Neil A. Hogan Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer
Space Fiction Writer Author Editor
By
When an ethereal voice begins calling Karol from her bed, she has to investigate. She quickly finds herself in a hidden underground cavern being shown images of the past by a ghost.
What is really going on?
Why does the apparition need her to see this?
And what is she going to do when she finds out the real truth?
Find out more in Layers. #31 in the Science Fiction Weekly Short Reads Series.
Available for Kindle from Amazon
By
Well, it’s been a busy few months. Quite a lot of writing and reading is involved in the creative writing degree I began this year, and that means not much time to work on anything else.
Having said that, I will get a break from the course between November and February, so I’ve set that time aside to begin work on Alien Dimensions #19 and The Robots of Atlantis.
Though, one of the things that I really want to do with Alien Dimensions is make sure that writers who contribute get something back. This is currently US$10 for a story for the rights for 2 years. It may not seem like much, but on a writer’s income, it’s no longer possible for me to pay that in advance and hope that I get it back through sales of the book.
So, instead, I’m trying something new. I’d like to raise some funds for the next issue of Alien Dimensions, so I’ve put many of my science fiction and fantasy stories into one volume called Hoganthology (the title is a homage to Piers Anthony’s ‘Anthonology’) There are over 47 pieces in Hoganthology. If printed, it would run to about 800 pages in a 5″x8″ book, but it is currently listed on Amazon as having about 600 in ebook form (depending on your device.)
In Hoganthology you’ll find the following:
Section 1 – Short Stories
A Little Matter
The Opposition
Gravity Locked
Still in Beta
Ancient Alien Dinosaurs
Japanese Martian Robot Souls
Oh My God It’s Full of Stars
Alien UFO Disclosure
Pyramids of the Moon
The Hydrofluorons of Krakon 7
Phases of the Moon Base
Interrelations
Surviving Mars
First Interdimensional Contact
Time Sheets
Mate
Robot Solitude
ExtraForestrial
Work After Death
Neko Girl
The Galaxy’s Driving Force
The Old Boys’ Club
Cosmic Joke
The Manipulator
Strange Lands
Layers
Life Choices
Moon Mine
The Secret of Bimini
Tutor Who: Heaven Cent
Section 2 – Flash Fiction
Child Safe
Evolution
Inter-View
Pocket Monsters
The Language Tutor
Controller
Gene-Reality
Rejuvenation
The Exchange
The Ugly Side of A.I.
Section 3 – Children’s Fiction
Alien Alexander – Alien Characters #55
Alien Hannah – Alien Characters #57
Alien Christopher – Alien Characters #60
Alien Alexis – Alien Characters #61
Alien Joseph – Alien Characters #62
Alien Daniel – Alien Characters #64
Alien Saya – Alien Characters #80
Section 4 – Space Opera Poetry
We’ve Been Wordsworthed, We’ve Been Poeed, and We’ve Been Quite Possibly Frosted
An Ode to Space Opera
Bonus Section – Excerpts
Alien Frequency – Chapter 3
The Andromeda Effect – Chapter 61
Temporal Incursion – Chapter 5
Tyrannosaurus Rex and the Cretaceous City – Dinory 1
Ida and the Planet Invasion – 2: Arrival
Gabriel and the Resurrection of Maldek – 3: 10:00am
Tiara and the Comet Apocalypse – Channel One
Bonus Section – The Future
The Robots of Atlantis (Preview) – Wednesday 22nd October 2053
Stellar Flash 2135 A.D.
-Plot Synopsis
-Notes on Location
-Character Biographies
-Extract 1
-Extract 2
-Some lines I’m working on
And more!
So, if you can spare some dollars, or you’re on Kindle Unlimited, it would be great if you could check it out. Find out more here: Hoganthology: Digital
The hope is that sales and page views can raise about US$200 to get started on Alien Dimensions #19. If you know of anyone who might be interested in this ebook, feel free to forward the link or this blog post to them.
Many thanks
Update. Working on the printed version now. 824 pages for US$32.95! Coming Soon!
By
Available in Digital and in Print Formats from Amazon
Temporal Incursion. Stellar Flash Book Three. Prologue. By Neil A. Hogan
2129/02/15/01:43 Tuesday
A bright object cut across a section of the Kuiper belt, broke apart a tumbling two-piece proto-comet, then shot out of the Solar System at high speed. Explorer satellites in the area reported it as traveling close to the speed of light.
*
An explosion rocked the little island of South Bimini, flattening palm trees, shorting out power cables, and collapsing buildings. A group of factories dissolved into a crater, then sank under a tsunami. A tiny object exploded from the center of the carnage, climbed quickly into orbit, then blasted past the moon. Luna satellites recorded a white streak but were unable to determine origin or destination.
