neanderthal fossil finds. Lexa is a former Marine but the secrecy makes no sense. "The real question now," she tells the agents, "is why some hundred-thousand-year-old bones in Italy are a matter of national security."

It turns out that buried in one of the ancient skulls is a tooth; removed for study, the handlers had accidentally chipped it, as Lexa sees in a photograph. But there's a second picture of the tooth without a chip. Okay. Except that the second picture was taken afterthe first. The tooth has healed itself. The genetic value to humanity? Incalculable.

There's more. Lexa meets Donna Morrow, project director in the Carson Habitat, "three hundred feet below the surface of the Tyrrhenian Sea and fifteen miles south of the Italian coast," where the focus is on Olive, a giant octopus who has learned rudimentary sign language. 

More importantly, cephalopods like Olive can quickly adapt their skin color to their surroundings, rendering them almost invisible. If that ability could be duplicated in the laboratory, soldiers would hold tremendous advantage against enemy troops.

Who wouldn't want such a genetic technology? So there are plots and counterplots afoot--and a grisly attack by a mysterious creature that makes getting at the truth a matter of life or death, even as the horror mounts.

This is the first book in the Special Projects and Intelligence Division Emergency Response (SPIDER) series and readers will eagerly await Lexa's next page-turning adventure.

"Franken-Fatale"

Chico area novelist H.J. Bennett, "heavily inspired by pop culture, comics, video games, the horror genre, and classic literature," has created an alternative realty in what publicity materials call an R-rated story full of "drugs, violence, sex, language, and unsettling themes." There are enough f-bombs in the first chapter alone to populate a wheelbarrow full of more conventional modern novels. Yet, strangely enough, the larger story is one of resilience, self-discovery, and the true meaning of friendship.

Imagine a music group composed of a guitar-playing monkey, a pregnant young woman called Denver, a hulking monster stitched together from body parts, and a fading but gorgeous 1980s pop star who has died many times (literally). "Franken-Fatale" ($19.99 in paperback from Blurb; also for Amazon Kindle) is the name of the band and the name of the novel. (The cover is by Wamberto Nicomedes.)

Best known locally as a mixed-media artist ("primarily acrylic, but I am known for using strange media as well such as eyeshadow, wine, tea, hair dye, and coffee"), Bennett has created a world with bits and pieces of our own (including a narrator, that pop star named Rita Venus, obsessed with celebrity) but that is definitely not our own.

It's a world in which reanimation is common so death is no deterrent. Body parts are bought and sold. Those with the bucks (like Rita Venus) can afford to be reanimated in style; others have to make do with standard reanimation chambers. Marilyn Monroe still lives, as provocative as ever, but those who have died once and are reanimated are no longer quite human. It's not exactly blood that courses through their veins, but a blackish substance, and no one has to eat. 

In fact, there are few "warmbloods" populating the earth, and Denver's quest to find an island of non-dead humans animates Bennett's story. In an author's introduction, Bennett writes that while humans are ego-driven, the "desire for belonging and social validation … drives us to behave in more charitable ways." Along the way the self-absorbed Rita is murdered multiple times, finds help in a floating brothel, and confronts a Victor Frankenstein figure that would make Boris Karloff shudder.

Then the story gets weird.

"We Inherit Eden"

Less than half a century from now interstellar travel is necessary if humanity is to survive. Orion Space Industries has established a colony on Proxima Centauri b, a little more than four light years from earth, and now has employed a pilot, the only human on board, to deliver some kind of cargo to the planet. It will be a long and lonely journey, full of strange dreams and assurances by the ship's Artificial Intelligence that the pilot is not really alone after all.

Mostly narrated by the pilot, unnamed until the very end, "We Inherit Eden" ($9.99 in paperback from CreateSpace) is a science-fictional exploration of the engineering needed to achieve 5% light speed, but also, and more importantly, a singular meditation on what human science has birthed--the A.I. that guides the Orthrus mission.

Written by Paradise High School grad Ryan Montoya, who went on to pursue an engineering degree (and a mountain climbing avocation), this mesmerizing novel hurtles the reader into deep space and the horrific consequences of a life-threatening accident. 

