The Fifth on the Eighth. By Michael E. Gonzales

The Fifth on the Eighth. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone! My new year is starting off with a great finish. On the eighth of January, 2019, the fifth and final story from The Unborn Galaxy…will be born.

The Blue of Antyllus is the sequel to The Vampires of Antyllus, and will answer the question, “will the human settlement of New Roanoke survive on the alien world or will the humans destroy themselves?”

Peace can be defined differently and so what one person may see as peace another may perceive otherwise. This absence of homogony among the humans will likely lead to the death of them all.

In The Blue of Antyllus you’ll find action, mystery, adventure and romance. Unrequited love, love forsaken and love denied. The outcome of the conflict will determine the future of several burgeoning loves. Whose will survive the wild blue? 

  

This was a difficult story for me to write. First, most of the characters are based on people I have actually known, real human beings whose real-life stories ended far too soon.

I have, in my story, breathed life back into these people, so that they and I…and you, might share one last great adventure together. Also, I have put my characters, both good and bad, through hell, and not all of them will get the deserts they so greatly deserve. Very much like real life.

The alien world of Antyllus is moving forward under new rule now that the war has been fought and won. With the native E’meset tribe joining with the emerging rebel Earth forces against Wilmington, the nefarious commander of the corrupt IIEA army of mercenaries, a tenuous peace has been patched together—but the solution for that peace is not workable for some, and whispers of a deadly uprising are in the wind...

Captain Nash Rastaban tries to rebuild his life after being duped into fighting with Wilmington’s iniquitous forces He is recruited by Dave Mitchell to help quell the mercenaries who plan to take over Antyllus—a battle he wants no part of. But when he stands to lose all he holds dear, he realizes that peace is something he is going to have to fight for—this time, on the right side.

Will Antyllus ever be settled? Can the E’meset trust the humans and SUBs to fight alongside them against those corrupt officials who would take over Antyllus for their own gain? Power is a formidable motivator, but Antyllus—and all it stands for—is worth this fight…worth dying for. Nash and the ragtag band of soldiers he leads are determined to protect their homes, their loves, and their lives—even if it means making a last, defiant stand here in THE BLUE OF ANTYLLUS…

Travel with me under the surface of the moon and try to survive. Join me in heated combat inside Earth lunar base. Cross a Sea of Stars with me for the adventure of a lifetime. Journey several light years into space to save an entire race and then return with me to that world in The Blue of Antyllus.

o0o

My next story will move us away from science fiction and into the realm of Fantasy...

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New Release -- The Vampires of Antyllus (The Unborn Galaxy Book 4) by Michael E. Gonzales #firestarpress #prairierosepubs #sciencefiction

A distant world in orbit around a binary red star set, light years away, holds the promise of humanity’s future. It also contains a deadly secret that unleashes the worst of all greed and the unthinkable—those who would kill for blood.

When Lieutenant Colonel Kathy Selina is offered the choice to relocate to the Antyllus colony, she hardly has a choice.  The military has not only training and time invested in her, but she’s also been given a new SUB body to defeat the deadly disease that would have killed her, as a human.  Kathy, along with her executive officer, Major Dave Mitchel, a handful of SUBs, and the members of the Colony Defense Force, must pit their skills and abilities against the most malevolent enemy the universe has ever faced.

Failure will mean a terrible end for the planet’s native inhabitants, those who’ve come to colonize Antyllus, and certain death for the small cadre of defenders, as well. In a deadly game of cat-and-mouse, how can Kathy, Dave, and their band of soldiers defend an entire world against THE VAMPIRES OF ANTYLLUS?

EXCERPT

     Kathy saw the net stop then zoomed in on Illat, who yanked hard on the line. Illat could see the net was stuck so he wisely stopped trying to pull it.

     Kathy refocused on the net. Dave was ripping the top of it apart with his one good hand. Then he jumped up and grabbed the vine just as the net fell out from around him. Kathy was shocked. Had she been a breather, she would have gasped. "Dave!" She cried out, knowing full well he would not hear her at this distance with the river roaring below him.

     She knew Dave was without the use of his right arm, so she instantly understood what she had to do. Without hesitation, she leapt up and grabbed the vine and started to hand over hand her way out to Dave as fast as she could. The farther out she got, the more she had to slow down, her movement was causing a wave affect in the vine that was bouncing Dave up and down. She could not eliminate this effect but she could minimize it by slowing down. As strong as Dave might be, he was still trying to maintain a grip on a wet, swinging, bouncing vine.

     When she finally got to him, she spoke first. "Are you this much fun on every date?"

   

The journey continues, by Michael E. Gonzales.

