Bøger af John Argo

When a man loves an airplane, it's a matter of calculations. When a man loves a woman, everything is up in the air. Paul Owens, in the early 1970s, found an obscure Soviet technical journal-and an inspiration that would save the Free World (based on true history). Paul also falls in love with a beautiful, intelligent young widow named Marsha Kassner, 32, who moves next door with her son Peter, 9. A brilliant aircraft engineer at Lockheed's Skunk Works, Paul is also a handsome young man tending toward fast cars, long hair, and loud music-all anathema to his stiff-necked supervisors. Certain mid-level managers conspire to eliminate him, in favor of someone safe, bland, and devoid of ideas like they are. Their mediocrity, and their resistance to change, nearly derails one of the most brilliant inventions of the century. Have Blue, named after the project that gave birth to this technology that saved mankind from World War III, is a historical techno-thriller with a strong romantic story line, loosely based on the first days of that project. The hero, a young engineer with a fascination for aerodynamic nosecones, discovers a stunning mathematical secret in an obscure Soviet journal--overlooked by similarly mediocre managers in the Communist domain. Have Blue was the most top-secret U.S. military project since the atomic bomb project. In 1973, the fate of the world hung on what would eventually become known as the F117-A stealth fighter. This became clear during the so-called Yom Kippur War (October 1973) between Israel and her Arab neighbors. This brief, devastating war was a test run between U.S. and Soviet proxies. One of the key arenas became the war between Soviet-built Egyptian defensive radars and U.S. penetrating attack jet technology-and the latter won, hands down. Now if only Paul Owens could overcome the forces conspiring to keep him from bringing his growing affection for Marsha Kassner through all the opposing radars to win her heart.

Library Journal, in their 2003 review of the print edition, offered warm praise for this "fresh, original new approach to a timeless classic" and recommended it for large libraries everywhere. In its initial appearance as an e-book at Fictionwise, this novel sold thousands of copies and garnered over 400 reviews, almost all positive, most of them raves. (Synopsis follows at end below.) It's a soaring, imaginative science fiction novel in a well-established, long-standing tradition (called Robinsonades, typically about shipwrecked, marooned adventurers) whose science fiction subset alone includes the following: Robinson Crusoe on Mars (film 1964); The Island of Dr. Moreau (novel H. G. Wells, 1896; films 1977, 1996); Enemy Mine (film 1985); Lord of the Flies (novel, 1953 Nobel Laureate William Golding; film 1963); and most recently Andy Weir's 2011 self-published SF novel The Martian, which became a successful major Hollywood film in 2014. There will be many more in the future-maybe even a film based on Robinson Crusoe 1,000,000 A.D. Note: the original Robinson Crusoe 1719 novel by Daniel Defoe is NOT a children's story. Although it has been borrowed, revised, and sanitized-made into Disney fuzzy bunny cartoons, abridged for children's editions-Daniel Defoe wrote a dark, violent, bloody novel about murder, betrayal, slavery, and cannibal feasts. The website (www.clocktowerbooks.com) cites at least one academic expert on this, plus info on pacing, point of view, homages, characters names, and many other fascinating topics. BRIEF SYNOPSIS: A million years into a totally unexpected future, our hero is the last man on Earth. Nobody has ever been so alone. Alex Kirk awakens a million years from now, utterly alone and in terrible danger on a brave new Earth. Humankind has been extinct for eons, and Alex Kirk is at best an accident, an afterthought in an uncaring universe filled with dreadful secrets. This is more than a purely entertaining DarkSF novel in the rich tradition of Blade Runner, Alien, Dark City, and other atmospheric, poetic literary SF. It's a stark warning about the dangers of genetic engineering that will soon be the greatest menace to humankind in history-scarier than 20th Century atomic bomb fears . If you're looking for post-apoc, with a plausible reason, here it is. He is marooned like no human ever before--in time and space. He can never meet another human, because he is a clone born in a wrecked, moss-covered breeding tank deep in a sentient cave. He has only the original Alex Kirk's memories to sustain him, but those are brittle and fragmented in Alex's newly formed mind. And yet Alex Kirk summons the determination to live, to dream, and to strive against all despair. Earth in 1,000,000 A.D. is a planet of shocks and surprises, from huge saltwater flowers to the giant butterflies that pollinate