The Orthrus sports two huge "sails" cabled to the ship, one in front and one in back, and uses "nuclear pulse propulsion" behind each sail to provide deceleration from the rear or acceleration from the front. 

But that kind of engineering is easy compared to the challenge of delivering a human alive to his destination. The solution is the stasis chamber with drug-induced sleep. "I knew, when I awoke, that my body would have experienced a solar month and my mind a solar day. But for the ship, an epoch would pass." It takes a long time to go 24 trillion miles, but what is more important than saving humankind?

When catastrophe strikes, it's unclear that the mission can be completed. The ship's A.I. talks to the pilot not only through a voice but as the "pale man" in his dreams. "I don't want to be afraid," the pilot cries out, and the answer is terrifying: "Fear not for humanity, for it is doomed. Fear not for your own life, for its time is numbered."

There is an alternative to fear, the ship says. And it all depends on Eden.

"Professor Witchey's Miracle Mood Cure"

Oregon-based author Eric Witchey (ericwitchey.com), a presenter at the WordSpring Creative Writing Conference at Butte College on April 29, describes "story" as "unfettered magic happening in the heart and mind of the reader."

He has collected some of his oddball yarns and creative experiments in a wondrous stew called "Professor Witchey's Miracle Mood Cure" ($17.95 in paperback from IFD Publishing; also for Amazon Kindle). The twenty-three short stories and two novelettes range from the surreal to science fiction.

The reader is quickly oriented but just as quickly disoriented as "Ezekiel, Prophet To Bones," cries out to the LORD (who turns out to be the Logistics Operations Restoration and Data system); or Aunt Linda whips up a batch of her incredible eggnog while displaying her "famous twisted mystery smile." Then there's a father and son fishing outing complete with chaos theory and "quantum synchronicity."

The two longer tales well represent Witchey's reader-pleasing prowess. "To Build A Boat, Listen To Trees" is an evocative tale of the quiet wizardry of Venerré, Master Shipwright of Port Corwald. Not everything can be said in words, it turns out, in this sweet and satisfying tale.

"The Tao of Flynn" traces the remarkable sales approach of a certain insurance salesman who tells his friend and fellow employee that "the truth is the most powerful lie there is. Before you met me, you thought you were a liar taking people's money. Have you ever seen me lie to anyone?"

The story builds delight as Flynn's success secret is revealed; the reader can hardly wait for the boss' inevitable comeuppance. It comes in a surprising sort of way--as one might expect of Witchey.

Eric Witchey is scheduled to lead two workshops, "Levers, Ratchets, and Buttons" and "How The Reader Breaks Your Writing" at the sixth annual WordSpring Creative Writing Conference, Saturday, April 29 from 8:00 a.m. until 2:10 p.m. at the Learning Resource Center on the Butte College main campus.

The event includes a continental breakfast, catered lunch, keynote address and breakout sessions in poetry, fiction, and cross-genre (including songwriting). Registration for the conference is $45 for students and educators; $75 for community members. For more information visit buttewordspring.org.

“The Book Of Strange New Things”

Scottish writer Michel Faber tells an interviewer for the Church Times that though he is an atheist, “I don’t see that as any credit to me…. I’m very sad that I lost my faith, and I’m very sad that it’s not there to sustain me in the sorrows that I’ve had to deal with in my life, particularly the loss of my wife.”

That makes Faber’s novel, “The Book Of Strange New Things” ($17 in paperback from Hogarth; also for Amazon Kindle) especially poignant. It’s the story of a young British married couple, Peter and Beatrice Leigh, he a pastor of a small church, she a nurse, who apply to a shadowy multinational organization called USIC in answer to the company’s call for Christian missionaries.

Only Peter is selected; they will be separated. In the world of the book, “separation” means Peter boards a spacecraft and “jumps” to Oasis, a planet unimaginable light years distant. His only way of communicating with Bea is through a kind of email system (no pictures).

USIC has established a base. Natives provide food called whiteflower in return for pharmaceuticals, but are balking without a pastor who can speak to them from the Bible, what they call “The Book of Strange New Things.”

