Kepler’s Son by Geoff Nelder.
Book 3: The Flying Crooked Series.
Mother and father are true humans born on Earth. Their son was conceived with the unwanted help from alien genes and so Gaston while loving him, refers to Adah as more Kepler’s son than his.
The hybrid Adah walked over and hugged his very human mother, who eagerly wrapped her arms around him even though she wasn’t keen on his sweaty-socks pungency. Weird considering, he didn’t wear socks. No one did.
The humans and their offspring (including clones and GM people) in the Kepler system face a backlash from Purist keps who want all humankind to be extinguished. With the support of the kep elite and strange artificial intelligence machines, our plucky band of humans find themselves hiding in the most extraordinary places such as inside a sun, but is it enough to thwart danger?
5-Stars: Adah is different in most respects from human boys.
‘Kepler’s Son’ in ‘The Flying Crooked’ series by Geoff Nelder is finally here. Let’s recap.
In ‘Suppose We’ (book one) a spaceship crash-lands on a faraway planet but the natives are so far ahead of Earth they ignore the human crew.
In ‘Falling Up’ (book two) Em is captured by an alien artificial intelligence that had attacked the Kepler-20h system.
Now in‘Kepler’s Son’ (book three) our heroes’ ace trick of splicing human genes with nasty bacteria to help the natives has backfired leaving the planet in danger of being overrun by squidgy, rapidly-evolving mind-hive creatures.
The Artificial Intelligence CAN reports after arranging with Kep flitters to reprogram all the ‘essential’ communication and science satellites that danced in whirls and lurches after being deserted by their home Kepler-20h planet. Problem: none of the 125 satellites have sufficient fuel to travel far. Solution: We’ve cannibalised some to create a huge solar cell array to supplement slow but steady ion drives to make their way. Where to? We didn’t know for days, but perturbations in the inner-planet orbits revealed the probable location and I found a weak signal from a beacon. Streaming now to update and sync. Bad news: intense radiation needs guarding against. Date: Earth February 19th 3664 Kepler New 6976 days.
A census is conducted by me because none counts better than I. All data refer to beings on this planet Kepler-20h. All beings possess a biometric signature whether they know it or not.
- Indigenous population known to humans as keps: 137, 328 (data from their archives indicate a mass migration to other planets 21 years ago).
- Indigenous population known to humans as trogs: 2,675,177 (NB very few live on the surface).
- Humans from Earth: 2 (Science Officer Gaston Poirier, Navigator Em Farrer).
- Human-forms with tripartite genetic code: 1 (Adah with DNA from two humans and one kep).
- Human-forms with pure human DNA via cloning engineering using original crew members plus genetic material brought from Earth: 217.
- Keeps – engineered human plus indigenous bacteria: 2,538,824.
In Chapter Twenty-Seven: Em was always the one who put herself out, travelling for days over unknown landscapes with only Kep1 and a trio of flitters for company just to hug her son. Gaston wasn’t Adah’s father, at least not in the traditional sense. The kep biologists had sampled his DNA and explained how most of it was human and some from the kep rapist and it’s the latter that had made him so different in most respects from human boys. His translucent skin; telepathic abilities the limitations of which he’d yet to discover except that it only worked with keps and keeps; and his ability to solidify his imaginary friends. Very scary and completely mysterious. At least his mother and father—the Gaston fraction—were now safe on the kep’s secret corona station. Hiding it inside a sun.
I enjoyed reading ‘Kepler’s Son’ and I invite you to read ‘The Flying Crooked’ series. Author Geoff Nelder takes his readers on a spectacular 5-Star Science Fiction (Action and Adventure). You will want to catch up before ‘Vanished Earth’ (book four) arrives. What’s happened to the humans’ home planet? Assuming Earth is our home planet. In book 4 of the Flying Crooked series of hard science fiction novellas, we find Earth, or so we think, but like the butterfly it’s changed.
Geoff Nelder lives in rural England within an easy cycle ride of the Welsh mountains. Publications include several non-fiction books on climate reflecting his other persona as a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society; over 90 published short stories in various magazines and anthologies; thriller, humour, science fiction, and fantasy novels.
Editorial Review (Book Marketing Global Network).
Product Details:
Paperback: 201 Pages
Publisher: LL-Publications (November 22, 2022)
Language: English
Science Fiction (Action and Adventure)
Science Fiction (Alien Invasion)
Science Fiction (First Contact)
Science Fiction (Medical Fiction)
Science Fiction (Post-Apocalyptic)
Science Fiction (Space Exploration)
About The Author: Geoff Nelder is a freelance writer living in Chester, UK.
