Alan Scarlett and the Scarlett Virus

I have always been a fan of “hard science, science-fiction.” Not the modern Science-Fantasy where you say, “make it so” and it magically happens whether it’s crossing the universe in a few hours or travel easily through time or find a race of space dragons that speak English. That stuff isn’t science fiction to me. It’s fun to read, but to me it’s fantasy.

I love the old school science-fiction where the science is first and foremost. My characters will probably never get past Saturn. They’ll never break the speed of light, they’ll run out of fuel, and they’ll squabble amongst themselves over the best food substitute at the chow hall. My ships don’t have artificial gravity, they don’t fly faster than light, my ships travel in straight lines and turning is a pain in the ass. There’s no swooping and curving trajectories. The only exception is the asteroid belt, that’s my playground. Anything can happen there.

I’m trying to bring the heady days of great science fiction back, the days of Asimov, Bradbury, Clark, Dick, Heinlein. I try to avoid words they wouldn’t have used in 1950, words like nuclear, computer, astronaut, cosmonaut, laptop. I name many of my characters after real astronauts that have flown in the past 50 years. Many ships and space stations are named after astronauts of note: Armstrong, Glenn, Shepherd. My bad guys are named after actual bad guys, and their history (your future) got pretty ugly in 2080.

Join me in a universe of brave men and women who man the ships of the Western Alliance Navy, and keep back the ships of the Eastern Bloc. A universe of space colonies on Mars, Luna, and Venus, vast stations hanging in space where their rotation provides gravity, where pirates prowl the solar system looking for a fat cruiser to pillage, and the spacemen who fly the small fighters and the bombers to keep the pirates at bay.

Each entry in the Captain Scarlett series is a standalone story. They can be read in any order. There’s no set length for these books. When the story ends, I stop writing and start the next story. I hope you enjoy and as always, your feedback is appreciated.