Showing results by author "Ginger Booth" in All Categories

Six months into his virtual life, traveling to colonize distant planet Rayas, Gabe Oliveri devises shapeshifter magic for a campaign in the Classic Maya world. In the video-game time travel that is history class, beliefs are real, and fuel Gabe’s magical powers. But the AI’s Maya campaign amounts to gringo-grade tourism. Because it skips Mexico’s most challenging belief – shapeshifting shamans. Specifically, were-jaguars. In the lush rainforests of Mexico and Guatemala, the Stone Age flourished into one of Earth’s great civilizations. The Maya mastered mathematics and astronomy. ...

In a tiny ship never meant for deep space, Denali is one hell of a trip. But the leading mind in nanite medicine is stranded there. Captain Sass Collier wants him back, to cure failure to thrive syndrome in her own colony. Each of the crew has a motive to embrace the risk. The lucky ones wish for adventure. Adventure is assured. But Denali holds another prize beyond their wildest dreams. Can Sass hold her fractious crew together, get the goods, and meet her launch window home?

They thought Earth was dead. Captain Sass Collier can’t die. A century ago, the Colony Corps carried her away to the stars. Because Earth was doomed. She returns with tech advances from the colonies, hoping to restore the one best planet for humanity, and save isolated pockets of desperate survivors. Instead her motley crew from the boonies finds not one, but three surviving worlds — Earth, Luna, and Mars. And she’s with the invading aliens. Her homecoming starts with a bang. The Northern League tyrannizes Earth now. They capture Sass and her ship separately, to hold them hostage ...

Mahina's terraformers built a high-tech urban paradise. Then Earth flooded the colony with desperate refugees, cop Sass Collier among them. The settlers who arrived with Sass died decades ago. Outside the citadel, their descendants die weak and young. Sass fought a rebellion against the city once. She won concessions to give the settlers a chance at health. She paid with 20 years in prison. Now she’s out, a reformed character. She assembles an oddball crew doing odd jobs. She intends to mind her own business. But her fellow settlers are still failing.

Mahina's terraformers built a high-tech urban paradise. Then Earth flooded the colony with desperate refugees, cop Sass Collier among them. The settlers who arrived with Sass died decades ago. Outside the citadel, their descendants die weak and young.

Fresh world, first colony! Denali colony is failing. But a pristine Earth-like planet beckons - beautiful Sylvan! Sass Collier and Thrive escort the colony expedition. Woefully underfunded, understaffed, and ill-equipped, they’re settling the first new human world in a century. The expedition leader’s motto is Fail Fast. And they’re doing a bang-up job of it! But is the problem lovely forested Sylvan? Or sabotage? Join the motley crew of Thrive for another space opera romp across the sorry stars of the refugee diaspora on the wing and prayer plan!

Do they dare to save a dying city? New York is hopeless. When the Ebola epidemic broke out, the Calm Act sealed the city behind armed borders. Otherwise contagious refugees could flee and devastate the Northeast. The survivors outside struggle to make ends meet in a chaotic climate and collapsed economy. They’re grateful for protection from the epidemic. But they feel guilty as sin. The agony of New York weighs on the regional conscience. Tech whisperer Dee Baker, and her partner Army Major Emmett MacLaren, propose a plan to save the city. Dee leads the Amenac Internet empire, bypassing ...

Time ran out on climate change. Super-storms. Government surveillance and breakdown. Tech whisperer Dee Baker seeks safety. Weather disasters spin out of control. Food prices skyrocket. Refugees spill everywhere, including Americans fleeing the dust bowl, floods, and hurricanes. Congress has a plan, the Calm Act. Its public face is martial law. The secret measures are worse. Dee's job provides her classified access to the truth. They promise her an ark berth, secure in a sealed biosphere. But she doesn't trust them to deliver....

Young Gabe travels through time and space, reliving history in virtual reality, as he trains to lead a viable space colony. Gabe leaves Earth to colonize last-chance planet Rayas. The space colony is funded by Mexican descendants of California’s El Grande – the Big One. The expedition bootstraps its terraforming talent from teenagers. Their flexible minds will spend the interstellar years of stasis in a virtual reality academy. But Gabe’s a physical guy. Cast among genius, what can he aspire to? History captures his imagination. Unlike home, air is breathable under a clean blue sky, ...

Captain Sass Collier got her crew to Denali. Can she bring them home again? Marooned 35 million miles from their home moon. Not enough fuel to reach orbit again, let alone Mahina. The locals seem friendly. But the planet Denali itself is hostile, from volcanoes to microbes. Thrive has 6 months until their launch window opens - and closes. The prizes Denali offers are jewels beyond price. An actual starship awaits on the sea bottom. The greatest nanite scientist of the system can finally tell Sass how she came to be immortal. Be careful what you ask for.

