The Flying Crooked Series!
Science Fiction As It Should Be…
Opi’s World (Book 5) In 2025!
Suppose We by Geoff Nelder.
Book 1 of 2: The Flying Crooked Series.
When a ship crash-lands on a faraway planet the crew needs local help. Unfortunately, the natives are a million years ahead of us. Ignored, the crew has to find a way to get attention.
Bringing back a sense of discovery and wonder to science fiction.
“I’ve always found Geoff’s work both inspirational and brilliant. I know that whenever I pick up one of his works I’m in for a damned good read. For those who’ve never read any of his works before, welcome to the Geoff Nelder club.” By Mark Iles, author of The Darkening Stars series.
“Geoff Nelder inhabits science fiction just as other people inhabit their clothes.” By Jon Courtenay Grimwood: Felaheen, Pashazade and End Of The World Blues.
If you liked Tuf Voyaging by George R.R. Martin, and Anne MccAffrey’s Dinosaur Planet you’ll like SUPPOSE WE.
Review by Martin Lamberti: 5.0 out of 5 Stars. Flying Crooked, predictably unpredictable. Reviewed in the United States on June 5, 2019. Verified Purchase. Just as the Cabbage White’s flight is unpredictable, so the quirky beginnings of Suppose We in Geoff’s newest release. I’m looking forward to the continuation of the crooked flights of the series that we suppose we CAN. (As in CANDID)
Review by Rosie: 5.0 out of 5 Stars. Science Fiction as it should be… Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 26, 2019. Verified Purchase. Geoff Nelder is one of those unsung creatives in science fiction. And with this book, his imagination is coming into its own. Like any work of such an innovative nature, it has to first engage in the ordinary (for science fiction that is) before it can move you into that very unique yet coherent world. He does this so subtly that you don’t notice until you are thoroughly enjoying the new.
So, it starts with a ship carrying four people to a new world. Their journey has lasted a thousand years in hibernation. And they end up having to crash land. An ordinary science fiction trope – so far. And that is where the ordinariness ends. The planet’s ‘lifeforms’ are an interesting mixture, with even more interesting consequences.
But an author cannot take a reader into this amount of unusualness without writing in engaging way, and this is exactly what Geoff has done, in spades. His characters are very relatable, his descriptions entrancing and his story pace an enjoyable canter.
A word about the science here – not all of it is explained, but given that the point of view characters can’t explain it, that is not surprising. The techies and scientists among you will realise that what Geoff has worked up might really be possible.
I have known Geoff’s other works and am not surprised at the quality of this book. What does surprise me is that a top-notch publisher has not taken up publishing ‘Suppose We’.
Review by Lucy M Andrews: 5.0 out of 5 Stars. Rich descriptions and vivid imagery. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 5, 2019. Verified Purchase. Suppose We is full of rich descriptions and vivid imagery that is a joy to read. The description of the alien world, including its dangers, bring it to life in a way that allows the reader to imagine being there. The characters are well drawn and as the story unwinds, the reader gradually learns more about the planet that they are on. I enjoyed this book immensely and will certainly read the sequel.
Product Details:
Print Length: 182 Pages
Publisher: LL-Publications (May 19, 2019)
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)
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Falling Up by Geoff Nelder.
Book 2: The Flying Crooked Series.
The Flying Crooked Series – bringing back a sense of discovery and wonder to science fiction!
After our human crew persuaded the far-advanced native Keps to allow human genomes to be spliced into native bacteria a new threat arrives. It’s not organic, it’s not on the planet, but it shreds planets. Alien AI have been offended…
“The characters, action and drama on the mind-boggling planet our humans are stranded on makes it one of the most original sci-fi stories I’ve read in a long while.” Peter Wilhelmsen, fantasy writer.
Chris Rimell, author of Untold History: “As always you do a lovely job of describing the worlds and filling them with colour and aromas.”
Martin Lamberti: International clown. “Just as the Cabbage White’s flight is unpredictable, so the quirky beginnings in Geoff’s newest release. I’m looking forward to the continuation of the crooked flights of the series.”
Review by DJW: 5.0 out of 5 Stars. Falling up. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 30, 2019. Verified Purchase. As bizarre as the title suggests. What a sequel to “Suppose We”!
Product Details:
Paperback: 166 Pages
Publisher: Dillon Enterprises (December 12, 2019)
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)
Amazon Print:
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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 and Endorsement by Book Marketing Global Network.
Review by Magdalena Ball: 5.0 out of 5 Stars. Hugely fun, fast-paced, inventive, action-oriented sci-fi. Reviewed in the United States on January 21, 2023. You don’t need to read Geoff Nelder’s bio to know that he is inherently a scientist and a teacher. His books are engaging and inventive to be sure, but they are underpinned by a deep understanding of and delight in the wonders of physics and biology. His worlds are full of anomalies that draw on real-life quantum quirks, cosmic paradoxes and biological anomalies, and his aliens are both delightfully bizarre and yet somehow plausible. He is a writer who knows his sci-fi tropes well enough to twist them into a Möbius strip and take them to new places while still providing plenty of Easter eggs to keen readers of the genre.
