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Ultra
Alternate Cover Edition: B00AO7E38Y
When a missing child is returned without her memory, only her abductor knows who she is – and who she isn’t.
Claire Halward disappeared as a child, last seen running up a hill before being struck by “something dark.”
Found in the same spot seven years later, her mother Karin is delighted to have her back. But the reunion doesn’t go well. Karin struggles to connect with Claire and Claire’s father Nick knows Claire is not Claire, despite accurate DNA tests.
Claire herself has no memory of these parents nor of the house they live in. She has no memory of herself. She remembers a twin sister she doesn’t have and dreams of her. Her body is covered with inexplicable scars and soon she begins to add to them.
Watching the disintegrating family is a man with silver-blue eyes. Unable to sleep, plagued with nightmares, struggling with the residual effects of machine-administered drugs, John Fox is the only man on Earth who knows the truth about Claire.
And then she runs away to find him.
When a missing child is returned without her memory, only her abductor knows who she is – and who she isn’t.
Claire Halward disappeared as a child, last seen running up a hill before being struck by “something dark.”
Found in the same spot seven years later, her mother Karin is delighted to have her back. But the reunion doesn’t go well. Karin struggles to connect with Claire and Claire’s father Nick knows Claire is not Claire, despite accurate DNA tests.
Claire herself has no memory of these parents nor of the house they live in. She has no memory of herself. She remembers a twin sister she doesn’t have and dreams of her. Her body is covered with inexplicable scars and soon she begins to add to them.
Watching the disintegrating family is a man with silver-blue eyes. Unable to sleep, plagued with nightmares, struggling with the residual effects of machine-administered drugs, John Fox is the only man on Earth who knows the truth about Claire.
And then she runs away to find him.
336 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 1, 2012
3 people want to read
About the author
Susannah J. Bell
25 books28 followersSusannah J. Bell is a writer of science fiction and other strange and surreal works. She was born in London but grew up in South Africa, escaping when she was twenty to be a writer. Not able to find much success in London, she dreamed of living in other parts of the world: the Scottish Highlands, New York, Mars, but never got much further than travel guides. Nowadays, she would like to live in a tower in a forest and dreams of travelling to the fantastical worlds of her imagination. Her writing has taken her from the familiar landscapes of Mars and Io and Titan, to worlds far beyond ours, even to the edge of the galaxy. She has explored other dimensions, realms, and space beyond. Within her writing, she explores different styles, voices and concepts, always returning to the theme that fascinates her the most: immortality. She has published several series such as The Fleet Quintet and The Exodus Sequence, and is working on a new series of novels, as well as a large literary work, more Exodus Sequence stories, and biographical short stories. She hopes one day to complete the fifth Fleet novel. She loves the sound of falling water, is passionate about trees, and is happiest when writing. She still lives in London.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 15, 2016
*** I've just relaunched this book, previously titled ULTRA, but all the notes below are still relevant.
The five stars for my own novel are for the amount of work that went into it rather than the brilliance factor. And a lot of work went into it – it spent at least fifteen years in development.
ULTRA began as a short story in the late nineties and was extremely strange, even for me. It was about a girl in a mental institution who, I seem to recall, wandered about in pyjamas with daisies on them. The title had rabbits in it. It was brutally violent and sexually sick. There was also an alien abduction thing going too, though how this fit in is beyond me. As a short story, it’s best forgotten.
In my first attempt at writing a screenplay, I adapted the short story into something that was as far removed from the original idea as possible. It was very much an X-Files derivative and quite terrible. It was disappointing to discover that I had not talent at all in screenwriting. It was a spectacular failure. I had wanted to call it The Collector but John Fowles had already come up with that one, so settled on The Collected – a lot less catchy.
