Satellite Lost

A rogue satellite disappears off NSA's space radar and falls into Monterey Bay on the California coastline. The Agency's efforts to find the lost satellite are thwarted by a young oceanographer, Matt Cross, who, with his wife, Lindy, a local television reporter, watch the fiery landing from their honeymoon beach picnic and track it to its final resting place, five-hundred feet down in the Monterey Submarine Canyon. Bent on fame and fortune, they retrieve the satellite, examine it, and find an unfathomable object, a satellite sent back in time from our future. Revealing its contents to the American public in a history-making television report, they turn our world upside down and leave it with a life-or-death decision: assassinate a few innocent people or destroy the future of humanity.

This fast-paced techno thriller leaves you breathless as you race through its pages, searching for the answer. Based on the Grandfather Paradox, it is not a fantasy but a realistic depiction of an event that could happen tomorrow. Fasten your seat belts and ready yourselves for the trip of a lifetime.

Satellite Lost (SF Techno Thriller)

By John Paul Cater

Independent Publishing Platform

ISBN #978-1535059671

Price $11.95

230 Pages

Rating 5-Stars

“A Different Kind of Time Travel Story.”

Newly weds Matt and Lindy Cross are celebrating their honeymoon on the California coast. Lying on the Monterey Bay beach they are attracted to a fireball falling into the waters off the shore. Strangely, the fireball doesn’t act like a meteor, as it slows before crashing into the bay. Matt, an ex-Navy diver, takes GPS readings, and a few days later makes a dive in his company’s mini-sub to retrieve the object.

Bringing it back to their home, they discover a teardrop shaped satellite, but that’s not the strangest part. When they open it, they discover it’s from the future, 2285, and there are now 54 states. A letter explains the situation clearly. A scientist in the future had discovered the wormhole effect, putting it to practical use, and aliens from another galaxy uses it to attack our planet. Earth is near destruction, and the president feels the only way out of the situation is for someone in the past to assassinate a relative of the responsible scientist to insure the wormhole effect is never discovered.

This was not only a fast paced thrill ride it’s an interesting take on time travel. Instead of sending their own assassin back in time, they use satellite technology to request us to kill a relative in the direct line. This is the Grandfather Paradox. By killing someone in the past, you destroy a whole family line up to and including the person you really want stopped. What would our society decide to do in such a case? The author’s solution is simply brilliant. Highly recommended.

Tom Johnson

Author of WORLDS OF TOMORROW

End light Dawning 2012

Endlight Dawning 2012 continues the Endlight Event saga from its interruption on December 21, 2012 by an extraterrestrial intervention. A large underground colony of survivalists in Carlbad Caverns has experienced an extinction level event (ELE) eclipse of the sun on Earth. Messages received from the extraterrestrial intelligence begin to support Mayan predictions. They are trying to tell us something. As the scientists in the caverns slowly decode the messages, their knowledge of time, space and dimensions are put to the limits. Everything is not as it seems. Earth is changing. A new world is dawning.

Endlight Dawning 2012 (SF Thriller)

By John P. Cater

Daily Swan Publishing

ISBN # 978-0982976951

212 Pages

Price $14.95

Rating 5-Stars

“Great Sequel”

At the end of ENDLIGHT EVENT, the survivors crowding in the Carlsbad Caverns come out to view a scene in the sky of bright objects forming a cross that brings life-saving light and heat to a frozen planet. Readers will recall that in the first novel a dense cloud from space blocks out the suns rays from the world, dropping temperatures too cold for survival. Billionaire Jackson Morrow built a city within the Carlsbad Caverns and brought selected people to survive the event until the cloud had passed out of Earth’s path. Not everything had gone as planned.

In this sequel, ENDLIGHT DAWNING, the survivors are still trying to cope with the situation. Dr. Galley Pruitt believes there is a message within the lights of the cross bringing their salvation, and attempts to decipher the code. Bringing a super computer system from Los Alamos, New Mexico to the Caverns, it’s connected to their original system, and now they are faced with an even larger situation, a computer that thinks it’s God. Can the survivors trust it, or even pull the plug on it now that it is alive?

