Mars reborn

Moon People #2

by Dale M. Courtney

"This Book is based on Earth into a new era of light speed travel thanks to the Powleens from a world called Sybon. And the adventure of 1st Science Officer Commander David Braymer’s journey on board his new ship called the Aurora, ”The Goddess of the Dawn”, Commander Braymer does a successful genesis and Colonization of Mars and resurrects Martians and animals that were frozen 100,000 years with mental powers.
With also the war between worlds for control of the Galaxy with Earth and Powleens against the Arcons and the Thracians. I hope you enjoy it.

Sincerely
Dale M. Courtney"

102 pages, Paperback

First published January 21, 2009

Reviews

[Marc *Dark Reader with a Thousand Young! Iä!* · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have not read the first Moon People because only parts two and three are available on Kindle Unlimited at the moment, which, you know, rude. This is fine. It's truly unnecessary to read the first part first.

Where to start? Is it worth pointing out the countless elementary errors, which include to/too/two, their/there, were/where, quit/quite, diner for dinner and dinning for dining, descent for decent, devise for device, petal for pedal, separating words when they should be together and merging words when they should be separate AND misspelling them at the same time (along for a long, a head for ahead, breath taking, in tacked [at least twice], grave sight), "Ginny pig" for guinea pig, however the hell it is that you end up with "the size of two-foot ball fields", and the absolute best, Lean Rhymes for LeAnn Rimes? No, it is not.

Is it worth discussing how the entire book is a single paragraph? There are five chapters, but this is probably only because the author remembered hearing at some point that books were supposed to contain chapters, and randomly slotted them in. It's not as if the chapters actually separate the story into different pieces. The start of each chapter is an immediate continuation of the previous sentence.

Or, the utterly ridiculous lack of acceptable punctuation for dialogue? This is how conversations are written:

David said that’s unbelievable. This is all so incredible. It sure is Admiral Benson said, and you did it all. By the way Captain you are now a Commander. David’s jaw dropped and said, I don’t know what to say sir. Thank you sir. Then the Admiral said, no thank you Commander Braymer. Then the Admiral smiled and said you really did earn this. I don’t give anything away. You should be proud Commander. I know I am. David smiled and said thanks again sir. You know I am very proud but not of me but for all of us. I couldn’t have done it without all of everyone’s help sir. Commander the Powleens are proud to be apart of your Mars genesis. I just wanted you to know that you are a famous Man on our planet now. David started laughing and said that’s really cool.

At least the use of parentheses as in (character name) to indicate the speaker is mostly restricted to the computer voice interface, unlike the original print editions of this trilogy. This is the main difference between the books as first published and the "revised" kindle versions. Imagine revising your book, and this travesty being the result.

How about the unvarying, droning cadence? Or, I could talk about how every character acts and talks like a happy moron all of the time. Wow. That's awesome. That's incredible. That's is so incredible (actual quote). Everything is "fantastic" and "amazement" and "awe" and more "awe".

No, I think I'll start with the romance.

On the way to the bridge, he seen Lieutenant Courtney. He gave her a big smile and said, how are you feeling this morning after that party. Lieutenant Courtney gave back a sexiest smile and said forgive me Captain, I have a little bit of a hangover. David said here try some of this coffee. Oh if you don’t mind I believe I will. Lieutenant Courtney replied. Mmm that is good, she took one more drink, Mmm thank you I sure needed that. You like your coffee like I like mine said Heather. You know I had a pretty fun time last night. I believe I had a little too much to drink though and I’m paying for it now. But it was sure fun when I gave you that kiss. David turned a little red, smiled and said you know I really liked that part a lot too.

Yes, the author made a character with his own last name as a love interest for his self-insert main character. Just in case there is any doubt that David Braymer, whose work has the best outcomes and is gushingly praised by the entire Earth military, the President, and multiple alien species, is a direct stand-in for the author, consider these additional details. From the book:

What kind of movie do you like Heather? I bet you like Pirate movies. Well your right there Heather replied, but I’m kind of partial to the old movie Jaws. Do you like Jaws? David answered yes I do. I also like comedies. I like science fiction and horror, I love space movies. You know what else I like a lot Heather? What? I like the movie Jaws. David and Heather started laughing and kissed again. David said computer will you put on the movie Jaws please. Affirmative. The T.V. monitor came on and so did the movie Jaws. David looked at Heather and said “Its show time”.

From the author's biography:

The first book that I really enjoyed in Korea was Jaws. I remember the two things I really wanted to do when I got back to the U S of A was to watch the movie Jaws. It had just came out about 6 months prier to me coming home. Also wanted to eat a quarter ponder with cheese with everything on it at McDonalds. Well I got to do both of them.

