Author: jmstine

They saved the world—but could they save themselves?

"Chalfy’s tender rendering of characters sets this novel a notch above its peers." —Publishers Weekly

Gaia has become a worldwide religion of love for the Earth, global warming and pollution have been overcome and the greening of the earth has begun. But the challenges of human selfishness continue to confront those who have been guiding Gaia. Jorge Alvarado, The Director and creator of Rejuvenation City, pursues his dreams of immortality and tries to inveigle Harrison, one of Gaia’s longtime leaders, to join him. Jorge’s race of diminutive women, specially bred for star travel, the Jorgenauts, who will literally spread his seed across the galaxy, remain a dangerous ambition. The weight of the long years they have spent building and protecting the Gaian movement begin to tell on Harrison and Helene and the grinding weight of dealing with fanatics opposed to Gaia drags at the bodies and psyches of Lucas and Maeve. A virologist who wants to destroy the world, and pirates attacking the floating cities, complicate the hand-over of power and responsibility to the next generation of Gaians, creating a looming concern. The question of humanity's survival is placed squarely on the table.

"I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the near future, especially anyone who is concerned about humanity's impact on the Earth." —Joe Vadalma, author, The Retslu Chronicles.

“I love the positive outlook, the cooperation and the utopianism of the book. It's got some surprising new plot additions, and it's very creative.” —Tina Tessina, PhD, “Dr. Romance”

Gaia, the revival of an ancient sect that worships the Earth itself, has become the fastest growing religion in history. Already, seeing the planet as a sacred deity has led people high and low to mitigate business and governmental practices that harm the environment. Pollution is abating and steps are being taken to heal Earth’s damaged ecology.

But in the megacities, the women and men who benefit their existence, the rich and the powerful politicians who prosper from their patronage, have become aware of the expanding Gaian religion and are determined to stamp out the movement before its spreads any further. Already, clandestine military forces have been sent to break up Gaian services wherever they can be found, arresting or killing the congregations.

To preserve the planet from further pollution and help reverse the damage that has been done. Lucas, a former government operative, and Maeve, the Gaians’ new High Priestess, spread and foster the worship of the Earth goddess. And they succeed, their ecology-based movement growing and extending its influence throughout the world. But they must do all this while staying one step ahead of the hit squads and fanatics seeking to destroy them—and they both know their luck can’t last forever.

Meanwhile, Lucas’ uncle Harrison and his G partner Helene, in Brazil for a rejuvenation treatment, meet the clinics’ sociopathic billionaire founder, and learn of his plan to build starships and seed humankind among the stars—no matter what the consequences to those who remain behind on Earth. But there is just one catch: He plans to go along as an immortal God and the only seed he plans to spread is his own!

Praise for Gaia, Book 1 of the Gaia Trilogy:

“The lead characters, as well as a number of people they connect with along the way, are well drawn and likable. This is a book about how cooperation, science and ethical motivation are used by a group who not only want to survive, but to thrive in the new conditions, and to create a foundation for future generations to live well for millennia to come. The relationships depicted are warm, loving and sensual, and they involve people of different generations, so there's something for everyone. A philosophy of growth is expressed by several characters, and furthers the plot. There's conflict, but it remains on a human, believable scale. Personally, I'm weary of overdone and over exaggerated plots about war, evil and violence. I like the thoughtfulness and hopefulness of this book. A most enjoyable read.” —Tina Tessina, PhD, “Dr. Romance”

“Interesting SF novel …well written and suspenseful. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the near future, especially anyone who is concerned about humanity's impact on the Earth.” —Joe Vadalma, author, The Retslu Chronicles.

“Espionage, intrigue, narrow escapes; love, both young and mature. What more could you want out of a world, or a book?” —Herman Bartleby, Amazon review

A futuristic novel, a mystery, an adventure, a love story, and a profound ecological meditation.