*
Drone 478 detected the intruder as it sped past Saturn and immediately activated its staccato flash drive, materializing further along the tiny object’s estimated path. The drone recorded it as it passed, predicted its trajectory, then repeated this several times before the object entered the Oort cloud. 478 quickly flashed back to Monitoring Station Z and delivered its composite video.
*
The images faded to black, and the lights came back up to reveal a small, oval room, with a tiny porthole looking out onto a section of Saturn’s rings.
“Interesting, don’t you think?” Doctor John Patel scratched his short, graying moustache, and glanced across the leafy table at his colleague, Admiral Rasskator, an attractive, green, mantis-like being from the planet Preyos.
Rasskator remained silent, a slight movement of one antennae the only sign she had heard him.
“We’ve since been able to confirm the objects are heading to Proxima Centauri B,” Patel continued. “They’re mostly moving at light speed but pause whenever they encounter something. Best estimates suggest they’ll arrive in just over four and a half years’ time.”
Rasskator chirped quietly, and her translator Englished. “They will be in the F.R.I.’s jurisdiction, then. Why see me about these?”
Patel smiled thinly. “Admiral, you plan to retire in four years’ time. If these objects are likely to cause a problem around then, I’d like there to be a faster transition between you and the new person here, so that we have time to prepare for anything that might eventuate.”
“Always planning ahead, John. Don’t you ever get tired? Live for the now!”
“Not a detailed plan, just a, well…”
“You’d like a recommendation for my replacement in 2133?”
Patel nodded.
Rasskator, rubbed her claw across one of her long green antennae, twisted her bulbous eyes a few times, then chirped. “Well, firstly I recommend building a new and more powerful Space Station. I doubt this throwback is going to last much longer. Certainly, if there are going to be more of these particles passing through, we need to have some kind of research center nearby.”
Patel sighed, looking about at the tiny space, knowing the monitoring station was barely 500 meters across. “It’s in hand. The project will commence at the end of 2132. We’ve received enough complaints from, ahem, your station, to bring things forward.”
“Acceptable. I do recommend Captain Victoria Heartness. She will have been working as a captain for ten years by then. An ideal time to be considered for promotion, and as my replacement.”
Patel leant back in his chair and steepled his fingers. “Interesting choice. We’ll see how she goes, and maybe I’ll put in a good word. Anything else I should know?”
Rasskator pointed a claw at the time stamp at the bottom of the last video. “You might have missed something with the last recording. Hard to see tiny Earth numbers in a hologram.” Her proboscis twisted back and forth in amusement, knowing Patel knew Preyosians had much better eyesight than humans. “Let me play the images forward for you again. Watch the clock.”
The composite drone footage played again, and Patel’s eyebrows raised as he realized what he was seeing. “The image is forward but the time stamp is running backward? How did I not notice that?”
“You have billions of projects on your mind. Impossible for you to notice everything. That’s why you are always happy to get a second opinion. In any case, whatever that object is, it is surrounded by a reverse time field. If that hits a populated area, there are going to be many beings in a lot of trouble. You saw what happened to that island in your Bermuda area. You were lucky it wasn’t a lot worse.”
“Well, let’s hope it
passes safely through the Proxibee system and keeps going,” said Patel.
“Otherwise, it won’t just affect one world, it’ll wipe out the entire
flash ship project.”
It is the year 2133, just one hundred years after Alien Shift. Humanity can now perceive the trillions of alien races that live in the galaxy, having finally increased their frequency speed to Zero. Now a member of the Interdimensional Coalition, humanity works with alien races from all over the universe on Flash ships, exploring realities on higher level frequencies, and instigating First Contact with new alien races. The Stellar Flash Frequency Ship is the newest addition to the universal mission.
By
When Raj Kumar investigates Pluto for possible life signs – standard procedure before adding a manned space station – he is surprised to find them. He’s even more surprised that they want to communicate with him.
What do they want?
Why him?
And what does Doctor John Patel of Space Station X-1a have to do with all this?
Find out more in Splinter. #26 in the Science Fiction Short Reads Series, and a prequel to the introduction of a character at the end of the Stellar Flash novel The Andromeda Effect. Splinter is a short story of about 4600 words.
By
“Ji. This does not look like a bio lab.”
Ji swept his arms wide to encompass the microscope that filled the room. “Maggie, you’ve got to admit, it’s pretty impressive. Imagine what you could do with this.”
Maggie shrugged. “To see genes, I need something a bit smaller. That monstrosity will just give me atoms.”
Ji pointed at a bank of screens in front of the tube-shaped structure. “It’s not an electron microscope. Something much better. We can actually see superstrings with it!”
She looked about, not quite hearing him. “You don’t even have any centrifuges in here.” She put her hands on her hips and turned to him. “What’s going on? I thought you needed my help splicing genes!”
Ji grinned. “The genes of the universe, Maggie. I want you to splice the very substance of reality!”
