Just published today: Short story "Mars: Genesis 2.0"

In the year 2020, astronomers discover a previously unknown asteroid that will strike Earth in exactly 666 days. Because of its massive size, it is impossible to deflect or destroy it with the available technology, and it is clear that the impending impact will be an extinction event. While most governments do what they can to ensure the survival of as many people as possible, such efforts are not expected to succeed. Nevertheless, underground bunkers are pressed into service and new ones created around the globe in hope that some remnant of humanity might escape impending doom by burrowing underground with enough supplies to weather the predicted decades-long nuclear winter that will result from an asteroid strike much larger than that which killed off the dinosaurs and paved the way for the eventual birth and ascent of homo sapiens.

The wealthiest, most technologically advanced countries of Earth hedge their bets by mobilizing their available resources to launch a handful of their best and brightest into space, either to a greatly expanded space station or to the Moon in the hopes that small colonies may be established there that would eventually use the Moon's natural resources to be self-sustaining. The U.S. forges a more ambitious plan to send 12 colonists to Mars in less than two years where with existing technology and the cobbling together of a space ship from three mothballed space shuttles, they may have a better chance for long-term survival.

This is the story of Earth's final days, and a testament to humanity's resourcefulness and indomitable nature in the countdown to Armageddon.

This short story (7,777 words) was published 12-14-2013 and has not been previously published elsewhere. For more information, please click on its Kindle cover below.

12/14/2013

                           Victor.

                                  " Congratulations !," I look froward to reading it.

                                                           Cheers......Joe........ 

Thanks, Joe. It was my summer "fun" writing project for last year that I completed only two days ago. This and another short story written earlier this year (The Riddle of the Sphinx: Solved) along with all the stories in Book of dreams 2e will be incorporated into a re-envisioned short story collection with the working title of Mindscapes: Ten Science Fiction and Speculative Fiction Short Stories that should be available sometime in January.   

I've been very busy with both work and life, but this is a welcomed retreat from what is at present a stressful existence.

Sounds exciting and very dramatic, Victor.  Wishing you much success with it.

Thanks, Abe.

Sounds interesting, Victor. I'm curious to see your take on the theme.

Dear Victor, I have thought about this same scenario but never have written it.  I look forward to the download tomorrow.  I do believe that you have an uncanny and beautiful perception of the way we live.  
I had thought about it with the animals as the last survivors.  Alas, I am a lazy writer and store my dreams away for later...that may never come.  I do think that the survivors of earth in the situation you describe will be the bugs and the small creatures. and the deep underwater life.  It is a wonderful thing to project what may be the future of this small earth on which we live.  Love, Betty

Thanks Ann and Betty.

I wrote the bulk of this story's first draft in about a week while vacationing in Spain with my wife in the wee hours of the night/morning last summer. It really needs to evolve into a novel as there are too many threads that I would love to follow on three different fronts:
1. The last days on earth and the few survivors condemned to a troglodyte existence until the closed systems designed for space fail the underground environment in the months or years following the impact;
2. colonies on the moon from various technologically advanced nations launched prior to the asteroid's collision and left to their own devices with limited resources in inflatable habitats, competing for the precious little ice below the surface in the poles and in deep craters. I have lots of interesting ideas I'd like to pursue in their battle for survival--and to see whether the best specimens of humanity's former glory will overcome the xenophobia and clannish behavior that has condemned nearly all civilizations to a nearly perpetual state of war since we climbed down from the trees to ban together in groups of hunter-gatherers; And finally, 3. I need to go back to Mars and see what transpires on the second day of the American colonist's arrival as they establish a habitat in an extensive network of (perhaps) natural tunnels believed to have been underground rivers that millennia ago fed a massive lake.

There is far too much exposition in the story as it currently stands--an unavoidable necessity to move the action to where I leave it after 7,777 words. I look forward to returning to it in time and working it into a full length novel. But then, again, I've been sitting on my first novel that deals with the underbelly of higher, for-profit education, for about a decade. Too much to do, too little time in which to do it. 

As an interesting aside on my own innerspace, I have now set the stage for the complete destruction of destroyed the earth (or at least all intelligent life on it) in three of my last three SF stories which are NOT "disaster" stories in the traditional sense, a sub-genre I generally detest. I don't need a shrink to tell me I have some issues with humanity--even before Obama Care . As Roby the Robot used to say, "Danger Will Robinson . . . hide the world, Victor is at it again."

Challenging.

Do hope you work on the novel, Victor. I definitely wanted more.

Congratulations.  I just hope it's not as disturbing as your last short story

This is a kinder, gentler far more positive Armageddon with at least the possibility of survival--a kind of hard reboot for humanity. I did not obliterate the universe this time out. The anger management classes might be working.  

Ann,

I like short fiction because it allows me to get to my point relatively quickly without the need for extensive plotting, character development and dialogue. This topic is just too broad to do it justice in a short story--at least for me. I just don't have the time to develop it into even a novella at this point, and hope that there is enough substance despite the broad brush strokes to leave readers wanting more, but not feeling short changed. (Fortunately Amazon allows Kindle books to be returned for credit, so if I've really missed the mark, no doubt readers will send me the message by doing just that--that is, assuming they buy it in the first place--never a safe bet.)

Best of luck with you book, Victor, I look forward to reading it.

Thanks, Alice.

Actually, I've simultaneously published "Mindscapes: Ten Science Fiction and Speculative Fiction Short Stories" that contains this new story, another new story and the eight other stories from Book of Dreams 2e. I no longer do free book giveaways as they have hurt my sales in the past. But I intend to make the book available under Amazon's new "price drop" program for $.99 for a limited time at the end of January. I'll post details here when that happens. (Mindscapes otherwise sells for $4.99.) I will do the same for the U.K. at that time. I can't do a price drop until the book is enrolled for at least 30 days. I'm trying out the new program with my Intellectual Property book and Book of Dreams 2e starting on teh 22nd of this month. We'll see if drastic price drops attract significant additional sales.