Worlds of Sol is the setting for a series of stories about the future, both short stories and novels. Worlds of Sol currently provides the setting for two novels: Asteroid Gambit (published in 2020) and Fire in the Sky (anticipated publication in early 2023) and several short stories : Martian Requiem and Leaving Acadia available in Kindle shorts and Dust Bunnies.
In the Worlds of Sol, the renamed United Nations of Sol establishes an outward looking frontier in space for all the nations of Earth. This manages to reduce intranational tensions and the risk of war. All of extraTerrene space, including new human habitations on the Moon, Mars, Ceres, Vesta, and some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, become UNS protectorates.
To create the Worlds of Sol the UNS creates centers for resource extraction and manufacturing in the L4 and L5 points of the Earth-Moon system, removing major pollution producers into space. It manages the transfer of the vast store of nuclear weapons from Earth to a secure site at the Earth-Moon L2 point. This makes environmental remediation possible as the population stabilizes at a much lower level. Of course, humans being humans, conflict simply morphs into different forms. Elites struggle for control of the Lagrangian clusters. People from different ethnic groups band together in the extraTerrene worlds and struggle for control of their destinies.
Fire in the Sky is the story of Wilcox Lafontaine, the entrepreneur who pioneers the use of nuclear warheads to move asteroids, He struggles against the opposition of Laurence Marsh, a businessman who has a monopoly on Earth-crossing asteroids that Wilcox’s methods would upend. Amanda Stolz, funded by Marsh, raises one objection to Will’s plan after another. Is she trying to block him or help him make his plan workable?
On Mars, terraforming workers imported from Earth rise up against the UNS elite who control their lives. The first rebellion is put down by UNS Marines in a spaceborne landing on Thaumasia Planum overlooking Mariner Valley. In Asteroid Gambit, die-hard rebels acquire an unregistered nuclear weapon to Mars which they plan to smuggle to Mars for a second revolt. Jack Jackson, in pursuit of his lost love Ellen Lecroix,, agrees to steal the nuke in a daring raid and dispose of it. Things don’t quite go according to plan. Jack heads for Mars to protect Ellen from reprisals. He encounters rebels, assassins, a quirky AI and a last-minute plan to destroy the Martian settlement. He and Ellen must get past their fractured relationship if they want to prevent a Martian apocalypse.
In Martian Requiem , a young man leaves home in Normandy, an independent farm in Eos Chaos, because he couldn’t accept his father’s religion. Now he learns his father is dying and returns to the farm. Once there he learns the future of the farm and of a significant part of the terraforming project depends on whether he will accept responsibility for his father’s legacy.
In Leaving Acadia, a teenaged boy and girl have to flee Acadia Farm, an independent farm in the outer reaches of Coprates Chasma in the west valley to escape her abusive father. The father learns of their plans and vows to prevent them from leaving. To succeed in escaping, the boy has to drive a vacuum tractor through rugged terrain at night, with her father in hot pursuit.
In Dust Bunnies, the UNS converts Vesta into a generation ship for an expedition to Proxima Centauri. On their way to their destination the Vestans encounter life forms that evolved in the Oort cloud before the Earth cooled. It’s the first encounter in what could be a millennia-long war fueled by misunderstanding. A grandfather tells his young granddaughter how war was averted. Dust Bunnies appeared on Anotherealm.com in March 2020.
Asteroid Gambit is currently available on Amazon KDP. Buy it here.
Other stories in the Worlds of Sol series are available at:
Martian New Year A story in the anthology Holiday Tales from Team Five