Bøger af Paul H Deal

The visitor arrived in orbit high above the earth on a fine northern hemisphere summer day. It came quite unexpectedly, though astronomers retrospectively tracked its trajectory back weeks as it approached the solar system from high above the plain of the ecliptic. It was enormous, a huge cylinder with mass and volume greater than the combined total of everything that humans had built in the history of their civilization. What was it? Where did it come from? Why had it come? Humans made every imaginable effort to communicate with their alien visitor, but it remained utterly silent. Then, some weeks after its arrival, it began to disgorge suborbiters. Brilliant, glittering, golden spheres, like giant, esoteric soap bubbles, began to descend on the peoples of the earth. Welcomed with tentative goodwill at first, the goldies soon resolved into the most enigmatic challenge humans had ever faced.

Rudy admires and fears his white supremacist stepfather, Judd. Under his tutelage, he joins Aryan Salvation, an organization that proclaims white people the highest level of creation, Jews the lowest, and all others "muds." It also claims the Holocaust of World War II is a Jewish myth fabricated to gain sympathy. After participating in a botched graffiti attack on a synagogue, Rudy questions his fitness as an Aryan. But when asked to prepare a report for his highschool history class, he decides he can best serve his cause by proving the Holocaust never happened. He begins, certain of the outcome, but quickly finds his task more difficult than he imagined. His investigation leads him to letters containing a frightening family secret and to a diary written by a boy who died half a century earlier. The letters and diary weave an anguishing tale that invades his sleep, causing nightmares that transport him into the Holocaust. As his "night lessons" expose the lies underpinning Aryan Salvation, he rejects Judd's bigotry and sees Aryan Salvation as a tool to bring about a new horror. His vow to stop it almost makes him one of its victims.

Savage beings seize two young colonists on planet Molii and drag them into its trackless desert. The older escapes and faces the daunting task of rescuing his brother. Dogged by a golden-eyed flyer, he can succeed only if he uncovers the secret held in the bird's unwavering golden stare.

A startling blue light is the last thing a few select humans see before awakening in a military barracks with a uniformed hard case, one of their own, breathing down their necks. From him they learn that extraterrestrial aliens have blue-lighted - that is kidnapped - them and impressed them into a mercenary military corps. They must learn to pilot some huge war machines called All-Terrain Leg-Driven Weapons Platforms - ATLs for short - or work as menial slaves under the lash of brutal alien masters. Going along to get along, the captives train to fight for their captors, but never miss an opportunity to learn about their strange environment and the odd beings who control them. They have no idea where they are - or even when - but escape is never far from their minds. And under duress some humans can be very persistent.

These seventeen stories explore the relationships between children and the adults - parents, guardians, or others - who might have an interest in them. They range from the wrenching to the whimsical. They examine abuse, neglect, and abandonment on the one hand, and loving, caring, and nurturing on the other. They are about children, but not necessarily for children. Some are happy stories, others are sad, but all testify to the strength and resilience of young people as they adapt to circumstances good and bad. The future, as is so often said, belongs to the young. These stories are dedicated to that truth.

H. P. Devlin, the billionaire owner and CEO of Universal Resources International, a corporation founded on the most advanced technology in the world, establishes Aanland as an experimental socialist community. His agents 'rescue' Rex Anderson, a brilliant electrical engineer, from a prolonged alcoholic binge brought on by the death of his wife and unborn child. Partly to rehabilitate Rex, partly to solve a systems control problem, Devlin puts him in charge of a URI fuel cell development project. Rex resists at first, but finds the research so compelling and the remarkable Aanlandan society, one in which robots do all the routine work and humans serve as their masters, so appealing that he shakes off his long depression and begins to enjoy life again. It helps that he meets Clara, a woman with whom he develops a special rapport, and that he becomes guardian to two remarkable orphans, boy and girl twins, rescued from a brutal foster home. A system Devlin calls Cooperatism, in which money regulates the distribution of goods and services but has no capital function, underlies Aanland's economy, and the government is based on something Devlin calls Stopar Democracy. Everyone owes public service, and a lottery fills all government offices by drawing candidates from pools of qualified citizens. Rex finds it a remarkable system, quite different from anything he has previously experienced, but he adjusts readily enough. The outside world, however is not so sanguine, and when it learns of Aanland's extraordinary technology, it becomes afraid. Fear and concomitant paranoia lead, inevitably to conflict.

Far Field continues the journey begun in A Lesser God, published in 2011by Paul H Deal. The Earth's first emigrant spaceship, carrying 80,000 passengers, is on its way to New Aanland, a cylindrical space habitat in orbit around Far Field, a dwarf planet beyond Pluto's orbit. A group of the emigrants, with high technical competence, find the four year voyage through empty space tedious and decide a detour to some of the solar system's other planets might be more interesting. Using the extraordinary phase-field technology developed by H. P. Devlin, an agent of the extraterrestrial entity, Mi-Ya, along with materials scrounged from the emigrant ship's stores, they fashion three, small, high delta-V spacecraft and head for Mercury. All goes well during visits to Mercury and Venus, but things change when they head for Mars. Shortly after leaving Venus, they encounter an unexpected anomaly that catapults them into a world they never imagined and ultimately into contact with people from their own past. Getting to New Aanland turns out to be anything but a done deal.

Fully grown, pocket people are from five to six inches tall. However, except their size, they're just like you and me. Some are fair, others are dark; some have blue eyes, others have brown eyes; some are fat, others are thin. They've long lived on Eldon where everything is smaller than on Earth, and most live there now. Usually Eldon and Earth are separate, but occasionally something happens and the two worlds touch for a moment. It was at such a moment that the pocket people came to New Mexico. They came riding the west wind, held aloft on wings of fire beneath a scarlet balloon. The pocket people fell from the sky near the Rio Grande in a small stretch of bosque. It was quite a jolt for them and changed their lives forever. They had much to learn and much to do to build a new life for themselves in a land ruled by giants. This is their story.

The Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu, more than two thousand years ago wrote a guide to the proper conduct of human affairs. The Tao Te Ching has since served as a major influence in Oriental moral, ethical, and religious philosophy. In Walking the Tao, a pair of travelers in late nineteenth century Midwestern America examine many of the ethical and moral principles outlined in the Tao Te Ching. Yu Cheng travels from China to the United States to meet Sam Linden, the teenage grandson he has never seen. Sam, living in Kansas, has read all he can about China, and wants to know the grandfather his Chinese mother has told him about. As a way of getting acquainted, the two take a summer-long walking trip through Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Colorado. Along the way they apply the Tao Te Ching's teachings to their daily lives. Each chapter of Walking the Tao explores a different principle, fifty-three in all, allowing the reader to become acquainted with the Tao Te Ching as a practical guide to human behavior.