Maggie gaped. “I’m a molecular biologist, not a physicist. I’m not so sure about playing with reality.” She walked around the machine. A large spherical ball was where a slide might be on a normal microscope, with a LED panel on the outside. “Faraday cage?”
“Something similar. Paradoxically holding two isolated superstrings in a vacuum.” Ji pointed at one of the screens in front of it. “The first one has an interesting vibration at this range. Multiple colours cascading from top to bottom. It looks almost like a chromosome. I guess our bodies express the fundamental shapes of the universe.”
“Fibonacci spirals, golden ratios in everything. Sounds legit.” Then she looked shrewdly at him, still not willing to get closer. “There’s nothing in the journals about this research. Is this military?”
Ji shrugged. “No idea. Contracted out to us. I don’t deal with the funding. I just get paid. My latest project is to find someone who can join them together.”
“Wait. What?”
He pointed at the screen again and she came over to have a closer look. The screen was divided into two. On the left side flickered the superstring, with four legs splayed out like a deformed insect. The right side of the screen was black. “Strings are influenced by our thoughts and observations,” said Ji. “You only need to direct your thoughts at it to influence it. My problem is I can’t influence it enough to connect with the other one. Maybe you could try…”
“Ji. You do know what gene splicing is, yes? It’s all biological. We use enzymes to snip out pieces of DNA inside genes, then mix the broken DNA with snipped DNA from other genes, then put the useful recombinant DNA into bacteria that will replicate it. There are other processes involved, but it’s completely unlike the fundamental building blocks of the universe. For a start, I’m pretty sure superstrings don’t have DNA.”
“Well, at this level, superstrings are everything. They are DNA and genes and chromosomes, if you like. Just take a bit from that superstring and add it to this one, and the energy field will replicate it. Think of it like your gene-splicing experiments but with everything purely energy. The universe will take care of the rest on the other dimensions.”
Maggie pointed at the dark side of the screen. “Well, I need to see the other one to know if this is possible.”
“I’m afraid our equipment is not compatible.”
Maggie stared at Ji for a moment, uncomprehending. “Is it faulty?”
Ji grinned. “This is the exciting part. The other string is not from our reality. It was taken from a wormhole we opened inside a micro-black hole in the Collider.”
“But, if it is not compatible with the instruments, then it can’t be compatible with our universe. What the hell have they asked you to do?”
“Look. If we splice it with a piece of our universe, we’d be able to find out what it’s like! What it can do!”
Maggie looked incredulously at him. “No. I flat out refuse. I don’t care if your project loses funding. I’m not merging the underlying foundations of two universes just for your research.”
“Come on. A simple thought, and it’s done. If you won’t do it, there are plenty of other gene doctors out there that could. Why not be the first?”
“No.” Maggie folded her arms.
Ji looked sadly down at the floor. “Well, look. Alright. I understand. But, just for me. How would you do it, if you wanted to? Like, what would your procedure be? Obviously, I can’t do it myself.”
Maggie sighed. “I don’t know the shape of the other one to know how for sure, but I’d imagine moving one on top of the other, and then allowing the vibration of ours to influence the vibration of the other one. As they synchronized I’d be able to see what the other one looked like, then work out how I could join them together. If the other universe’s superstrings had eight extensions, for example, I could take one and add it to this one and see what happens. I mean, it’s really…what is it?”
Ji was staring at the screen as the right side began flickering. “It worked. You’re a genius.”
Maggie’s hand flew to her mouth. “No, no, no. You tricked me!”
Ji was ignoring her. “Look, look. The other string has six legs. And it’s slightly larger. Wait, what’s it doing?”
Maggie pushed him away and looked at the strings. One was on top of the other and seemed to be vibrating faster. “Oh no!” She quickly reached for her mobile phone.
“What? What are you doing?”
“Calling my mum to say goodbye.”
“What? Why?” Ji’s face paled as he realized she was serious.
“They’re not merging. They’re mating,” cried Maggie.
But it was far too late.
There was a momentary flash as the combined strings quickly replicated, and a new universe exploded from the laboratory at a billion times the speed of light.
###
Hi Friends. Thank you for reading my blog. I really appreciate the 200+ daily unique visitors and hope you find something useful and/or entertaining in my writings and missives.
If you haven’t checked them out yet, the Science Fiction Weekly Series for 2018 is almost complete. The final release, #26, will be out on the 25th December. Science Fiction Weekly will hopefully then return in 2020.
Wishing you Happy Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Happy Holidays and for those of you on the Gregorian calendar, I hope you have a fantastic New Year. Here’s to another orbit around Sol.
By
When Rosa hires Jacob to help her discover alternate realities not detectable from this universe, she hardly expects him to find a way so quickly.
But then she discovers that Jacob has been one step ahead of her the whole time. And his solution to the experiment may affect the entire human race across all of space and time.
Cosmic Joke is #23 in the Science Fiction Weekly Series. A short reads story of about 4900 words.