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Incursion
Every Universe that can play out, has and currently is. Not everyone likes the Universe they were born in, even fewer dare to think they alone can change it for the better.
ebook
First published August 6, 2012
About the author
Ray Daley
150 books15 followersRay Daley was born in Coventry & still lives there. He served 6 yrs in the RAF as a clerk & spent most of his time in a Hobbit hole in High Wycombe.
He is a published poet & has been writing stories since he was 10. His current dream is to eventually finish the Hitch Hikers fanfic novel he's been writing since 1986.
He is a published poet & has been writing stories since he was 10. His current dream is to eventually finish the Hitch Hikers fanfic novel he's been writing since 1986.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 2, 2017
The short version first . . .
There are many different forms of fictional literature available to both readers and reviewers. It is at times a welcomed relief to get down and pick up a read that will take one less than an hour to “breeze” through, but when it comes to a review, these shorter reads take a longer time to mull and try to come to a reasonable sense of the intentions of the author as well as the information “take away” (what are you supposed to remember about the work just read). It is with those thoughts in my mind that I look at this juncture at the short fiction piece called Incursion by Ray Daley.
In one sense it appears that you are looking at a vignette of the whole as you read the work, almost as if you are looking through a telescope or a remote sensing system as you look at the goings-on in the story. Mr. Daley presents you with a picture of a classroom or perhaps even a small command center, although it feels more like the former. Individuals are taking readings and making estimates on the basis of the readings being taken about the possibility of an incursion into “friendly” areas from without. The classroom construct appears more plausible as Mr. Daley uses phrases like “class,” “tutor,” and “projects” within context that seems quite educational and almost like “on-the-job” training, with a certain degree of technicality to the devices being used and to the measurements and the manipulations of these measurements being made. An alternate universe may be inferred from the terms “thousand year Reich,” “almost immortal Führer,” and “time travel,” be they real or imaginary. They suggest that the setting is some rendition of Earth sometime after the middle of the 20th Century where Germany won World War II, plunging the resulting “reality” into the realms of the planned thousand year rule of Adolf Hitler. One may also infer that the subjugation of the masses has been accomplished by whatever means ruled the day, and it is apparent some of the means involved technologies which were being rapidly developed in the darker hours and days of World War II, more successfully in the Allied laboratories than those of the Axis, at least in the reality that we enjoy in the present universe in which we currently reside.
The fact that Mr. Daley’s work is relatively short in length increases the need for the use of inference and suggestion to help you, as the reader, apply your understanding to the work, rendering your own “understanding” for you to appreciate what you have read once you complete the work. In this case, Mr. Daley provides us with reasonable dialog, excellent clues as to place and time, and other deducible elements that allow us to see and understand more about the alternate reality he is describing. In that sense, Mr. Daley got his primary message across as you can read in the publisher’s blurb in the locations from which you purchase your books. Similar to the insides of dust jackets and other similar locations for synopses, you should expect there to be an alternate reality that has only some resemblance to the world as we know it. As Mr. Daley points out, this is a story set within an alternative reality. He has gone to lengths to ensure that we can understand that state of affairs with clearly evident contextual clues to let us know that World War II ended up the “the other side” winning. That is an alternate reality that we probably should rightly call an alternative nightmare, for all intents and purposes.
It is difficult to find “hard science” references to support some of the “extra” capabilities of things like the meters being used which are referenced as Geiger counters that are enhanced. Since Geiger counters measure ionizing radiation particles particularly beta, gamma, and some forms of X-rays, there would have to be extensive modifications to enable the devices to measure atypical radiation which may only exist in spacetime in its fourth dimensional orientation, measurement of which has never been considered nor discussed in a scientific way. Mr. Daley does address this issue with the use of special features noted in both his text as well as his Author’s Notes at the end of his work.
While I might have preferred a longer read with some development of the alternative reality aspect of things, this was a simple, easy read with admissions of use of alternative realities, expansions on typical radiation detection gear, and some aspects of time travel associated with those expansions. Beyond that, it is readable to most interested readers, and it is short story length – and a bit short in that aspect as well. Still Mr. Daley has done a fine job and a good job of filling in places where one might want to ask questions. His answers in his notes are to the points as noted. I started out with a granting of two stars for this work, but as I have worked on this review I believe that it deserves four for being specifically designed for a specific field of interest, clearly delineated and crafted in a succinct manner.
