Virtually Maria

by John Joyce

"Virtually Maria" is the first book in John Joyce's Virtual Trilogy - A quest by one man to save the love of his life from murder by travelling back in time. It is a story of state of the art technology, forgotten forces, and exotic locations all over the world. Our hero will be guided by the artificially intelligent Minerva computer - an electronic Tinkerbell with a mind of its own. Theo Gilkrensky, computer genius and chairman of the electronics multinational GRC, is engrossed in the final stages of development of the revolutionary Minerva computer, when his wife Maria walks out on him and is killed by a car bomb. Wracked by grief and guilt, Theo retreats with Minerva onto a remote island off the south coast of Ireland until the crash of a GRC-owned airliner near Cairo forces Jessica Wright, his chief executive and former lover, to drag him back from exile. Using the Minerva display data from the crash investigation, Theo manages to exonerate his corporation, but in the process reveals that he has reprogrammed the computer's user interface to look, think and speak like his beloved Maria. Investigating further, Theo discovers that the crash was caused not by computer failure, but by a unique radiation coming from the Great Pyramid of Cheops. He finds a previously undiscovered chamber - a place where unseen energies from all over the world are concentrated to warp the very fabric of space and time. Theo is further astounded when Minerva calculates that this phenomenon could be manipulated to travel back in time and save his wife, Maria from death. Meanwhile, others are out to steal the revolutionary Minerva, while Yukiko Funakoshi, the half-caste daughter of a man Theo once wronged, is homing in on Cairo with an arsenal of arcane weapons and millions of dollars at her disposal for Theo's destruction. First published by Poolbeg Press in 1998, Virtually Maria was "Book of the Month" at the Easons Bookstore chain in Ireland. It will be followed in 2008 the other two books in the Virtual Trilogy - "A Matter of Time," and "Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow," both to be published by Spindrift Press, Dublin.

360 pages, Paperback

First published March 17, 2008

About the author

I wrote my first novel at the age of 25 in response to being a temporarily unemployed marine biologist in the cold and windy town on Lowestoft on the most easterly coast of England in 1976. This gangster novel - THE BEACH RING - was an excellent way for me to vent all my frustrations by creating a series of fictional characters and 'blowing them away' in a series of imaginative ways. Luckily, this novel was never published!

Then my luck changed, I moved to Ireland where I met my wonderful wife Jane and, over Christmas 1980 we embarked on a hair-raising charity mission to Egypt which involved driving an old bus, a broken down ambulance, a decrepit van and a lorry carrying an obsolete printing press across the Alps to the port of Ancona in Italy, which delivered us by ferry to Alexandria. While in Egypt, Jane and I visited the pyramids, and I got the idea for my first published novel - VIRTUALLY MARIA - the first of my 'Virtual Trilogy' of technothrillers - about a grief stricken billionaire on a quest to turn back time so that he can save his beloved wife Maria from being murdered.

This book, along with my three underwater adventures for children in the CAPTAIN COCKLE series, was published by Poolbeg Press and was chosen to be 'Book of the Month' in the Irish bookstore chain Easons, in August 1998.

VIRTUALLY MARIA was followed by A MATTER OF TIME and YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW - in the 'Virtual Trilogy' and were translated into Russian by the Russian publisher ACT.

Then, older, wiser and much better equipped, Jane and I embarked on a very enjoyable research trip for my next novel FIRE & ICE which features a breathtaking chase in the Grand Canyon and a casino scene in Las Vegas. This Cold War thriller, about a rogue Soviet submarine armed with a nuclear-tipped torpedo and bogus orders from s dissident Russianist breakaway group in Leningrad to attack the US Navy blockade, was published in 2012 and was well received by the critics.

My last novel MASTERPIECE took Jane and I on a trip to Paris, Madrid, Barcelona and London on the trail of a plot to steal the Mona Lisa by holding Paris to ransom with a stolen Soviet nuclear weapon. MASTERPIECE is the first of a series of novels featuring former IRA member turned academic Dr. Damien Flynn and crack policewoman Gabrielle Arnault in the EUROPOL specialist team COMMETT and will be followed by my next novel MASTERMIND in 2016.

Following on from my CAPTAIN COCKLE underwater adventures, I've created the character BLACK JOHN THE BOGUS PIRATE who already has his own BLACK JOHN THE BOGUS PIRATE CARTOON WORKBOOK OF MARINE BEASTS and will be following that with a series of illustrated novels for children in the near future.

Reviews

[Maria · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was pleasantly surprised by this book. I found it enjoyable & the ideas interesting.