At first it was believed that aliens had came to their rescue, creating artificial suns to bring light and heat to the world in the form of a bright cross in the sky. Now, they think it might be another dimension, but who are the strange beings seen as nine-foot pillars as in a dream? What are they really, alien or monster, savior or conqueror? This was another fascinating story that brings the Endlight stories to an end. It is a character driven novel with science and technology that could either be a benefactor and curse, and it keeps the reader on the edge of their seat as each page brings another twist to an all ready complicated plot. Highly recommended.

Tom Johnson

Author of THESE ALIEN SKIES

Tomb of The Ten Thousand Dead

Action packed and captivating tale. Captain Gordon is hired to fly a team of American anthropologists to an arid mountain region now part of Pakistan bordering the Arabian Sea. All goes well until an ancient map is discovered in an old pottery jar, revealing the site of a vast treasure that Alexander the Great was bringing to Greece from his conquest of India. More than 10,000 of Alexander's soldiers and camp followers lay buried in the high desert plains along with the loot of India - hidden in a tomb never to be reclaimed.With the map's discovery, all academic pretense is dropped. Now Gordon finds himself caught in the middle of the expedition where murder replaces scholarship as the best method to uncover the valuable hoard. ALSO INCLUDES THE ADVENTURE STORIES ''PRICE OF A HAT'' AND ''STARCH AND STRIPES''.

Tomb of The Ten Thousand Dead (Adventure)

By L. Ron Hubbard

Galaxy Press www.goldenagestories.com

ISBN #978-1592122353

124 Pages

Price $9.95

Rating 5-Stars

“Adventure Yarns By A Master Storyteller.”

“Tomb of The Ten Thousand Dead” was published in the October 1936 issue of THRILLING ADVENTURE. Pilot Captain Gordon finds himself among crazed scientists when they discover the lost treasure of Alexander The Great.  Alone in a cavern with the thousands of dead soldiers left to guard the treasure when Alexander couldn’t take it with him. All ready one man has been killed, and three more will kill to obtain the treasure.

         “Price of A Hat” was an interesting tale told by Stuart as a group set at a card table, the discarded cards tossed into a strange hat called a kubanka. Stuart had been assigned to spy on Russia in 1917, and in Siberia he witnesses the murder of a Mongol rider. He chases the killers off, and the Mongol tells him to carry the hat to the Czar, and then dies. Stuart loses the hat and regains it several times before having an intelligence operator examine the hat. Hidden in the seams is a coded message warning Czar Nicholas II and his family that they are to be murdered if they don’t flee to safety. The message was not delivered on time, and Czar Nicholas II and his family were murdered.

         “Starch & Stripes” is another yarn about marines training blacks in Africa to be soldiers. Gunnery Sergeant Eddie Edwards, wearing captain bars, is in charge of the local unit. He has set a trap for the local rebel leader, but before the trap can be sprung, Lt/Col Cramer arrives to order his men prepare for inspection. A top marine general and senators are coming for an inspection. Not having a clean uniform, Captain Edwards runs into town to have his clothes cleaned and pressed by a local black woman. Unfortunately, while in town he’s captured by the rebel leader. In an escape, he turns the tables and gets the rebel. They get to camp just in time for the inspection and the general is ready to bust him back to corporal until the senators take charge of the situation.

         The three stories were fun reads. I kind of liked “Price of A Hat” better than the other two, but each had their own merits. Hubbard was an excellent writer of adventure tales, as well as other genres during his pulp years. Highly recommended.

Tom Johnson

Author of COLD WAR HEROES

The Asset

In the exciting new thriller from the author of the internationally bestselling Intern’s Handbook, a private airport security contractor becomes a counterterrorism operative and must stop an attack that will destabilize the US and cause global chaos.

Kennedy—a private airport security contractor—knows more about airports than the head of the TSA, and he feels more comfortable in his British Airways Club World flatbed seat than in his own home. Haunted by the memory of his sister’s death on 9/11, Kennedy takes his job and the protection of the American people very seriously. So when he’s kidnapped and recruited into a CIA ghost operation known as Red Carpet, he jumps at the opportunity to become a civilian asset working with a team of some of the CIA's best counterterrorism analysts and spec ops soldiers as they race against the clock to stop the greatest terrorist threat the United States will ever face.

