stars Archives ~ From The Stratosphere

The release of Book 4, Thomas Jackson Legacy

By hsrivney | March 30, 2019

A gift for income tax deadline day, Release of Book 4 in the Rising Destiny series will be mid to late April.

You’ve been waiting, and it’s almost time. It’s almost time to release Book 4 in the Rising Destiny series, a decade from the life of the valiant star ship captain Thomas Jackson.

The name for this long-awaited novel:

The Chameleon Quasar*

After near disaster, Jackson’s future turns from bleak to charmed. He’s given near hero status when he returns home from a mission with the cure for a genetic disaster. The miracle DNA, however, exists in his daughter’s body, and Earth is not the haven it had been when he left five years earlier.
Rewarded in Book 2 with a new ship, the Science Ship Maria Mitchell, he takes a larger crew to Eta Cassiopeia. An incurable plague rampaged a civilization for three centuries. While helping to solve the crisis, Jackson discovers the piece to the puzzle is personal. It’s a history-changing secret that turns his world upside down.
When trying to keep a promise, he is diverted from a visit to Beta Hydri IV by amphibious aliens. A gigantic asteroid comes out of nowhere, threatening his wife’s home world. When an old foe seeking revenge appears, he is ready to throw in the towel. To save his family, and his crew, he agrees to be held as a prisoner for ransom. Then, he has to stop the torture, escape into space, and throw himself on the mercy of the universe.
A refuge awaits their arrival: the space station Novissimus, a marvel of industry and cooperation. Jackson must forsake custody of the time traveling mummy which bears his DNA. He’s given another task before he can go back to Earth. Jackson must take supplies to the Tau Ceti system. But when they arrive, he faces his hardest challenge: losing everyone, and everything, he cares for when an artificially intelligent android hijacks the his ship, the Maria Mitchell.

Another year is about to pass

Book 5 should be out by year’s end, but the release of book 4, is scheduled for mid-April (that’s 3 weeks, folks). It will be available individually for a short time before the Four Volume series is released as a special purchase! Don’t forget to read Serpents of My Imagination, the free prequel available here on the blog. Gamma Ray Games, a novella, is the original starter to Captain Jackson’s pioneering missions. Of course, Novissimus is a lighter tale of Jackson outwitting aliens and life forms that you don’t want to miss.

You know where you can get all of my work (click here for my Amazon author page). Every title is enrolled in the Kindle Unlimited program, so you can read for hours and hours without stopping. Choose Novissimus, Gamma Ray Games, then the free Prequel, Serpents of My Imagination (click above), then Paradox, Symbiosis, Jeopardy, and you will be ready for The Chameleon Quasar.

*An author reserves the right to change her mind…

Spring has Sprung

By hsrivney | March 25, 2018

Spring means new stars in the northern hemisphere; Sky Guide can help you find them. Sirius hangs near the horizon, under the moon, around 8 pm. West of the moon, you will still see Orion in the sky, including Betelgeuse and Rigel. Taurus’ horns are up and he is diving down in the west. Winter is over, and it’s time for new star gazing with warmer weather finally. Do you know your stars and constellations? If you’re rusty, there’s a great app I may have mentioned in the past that you will find hard to believe. It’s a few dollars, and worth every penny. It also has a monthly subscription!

Sky Guide

Sky Guide – you can get the regular app or the monthly subscription if you’re even more crazy than I am about the sky. I like it better with a pad than a phone just because you can see so much more at once, but do check it out. I can’t do it justice here, so go ha fun and look at it for yourself in the app store. No affiliate here for recommending this, I just happen to love it.

About the books …

The new book, Jeopardy, will be out before summer. I had some diversions over the winter and have been spending some time letting people know about Paradox, Symbiosis, and now Jeopardy: Firestones and Aliens. After the initial launch, I’ll be offering the three as a set, but this is an ongoing series, and as long as there’s a story to tell, I will keep going.

