Speculative Fiction Review

Speculative Science Fiction

Speculative: "Engaged in, expressing, or based on conjecture rather than factual knowledge."

Science Fiction: "Fiction based on imagined future scientific or technological advances and major social or environmental changes, frequently portraying space or time travel and life on other planets."

Book Covers: "Click on book covers below to find the Book on Amazon."

End of the World (Peter Dingus 2024) comes as an Audiobook as well as a Kindle. The Earth has been obliterated, and humanity's last hope lies on Mars. How will the survivors cope with the isolation, devastation, and haunting discoveries that could change the future of mankind? The survivors’grim reality on Mars takes a sudden turn when Liam uncovers an ancient alien artifact buried in the Martian soil. This discovery throws open existential questions about humanity’s origins and place in the universe. As the survivors struggle to come to terms with their fate, the mystery of the artifact leads them deeper into a journey that could either save humanity or seal its extinction.

Proteus Rising (Peter Dingus 2006/2011). In the year 2331 AD, on a vast Martian colony in the Valles Marineris canyon of equatorial Mars, an experiment set in motion fifteen years earlier could make humanity obsolete. George Mills, an Earth expat and scientist, immigrates to Mars and partners with a Martian biologist, Joanne Zhu, to create a new race of humans. People who immigrate to Mars need genetic therapy in order to survive in the low gravity, high radiation environment. In a secret project code named The Proteus File, George and Joanne secretly insert a synthetic genetic code into a group of children in hopes of improving the human species. Now, at the onset of puberty, the Proteus children are exhibiting unforeseen traits that are raising alarms with the authorities and threatening to expose both the Proteus File and the unprecedented powers of Will, the quantum computer architect of the revised human genome.

“What if I told you I’d found a genetic cure for original sin” — George Mills, Ursa University, Mars 2321 AD."

"The boy continued to stare with eyes a color Dale found unsettling. They had odd golden flecks that seemed to scintillate when the boy turned his head. Then the boy looked directly at him and the eyes seemed to go dark, as if the corneas were polarized. The doctor nodded and the boy moved to the edge of the sofa, cocked his head slightly, and reached for the plastic pieces on the table with slender brown fingers. As Dale looked on, the boy assembled the three-dimensional object, a sardonic smile slowly creeping across his face. He didn't even try the pieces in various orientations, something Dale imagined himself doing. Ben simply put each piece in its appropriate place, as though he'd had a diagram on the table next to him. When he had finished, the boy slipped his hands over the object, almost in a caress, then sat back on the sofa. Dale regarded the pyramid standing in the middle of the table with a sense of unreality. It was four levels high, with each stratum delineated by a row of large beads that seemed to shine in the diffuse light of the room. Each layer of the pyramid had one less bead than the preceding one, with a single red bead adorning its pinnacle. The solution of the puzzle had all happened so quickly and easily that it seemed almost anticlimactic."

Worlds in Transition (Peter Dingus 2017) is an anthology, two novellas and two short stories. Worlds in Transition is currently on the Short-List for the Chanticleer Short Story Awards for 2024. Interestingly, the second novella, One way Ticket, is the continuation of Proteus Rising a thousand years in the future. In that story, we see the bifurcation of the human species as a result of the birth of the Proteus people a thousand years in the past. The story imagines humanity as humanity might see itself, rather than as Darwinian evolution has made it.

“There once was a woman named Bright Who traveled much faster than light: She set out one day In a relative way, And returned on the previous night.” — Anonymous

The other novella is The End of the World. In the End of the World, two survivors, on an isolated Mars base, investigate a strange dead region on the shores of an ancient Martian sea after an apocalyptic war on Earth. What they find there is that everything they thought was real, really wasn’t.

“Prediction is hard, especially about the future."

In the short story Parallax, two people discover strange messages in the detector of a scientific experiment in a mine a mile under the mountains of Montana. This story is a deep dive into quantum reality as presented by the Many Worlds interpretation of the measurement paradox.

Deep Time (Peter Dingus 2024) has won the Storytrade Award for Best Science Fiction of 2024; it is currently a finalist for the International Cygnus Award for Best Science Fiction of 2024.

In the year 2240 AD, the human race has migrated to the far reaches of the solar system, but that hasn’t ended conflicts among the many human outposts separated by vast stretches of space. Earth, devastated by climate change, has become a corporate state where governments are a mere proxy for corporate interests. The Saturn Commonwealth, a billion miles from the corporate centers of power, is the only remaining free human society in the solar system. Serena Roe, once an indentured corporate super-soldier, now a disgraced corporate contract laborer, finds herself encased in a block of methane ice two kilometers below the surface of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. She becomes the victim of sabotage on Commonwealth territory by unknown forces. A dark figure hovering above her destroys her communications system and leaves her to die. So starts Serena’s journey to try and discover who’s trying to kill her, which leads to the discovery of a god-like power from deep-time, and the murderous plans of Adonus, a high corporate officer.

What follows is a lethal chess match between a lone, highly advanced Commonwealth cruiser, the Vindicator, which is equipped with sentient intelligence, and Adonus’s on-site forces, supported by a powerful corporate fleet carrying anti-matter weapons. Adonus is determined to use the super technology of the alien artifact to destroy the nascent but powerful Commonwealth. Adonus discovers they cannot move the artifact off Titan, which ignites an all-out war on Titan, in Saturn space, and aboard the corporate assault ship, Athena. While all this is happening, Serena is having disturbing dreams, which compel her to sneak back to the site of the accident that trapped her in the ice. She uses a route under a methane sea adjacent to the site in an attempt to discover the secret of Adonus’s discovery and the key to the survival of the Commonwealth.

At some point in time, technology reaches a scale that comes into direct conflict with the survival of a species. And, to add another dimension to the conflict, what if a god-like alien influence appears at that crucial moment in human history. Through this confluence, Deep Time offers a new spin on alien contact.

For readers who've enjoyed Michael Crichton novels and more recently Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary, and James SA Corey's The Expanse novels, give my books a try. You can click on the book covers above to go to Amazon where you can read first chapters. You can find reviews and an audio version of a couple of chapters in the menu items above.