Sins of the Son — a vignette by Torn MacAlester

Short science fiction by Torn MacAlester

A vignette by Torn MacAlester: Sins of the Son

My sto­ries are arranged in a time­line of events.  See it here. It is the first sto­ry from the after­math of the Yel­low­stone erup­tion.  These are relat­ed events that take place in the same time­line as my nov­el, Thun­der Moon Tus­sle, it is avail­able on ama­zon in paper­back and kin­dle formats.

Pho­to by Nick Wehrli from Pex­els

sins of the son

The Farthest Star

Short science fiction by Torn MacAlester

It is fan­tas­tic that the far­thest star detect­ed is so far away: 12.9 bil­lion light years.  As a result, it is not the first star born in the Uni­verse but it does pre­date the Sun by 7.9 bil­lion years.  Though this star is too short lived for life to evolve, but a dim­mer star formed at the same time might have been the loca­tion of the first life in the uni­verse.  If that life evolved into intel­li­gent civ­i­liza­tion with­in 5 bil­lion years (as it did here on Earth), that civ­i­liza­tion would be 2.9 bil­lion years old.  What kind of civ­i­liza­tion might it be?

Check out my arti­cle on the Kar­da­shev  scale to imag­ine the civ­i­liza­tion that might be so incred­i­bly old and asso­ci­at­ed with the far­thest star.  Could this end up being a class III galac­tic civ­i­liza­tion?  Maybe its only a class II stel­lar civ­i­liza­tion?  Or the civ­i­liza­tion might have died out before it reached class I.  The ques­tions abound regard­ing such a civilization.

Sci­ence and sci­ence fic­tion are inter­twined.  Sci­ence does not rule out the fan­tas­tic.  The uni­verse we live in works accord­ing to sci­ence, but I find it fantastic.

 

 

Apollo 14

Short science fiction by Torn MacAlester

Pho­to by Bri­an McGowan on Unsplash

 

 

Did you know that Apol­lo 14 land­ed at the planned land­ing site for Apol­lo 13? The place is called the Fra Mau­ro High­lands. The Apol­lo 14 lan­der, Antares, land­ed at Fra Mau­ro near the Cone crater. Part of the mis­sion required an EVA to the rim of Cone crater to col­lect sam­ples from inside the crater’s rim. The hope was to col­lect sam­ples from under the Frau Mau­ro for­ma­tion as ejec­ta from the deep cone crater. Lack­ing nav­i­ga­tion aids such as mod­ern GPS, Shep­ard and Mitchell missed the rim of the crater as they walked up the hill. After a time, Shep­ard decid­ed they were close enough and col­lect­ed the samples.

One inter­est­ing addi­tion­al find from the mis­sion sam­ples is a big rock nick­named ‘Big Bertha’. It turns out that ‘Big Bertha’ is a piece of gran­ite. It is a mete­orite eject­ed from the Earth in the dis­tant past. Gran­ite, unlike basalt, can­not form with­out sig­nif­i­cant amounts of water being present.

Anoth­er inter­est­ing instru­ment from the Apol­lo 14 Lunar Sur­face Exper­i­ments Pack­age is the SIDE (Suprather­mal Ion Detec­tor Exper­i­ment). It mea­sured the mass and ener­gy of pos­i­tive­ly charged ions. These result from the solar wind hit­ting the Moon’s surface.

Read More about Apol­lo 14 here: Sci­ence of Golf and Outgassing

 

 

 

Video of Mis­sion by Home­made Doc­u­men­taries:

Science of Golf and Outgassing

Thunder Moon Tussle received a Five Star Review

Short science fiction by Torn MacAlester

Recent­ly, Thun­der Moon Tus­sle received a five star review. Thanks to every­one who has tak­en the time to read my nov­el.  I appre­ci­ate all of you.  I have a spe­cial thanks to Russ J., who pro­vid­ed me a nice review on goodreads.com.  He called it  “a well-craft­ed sci­ence fic­tion tale,” and “well writ­ten, real­is­tic, and exit­ing” to describe the story.

