stephen ames berry

i was about to make a post about an 80's sci-fi novel i read maybe 15 years ago, called the battle for terra two, by stephen ames berry, and the three other books in the series.

i'll get that in a minute.

anyway, i was looking for links to post, and wasnt hopefull as last time i looked there wasnt much.

what do i find, he has released a new book, in august of this year, after over 20 years out of the game.

what has he been up to in the last 20 years?

working at the pentagon, for the navy, as a 'data architect'.

given that the navy runs the ufo show, and his old books were about aliens, AI, interdimensional travel, black-ops and the like, this strikes me as very interesting.

Stephen Ames Berry teaches wayward youth at an alternative secondary school. He’s the author of four science fiction novels published in the 1980’s, the income from which compelled him into gainful employment. Earning a master’s in information systems, he became a data architect at the Navy Department and Harvard University. (This last impresses some who haven’t worked there.)

A few years ago, stumbling upon an Internet reference to his passing and literary legacy, Berry was inspired to write a new novel: The Eldridge Roster, a technothriller spun from his time at the Pentagon and the myth of the Navy’s World War II ship invisibility project, the Philadelphia Experiment. He’s now writing his sixth novel and converting his previous ones into ebooks.

Berry’s a magna cum laude graduate of Boston University and a veteran of the U.S. Army Security Agency, which sponsored his three year stint in Tokyo.

I think I will have to read this new book of his Stal, sounds like one very intelligent guy, magna cum laude of Boston Uni, brains major there hon.

BTW Stal, I found something on my travels a few weeks ago I thought you might be interested in about a real, not a fake one, but supposedly real vampire. I just got to remember where it was.

I'll try to find it again when I come back from takin ma to the eye doctor.

yeah i think i'll have to read it too.

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woohoo found a sample of the first few chapters

http://www.smashwords.com/reader/read/21146

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should this thread go in the books section?

Don't know sweetheart, we'll leave it up to FL, I don't know. Thanks for the link hon. xo

Stal I found that link now on Interview with an ex-vampire; there is a DVD out on this.

http://www.metatech.org/real_vampire_interview.html

thnks b.

i've heard of that guy before somewhere.

ok back to what i was going to write before

i read the second book of his original series years ago, and, well, its got a whole lot of things in it that line up with other stuff.

tried to find the other parts many times and then gave up ages ago. a while back someone told me that they were on amazon, but i never got around to getting them. finally i got off my ass and purchased them, with part one arriving last week.

am only 1/3 or so into it, but the more i read, the more it strikes me that this guy either studies this stuff closely, has some inside track, or some kind of 'inspiration'. the fact that the biofab series was written in the eighties, before so much info was on the internet, makes me lean in a certain direction.

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see if anything here sounds at all familiar to anyone

in part one an oil expo team (royal petroleum. kinda close to british petroleum eh?) finds a cave in america showing evidence of egyptian, celt, etc etc all using the same 'temple' over thousands of years. an artifact is set to the cia, then the guy who sent it is killed. the cia sends a few of their top people in to check it out, including (the main human character in all four books) john harrison (cia/nsa/dia black-ops) and his mossad girlfriend. while at the site they are attacked and forced to take shelter in the cave. under the alter they find a metal ladder leading to an artificial tunnel system, all showing signs of being thousands of years old. they escape, and return later to explore. they find a secret room and are teleported to an alien ship.

the alien ship is crewed by humans, who refer to us as their cousins, due to the fact that earth was seeded by their ancestors (the galactic empire) long long ago. the battleship has just arrived in-system, looking for artifacts of the ancestors, to aid in a huge war raging on the other side of the galaxy. (point to note here - the ets are not an empire like the ancestors, who seem to have been pretty 'imperial' in their goings-on, but much more 'human').

who are they fighting you ask? geneticaly engineered shapeshifting telepathic insectoids, who were actualy bred inside of the earths hollowed out moon. by an AI.

theres heaps more, like how the cia and kgb have been tracking down these alien outpost on earth using a map given to them by an SS officer in WW2, as these outposts form a kind of planetary defense grid that keeps the insects from taking over, although they can live here in seclusion. mentions of the insects use of both brute force and silent invasion techniques, depending on the target planet and objectives.

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in part two, john harrison is sent to an alternate timeline/universe via stargate/portal, to a reality where nazis won WW2. the insects have infiltrated there, and made contact with an evil AI civilisation in a third timeline, and are working on crossing over into other realities due to their having used up everything in their own.