them. Sinister and cunning, black-furred, evolved wolverine/bear Rippers with boar tusks lurk hour after hour waiting for Alex to make a single mistake so they can devour him. This scary new world has living caves that swallow people; armed and marauding aftermen; a haunted village of long-dead clone men and women; a valley formed when an ancient university crumbled and its experimental laboratories fissured, with a swift-flowing river between them, a valley littered with skulls, picked over by Rippers and other un-things in the long afterglow of old Earth. One day, solitary, lonely Alex sees a curious smudge in space, beside the moon. He will discover it encapsulates the secret of what happened to humankind, and the key to his own fate. Starting alone, naked, and with nothing except a fierce will to survive, Alex courageously explores, battles, and conquers. He ultimately confronts the enigma of who he is and why ancient humans left him shipwrecked and alone in eternity. Is there a woman-Friday to relieve his nightmare existence? Read this novel and learn the answer. Hint: "strawberry ice cream."

Praised by reviewers, Lantern Road* is a far-future adventure of a doomed love between a human and a gorgeous alien princess. In a galaxy where humans are hated and hunted like prey during the Inversion of Man*, their affair causes scandal that only ritual suicide can fix. While Lady Ramy is forced to take her life (but wait - you don't know the whole story until the end), Jory the Velvet Thief & Failure escapes to the stars - and an amazing adventure.*The title Lantern Road refers to the imperial highway circling Oba's great island in eternal night. Based on feudal Japan's famed Tokaido Road, in this novel - full of foot traffic with swinging, hurrying lanterns of all colors - it evokes the galaxies above. **The Inversion is a 2000 year dark age in humankind's long, checkered history documented by the series.Two passionate lovers, best friends since childhood - a human slave, Jory, and his alien mistress, the beautiful young princess Ramy of Oba - are discovered in a forbidden tryst. They face death together by the classic twin short-swords, inscribed with nursery rhymes doubling as suicide poems, which are routinely gifted to lovers in this dark, faraway world run by a samurai-like warrior cult. What will become of the doomed lovers? Will their Lantern Road be one of death, or will they find their way to the stars? In a terrifying, achingly far-distant future lies an alien realm that resembles feudal Japan. Old Earth is long forgotten or may never have existed. Humans are despised underpeople of the galaxy, hunted as prey, hated everywhere, cruelly enslaved on worlds like Oba.Alas, Lady Ramy and her wasp-sister Ramy-baba cannot escape their self-execution by the twin short rabbit-swords of the ancient poetic fame. But Jory O'Call, her human lover - condemned as well by his own people - escapes to the stars. There, he encounters wonders beyond imagination. But the greatest wonder of all is a secret we encounter at the very end of the story. It is a new life, a new Lantern Road, in which the lanterns are the ocean of stars through which Jory navigates starships - but sometimes fate comes full circle. There is even more to wonder at, but we leave that to your reading pleasure and amazement.Tim Pratt, Locus Online: "...a richly-realized far-future world in which strange wonders are revealed as considerable suspense builds. The characters are interesting, and the plot moves well, but the real star here is the universe in which the events take place, especially the inhabited moon, Shur, with its complex star faring alien culture, reminiscent of Imperial Japan, but with strange complications--including multi-use fungi gardens and a third gender. Argo's handling of detail is remarkable, creating a sense of a whole universe without bombarding the reader with unnecessary information." (full review with the book).John K. Muir, author/media critic, SciFi Channel, Cinescape; "I had the pleasure of reading Lantern Road...and found it to be a very atmospheric reading experience. I was floored by many of the descriptive passages and conceits... John Argo's Lantern Road is a sensuous and elaborate glimpse into a distant future--evoked, interestingly, by way of our storied past. Earth is a barely-remembered legend, man is a slave, and a unique species of alien (which includes an insect-like third sex...) dominates a faraway planet. But the story is accessible and immediate (rather than farfetched) because the writer, in lyrical, descriptive passages, has forged a civilization that evokes memories of the ancient Orient, with all of its imperial plotting and conspiracies. Our hero, Jory O'Call, is a slave, sold into a royal alien family by his poor parents..." (full review with the book).