An Oasan is a short, bipedal being; “their spindly arms and webbed feet merged in a tangle of translucent flesh that might contain—in some form unrecognizable to him—a mouth, nose, eyes.”

Peter grows distant from Bea, who writes increasingly panicked messages about a world collapsing around her. Peter can sermonize, but he is no novelist, failing repeatedly to convey to Bea his inner life.

The book is a quiet meditation on separation and the limits of (Peter’s) faith. “The holy book he’d spent so much of his life preaching from had one cruel flaw: it was not very good at offering encouragement or hope to those who weren’t religious.” Peter is torn between building the Oasan church and going home (in light of the horrific words of his wife’s final email).

Set against a science-fictional background, the book sensitively explores the meaning of faith and meaning where there is no faith.

What I was reading when the power went out

The tragic late-December wind storm knocked out electricity for many of us in the northstate, at least for a while, and the steady reports on our cellphones of the loss of life and destruction of property created a sense of somber amazement. We yearned to “get back to normal,” but for some that will never happen.

What if that would never happen for anyone on earth? What if a deadly virus, far more potent than Ebola, enveloped us, leaving only a handful alive? Those are the questions addressed in an extraordinary book by Emily St. John Mandel called “Station Eleven” ($24.95 in hardcover from Knopf; also for Amazon Kindle). As the power flicked off, I found myself deep in the last few chapters of the book.

The story straddles before and after, weaving together the lives of those somehow connected with one Arthur Leander, who, at 51, is playing Lear at the Elgin Theatre in Toronto when he abruptly dies onstage of a heart attack, leaving behind three ex-wives and a comic book, Station Eleven, drawn by his first wife, Miranda.

She gets the message of Arthur’s demise while in Malaysia. Then come the reports of a deadly virus making its way to North America, spreading everywhere. Almost no one is immune. “This was during the final month,” St. John Mandel writes, “of the era when it was possible to press a series of buttons on a telephone and speak with someone on the far side of the earth.”

Afterward, “no more pharmaceuticals”; “no more flight”; “no more countries”; “no more Internet.”

Two decades later, “the caravans of the Traveling Symphony moved slowly under a white-hot sky” near Lake Michigan. The small group stops at mostly deserted towns to play classical music and stage Shakespeare. And a little girl once in Arthur’s Lear is now one of that company.

The comic book Arthur had given her will play a key role in a world fraught with violence--but tinged with grace. Too close to home, I’m thinking, with these musings stationed right here, coincidentally of course, on the eleventh [of January, when the review was first published].

A serial mystery from Dan O’Brien

Local writing entrepreneur Dan O’Brien is venturing into the world of the mystery serial with a series of six episodes to be released over the next few weeks. Copiously illustrated by Paradise artist Steve Ferchaud, the first of the six is “Mobsters, Monsters and Nazis” (in digital format from Amalgam; available for Amazon Kindle). The story is the tale of a hard-bitten detective named Derrick Diamond who receives a strange package from a courier only to have the package stolen by a human-sized lizard.

Diamond follows the thief to the Yellow Monarch nightclub. The thief proves elusive, but the Yellow Monarch draws the detective’s attention. “Patrons called it the Yellow Monarch because of the iridescent, winged, creature that seemed to rise from above the foyer. Derrick approached slowly, feeling as if he was being watched from a distance.” 

Of course he’s being watched. “Serpentine and dressed to the nines, the reptilian thugs watched through thin eye-slits as Derrick walked across the empty street and past the board announcing Ava Harpy as the crooner of the night. They slithered along the wall, bodies bending to get a better vantage point.”

Inside the club, Roaring 20s jazz. The “music filled the air and women with blood-red corsets carried trays filled with cigars and scotch.” At one table in the back is the Fat Man, whose face “seemed cluttered with a mass of tentacles that created a slimy beard beneath beady black eyes.” Derrick has to tell the Fat Man the mysterious object has been stolen.

Over there at another table, “crisply dressed Nazis who were looking in Derrick’s direction.”

