SFR Book Reviews by Jessica E. Subject

I recently had the chance to read two fabulous SFR books, both of which I bought myself. The first is Alien Tango by fellow SFR Brigade member Gini Koch. The other, Across the Universe is a YA SFR by Beth Revis.

Alien Tango by Gini Koch

From the back cover:

For Alien Super-Being Exterminator Katherine "Kitty" Katt, anti-alien conspiracies, threats from outer space, and a couple of killer alligators are all in a day's work. But internal alien schemes and some major "relationship" complications are about to bring a new meaning to the phrase "chaos and confusion."

It's been five months since Kitty joined Centaurion Division, working with the aliens from Alpha Centauri. She and Jeff Martini have grown closer as a couple and life looks rosy. But when an experimental spacecraft is unexpectedly returned to the Kennedy Space Center, Kitty and the rest of Alpha Team are called on to investigate and are immediately embroiled in life-or-death situations that scream "political conspiracy."

The team must survive murderous attacks, deal with a mysterious space entity that has seized control of a group of astronauts, and evade a woman who'll do anything to eliminate the competition when she develops an obsessive crush on Kitty's old high school boyfriend. And that's all before the evil masterminds decide Kitty's extermination is vital...

For my review and more information about the book, click here.

Across the Universe by Beth Revis

A love out of time. A spaceship built of secrets and murder.

Seventeen-year-old Amy joins her parents as frozen cargo aboard the vast spaceship Godspeed and expects to awake on a new planet, three hundred years in the future. Never could she have known that her frozen slumber would come to an end fifty years too soon and that she would be thrust into a brave new world of a spaceship that lives by its own rules.

Amy quickly realizes that her awakening was no mere computer malfunction. Someone—one of the few thousand inhabitants of the spaceship—tried to kill her. And if Amy doesn’t do something soon, her parents will be next.

Now, Amy must race to unlock Godspeed’s hidden secrets. But out of her list of murder suspects, there’s only one who matters: Elder, the future leader of the ship and the love she could never have seen coming.

For my review and more information about the book, click here.

Author Interview: Marva Dasef

Heehee! I get to twirl my Hercule mustache and start the interrogation of the wonderful author Marva Dasef. In particular, I'm going to being asking her about her SFR release, ULTIMATE DUTY.

So, my friends, let's work our little grey cells. Shall we?



****


ULTIMATE DUTY
Marva Dasef
Eternal Press PDF
Amazon Kindle
Amazon Print
Book Trailer


Thank you for joining us today. Why don't you tell everyone a bit about your book?

ULTIMATE DUTY is space opera with a bit of romance. From the cover:

Remy Belieux, a woman born into a life of servitude on a repressive factory planet, is desperate for a different life. When she's accepted into the Space Service Academy, run by the organization that enslaves her planet, she discovers the truth behind generations of rebellion. Now, she must decide what to believe, where her ultimate duty lies, and fight for more than her life against impossible odds.

Where did the concept for the book come about?
I wrote a short story titled "Pressure Drill" years ago. I got a good response from my critique group, but back then, submitting was entirely by snail mail. I didn't pursue publication. When I retired from real work, I hauled out the story, along with a few others and gave them a fresh look and rewrite. That first story, plus one more with the same main character were published. From that I expanded the story and it eventually became a novel.



How long did it take you to finish, from concept to final product?
Only thirty years in the making, but I was busy doing other things most of those years.

Are there any authors that have influenced your own writing?
Mark Twain, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov. Plain, simple stories well told.

For the full interview and to read an excerpt, click over to Adventures of a Sci-Fi Writer.

Submission Alert: Decadent Publishing Seeks SFR

Many thanks to Brigader Jessica Subject for a head's up that Decadent Publishing is looking for Sci-Fi with strong romantic elements.

A quick check of their Daily Dose of Decadent blog revealed a Submissions post addressing the question of what they are looking for, included the following: 

"I REALLY want some Sci-fiRom. Give it to me at any length." 

Also:

"End-of-the-world novellas"

and

"I would invite authors with back list titles they own to submit and see them published once more with a company committed to promoting."

There's your knock of opportunity, Brigaders.  Polish up those manuscripts and fire away.  Decadent's submission guidelines can be found here.

Cyborg Future

The February 2011 issue of Scientific American has an article in it called Mind Out of Body by neuroscientist Miguel A.L. Nicolelis. The article is an excerpt from his new book "Beyond Boundaries: The New Neuroscience of Connecting Brains with Machines - and How It Will Change Our Lives" (link to the book's Amazon page is below).

Nicolelis paints a picture of a future wherein the disabled use robotic exoskeletons which are wired directly to their brains. Via thought (the specific patterns of neurons firing), the patient will control the exoskeleton. He even envisions the end of internet based social networks with the advent of what he calls neurosocial networking - communicating brain to brain - either with a coworker in the next cubicle or to hundreds of 'followers' in a new medium he calls the 'brain net'.

Nicolelis is at the forefront of neuroprosthetic research - looking for the ways and means to handle both input and output links from the brain to a machine (like a robotic leg) and back again. He describes a day when someone with a spinal injury or a debilitating neurological disease will select a robotic suit to wear, plug in the control leads, and walk out the front door.

The article intrigued me because it sounds like cyborgs may be closer to possible than any of us had dreamed. While the Scientific American article isn't available online, Miguel Nicolelis's book is available in print or in e-format. The excerpt of the book was very readable and nontechnical (you need not be a neuroscientist to understand the concepts). The author seems very adapt at communicating very specialized science to nonscientists if you're interested in having a look at the progress Nicolelis's labs have already made in marrying mind to machine.

Image source: http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=1205
Book: http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Boundaries-Neuroscience-Connecting-Machines/dp/0805090525/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1296360912&sr=8-1