Boots of Oppression is now available as a eBook:
Triton is a soldier forced to fight for the oppressive Spitnik and given an order he just can’t bring himself to obey. Just when it appears all hope is lost for Triton, the situation dramatically changes, and he finds himself on the other side.
Set in a distant future on colony worlds that long ago had lost contact with Earth. One of those worlds, Spitnik, is now out to forge an empire by conquering all other known colonized worlds. In their sights is Bahram, a largely desert moon of a ringed gas giant. But unlike earlier worlds conquered by the Spitnik, the Bahramians have no intention of simply rolling over.
A stunning new hard-core space opera bold characters, vividly described worlds, and imaginative action scenes.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/169671298X
The eBook is in progress and shouldn’t take more a than a few days before it is also available.
Check out my work in progress: Boots of Oppression
Blurb for Boots of Oppression
I am Trite, a soldier forced to fight for the oppressive Spitnik. I was given an order I just can’t bring myself to obey, and that may cost me my life.
Set in a distant future in which worlds had to rebuild from small colonies seeded by fusions ships originally sent out from Earth. An Earth that has since mysteriously vanished.
One of those worlds, Spitnik, is now out to forge an empire by conquering all the other colonized worlds. In their sights is Bahram, a largely desert moon of a ringed gas giant. But unlike earlier worlds conquered by the Spitnik, the Bahramians have no intention of simply rolling over.
A stunning new hard-core space opera with bold characters and vividly described worlds.
Six Must-Read Fictional Dinosaurs Books:
Dinosaurs once roamed the Earth, doing all the things live animals do today. They fought; they ate; they reproduced. But today they live only in our imaginations, our books, and our films. And if you’re at all like me, you probably snap up every book (fiction and non-fiction) you can find about those wondrous creatures, and you experience vicariously through the characters in those books what it would be like to be stalked by a pack of velociraptors, ambushed by a T Rex, or just watch a brachiosaurus munch on some towering vegetation.
If you have just recently been bitten by the dinosaur bug (probably a resurrected amber-entombed mosquito), then below are six must-read novels. Below the must-reads I included a more extensive list of novels (a mix of very old to a spate of recently published) in case you want to go beyond the magnificent six.
Check out a few that I have penned as well.
Six Must Reads
The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle (1912)
An old classic. The premise is dinosaurs survived in a remote and inaccessible region of the Amazon. Professor Challenger came back from there and then plans a second expedition to prove his claims, taking along his professional rival and critic Professor Summerlee. Although antiquated in ways, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s prose still makes for superb reading. This book may also be downloaded for free.
Dinosaur Four by Geoff Jones (2014)
From something written over a century ago to something more recent. Dinosaur Four is a time travel story where ten people from a coffee shop get unwillingly sent back into the distant past where they come face to face with dangerous dinos of all sorts – even the herbivores are ferocious killers. *Spoiler alert: some of the ten meet a gruesome death and don’t return.* Eclectic blend of distinct characters in constant danger makes it hard to put this one down.
Rampage at Waterloo by Brian Falkner (2015)
There are a number of alternate history stories in which Dinosaurs somehow survived the extinction event 65 million years ago. This young adult novel is a cut above most. A mishmash of historical fiction set in a fantastical world in which dinosaurs never went extinct. Napoleon (yes, that Napoleon) uses the beasts in his battles against his enemies. Incredible depictions of battles makes for a riveting read.
Far-Seer by Robert J. Sawyer (originally published 1992)
An award winning first book of a trilogy. The premise is that 65 million years ago aliens transplanted dinosaurs onto another world before an asteroid made them extinct on Earth. This is sort of a what if Galileo had been a dinosaur story. Set on a distant moon orbiting a gas giant around some other star, sentient descendants of tyrannosaurs revere the gas giant as the “Face of God.” When Asfan, a young Quintaglio (as their race is called), turns a new invention (a far-seer) toward the gas giant he discerns the truth, and (as you can probably guess) things take a turn for the worse when Asfan tells everyone what he has learned.
Bones of the Earth by Michael Swanwick (2002)
A sci-fi time travel thriller that involves Cretaceous dinosaurs, humans, and future avian descendants that take over the Earth after our demise. The book offers interesting scenes like at the beginning when the paleontologist Richard Leyster is lured away from his position at the Smithsonian by being shown a the head of a stegosaurus that was freshly killed. The team become stranded in time and must survive amongst the savage beasts. Probably a little cliché. However, the book also offers some unique twists later that earn it a spot on this list.
Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton (1995)
This list wouldn’t be complete without this classic which started our whole modern love affair with dinosaurs. Granted, some of us have always loved them, but the Spielberg movie that was cloned from this book took dinosaurs into the mainstream of pop culture. I use the term clone as loosely here as the dinosaurs were cloned. If you have only seen the movie, I encourage you to read the book. Although the movie follows much of Crichton’s original plot, there are numerous significant differences including sections and characters in the book that were cut from the film. Although some of those scenes were later dug back up for the movie’s sequels.
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Others (original publications date). For series, only the first book is listed in most cases. Links are provided to a source for each.
Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne (1864)
At the Earth’s Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs (1922)
The Night Shape by James Blish (1963)
Thonger and The Wizard of Lemuria by Lin Carter (1965)
Speaking of Dinosaurs by Philip E High (1974)
Dinosaur Planet by Anne McCaffrey (1978)
West of Eden by Harry Harrison (1984)
Carnosaur by John Brosnan (writing under the name Harry Adam Knight) (1984)
Raptor Red by Robert T. Bakker (1995)
Footprints of Thunder by James David (1995)
Dinosaur Summer by Greg Bear (1998)
Dinoverse by Scott Ciencin (1999)
End of an Era by Robert J Sawyer (2002)
The Sky People by S.M. Striling (2006)
Cretaceous Dawn by Lisa M. Graziano and Michael S.A. Graziano (2008)
Love in the Time of Dinosaurs by Kirsten Alene (2010)
Antarktos Rising by Jeremy Robinson (2010)
Cryptozoica by Mark Ellis (2010)
Dinosaur Wars by Thomas Hopp (2011)
Dinosaur Lake by Kathryn Meyer Griffith (2012)
Dragon Dawn by Deborah O’ Neill Cordes (2014)
Al Clark by Jonathan G. Meyer (2014)
The Dinosaur Lords by Victor Milán (2015)
Jurassic Island by Viktor Zarkov (2015)
Future Remainsby Robert Jack (2017)
Pangaea: Exiles by Jeff Brackett (2017)
Final Extinction by Rick A. Mullins (2017)
Megazoic by Matthew Donald (2017)The Island in the Mist by C.G. Mosely (2017)
A Man out of Time by Christopher Leflan (2017)
Primordia: In Search of the Lost World by Greig Beck (2017)
Primative War by Ethan Pettus (2017)
House of the Gods by Davide Mana (2018)
Bestiarii by James Tarr (2018)
Monsters in the Clouds by Russell James (2018)
The Flipside by Jake Bible (2018)
Throwback by Edward J. McFadden III (2018)
The Wyvern in the Wilderlands by Eddie Patin (2018)
A Fistful of Dinosaurs an anthology by multiple authors (2018)
Primal Terra by Tim Meyer (2019)
Dreamshores: Monster Island by Mike Robinson (2019)
PREHISTORIC: A Dinosaur Anthology by multiple authors (2019)
Dinosaur World Omnibus by Adam Carter (2019)
Ice Station Death by Gustavo Bondoni (2019)
Objekt 221 by Steve Metcalf (2019)
Little Dinosaurs by Audrey Swindon and Bob McCullough (2019)
Raptor Red by Robert T. Bakker (1995)
Footprints of Thunder by James David (1995)
Dinosaur Summer by Greg Bear (1998)
Dinoverse by Scott Ciencin (1999)
End of an Era by Robert J Sawyer (2002)
The Sky People by S.M. Striling (2006)
Cretaceous Dawn by Lisa M. Graziano and Michael S.A. Graziano (2008)
Love in the Time of Dinosaurs by Kirsten Alene (2010)
Antarktos Rising by Jeremy Robinson (2010)
Dinosaur Wars by Thomas Hopp (2011)
Dinosaur Lake by Kathryn Meyer Griffith (2012)
Dragon Dawn by Deborah O’ Neill Cordes (2014)
Al Clark by Jonathan G. Meyer (2014)
The Dinosaur Lords by Victor Milán (2015)
Jurassic Island by Viktor Zarkov (2015)
Future Remainsby Robert Jack (2017)
Pangaea: Exiles by Jeff Brackett (2017)
Final Extinction by Rick A. Mullins (2017)
Megazoic by Matthew Donald (2017)The Island in the Mist by C.G. Mosely (2017)
A Man out of Time by Christopher Leflan (2017)
Primordia: In Search of the Lost World by Greig Beck (2017)
Primative War by Ethan Pettus (2017)
House of the Gods by Davide Mana (2018)
Bestiarii by James Tarr (2018)
Monsters in the Clouds by Russell James (2018)
The Flipside by Jake Bible (2018)
Throwback by Edward J. McFadden III (2018)
The Wyvern in the Wilderlands by Eddie Patin (2018)
A Fistful of Dinosaurs an anthology by multiple authors (2018)
Primal Terra by Tim Meyer (2019)
Dreamshores: Monster Island by Mike Robinson (2019)
PREHISTORIC: A Dinosaur Anthology by multiple authors (2019)
Dinosaur World Omnibus by Adam Carter (2019)
Ice Station Death by Gustavo Bondoni (2019)
Objekt 221 by Steve Metcalf (2019)
Little Dinosaurs by Audrey Swindon and Bob McCullough (2019)
I created this map when I was writing No Road Out and thought some of you might enjoy looking at it.
Living on a Moon in Distant Star System
My next novel is set (for the most part) on the world Bahram which is a moon around a gas giant orbiting a star somewhere out there in the Orion Spur. Mostly due to tidal locking, living on a moon would have some unique differences compared to living on a planet.
Bahram is described as being tidally locked to its gas giant, meaning that the same side of the moon always faces toward its gas giant in the same way that our moon always shows the same face toward Earth. Given enough time, all moons will become tidally locked to their host planet. The closer the moon and the larger the planet, the sooner the moon will become tidally locked.
Life would be interesting on such a tidally locked moon. Tidal locking does not totally stop rotation but slows it until the rotation matches the revolution around the planet. The length of a day-night cycle then depends on how long it takes for the moon to revolve around the planet. For our moon, it takes about 28 days to revolve around the Earth, giving 14 days of day and 14 days of night at any given spot on the lunar surface. Yes, the dark side of the Moon is, in fact, lit up half the time. Effectively, the day and the month are the same on a moon.
So we said the length of the day depends on the time an evolution of the moon around the planet. This then depends on the mass of the planet and the distance of the moon from the planet. The heavier the planet, the stronger its gravitational pull, and the faster moon has to travel in order to stay in its orbit. And the closer the moon is to the planet, the less distance it has to travel to go around.
As a moon revolves around its planet, the sun will rise and set. Stars will come out, and different constellations will be visible at different times of the year as the planet revolves around the sun. The planet going around the sun will then define a year in such a system.
The gas giant of the moon will not budge in the sky of the moon, although a little wobble is possible if the moon’s orbit is eccentric. But one side of the moon will never see the giant, and one side will always see it hanging in the same place while everything else moves in the sky.
However, note that although the gas giant is always in the same place, it is not always visible. Just like our moon goes through phases, so will the gas giant, and that includes a phase like a new moon where the entire planet is black as space. These phases would be in sync with the length of the day. So if the full gas giant was seen at sunset at Lookout Point on the moon, the full gas giant would always be seen at sunset at Lookout Point. It would be seen at other times of the day, but it wouldn’t be full.
The whole side of the moon that sees the gas giant would see it as full at the same time, but the time of the day would be different. I’m talking about East/West here, not North/South. In the example above at Lookout Point, let’s assume the gas giant is on the eastern horizon. At the same time, a quarter of the way around the moon to the East, it is midnight. And the full gas giant is seen straight overhead. Another quarter of the way around, and it is dawn. And the full gas giant is on the western horizon. By the way, we wouldn’t have to wait until star travel is possible to see these type of effects. The phases of the Earth would be just like this as seen from a future lunar colony.
On a moon like Bahram, you would also experience an eclipse once every light cycle as the star goes behind the giant. Our moon is not eclipsed every month because the Earth-Moon plane is not aligned with the Earth-Sun plane so the Moon is usually above or below the line between the Sun and the Earth. Due to the large size of a gas giant, however, the local star would most likely always pass behind the giant unless the orbit of the moon was significantly tilted relative to the plane to the local star and the moon was far from the planet. In that case, the eclipse would be rare and happen for the same reason solar and lunar eclipses are rare on Earth. When the plane of the orbit of the moon around the planet is not the same as the plane of the orbit of the planet around the star, those planes must intersect. As the moon orbits the planet, it passes through that intersection twice during each orbit. If that intersection just happens to align with when the moon is exactly opposite of the planet from the star, then an eclipse of the moon occurs.
Well if you are geek enough to have gotten this far, I think you will enjoy my next book (Boots of Oppression) which should be ready to release sometime in July 2019. Or check out my other books.
RockIt On! – MJ
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