Jamie Williams has fought against corruption, war, and oppression all his life. A former campus radical, he publishes the newsletter, Uncommon Sense. Middle age has banked some of his fire, but not his values. And it has taught him that if he wants his voice to be heard, it has to be reasoned and balanced. Perceived by both the media and many within his administration as weak and indecisive, President Marshall Thornberry has yet to find his public voice. He knows he's in the Oval Office only because the powerful right wing of his party selected him as a face that people would find acceptable,...

Harry Middleton is born in an America staggered by a century of decline, a time of medical and technological marvels beyond the reach of most people in a shattered economy. Pessimism and despair have replaced optimism and hope. A desperate government has bet the future on space, but the lunar and Martian colonies haven't provided the hoped-for salvation. Despite an angry, disillusioned public, the first star mission will soon be launched. Harry is a special child, smart and precocious, his only confidante an embittered grandfather. When the old man dies, Harry is lost until he meets Lorrie....

Alan Zendell has had a long and varied career as a physicist, aerospace engineer, software and database developer, and Government analyst and manager. But as both a reader and writer, his first love was Sci-Fi and speculative fiction. In "retirement" he now helps middle and high school students improve their math skills as he and his wife divide their time between Maryland and Florida, the home of their present and future grandchildren and their favorite dog.

What if Earth possessed a critical element not found on any other planet in the known universe? And what if older, more advanced civilizations on other planets circling other stars had spent millennia searching for it, only to discover it on Earth? What if they were willing to fight over it, even if they turned Earth into a battleground? That's what computer engineer and committed agnostic Steve Kowalski learns when he seeks solace from his personal problems on a remote mountaintop in Colorado. He discovers a badly injured alien who claims he is there to defend Earth against other,...