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Falling Up
The Flying Crooked Series - bringing back a sense of discovery and wonder to science fiction!After our human crew persuaded the far-advanced native Keps to allow human genomes to be spliced into native bacteria a new threat arrives. It’s not organic, it’s not on the planet, but it shreds planets. Alien AI have been offended…“The characters, action and drama on the mind-boggling planet our humans are stranded on makes it one of the most original sci-fi stories I've read in a long while.” Peter Wilhelmsen, fantasy writer.Chris Rimell, author of Untold “As always you do a lovely job of describing the worlds and filling them with colour and aromas.”Martin International clown. “Just as the Cabbage White’s flight is unpredictable, so the quirky beginnings in Geoff’s newest release. I’m looking forward to the continuation of the crooked flights of the series.”
142 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 11, 2019
About the author
Geoff Nelder
54 books81 followersGeoff Nelder has a wife, two grown-up kids, an increasing number of grandkids, and lives in rural England within an easy cycle ride of the Welsh mountains. He taught Geography and Information Technology for years until writing took over his life. Geoff is a competition short-fiction judge, and a freelance editor.
Publications include several non-fiction books on climate reflecting his other persona as a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society; over 50 published short stories in various magazines and anthologies; thriller, humour, science fiction, and fantasy novels.
2005: Humorous thriller Escaping Reality. Republished 2012.
2008: Award-winning science fiction mystery with hot-blooded heroine, Alien Exit, on Kindle
2010: Another thriller received an Award d’Or from an Arts Academy in the Netherlands. Its third edition will be published in 2012, Hot Air.
2012: ARIA Trilogy starting with Left Luggage an apocalypse and survival series.
An urban and historical magic realism fantasy, Vengeance Island is available on Kindle.
Flying Crooked sf series starting with Suppose We.
Chaos of Mokii an experimental sf on Kindle
Incremental - short stories of mainly sf and Kafkaesque.
Amazon Author page https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/autho...
Publications include several non-fiction books on climate reflecting his other persona as a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society; over 50 published short stories in various magazines and anthologies; thriller, humour, science fiction, and fantasy novels.
2005: Humorous thriller Escaping Reality. Republished 2012.
2008: Award-winning science fiction mystery with hot-blooded heroine, Alien Exit, on Kindle
2010: Another thriller received an Award d’Or from an Arts Academy in the Netherlands. Its third edition will be published in 2012, Hot Air.
2012: ARIA Trilogy starting with Left Luggage an apocalypse and survival series.
An urban and historical magic realism fantasy, Vengeance Island is available on Kindle.
Flying Crooked sf series starting with Suppose We.
Chaos of Mokii an experimental sf on Kindle
Incremental - short stories of mainly sf and Kafkaesque.
Amazon Author page https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/autho...
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
August 23, 2020
The follow up to ‘Suppose We’, ‘Falling Up’ is the second book in ‘The Flying Crooked’ series. In ‘Suppose We’, titled after the spaceship, four human colonists arrived in the Kepler system and landed on Kepler-20h to explore and assess its suitability for human colonisation. The crew consisted of a two-fisted American Commander named Penn, French science officer Gaston and two talented females, Delta and Em.
After certain adventures, they established contact and friendly relations with the native Keps, members of an ancient civilisation who look like oblong balloons but can pass straight through a human. Communicating with them was difficult and matters were complicated by developments with the Suppose We AI, CAN, which has grown more independent.
As ‘Falling Up’ begins, the humans are still exploring the planet and its wonders but there are several crises building. The Keps have allowed human genomes to be spliced onto their native bacteria, partly to help with a plague that almost wiped them out but Gaston isn’t sure that the combined human and Kep genomes won’t mutate into something dangerous.
Delta is very ill with some unknown medical condition. Worst of all, a race of alien AIs is attacking the Kep system in retaliation for the Keps stealing a giant sphere of gas from them. The Keps didn’t know it belonged to anyone but the AIs now think the Keps are a threat and so attack. Keps are pacifists and prefer not to fight if they can avoid it and definitely don’t want to kill any sentient species. They send Em out to negotiate with the invaders for the pleasing reason that humans can lie and cheat.
As in ‘Suppose We’, the story moves swiftly and there are plenty of technological marvels. Author Geoff Nelder is very much in the ‘sense of wonder’ school of Science Fiction and has the technical know-how to make his creations realistic.
He’s on a par with Arthur C. Clarke for coming up with amazing gadgets, I was reminded of ‘Rendezvous With Rama’, but probably better at portraying human frailty and stupidity in some cases, mostly with the men. He’s also up there with E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith when it comes to cosmic awe, shifting planets around and slicing up moons with gay abandon but in a more matter of fact fashion than Smith.
This is another good dose of old-fashioned Science Fiction with likeable characters and a positive outlook but updated with modern scientific knowledge. Most SF fans should enjoy it.
After certain adventures, they established contact and friendly relations with the native Keps, members of an ancient civilisation who look like oblong balloons but can pass straight through a human. Communicating with them was difficult and matters were complicated by developments with the Suppose We AI, CAN, which has grown more independent.
As ‘Falling Up’ begins, the humans are still exploring the planet and its wonders but there are several crises building. The Keps have allowed human genomes to be spliced onto their native bacteria, partly to help with a plague that almost wiped them out but Gaston isn’t sure that the combined human and Kep genomes won’t mutate into something dangerous.
Delta is very ill with some unknown medical condition. Worst of all, a race of alien AIs is attacking the Kep system in retaliation for the Keps stealing a giant sphere of gas from them. The Keps didn’t know it belonged to anyone but the AIs now think the Keps are a threat and so attack. Keps are pacifists and prefer not to fight if they can avoid it and definitely don’t want to kill any sentient species. They send Em out to negotiate with the invaders for the pleasing reason that humans can lie and cheat.
As in ‘Suppose We’, the story moves swiftly and there are plenty of technological marvels. Author Geoff Nelder is very much in the ‘sense of wonder’ school of Science Fiction and has the technical know-how to make his creations realistic.
He’s on a par with Arthur C. Clarke for coming up with amazing gadgets, I was reminded of ‘Rendezvous With Rama’, but probably better at portraying human frailty and stupidity in some cases, mostly with the men. He’s also up there with E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith when it comes to cosmic awe, shifting planets around and slicing up moons with gay abandon but in a more matter of fact fashion than Smith.
This is another good dose of old-fashioned Science Fiction with likeable characters and a positive outlook but updated with modern scientific knowledge. Most SF fans should enjoy it.
Displaying 1 of 1 review