Dear Pik: Letters From a Stellar Explorer

by John Missall

Gifted Photomass Engineer Asgar Kazmian needs to get away. After the loss of his wife and young son in an earthquake, the home planet no longer feels like home. Packing a few mementoes in a travel bag, he emigrates to space, hoping to build a new life among the hundreds of millions of people who are spreading across the galaxy. What he doesn’t know is that someone has her eye on him. There’s been an unexplained death on the research and rescue vessel Watson, and Asgar might be one of the few people capable of solving the mystery. Enticed to join Watson’s crew, he soon finds himself facing more than technical problems. In a series of letters to a badly injured child on Earth, he tells of desperate rescues, exciting new worlds, and confrontations with murderers and rogue scientists. All this while learning to navigate a new culture that has evolved to exist in an environment that is both deadly and unforgiving. In the process, he must confront his own responsibility for the death of his family and discover the true meaning of life and of right and wrong.John Missall is a two-time award-winning writer of historical fiction, biographies, and non-fiction history who has decided to turn his literary attentions to the future, building upon lessons learned from the past.

279 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 11, 2020