There goes my theory that the author has never seen a book before.
Also from the book:

Well I'm an Astrologer also . . . I'm a Libra and we are very compatible.

Guess what pseudoscience the author also includes in his biography? Anyway, of course David Braymer is the author, he's the only guy in the book who gets laid.

Heather came out of the bathroom and she was in the buff. Man she was a knock out. Then David said, wow you are so hot. Are you an Aquarius? Heather replied yes, how did you know that? . . . Then Heather said, you know smart men really turn me on. She came over to David and then started kissing him and then they made love for about 1 hour.

Whew, a whole hour! It's important here to remember that this is the future and society is different than in 2008.

That’s the way things pretty much was after the sexual revolution in 2034. When the courts no longer recognized sex as a binding force in a marriage. Men and women no longer felt hooked when they had sex to one another unless there was pregnancy. But that didn’t happen much anymore because of break through’s in birth control. Sex was like sharing a super moment that they will remember for a long time. In another words sex did not bind you into marriage or a relationship except for a friendship unless you had children. Most of the time they gave equal joint custody for the children in a divorce. In these times sex was just like cementing a new friendship. Everyone just felt it was better this way. That way there was no binding agreements where nobody gets hurt in the end. Violence in marriage and divorce when way down. Since they cured all of the sexually transmitted diseases with DNA research back in 2030. Sex was also very safe now. Although they still had a lot of weddings, but not as many anymore. Everyone just lived together until they didn’t want to anymore. Heather and David made love some more.

But romance isn't only for David. Another young buck aboard the space thingee has some potential action developing.

Lieutenant Parsons was walking with Lieutenant Fisher and Lieutenant Charles Courtney was flirting with them as they were arriving. Lieutenant Courtney was trying to set up a date with Lieutenant Fisher on the observatory. Lieutenant Fisher was laughing and she was saying, I know what you want me up there for so you can make your move, ha ha. Lieutenant Courtney looked at her with a funny look on his face and said that’s right how did you know? It’s just that you are so sexy. I just can’t help myself. Then Lieutenant Fisher said, well Lieutenant Courtney we all must maintain control. Lieutenant Courtney looked a little depressed or maybe it was the look of failure and then he said yes I guess so. Then Lieutenant Fisher started laughing and said, you didn’t say what time you wanted to meet me there. Lieutenant Courtney perked up with an anxious look on his face and said, how about 2100 later on.

Why yes, the author does have a real-life son named Charles Courtney, making this Lieutenant Charles Courtney a son-insert character. His flirting doesn't go quite as well as Braymer's, though.

Then Lieutenant Fisher said, I don’t know about that. You see we’ve talked to your sister. She tells us all kind of stuff about you. Both Lieutenant Fisher and Lieutenant Parsons gave Lieutenant Courtney a very funny look. Then Lieutenant Courtney said, now wait a minute she lies a lot about me to get even because I use to pull practical jokes on her a lot when we were little. I know I shouldn’t have done some of the stuff I did but I was little too you know. I didn’t know what I was doing. Why what did she say about me? Lieutenant Fisher was kind of blushing and smiling at the same time and said a long “Well” she told us how when you were little. She accidentally walked in on you when you were in the shower. Then Lieutenant Fisher started giggling. She then said you were doing some funny stuff in the shower, can you tell us what she meant by funny stuff. Both girls started laughing out loud and so did Captain Braymer.

So... the author makes a character who is an insert for his son, then tells a story about said son's sister walking in on him masturbating in the shower? Got it. It gets worse. See, I didn't realize until the following chapter that there were two separate Lieutenant Courtneys introduced. One is Heather, who the main character is getting it on with, and the other is the author's son. It turns out that the two Courtney characters are brother and sister. This means that the author's self-insert is banging his son-insert's sister, which yikes, yuck, eww and that's enough of that, next topic!

Let's talk about animals! Thanks to the main character's sciencing, Mars is restored, and Martians are recovered along with hundreds of species of alien animals. That sounds amazing! I can't wait to hear what some of those alien animals look like!

It was like a cross between a horse and a Giraffe.

That's . . . just a giraffe, that's what giraffes are already like. Have you got anything else?

Then suddenly a little animal came close to the expedition looking for food and it was really cute. It looked like a relative of a Deer. But it had twice the color as our deer. We only have seen one though. That seemed to worry everyone because it was so beautiful and cute. Then Captain Braymer said don’t worry we should be able to cross breed it with some of our Deer. We can also clone this animal to keep this breed pure and just change the sex with DNA gene structuring. Then everyone smiled and said way to go Captain.

"But it had twice the color as our deer." WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN??? Fine, third time's a charm:

David couldn’t believe how different the animals were from Earth. Some of them were really neat looking.

Thus ends any description of hundreds of new species. Fuck you, David.

