Read The Ripple in Space-Time: Free City Book 1 (The Free City Series) Online
Authors: S F Chapman
The Ripple in Space-Time: Free City Book 1 (The Free City Series) (20 page)
About the novel:
During
the warm and sleepy midsummer’s days of 2010, I had a few gossamer ideas for a
new science fiction tale floating around in my head.
I now
suspect that these bits and pieces came to me at that particular time mainly as
an intriguing distraction to draw my attention away from the more pressing and
daunting task of beginning my third novel, the soft science fiction piece
entitled
Xea In The Library
.
Xea
is the sequel to my first work,
the post-apocalyptic mystery called
Floyd 5.136
.
In one
of those wonderful little moments of inspiration that led to much larger
things, an irresistible title came to me while taking a long, hot shower:
The
Ripple In Space-Time
.
I’d
been considering the intriguing notion of ‘Space-Time,’ Albert Einstein’s
speculation that space and time are inextricability linked together as the
fourth dimension, after enjoying Isaac Asimov’s nonfiction work
Atom: A
Journey Across the Subatomic Cosmos
, CalTech’s fantastic
Mechanical
Universe
video lectures and Carl Sagan’s seminal series
Cosmos
.
The
title fused together with a first chapter during a burst of nervous energy on
the afternoon of August 12th.
For
months I had been playing around with the idea of alternating viewpoints in a
novel and I decided to write chapter 1 in the dry, formal style of a newspaper
obituary. Where the novel would go from there, I had no idea at the time.
With
Xea
In The Library
looming, I set
The Ripple
aside.
Almost
exactly 6 months later
,
I returned to
The Ripple In Space-Time.
Of all
of my four novels to date, I had the most fun writing this sometimes brutal,
sometimes poignant and often quite tongue-in-check tale.
The
Ripple In Space-Time
is one of a large group of novels that I’ve written or plan to
pen soon that fit into a consistent history that stretches from the present to
more than eighteen thousand years into the future. Several of the novels are
consecutive and are best enjoyed and understood if read as such. These are part
of the MAC series: currently
Floyd 5.136, Xea in the Library
and
Beyond
the Habitable Limit
with others likely to follow.
The
Ripple In Space-Time
is not part of the MAC series but refers to much of the same
history. Enjoy it separately or at any point while reading the MAC series.
All
three of my editors expressed a desire to read at least one more tale involving
the characters and settings in
The Ripple In Space-Time
.
Perhaps
Inspector Ryo Trop and the others will return.
Enjoy,
S F Chapman, July 2011.
Science Fiction Detective Adventure
The Adventures
of Ryo Trop and Lt Zmuda continue in
Torn From On High.
Torn From On High
is a fast-paced detective adventure set in
the dark and gritty Film Noir-like world of the near future. Detective Ryo Trop
struggles with a gruesome murder in Low Earth Orbit and a clandestine plot for
human domination in the Sahara Desert.
Who was she?
Floyd stared with great interest at the slumbering
woman as she was slowly freed from the cocoon. She was the first new person to
be generated in over fifteen thousand years!
For
eons, the same seven people had been cloned innumerable times. They lived
ordinary lives and died ordinary deaths. But Floyd and his companions always
started out in the same very unhuman-like way as cocoon-bound twenty-five year
old adults in full possession of their past memories.
Everything
would change with the arrival of the intriguing young woman.
Everyone knew
that it was coming. No one was ready when it finally hit.
It has been
over a century since the last big earthquake decimated the San Francisco Bay
Area. Another massive tremor is long overdue. The slumbering beast that is the
Hayward Fault will finally awake on an ordinary October morning, catching
millions of people by surprise. Will troubled seventeen-year-old Kayla Hendley,
veteran airline pilot Burt Weaver, precocious second grader Gwen Mills and many
others survive the convolutions of the angry earth?
You might also like the
literary fiction novella
I’m here to help
When seventeen-year-old
Renita discovers that her long-held belief that she was adopted might not be
true, she confronts her mother with her suspicions and finally learns of the
convoluted events that transpired in the months before her birth.
“I cried like a baby. This
book is full of feelings and it's certainly extraordinary! I'd love to read
some other works from this author.”
-- Disincentive Blogspot
A lifelong Northern Californian, S F Chapman traded his
construction job for the more docile profession of novelist in 2008 when the US
economy faltered.
The tireless author has since written eight books. His first, “I'm
here to help” (published by Striped Cat Press in July of 2012), is a literary
fiction novella about a teenage daughter looking for answers to some troubling
inconsistencies in her birth certificate. “The Ripple in Space-Time” (published
by Striped Cat Press in February of 2013) is Chapman's second book. It is an
exciting science fiction detective adventure set in a moldering and corrupt
future controlled by greedy warlords. The author’s third novel “On the Back of
the Beast” is an action-packed Contemporary Fiction tale about a massive
earthquake that destroys the San Francisco Bay Area. It is now available from
Striped Cat Press. Chapman recently released an exciting sequel to “The Ripple
in Space-Time” entitled “Torn From On High.”
Other works include the post-apocalyptic soft science fiction MAC
Series consisting of “Floyd 5.136,” “Xea in the Library of All Human Knowledge”
and “Beyond the Habitable Limit.”
Chapman has recently finishing up a rough-and-tumble literary
fiction novel about homelessness called “The Missive In The Margins.”