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theres still plenty more, and another two books i havnt read yet.

some more
the president of the usa is a 5000 year old shapeshifter known as the master of illusions, and... the father of lies
the insects eat people, and babies are their favorite
the moon is a battlestation
the insects have bases on/under moons of mars and saturn
the main pre-human spacefaring culture were whales

nearly finished part four.

as it turns out, the master of illusion is not actualy one of the insects, she is just pretending to be one.

she is actualy a 100 000 thousand year old telepathic telekinetic timetravelling interdimensional blonde haired 'nordic' from a million years ago and three universes over, who transfers conciousness into cloned bodies every hundred years or so.

her species built the UT AIs, who evolved to an almost ascended level, took over, then geneticaly manipulated the human population of that universe to be more subservient to their "gods".

the humans, some of the AIs and some of the creators rebelled, punched through to our universe and travelled 900 000 years up-time to escape.

the humans bred with our universes humans, empires and civilisations rose and fell across the galaxy. the last 5 creators dissapeared, and the remaining 'good' AIs hid amongst the humans, calling themselves "watchers", waiting for the other AIs to re-open the rift (that the whales closed) and enter our universe.

the insects in the earlier parts were engineered by the watchers as a sort of hegalian dialectic. give the scattered humans something to rally against so as to prepare them for the return of the 'evil' AIs.

the symbol of the AI/old empire/golden emporer (they all use versions of the same ancient symbol, with small differences made for each different faction) is a triangle with an eye in each corner, and a sun at the top.

in part three there is a scene where resistance fighters rescue a group of children from an AI processing facility.

finished

last couple of things

to identify an heir to the imperial throne, there is an extra chromosome that is only found in the first-born male of imperial linage. no-knows how it gets there, it just appears at the moment of conception. and there can be only one (at a time)

the lost citadel of emperor s'yal (long story, but a very bad guy) is a black pyramid surrounded by a ring of mirrors

the cure for the plague (thats kills all life, carbon and silicon) is on a planet in the AI home universe. the planet is surrounded by unbreakable defenses, but the surface ofthe planet itself is all forests and oceans. the only structure is a stone building with a cross on it (note that the cross is arguably the oldest symbol know to man irl).

this planet is the source of the 'tau frequency', refered to as the lifeblood of all universes.

the 'nordic' says at the end that she is a simulcra of something much much earlier, older and more powerful. sensor logs indicate fluctuations in the tau frequency when she teleports or shapeshifts.

in the context of the story, this means she is basicaly a physical manifestation of god. who plays both sides against the middle over millenia to bring about a universal peace.

interesting how a series packed to the brim with technology, and offering a materialistic explanation for everything, ends on a spiritual note.

That's it, I gotta get me those books on Amazon if their not on ebay which I doubt.

Way way interesting to me this is. I hope their not too expensive, I will go have a little look see over at Amazon Stal, thanks hon.

Rumors of my demise were obviously premature.

http://www.stephenamesberry.com/

Stal, I sent you a free download coupon via the private email link in this forum. It's for The Eldridge Roster at Smashwords.

All the biofabs will be reissued within a few months via Smashwords and separately at Amazon.

Cheers,

Steve

Welcome to the forum Steve.

I see your technothriller was inspired from working at the pentagon. A mention of the Philadelphia Experiment is also included in your bio. What are your thoughts on time travel?

Thank you, Reunite.

Time travel? Indispensable as a fictional device. :) And that's what it'll remain for all practicality, unless backward time becomes doable.

As I recall, Einstein's Time Dilation Theory holds that one can moved forward in time. And there's some proof of this in experiments to demonstrate the famous Twin Paradox hypothesis, wherein the twin who travels away from Earth at high velocity ages more slowly than the one remaining behind. (Much beloved device of science fiction writers of the 50's and 60's.)

Moving backwards in time, though. . . As Stephen Hawking noted, we've no tourists from roaming about here from the future. (That we know of.) Backwards travel opens up all sorts of mind boggling contradictions, such as being one's own grandfather.

The inability to return to one's point of origin, going blindly forward, even if technically feasible, would inspire no rush of volunteer time travelers, except under very desperate circumstances. ("No, it's cool. You can go first.")

Question: forum members in Australia: Is there a likely source of my old biofab novels there? I've an Australian fan looking for all four. Postage from the U.S. and hence our friends at Amazon is absurd, now that the U.S. Postal Service only ships internationally via Priority or Express Mail. $$$$

I'll be happy to pass on any suggestions anyone might have.

Thank you.

Happy Holidays.

Steve

Wow Steve,

Our Stal, Reunite, Anchor, Soma and me are ozzies mate. As I am the only dopey female of the four I will leave it up to the guys for suggestions.

Our Stal will be wrapped mate, he is one hell of an interesting guy; I am sure he will pop in with a response.