Let's talk about science! Because science fiction, space, the future, alien technology, all of it, right?

Their O-zone was three times the strength that Earth’s was.

You *do* know that ozone is not actually a zone, yeah?

Then one day everyone was watching the Suns erratic behavior with multiple solar flares then all of a sudden their Sun started to flicker in and out three times and then went super nova and exploded and sent the planet Aston launching into space at the speed of 20 million times the speed of light, like a shooting star.

I, hmm, I don't think a super nova would propel a planet in that way, rather than simply incinerating it, would it?

Suddenly Aston slams into this planet and welds itself for a short time to the other planet and then because the planet rotating and because of centrifugal force, Aston recoiled and bounced from the impact causing both planets to break apart and bounce off the planet and then Aston gets caught up in it’s gravitational field of the planet it hit and becomes it’s only moon.

Uhhh . . . next science topic? First Science Officer Captain David Braymer is leading the effort to heat up Mars's core to melt an ice cavity and restore water and oxygen to the surface, also increase the planet's rotational speed and magnetic field strength. They will do this by shooting a microwave beam at the planet's core. By the time it gets there, the microwave beam's power level will be about 20,000 watts. My home microwave's power is 1,000 watts so I'm not sure how well this will work, but I'm not a future space scientist, so . . .

On the bridge of the Lunar Base 1 Admiral Benson is in command. Let’s put Mars on the main view screen Lieutenant Parsons, ordered Admiral Benson. Lieutenant Fisher are we ready to implement the microwave beam yet? Lieutenant Fisher answered, we are just about ready sir. Captain Braymer said to the Lieutenant, have you aligned the beam to the co ordinance of 45N32’17” and 85W22’46” asked Lieutenant Fisher? Yes ma’am, Captain Braymer replied. Lieutenant Fisher we are go for microwave beam as soon as we go over a few small details. Then Admiral Benson asked, Captain Braymer when we begin how exactly do you wish me to proceed from here? Would you brief me one more time? What I mean by that is do you want me to gap the intervals every ten seconds or five or what? I know you have everything ready. Captain Braymer answered well sir, I would like to try it like this. We hit the core with the beam for three seconds and then I will monitor the cores temperature and oxygen levels and its magnetic field and also rotation speed and check with Mars base and we will go from there

and it's all very thrilling, I'm sure. Let's jump ahead a bit to check on the outcome:

Then the Admiral said well Captain how are we looking on Mars. Sir, I thought you would never ask. Are you ready for this sir? The Admiral smiled and said sure. Here goes the Captain said, at 0400 this very morning we’ve spotted over 100 new life forms on the planets surface. Also Mars is starting to clear up at a very rapid rate sir. The Admiral just looked at the Captain with a stunned look on his face. Then he said a real long whaaat.

Anyway, they save the remaining Martian race and Mars is habitable again.

The way everyone was looking at it was that Mars was like salvage rights, if it wasn’t for us doing the genesis they may not have ever have been brought back to life again or maybe not for another million years, who knows. Everyone felt that Mars was not only the property of the Martians first but we all felt that Mars was ours too.

So fuck you, Martians! The end.

The second star in my rating is for the unintentional hilarity, and the general positivity on display.

Merged review:

My full review of the text is here. There is still more to unpack about this book and series and author, and the Goodreads review character limit forces me to add this under another edition. This is still a review of Moon People 2, focusing on different aspects than my other. It bears noting that there are likely minor differences between the print and e-book versions of Moon People 2; there certainly are for the first Moon People, as determined from other print and podcast reviews of that first part of this trilogy. For one, the print version made extensive use of parentheses to indicate speakers in dialogue, in such a manner as follows (not taken from the book, but a fair illustration):

(Joe) hey did everyone see that? (Tracy) yeah. Computer, play recording (Computer) Affirmative.

The revised version might read:

Joe said hey did everyone see that? Tracy said yeah. Computer, play recording. (Computer) Affirmative.

It's important to understand that the e-book is the improved version per the author. Given the chance to make edits, this is the final result.

The front and back matter of the book is as fascinating as the story proper. Or course we have the book's description or cover matter available on the sites that sell it. What I discuss here is all actual internal book content, whether it should appear there or not.

Here is a defacto table of contents for the e-book:

1. "Introduction Moon People 2" - in which the entire book's events are described in detail, in an exhaustive self-spoiler. Here is the first sentence:

This story is about the space Adventures of First Science Officer Captain David Braymer and his transition from the Lunar Base 1 base station, to his new home the Powleen traded us called the Aurora moon ship also known as the "Goddess of Dawn" it resembles a Moon and is 10 kilometers in diameter with light speed capability.