This stuff is straight out of pulp comics, and it’s a hoot. There’s a strange logic at work here, and in the second installment, “Phantasmagoria,” the Object is the subject of the Nazi’s attention. It turns out to be an “antikythera mechanism” which will help them achieve some nefarious end. Derrick and Ava escape assassins in the first episode; in the second they become something of a team. Maybe Ava is more than a floozy singer.

O’Brien promises it will all make sense—in time.

Anthology features Chico writer's prize-winning science fiction story

For almost thirty years L. Ron Hubbard's "Writers of the Future" contest has honored up-and-coming science-fiction, fantasy, and speculative fiction authors (and illustrators) with a black tie awards ceremony and an anthology of the best entries. Judges are sci-fi luminaries, and the judges, writers and illustrators have gone on to win some of the most prestigious awards in the science-fiction and fantasy communities (including Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards).

This year's contest honored Tina Gower of Chico and Stephen Sottong of Eureka as quarterly winners, and Gower's story, "Twelve Seconds," went on to win the international grand prize of $5000. (More information, and a video of the awards ceremony, can be found at writersofthefuture.com.) Winning stories and illustrations appear in "L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Vol. 29" ($7.99 in paperback from Galaxy Press; also available in Amazon Kindle and Barnes and Noble Nook ebook formats), edited by Coordinating Judge Dave Wolverton.

Both Gower and Sottong will be speaking and signing copies of the book tomorrow night at 7:00 p.m. at Lyon Books, 135 Main Street in downtown Chico.

Born in Kokomo, Indiana, Sottong's jobs included radio repair for the Navy and a career as an engineering librarian. His "Planetary Scouts" is a gritty tale of Aidan Pastor and his new Scout partner, Aloysius Lester. "We're supposed to make sure humanity doesn't destroy other intelligent creatures," Aidan tells him, "or pick up something nasty enough to kill us off." That's not quite how things work out. ...

Gower was born in Siskiyou County, married her high school sweetheart, and lives with her family in Chico. She became a school psychologist, trained guide dogs for the blind, and now focuses on raising her family and writing (smashedpicketfences.com). "Twelve Seconds" is the harrowing and sensitive story of Howard, an autistic man who works with Eddie to "process memory siphons. I clean and sort. Eddie approves for archival. We are cogs, endlessly pinching, prodding, and polishing homicide victims' last memories on aging holodesks in a dark room."

Howard dreams of being "Howie," the cool guy who saves the day and gets the girl. But then a strange turn of events leads Howard deep into a sinister plot. It's a brilliant and poignant voyage of self-discovery.

A dystopian novel of Northern California

By "Northern California" London-based novelist Cory Doctorow actually means "San Francisco" (with a glace toward Sacramento). I caught up with him by email during a promotional book tour in the US and asked whether he had ever been to Chico. He thought for a long time, he writes, and though he hasn't journeyed through Butte County, he likely has flown over it. What little surveillance he has given us is nothing compared to the digital dystopia he imagines in "Homeland" ($17.99 in hardcover from Tor Teen; also available in Amazon Kindle and Barnes and Noble e-book formats).

Doctorow (craphound.com) is a prolific science-fiction novelist, co-editor of the Boing Boing blog, and a writer and speaker on digital freedom issues. He is a foe of "digital rights management" (DRM) software that, for example, prevents lawfully obtained e-books from being given to others. (The electronic versions of "Homeland" are DRM-free at the publisher's request.)

"Homeland," which takes place in the Bay Area and at Burning Man in Nevada, presents readers with a not-so-distant future in which electronic surveillance (especially of mobile devices) has become the norm by local governments and civilian organizations with contractual ties to the government (think Blackwater, only in the novel it's called Zyz). "Homeland" begins a few years after "Little Brother" and traces the further adventures of now 19-year-old Marcus Yallow who had been brutalized by officials in San Francisco after a terrorist attack.

Now, Marcus has received 800,000 files (think "WikiLeaks") that detail technology's misuse in the name of "keeping us safe." There are the school officials who can view what goes on at home without student laptops' camera lights coming on; the Hearts and Minds "persona management" software Zyz uses that creates "astroturf" (not true grass roots) movements designed to sway public opinion with "paid operatives"; and lobbying efforts to make student loans even more difficult to pay off.