Time Train: Dystopia USA 2049 is a new edition of a 2008 novel that was eerily prophetic about future conditions in the USA and the world; too much of it seems to be coming true already as in classic dystopian Blade Runner series of Ridley Scott. The author in 2008 predicted the following: 1) An Amerika run by a ruthless and amoral tyrant called the Great Shepherd2) An Amerika surrounded by a high wall called the Magnum Line3) A chapter titled "Take Down This Wall" that mocks Reagan's Berlin Wall quote4) And (are you ready?) a sinister cat prowling in high places named *Donald*DEA Special Agent Joe 'Mack' Mackinson's nightmare adventure starts on a lone stakeout one nigh, in the desert outside San Diego. He hopes to snare a Baja drug lord. Instead, he stumbles onto a battle between rival UFO gangs from the distant future. He is kidnapped, and drafted into service on a perilous mission in Future Amerika. Time travelers from far uptime are constantly working to undo the damage from a vast and deadly Time War eons from now that has left Earth and its great City of En metropolis at the edge of extinction. By carefully, gently tweaking myriad small events in the past, agents from the future hope to save their world by hours and minutes at a clip as Earth slips into the deadly embrace of the Cosmopause at the edge of time. Mack's mission is to escort a dissident senator and his family out of the Great Shepherd's nightmare Amerika, across the deadly Magnum Line (or National Defense Barrier), and into the free world beyond (Canada, Europe, everywhere except a nation trapped in its own exceptionalism myth). The Magnum Line is manned by two million terrified, jumpy troops ready to shoot at any phantom that may invade their prison nation at any moment. But that wall of paranoia, like the Berlin Wall during the Cold War, is not about keeping enemies out. It's about keeping the truth out, and the serfs on the inside ignorant of how cruel and tragic their lives in a totalitarian state have become, founded on fake noise from Big Brother about everything: economics, religion, science, politics. No trace of U.S. democracy remains - only a Big Brother media circus that rewrites history every morning news program to suit the ruling korporate oligarchy's latest lies of the day.It's a rich dystopia in the best traditions of SF's literature of ideas, filled with action and thrills, as well as the sentimental love story of Mack and his beautiful young wife Carly - who may be the next victim of time travel and slaughter that knows no boundaries. Can Mack save Carly, get the senator and his family of out dangerous new Medieval Amerika, and help save the far future City of En? Mack will have plenty of help (or hate) from rival future time travel agents who talk rough and play for keeps.

