Post #154 January 28, 2019

“Updates and What’s Coming in 2019 and Beyond”

The year 2018 was a pretty successful year for me as a writer and author.  Below are some download statistics for last year (as of 1-14-19).

Total downloads for 2018 (all titles) = 5629

Total downloads since I went online in 2014 (all titles) = 18,828

Total downloads since online for Tales of the Quantum Corps = 5777

Total downloads since online for The Farpool Stories = 2718

Total downloads since online for Quantum Troopers = 8354

Total downloads since online for all other titles = 2035

 

The year 2019 will see the upload and publication of my new series Time Jumpers.  I’ve mentioned this series before. 

1. Time Jumpers is a series of 20,000-30,000-word episodes detailing the adventures of Ultrarch-Jump Captain Monthan Dringoth and his crew and their experiences as time jumpers with the Time Guard.
2. Each episode will be about 40-60 pages, approximately 25,000 words in length.
3. A new episode will be available and uploaded every 4 weeks.
4. There will be 12 episodes.  The story will be completely serialized in about 12 months.
5. Each episode is a stand-alone story but will advance the greater theme and plot of the story arc. 
6. The main plotline: Time Guard must defeat the enemy Coethi and stop their efforts to disrupt or eliminate Uman settlements in the Galactic Inner Spiral and Lower Halo sectors of Uman space.  
7. Uploads will be made to www.smashwords.com on approximately the schedule below:
    
   Episode #        Title                                                                 Approximate Upload Date

1.             ‘Marooned in Voidtime’                                 February 1, 2019        
2.             ‘Keaton’s World’                                            March 1, 2019
3.             ‘A Small Navigation Error’                             April 15, 2019
4.             ‘Cygnus Rift’                                                  May 3, 2019
5.             ‘The Time Guard’                                           May 31, 2019
6.             ‘First Light Corridor                                       June 28, 2019
7.             ‘Hapsh’m and the First Coethi Encounter’     August 2, 2019
8.             ‘Operation Galactic Hammer’                        August 30, 2019
9.             ‘Byrd’s Draconis’                                           September 27, 2019               
10.             ‘First Jump Squadron’                                    November 1, 2019
11.             ‘Planck Time’                                                  November 29, 2019
12.             ‘The Time Twister’                                          January 3, 2020

I’ve actually written and archived the first 3 episodes of the series, so I’m ahead of schedule by several months.  Look for the first episode February 1 at Smashwords and other fine ebook retailers.  Here’s a description of that first episode…

First Time Displacement Battery is a new outfit in Time Guard, with a critical mission: deploy a new weapon called a Time Twister on a hellhole backwater world called Storm.  The Twister is needed to block the advance of the Coethi from intruding on Uman space, threatening Uman settlements, using their own temporal weapons to change time streams and prevent Umans from ever settling worlds in the Lower Halo of the Galaxy.

Two obstacles are working against 1^st TD and its commander, Jump Captain Monthan Dringoth:  the Coethi continue to prowl around the frontiers of the Alliance and could pop out of voidtime at any moment, preventing the Twister from being deployed. But the greater complication is local; Storm is not uninhabited.   And one crewmember becomes quite smitten with the indigenous life, threatening both the mission and the very lives of the crew.

In the end, Dringoth is faced with a stark dilemma: Coethi assaults have irretrievably damaged the sun Sigma Albeth B and she’s going supernova in days.  The Battery has been ordered to breakdown their new weapon and re-locate to another world.  But the locals have different ideas and Dringoth finds he can’t even control his own crew.

First episode in the Time Jumpers serial. 

Longer term, look for a major science fiction novel from me in 2020, entitled Monument.  Here’s a description of the first chapter from this work:

Helios Station

In Parker Orbit around the Sun

June 1, 3155 CE

Onboard a research and monitoring station called Helios (orbiting the Sun in ‘Parker’ orbit), two astronomers Aditi Surat (female) and Carlos Tromelin (male) are manning the late shift when they notice strange effects occurring in the Sun’s photosphere. The Sun’s measured total output has dropped below baseline values, triggering warning flags and alarms aboard the station.

After some discussion with UNISPACE centers on Mercury and Earth, Helios is commanded to send several unmanned probes into the Sun, through its outer atmosphere and into its convective zone, to take measurements and determine the cause.  The Sundiver probes are launched and the data they send back indicates that, for reasons not fully understood, the Sun’s fusion process has become less efficient and the Sun’s energy output is dropping—fast.  Previous attempts to increase solar output through the ill-advised use of nanobot ‘doping’ of the Sun may be causing this.  Years before, in an effort to increase solar output to provide greater energy for human settlements around Mars and Jupiter, swarms of nanobots were dropped into the sun, to assist in the fusion process.  UNISPACE now believes this process has gone haywire and the bots are having the opposite effect: destroying hydrogen nuclei that the Sun needs to continue fusion.

The Sun now seems to be on an accelerated aging track.  Something must done and UNISPACE declares a Class 1 Emergency. 

Over the next year, an emergency contingency plan is worked out through the Concordance (an alliance of most human worlds and settlements across the solar system): the plan is to use either Saturn or Neptune to siphon off material and stream the material across space to Jupiter.  If enough material can be deposited onto Jupiter, the Concordance believes Jupiter can be ‘ignited’ to begin fusion and become a second sun.  It’s a controversial plan with unknown and perhaps unknowable effects and controversial as thousands of settlements in and around Jupiter space will have to relocate.

Heading up the project will be architect Pieter Delano, a famous and visionary developer of worlds across the solar system.  Delano views the Salvation Project as his grandest effort to date, a legacy project that will leave a lasting name for future generations to revere and admire.  Delano admires architects of the past, from the pyramid builders of ancient Egypt to his own illustrious ancestor Philippe Dugay, creator of the terreta concept, which enabled widespread settlement of the solar system in the 23^rd century. 

But as plans are being developed and scoopships assembled around Saturn to begin the Project (known as Salvation), Delano receives disconcerting news from a Concordance station in high Jupiter orbit, in fact on Europa.  The news: Jupiter is in trouble too.  It’s shrinking, losing mass somehow.

Astronomical observations and atmospheric probes confirm a suspicion: there is a sink or a wormhole at the core of the planet.  Somehow, it’s losing mass into this sink.  How did this sink develop?  Historical research on Jupiter’s past details multiple episodes of this cyclic loss of mass occurring in recent centuries.  It seemed to start around the year 2249 CE. 

This makes Delano highly suspicious.  The year 2249 CE is burned into his memory.  It was the year that his ancestor Philippe Dugay began a project to unravel Jupiter completely and use the material to build a new Ring for the Concordance, a new band of terretas and settlements between Jupiter and Saturn.  Delano is suspicious that his ancestor Dugay is fiddling with Jupiter even as he is trying to ‘bulk’ the planet up to ignite it as a second sun.

The problem is clearly in the past.  Delano seeks approval from the Concordance’s Time Guard to travel back to that time (year 2249), confront his ancestor and make them stop fiddling with Jupiter.  Time Guard ultimately agrees, with the proviso that another time jumper accompany Dugay, an experienced chrononaut named Evelyn Kasongo.  Delano and the Time Guard agree on details and parameters of the mission.  They must succeed or else the world of 3155 CE will die, when the Sun goes dark, which may come in a generation or less. 

Determined to succeed and both annoyed and angry at his rambunctious ancestor Philippe Dugay, Delano and Kasongo board the jumpship Gemini and travel the local time stream back to 2249 CE.

I hope 2019 will be a successful and prosperous year for all.  The next post to The Word Shed comes on February 4, 2019.  See you then.

Phil B.