It hit me just after I woke up today. My books, like most sci-fi or fantasy books, have a lot of non-scientific things going on. Whether it’s the many alien races or Universal Power in the Dave Brewster Series, or traveling the universe through a portal inside a Heartstone in the Heartstone Series, the reader has to accept the alternate view of reality in order to keep going forward.

What coalesced in my mind this morning was that the truth is usually stranger than fiction. Following the latest trends in quantum physics and cosmology is my hobby. That’s weird too, I know, but bear with me a minute.

According to physics, matter is almost entirely empty. If you could enlarge a typical atom to the size of a tennis court, the nucleus (which holds virtually all the mass and material) would be the size of a grain of sugar in the center. Therefore, matter is really open space. The couch I am sitting on is almost entirely not there.

On the other hand, according to quantum physics, the vacuum of empty space (the entire universe less the galaxies and their stars and nebulae) is not empty at all. It is a seething caldron of massless particles (or strings) that pop in and out of existence continually. Therefore, emptiness is really fun of stuff.

Now perhaps the empty space in an atom is also a seething caldron. In any event, empty is full, and full is empty. And that’s science! I wish I’d come up with that theme for one of my books!

I just noticed a new trend in my most current books: Heartstone: The Time Walker (waiting for cover art) and book 5 in the Dave Brewster Series, entitled The Accord (currently around 50% complete). While I am not a vegetarian or anything like that, both of those books raise questions about the morality of consuming other living things.

In both novels, the food of choice is other humans, which I hope we can all agree is totally disgusting. In the following paragraphs from Time Walker, the bad guy, Os, justifies his appetite for humans by comparing it to the desire to eat any kind of living food:

“You suck the life force out of others to keep yourself alive,” Baku replied. “That seems pretty horrible to me.”

 Os laughed at the thought. “You think you are so pure and innocent, but almost all life feeds on life. The tubers in this stew were alive until you ripped them from the ground and sliced them up. When you wish to eat meat, you slaughter the animal, gut it and cook it in a pot. You take life so you can extend your own, just like me. We are all guilty of the same crime, but my method is not so barbaric. On my new planet, there live six billion sentient Beings. I can survive by taking only a fraction of a second from each every day. Those creatures have natural lives around one hundred years long. My nourishment may cost them an hour or two. No one is killed and sliced into steaks for me.

That bit of dialogue hit the paper without me even thinking about the words. Afterward, I wondered where that choice of words came from. Is someone trying to tell me something? Well, I don’t really know, but it’s an interesting thought that carries forward into The Accord. The bad guys in that book are not as kind to their prey as Os. And other than those few words above, Os is not so kind himself, which you’ll see when the cover is available. Please let me know what you think? And I hope you check those books out when they become available. Thank you for joining the adventure!

I belong to a LinkedIn group for Sci-Fi Readers, Writers, Collectors, and Artists at: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=45166&trk=anet_ug_hm

This Month, I uploaded my first story to meet their Microstory guidelines of 4,000 characters or less. I’m attaching it here for your review. I really hope you enjoy it. My story is about love, piano keys, and a contradiction, which you can also follow in my new books:

Heartstone: The Time Walker

The Accord: Dave Brewster Series

Karl

Here is my new story: 8seconds

Writing these stories has given me a unique opportunity to look at the role faith plays in our lives. Since my books look at life on Earth as well as other planets, many of which have highly advanced alien societies, I’m left to imagine what their religions and beliefs would be. Our little planet has been home to many great people whose beliefs gave rise to the world’s religions. I suppose it is possible those same souls appeared on other planets, probably in native bodies. Gallicean prophets would be featherless bird-like creatures living on ice islands floating over gas giant planets. Maklan saints would be crystalline spiders who can teleport themselves across space.

Alternatively, the founders of religions on those planets could be new and radically different. The one thing that binds them all together is their belief in something greater than themselves. Faith is an important part of my life and I was not about to leave it out of my writing. I want my heroes to be men and women of honor, integrity and faith, although the specifics of what they believe are deliberately left out. The goal is to demonstrate how their belief systems help them to overcome incredible odds to defeat evil and save their friends.

To be sure, my books are about adventure without the boundaries of our current scientific knowledge or the vastness of space. While there is some debate in the Dave Brewster Series about the line between physical and spiritual reality, that is never the focus of the plot. I view the inclusion of spirituality as just another way to show the similarities among people and other civilizations who live throughout this amazing universe.