Eight thousand years in the future, and many parsecs across the galaxy, humankind has entered a fabulous age known as the Renaissance of Mankind. Two attractive, smart young persons meet at a remote university world, and fall in love: a young commoner and a beautiful princess. Their future looks bright -- until a sudden, catastrophic attack by a blood-thirsty, merciless alien race known as the Kaarrk Swarm darkens everyone's life and calls for the utmost heroism and sacrifice.Zara is the Crown Princess Upholder, of the ruling clan on the Tellerine world in the Corduwaine system. Ranay is a gifted commoner who gives up a promising future in his home system to marry her and live his life out with her on her far away home world. Humans and aliens have lived in peace for centuries after many bitter wars long ago. The humans live under the spiritual rule of a female pope known as the Holy Mother, who is attended by battalions of fearless, devoted military priestesses. The Kaarrk Swarm are about to shatter that peace in a holocaust of blood, violence, terror, and death.At first arrival on peaceful, lovely Tellerine, everything looks wonderful and promising for the young couple, despite her gruff father the mighty Lord Trask, Upholder of Corduwaine and Tellerine. We meet Zara's sisters and other members of a strong, resilient frontier world.Just when life seems perfect for Ranay and Zara, the Kaarrk Swarm attack in force, including a behemoth mothership that almost literally eats planets. Tragedy and horror rip through the peaceful Corduwaine System. Suddenly, it's all about life and death, demanding courage and duty. Fighting alongside military priestesses, mystical abbesses, time-traveling HM Sacred Agents, and other denizens of this future galaxy, Ranay and Zara confront their ultimate fates--and surprises beyond imagination.After thousands of years of suffering and near annihilation, the human race is stronger and wiser, living in peace with other races. But a terror lurks beyond the dust clouds and dim light years of far space, threatening to destroy civilization and humankind. The enemy is so powerful, so implacable, so filled with hate, that its very name inspires chills: The Kaarrk Swarm are a militant hive culture whose only emotion is a relentless hunger to be vicious. A dying hive scorpion's only emotion is rage because it will no longer live to hate and kill.This gripping new novel in John Argo's Empire of Time series joins a sweeping cosmic history spanning eons of time and light years of space. Its lyrical, at times poetic language reminds us of the atmosphere, epic story telling, larger than life characters, and lyric poetry of science fiction classics - think of Frank Herbert's Dune, James Tiptree Jr.'s 20,000 Light Years from Home, Cordwainer Smith's The Planet Buyer, and A. E. Van Vogt's Weapon Shops of Isher.Read Far Wars, and then explore the other novels so far in the Empire of Time Series, starting with Summer Planets written by John Argo as a teenager, finished at age 19, which has become the series corner stone. In Later Novels: You'll meet the Holy Mother and her military priestesses in Mars the Divine, and you'll see the Kaarrk Swarm in action in John Argo's Escape Prison World Or Die, another novel of far future distant wars in the galaxy. Details on the series can be found at www empireoftime com.Far Wars is a far future science fiction novel - a symphony of love, war, loss, and rebirth in a distant future time place in the galaxy. It's a powerful love story set against a sweeping background - an SF Doctor Zhivago more than 7000 years from now. Stunning and poetic far-future history by John Argo in the tradition of Cordwainer Smith's Classic Norstrilia and other tales of the Instrumentality.

25 light years from dying Earth, a fresh, earth-like planet broadcasts radio invitations to come to a thriving alien starport. Paul and Licia Menard (lovers) are among 6 last surviving humans who journey 1,000 years to join an advanced star-faring civilization. What the pioneers find is a world of jungles and plains, with no sign of advanced civilization, but ancient ruins everywhere. They discover blue-skinned, stone age village people with dim cultural memories of star flight, and-as they excavate an ancient, purposely sealed chamber in the village of Akha--answers to questions nobody ever thought to ask.Already, one of the pioneers is dead-from a lander crash upon leaving the mothership. Dead is engineer Tynan's spouse, Nancy-meaning one of three breeding pairs is gone. Another couple, the Wengs, are lost somewhere-it's not clear if their life craft burned up in orbit, or crashed and burned, or if the two scientists are struggling alone and lost someplace far away. Paul and Licia's lander burned up on crashing, though the two just barely escaped unhurt. With each of the three life craft/landers that is lost, an entire library of dead Earth's civilization is gone forever. At present, the only remaining hope is that the Wengs and their ship survived its landing. The mothership itself, loaded with records and tools, entered the atmosphere, unplanned, and burned up.There are just three pioneers accounted for in Akha: the dangerously explosive trio of Licia and Menard--plus the odd man in: handsome, rugged Tynan, who soon starts eye contact with Licia. Sparks fly, and one of the men must leave, forever, on his own in a vast wilderness haunted by roaring beasts. Will it be Menard or Tynan? Ancient laws of evolution, survival, rivalry, and conquest kick in. It's the Human Condition, at its last gasp, far from lost Earth. Is there any hope for mankind?.The three pioneers who landed together-Licia, Menard, and Tyan--receive limited and conditional hospitality from a puzzling, human-like blue people in a prairie village. They are barbarians amid the ancient ruins of a fabulous star port.Shadowing their every move is an enticing, mysterious BLUE PRINCESS named Auska, whom Menard and his fellow surviving colonists befriend. This beautiful, exotic blue princess is integral to the upcoming STORYBOOK FESTIVAL. Auska's father is a local stone age shaman who, like all his people, is illiterate-and yet, he wears a metal disk that carries with it telepathic images of a fabulous, long ago starport named Avamish. To make matters more complicated, Auska becomes part of the pioneer love polygon...with special affections for the lead character, Paul Menard. Is Auska clever and deadly, or a brave pioneer in her own right?.Every year, the shamans and people from around the blue world gather in eerie, crumbling, empty Avamish for the annual Storybook Festival. Out of desperation, the three pioneers and Auska join her father and shamans from Akha on a long journey to the ruined starport-which contains far more secrets than anyone had imagined. Avamish calls the pioneers into its muted and haunting embrace.