Book Symbiosis: Titans of Cassiopeia by H S Rivney

New covers! Paradox and Symbiosis have been redesigned with new covers fit for paperbacks! Descriptions are also getting a face lift, and for e-book lovers, more links to the science that you can examine in depth. It’s going to be a fabulous year!

Paradox, The Alien Genome, 5 star Reader’s Choice Awards

Would love to hear your feedback for novellas on the other characters, namely, Quixote, a reptilian from Draconia, and Dr Jane Ferris, descendant of a chimera. Some will be set pre- 2160, some post 2170. More novellas to come on Captain Jackson’s earlier years on the Linus Pauling, and before that, as a pilot on the carrier Saratoga.

Don’t forget to tell me what you’d like to see in the upcoming stories. I write for you – what do you want to read?

Feedback? ↓

Solar Eclipse Fever? Mark your calendar for 2024

By hsrivney | August 22, 2017

Total Eclipse of Sun and Corona Photo by Fred Espenak, 1999

Once in a lifetime solar eclipse? Maybe not.

Nature’s rarest celestial spectacle, a total solar eclipse. Now that you’ve seen it on television and heard the awe of the spectators, you wish you’d been able to work it out. For a variety of reasons I was content to see a 72% eclipse from my home in Las Vegas, alas, for the single hour that would have been needed to watch, it rained. And it really rained, like big, black, storm cloud rain.

Rain might not seem such a big deal to most, but we have sun about 350 days a year here. It’s why I have a 10.5K solar array on my roof, why my bath towels are kind of stiff from drying on the clothesline six months of the year, and why I expected that in this valley my odds (no obvious Vegas pun intended here) of visibility were about 34:1 in favor of sun. In fact, even with rain, at some point the sun will appear even on those days. And, I was right. The clouds cleared around noon, well past the entire event in the southwest part of the country.

Solar eclipse of 1979

So the last chance I had was in 1979. I will tell you, without too many age revealing details, I happened to be on a school campus at the time, sometime around 8:15. I used the pinhole method, a hole in a paper cast upon another sheet of paper. My classmates thought I was nuts for even caring. I was probably the only person that day who bothered, or cared, that in the sky above us something extraordinary was occurring, in real time, and that tiny little grey crescent, as it changed from fat to thin to fat and whole again, in the past had confirmed Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, in 1919.

And as sad as that experience might sound, I’ve never forgotten it. I’ve been nerdy since before they invented the term, and I’m not surprised to find myself writing scientific fiction stories, hoping to instill the same feelings of amazement and cosmic unity in my readers as I embrace. I call this a natural worldview. Only a handful of humans have ventured beyond our stratosphere, and only as far as our moon.

The speed of light is 186,000+ miles per second (300,000 km/sec), or 6.71×10⁸per hour. I seared that number into my brain prepping for a science club contest between high schools. A photon of light can circle the Earth 7.5 times in one second. Light travels between the moon and Earth in less than two seconds. It takes light 8 minutes to get from our sun to Earth. My point is, space is big, and that’s an understatement.

Next total solar eclipse in United States — Texas to Maine 2024

April 8th, 2024, we have another coast to coast total eclipse, but instead of west to east, it will be south to north, more or less.

annular solar eclipse 2023 — Oregon to Gulf of Mexico

An annular eclipse, where instead of the corona you see a ring of fire, will occur shortly before that, on October 14th, 2023.

It works like this: the Sun is 400 times +- larger than the moon. It is also 400 times farther away from the moon than the moon is to Earth. For a deeper explanation, go read this Popular Science blog. No sense in reinventing the wheel here. And since the moon moves away from Earth a few centimeters each year, before another billion years pass, a total solar eclipse will be a thing of the past. Of course, none of us will be here to lament the demise. We are on the planet, conscious, sentient, intelligent, at the best time since life began.

