FREE eBooks: Rosemary's Quest on 19th, The Lady is Blue on 20th

Rosemary's Quest - free on Friday

Coming-of-age novella: Untrained witch child Rosemary flees bullies, seeks forgotten White Wizard to destroy evil shadow king. 
 

 

 

 

 

The Lady is Blue - Free on Saturday

Scaly aliens with a mating season. What happens when their ship lands on a colony of unsuspecting humans? Secretive aliens frustrate curious scientists. Conflict erupts. What game is the hero playing? Can the heroine unravel the puzzle and engineer a peaceful solution?

 

Fred Hoyle: eminent scientist and author of science fiction

Why he is interesting

Sir Fred Hoyle (1915-2001) is best known as an astronomer. His science fiction plays and novels are less familiar today. I am fond of Fred Hoyle since I am a scientist and an author of science fiction. Also, I met him once when he lectured at the Cambridge University Astronomical Society.

Science

Sir Fred was a cantankerous Yorkshire man, who became a maverick outsider in the scientific community. His ideas were great, but he refused to accept evidence to the contrary.
He was an opponent of the big bang theory for the origin of the universe and advocated the alternative steady state theory.

Perhaps his greatest scientific achievement was his explanation that the elements necessary for life on earth, such as carbon, arose from nuclear fusion in the stars. He was omitted from the Nobel prize awarded for this discovery, which went instead to his colleague William Fowler, who confirmed Hoyle's idea. Fowler gave Hoyle credit:
“The concept of nucleosynthesis in stars was first established by Hoyle in 1946. This provided a way to explain the existence of elements heavier than helium in the universe, basically by showing that critical elements such as carbon could be generated in stars and then incorporated in other stars and planets when that star "dies".”

Later, Fred Hoyle promoted, with Changra Wickramasinghe, the concept that life on earth began in space and spread through panspermia. They imagined viruses riding on comets.  

Fiction

Fred Hoyle wrote science fiction, often with his son, Geoffrey Hoyle. He has diverse and interesting ideas, and although the protagonist is a man, the works include strong female scientists. Some of the endings are not happy (in more than one sense). Here are my comments on some of his works (published 1957-1982): 

The Black Cloud depicts a super-intelligent cloud of interstellar gas and the problem of communicating with it.

A for Andromeda (with co-author John Elliot) was a BBC radio show, a novel, and a film. A message from the Andromeda galaxy has instructions for a computer, which gives instructions for creation of living organisms, ultimately a woman. Andromeda Breakthrough is the sequel.

Rockets in Ursa Major began as a play and is a fun read. Today it would fit into Space Opera with two sets of alien spaceships. I enjoy the opening sequence with a message found on a lost spaceship:
"If this ship returns to Earth, then mankind is in deadly peril-God help you." 
 Into Deepest Space is the darker sequel. 

Ossian's Ride is more of an adventure with SF components. Mysterious new technologies come from the barricaded Industrial Corporation of Eire.  

Lines for SFFSat from A Tale of Two Colonies

Time for another 15 lines for Science Fiction & Fantasy Saturday

Fight for freedom! Fight to survive! The colony ship left Terra 500 years ago. What happened to it? Lily escapes the squalid confines of Terra to search for the lost colony. 

from A Tale of Two Colonies (Released in August)

As she approached, the ugly head of a creature reared out of the water. Its vicious, scythe like jaws were clamped around Jim’s leg. It had a segmented body, longer than a man, with many legs thrashing in the water. Lily had no time to be afraid. She gritted her teeth and fired her laser, with little effect on the armored body. She jumped into the water, trying to jab her stick between the creature’s jaws and pry them apart.

John came running from the houses, carrying a heavy duty slicer. He used the powerful laser beam to sever the creature’s head from its body. They grabbed Jim and hauled him to the bank, while the creature’s body continued to whip around, splashing in the deeper water. Its jaws were fastened tightly onto Jim’s leg. In the end, John had to cut away the creature’s jaws in order to release Jim’s torn leg.

“We must carry better weapons from now on,” John said. “We can’t underestimate the unknown dangers of this planet.”

Lily nodded in agreement. Looking back at the river, she saw a large winged creature swoop onto the thrashing body of the dead animal. 

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