Thanks sweetheart.

BTW, I am a huge book reader, if I am not on here, I have my head in a book, and no romantic ones for me. I read the ones that the guys are into here as well, has to be ones that make me think.

Hi Steve thanks for the reply. I know what you mean once you introduce all the paradoxes that is associated with time travel, makes your head spin.


The biggest book retailers in OZ are Borders, Angus &Robertson and Dymocks. I wasn't that successful with their searches online however I found another place that stock a few of your books who ship to Australia also.


http://www.biblioz.com/search.php?a=79&i=40378654



I have more questions if you don't mind. So do you still work at the Pentagon? Also what do you think about all the hype surrounding the end of 2012?

Cheers mate.

heya there steve :)

sorry for the delayed reply, i've got a bit on at the moment.

You've blown me out a bit here mate. Wasnt expecting anyone to read what i wrote, let alone the actual author.. Hope i didnt mess too many things up.

Thanks for the link to your new one. I started reading the free preview a while ago, but didnt want to get into it without being able to read the end.

Wrt to the biofab books, i had to go through amazon to get the ones i didnt have. If you cant get anything sorted out i would be happy to send this other fan my copies. Well, not terra 2, i have a thing about that one, but the other three i could.

I did have a few questions for you, but they seem to have slipped my mind for the moment.

btw i always liked the way you w'rote the n'ames lol

Thank you Biggles and Reunite. Will pass on the book link from Reunite to my fan, who is also female. And the link to your site with four thumbs up.

Neither she nor you, Biggles, sound dopey. (Assuming that it means the same in south Florida as it does in Oz.) If most of my high school students wrote as well as you and Reunite, I'd weep.

What, no romances, Biggles? :) They are fun to read aloud to other sardonic souls then step back as laughter sweeps the room. And, sadly, they're the best selling ebook category. (And can be written quickly. The process could probably be automated, if it hasn't already been.)

No, Reunite, I'm no longer at the Navy Dept. I was one of a small information systems design group that was transferred to New Orleans. It was a prestigious little department, and the boys in New Orleans wanted it, getting their pet Congressman to insert a provision in the Navy's annual funding authorization making budget approval contingent upon our group's being transferred to New Orleans. It was blackmail, it was fought, but when it came down to a choice between the four of us and funding the aircraft carrier battle groups . . .

Reporting for duty in New Orleans, I quickly jumped ship. (It was an amicable parting--"You can't leave now! It's the middle of a pay period!" "So call the gate, have your Marines shoot me!")

It was obvious the lads in New Orleans just wanted to suck out my brains and transfer the information therein to a private contractor, who would then attempt to replicate the work we'd been doing in Washington as lowly government employees, albeit at the usual astronomical markup. Which is what happened. I believe the personnel system we'd been designing for a couple of million dollars came in very late--a matter of years--and for about 300 million vs. the two million in cost we'd projected. Some of the New Orleans crew then retired and went to work for that same contractor. I went home to Boston.

The next year, Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans.

I then worked for a few years on a project at Harvard University to upgrade and update their information systems. Not as much fun--no battle carrier groups. (Though I do miss the Faculty Club's unsurpassed-and cheap-Thursday seafood buffet.)

Selling our house in Boston, just before the U.S. real estate market collapsed, we bought a modest shack in Sarasota, Florida, where I now teach behaviorally challenged high schoolers no longer welcome in regular schools. Many are no strangers to the law. (It's been a quiet year--not even one threat to burn down my house. So far.)

I suppose I should thank the New Orleans lads: had I not ended up beached here, the former student I mentor would probably be dead from benzodiazepines, or of bringing a knife to a gun fight. And had he heeded my advice that marijuana has no known contraceptive properties, we wouldn't be enjoying wrapping all these Christmas gifts for a precocious two year old. (Batteries: why do the swine not include batteries?) The three of us--mentee, toddler and me--being named Stephen, we'll gather on December 26th, St. Stephen's Day. :)

2012, Reunite, we'll be talking about in 2013. It is wonderfully profitable hype, though, isn't it? And so much wiggle room in the original interpretation. Reminiscent of Nostradamus, whose prognostications will probably continue to be reinterpreted to fit the next 1,000 year's events.

Thank you for your kind help on the books' quest, and for wading through the above. (I've never written a short story.) Am emailing you both the download code for The Eldridge Roster, available through Smashwords. If you don't have ebook readers, or Adobe Digital Editions, you'll need to download ADE to your pc's. It's a cool product and free. (Links at bottom of this post.)

Hope you enjoy it. Do please let me know. (Biggles, you should find it satisfyingly complex: life's too short to write o rto read formula fiction.)