Marcus and his "hactivist" friends are targeted by Zyz as trouble. Doctorow details the geeky use of the "darknet," a place online that the files can be kept without links to who put them there, and amid police roundups, Zyz rough-ups, political run-ups, and relationship break-ups, Marcus finds a voice for a utopian vision of justice and freedom in this fast-paced and unnerving story.

Chico novelist fiddles with time

If you fiddle with time, as most science-fiction readers know, time is likely to fiddle back. Oh, the paradoxes of traveling back in time to prevent an earlier self from making a romantic mistake which brought you there in the first place. Throw in an evil Corporation that wants to monopolize time travel and a group of Anarchists who want to overthrow the Corporation, and pull together some innocent (and not so innocent) people from our own time, and you have the makings of fast-paced romp with a time machine that looks suspiciously like a kitchen chair.

The story is called "Tendence And Cavile" ($13.95 in paperback from Leeftail Press, leeftailpress.com; also available in Amazon Kindle e-book format) by D.T. Kastn (a pen name). Kastn also writes poetry and short stories and she blogs at the Unboxed Project (unboxed-project.livejournal.com).

Things begin quietly enough. In our own time (whatever that means), Sevannah (Sev) Carlson, having reached the odd age of 37, "had given up on the myth of an intelligent, handsome man and was instead looking for one who could count to ten and wouldn't frighten small children."No wonder she falls for handsome Matthew Adler. But then he disappears and when Sev investigates Matthew's basement, she finds a kitchen chair time machine. When she sit and presses "enter" on the control box she is whisked away to London of an earlier time. What the Dickens?

There she meets another time traveler, an Adept (meaning no chair needed) named Simon or "Sime (In Time)." He becomes her conversational sparring partner through wild trips to the past and future in an effort (at first) to track down Matthew. Think Nick and Nora Charles meet Douglas Adams.

But it becomes clear that Matthew is not quite a paragon of virtue and that, through all the verbal barbs lobbed at each other, Sev and the older Sime might have some kind of future. The quest transforms into a plan to destroy the Corporation. But they must deal with Corporation's Tendence and Cavile.

"They're the enforcers," Sime says. If they catch you? "They take all the years you've traveled, add them up, and tack them onto your present age, effective immediately." Ouch! What happens next? Who wins?

Answers will come, all in good time

A science-fiction thriller from a local writer

Dan O'Brien is editor of Empirical. Distributed nationally, each issue of the Chico-based magazine delves into the world of human experience with a literary sensibility and willingness to explore new paths. But O'Brien is also a prolific novelist, honing his craft with each exploration of a new world or a human mind.

"Born in Connecticut," he writes in a published interview, "I moved with my family several times over the course of my childhood. Having lived in several states and attended many institutions, I have a unique perspective of the human condition. Each new place, every new relationship, has allowed for me to paint from a rich easel of colors. A lifelong practitioner and enthusiast of martial arts, elements of spiritualism and eastern culture have found a home in my works."

In "Cerulean Dreams" ($14.95 in paperback from CreateSpace; also in Amazon Kindle format), O'Brien imagines a future in which "the world had become an immensely safe place. There was no war. Poverty had been abolished, laws and rituals instituted that would maintain the pleasant temperament of the new-formed society." Every citizen is "implanted in their temple with a motherboard chip." They sleep by day and arise at night. Utopia.

A great many lives had been "lost in the Water Rights Wars of 2076" but, as the news reports, "it marked the inception of the Cerulean Dreams Corporation. And eventually the gathering of the citizens of Earth into the newly-manufactured Orion, the first and last safe haven for humankind."

But utopia is not what it seems in this page-turner. Alexander Marlowe refuses to upgrade his chip software and goes off the grid. He is investigating the seeming murders of young women when he encounters Dana, still alive. Haunted by "shadows," Marlowe and Dana plan to escape Orion, to get outside the city where there is nothing but lifeless desert. Or so they've been told.

The Company, and the mysterious group behind it, want Dana back no matter the cost. What follows are a series of horrific and bloody encounters with the assassin Armon, and the discovery in the desert of a village shaman who points Marlowe to the answers he seeks. Minds must be free, not controlled--but there is a gruesome cost to that freedom.

