To Slip The Surly Bonds Of Earth

The development of fusion power in the small colony established on Mars leads to an explosive outward emigration from Earth to the moons of the solar system. On Earth, increasing civil unrest in Europe has led to the election to positions of authority of three strong women: Leda in Germany, Madeleine in France, and La Marquesa in Spain. With the assistance of others—including Tomiko from Japan and Hinchcliffe, with her paramilitary organization, the Legion—order is restored, at least temporarily. The lives, loves, and deaths of these women are set against a world of conflict, hope, and despair, as they struggle to maintain civilization and allow further immigration to the high frontier in the face of malevolent opposition forces.

The West is entering its final phase, like the fall of Rome or the Late Merchant Phase of the various Chinese empires. It is slowly grinding to a halt as the inevitable problems multiply, with no obvious will to counter the decline. One man dreams of humanity becoming a multiplanet species in the hope of preserving the basics of human knowledge through the coming dark ages. The Great Powers have turned inward, and there is little political will for further space exploration. Funding is minimal, and technological innovation has slowed dramatically. He uses his skills as a fighter to fund his dreams and is, for a time, the heavyweight champion. Using his notoriety, he slowly gathers friends, seeking to find those who can make the dream a reality. Manon, who claws her way up from nothing to wealth; Elizabeth, the miner turned politician; and others help fund the space project. They set up a foundation to search for scientific geniuses in the most unlikely places, looking for children who perhaps can make the journey into space possible, but it is not clear that Earth has any interest in returning to the high frontier. Against a background of indifference, competing interests, and active discouragement, they do manage to establish small independent colonies on the moon and Mars; but the odds are great, protection is difficult, and long-term success is by no means assured. And there are malevolent forces moving in the world.

The West continues its precipitous decline. The ancient, magnificent, awe inspiring Christian Churches which had taken centuries to build, are burning all over Europe, and that tragedy and violence on the streets are becoming so commonplace that it barely is mentioned by the media. Even the most egregious terrorist outbreaks are passed over by politicians as something which occurs in big cities and the indigenous population should simply get used to it. Policing in most of the West has sunk to an all-time low. Rape of women and children has reached unprecedented levels. Crimes against property and person are largely ignored. Break and Entry now no longer even merits a police inspection. Horrifying acid attacks, where acid is thrown on a young woman, destroying her face, never before seen in Europe, are barely mentioned. Any vestige of ‘Free Speech’ has become a thing of the past and there is a return to the Thought Police of the Communist era. The Prometheus Group, a disparate collection of people who fear for the future of civilization, especially the unlikely Enlightenment concept of intrinsic individual human worth, have established small colonies on Mars and the moon. They continue to fly under the radar of public attention, as much as they can, while quickly expanding these colonies. The economic collapse of countries such as Greece had long been anticipated. Unsurprisingly, the economic situation in Canada suddenly deteriorates and the US President is forced to step in to prevent complete anarchy, which would threaten the undefended US northern border. Unwilling to involve the United States government directly, she asks the Prometheus Group for personnel to help oversee and assist the economic rescue of Canada, which the group agrees to with exceeding reluctance. More of the exceptional children continue to be sought by the Prometheus Group, and continue to be found in the most unlikely places. As before, they are mainly seeking girls whose genius would otherwise be missed. These children are enlisted into the effort to produce the science which will get as many people as possible into space, and speed the terraforming of Mars, before the cataclysm of civil war, which is now inevitable in Europe, and will likely spread to involve the world. Any extension of war outside Europe will inevitably result in a nuclear exchange with unimaginable destruction, as a single nuclear airburst could produce such an electromagnetic pulse as to wipe out all computers within the blast area. This disaster, multiplied many times over, and almost certainly aided by biological warfare, would produce a possible reversion to primitivism, tribalism and savagery or the establishment of a dystopian rigid unchangeable medieval philosophy.

"Touching the Face of God" is the fascinating true story of John Gillespie Magee, Jr., author of the poem "High Flight." Magee composed his famous poem while serving with the Royal Canadian Air Force in England during World War II. Magee's "High Flight" gathered world-wide notice from such luminaries as Winston Churchill, King George IV, Helen Keller, Orson Welles, Tyrone Power, and Katherine Hepburn. The poem has been used countless times in music, books, movies and speeches. The history of John Magee and his famous poem have been told several times, but this book seeks to tell his complete and compelling story. From his birth in China to his entrance into WWII as a combat pilot, "Touching the Face of God" is a story of true love, courage, compassion and commitment.

The original Journal of the Plague Year was written by Daniel Defoe in 1639. Plagues have been a recurrent fact of life since humans have existed. A virus or a bacterium makes the jump either from an animal or from a tribe who have long been habituated to the organism, and this novel infection races through the newly exposed populace, and a huge die-off of the new hosts occurs. The last major event was the Spanish influenza at the end of WWI. There have been events of concern such as SARS and Ebola, with other lesser events such as H1N1, MERS, and Hong Kong flu. While these potentially were a major problem, the Wuhan virus has turned out to be a new plague of disastrous dimensions. It remains to be seen if the catastrophic subsequent events were due to the virus itself or the hysterical overreaction to it. As an experienced doctor, with a large active clinical practice, I found I was often being asked the same questions as many patients were totally confused by the media and the changing and contradictory pronouncement from politicians and public health. I found I was answering so many questions in the office and on Facebook that it came to me, in April of 2020, that what I was doing was in fact compiling a “Journal of a Plague Year.” This book is a collection of sequential posts, almost all completely unedited. Also included were some questions and my answers.

A Toronto Star Bestseller! Rose, a Canadian intelligence officer in Britain in World War II, struggles with conflicting feelings about the war and a superior’s attention. Rose Jolliffe is an idealistic young woman living on a farm with her family in Saskatchewan. After Canada declares war against Germany in World War II, she joins the British Women’s Auxiliary Air Force as an aerial photographic interpreter. Working with intelligence officers at RAF Medmenham in England, Rose spies on the enemy from the sky, watching the war unfold through her magnifying glass. When her commanding officer, Gideon Fowler, sets his sights on Rose, both professionally and personally, her prospects look bright. But can he be trusted? As she becomes increasingly disillusioned by the destruction of war and Gideon’s affections, tragedy strikes, and Rose’s world falls apart. Rose struggles to rebuild her shattered life, and finds that victory ultimately lies within herself. Her path to maturity is a painful one, paralleled by the slow, agonizing progress of the war and Canada’s emergence from Britain’s shadow.