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Charon’s Ark Is Now Digital
Posted on | April 2, 2013 | No Comments
Balzac said that there’s no friend like a reader, and he was right. Thanks to everyone for favorable comments about Charon’s Ark. Volumes 2 and 3 of the Charon’s Ark tale are called Charon’s Children and Charon Is Coming. I hate multi-volume sci-fi novels, but my publisher bribed me into wrapping up the story. All three volumes of the Charon’s Ark “epic” contain all of my favorite things: Spaceships, aliens, robots, dinosaurs, brash adolescents, and sexy nice girls in their summer underthings. Read ‘em and meet the Bigbirds, land a UFO in Seattle, shoot it out with the Proctor, watch Chela rob a bank and steal a truck, and see Eva not get what she deserves!
The first volume of the Trilogy is now online as a kindle download.
A planeload of high-school students, their teacher, and the airliner’s crew are hijacked in midair by an alien spacecraft. The aliens take them to their crazily-malfunctioning starship Ark, which we know as the planet Pluto and its moon Charon.
You can read the first chapter online at Amazon (just click on the cover image). Hope you like it enough to download it!
I Spit On Your Galaxy
Posted on | August 29, 2011 | No Comments
R: I looked up the newly reported supernova; it’s in the Pinwheel Galaxy, right above the outermost two stars in the handle of the Big Dipper, something even I can find. We’re having marvelous clear weather here so I went out last night with a small scope to try to see it. I saw a couple of teeny stars embedded in fuzziness, so maybe I did. It’s supposed to increase its magnitude from its present 17 to about 10, so we might get to see it. A first and only for people of our generation.
While I was outside my Android rang and it was D’protz, Dread Emperor of the Pinwheel Galaxy via FTL spacephone. He said that our name for his galaxy sucks. Its real name, he said, is Galaxy of Doom Death Horror Galaxy, and he swore vengence upon us for giving his home Messier object such a paltry name. As soon as his vast armada of giant stompy robots can figure out which one is us. I told him at least we didn’t have a supernova going on in OUR galaxy and that he should spend more on maintenance instead of interstellar warfare. There was silence for a moment, then he wanted to know how I knew he had a supernova, since his galaxy is 200 million light years away from ours. I told him I had a friend at Goddard and gave him your name and phone number.
B: I am thinking D’protz is putting you on a bit, as the Supernova is old news to him by 200 million years… In fact the radiation of that supernova lead to the genetic mutations that gave rise to the race from which D’protz is descended (according to my Stargate sources). This appears to be just D’protz’s lame attempt to expand his mind games to a new realm, thus furthering his “Dreadedness” to new corners of the universe, don’t fall for it.
R: Actually I believe that D’protz doesn’t know about the supernova of 200 million years ago. I was trying to make him think that I could see the supernova they’re having now (they call it Irene). I was messing with HIS heads.
B: My mistake…
The Old Lady’s Coffin: a Vietnam Story
Posted on | May 14, 2010 | 5 Comments
by Rick Gauger ©2010
[Author's note: This is the first time I have written about my experiences as an intelligence officer with the First Cavalry Division during the Vietnam War. A warning to sensitive readers: this story contains descriptions that you may find disturbing. Everything in this story is true.]
This is one of the things that happened at LZ Pony. The LZ had been in place four or five days by the time this happened. There were about 30 American soldiers at Pony, including my little interrogating team. Fighting was going on elsewhere, so our helicopter support was sparse. We didn’t have our jeeps, our tents or our other luxuries. We were by ourselves on a bare hilltop surrounded by little hamlets and rice paddies in a valley in the mountains. We lived under our ponchos. For two weeks our luck held out. The weather was good and there was no enemy except for a sniper who used to fire one shot at us from a great distance every evening at 5 PM.
The LZ commander sent out small patrols of seven or eight infantrymen, to explore the hamlets that dotted the big valley and its tributary valleys. I wasn’t supposed to go on these patrols, but I did anyway. I was curious about this exotic place, the infantry needed interpreters, and it’s smart to scout around when you’re in VC country. My Vietnamese Army interpreter, Sgt Xuan, was willing to go too.
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