Galactic Exploration Book 2: Trixie and Me

Earlier this month I reviewed “Beyond Lies the Wub” by PKD, and the author of this story commented that he was inspired by the Wub while immersed in left brain creativity for Trixie and Me.  Everything we do is inspired by things we interact with daily and historically whether we can admit it or not, in this case when pointed out you can see the minor similarities of the alien species in both stories.

Trixie, the story, not the woman is not as intelligent a read as Serengeti.  But what it lacks in the immense technicality of  Serengeti it makes up for in story content.  Twice the pages as it’s predecessor, but read in half the time because the story flows and you just read and read, rather than having to read and re-read because you are trying to understand the complexity of astrophysics… unless you are Stephen Hawking or Brian Greene, then Serengeti is like Dr. Seuss.

Slight spoiler below,

Galactic Exploration Book 1: The Serengeti

A novel, a course in astrophysics, a lesson in the theories of Albert Einstein all wrapped up in the guise of fictional galactic voyage.  Serengeti is the first story in a collection of 4 novellas written by Peter Cawdron.

Sharing the book’s title, the Serengeti roars through space, not at unattainable speeds depicted in Star Trek and the numerous ships that explored the Universe throughout our childhoods, but at 99% of the speed of light.  Making a trip to another galaxy not possible by a simple splay of light and a screen blend on the t.v. but a multi-generational task handed down from one captain to the next.

“And yet, even at such radical relativistic speeds, he knew the frozen image before him would take decades for the slightest change to appear.  The universe was so vast as to defy reason.  The distances were so immense that a life time of travel at almost the exact speed of light would barely make any perceptible difference at all.” – Excerpt from Serengeti

Taking the romance out of interstellar travel Cawdron gives us the depressing reality of solidarity that a true traveler would endure to reach beyond mankind’s grasp.  Man is bio-replicated for the century long journey, engineered being, using and discarding old workers, making human life the oil filter of civilization’s conquest.  Generations lost just to maintain the quest of the unknown.

While Book 1 tends to be on the slow side from the perception that space travel books ultimately end up in physical struggle and adventure.  The psychological exploration of the future generations and outcomes bring the book much closer to the mind bending and thought-provoking tales of a life times journey and it’s cost.

Book 1: Segengeti   B+

Galactic Exploration

I own this on my Kindle, I admit I have not read this title by Peter Cawdron yet… But I plan to read it in the coming weeks.

If you haven’t yet read Anomaly another of his works you should get on that also while you are on Amazon.

THINKING SCI-FI

As a kid, I loved Star Trek and Lost in Space. My favourite movie, prior to the release of Star Wars, was Forbidden Planet, so it’s probably not too much of a surprise I still enjoy both reading and watching science fiction. My only lament is that the drought between good sci-fi books, TV shows and movies is often measured in terms of years, so I decided to write my own science fiction.

Galactic Exploration was launch on Amazon last month. Admittedly, the title isn’t the most compelling of names for a novel, but it is descriptive of the contents, which are a modern take on the Star Trek concept.

Galactic Exploration is a compilation of the novellas :

• Serengeti
• Trixie & Me
• Savannah
• War

Galactic Exploration was written as a series of novellas for a couple of reasons. Firstly, this short format allowed me to explore not only some…

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