Review of Incursion by Ray Dakey by Richard Buro is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17315028-incursion.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at https://www.smashwords.com/about/contact.
There are many different forms of fictional literature available to both readers and reviewers. It is at times a welcomed relief to get down and pick up a read that will take one less than an hour to “breeze” through, but when it comes to a review, these shorter reads take a longer time to mull and try to come to a reasonable sense of the intentions of the author as well as the information “take away” (what are you supposed to remember about the work just read). It is with those thoughts in my mind that I look at this juncture at the short fiction piece called Incursion by Ray Daley.
In one sense it appears that you are looking at a vignette of the whole as you read the work, almost as if you are looking through a telescope or a remote sensing system as you look at the goings-on in the story. Mr. Daley presents you with a picture of a classroom or perhaps even a small command center, although it feels more like the former. Individuals are taking readings and making estimates on the basis of the readings being taken about the possibility of an incursion into “friendly” areas from without. The classroom construct appears more plausible as Mr. Daley uses phrases like “class,” “tutor,” and “projects” within context that seems quite educational and almost like “on-the-job” training, with a certain degree of technicality to the devices being used and to the measurements and the manipulations of these measurements being made. An alternate universe may be inferred from the terms “thousand year Reich,” “almost immortal Führer,” and “time travel,” be they real or imaginary. They suggest that the setting is some rendition of Earth sometime after the middle of the 20th Century where Germany won World War II, plunging the resulting “reality” into the realms of the planned thousand year rule of Adolf Hitler. One may also infer that the subjugation of the masses has been accomplished by whatever means ruled the day, and it is apparent some of the means involved technologies which were being rapidly developed in the darker hours and days of World War II, more successfully in the Allied laboratories than those of the Axis, at least in the reality that we enjoy in the present universe in which we currently reside.
The fact that Mr. Daley’s work is relatively short in length increases the need for the use of inference and suggestion to help you, as the reader, apply your understanding to the work, rendering your own “understanding” for you to appreciate what you have read once you complete the work. In this case, Mr. Daley provides us with reasonable dialog, excellent clues as to place and time, and other deducible elements that allow us to see and understand more about the alternate reality he is describing. In that sense, Mr. Daley got his primary message across as you can read in the publisher’s blurb in the locations from which you purchase your books. Similar to the insides of dust jackets and other similar locations for synopses, you should expect there to be an alternate reality that has only some resemblance to the world as we know it. As Mr. Daley points out, this is a story set within an alternative reality. He has gone to lengths to ensure that we can understand that state of affairs with clearly evident contextual clues to let us know that World War II ended up the “the other side” winning. That is an alternate reality that we probably should rightly call an alternative nightmare, for all intents and purposes.
It is difficult to find “hard science” references to support some of the “extra” capabilities of things like the meters being used which are referenced as Geiger counters that are enhanced. Since Geiger counters measure ionizing radiation particles particularly beta, gamma, and some forms of X-rays, there would have to be extensive modifications to enable the devices to measure atypical radiation which may only exist in spacetime in its fourth dimensional orientation, measurement of which has never been considered nor discussed in a scientific way. Mr. Daley does address this issue with the use of special features noted in both his text as well as his Author’s Notes at the end of his work.
While I might have preferred a longer read with some development of the alternative reality aspect of things, this was a simple, easy read with admissions of use of alternative realities, expansions on typical radiation detection gear, and some aspects of time travel associated with those expansions. Beyond that, it is readable to most interested readers, and it is short story length – and a bit short in that aspect as well. Still Mr. Daley has done a fine job and a good job of filling in places where one might want to ask questions. His answers in his notes are to the points as noted. I started out with a granting of two stars for this work, but as I have worked on this review I believe that it deserves four for being specifically designed for a specific field of interest, clearly delineated and crafted in a succinct manner.
Review of Incursion by Ray Dakey by Richard Buro is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17315028-incursion.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at https://www.smashwords.com/about/contact.
Displaying 1 of 1 review