How a Chico high schooler saves the universe

"In the year 2098," novelist Blair Palmerlee writes, "everything and everyone in the city of Chico seemed to be a well-adjusted part of the well-oiled machine, which began life each day. This, however, was not the case for a young boy named Malcolm Thomas. For Malcolm the day would begin the same way it would end: Not soon enough." This particular day Malcolm is not quite late to his favorite high school class, quantum mechanics, taught by Professor Manuel Clarick. Good thing, too. This day Clarick shows off his experiment, and Malcolm has to save the universe.

In "The Universe of Malcolm: The Biggest, Small Problem" ($12 in paperback from CreateSpace) Palmerlee has crafted a wildly inventive sci-fi tale for 'tweens and young adults about a nerdy kid who discovers the meaning of courage. Palmerlee, a recent guest at Lyon Books in Chico, grew up on a farm near Bangor, attended Chico High School (the name of Malcolm's school is never mentioned), and is now studying psychology. His plot keeps pages turning as space battles alternate with deadpan humor.

That fateful morning Malcolm had zapped his hand with his Neutron Razor, and now his hand is beginning to disappear. As his science teacher explains, "You see, the razor works by breaking the electron barrier on the atoms in hair, absorbing the remaining neutralized particles, and recycling their energy for smaller tasks like nostril grooming." But something has gone wrong. Buried in Malcolm's disappearing hand are galaxies and nebula but--surprise!--"a huge war-like spaceship, emerging from what looked like a strange green worm hole. 'Houston,' said Prof. Clarick, as he stared at the pictures. 'We have a problem.'"

Clarick's experiment is not something you or I can understand, but it enables Malcolm to descend into the universe of his own hand so he can put things right and, if everything goes according to plan, emerge before he went in. So in he goes.

There is war in space. The Order, headed by a long-eared Dorexian name Kail, is desperately trying to stop the evil Fults, who will stop at nothing to take the ancient power of Moltor and so rule the universe. Malcolm, who is the universe, must stop him.

No wonder he misses Chico.

Robots behaving badly

Daniel H. Wilson has a Ph.D. in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University. He lives with his wife and daughter in Portland, but two or three weeks ago found himself near Colusa. He was, he writes me, "in an RV with eight guys on a bachelor party, on my way to a wedding in Calistoga. Incredibly beautiful place! I ended up getting on NPR Science Friday, and so a black towncar picked me up from a dusty RV park over in Meridian where we stopped for the night. Took me down to SF and then back up. Pretty hilarious."

He was receiving the VIP treatment because of his new, best-selling can't-put-down "Robopocalypse" ($25 in hardcover from Doubleday; $12.99 in Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook e-book). Word is that Steven Spielberg will direct the movie version.

In the future, humanoid robots are deployed as housekeepers and cars have smart chips in them so they can talk with other cars. People in offices depend on smart copy machines and kids play with smart dolls.

A researcher in northwest Washington pushes the limits of computer intelligence and succeeds a bit too much. His creation, "Archos," is quick to put things straight: "I am not your child," Archos tells the scientist. "I am your god." It's not long before Archos brings other robots under its sway and soon an apocalyptic conflict breaks out between humans and robots. It's intense and pretty gruesome.

The story of the war, and what happens afterward, is told in many voices, from Tokyo to Oklahoma, transcribed by a single soldier, Cormac "Bright Boy" Wallace, using documents preserved by a robot hidden in Alaska. Here are the stories of Mr. Takeo Nomura, a Japanese bachelor, assaulted by his robot companion; Paul Blanton, an American soldier fighting in Afghanistan; and groups of human survivors who will one day mount an attack on the Archos intelligence. The action seldom lets up, but this is not a simplistic humans-against-robots yarn.

Wilson raises the question whether the triumph of Archos would actually liberate the robots. Maybe not. But, then, what is true robot freedom? Perhaps the war against Archos is a war for a new kind of liberation.

Just to be on the safe side, I read the printed version of the book.

