"Bizarre Bipeds: What IS humanity's role in the universe?" contains 4 new science fiction stories. Order your advance copy now for half of regular price!
The anthology includes:
"Liberator" is a novella. Monsters from space wreck the peaceful life of the people. They commit unspeakable cruelties, because they need the people as slaves in their diamond mine. It takes a very special little boy to gain justice. The only thing is: the monsters are humans from Terra. The people have three arms, three legs and green skin.
"Dummies in Dimensional Drive" is a lighthearted love story, but its setting is grim. Environmental cataclysm has destroyed much of humanity. The Galactic Council has come to help. They have terraformed Venus. Jim is one of those chosen to go, and uses his quick wit to ensure that the girl who'd been about to kill him comes too.
"A Different Invasion" shows that beauty of the heart is more important than beauty of the body. Luci is struggling through a storm to get help after her stepfather had bashed her mother. Trevor comes and shows remarkable healing skills. Only, he proves to be a horrible-looking alien...
In "Cooked," a person from the center of the Galaxy blunders into our solar system. All it wants to do is to go home. To do so, it needs to create a mighty nuclear explosion. Some people manage to make contact, to show it that Earth has intelligent life. However, the authorities respond differently -- and the visitor shows its gratitude in a way that makes perfect sense for its kind.
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As a new-born during the Second World War, Bob was already fighting victimization. He was a Jewish baby in the Budapest ghetto, but with blue eyes and blond hair. So, his mother removed her yellow star, and used her obviously Aryan child as camouflage, obtaining food for many people. This is one of the themes of his award-winning biography, Anikó: The stranger who loved me. By luck, Bob found himself in Australia at thirteen years of age. He is Australian by choice, not by the accident of birth, and loves this ancient and unique land. |
He became a research psychologist, but retired when thirty-five. It happened because he kept falling asleep in the Library while writing up his Ph.D. thesis. This couldn't be allowed because he was visible to hundreds of his students. He had young children, so kept awake by reading predictions of the future. No, not Nostradamus, but the reports of the Club of Rome, the Ecologist magazine, books by Paul Erlich. In time, he acquired enough knowledge to make his own predictions, and this turned him into a born-again Greenie. He forecast a future plagued by mass starvation, wars of genocide, epidemics of new diseases, crime, alcoholism and drug addictions on a frightening scale, the breakup of the family… well, today's world.
He and his wife Jolanda decided to change the world by first changing their own life. They have lived a deliberately low-income lifestyle for the past twenty years, in this way sabotaging the Economy, the monster that's eating our future. An accidental by-product of this choice was contentment, and their children have grown into adults they're proud of. Read the logic behind their lifestyle.
They joined a Co-operative, and started building their adobe house. Long before the house was built, Bob was teaching building skills. He calls himself a Mudsmith. He wrote a Manifesto, but a friend said, 'write it if you like, but no-one reads stuff like that. Write fiction.'
Bob didn't even know that there were courses for writers, he learned by doing. He's been writing magazine articles since 1980. His Earth Garden Building Book will soon have its fourth edition published by Penguin, and has been reviewed as 'the Australian owner-builder's bible'. His second book, Woodworking for Idiots Like Me is a collection of autobiographical short stories, but teaches woodworking skills as well. You can read reviews of these books.
Bob now has an impressive list of prizes and awards in writing competitions, and has been swallowed by his computer.
Read an excerpt from one of Bob's books here.
Contact Robin at Bookandblog@yahoo.com.
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