FROM KIRKUS REVIEWS: "An entertaining, kinetic supernatural tale with surprises and a genial hero."- Kirkus ReviewsIt's the next fun romp and cult classic in the spirit of famous dark comedies like After Hours (Martin Scorsese), From Dusk Till Dawn (Quentin Tarentino), and National Lampoon's Vacation (Chevy Chase, 1983). This little novel rivals any of them, and then some! A UC Berkeley senior's journey to see his romantic interest sends him on a terrifying, otherworldly detour in this dark comedy-fantasy. San Diegan Martin Brown, home for summer, dreams of a career as a film industry writer. After losing his job shoveling mulch at a garden store near home in San Diego, he visits Los Angeles production companies two hours' drive north. In L.A., Martin meets attractive and personable Chloë Setreal at Alienopolis, producer of fantasy books, games, and movies. Martin and Chloë instantly fall in love. Chloë soon calls him for a job interview-a chance to meet again. Martin hops in his car for a quick two-hour drive up the coast, but a huge Pacific Ocean rain storm crashes with thunder and lightning, and car trouble strands Martin near Solana Beach. Drenched, he walks to the nearest house for help (or hell?) in a scene Alfred Hitchcock might have written in sequel to his thriller Psycho. And that's only the start of Martin's misadventures. A leisurely two-hour drive becomes a 36 hour nightmare that gets crazier by the hour. Martin flees from one ramble to the next, eastward to the Salton Sea, to Bombay Beach, to a fundamentalist camp where kidnap victims harvest marijuana, to a resort used by fake evangelists, corporate republicans, and other crooks serving the deep oligarchy. Martin makes his escape on water skis towed by fellow escapee (petty crook) in a motorboat. Along the way, Martin has brief, cryptic cell contacts with Chloë, who is laid up in L.A. with a broken leg and begs him to hurry. She longs for him. Martin pledges to see her at any cost, flying into the snowy mountains east of L.A. for deepening terrors involving zombies, aliens, and other unusual persons... and ultimately back to L.A. tattered and half-dead to reach Chloë, who had a scare of her own. As in famous dark comedies like After Hours (Martin Scorsese), From Dusk Till Dawn (Quentin Tarentino), Chloë remains a beautiful, loving, delightfully aloof sort of goddess figure to whom Martin must journey through fantastic adventures, like Ulysses in Homer's Odyssey. Read full Kirkus Review inside cover: "...Argo excels at pacing, as his story begins leisurely and becomes increasingly frantic and unpredictable... Martin traverses a hellish underworld so startling that reaching Chloë is a goal worth cheering for."

