Ever fantasize about being on a manned space mission? Brett Denton didn’t. Not until tragedy struck his family and he had no reason to stay on Earth. Nothing to lose, nothing to gain. The perfect choice for a mission with no guarantees.
As Brett travels through space in Alpha Redemption, he endures sessions of immersion in a gooey pool, in which he sleeps during the faster-than-light portions of the trip. In between, he spends time reading, working out, eating, and getting to know the ship’s computer, whom he names Jay. Jay has been programmed to desire knowledge. As the trip wears on, Jay becomes curious about many things, including God, whom Brett has no use for since his family tragedy.
Besides the development of this unlikely friendship over the journey, strange things happen to Brett. With each successive awake period, Brett gets a little younger in real time. And with each successive sleep period, Brett relives the portion of his life that corresponds with his younger self. This has the strange effect of time stretching in both directions at the same time from the novel’s start point. This gets a bit tricky, but Baines manages to keep it together and interesting even when the reader is hurtling backwards in time.
Alpha Redemption is a science fiction novel releasing today from Splashdown Books. The author, P. A. Baines,writes science fiction that is both contemplative and profound. Educated in Africa, he works as an analyst/programmer and is studying towards a degree in Creative Writing through Buckinghamshire New University in England. He currently lives in a small corner of the Netherlands with his wife and two children and various wildlife.