The heroes left behind. Sass Collier and the Thrive vanished a decade ago to visit another star. Most of her crew stayed behind on their home moon. Ben Acosta, captain of the ringship Prosper, still joyfully plies the spaceways. Until his ex decides to head into space with an audacious plan. The Thrive crew reunites to test a faster-than-light breakthrough that could change everything. Experimental conditions may be adverse. Mileage may vary. Can Ben keep his decrepit ship flying, help his ex prove ground-breaking new physics, save innocents, steal priceless technology, and pay the kids’ ...

When Nexus catches the attention of the alien croc ambassador, his first space travel goes weirdly astray. A backwoods Earth terraformer, Nexus is awkward with people, good with creatures, at a time when the human worlds are bumping against the alien races who surround them. He sets off to explore human space. But to leave home, he must first repay a debt of honor, and smuggle a highly illegal sentient robot off-planet. Memory murky, the poor robot got stranded on Earth before Nexus was born. Nexus is delighted when the alien ambassador boards his space train to Luna. Most fear the ...

Captain Sass Collier steers her motley crew across the treacherous planetary rings, seeking solutions to the steady health decline of Mahina Colony. Tantalizing clues point to Sagamore, Mahina’s sister moon. To get there, Sass needs to upgrade her vintage skyship to a spaceship. Her crew's would-be heroes need to earn their space legs. And ex-cop Sass is probably the wrong person for the job.

Five months there. Five months back. And seven months waiting for the planets to align. In a tiny ship never meant for deep space. Denali is one hell of a trip. But the leading mind in nanite medicine is stranded there. Captain Sass Collier wants him back, to cure failure to thrive syndrome in her own colony. Each of the crew has a motive to embrace the risk. The lucky ones wish for adventure. Adventure is assured. But Denali holds another prize beyond their wildest dreams. Can Sass hold her fractious crew together, get the goods, and meet her launch window home?

She fell in love. New York fell into chaos. Before the Ebola epidemic, before the Starve, Ava Panic is a lonely teen. Ava is caught inside the barricades as the U.S. descends into martial law. Food prices skyrocket, and riots fill the streets. But Ava meets handsome Cade at her karate dojo, and her life changes overnight. Cade is popular, wealthy, a top student. Heady days follow of friendship and freedom, and budding romance. Ava finally belongs. The mean streets are their playground. But there's a dark side to Cade. And maybe being with others isn't safer. Maybe it's a trap. Ebola Day is ...

Resourceful programmer Dee Baker is getting worried about climate change. Food prices are skyrocketing, the drought out west deepening, and the storms won't quit. When her intrusive Fortune 100 media employer forbids her to attend the worsening riots, Dee defies them to visit a rally, and see for herself what they're trying to hide.

The storms before the Calm. Climate catastrophe looms while they're making other plans. Freedom dies, and the United States begins to unravel. These four prequels introduce characters from the Calm Act and Feral America series. Civilly Disobedient: Tech whisperer Dee Baker attends a political rally in Philadelphia, to find out what news the government is so desperate to hide. Dust of Kansas: A new Dust Bowl deepens. Race riots and refugees fill the news. And Army scholars war-game the collapse of the United States due to climate change. Major Emmett MacLaren vets the Calm Act, a plan to ...

How can Nexus be the Oracle? On a hardscrabble colony world, Nexus tracks a mysterious rat outbreak to a shy tortoise-like alien, who calls him Oracle. If his addled visions amount to fortune-telling, Nexus can’t read the tea leaves. He foresees alien crocs ravaging Earth and enslaving humanity. Another vision depicts him happy in love. How to evade human extinction and win the girl is unclear. Word leaks that Nexus is the new heir to a powerful fortune, compounding his social challenges. To save the human race, escape gold-diggers, repair his space mink, and win the woman of his dreams, ...

Thrive’s next generation is put to the test. Dark-humored Frazzie, and stolid engineer Tiktok, win rank and cadet berths on Sass Collier’s exciting mission to investigate the dead colony world of Aden. Eerie ruins nestle among Aden’s dark rugged canyons, and a quarter million settlers are gone. What destroyed Aden colony? Meanwhile Frazzie’s father, admiral Ben Acosta, migrates Rayas Colony. Cadets can transport the people. But the Rayans also need their precious space station transferred. That engineering feat requires Ben. Do they have the League’s blessing? No. Do they care? ...

Rayas offers a singular prize - the Dream. Last-settled of the Diaspora colonies, Rayas was privately funded by California refugees in Mexico. They couldn’t bankroll the immense settler ships that bore a quarter million souls apiece. And the terraformers were long gone. Instead they sent teens, trained en route using an AI, the Dream. This virtual reality teaches every science and technology, quickly. Students also relive Earth history first-hand as a video game. In Renaissance Florence, beat the Black Death and study under Michelangelo. Sail the Caribbean smuggling drugs, or master the ...