In 2010, shattered with exhaustion after a huge rewrite of my novel Commences, I decided to write a novel that I hoped would have a broader appeal. I struggled with the title, even spending hours in Waterstones perusing the new titles table to get ideas. I finally worked out that titles have nothing to do with content and came up with The Pink Tulip Tree. Could anything sound less like a tale of alien abduction than a flowery romance? But it was an easy novel to write after the blood-from-stone that was Commences. All the preparation had already been done when I had worked so painstakingly on the screenplay. My only stipulation was that every chapter had to be only five (Word) pages long, which, for me, is really short. In this way, I could get plenty of punch into every chapter and also meant I wouldn’t get bored – I was, after all, running on empty after Commences.
When I was done, I decided the title was stupid. I was kidding myself when I told myself it wasn’t a sci-fi novel. So I picked one word out of it and ULTRA was born.
It’s not conventionally sci-fi. It’s not conventionally anything. It’s modern, set on this planet (I rarely do that) and has four central characters: the parents of a child that went missing when she was six or so, the child herself, now about eleven, and the man who may be her abductor. With unseen aliens, a vast, hidden conspiracy about the universe and its parallels, and you’ve got ULTRA. The Big Reveal delighted some readers. The rest didn’t comment.
ULTRA has received several five star reviews on Amazon and very pleasing reviews.
You can read about it on my blog:
https://alterspacefleet.wordpress.com...
The five stars for my own novel are for the amount of work that went into it rather than the brilliance factor. And a lot of work went into it – it spent at least fifteen years in development.
ULTRA began as a short story in the late nineties and was extremely strange, even for me. It was about a girl in a mental institution who, I seem to recall, wandered about in pyjamas with daisies on them. The title had rabbits in it. It was brutally violent and sexually sick. There was also an alien abduction thing going too, though how this fit in is beyond me. As a short story, it’s best forgotten.
In my first attempt at writing a screenplay, I adapted the short story into something that was as far removed from the original idea as possible. It was very much an X-Files derivative and quite terrible. It was disappointing to discover that I had not talent at all in screenwriting. It was a spectacular failure. I had wanted to call it The Collector but John Fowles had already come up with that one, so settled on The Collected – a lot less catchy.
In 2010, shattered with exhaustion after a huge rewrite of my novel Commences, I decided to write a novel that I hoped would have a broader appeal. I struggled with the title, even spending hours in Waterstones perusing the new titles table to get ideas. I finally worked out that titles have nothing to do with content and came up with The Pink Tulip Tree. Could anything sound less like a tale of alien abduction than a flowery romance? But it was an easy novel to write after the blood-from-stone that was Commences. All the preparation had already been done when I had worked so painstakingly on the screenplay. My only stipulation was that every chapter had to be only five (Word) pages long, which, for me, is really short. In this way, I could get plenty of punch into every chapter and also meant I wouldn’t get bored – I was, after all, running on empty after Commences.
When I was done, I decided the title was stupid. I was kidding myself when I told myself it wasn’t a sci-fi novel. So I picked one word out of it and ULTRA was born.
It’s not conventionally sci-fi. It’s not conventionally anything. It’s modern, set on this planet (I rarely do that) and has four central characters: the parents of a child that went missing when she was six or so, the child herself, now about eleven, and the man who may be her abductor. With unseen aliens, a vast, hidden conspiracy about the universe and its parallels, and you’ve got ULTRA. The Big Reveal delighted some readers. The rest didn’t comment.
ULTRA has received several five star reviews on Amazon and very pleasing reviews.
You can read about it on my blog:
https://alterspacefleet.wordpress.com...
September 12, 2016
Previously titled ULTRA, this novel has struggled not only with its title, but also its genre! It has also been through several formats: starting with a short story and ending with a screenplay. But finally the story found its way into a novel.
After the ludicrously awful short story and the truly terrible screenplay, I was amazed to find that writing the novel was fantastically easy, particularly since I was burnt out from rewriting another novel, the immensely difficult COMMENCES (still to be published). I really wanted to write a novel with a broader appeal and because I had already worked so painstakingly on screenplay’s pre-writing, everything was already prepared. I opened the blank screen, found the novel’s voice and was away. I wish all my writing could be like that, less blood-from-stone and more breezy ease! I restricted myself to five pages per chapter which, for me, is really short. This was so that I could get plenty of punch into every chapter. It also meant that as a writer I wouldn’t get bored.