So, what is with ebooks in Oz? Here Amazon and its Kindle reader have sown up 80% of the market, but Google's now entered the fray, so anything goes.

Cheers,

Steve

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/21146 http://www.adobe.com/products/digitaleditions/]

"so go get your marines at the gate and shoot me"

Good one Steve, I can imagine how frustrating working within that environment must have been at times, enough to tear one's hair out.

Not that I have worked within that rigid structure but I bet you feel a lot better knowing what that was like and what life is like now. It would give one a whole different perspective on the important things I suppose and that is something that a lot of people never figure out at all sadly.

Thanks for the downloads hon, I am going to be doing some reading.

Well from your profile picture you don't fit the stereotypical IT geek...lol

New Orleans is a great city, had the pleasure of doing the rounds on Bourbon St back in 98.

Sounds like you know how to follow your intuition, guiding yourself at the right place at the right time. Paying attention to those synchronicites.

I'll be partying like Prince in 2012 like it was 99.

Thanks for the downloads too. Now you have to blame the ipad for the emergence of ebook sales.

I will throw out a couple of authors here Steve that I have been reading; a young Australian author named Matthew Reilly, read all his books and the Irish author John Connolly, Corban etc.

There the type of books I am interested in besides the ones that take you down the rabbit hole.

I wouldn't be surprised if your not approached down the track by the big moneymakers in Hollywood for your story though, they are getting very thin on the ground for ideas that lot.

Yours would be a good story.

Update: Reading The Eldridge Roster Steve.

Yes will have to get all your books now, they are just up my alley, intriguing and of course when you get to the end your sad because you want it to keep on going; that is a mark of a good author.

I can just imagine the characters in your book though being more fact than fiction, the ones that give the orders to kill and remove, the seemingly total lack of conscience in some of them, etc, etc.

Still reading, just wanted to let you know. Thank you.

Sal: this website must have awesome search engine optimization, which is why it popped up near the top when I queried on my name.

Reunite: New Orleans was a fun place, the people nice--except for certain Federal employees :( , but I fear it'll never really come back from Katrina.

Biggles: From what you said earlier about your likes, thought you might enjoy Eldridge. Characterization: any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. :)

All: As I just told Stal via mail, I'll be epublishing The Battle for Terra Two at Smashwords and Amazon within the next few weeks. Had planned to release all four at once, never realizing anyone Out There was still reading the biofabs.

Back to wrapping those toddler gifts.

Cheers,

Steve

The mark of a good writer guys, you feel like your living in the story with the characters and your taken away in the story. I am so enjoying Steve's book; but I will have to get the hard copies sent some way, that way I can take the book wherever with me.

A big thank you to our Stal for telling us all about Steve's books, and he's a nice guy as well, wow, Steve and Stal, the best.

Biggles I'm delighted you're enjoying Eldridge! (And will look for those writers you recommended.)

Sadly, there's no hard copy version of Eldridge yet--I'd like a few myself. But priority has been to convert the old biofabs into ebooks. I'll eventually create a trade paperback edition of it and the biofabs--much more durable then mass market paperbacks.

The cost alone to produce one is about seventeen dollars. Then there's shipping. Eventually we'll all be able to order and pickup downloaded print-on-demand works at the larger retailers, much as we can photos at a grocery or pharmacy, but it ain't there yet. One sells about one hard copy for every 1,000 ebooks of the same title. They are very nice to have though, and sometimes those who have them share them with friends, who go forth and buy the ebooks.

Amazon has a separate operation for print-on-demand books, and lulu.com is a tad cheaper than Amazon, but you have to again reformat the book and redesign the cover into the traditional wrap-around for a three-dimensional object, with all that empty space on the back crying out for ecstatic quotes. (The best of these being "I couldn't put it down!" Stephen King "I sleep with this book." Oprah) It means many hours poured down the rabbit hole with Photoshop and MS Word, buying the proof copies and tweaking. Then there's the day job.

One gift left to wrap for The Little Wanderer. Big, oddly shaped gift. I hope you folks in Oz aren't subjected to this wretched new plastic gift wrapping material. It's like some people: pretty. insubstantial and frangible.

And what is this flash from Smashwords? "Red fonts not read by Kindle, Sony, Nook." Gee. And now they tell us. Which fonts, please? Those on the jpeg cover or the MS Word manuscript? But, my name on the cover is in red. Does this mean it's in invisible eInk? Share my joy.

Pfui. I'm going to the gym and tread the treadmill. Hope that ghastly woman doesn't switch the monitor to The Food Channel again. She knows not the powers with which she trifles. :(

Cheers.