The Second Coming- post apocalyptic fiction?

The Skidian Chronicles novels have some new reviews, neither of which I wrote myself!

For the First Chronicle

This book views its science fiction subject matter through a Kiwi set of eyes. The dry humour of the Kiwi farming character is amplified by the 'city slicker' attitude of his American "heroine"; his stoic country practical outlook versus her rather pathetic helplessness. My daughter bought me both books and I intended to read the first book and then something different before the second , however I was so intrigued by the plot at the end of this book that I had to immediately read the follow-up. I was amused that Keith chose to name his female lead after me , even though we'd never met, well not on this planet !

And great to see the reader liked the first book so much they bought and enjoyed the second book (The Second Coming)  in the series;

Having read the first book I was intrigued to see how the second book developed. I was pleased that my namesake developed more strength of character, and that the dogs had their own part in the plot. The storyline allows the reader to believe some of the subject matter could actually become a reality and at the end of the book I was left with some thought provoking reflections. This book is an easy read which make me smile, and I hope to read how the story progresses. The font size in the 2nd book was easier to read.


And one from a year or so back

The Second Coming by Keith Fenwick is a next-in-series title about several different people whose stories are in some way related, but if you are just coming in you don't quite know how. Sue and Bruce are normal, everyday Earthlings... mostly. Sue, who owns a travel agency, is somehow pregnant when she hasn't had a sexual partner in a very long time. Her best guess is immaculate conception.

Bruce, on the other hand, is a bit of a foul mouthed, rugged loner living off the land. He feels that something is missing--a chunk of his life perhaps.

On the other hand, Mitch, a third Earth personality (and the United States President), was experiencing no abnormality in his life before a spaceship landed in an American military airplane hangar after a little airspace encroachment, battle, and chase. The alien flying that craft is Myfair, the happenstance ruler of a mostly unknown planet, Skid--the most advanced planet in the universe.

In the wake of a mind-blowing apocalypse on his planet caused by a malfunctioning computer intelligence charged with making Skidian life as easy as possible, Myfair was simply traversing the deep, not looking for anything in particular, when he accidentally stumbled upon Earth, violating American airspace and instigating a dogfight in the process. The skirmish caused him to lose control and scrape his ship across a range of mountains, forcing him to find a place to land. A secured military base is as good a place as any, wouldn't you think?

To you and me it would seem like an insanely stupid idea; but to an intelligent life form that considers us a pitifully ill-advanced, backwater planet that can be easily handled, an air of arrogance keeps our intelligent thought process from rendering us dangerous to a Skidian, and even worthy of note. This is why Myfair was just fine with parking in a military hangar and taking a Sunday stroll around, checking out American war planes. His lack of realization that there could in fact be danger on such an inconsequential planet is just the reason he runs into Bruce, Sue, and President Mitch, which begins their journey together.

As a critique, it takes a lot of reading to get to this point. It could have easily been a hundred or more pages shorter. In addition some of the sexual description was weird, almost as though it hardly had a place in the book. I don't mean all of the sex in general, which was very little, but when it popped up unexpectedly--specifically from the main female character's perspective--it took me by surprise and seemingly without reason. On the upside, there are almost no instances of it. In fact, all such instances containing sex probably only amount to a single page, or less even. My final critique is that Bruce's mother added an almost irritating ingredient to the mixture that bothered me--not because it existed, but because it worked itself into this book so late. Perhaps Fenwick touches on this in the first book, which could make me wrong in thinking this was new, but it was bothersome none-the-less.

All in all though, I found the book quite fun, especially when I got to the meat of it. As the book follows Myfair and other Skidians and allows you to see what their arrogance and underestimation gets them into, it's hard not to laugh. Reading about the effect that Bruce and Mitch have on others is no different; it's quite comical and some of the adventure and action made it so I had to keep reading on past my bed time. The Second Coming turned out to be a fun and funny read and I would recommend it to anyone that has the endurance for longer, slower adult science fiction novels.

The story so far- The Skidian Chronicles Trilogy and Lifeboat teaser

In the First Chronicle, the main protagonist of this tale along with the woman in his life, was abducted by a group of aliens from the Planet Skid.

 The First Chronicle deals with Bruce and to a lesser extent his fellow abductee, Sue coming to terms with the culture shock of finding themselves in this alien environment with no prospect of ever making it home and doing their best to make a go of it on a world facing a Skidian made catastrophe. A catastrophe that no Skidian seems to be taking too seriously despite the clear warning signs to the contrary.

The comparisons with our own world are obvious along with the ‘it will never happen to me, or not in my backyard thankyou very much,’ attitude of the average Skidian. In time the dire predictions of gloom, doom, and famine did come to pass. This was of little comfort to the few survivors of the calamity that all but wiped out the greatest civilisation that this remote and relatively unimportant section of the universe had ever known.

The Second Chronicle, The Second Coming, deals with Bruce finding himself back home and dealing with a profound change in his life that makes him question everything he knows to be true.

Change that he is struggling to come to terms with, largely because the Skidians wiped the memory of most of the experiences that led to this epiphany. Bruce thinks he is losing his marbles until he meets Sue and discovers they have an infant son. They meet almost by coincidence in a bar in her American hometown that Bruce has been drawn to for no better apparent reason than an acquaintance has a brother who owns a bar in the city.