I also want to thank the review­ers on amazon.com who have pro­vid­ed their thoughts:

Lon­don Mar­i­on called it “Excit­ing”,

TRA called it “Worth Reading”,

and an Ama­zon cus­tomer “real­ly enjoyed this book”.

 

 

 

 

 Torn MacAlester Fire­bird Book Award Winner

133 AUTHORS JOIN THE FIREBIRD BOOK AWARD CIRCLE OF WINNERS

Octo­ber 2021 – Speak Up Talk Radio announced the win­ners of 2021’s third quar­ter FIREBIRD BOOK AWARDS contest. 

One of the win­ning entries was from Mon­tana author Torn MacAlester whose book titled Thun­der Moon Tus­sle won in the Sci­ence Fic­tion category.

Authors and pub­lish­ers from around the world sub­mit­ted their work to the Fire­bird Book Awards. Two judges from a select pan­el of 17 judges read each book in its entire­ty and inde­pen­dent­ly scored each entry. All judges com­mit­ted to a set of stan­dard­ized cri­te­ria that eval­u­ates the qual­i­ty of the writ­ing as well as pro­duc­tion aspects. Only entries with the high­est of scores were award­ed the cov­et­ed Firebird.

Patri­cia J. Rul­lo, founder of the Fire­bird Book Awards, says, “ we received near­ly dou­ble the amount of entries this quar­ter and we recruit­ed more qual­i­fied judges from the pub­lish­ing and writ­ing world. Our judg­ing pan­el includes a diverse group who rep­re­sent a cross sec­tion of ages, cul­tur­al her­itage, race, reli­gion, gen­der, and expe­ri­ence.  At Speak Up Talk Radio, our mis­sion is to offer authors a wel­come place to pro­mote them­selves and their books via book awards, radio inter­views, audio­book pro­duc­tion, voiceover mar­ket­ing tools, and pod­cast­ing ser­vices. We love to sup­port those who dare to share their inner­most thoughts with the world. Just one sen­tence in one book can very well make a dif­fer­ence in a reader’s life. I can’t think of any­thing bet­ter than that.”

Pat adds, “We’ve includ­ed a char­i­ta­ble com­po­nent to our awards by mak­ing all entry fees tax-deductible to the author. In return, we per­son­al­ly make and send hand­made fun and col­or­ful pil­low­cas­es to women and chil­dren in home­less shel­ters via Enchant­ed Makeovers, a 501©3 tax-exempt orga­ni­za­tion. All entry fees fund this project. In this way, authors get noto­ri­ety for their work while help­ing to trans­form home­less shel­ters into bright and hap­py homes. It is a reward­ing ven­ture for everyone.”

The Fire­bird Book Awards run quar­ter­ly con­tests so authors can receive recog­ni­tion on a time­ly basis. Authors from all gen­res, main­stream, inde­pen­dent, and self-pub­lished are wel­come. For addi­tion­al win­ning authors, titles, and entry information:

https://www.speakuptalkradio.com

Thunder Moon Tussle by Torn MacAlester

Short science fiction by Torn MacAlester

My nov­el Thun­der Moon Tus­sle is avail­able in kin­dle unlim­it­ed, kin­dle, and paper­back on amazon.com.

 

Nils Carmike, a fall­en from grace astro­naut turned smug­gler, forges a new life on the lunar fron­tier. Harassed by the strik­ing­ly beau­ti­ful and demand­ing Deputy Miller, he is faced with fines and con­flict, result­ing in a tumul­tuous rela­tion­ship and ulti­ma­tum he can’t refuse. Run­ning for their life they strug­gle against their pasts, hop­ing to out­smart the com­mon face­less ene­my and forced to focus on the only rule that mat­ters: survive!

 

Cov­er graph­ic by Shan­nan Albright

 

Check out the relat­ed sto­ries for free:

Mor­gan’s Road by Torn MacAlester

and

Golf and Out­gassing by Torn MacAlester

Yellowstone and Timeline of Events

Short science fiction by Torn MacAlester

The key back­ground event of the sto­ry­line that includes Thun­der Moon Tus­sle is the erup­tion of the Yel­low­stone super-vol­cano.  This erup­tion forms the basis for the cal­en­dar where the year of the erup­tion is des­ig­nat­ed Y+0.