Never before has a ship so far from home been in so much trouble. Hurtling through space and time like a blur, the starship Nebula Express gives truth to a darkly bright motto out of a nightmare: "Nothing seems right...near the speed of light..." Not the ship, not the mission, nor its people--especially not Ridge and Brenna, who are drawn to each other in a deep passion that defies the deadly madness all around--yet their love, too, is a symptom of all that's wrong aboard the Nebula Express. In the tradition of Ridley Scott's Alien-scarier, yet more thoughtful, with a love story amid the terror, chaos, and horror of a ship gone insane.The six-person engineering crew aboard a cargo ship awaken to a normal morning in the crew quarters aboard a solar system cargo ship named Neptune Express, on a two-year mission to the blue gas giant that will allow each to retire wealthy. They enjoy breakfast, banter, and email home across the vast emptiness of space. But Earth isn't answering. And the captain is nowhere to be found.When Ridge, Brenna, and the other four specialists open the hatch to enter the huge ship, they discover to their horror that nothing is what they thought it would be. Nothing is what it should be--not the ship, not the mission, not the engineers themselves--in a heart-rending ultimate discovery for each man and woman that is sure to send cold chills through the reader. You will *not* want to miss this unique twist that takes horror to its ultimate, personal peak. It's a plot twist no writer has ever done before. Be prepared to keep the lights on all night. Take a deep breath, take a long walk around the house late at night, check the doors and windows, and look in the mirror to see who or what is looking back at you.Our apocalyptic odyssey is not just through ruined cities--all of that is gone forever. Six technicians aboard a broken, ruined, apocalyptic starship from hell must learn the tragic truth about themselves, their journey, and their destination (nowhere).Mystery upon mystery compound the terror as the crew find themselves inside an ancient, wrecked starship that is far beyond anyone's ability to repair. Then bodies begin turning up, along with zombie-like Mudmen or Cleaners who hunt both the living and the dead, seeking body parts and food. But that's the least of the crew's problems.Then the dying begins. One by one, the engineers fall prey to a strange illness. Not only is everything frighteningly wrong, but one by one, each realizes the most horrific truth of all about him or herself.Ridge, a strong, handsome Lead Engineer, and lovely red-headed Brenna, Senior Engineer, have families back on Earth whom they love very much. And yet, they find themselves drawn into a passionate, overwhelming love that neither sought, but they cannot resist or understand.Soon, pursued by the zombie Cleaners, Ridge and Brenna are on a desperate search for truth, for help, for survival, for salvation where there can be none. Or can there? Somewhere in the rusting, dripping, hollow, ghost-ridden bowels of this enormous city flying through the distant galaxy is a magical place called Largo, where answers and help can be found.Ridge and Brenna must find Largo before it's too late, as the clock ticks...Largo itself is only a keyhole leading to either human extinction...or a New Earth that is humankind's only shred of hope. If the two lovers cannot defeat the ship and its monsters (both external and internal to themselves) they will never know as a ghastly array of long-dead, mummified officers on the bridge sails the Nebula Express to her ultimate destiny amid distant stars. Visit the author's webplex online at www.darksf.com for more info.