Kepler’s Son, the third book in his Flying Crooked series, is no exception. In previous books in the series, humans have left the Earth and crash-landed on a planet called Kepler-20h where the aliens are so technologically advanced to humans, that they just ignore the visitors. Humans aren’t colonisers here, as is often the case in sci fi books, but minor vermin barely worthy of note. It is only the awkward human personality, human bacterial issues, and the ship-steering, all seeing, God-like artificial intelligence CAN that makes the humans noteworthy to the Keps – the ultra-advanced aliens who live on Kepler-20. CAN shines in this work as a hilarious non-human character with its camp dairy style missives that play on its name (“Can Can”, “cannibalised”, “cantering”, “Wiccan” “the oilcan”, etc.). CAN is a significant character, whose distinctive voice is somewhere between the existential musings of The Hitchhiker Guide to the Galaxy’s Marvin (though happier) and the careful diction of a geeky science teacher.
The other protagonists of the series are Em and the charmingly French Gaston. In book two, Em falls pregnant to Gaston at the same time as she is impregnated by a Kep, thereby creating a hybrid child, Adeh. Adeh is 18 when Kepler’s Son, an obvious reference to Adeh, opens. His interesting mix of human and alien genes are on full display throughout the book as he develops while exploring the world he and his parents live on, and learning the limits of his capabilities and his relationship to other creatures, imaginary or real.
Nelder does a good job of keeping the story fast-paced and action-oriented as the humans and their collaborators are hunted down by ‘purist’ Keps who would like to exterminate them. While the story hints at human history and our many foibles including the wrecking of our planet through anthropogenic climate change, the way in which the narrative progresses is novel, involving a galactic chase that includes ‘pinching’ – a folding of space time that simulates a kind of wormhole. There are all sorts of dangers for the couple as they fly a variety of crafts, and fun hiding spaces like a base inside a sun’s corona or an impossible tower built of ‘non-Euclidean, non-Newtonian, non-Einstein geo-physics’. Nelder manages just the right blend of scientific description and imaginative ideation. The characterisation remains strong through the book as he moves in and out of different viewpoints, even giving voice to some of the stranger characters, like the genetically-engineered Keeps – part Kep, part human, but more collective than individual and only able to communicate in sing-song grunts.
While Kepler’s Son does provide context and background to the previous books, both in the intro and at key points through the narrative, a better reading experience is to be had by reading all three books in the series (and ultimately the fourth when it comes out) in sequence as it does take a bit of catching up to understand Nelder’s extensive universe with its biological and mechanical creatures, particularly Gaston’s Papillon who feels quite important but doesn’t feature strongly in Kepler’s Son. That said, Kepler’s Son is self-contained enough to provide a joyride that won’t disappoint readers who enjoy high quality sci-fi. This is a well-crafted book with a dynamic and engaging pace that has something for everyone, including multiple close calls, close and steamy encounters, clones, cold fusion, dreamlike landscapes, and far-flung star systems.
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)
Vanished Earth by Geoff Nelder.
The Flying Crooked Series Book 4 of 4.
Vanished Earth, the 4th in the FLYING CROOKED series releases a lifelong urge for Geoff Nelder to paint his own vision of what a strange yet habitable planet might be like and how we might react to alien encounters. If you enjoy breaking tropes, this is for you.
The descendants of humans who’d left Earth 1500 years before had the uncontrollable urge to visit their origin planet but WHERE has it gone? In any case would Earth welcome the aliens and new lifeform they’re bringing?
Mika, a woman born of two human clones on the faraway Keplerian system: Screaming persisted, some of it from herself, the ship and the Keps. She thought she could tell the three types apart now. All this way to become an expert in alien screaming.
From Magdalena Ball of the Compulsive Reader review site: “There’s always an element of action, a hint of steamy romance, and Nelder’s trademark twist.”
From Mark Iles – author of science fantasy The Gardens of Earth (Sundering Chronicles)
“I absolutely loved this, a brilliant piece of work. ‘Vanished Earth’ is a great title too, as it so reflects the content. The humour within is tongue-in-cheek and made me smile throughout.”
Review by Frances: 5.0 out of 5 Stars. Fascinating future vision of Earth. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 16, 2023. Verified Purchase. Such a fascinating vision of planetary exploration and future visions of Earth – really fantastic descriptive writing and imagery. I’m curious to know what effect the keeps would have on Earth’s ecosystem in years to come. The origin of the keeps and Adah’s imaginary friends makes for compelling reading. It feels like this may be the final book, but the author has also left an opening for future stories or books in this series. Highly recommended.
Product Details:
Paperback: 126 Pages
Publisher: LL-Publications (October 11, 2023)
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)
Amazon Print:
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Author’s Page At Book Marketing Global Network:
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