Shane Kuhn’s bold, darkly comic voice has earned him rave reviews for his previous series, starting with the Intern’s Handbook, which was called, “a serious guilty pleasure” by The Seattle Times and, “explosively violent and psychologically wily the way a good thriller should be” by the New York Post. Shane brings that same intense voice and gripping storytelling to The Asset—an edge-of-your seat read you won’t be able to put down.

The Asset (Thriller)

By Shane Kuhn

Simon & Schuster

ISBN #978-1501140372

Price $2013 (Hardback)

288 Pages

Rating 2-Stars

“A Waste of My Time.”

Kennedy, a TSA security expert, is kidnapped in America, and wakes up in a meat locker with carcasses of pigs hanging on meat hooks. Men who look and sound like Arabs threaten to cut his head off if he doesn’t answer their questions. After telling the men he will answer their questions, the men argue among themselves and leave the locker. Alone, it doesn’t take him long to cut his bindings loose and escape through the ceiling. But when he steps out he’s in a Paris café where a beautiful woman named Alia meets him. She tells him it was just a test to see how he would react in a similar situation, and he has passed the test. I’m not sure how he passed, since he had willingly agreed to answer all their questions. Then to further throw me, Alia says she’s recruiting him to lead her team of trained CIA agents in Red Carpet, a super secret CIA group to foil a monstrous terrorist plot. If this is how the CIA does business, I wonder how it has existed for so long. A young man, without CIA or military training (although he keeps hinting at working with Israel), is going to lead seasoned agents in an effort to foil a terrorist plot. This boggles the mind. His motivation, however, was Belle, his sister’s death in one of the planes on September 11, 2001, while he was talking with her on the phone. First, let’s look at the team:

Alia – Red Carpet CIA team boss.

Kennedy – Team Leader, knowledge of airport security.

Juarez – under Alia, not sure what he’s good at.

Lambert – rugged, built like a football lineman. He doesn’t last too long.

Nuri – Asian, she’s a computer specialist.

Trudeau – weapons specialist, will know when certain weapons are moved around the world.

Best – paramilitary specialist, ex- Navy SEAL.

The bad guy:

Lentz – evil person

First mission: To watch TSA & Department of Homeland Security, as evil person may have people inside those organizations.

        

Page 75, Quote: “Kennedy was feeling overwhelmed. He was used to dealing with marginally educated people who looked at him as their shining beacon of guidance, not a bizarre collection of idiosyncratic CIA officers, most of whom had some very dangerous talents.” End Quote.

Really? I couldn’t help thinking he also believes his readers are marginally educated, too. I almost tossed the book in the trash by this point. But if I had, I would have missed the double coincidence. Let me explain. As we reach about page 100 another team member is brought in, who wasn’t mentioned in the beginning, named Mitchell. He’s described as mean and tough with stringy muscles, that sort of thing. We know he’s a killer right off, so someone is going to be killed. Sure enough, there is a confrontation with two TSA men, and Mitchell kills them. Of course, we’re told the Red Carpet team had been watching these men for a long time, and knew they were agents of Lentz, the evil guy. These were merely coincidences, right, the new guy, the killing of TSA men? Now I’m wondering how long Mitchell will stay around.

Actually. Kennedy quits Red Carpet after the killing. He hadn’t bargained on things getting rough, but Juarez asks him to help out without Alia’s knowledge. As if this couldn’t get any weirder, to bring in a Lentz’ aide, Kennedy recruits his and Belle’s old friend, a popular singer named Love to sweet talk the fellow, getting him on their side.

If I go on, I will reveal everything, and that’s not acceptable. Let me just say the plot involves the planned detonation of a ten-kiloton nuclear bomb on American soil. To give the author credit he is probably a fan of Tom Clancy, and the Bourne novels and movies. Unfortunately, I found his plot and characters lacking in well-crafted work. The writing appears to merely be an exercise of putting words on paper and calling it a novel. In my opinion it was a failure. The publisher evidently found it worth publishing, however. I felt I wasted my time reading the book, and cannot honestly recommend it for thriller fans.

Tom Johnson

Author of ASSIGNMENT NINA FONTAYNE