Remember a time when you enjoyed playing board games around the kitchen table, and you rolled the dice and moved your piece around the train tracks on the board? You could buy and sell real estate in some virtual city that left much to the imagination. Maybe you fantasized what it might be like to shrink down to atomic size. You'd become a tiny person in an virtual game world with life-sized trains and cities all around you. Most excitingly, you'd meet all those fascinating people-spies, lovers, runners, shooters, or a million ordinary men and women going about their lives in a divided Gotha (think Berlin) right out of the Cold War. Interested? That metro has now arrived at your imagination station with this DarkSF novel by John Argo. Take a rocket ride on the author's inventive and original idea express. Enjoy a romantic story in a setting so far out that only John Argo could get us there and back. Best of all, the underlying concept takes us to the far edge of science. In a pocket universe of danger and intrigue, Tedda lives in a rainy metropolis right out of Brazil or Dark City. In a dark and glistening dystopia, East Gotha and West Gotha are eternal rivals trying to destroy each other in a war whose reasons nobody can fathom (aren't all wars like that?). You're about to meet a young West Gotha woman mathematician named Tedda, who commits the ultimate crime of treason - she has an affair with the dashing Captain Alton Hedrock, a spy for enemy East Gotha. Tedda becomes a prisoner in a strange West Gotha university, where she joins other programmers in the eternal military effort against East Gotha. For amusement, West Gotha's data miners invent a subatomic board game where you can actually descend to a tiny universe (that game board) and interact with people - and dark, dangerous forces that challenge your own reality. In the pocket universe of Meta 4 City, or Metaphor City, Tedda meets and falls in love with Edgar, a Rule like all things and all people in that miniature world. But Tedda's world is in danger of imminent destruction, and only Metaphor City offers a means of escape before it is too late. The spies of East and West are everywhere, and you always looks over your shoulder. The game is on, the stakes are sky-high, deadly spies move in the night, and the eternal war between East and West Gotha continues unrelentingly. Think East and West Berlin at war, complete with strutting officers in jackboots, alluring women with secrets and perfume, soft jazz on rainy street corners, droning bombers, sweeping search lights, and howling sirens. In the midst of all battle and terror, men and women manage to still fall secretly in love--that, too, is the oldest game in town. Except the entire world is about to change. This novel will remind you of DarkSF movie classics like The Matrix, Inception, Blade Runner, and Dark City, but Meta 4 City stands tall in a world of its own fresh, unique imagining. What is DarkSF? John Argo proposes that most literary, topnotch science fiction is DarkSF. That's not horror or gruesome, but "the dark chocolate of science fiction." We've already mentioned a few classics. Add to that Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, George Orwell's 1984, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Nobel Laureate William Golding's Lord of the Flies or The Inheritors, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein-the list is endless, and surprising. DarkSF is the Dark Chocolate of Science Fiction in particular, and literature in general. Clocktower Books will soon launch a website to offer more info and insight about DarkSF, so please stay tuned.

Doom Spore (a DarkSF Series novel) is a 'summer movie in a book' - dark, chilling, and hugely creepy science-horror fiction in the tradition of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, They Walked Like Men, and The Thing. As it turns out (the author didn't know this when writing it in 2003-5) Doom Spore reflects a true phenomenon - the entomopathogen fungus family, which turns ants and other insects into suicidal robots (zombies) to help the fungus thrive while the helpless victim (e.g., a carpenter ant) suffers a prolonged and terrifying death right out of your worst nightmares. More on that true science in a moment.Lt. Linsey Simon, San Diego Harbor Police, and her husband, hard-hitting reporter Jack Simon, are thrust headlong into the gripping case of a dangerous scientific experiment gone horribly wrong for corporate profit.This scary and entertaining story begins quietly and ominously in little homes in ordinary neighborhoods around San Diego. A boy named Jimmy Mendez, 9, and his cousin Maribel Walesky, 10, await the return of their dads (merchant sailors) from the sea.But the things that come home are not men. They look like sailors, but they are silent and empty-eyed, and are not the same dads who went to sea. At first, only the children can see this -not their mothers, nor any other adults--and nobody will believe them.Soon, people begin dying all over town, turning into alien spore carriers seeking their next victim to infect. The inhuman forces behind this are well organized by a corporation whose desperate and risky effort to develop a forbidden jungle-derived drug has gone horribly wrong. From a secret airstrip, in the Volcan Mountains east of San Diego, crop-dusting missions