MUSE MONDAY
Please welcome Herbert Grosshans to Discover... Love his musings. Enjoy!
The first humans on Earth surely wondered
about those lights in the night sky. What were they? What about that big orb
that became smaller every night and completely disappeared for a few nights,
and then began to grow again? Were those lights gods or demons? They worshipped
the sun because they knew without the sun there would be no life.
To this day, people look at the stars and
wonder if those alien suns have planets like ours. Are there intelligent beings
living on them? What are they like?
I wonder about that also. That’s why I make
up stories about alien societies. I imagine planets populated by beings that
may be different from us humans but still not so much different that we can’t
communicate with them. I imagine humanity venturing into space and interacting
with those aliens. Will we war with them or will we live in peace?
These days, I wonder if my stories even
have a chance to become reality. Our planet is in turmoil. Has there ever been
peace anywhere on Earth? Ever? We kill each other over religion, ideologies,
territory, oil, technology, and food. The next big war will be fought over
fresh water. Is there actually a future for mankind? It doesn’t look promising.
Right now, the whole world is in the grip of a pandemic. How many people will
die before this is over? Our world will be different after this, and that is a
certainty. There are people out there who live in denial and pretend nothing
has changed, but they will have to wake up to the new reality. The question is:
When will the next wave of another virus hit us?
Will we ever leave this planet to explore
space or are we condemned to live out our lives stuck on Earth? Perhaps we’ll
go the way of the dinosaurs and be wiped out.
But in the meantime, I will continue to
dream.
My featured book ‘Return to Redsky’ is a
planet humans have colonized. In two stages, actually. There are settlers that
arrived there a long time ago and there is the new wave of settlers. Redsky was
not empty of natives. Humans and the native population get along—sort of.
And then there is the threat of an alien
race humans call ‘Stardogs’. Not much is known about them, except that they are
not friendly.
The main character of the story, Dan
Griffin, is a man who has been accused of murder. He is sent to a prison
planet, where he and other convicted criminals are used in experiments. When it
is discovered that he is innocent, the damage is done. They turn him into a
super-soldier.
Like on any planet colonized by humans,
there are always conflicts with the natives. Dan Griffin and his team are sent
to Redsky to investigate the problem and to solve it. Griffin is not welcomed
in his hometown. Aside from his mission he has his own agenda. He is determined to find out who framed him
and to punish the guilty.
Excerpt Return to Redsky, Book One of the series ‘Stardogs’,
by Herbert Grosshans
I looked at the red sun in the sky, and then at the
two barely visible small moons hanging low above the horizon. It felt good to
be home again.
The first twenty years of my life I had spent
traveling across the surface of Redsky or Shantra, as the natives called
this planet.
A sudden gust of wind swept along the dirt road,
swirling up the yellow dust. I walked slowly. There was no need to hurry.
Above, a Yac-bird circled, looking for prey. I heard
its sharp, piercing cry, and it brought back long forgotten memories. Squinting
against the fiery red sun, I tried to make out the ridge of the
Golgat-mountains in the hazy distance, where I had hunted the fierce Gaar. So
long ago, and yet...it seemed like only yesterday.
I had walked for nearly an hour, when the drumming of
hoofs came from the forest to my left, and I was not surprised to see the small
band bursting into the open. They reached me quickly. Their riding animals
reared high as they formed a circle around me.
Only six surrounded me now. Short, stocky males, with
long, narrow, arrogant faces. The tips of their horns were painted red. This
meant they had all made their first kill.
“Terra-man,” mocked the first one, contemptuously
pointing his Ginsa-staff into the sky.
Read more
at my publisher’s author page:
Warning:
Even though this excerpt is PG rated, the book contains violence and explicit
erotica.
Return to
Redsky is available from my publisher Melange Books and other outlets.
Find Herbert here:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/hergros
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