One sentence, ladies and germs. I find it fascinating because an Admiral spends 80% of the book debating over which ship he will take, and then the crew has to decide on a name for it. Surprise, it's the one that resembles a moon and they name it "the Aurora" which also means "Goddess of Dawn." Oh, the suspense. You can read this section in the book's preview on Amazon if you really want to know the story without putting any time or money into it.

2. Chapters 1 through 5 - just in case you skipped the introduction but still want to know what happens.

3. An untitled section with a short author biography followed by a short book synopsis without spoilers.

4. "Authors Cover Biography Short version of 100 words max" - in which a very slightly altered version of the author biography from less than one page ago appears. Instead of writing decades as "the early seventies and eighties," this second bio uses "the early seventy and eighty's."

5. "Authors Dedication 100 words max" Yes, the recommended word limits are included in these section headings. The dedication to the author's children is one of love, and is consistent across the trilogy.

6. "Author Biography 2000 words max" because the last two author biographies were just too short. This is a welcome inclusion, because this is where a lot of information helpful to understanding the man behind the Moon People Trilogy can be found. I will circle back to quotes from this section shortly.

7. "Books Summary 100 words max" Another concise book summary but still with a lot of spoilers, at least placed at the end of the book this time.

8. "Book Description - Moon People 2" - similar to the introduction in that it fully reveals every major plot point from the book. They share the same first couple of sentences, but the rest is completely re-written. So, the book contains not one, but two different complete plot summarizations. I suppose this is helpful when one completely zones out while attempting to read the actual book, which is a likely outcome.

In summary, the book includes one short spoiler-free synopsis, one short and two long spoiler-filled synopses, and one long and two short author biographies. These are in addition to multiple versions of the author's biography in different places, such as the current one on Amazon, in which I will emphasize some parts,

[Neil · Rating 5 out of 5]

When Dale M. Courtney burst onto the Science Fiction scene with Moon People he reshaped our literary preceptions with a rebellious and avant garde prose. He did for modern fiction what Impressionism did for late 19th century painting. It is with this in mind that one embarks on Moon People 2 with high expectations and a desire to be amazed.

Moon People 2 is delivered with the same broad brush strokes as the first. The setting and events are presented to the reader in approximately precise terms. No other author is able to make 'perhaps' sound so definite. For example, we are shown a hangar door that "was 17 feet down and approximately 30 meters long". It is by using these clearly vague terms that Mr. Courtney expresses his trust in his readers; his confidence that you will understand the point without worrying about the details. By switching from Imperial to Metric measurements mid-sentence we see that neither matters and take away only the impression of size. "Intact", "in tact", or "in tacked", it does not matter as our grasp of the point remains intact.

The brush strokes of Mr. Courtney's writing paint a picture, and it's one that starts with his characters. The personal interactions of Captain/Commander David Braymer and his shipmates are the heart of the story. The joy and amazement they feel as they create a habitable ecosystem from the barren rock of Mars, or take delivery of amazing space ships from their friends the Powleens are obvious. In more subtle ways we are shown the importance of our characters social interactions. In every conversation we see every 'hello', every 'goodbye', every 'goodbye to you too' and every 'okay, see you', and every 'okay, thanks again', and every 'goodbye again'. Herein lies the true detail of Mr. Courtney's writing; the finest lines connecting people.

It's easy to get carried away discussing the style of the writing in these books, but the plot is just as important. In Moon People 2 our heroes are presented with amazing discoveries on Mars and bring to life an ancient and mysterious race of aliens. They also encounter a nemesis so purely evil that they are given no specific characters, no dialogue and no motivation. The viscious alien Archons simply attack, like a force of pure destruction and hatred. Our protagonists must overcome dire peril to defeat the Archons. Only teamwork and exceptional luck can save the universe.

Moon People 2 will amaze you with dazzling technology, and excite you with dangerous space warfare, and feel like part of the adventure along the way.

[Terrible Book Club · Rating 1 out of 5]

We read the original Moon People four years ago in Episode 14. In Episode 71, we returned to Moon People and read its sequel.

Nothing seems to have improved from the first Moon People, unfortunately. Moon People 2 is an unedited mess with no compelling narrative, no character development, and some of the most unbelievable dialogue we've ever read.

[Michael · Rating 1 out of 5]

Donald and I read this together to fill in a gap between books for the 372 Pages We'll Never Get Back podcast. We read the first one along with the podcast, back in 2022, so when we noticed that the rest of the trilogy was available on Kindle Unlimited, we decided to give it a try.

This would be another great candidate for the podcast, though I don't know if they'll want to return to the series. Lots of fodder here. It certainly didn't fail to entertain us, and I wouldn't mind reading the last book in the series, one of these days. It does take some extra effort to read, what with the lack of quotation marks in a very dialogue-heavy book! I think the comedy value is worth the trouble, though.