I usually write short blog entries, just a sentence or two mostly discussing the latest turn of events in an ongoing story. But this one's going to be a lot longer, because we're starting a new story today and I have a good deal to tell you about it.
First off, this is my final entry in the Eden universe. I've written several others, one of which has already been posted here (A Much of a Which of a Wind) and the rest are to be found on Amazon, but they're unrelated. For me, the Eden saga stops here. If somebody else would like to take a whack at going forward, have at it; be fun to read. But I'm done.
I'm opening with a much bigger post than usual-the prologue (which is simply a recital of what's gone before, in Eden and Return to Eden, but please don't just use it to jump into the series; go back and read the other two if you haven't already, you'll lose too much if you don't), and four chapters. Eden Rescue starts a little slow, and I don't want readers to get discouraged from continuing by the initial gradual pace and seeming non sequitors of the first three chapters.
Now, the "science" of chapters 1-4 (this is supposed to be science fiction, remember, meaning fiction based on science): As I've written before, I'm kind of a hard-liner about there being at least some factual basis in presently known science for the fiction I write. Well, the type of nova I postulate here isn't exactly known fact, or even close. But it's certainly consistent with the little that's currently known about novae (plural; please don't say "novas") and with current physical science information we have. But I needed some rational way of establishing human foreknowledge. In his novel The Devil's Eye Jack McDevitt does it differently, but his fictitious FTL (faster than light) travel is different from mine and his plot is more convoluted in that respect (the whole novel deals with the discovery), so I needed a different approach. My hypothesis is at least consistent with such scientific knowledge as we have today, which is as good as it gets.
Finally, I mention the foregoing about science because-unlike the two earlier stories-there's a lot of it in this one. It doesn't overwhelm the story, but it's pretty prevalent. A great deal is like the nova emissions business, strictly speculative and only postulated because it fits into as much knowledge as we've developed thus far. But some of it's real, too-things that we already know to be true. For example, the description of a star's aging process and ultimate consumption as a nova in chapter 2 is accurate according to our present knowledge of nuclear physics. Either way I'll explain to the non-scientific reader (either my speculative explanation or the real one) as we hit each point, as I do in chapters 2 and 4, in as non-boring (and non-technical) fashion as I can. But be prepared for some scientific exposition now and again.
Your votes have been very kind for the first two Eden chronicles. I hope you'll enjoy this one as much.