Sara, Scott and the others are slowly breaking down from the realization that they and the reality around them could change at any moment. Dale makes a final change and takes a final step to insure the safety of his friends and their reality.
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NaNoWriMo 2016 -Wrong Exit – Week 6
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NaNoWriMo 2016 – Wrong Exit – Week 5
Dale returns to the empty exit only to discover that he isn’t the only one who can find it. He then tries to help Sara gain closure over Caleb, only to have his attempt make things worse.
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NaNoWriMo 2016 – Wrong Exit – Week 4
Sara joins Dale for a dinner with Scott and Diane, where they make a most unusual request. Trenton gives Dale another warning, Sara comes to a realization about Caleb and Dale is forced to consider his own behavior and choices.
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Camp NaNoWriMo 2016 – Portals – Week 4
Perry finds that no one has considered a psychological study of the teams on the far side of the Portals, but finds that they do regularly monitor all communications home. He and Peri are told to not talk to each other and to keep their observations to themselves, resulting in an unexpected but necessary arrangement to continue with their research.
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Camp NaNoWriMo 2016 – Portals – Week 3
Rifts between the various teams seem to be deepening, but only Perry and his unexpected ally Perimala seem to notice anything.
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Camp NaNoWriMo 2016 – Portals – Week 2
Perry gets his first taste of how things are done on the far side of the Portals, and discovers that even though every one there is part of a select group, not everyone is getting along.
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Camp NaNoWriMo 2016 – Portals – Week 1
A mysterious artifact has been found that allows passage to alternate versions of the Earth, but only a select few individuals are able to pass through them.
On all of these alternate Earths, humanity is extinct.
Climatologist Percival Grayson (call me “Perry”) is the latest to learn that he has the ability to use the “Portal” and is sent to Dallas, Texas on an Earth locked in an Ice Age. What will he find there?
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Review – The Breach
The Breach by Patrick Lee Ex-corrupt cop/ex-con Travis Chase, recently released from prison, is hiking through the Alaska wilderness and trying to figure out how to get his life back together when he stumbles across the crash of an unmarked 747. Inside the crash he discovers that everyone on board has been executed, including the First Lady of the United States. A note in her hand sends him in search of the two survivors of the crash, who are being brutally tortured to force them to reveal the location of an object that could lead to the destruction of everyone and everything on Earth. And thus begins Breach, the first novel in a new thriller series by Patrick Lee. While many thiller novels by such writers as James Rollins, Jeremy Robinson or Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child skirt the edges of science fiction in their novels, Patrick Lee embraces it wholeheartedly. While it is marketed as and starts out as standard thriller fare, make no mistake; this is a science-fiction thriller. Travis soon rescues Paige Campbell, the last survivor of the crash, and learns what is happening. (Warning: Minor spoiler for the first of the novel.) Paige works for an international government organization known as Tangent. Thirty years ago, an experiment beneath Wyoming opened the “Breach” of the title; an opening to… somewhere. Various artifacts (which they call “entities”) have been coming through the Breach at regular intervals since then. Some of these entities are benign, some are very dangerous
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It’s Not Reality, It’s Just a Fantasy
I took a swing through a bookstore the other day, the first one I had been through since the demise of my local Borders, and as usual went to check out the SF section. What I found, also as usual of late, was that most of it was actually fantasy. Mostly Urban Fantasy, actually; so much urban fantasy. I didn’t find anything (my reading pile is still big enough that I don’t need to grab anything just to have something to read) but as I left I started wondering what happened to the Science Fiction shelves of old. I remember when Science Fiction and Fantasy were two different areas in the stores and the SF shelf was the larger of the two. No longer. Of course, part of it is the popularity and success of such things as the Harry Potter and Twilight series which of course have spawned their imitators, but this just changes the question as to why these series became so popular in the first place. I think it is because that, based on what Science Fiction promised us, Science has failed. I’m not talking about “where’s my flying car?” here. Up through the 1950’s and 1960’s, everyone thought that science (Science!) would solve all of our problems. Robots would remove all need for menial labor. The Atom would provide all our energy needs. We would be living in a utopia fueled by the fruits of science. Reality didn’t match that. We are constantly told of the
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The Man Behind the Curtain
When she arrived in the Emerald City, Dorothy and her companions were groomed, dressed and prepared for their encounter with the Great and Powerful Oz. Upon entering his chamber they were awed and frightened by the Great Oz floating before them, wreathed in smoke and flame. Of course, Toto then finds the man behind the curtain who is running the whole thing. Like a villain being unmasked by Scooby and the Gang, the Great and Powerful Oz is revealed to be just a con man from Kansas. The con man then gives her companions what they want and Dorthy is shown that she has the ability to go back home herself and she returns to Kansas. I have always wondered… why is this considered a happy ending? Sure, she is happy to be home at first, but she will wake up the next morning in her black-and-white world, knowing that the bright, colorful world she left behind was only a dream and that the only magic in the world was the work of a man hiding behind a curtain creating an illusion through smoke and mirrors. I’ve been thinking about Dorothy and that man because DragonCon is coming here to Atlanta next week. I’m planning on going this year, for the first time in around a decade. You would think that I, as a long time Atlanta resident and Science Fiction fan, would have been a regular attendee but that hasn’t been the case. Actually, I haven’t been to any
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