A former high school teacher of geography and information technology, he has had non-fiction books published on microclimates in the UK along with several articles in academic journals such as Weather, Geographical Magazine and the Times Educational Supplement. Geoff is a part-time journalist contributing humorous travel accounts to Cycling World.
He has had short stories published and won a commendation for a story in the Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Competition. He won first prize in the Cafe Doom short story competition in 2005. Besides his 2005 released humour novel, Escaping Reality, published by Brambling Books, he won an award for mystery thriller, Hot Air, to be published by a Dutch Arts Academy in 2009, and a Science Fiction block buster, Left Luggage is in the hands of an agent. Double Dragon Publishing published Geoff’s Exit, Pursued by a Bee science fiction in 2008.
Geoff is an editor for Adventure Books of Seattle, co-editor of Escape Velocity – a print and ezine magazine of science fact and fiction. He has been a freelance editor of novels and short stories for several years. Geoff is the 2009 sort-fiction judge for the Whittaker Prize.
Additional Books:
- Best of British Science Fiction 2020 Jul 27, 2021 by Donna Scott, M. R. Carey, Lavie Tidhar, Anne Charnock, Liz Williams, Ian Watson, RB Kelley, Eric Brown, Ida Keogh, Neil Williamson
- M is for Monster Oct 27, 2010 by Ian Woodhead, Serenity Banks, David Youngquist, Simon Unsworth, Geoff Nelder, Kate Jonez, Zach Black, John Prescott, Ash Krafton, Adrian Chamberlin
- CROOKED TALES: Deception & Revenge in 14 Short Stories Sep 1, 2016 by Mark Fine, Pamela Crane, Traci Sanders, Elizabeth Horton-Newton, Joseph Mark Brewer, Keith Dixon, Eric J. Gates, Geoff Nelder, Anita Kovacevic, Michelle Medhat
- Once Upon A Scream Feb 7, 2022 by Dorothy Davies, Dan Allen, Rie Sheridan Rose, Brooke MacKenzie, Stuart Holland, David Turnbull, Gina Easton, Liam Spinage, Jason R Frei, Geoff Nelder
- SFerics 2017 Oct 22, 2017 by Rosie Oliver, Roz Clarke
- The Horror Zine Magazine Summer 2017 May 2, 2017 by Jeani Rector, Vitaly S. Alexius, Peter Ferguson Swarr, Liz McAdams, Ariana Carlson, katie Marie, David Subacchi, Teresa Frazee, Edmund Stone, James Ward Kirk
- The Horror Magazine Spring 2020 Feb 4, 2020 by Jeani Rector, Jeffrey Genung, Kristen Houghton, Harrison Kim, Richard Dawkinson, Juan Perez, Stephanie Smith, Lori Lopez, Kim Vincent, Sana Amber
- The Horror Zine Magazine Spring 2016 Nov 14, 2015 by Charles E.J. Moulton, John T. Biggs, Timothy Wilkie, Geoff Nelder, John C. Adams, Sebastian Crow, Kristen Houghton, Frank Schury, Larry Hinkle, Jeani Rector
- Personal Bests Journal Issue 1 Aug 6, 2020 by David Gardiner Editor
- Twisted Tails IX: Wunderkind Jan 27, 2016 by J. Richard Jacobs
- Twisted Tails VIII: Para-abnormal Jan 20, 2016 by J. Richard Jacobs
- Shrieks and Shivers from the Horror Zine Jan 6, 2015 by William F. Nolan, Ray Garton, Elizabeth Massie, Lisa Morton, Joe McKInney, Tim Waggoner, Martin Rose, Jeani Rector, Bentley Little
- 100 Stories for Queensland May 3, 2011 by Jodi Cleghorn, Kate Eltham
- Monk Punk Apr 19, 2011 by A.J. French, D. Harlan Wilson, Dean M. Drinkel, Geoff Nelder, Adrian Chamberlin, John R. Fultz, William Meikle, R. B. Payne, Sean T. M. Stiennon, Zach Black
Amazon Author’s Page:
https://www.amazon.com/Geoff-Nelder/e/B002BMB2XY/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1
Professional Website:
http://geoffnelder.com/
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/geoffnelder
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/geoffnelder
LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoff-nelder-39170a3/
Author’s Page At Book Marketing Global Network:
https://bookmarketingglobalnetwork.com/book-marketing-global-network/geoff-nelder