In Book one, Dark Moon Rising, of the The Unborn Galaxy series, you were introduced to JILL, the Joint International Lunar laboratory, on the Moon’s near side, setting inside Mare Insularum, the Sea of Islands. Here you witnessed the horrific and unprecedented lunar quake that sent one of the habitats, and eight humans, plummeting into a sub-lunar world fraught with danger, and complicated by the gambit of human emotions, frailties, and lusts, all seeming to conspire to end their lives. And then they encountered the lost alien colony.

  

In my second book, The battle of Broken Moon, you watched as the survivors of the quake fought to stay alive and evacuate the base. You saw their efforts thwarted by traitors, and an invading force from space.

In the coming third book, look for some subtle clues that will point toward the series finale.

The third story in the series starts on JILL, with a mystery that dates back to the Apollo 15 Moon mission of 1971, and the mysterious photographs of what appeared to be a large cylindrical shaped spacecraft, lodged in a crater on the far side of the moon.

Then came the top-secret Apollo 20 mission which took place in August of 1976. The Apollo 20 mission objective, according to Mission Commander William Rutledge, was to land in proximity to the cigar shaped alien craft, spotted by Apollo 15, and then conduct a detailed survey and exploration.

A Saturn V rocket was the launch vehicle, and the Apollo space craft made the trip, and landed on the far side of the moon where two of the three astronauts, one American, and one Soviet, explored the massive alien craft before returning to Earth.

Their findings were so startling, so unnerving, so explosive, that the entire mission was buried, and both the Americans and the Soviets agreed to deny the mission ever existed.

But the films and photos remain on file, and on line, for any to see…to this day.

The story, the cover up, the controversy, the conspiracy had long been forgotten when a series of extraordinary events on the lunar surface caused a reexamination of the record.

Captain Cristóbal "Chris" Salazar, a career Air force officer, who had trained for years for the Mars mission suffers a devastating blow when he was passed over and thus prevented from joining the Mars crew. He is cast into a deep depression, but when offered a posting on the Moon…he grudgingly accepts.

Arriving on JILL almost a year after the great quake, Chris is made the pilot of a Lunar Eagle, a small low orbital vehicle designed for transport, and survey work.

When the “anomaly” begins, he is selected, because of his skill as a pilot, to fly an Eagle to the event site, and launch a probe.

The probe sends back telemetry and images that shock the scientific community.

As a result, the military want to destroy the anomaly. But instead another, more sophisticated, probe is ordered delivered into the mysterious event.

When asked, Chris volunteers for the dangerous return trip. This time the unimaginable happens. He is drawn into the event horizon and vanishes from sight, off sensors, and into an adventure both horrifying and wondrous. He will face great malevolence, monstrous creatures, zombie like humanoids, evil magic, and worse yet, his own demons.

Chris will also find a treasure worth more to him than even his life. To possess this paragon, he will forever sacrifice his chance to return home, Across a Sea of Stars.

(Take a look at the pictures and film footage of the alien craft by looking on YouTube for “Apollo 20 William Rutledge”)

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On Writing Science Fiction by Michael Gonzales

Writing Science Fiction demands something that many other genres do not. It demands that the author conceive a future technology for our planet, or invent an altogether alien technology. 

We’ve all seen the movies, and the TV shows depicting life thirty and a hundred years into the future. Everyone is wearing silver jumpers, living in skyscrapers that tickle the ionosphere, and the air is filled with flying buses and other public transportation.

For those long trips, say to Tokyo or Berlin, there are super-sonic trains in glass tubes moving at near super-luminal speeds, putting you at your destination in mere minutes.

It’s all so familiar to us—and that’s the problem. Trying to be new, fresh, original in this, the twenty-first century, is a real challenge.

On the other hand, an author these days does not have to spend a chapter and a half describing the Utopian citadel wherein characters reside; just a few key descriptors and the average reader can easily recognize the metropolis of the future—in their already-programmed minds.

Still, what writer of SciFi can resist trying to accomplish what Jules Verne did in 1863 in one of his earliest novels, “Paris in the Twentieth Century.” His descriptions of society and technology a hundred years in the future were frighteningly accurate.

A testament to this fact is the reaction he got from his publisher, Pierre-Jules Hetzer, who refused to release the book because he thought it too unbelievable.

The book's description of the technology of “1960” was in some ways remarkably close to actual 1960s technology. The book described in detail advances such as cars powered by internal combustion engines ("gas-cabs") together with the necessary supporting infrastructure, such as gas stations and paved asphalt roads, elevated and underground passenger train systems, and high-speed trains powered by magnetism and compressed air, skyscrapers, electric lights that illuminate entire cities at night, fax machines ("picture-telegraphs"), elevators, primitive computers which can send messages to each other as part of a network, resembling today’s Internet (described as sophisticated electrically powered mechanical calculators which can send information to each other across vast distances), the utilization of wind power, automated security systems, the electric chair, and remotely-controlled weapons systems, as well as weapons destructive enough to make war unthinkable.