I wrote about humans on another planet experiencing a solar eclipse, not a total eclipse, but one in which three moons converge to cast their shadows and block out the star, Beta Hydri, and this defining moment in their lives brings a new beginning and hope as they patiently await rescue on a planet that, like Nature here, doesn’t care for the life forms; they simply must use their brains to stay alive, and the solar powered escape pods are pretty helpful, too. If you want to check that book out, just pop over here and you can find it on Smashwords or Amazon as an eBook, or in paperback if you prefer. Paradox: The Alien Genome, the first novel of the Captain Jackson Adventures series.

novel alien genome — Five Star Rated, Paradox: The Alien Genome

Until the next worthy news item, wear your sunscreen. Those UV rays are Naughty Nature at her most wicked!

A recent review

By hsrivney | June 20, 2017

Shameless plug: another 5 star review of Paradox. If you haven’t read it yet, what are you waiting for? Click the picture and get the e-version instantly! Read it? Rate it! Read more stories with many of the same characters: Jackson, Quixote, Rianya, Bala, Lee, Watson, Bailey, Dukvita, the Kiians, and a new species coming up – the Zlogers!

If you long for the days of Gene Roddenberry’s soulful Star Trek, or hope the Avatar movie might one day become a reality, then you are in for a treat with H.S. Rivney’s Paradox: The Alien Genome. The suggestion of a genetic cure from the world beyond captivated my imagination, as did the author’s writing style. For me, the vivid, unique descriptions illuminated this space odyssey to movie-screen proportions. A healthy dose of dialogue keeps the pace at warp speed with lots of techie jargon. But what really impressed me was the author’s sophisticated scientific knowledge—I would believe her to be an astronaut or a physicist in a previous life to dream up the concepts presented throughout the novel. The author creates a totally convincing world from ecosystems to geology, animal species to alien beings. One graphic scene was tasteful, accurate and evocative. But there’s a touch of intrigue and danger, as well as a softer side to this story, too. A great ending wraps up this exciting futuristic journey after traveling back to a nostalgic era of Kirk, Spock, and Sulu— I highly recommend the ride!

Patti Cavaliere, author of 5 star rated “Looking for Leo”, click me!

Move Over, Hubble

By hsrivney | November 4, 2016

james-webb-space-telescope A golden telescope is ready to be tested after twenty years under construction. It will be the largest space telescope humans have ever deployed, and it’s scheduled to assume its final position about a million miles away from Earth in 2018. This magnificent feat of engineering will have seven times the light collecting surface of Hubble in addition to having the ability to collect infrared light.

It’s called the James Webb Space Telescope. If the moon was only the size of a jellybean, this telescope could see it, and any heat that it might emit. From its orbit ‘behind’ the earth at a place in space officially called Lagrange Point 2 (see the info graphic), and by maintaining a temperature near absolute zero, the telescope will, among other tasks, be able to penetrate clouds of dust and analyze the atmospheres of exoplanets that have been discovered around nearby stars.

The cost? Almost 9 billion bucks. That’s a lot of money, but it didn’t simply go up in smoke. The money supported high tech and manufacturing jobs for the betterment of man as opposed to more nuclear weapons, wars for oil, and the interest on the national debt, which by itself is over 230 billion dollars annually. Over the course of 20 years, this single project cost less than a third of a single year’s American science budget. When you look at it that way, it’s downright reasonable given its projected lifespan, the information we will gain, and again, the high tech jobs that go with. We spend that money and we have something to show for it.

NASA leads the project, but has considerable support by the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. The 21 foot mirror has to be launched folded and will unfurl once it has endured the launch itself which will take about two weeks! It will be told to open its solar shield, then it must cool down. The last thing ground engineers will do is focus the instrument, and it should begin functioning by Spring of 2019. It carries enough fuel to sustain it for ten years but with typical spacecraft, it will probably function much longer than anyone expects.

I borrowed (stole) this info-graphic from Space dot com that broke the story, and hope if you are interested in more details you’ll go visit them. I’m all about giving credit where it is due, and simply want to bring a little good news to you in light of all the ugly news on the television these recent days. Enjoy, share, and dream.

Tag: stars