Connection

by Ken Pence

Robert Kobe is an entrepreneur but the first (accidental) interstellar flight far exceeds his expectations. -Their first contact is our first contact.-Now Robert is the alien on a planet of aliens.-Unable to speak a word of the language.-No money – no contacts – no ship – no food - but lots of technical expertise....A hunted criminal to destroy a civilization...he made a choice.-Kills hundreds to make a point...is he justified?-Forces a Trade agreement...by himself with a planet - justified?-Faces legal troubles at home.-Faces violence from other corporations.-Must kill to escape - justified?-Steals to finance his goals - justified?-Builds a space fleet to defy the Earth military - respects no Earth government.-Reinforces an interstellar reputation.-Saves an allied, alien military.-Experiments with tech from other dimensions. -A fun read Space opera with interesting tech.AMAZON REVIEWER "Wow! Well Done. Just finished Ken Pence ‘Connections’ and like his other stories found it fast-paced and an easy read without a lot of fluff and feathers. The characters are interesting and the story makes you care what happens to them. No spoiler here, but I did like the twist as I never saw it coming. Overall, this is a great adventure story, fast-moving with interesting tech about man’s first venture into deep space. There is also the question of what might happen when we meet aliens, some more interesting than others on a more intimate level. As an aside, not being any sort of an editor myself, I skipped over the errors I found and concentrated on the storytelling. Ken Pence did another excellent job of portraying men, good and bad, and how greed can motivate them to do their worst. Lastly, this is a story well worth reading." Rob BuckmanCan be read as a standalone but the Trade World series gives richer context. All Trade World books are tied. - Enjoy

402 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 12, 2015

About the author

Ken R Pence, Ph.D. is a professor of engineering at Vanderbilt University. He is a retired captain from the Metro Nashville Police Department where he served 31 years (16 on SWAT) and has taught police and military in the US and Europe (England, Germany, France, and Northern Ireland) in confrontation management skills. He has researched sniper shot location for DARPA, acoustic sensors to protect African elephant herds and inexpensive magnetic levitation. He lives in Nashville with his wife and his large - drooling - black lab (Drools Verne).

ken.pence@vanderbilt.edu

Reviews

[Shane · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two and a half stars. This is a pretty good story trying to fight its way out of an editing nightmare. The book starts out with many errors with misused and missing words. There is also a big chunk of text that repeats itself. The later chapters have cleaner writing as far as missing and misused words but it losses cohesiveness and the structure of the story itself. The characters are good, but the story after a good start begins to wander aimlessly and then skip dimensions. I really wanted to like this, but it ended up in such an odd place that it felt like an "and then I woke up" ending.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good!

[Marty Taft · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good, solid escapism SF

Well-written and easy reading story. I am a sucker for the little guy who makes it big through heads up thinking and rises to vast command. Lots of interesting character development, lots of interesting technology that makes you think about the physics involved. Ken Pence is one smart cookie and tells a great story.

[Steven Dawson · Rating 5 out of 5]

love the trade world universe!

Keep em coming Ken. Cool characters and tech. Twisted timelines and universes. I want one of those ships! Lots of fun!

[JF Ecklund · Rating 5 out of 5]

Waiting impatiently for more!

[Sean Randall · Rating 1 out of 5]

Potential, but an utter and unashamed waste of £2.10. It started out well enough, even if we do have to overlook a computer suddenly gaining magical levels of intelligence. Also, given that there's a typo in the description I wasn't expecting perfection. But the whole book came to a shattering mess when the extra dimensions were introduced. It reads as if the author just got utterly bored and started tossing in anything from his rather limited imagination to try and spice up, or perhaps prop up is a better descriptor, a sagging, bloated tale which sounds as if it might have glimmerings of possibility but actually reads like it was penned by a twelve-year-old with only a vague understanding of plot and story structure.

And then when you get through the increasingly implausible rubbish to the end, he writes: "Thank you – typos and narrative changes are rampant – yep – thank you for reading anyway." SO it's not even as if he's unaware of the claptrap he's spouting (we skip from first to third person with alarming regularity and the typos are like the body count in a zombie movie) and he's still selling this stuff! A total waste of money, and he even has the bad taste to bring in the name of one of his friends at the end, who of course has given a glowing review of this book on his Amazon page. Well, I won't be checking out his friend's books for a while because of the crimes to the English language and good narrative sense thrown at me by Mr Pence. I'm all for a free market and support self-publishing to the hilt, but the ball was seriously dropped on this one.