The book also predicts the growth of suburbs and mass-produced higher education (the opening scene has Dufrénoy attending a mass graduation of 250,000 students), department stores, and massive hotels. A version of feminism has also arisen in society, with women moving into the workplace and a rise in illegitimate births. It also makes accurate predictions of twentieth century music, predicting the rise of electronic music, and describes a musical instrument similar to a synthesizer, and the replacement of classical music performances with a recorded music industry. In addition, it predicts that the entertainment industry would be dominated by lewd stage plays, often involving nudity and sexually explicit scenes.

With Hetzel’s refusal to publish, Verne locked the manuscript in a vault where it languished for 131 years before being discovered by his great-grandson in 1989. It was first published in 1994.

THAT, my friends, is forward thinking. He was able to describe things not in existence at that time because he stayed abreast of scientific advancement in his own time. Equipped with a knowledge of where science had come from, where it was, and what it was aiming for, Jules Verne extrapolated the future, accurately, a century in the future. Incredible!

As for alien tech, well, the sky’s the limit (no pun intended). We are a long way from the flying saucers of the 1950s. Today alien spacecraft have been described, in Science Fiction, as everything from massive cities in space to living biological creatures, harnessed to transport the aliens anywhere they care to travel. 

Alien space craft can be anything you can conceive, tiny ethereal objects of light with dimensional anomalies that allow them access to the multiverse, with limitless capacity to transport entire populations, or vast armies.

The aliens could even come to us with no spacecraft at all. Imagine a mind so powerful it can place itself anywhere it can comprehend in the blink of an eye. An alien life with no corporal form.

And if such a wraithlike life existed, what could they possibly see in us? What indeed?

I relish such questions and enjoy trying my best to answer them in a manner that my readers will find entertaining, or better yet…riveting.

Follow me then into worlds beyond our own. The next three stories in The Unborn Galaxy series will take us far from our tiny blue orb to worlds of SciFi adventure mixed with Fantasy and Romance.

I’ll not claim to be a Jules Verne, no one can, but I have called upon a power granted me by an other-worldly entity that allows me to tap into vast reservoirs of imagination; that, combined with the ability to spin a yarn, will provide you, dear reader, with an experience I hope will entertain and enlighten.   

Mike Gonzales

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Happy New Year from the author of, "The Battle of Broken Moon."

JILL seen from the lunar surface.

2016 is in the archives. Frankly, I’m happy to see it go. Not that it didn’t have its high points.

My first novel was published in March, Dark Moon Rising. My second novel, The Battle of Broken Moon, was released in December. I can’t start to describe the rush that accompanies seeing your words in print! This, of course, is followed by the deep concern that readers will like what they read.

The series, “The Unborn Galaxy,” is made up of five separate stories, all taking place within the “Unborn Galaxy.” Two are published, the publisher has the third, the fourth was edited this past summer and I just got the fifth back from my editor.

Additionally, in the wings, is a separate story, a medieval adventure filled with mythical creatures, a beauteous young damsel as quick with her sword as she is with her wit. An elder knight who bears a great burden, and a malevolence to vile for even the most hated of mythical monsters. This story I call ― “The Witch of Vindemiatrix.”

Cliona

Another point of celebration; this past December 21^st of 2016 saw the one year anniversary of my wife’s survival after her heart attack. Additionally, her cardiologist has given her a clean bill of health. Nevertheless, she will remain a heart patient for the rest of her life.

 The event took place inside the VA hospital, where my wife took me for an examination. If you’re going to have a heart attack, have it in a hospital.

As a result, my family missed its traditional Christmas celebration in 2015. We made up for it Christmas of 16, however.

I have learned a lot about heart disease in general, and in women specifically. It is often called the silent killer of women, because, unlike in men where a sudden pain in the chest, arm and or leg signals the onset, in women it is far subtler.

And women suffer a disproportional number of heart attacks.

Ladies, if you’ve not been examined I cannot encourage, cajole, or warn you enough. There is no typical target for the disease. Young, old, tall, short, smoker, non-smoker, lite, or heavy.  My dear wife was the picture of health. Where I was taking a bevy of meds supplied by the VA, my wife took none. She had regular checkups, exercised, ate right, she was the archetype of what our doctors want us to be. Yet, on 21 December 2015 she was laid low by a near microscopic tear in the interior lining of a blood vessel on her heart, smaller than a strand of spaghetti.

This past Thanksgiving, and Christmas, we certainly thanked God for his blessings, and have been doing so every day since that dark date.

So, please, see your doctors, have your risk assessed, and your ticker scrutinized.

None can cheat death, but you can increase the distance from him―and it is not difficult at all.

So, as we enter a new year, let me wish you all a happy, prosperous, and healthy New Year. A year that can be made much more adventurous within the pages of Dark Moon Rising, and The Battle of Broken Moon.

Mike Gonzales

Atomic bombing of JILL

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