Welcome to the universes of the Perseus Series, an adventure through eleven novels – and counting – where you’ll meet people of three species who work with the Perseus Defense Agency to protect the United Star Communities. You’ll also meet noisome predatory creatures… or constructed, sentient beings like the Crater-class cybernisms… or intelligent species loosely resembling dolphins and octopuses.
There may be pirates. There may be love found in surprising places. There may be galactic tricksters.
It’s going to be quite the ride.
The History of The Perseus Series
There’s a story behind the story…
The bare bones of “Andromedea” started somewhere in the late sixties and became The Perseus Series which scratched along via pen and paper to fill seven binders through to the late eighties. Then, the collection of binders was carefully saved and moved through all of my life’s changes and locations, until in 2011, I adopted and enthusiastically embraced the spirit of “Better late, than never!”
At the beginning, the work was a rewrite. Andromedea and its sequel, Eye of the Gazelle, badly needed updating and reworking, but for the most part, held their structure. High Telepaths, Book 3, also came together along the lines of the original, though already the story arc was reaching beyond the scope of its first incarnation.
The problem was one character. He grew on me… then grew… then became indispensable. It would be spoiling to reveal who he is, but I can frankly say he changed everything after that! High Telepaths was scraped together from two sets of source material, as was Xavia’s Song. Book 5, Guardians, was a fair rewrite, but also followed the original plot for the most part.
Then came Book 7, Attitudinals. (Ain’t that a mouthful! Yep, and all the characters agree, but that’s the word that stuck.) I moved to West Tennessee in 2004, and I believe I took this binder out from the crate where the others were – to read, mind you – sometime in 2005. Then lost it.
It’s still lost. Freaking out, I ended up writing an entirely NEW Perseus Series book, Negotiator, which is concurrent to Guardians. By then, I had scraped together enough memory and references in later books to the events in Attitudinals that I ventured to write that entire book from scratch. Whew! Incredibly, it happened. Now, to tell you more about the books after the first seven, would be revealing too much. Best to let you read those!
Right now I am working on Book 14. Yes, there are fourteen! And ideas are percolating for a series beyond Perseus. You're welcome!
And here we are. Andromedea is all but published. To that end, I will be sharing excerpts here, and highly appreciate comments, suggestions, praise and all that sort of thing. I hope you come along on this ride – the discovery is going to be fun!
The Big Questions
“The Perseus Series” is science fiction… and fantasy… and wildly speculative. I have big questions I seek to answer in writing this engrossing work. Questions like:
1. What constitutes personhood? Can it be created?
2. What are the absolute frontiers of mental powers that a being can reach? Are there limits?3. What might Humans be like in a thousand years?
4. What if a group, having settled for a good 800 years on a particular planet, develops into a subspecies of Human?
5. What might “English” become in a thousand years?
6. What might communication and data networks look like in the future?
7. What about communication between star systems?
8. What if there are alternate universes… that can be accessed?
9. What if there are multiple realities… and can we access those?
10. Is it possible for a society of Humans to evolve enough to move beyond obsession with gender divisions? What might that look like?
11. What might medical science look like in a thousand years? How could surgery change to become completely non-invasive?
Writing the Perseus Series is my personal adventure in thinking about all these big questions. It’s fun. It requires the ol’ “willful suspension of disbelief.” While I do research as much as possible in the science behind the concepts I work with, I do challenge myself – and the reader – to think outside the box. I don’t say “this can’t happen.” I say: “what if it could?” and invite you to wonder with me.
Let’s imagine… let’s ask big questions… let’s reach for the stars!