Mort Chalfy's books are "A nifty mix...tender...a notch above his peers." —Publishers Weekly

“Well written and suspenseful. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the near future, especially anyone who is concerned about humanity's impact on the Earth.” —Joe Valdama, author, The Books of Retslu

“It's sure to please seasoned sci-fi fanatics, utopians who dream of a better world, and those who love the earth and try to save it. But readers who love a good love story (or two, or three) will also get what they crave. If you dip in a toe, you'll soon find it's a page turner that also yields interesting food for thought.” —Elgy Gillespie, journalist, The Irish Times

In the near future, global warming has made much of the Earth a wasteland and driven most people into “cubes”—self-supporting, city-sized megabuildings. There, inhabitants can regain their health and live far longer than they would outside, but that life is strictly regulated, monitored and controlled. A few “wild” bands of humans still live outside, practicing sustainable farming techniques in relative freedom.

Lucas Barnes, an analyst in a government intelligence bureau, is unnerved by the developing governmental support for universal “chipping”, embedding a readable chip in every citizen containing their entire personal, legal and medical history. Lucas decides to flee with a stolen device that renders a chip invisible to chip-readers. Uncle Harrison, a liberal college professor, helps him escape to the home of the Gaia movement.

The Gaians are a community whose sole mission is to foster the survival and sustainability of all life on Earth. But, once there, Lucas is unsure that the Gaians’ solution is a better one. From the outside looking in, the Gaians seem a cult-like group bent on saving the earth by teaching everyone to worship it. They seek to spread the ancient worship of the goddess Gaia, a personification of the Earth itself—and in the process make the planet a holy object, too sacrosanct to harm or exploit. Wary though he may be of the Gaians, however, Lucas falls immediately in love with Maeve, their High Priestess in Training.

When a mysterious group makes the first move against the Gaians, Lucas is maneuvered into supporting them far sooner than he would have liked. Escape is just the beginning of the adventure, which leads Lucas, Maeve and the Gaians across the heartland of the U.S. to an unexpected and moving conclusion.

In Gaia, Mort Chalfy investigates the role of religion in securing cooperation around a shared spiritual ideal. The book also considers where society may be headed, socially and economically, and suggests innovative ideas on urban planning and construction, food production, and what is done with, and by, society’s dissenters. Advance readers have likened the book to a feminist Stranger in a Strange Land.

“Espionage, intrigue, and narrow escapes; and there is love, both young and mature. What more could you want out of a world, or a book? I enjoyed visiting, and I want to live there.” —Herman Bartleby, Amazon review

“The lead characters are well drawn and likable. The relationships depicted are warm and loving. This is a book about how cooperation, science and ethical motivation are used by a group who not only want to survive, but to thrive in the new conditions, and to create a foundation for future generations to live well for millennia to come. A most enjoyable read.” —Tina Tessina, “Dr. Romance”

Morton Chalfy is a writer living in Alameda, CA. He is the author of two prehistory romances, The Antler’s Point and The Cave of Lost Love.

Ships that take us on journeys to other solar systems and people who develop powers and abilities beyond the usual have been inseparable in science fiction since its dawn as a literary genre. The most mind-bending of early space operas, the Lensmen series by the Homer of the spaceways, Edward E. Smith Ph.D., combined ships that galloped up parsecs by the second with extraordinary scenes of transcendence. In this megabundle you will find five early pulp science fiction novels that focus on starship travel or transcending the state of humanity—and in a few cases, both. Here you'll find work by:

Dwight V. Swain (1915 – 1992), one of the most popular of the "new" post-war crop of science fiction writers in the pulps during the early fifties. Fans of the Star Wars movie series will thrill to The Weapon from Eternity, his offering here, which can best be described as a ring-a-ding space opera with style.

Chester S. Geier (1921-1990) was one of the Chicago writers who began writing science fiction for Ray Palmer when he became editor Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures for the Ziff-Davis (located in the Windy City) chain of pulp magazines. At the time of the first publication of Forever is Too Long, then fan Robert Silverberg, now a multi-winning Hugo and Nebula author, hailed it as “a wonderful story” and said, “almost any other immortality story would be inferior.”