Then one of the original crew of Skidians who had abducted them turns up in the bar with a much bigger fish in tow: The President of the United States no less. The four of them return to Skid with a different mission from the first trip.

This third novel in the series; The Lifeboat deals with what happens next. Bruce discovers all is not what it seems and makes some startling discoveries regarding some of the questions that mankind has wrestled with for thousands of years. If you have a need to know the meaning of life then this novel is a must for you.

The Second Coming

The Second Coming- Part two of the Skid Chronicles series
click here for the first novel in the series 


Synopsis

The Second Coming is the second novel in the Skid Chronicles series and follows on from the first novel in the series where our unlikely protagonists were kidnapped by a team from the Planet Skid who were on a mission to locate expertise to assist them in developing alternative food sources to feed their people as the planet’s synthetic food production systems began to fail.

The Skidian team selected a team of experts at random without really understanding the expertise that they required to achieve their objectives. More by good luck than good management they had found in their random and unscientific search someone who could generate new food production systems in the form of New Zild Kiwi style grasslands based cattle farm, station or ranch. Unfortunately for the Skidians as the old earthly adage goes; ‘you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink,’ the enterprise eventually failed because not enough Skidians wanted to get their hands dirty in the enterprise.

Since the inception of modern Skid as it was at that point in time; the most sophisticated and powerful civilisation in the known universe, the concept of having to actually do anything remotely connected to work for most Skidians was unknown and hundreds of millions of Skidians had been governed by a small group of hereditary rulers who didn’t brook any change to the status quo.

Quite unknown to those rulers or perhaps unacknowledged by them in many respects, in actual fact their lives were monitored and controlled by an artificial intelligence that in many ways was as flawed as the society that it was tasked with maintaining.
The alternative systems developed by the offworld experts would inevitably lead to the transformation of Skid as it was known and the fracturing of Skidian society. Faced with a choice between maintaining the Skidian Way and perhaps saving a good number of Skidians from certain death, the hereditary rulers chose the former and hoped for a miracle to deliver them from mass starvation and the end of the Skid as they knew it.

To make matters worse the artificial intelligence that monitored all the systems that kept the population fed, housed, and watered was experiencing its own difficulties.
The second novel deals with the aftermath of the breakdown in food supplies. The offworlders have been returned home after undergoing a partially successful memory wipe and Skid is slowly recovering from the disaster that; not for the first time has all but destroyed the most powerful and sophisticated civilisation known in the known universe.

The first novel in the series can be bought here

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009FIAMXS

The first Skidian Chronicle

Skid is an imaginative science fiction novel of considerable skill that pokes fun at all forms of political correctness, while also indicating there are dangerous signs of a disintegrating world that is not adequately taken care of. Readers will recognise these as parallels to life on earth. 

The plot addresses some serious themes, touching on issues as wide as the survival of any planet in the universe - from pollution, to the exploitation of natural resources - the pros and cons of collective versus individual action - organic versus synthetic food - survival with humour versus the alienating aspects of a form of political correctness. 

The use of humour makes the book work effectively - mainly through the reactions of the "offworlders", Bruce (from New Zealand) and Sue (from the USA). Both Bruce and Sue react in stereotypical ways as caricatures of the cultures they come from - the skilful and amusing portrayal of their characteristics allows readers to laugh at their own attitudes. 

Unlike many science fiction books, skid doesn't get bogged down in detail or stray so far from known worlds that you lose the plot. Aficionados of science fiction and anyone who enjoys a good read will enjoy this novel.

http://www.amazon.com/Skid-Chronicle-Skidian-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B009FIAMXS

Published at last

I have long been a frustrated author. Being a writer is something that I have always wanted to do. There is a literary bent in the family so I guess this isn't all that unusual.

If I was being honest with myself the reason that I have never really pursued writing as a career option is a lack of confidence and drive. The started  with being dissuaded from a potential career as a journalist by well a well meaning but in hindsight incompetent careers advisor at school. She suggested I start an apprenticeship as a typesetter instead. Continued with family and friends telling me that I needed a real job, rejection and my own lack of confidence.

This isn't to say that I haven't written, submitted work to publishers or even had a go at self publishing. When I might have given this a real go the realities of earning a living, mortgages and a need for some kind of financial security got in the way.

Latterly I have been interested in playing with helmet cams and writing or even thinking about it hasn't been high on my list of priorities.

Cue a life changing event, the end of a relationship that I thought was the real deal, a new relationship and the gift of a Kindle.

Among other things the Kindle reinvigorated my interest in reading. I have been at times a voracious reader and have often probably withdrawn from the real world and into the world of  print more often that I should have. Latterly I have become much more picky in my reading and loathe to spend money on books from authors that weren't on my personal safe list.

The Kindle has changed all this and while I still buy from mainstream authors there are huge numbers of free or very cheap tittles available that I have entertained myself with. As I have sampled the good, bad and barely readable I came to the realisation that my work is at least as good if not better than some of the titles I was reading and in many cases paying for.

Over the last several months I  have dusted off, reviewed and honed one of my masterpieces and in the last week or so published it on Amazon.

I know there are other platforms to use and maybe I will review them in time but Amazon is the industry standard for self publishing and once I had sorted out the formatting issues the process is painless.

So read the book if you have the time and interest and if you do keep an eye out for the sequel that i am busy polishing and updating.

Kindle version or Buy a hard copy version

Brrrp - now I need to check the bike out because I haven't ridden it in months.......