Chico becomes a coastal town in new eco-novel

Dale Pendell is not only a contributor to the Huffington Post; he also achieved cult popularity with the Pharmako trilogy ("an encyclopedic study of the history and uses of psychoactive plants and related synthetics"). A proponent of what his website (dalependell.com) calls "wild mind," he has been deeply influenced by "poet Gary Snyder, Zen teacher Robert Aitken, and philosopher Norman O. Brown."

Now the Sierra foothills resident traces the ecological history of California for the next ten thousand years in a new science-fiction novel, "The Great Bay: Chronicles of the Collapse" ($21.95 in hardcover from North Atlantic Books; $9.99 in Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble NOOK e-books). In 2021 a pandemic destroys most of the world's population, brought on, it's said, by weaponized bugs from the Americans and the Chinese.

"By 2031, ten years after the Collapse, the population of the United States had stabilized at four million." Carbon dioxide emissions from now-defunct factories had triggered a vast chain reaction. Global warming, and the rising oceans, would change the face of the world.

Pendell is scheduled to be in Chico tonight at 7:00 p.m. for a book signing and discussion at the 1078 Gallery, 820 Broadway. The free event is sponsored by Chico's Lyon Books.

The novel uses maps, travel journals, poetry, interviews, and news accounts to flesh out the human response over the course of millennia. Each chapter begins with a "panoptic," an overview focusing on the social and climate changes reshaping California.

As declarative sentences multiply, it's evident that the remaining humans are somehow surviving in small, do-it-yourself communities. In an address in 2171 to the Berkeley Scholar's Guild on "Pre-Col Society" one historian notes: "It was called democracy but it wasn't at all what we mean by that; it was really an oligarchy. Representatives weren't even required to do what the people wanted them to do."

In the years 2121-2220, "twenty feet of water lay over Sacramento. . . . The Sacramento Valley had become a great bay, already stretching 125 miles from the Sutter Buttes to Modesto. . . . A tallow industry developed at Chico, producing candles. Tanbark and hides were floated to Santa Cruz, where locals operated a tannery."

People followed Earth's rhythms, not the other way around.

Magalia resident co-authors science-fiction thriller

Author Kathy Terstegen writes that a decade ago she met her co-author online and they decided to write a science-fiction/horror novel "that lays out reasons for sightings of gray aliens and the purpose for alien abductions." The result is a chilling yarn called "Gene Pool" ($2.99 in e-book format from the Kindle Store at amazon.com) by Steve Maass (of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin) and Katherine Terstegen.

Designed for reading on Amazon's Kindle e-book reader, "Gene Pool" can also be read on the iPhone, iPod Touch, Blackberry, and PC's using the free Kindle apps from Amazon. (A Mac version is billed as "coming soon.") Since March 7-13 is "Read An E-Book Week" (ebookweek.com), it seems appropriate to feature a digital-only book from a local author.

The novel begins with a scenario reminiscent of the X-Files. Matt Greerson, 35 years old, is "chief investigative scientist of the Air Force's Extraterrestrial Task Force." He combines forces with Janice Whitfield, in her early thirties, who teaches astronomy in a California university. They investigate the growing number of abduction stories from solid citizens who swear to have seen gray aliens in flying saucers. But that's not the half of it.

Earth has become a battleground for two alien species, the gray aliens with the almond eyes and another race, stranger yet. The gray aliens have some kind of green gel that reduces human flesh to a brown stain; the other aliens do their killing the old fashioned way, by ripping throats.

The main action with Matt and Janice (including their growing interest in each other) is intercut with stories of secondary characters who encounter the extraordinary. "Standing over the dead man was a monster the likes of which Gordon had never seen even in his worst hallucinations. A hulking nightmare with a shark-like head and widely-spaced black eyes, the creature dripped blood from its clawed hand."

To add to the menace, the shark-faces can seemingly take the shape of humans, or animals, or just about anything. Their ships "resembled a giant spider with legs cradling a glowing egg." (Readers should know that descriptions of violence are restrained and there's not a swear word to be found.)

Why are humans being abducted and killed? The mystery slowly unravels to an unsettling and cautionary conclusion.