When a disgraced scientist, Wilker, discovers the stars are disappearing, he sets out to find an explanation. An answer comes in form of Jahum, an alien who tells him that Earth will be destroyed by invaders. But when Wilker learns that Jahum is only going to save his wife, it's up to Wilker to fight to save himself and the rest who are left behind.
An novella based In A Universe Without Stars and from the novel Skyeater.
J Alex McCarthy is a writer of everything science, fantasy, and magical. Born and raised in Texas, he moved to Los Angeles to pursue a dream of directing and screen writing. But during a down month in his aspiring career, he decided to write a novel and found a love in the format and novels in general. Follow him on his website here: http://jalexmccarthy.com/
This short story started off very strong. The main character is an astrophysicist whose colleagues consider untrustworthy due to a past problem that is alluded to but never specified. His wife is the head of SETI and well-regarded, but she is dying (cancer?). The stars are slowly disappearing from the sky. It seemed like it was going to be a moody, introspective soft (in a good way) science fiction story.
Then an alien shows up, tells them other aliens are coming to kill everyone, and, to put it bluntly, all hell breaks loose. Beginning at page 26 the story went downhill badly. The latter portion of it felt rushed, and was in desperate need of proofreading. Based on this sample, I'm not at all interested in reading the author's "first debut novel" that is to follow.
This started out with a great premises, the stars are disappearing and the scientist who has the proof is somewhat discredited. Hits wife is also a scientist and is dying. they meet am alien who can save her. that's where I felt like it fell apart. I didn't understand the ending, it alluded to a novel, the start of which is included with the kindle version, but the novella left me wanting and the novel part didn't such me in. oh well. it was free.