Retrocause

by A. Scott Howe

Retrocause

Justin Williams fell in love with a legendary girl in a photograph. Unfortunately, the photograph was from 80 years ago. When the elderly woman abruptly appears and they are stranded on a derelict spaceship, Justin must choose between critical decisions that will literally split the universe.

395 pages, Hardcover

Published January 4, 2024

About the author

A. Scott Howe is a licensed architect and retired robotics engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He earned PhDs in industrial and manufacturing systems engineering from Hong Kong University and in architecture from University of Michigan. Dr. Howe spent 10 years of practice in Tokyo, Japan, and taught for 6 years at Hong Kong University. He functioned as Design Integration lead for the NASA Advanced Exploration Systems (AES) Deep Space Habitat team, and was the original designer of the Habitat Demonstration Unit (HDU) at Johnson Space Center, which has been renamed the Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA) doing mini missions with multi-week crews. Dr. Howe worked as a member of the JPL All-Terrain Hex-Limbed Extra-Terrestrial Explorer (ATHLETE) robotic mobility system development team.

Dr. Howe is an avid scuba diver, backpacker, amateur radio operator extra (N3ASH), 4-wheeler, and outdoor enthusiast. He is the author of over a hundred technical papers covering topics of space habitation, robotics, and architecture, and has been co-editor for technical books (as listed on this page). Technical papers can be viewed on the spacearchitecture-dot-org website, under "publications".

Dr. Howe has been writing science fiction as a hobby for over thirty years, culminating in a series called "One Eternal Round", which is written as a possible distant future fictional history based on his experience in the NASA community. the series (so far) includes:

Near future:
Book 1: Theoloop (2021)
Book 2: Chronosphere (2014)
Book 3: Replicycle/Retrocause (2022)

Far future:
Book 4: Waterball (2012)
Book 5: Blister (2013)