Berkeley Livingston (1909-1975) was another of Palmer’s circle of writers who contributed much to the shaping of Amazing and Fantastic during their 1940s heyday. According to Richard Simms, who made a close study of Livingston’s work, he was “a talented and versatile writer” whose work was “action-packed,” “fast-moving,” “colorful” and “thought-provoking.” Dimensions Unlimited displays all those literary virtues, as well as taking place, in part, in the universe of the famed and controversial Shaver Mystery.

Geoff St. Reynard was a pseudonym of historical novelist Robert W. Krepps (1919-1980) famed outside the science fiction world for such bestsellers as The Court of the Lion, Baboon Rock and Tell It on the Drums. As a science fiction novelist, he is best known as the author a number of fine alien invasion tales written in the midst of the Cold War wave of flying saucer sightings. The Deadly Saucers (also published as Don’t Panic) is one of the best of these.

Don Wilcox (1905-2000), according to Fancyclopedia 3, was one of Amazing Stories’ “most prolific and popular contributors.” The young Terry Carr, who would become one of the field’s ablest critics and editors, once wrote to Amazing begging, “Give us more Wilcox, please!” We think that after reading the extraordinarily imaginative Desert of the Damned, written during the World War II era, you, too, will be begging, “Give us more Wilcox, please!”

When people think about science fiction, they are likely to picture far-future spaceships hurtling through the interplanetary void, carrying people from world to world or locked in combat, battling each other with iridescent beams of force. Of course, there are other types of science fiction: cyberpunk, steampunk, utopian, dystopian, stories of robots or clones menacing our claim to individuality, near-future projections of current trends, time travel, alien invasion, alternate universes and history—and so on. But what do many people tend to picture first whenever science fiction is mentioned? Spaceships traversing the stars. Warfare of cosmic proportion.

This subgenre of science fiction called “space opera” has long been its most popular—in novels, television series, movies, anime, etc. If you, too, just can’t get enough good space opera—here are five genuine time-tested novels carefully selected from the birthplace of space opera: the pulps of the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s. Each is filled with the wonders of the far future, with ships so fast they literally rip holes in space, with captains and mechanics, courageous women and daring men, conflict on distant planets and cosmic battles with worlds at stake.

Dwight V. Swain was one of the best and most popular authors of space opera in the pulp magazines of the fifties. Swain’s space opera stories were so well loved that his magazine publisher commissioned him to write twelve full space operas over the next six years. In 1955, when at the height of his powers as a master of the field, Swain described his life as “darn close to ideal. Half the time I teach writing at the University of Oklahoma; the other half I freelance. But every once in a while the yen to whack out fiction grows too strong and I come up with such a yarn as [The Weapon from Eternity.]”

For most of his life Edmond Hamilton and space opera were synonymous. He was one of its founders. It was his emphasis on titanic weapons capable of destroying whole planets—and that made the saving of worlds, solar systems and universe one of the defining characteristics of space opera. From Across Space in 1926 to 1968’s World of the Starwolves, science fiction readers knew who to turn to for poetic, deeply-felt space opera. Edmond Hamilton was the Star King.

Hugo finalist Rog Phillips (the writer Robert Silverberg called “the master”) wrote The Cosmic Junkman in 1953. An amazingly off-trail space opera far ahead of his time, The Cosmic Junkman is hailed by The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction as a “pioneering story” that “creatively explored themes and techniques later used … by Philip K Dick.”

Nine Worlds West, Jack of Planets, and The World Burners are just a few of the space operas that Paul W. Fairman was remembered for in the mid 1950s. But Secret of the Martians, which begins in the office of the Chief of Interplanetary Security and ends in a battle royale in the deserts of the red planet, is likely his best.

Noel Loomis was one of the pioneers of the original paperback novel when paperbacks began their rise in the early 1950s. A prolific author of genre fiction of all types, he is best known in science fiction for the two-book sequence City of Glass and The Iron Men, set on a desolate, deserted, far-future Earth. The Man with Absolute Motion is set in a distant time when the energy level of the universe is declining rapidly, and the protagonist is sent on a mission to find a source of power to reinvigorate reality as he knows it. The book has a 4.5-star rating at Goodreads, where D.C. Farmer rated it as “Amazing. One of the first science fiction books I read and still one of my absolute favorites. There's a very Ian Fleming-like air to this story, as well as enough aliens to shake a stick at. I would thoroughly recommend this as a great yarn.”

