When Wisconsin Territory botanist Calvin Scholz receives a mysterious package from an old friend who recently came to an untimely demise, it sparks a wild adventure. The mid-1840s is a dangerous time, for the Americans are at war with Mexico.

Scholz survives attempts on his life as he tries to deliver the package to his friend’s brother, a Savannah ichthyologist interested in fish-powered machinery–ichthyotech. The situation grows increasingly dire, and Scholz finds himself aboard a riverboat in the Amazon Basin wilderness.

While this novel contains a fast-moving, original story, it is also a tasteful parody of the Steampunk movement. There are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, as well as a few compulsory bad puns.

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It’s the first human voyage outside the solar system, and Proxima Centauri is the destination. The crew of the sleeper ship Deep Space discovers we are not alone, and not everyone out there is nice.

Diverted to Alpha Centauri A (Rigel Kentaurus) to fetch and return a faster-than-light prototype, the crew learns that humanity is the only civilization to ever solve the light barrier problem.

Now, Deep Space must defend it as a military secret, because the mysterious Betels have been at war with the brutal Thrace since before mankind discovered fire–all with sublight space travel.

See a summary sheet here.
A separate PDF file containing only the language glossary appendices can be found here.

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The world of anthropology would have been excited when a perfectly preserved Neanderthal body is discovered in the Greenlandic permafrost, if authorities would allow the details out. When an American anthropologist involved in the excavation is denied access to the body, she uses an illicit tissue sample as source material to carry the Neanderthal’s clone to term herself.

Meet Ike Mudge, twenty-first-century Neanderthal man. Self-educated and raised in a laboratory thirty-thousand years out of his time, he is alone in a world of billions. Will it drive him insane, or will he make a final contribution for his kind–a Neanderthal Swan Song?

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A selection of Rick’s work from the first 10 years of being a published writer. Click the picture at left to buy an electronic copy directly from the author, or get an electronic or paper copy at most online bookstores.

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Some storytellers use the distant future as the setting to make fantastic extrapolations and to explore compelling ideas. In this volume, however, the writers look forward a mere decade and present stunning scenarios, reveal exciting possibilities and warn against the harrowing pitfalls that may lie just a few steps ahead of us. What will life be like ten years from now? Sixteen extraordinary writers offer their own mind-bending answers to that questions, their spectacular 2020 Visions…
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Note: This book is published by M-Brane Press.