Starship-101 successfully landed on Proxima Centauri-b about twenty years ago, marking humanity’s first interstellar settlement. But with radio messages taking over four years to traverse the vast darkness of space, this fledgling colony has been isolated from Earth. Enter the Clason twins – Tarvin and Harden – the galaxy’s preeminent Superposition Navigators. These brothers can bend the quantum space-time continuum to their will, instantaneously transporting people and cargo across the stars. To revive supply lines and reintegrate Proxima Centauri b into humanity’s network of trade, the Clasons have been contracted to lead a modern resupply mission. Their quantum technology will provide the colony with the latest gadgets and gizmos from home. And the Navigators have another task – returning Starship-101 itself. That aging relic is now a valuable antique, the first testimony that humans can thrive beyond our solar cradle. Join the Clason twins as they quantum-jump across the cosmos on this historic mission of reconnection!
Born in the village of Moore in the Borough of Halton, located midway between Runcorn and Warrington in Cheshire, England, where his father was a licensed victualler, Richard de Mora gave up a promising career with the Mersey Ferries to follow his dream of being a session musician at Abbey Road. He never actually played his guitar in any Beatles’ sessions, though he often claimed that he had.
Tiring of the hand-to-mouth existence of a poorly-paid session musician in London, he returned to Liverpool and had a range of lucrative jobs in local attractions in the city’s growing tourist industry. These included trainee crocodile-handler at a local adventure park; specialist scouse-chef at a Pier Head hostelry; and mushroom forager in Sefton and Prince’s Parks, where he also worked as a tennis coach. During most of this time, he attended creative writing classes at local colleges and wrote several quite successful professional texts and guidebooks. Now, he’s decided to write fiction and it’s up to you to decide how well that’s turned out.
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Introduction
In “Starship 101” the first impression that I had was what an amazing breath of science knowledge that this author must have to paint a picture of our first trip to the nearest star and the inhabitants of Proxima-Centauri-b with meticulous detail and information, he place the reader at the scene of the crew of the resupply and salvage ship and into the mind of the captain that brought them there. The reader stays in that mind and realizes the unbelievable amount of stress and responsibility that he must bear to pilot that crew and assure success of the mission.
Summary
As only science fiction writers can achieve, we have a probable glimpse of the future in a story about a crew that travelled at less than the speed of light many years prior caught up to by a crew that can travel faster than the speed of light by means of “Superposition Navigators” using a neuro-link between the captain and navigator minds and our most powerful A.I. The crew is already on the surface of the planet and on their way to the much older starship-101 when the story commences and is followed by a very plausible description of what such a colony would look like and featuring the planetary environment in an alternative environment, much like the Devonian period on Earth. The author then informs us of the history and politics of the settlement to even including the last 94-year-old computer engineer who stills lives on the ship which had crash landed on the planet 20 yrs. earlier only due to the exceptional flying skills of their captain. Then follows the story of all the preparations for the transposition of the old starship to orbit for transfer back to our solar system including the unexpected arrival of a surprise guest starship.
Evaluation
The author describes a future scenario which is believably scientific and achievable if one takes into consideration the advances that are being made in modern physics in the understanding of quantum mechanics. The strength is in the detailed description of Proxima-b and the inhabitants with the time lag and concept of the protagonists Superposition Navigation. The weakness is also related to some of the details in the descriptions and the lack of an interesting plot that includes a suitable antagonist. The Chinese arrival presents a potential antagonist, but I am afraid that those readers are so used to early action scenes in fiction that they may lose some interest in the details of the transactions, politics, and science. Nevertheless, the descriptions paint a vivid picture.
Recommendation
I would recommend this book for those familiar with advanced scientific theories, politics, business, and Naval procedures. It is a great read for those who can imagine where the concepts of these disciplines will be centuries from now. For those who require a story line with a little more action may not find it in a category with Dune or other stories with wars and drugs and a little more chaos. I would give it 4 stars for the former group.
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