We invite you now to join the five voyages recorded here. We don’t think you will regret your trips.

In this special megabundle you will find five novels about denizens of our time, and those of the future, who dream of traveling the spacelanes—and of the warriors who defend them. The success of Star Trek, Star Wars, Babylon 5, Farscape, and Battlestar Galactica proves that people who watch science fiction have a soft spot in their hearts for starship soldiers. The same is true of its readers—just look at Heinlein’s perennial bestseller Starship Troopers, the gigantically successful Miles Vorkosigan saga, and the fact that Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice won all five top awards in the science fiction field. Perhaps the popularity of this genre of science fiction also suggests a deep-rooted fear that there will never be peace in our time—or any time! Who then will fight for us, and how? If there is to be peace, how will it come about or persist?

And yet we still dream of the stars of future frontiers where every human can seek their own destiny and find planets where humans can set down roots without the need to oppress other sentient beings. We even dream of explorers who will dream of the stars in the future and hunger, as so many do today, to leave Earth behind and experience the far wonders of the universe. This book, and the stories in it, are for all science fiction lovers—dreamers who dream of future dreamers.

An essential, entertaining and illuminating must-read for…

*Fans of Star Trek: The Original Series;

*Fans of Fantastic Voyage (the movie);

*Fans of The Man from Earth (movie duology);

*Anyone interested in screenwriting;

*Anyone interested in how movies are produced and made;

*Anyone who appreciates a compelling, thought-provoking, well-crafted story that spans eons, yet takes place in a single evening.

Here is famed Star Trek writer (and creator of the famed "Mirror Universe") Jerome Bixby's original screenplay for his celebrated feature film, The Man from Earth—and not one word has been changed.

Read it for fun or read it for insight into the author's fertile imagination and wide-ranging perspective on humankind.

...Or compare it to the final film version for insight into the kinds of changes the producers felt were needed to fulfill its potential as a motion picture. Will you agree their alterations improved it, or will you scratch you head in wonder at their decisions?

With a Foreword by Bixby's son, Emerson, himself a successful screenwriter, detailing the development of the script from the initial concept to the final writing of the screenplay (with the last pages being dictated as his father lay dying), through multiple attempts to sell the film, the many lucrative offers turned down from companies determined to make major alterations of message and meaning—to the final selection of Richard Schenkman and Falling Sky Entertainment, who shared Jerome Bixby's original vision of The Man from Earth.

And with an Introduction by producer Richard Schenkman about why he wanted to make the film and many incidents involved in its casting, production and critical reception that led to its sequel The Man from Earth: Holocene.

Whether you are a fan of Bixby's writing, or a film buff, or a budding filmmaker, you will want to read this one-of-a-kind book.

As a bonus, this special ebook edition features a gallery of production stills and posters for the movie.

The dazzling must-read classic SF novel!

An ancient god. A new technology. The future will never be the same. New technologies resurrect an ancient Aztec wizard/warrior god who hijacks the body of the one who resurrected him, running wild through a futuristic Hollywood, adapting the brave new world and getting back to his old business of creating chaos and taking control.

“...The subset of works that make up what Rudy García calls ‘Latino SpecFic’ are also worthy of greater notice. I would argue that the tools it affords an author are uniquely apt for exploring the human condition.
“Hogan’s style is both deftly self-assured and gleefully madcap, harkening to the very best of Philip K. Dick, Harlan Ellison and Samuel R. Delany. ...Steamy, explicit scenes are juxtaposed with philosophical conversations and political machinations, but the narrative flows smoothly, drawing a reader deep into this imagined world.
“And what a world! ...The shamanistic cyberpunk vibe of El Lay (Los Angeles) during this ‘trimili era’ is unique while feeling familiar, as if Guillermo del Toro had collaborated with Terry Gilliam to craft a fictional universe.”
—David Bowles, The Monitor

“A delirious mosaic of sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll, post-cyberpunk savvy, linguistic fun and Aztec myth. Exemplary—and exuberantly fun.”
—Claude Lalumiere, January Magazine

“If you're looking for something new and different, or just want to read something wacky with a little edge to it, then Smoking Mirror Blues is a book you should be reading right now.”
—James M. Palmer, New York Journal of Books

“the apocalypse is going to take the form of an Aztec trickster god invading cyberspace. You ready?”
—Amazon 5-star review

HIGH AZTECH, the underground cult classic, is back and ready to blow your mind wide open.

