The near future technothriller, Weight of Space, is now available for preorder in trade paperback format on Amazon. Say what? That's right. I just published a novel. Been a long time coming too. More about that in a bit.
What does a long time Autodesk Civil 3D geek do in his free time? It may surprise you. Maybe not.
Ok. I do write a lot. Why not write about something completely different. Makes sense to me.
The paperback edition the Weight of Space will officially ship to customers on Aug 15, 2023.
The ebook (epub) format edition will also be available on Amazon on the same day. God willing.
Weight of Space
Thriller in the Black
“Folks, we have breaking news...
There are reports that two science astronauts are missing in deep space. The men were on a 5-day mission to upgrade the Deep Space Radio Telescope Array. Remotely operated, the DSRT Array is located in the L5 space some distance from the L5 Station.
The identities of the missing crew remain unknown.
The Space Navy and the International Deep Space Observatory will neither confirm nor deny these unofficial and unconfirmed reports.
Our viewers will certainly recall that the rebuilt L5 Station now includes remnants of the Capture – the dark comet Melinoe and two smaller asteroids. The space mining and manufacturing facility currently supplies vital materials for the Ring Station and other structures under construction in Near Earth Orbit.
The L5 Station habitat is a government commercial partnership of the Space Navy and Space Orbitals. The acting Chief of Station is Dr. Sally Farmer, renowned eco-biologist, and the mother of the First Family of Space.
L5 Station manifests show that the famous Capture Boys, Captain Robin Bennett and Admiral Liam Stewart, are currently aboard.
Clearly, the fate of the missing crew is in the hands of our most experienced space heroes.”
The news is only part of the mystery from the Edge of Black
A Near Future Tale
Order the Weight of Space on Amazon
Just to confuse matters we published the novel under my pen name Fat Fish Farmer. Long time readers of this blog will recognize that my pen name is a play on the Middle English meanings of my actual name.
Visit My Author Website
Over there you can read the Fat Fish Talks blog and follow the Fat Fish on X (Twitter) or whatever.
Here’s the Weight of Space book cover.
Hope you all like the sort of early 60’s retro graphics feel of the cover. One hopes the bold cartoon and comic book colors play well on the Amazon site and on the bookshelves of book sellers everywhere.
Couldn’t resist the use of a souped-up version of the famous NASA Comet Tempel 1 Impactor mission photo. Other versions of the pic are also employed elsewhere on the wosam dot com site. Imagine that.
Why? The photo and that turn of the century mission triggered my first glimmers of the BIG ideas behind the #WOS.
For Those Who May Care
I drew comic books in middle school. I began my first sci-fi novel in high school. I submitted a couple of short stories back then, but they probably never got read.
I got distracted by songwriting and poetry back them. Give me a break. Didn’t everyone want to be the songwriter, rock star?
That later led to me composing wedding songs for a few couples which is another tale. Not too shabby for this tone deaf someone who’s singing makes Bob Dylan sound good. Eheh.
I finished 95% of a technothriller about military intelligence technology, a US Army coup, and terrorist bombings. I threw the book away because it seemed to me that it was starting to come true. Kid you not. My wife will attest.
The other day I discovered buried in my garage the Corona manual typewriter I used to bang away on it. Which only proves that people store dumb stuff when they have a garage.
The Personal Back Story
I started the Weight of Space sometime shortly after the 2008 financial crisis nightmare that changed my life forever. What began as regular practice writing dialog, sucked up the theme of our human responses to the unexpected circumstances that God throws at us.
Life is full of Black Swans. None of us want to believe that. What do we do when it hits the fan? What do we do about them? Do we overcome? Maybe how do we overcome in a righteous way is what interests me.
The #WOS book is intentionally a Near Future Tale. Silly me.
This challenge might be the hardest fiction to write.
Life in such a novel must somehow be reasonable even though our real future will be nothing like, and everything like, the way things are today.
Hmmm? You may recall the first iPhone came out the year before I started the book. What do you think cell phones will be like in 10 years? 25 years? My take in the Weight of Space surprises even me.
The Weight of Space addresses many questions of that level because those are a lot of fun and many are worth asking. The book, in a fun way, attempts to ask the harder questions about human habitation in space and our near future lives on the Edge of Black.
I completed most of the story before the 2013 release of the movie Gravity (which annoyed me) or Andy Weir’s great book The Martian hit the street. Reusable rocket systems were only a gleam in the eye for the few.
I spent years working on other products and on projects readers of this blog are familiar with. The Framework for Civil 3D paid the bills. I probably put the book aside too often to do that. You know the drill.
“The Plans of Mice and Men”
Honestly, I wasted a number of years. The published writers I knew had agents. I thought finding a literary agent first was necessary. It is and it isn’t.
Thank you to my family, friends, fans, and volunteer readers who encouraged me to get ‘er done.
They all remind me to remind you to…
Please Tell Someone About the Weight of Space