The Yel­low­stone erup­tion plays into some of the moti­va­tion or emo­tion­al state of the char­ac­ters.  It serves as a focal point event where almost every­one relates to it.  It has the same affect as the attack on Pearl Har­bor or 9/11 had on their respec­tive gen­er­a­tions.  I recall a lot of the old­er gen­er­a­tions when I was young refer­ring to the attack on Pearl Har­bor as a turn­ing point in many of their lives.  I’ve also noticed that many of my peers refer to 9/11 the same way.  It may be we are liv­ing through anoth­er such event with the Covid-19 pandemic.

In this case, you can find ref­er­ences to the Yel­low­stone super-vol­cano erup­tion through­out Thun­der Moon Tus­sle.  Nils Carmike and Deputy Miller both refer to Yel­low­stone as a piv­otal event.  In his the review of Thun­der Moon Tus­sle, Nathaniel Owolabi makes note of this.

I try to set each of my sto­ries or vignettes on this time­line, though there are some excep­tions.  The vignette Cold Con­tact is not on the time­line.  The short sto­ry Mor­gan’s Road is on the time­line to indi­cate the year in which Nils Carmike tells the sto­ry for the first time.  The time­line pre­sent­ed will con­tin­u­ous­ly update with vignettes that give a taste of the back­ground with­out pro­vid­ing spoil­ers for any one story.

Time­line of Events

Science and Technology in Morgan’s Road

Short science fiction by Torn MacAlester

Being a sci­en­tist and engi­neer, I enjoy adding as real­is­tic ele­ments as pos­si­ble to my sto­ries.  For exam­ple, I wrote this arti­cle to dis­cuss the sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy that I ref­er­enced in writ­ing the sto­ry Mor­gan’s Road.

Sci­ence of Mor­gan’s Road.

There are cer­tain­ly some spoil­ers in that arti­cle. If you haven’t read Mor­gan’s Road, now is the time:

Mor­gan’s Road by Torn MacAlester.

 

The Mor­gan’s Road Cov­er Graph­ics are by Shan­nan Albright.

 

Mor­gan’s Road is relat­ed to the sci-fi nov­el Thun­der Moon Tus­sle by Torn MacAlester , avail­able at amazon.com in Kin­dle unlim­it­ed, Kin­dle, and paperback.

The science and technology of Morgan's Road

Thunder Moon Tussle and Morgan’s Road

Short science fiction by Torn MacAlester

 

Among oth­er things, Nils Carmike is a sto­ry teller.  This is some­thing his friend Mil­ton finds ridicu­lous. This pro­vides the back­drop for Thun­der Moon Tus­sle by Torn MacAlester

Take a look at one of Nil­s’s favorite sto­ries: Mor­gan’s Road by Torn MacAlester.

Then read the sto­ry that Nils did­n’t tell:  Thun­der Moon Tus­sle by Torn MacAlester.

 

Cov­er for Thun­der Moon Tus­sle and graph­ic for Mor­gan’s Road by Shan­nan Albright.

Free Short Science Fiction Story by Torn MacAlester

Short science fiction by Torn MacAlester

Free short sci­ence fic­tion sto­ry: Mor­gan’s Road by Torn MacAlester

Mak­ing a liv­ing on the Moon is not for every­one, but Nel­son Carmike actu­al­ly pre­ferred the air­less basalt plains over Earth’s windy prairies.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, three years of Moon prospect­ing left him pen­ni­less, and with­out funds for sup­plies he was doomed to face a forced flight home. Out of options, Nel­son had all but giv­en up until a prospec­tor, pre­sumed dead for twen­ty years, arrives on his doorstep with a secret.

Can Nel­son fig­ure out how the man sur­vived on his own, and learn to do the same before his sup­plies out?

Check out this free short sci­ence fic­tion sto­ry. After­wards, take a look at the nov­el Thun­der Moon Tus­sle by Torn MacAlester.

 

Cov­er Design by Shan­nan Albright