fly over the city to spread their spores more efficiently.By the time human authorities realize what confronts them, it's all but too late. Now it's up to Linsey and Jack, along with two brave children and a few hardy citizens, to save the world. San Diego, beautiful tourist capital of blue skies and balmy sea breezes, becomes a colony of the fungal or Fifth Kingdom of life on Earth.John Argo has written an entirely new and fresh premise here, using not the alien pods found in Jack Finney's 1955 classic The Body Snatchers, but a fungus horror from right here on Earth in the jungles of Peru. Amazingly, after publishing this book, the author learned that there are actually zombie fungus life forms in those very jungles. This is no joke. They are called entomopathogens, right out of the worst nightmares of science horror. That's science fiction gone dark and creepy (like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Thing, and similar stories). Doom Spore is fiction (so far) but entomopathogens are real. For example, the fungus Ophiocordyceps unilateralis (discovered in 1859 in a tropical rainforest) attacks insects including carpenter ants. The fungus seats itself on the ant's head, drills into the brain, and builds a kind of living console on top of the head. The ant's entire nervous system is now controlled by the fungus, making the ant into a zombie (literally). The fungus then controls the ant, forcing it to abandon its life and venture into areas where the temperature and humidity are best suited for fungal reproduction. There, the ant is then forced to attach itself to a leaf or similar perch until it dies from starvation and dehydration, overgrown with fungus as in the worst horror movie you can imagine. Even Doom Spore isn't quite as cruel, although Doom Spore is both terrifying and rewarding as a modern classic soon to be. Jack Finney's The Body Snatchers has been made and remade into movies at least three times. That's a sure sign a story is not just great, but an archetype that spawns endless homages. Doom Spore is an homage but not an imitation. Read it and you'll agree that Doom Spore is wildly fresh and original, and deserves to be made into a very scary, addictive movie.

If you liked cozying up with Stieg Larssen's Lisbeth Salander, you'll love Laurel 'Blue' Humboldt - except Blue was on the scene 25 years earlier. In this steamy, intriguing suspense novel from the very dawn of Internet publishing, attractive young punk DEA agent, martial artist, and grunge musician Laurel 'Blue' Humboldt must unravel not only the deadly secrets of an international drug cartel, but also the unusual love triangle in which she finds herself. Not only was Neon Blue a radically innovative digital novel in 1996, but the heroine is a young bisexual woman (DEA agent) struggling with her love life amid murder, mayhem, and desperate detective work. Young DEA Special Agent Blue's first case becomes intensely personal not just with the assassination of a key witness she is transporting in Manhattan, but the cartel-related murder of her dear friend, a married detective named Eddie Stosik in a small Connecticut town. Propelled by fury, she pursues the killers to San Diego, where two different showdowns must occur. One is her final, deadly confrontation with a creepy European slasher who is out-badding the Colombians. The other showdown is inside her heart, and love waits for no killer, agent, or detective. As the case takes her from coast to coast, with a climax in sunny San Diego, does her heart yearn more for beautiful Chinese American detective Martha Yee, or handsome millionaire importer and ex-model John Connor? She can't think too long, because the cartel's ruthless assassin is closing in. Skilled in karate - a statement in punk, rock, tattoos, and art - new 23-year-old college grad and training academy sprout Blue is tricked out with a 9 mm Glock, waving a DEA badge, as she tracks down a trail of corruption involving church officials, Colombian drug mobsters, and other crooks. Things go from personal, when the slasher who is on her trail starts brutally murdering her friends - to desperate when both John Connor and Martha Yee are targets on a murderous path that leads directly to Blue. Neon Blue by John Argo was the world's first true online e-book at first publication in 1996. This novel attracted world-wide attention in the 1990s, and was a bestseller on line during the early days of Web publishing and e-commerce. Publishing note about this book and Clocktower Books (publisher): Neon Blue by John Argo was the world's first true online e-book. Originally published in 1996, this was history's first novel ever published online for reading in HTML - proprietary, not public domain (Gutenberg-type programs not applicable). Full criteria listed in the interior text of the book and at the Clocktower Books website and museum pages. Neon Blue was a bestseller on line in the original Rocket eBook and Barnes & Noble e-book markets 1999-2001. Our publishing program branched into print on demand while our primary e-book platform in the early 2000s was Fictionwise (2001-2012). We continue to publish titles in POD and e-book formats, with our vision for a synthesized, digital-first future where content is all the meaning, not the container, and especially not obsolete, desperately struggling delivery systems.