Beyond the Stars: Infinite Expanse: a space opera anthology by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Astral Books
Published: 2020-08-20T22:00:00+00:00

A Word from James Rossiter

I've been a professional blackjack dealer, experimental drug study subject, National Institutes of Health (NIH) researcher, baboon sanctuary volunteer, Hollywood set consultant, and evolutionary biologist. With this story, I am now finally a professional science fiction author. Life is full of surprises.

I've been reading sci-fi and fantasy as far back as I remember. The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings were the first books I remember being read to me as a child. In junior high I worked my way through Robert Aspirin, Piers Anthony, Lyndon Hardy, and all the Pocket Books Star Trek novels. In high school I devoured Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett. I was introduced to Dungeons and Dragons at summer camp and by the end of high school had played tons of other role-playing games.

During my undergraduate years, I didn't read as much since I was busy majoring in biology, chemistry, and mathematics (and minoring in physics). There wasn't a lot of time for extra reading. I'm a bona fide science nerd as well as a science fiction geek.

When I started graduate school, I rediscovered speculative fiction (thanks to J.K. Rowling, Orson Scott Card, Nancy Kress, and others) and have been reading more ever since. I wrote a few unpublished stories back then, but my focus was on getting my nonfiction scientific articles written and published.

Then I earned my PhD in theoretical population genetics and did an NIH-funded post-doc where I performed artificial selection experiments with fruit flies. After that I moved out to Los Angeles and started a position as a biology professor where I teach evolutionary biology and statistics to biology students. I also run a research lab where we study evolution, behavior, and public health.

I'm a legit mad scientist. True story.

A major interest of mine is understanding how and why things change. This is what attracted me to evolutionary biology and is one of the things I like to explore in my writing. Hence the name for my online moniker; you can find me at www.evolvingmagic.com and via "evolvingmagic" on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

This story was inspired by a book called Last Post: The Final Words from Our Soldiers of the Great War by Max Arthur. That 2004 book is a series of short interviews with the final twenty-four surviving British veterans of World War I. Their descriptions of the war, their lives afterwards, and their thoughts about what it all meant to them was deeply moving and has stayed with me since I read it. Getting a glimpse into their lives shows how much the world has changed.

I plan to write a novel that tells the full story of the space war alluded to in this story from a variety of perspectives, but the experience of Jonathan Casper Huang demanded to be told first. We should never forget that war is not just a topic in history class or an abstract force of nature; war is violence fueled by the lives of people. Warriors do the exceptional, but that experience is only part of their full identity.

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