“A high-energy adventure peppered with great ideas, well-imagined unusual settings, outlandish characters, and a wicked sense of fun.” —Locus

In mid 21st century Mexico, Tenochtitlán, the metropolis formerly known as Mexico City, is the most exciting place on Earth. Stainless steel pyramids pierce the smoggy sky. Human sacrifice is coming back into fashion, especially on the new Aztechan TV channels, and everyone wants an artificial heart. Xolotl Zapata, celebrated poet, skeptic and trmrhsfr journalistr, starts receiving death threats from a cult he's lampooned in a comic book. But soon he will have much worse problems and be running for his life. The government, the Mafia, street gangs, cults, terrorists, even garbage collectors will be after him. Why? He has been infected with a technological development that will changing human life as we know it Zapata is carrying a virus that can download religious beliefs into the human brain—a highly contagious virus that is converting everyone he meets, and everyone they meet, to the Aztec religion. This is Witnessing with a PUNCH! Since he's a virulent carrier he infects a large part of the city all by himself, and the masses, filled with visions and portents, await the End of the World.

“The plot twists and turns, bouncing between the horrors of a police state with high-tech weaponry and eavesdropping equipment and the feverish hallucinations that the protagonist endures as he is captured first by one enemy then another. Those who enjoy science fiction will probably find pleasure in this book. I found the book entertaining and clever in the complexities of its plot. … an example of what might be called Latin American sci-fi magico-realism.” —Nahua Newsletter

“Cyberpunk is the combining of science fiction and technology with a future society on the brink of self-destruction. Ernest Hogan takes the concept a step further, blending in his love of the Aztec’s ancient beliefs and civilization to produce very unique and gripping stories. When it comes to science fiction of a different breed, Hogan is definitely sitting in the front row. One reviewer aptly referred to Hogan as a ‘mad Mexican Hunter S. Thompson.’” —wickedlocal.com

“Chicano writer Ernest Hogan bridges the gap between hard science fiction and cyberpunk … interweaving Pre-Colombian mythology and Spanish, Spanglish, and Nahuatl language into a humorously dystopian sci-fi context … exploring the intersection of religion, technology, pop culture … with a distinctly Latino twist.” —The Routledge Companion to Latino/a Literature

“…a delirious mosaic of sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll, post-cyberpunk savvy, linguistic fun and Aztec myth.” —January Magazine

The saga of The Six Magicians reaches its stunning conclusion!

Fardio, the Timbrul Circus Ringmaster, has decided that with Jeri in the show, playing Big Rock might be profitable. The circus heads south—just ahead of Kite and Ciara, who have been following what they hoped was a lead on finding Jeri.

Meg and Tal, traveling with The Silent One, happen to approach Big Rock from the other direction. Taritha, their aunt, has also been following the road to Big Rock, searching for the children and praying that she finds them before they get themselves killed—or before she runs into their mother.

Saritha and Reagin, along with Talisman and Red, have been following a killer’s trail through wilderness, falling farther and farther behind.

Meanwhile, Callie has been using her scrying skills to follow The Silent One. She had prepared a second map for him that she hoped would lead him to the treasure.

Droud, with an ancient weapon guaranteed to kill, waits in Big Rock for Callie to do his work for him and bring the treasure out—so he can take it from her fresh corpse.

The Silent One and the children, along with Jeri and Wolfie, descend into the warren that was inside the actual big rock that towered over its eponymous town.

The six magicians have waiting in their self imposed hell for release. Free at Last! The world would suffer.