Will Harden
HomeThe Greening of Mars 2011
This story takes place about the year 2100 when a druggy, long- haired kid speaks up in a Harvard Astronomy class. The professor was talking about how dry Mars was and how it would be too expensive to get enough water to the planet.
The kid’s idea was to divert some of the thousands of comets that orbit far out beyond Pluto and Neptune and make them crash into Mars. Comets are 50% water and were the source of most of the water on Earth. The next question is, where do we get the energy to push the 10 mile diameter icy planetoids into the inner solar system? The kid points out that since they have achieved hydrogen fusion 15 years before, this should provide all the energy necessary since it is the power of the Sun. While at our present date in 2012 hydrogen fusion has only been achieved in nuclear warheads and by using uranium fission as a trigger, the reaction is 7 times as efficient and leaves almost no waste.
Anyway the kid's life is totally transformed as word gets out about his idea. While he is influenced by the many faculty that speak to him as he walks across campus, the rest of the world is transformed as well. A multinational effort to make Mars livable gets under way with the strong support of all the over populated nations of the world. By the year 2150, this includes better than half the nations of the globe. A ship,powered by hydrogen fusion called a thruster ship, is designed that can take off from Earth, fly to the Kuiper Belt where these comets orbit, and push them toward Mars. Of course, the water and hydrogen can be mined from the ice of the comet.
Better than 96 of these comets are sent in their slow spiral toward Mars before one gets off course and is about to hit Mars in a glancing impact that threatens Earth. Alexi Komorosky is the Captain that attempts to prevent this and dies a hero. A half billion people are killed when the fragments hit Earth as large meteors. There is a huge international protest and all new diversions are halted. The problem is, better than 60 more are making their slow way toward Mars and have to be guided in.
After all of the things are safely deposited on Mars, people have to wait 50 years for Mars to cool before attempting to seed it with plants from Earth. Ted Komorosky,Alexi's great grandson, is one of those people that attempt to go back to Mars and make it green. With green Plants there will eventually be oxygen to breathe. Then the Earth can get relief from the overpopulation and flooding from global warming that threaten all of humanity.
The Hit Squad 2012
The book begins with a Sam Berrel hiding like an animal in a drainage pipe thirty inches wide and not that deep. Having committed murder for the first time in his life, he ponders how he got there. After getting fired from his job as a stock broker, he had set out to get drunk. After a few drinks, he begins a tirade about all that is wrong with Wall Street and how crooked bankers caused the '08 financial crash. He ends this speech with,"I wish that I was a Mafioso like Tony Soprano so I could take out the worst of them."
He is suprised to hear applause. Several guys have been listening and like his idea. The hit is on. They meet and Sam sets the rules. No innocent people, family, servants or bodyguards are to be harmed and everyone is equipped with Tasers and tranquilizer guns. After carefully finding new people and training everyone, a date is set. When it happens, ten bankers die and members of the tiny band have to escape to Mexico, Brazil, Hong Kong, Canada and France.
A three hundred word statement is sent out the next day, beginning with an apology for any fear they might have caused and an explanation of why it was necessary. This is ended with a plea that everyone else continue the cause of justice for the criminals by more non-violent means. As some of the squad are caught, all seems lost as they sit in Riker's Island. Then, an angel appears in the form of a Columbia journalism major who inteviews them. Her articles, appear in the internet and in newspapers and eventually bring reform for Wall Street and hopes of amnesty for the prisoners
The Interstellar Advocate 2013
This books is about John Preston, a Sci-Fi writer who is suddenly called by Homeland Security to serve as a linguistics specialist. He asks why they chose him and the Air Force Major asks if he was the author of "Prisoner in Cell 209?" Since that book was one in which the hero, a linguistics professor, works to build a language with a captive alien, John is pretty sure that the major might just have one of those he needs to communicate with, he goes along with all the threatening "hush,' papers he has to sign for security.
He is taken to Area 51 and sees that they have four of the small beings in a secure bio-contained living area. Medical people have to wear suits and walk through a sterile shower before entering. He quickly works up seven things to do to help communicate with the small five foot high guys when they ask for something else. They also want his wife Sandy, who is an allergy doctor, to come as well as they suspect that the four captives are suffering from allergies. John, after Sandy asks if this is some kind of cult, gets her to come and she emerges as the primary communicator through her skills at soft mothering talk that she learned working with children at San Diego Medical Center. She finds that the little bald-headed guys with big oval eyes are not tough and sadistic like in so many movies but sensitive, insecure and nerdy. Knowing this, she becomes their chief advocate and goes about telling off Colonels and presidential advisers who want to keep them captive until they reveal how they power their spacecraft. Eventually the aliens invite John and Sandy to return with them to their planet Balacar.