It wasn’t meant to be science fiction and for the most part it isn’t. But as one of my clever reviewers pointed out, there is a feeling throughout the novel that something huge is behind the story, something that is never quite revealed, only alluded to in the twist at the end. This is exactly how the story was written: there IS a huge back story. There ARE fantastical events taking place that are barely touched on. These events are beyond Earth, beyond this universe, even, though not unreachable in distance, just understanding. I particularly love this style of writing, though I don’t do it consciously. In all my novels, no matter how grandiose the subject, I like to zone in on the tiny details, the minutiae of people’s lives, against a backdrop of vast events that pass by generally unnoticed.
This is very much how I feel about this planet: we live our tiny lives, we do the best we can. We hate the wars and the misery and suffering. We wish it was better. We wish we were somewhere else. But “somewhere else” is a story that is so vast and incomprehensible that we can’t even begin to guess what it is. And thus science fiction is born. And fantasy. And every other creative art.
A Doorway into Ultra is a doorway into that “somewhere else” – that vast, indescribable, incomprehensible place, one that everyone has been trying to get to for years. And not just us. Everyone else too. That is the theme of this novel: what lies beyond immortality?
After the ludicrously awful short story and the truly terrible screenplay, I was amazed to find that writing the novel was fantastically easy, particularly since I was burnt out from rewriting another novel, the immensely difficult COMMENCES (still to be published). I really wanted to write a novel with a broader appeal and because I had already worked so painstakingly on screenplay’s pre-writing, everything was already prepared. I opened the blank screen, found the novel’s voice and was away. I wish all my writing could be like that, less blood-from-stone and more breezy ease! I restricted myself to five pages per chapter which, for me, is really short. This was so that I could get plenty of punch into every chapter. It also meant that as a writer I wouldn’t get bored.
It wasn’t meant to be science fiction and for the most part it isn’t. But as one of my clever reviewers pointed out, there is a feeling throughout the novel that something huge is behind the story, something that is never quite revealed, only alluded to in the twist at the end. This is exactly how the story was written: there IS a huge back story. There ARE fantastical events taking place that are barely touched on. These events are beyond Earth, beyond this universe, even, though not unreachable in distance, just understanding. I particularly love this style of writing, though I don’t do it consciously. In all my novels, no matter how grandiose the subject, I like to zone in on the tiny details, the minutiae of people’s lives, against a backdrop of vast events that pass by generally unnoticed.
This is very much how I feel about this planet: we live our tiny lives, we do the best we can. We hate the wars and the misery and suffering. We wish it was better. We wish we were somewhere else. But “somewhere else” is a story that is so vast and incomprehensible that we can’t even begin to guess what it is. And thus science fiction is born. And fantasy. And every other creative art.
A Doorway into Ultra is a doorway into that “somewhere else” – that vast, indescribable, incomprehensible place, one that everyone has been trying to get to for years. And not just us. Everyone else too. That is the theme of this novel: what lies beyond immortality?
July 18, 2017
Claire was taken as a small child and returned seven years later. With no memory. Even though DNA tests confirm her parentage her father knows she isn’t his true daughter and her mother has great difficulty relating to her. Knowing she doesn’t belong with them, feeling she belongs with a man she has glimpsed only fleetingly, Claire runs away to find him. The plot thickens when, on spotting this man’s double, unlike the now familiar original one, he shows no recognition of her. What is the connection between that fact and the powerful feeling of having a twin? This is a fascinating scenario with an intriguing plot, beautifully penned and well worth reading.
I was led from fear of just another alien abduction story, through a number of alternative explanations and… Well, no spoilers other than, it had a good twist.
I was led from fear of just another alien abduction story, through a number of alternative explanations and… Well, no spoilers other than, it had a good twist.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews