Science
Fiction
“The one, essential difference between science fiction and fantasy is the deeper you dig into science fiction, the closer you get to the truth.”
Taming the Perilous Skies
By 8:11 a.m. on October 19th, 2076, Brian Medlock has transformed the planet with his theory of persistence and his invention of anti-gravity. Climate change is on the mend, political and social barriers have begun to be dismantled, crime is at a historic low, and religions have accepted the timeless Fabric, theorized by Medlock, as one and the same as God. By 8:12 a.m., everything has changed. That’s when the anti-gravity control grid fails, causing aerial vehicles to start dropping from the sky by the thousands. Jack Woods, the mild-mannered US Deputy Director of National Safety, is handed the most consequential investigation in history.
Set against the dramatic backdrops of Washington DC and Milan, Jack and the supremely ridiculous 95-year-old Medlock, along with quantum cryptologist Olivia Martorana, must navigate spinning photons, old nemeses, international intrigue, and even the Catholic church to piece together the clues. The clock is ticking. Jack’s only child Erik is stuck alone at five hundred feet. If they do not discover and fix the cause of the crisis by 8 p.m., Erik will die.
TAMING THE PERILOUS SKIES is a hard sci-fi novel inspired by the author's theory of persistence that visualizes a technological world with significant implications for our own.
One Man’s Persistence
Taking place a year after The Fall of 2076, acclaimed science biographer Sagan Franklin interviews Brian Medlock whose invention of anti-gravity saved the planet but also made the tragedy possible. As we journey through Medlock’s history of discovery and invention, we gain insights into the human toll that invention can bring. We also learn that Sagan’s motivations for the interview are personal, and her discoveries could be profound. She doesn’t have much time. With Medlock’s advanced age and failing health, his death is scheduled for the next day. This will be his final interview.
Scattered Pictures
Somewhere in the recesses of his mind, Dr. Wendell Cooper knows it is New Years Eve at the dawn of the 22nd century. Since he was a young boy, from when Brian Medlock’s anti-gravity began transforming society, he had fixated on the age he’d be at this very moment. And yet, as fireworks and colorful aerials marked the milestone, he struggles to remember that number. Was it fifty-four? Fifty-six? It barely registers that he can no longer remember his own age. He only knows it is an occasion for shame and bitterness.
“Coop” had set out to prove an outlandish theory: memories are created and maintained through the entanglement of elementary particles between our brains and the timeless Fabric described by Medlock. Moreover, he had invented a prosthesis that maintains the connection to the Fabric to preserve memories. If only he had been successful, his invention could have finally treated the rare form of familial dementia that had taken his mother and was consuming him, memory by memory, day by day. As he slips into the indeterminate void of darkness, a miracle occurs.
If Memory Serves
By 2126, society has been reshaped by Wendell Cooper’s “Cooper Caps,” which allow humans to relive, store, and share memories. While transformative, these shared experiences, combined with augmented reality bots, have led to a collective truth, stifling individuality and erasing irony and parody.
Saila Pinkerton, a researcher at the Cooper Memory Institute, uncovers a strange, universal memory shared by her study participants: a round, dimly lit ring or disc. Strangely, she holds the same memory with no identifiable origin. Teaming up with her childhood friend Derek Ross, a skilled programmer, and an iconographer, Saila discovers the memory is a deliberate message embedded in the universe’s Fabric by an unknown intelligence.
The memory, fading rapidly, connects to the Fall of 2076, a tragedy that claimed over 40 million lives. Racing against time, Saila and her team—Derek, Erik Woods, Kavi Batra, and Marco Fabrizio—dig into the past, uncovering ties between the gate and the Fall. Their work suggests humanity unknowingly received the key to unlocking the gate during a first contact.
As they close in on the truth, dark forces linked to the Fall resurface, determined to stop them. The gate holds the promise of discovery—or the risk of destruction. Time is running out.
The Fantastiverse Series
World One
We have just been introduced to our first extraterrestrial civilization. The invention of the Cooper Caps allowed us to tap into the timeless Fabric where we discovered a message left for us by an ancient species. These ambassadors, from what we come to know as World One, have left for us their dramatic story of first contact with the world before them, World Two.
WORLD ONE is a hard sci-fi novel built upon the prior works in my Persistence Universe. I hope it will be the first of many, each telling a fantastic story from yet another of many ancient worlds that have crossed our path in the timeless Fabric.
Welcome to a Fantastic World.