Author Guest Post with Zanne Rab: The Chronicles of Deneb Series

2080: The world is dying. Travel into the future to a time when nothing is certain.

Welcome to the December 30th stop on the blog tour for The Chronicles of Deneb series by Zanne Rab with Goddess Fish Promotions. Be sure to follow the rest of the tour for spotlights, reviews, and a giveaway! More on that at the end of this post.

Please note that this post contains affiliate links, which means there is no additional cost to you if you shop using my links, but I will earn a small percentage in commission. A program-specific disclaimer is at the bottom of this post.

Author Guest Post

It seems these days that science fiction is becoming science fact. Even as I wrote The Flight of the Mayflower, the first book in the sci-fi space opera series, a major scientific discovery was made that helped me with the novel. I began writing TFOM in 2018 and at that time, I needed to get a crewed starship across a vast expanse of space, so I turned to the time-old “wormhole”. When I was writing about the ship entering the wormhole, I tried to visualize what this still-fictional space oddity could look like. Then, the very first image of a black hole was televised back in 2019, helping me visualize what the entry point to a wormhole might look like.

So rather than the usual dissection of my novels, or chatting about myself, I’d like to take you on a historical journey for a quick tour of the creations of sci-fi of the past that have since become reality.

Let’s begin with the nineteenth century author Jules Verne. One of his more memorable works was Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, published in 1870. In the novel, Captain Nemo and his ‘guests’ travel about the world’s oceans in the Nautilus, an electric submarine. Back when Verne authored this novel, electricity was seen as an almost magical novelty but some modern-day subs are also propelled by electricity from lead-acid batteries. Jules Verne was very forward thinking. You could say his phonotelephote device, (written about in his novel In the Year 2889) that allowed “the transmission of images by means of sensitive mirrors connected by wires”, was the earliest reference to video teleconferencing. I bet Verne would love Zoom! And in that same novel, he writes how one day, newspapers will be replaced by reporters speaking news to subscribers… like podcasts?

The year is 1898. HG Wells describes a heat ray in War of the Worlds. Heat ray… laser…? By the way, the book is an amazing read in my opinion. Aliens from Mars (okay, we now know there are no aliens on Mars, but remember this was 1898) descend upon Earth in a killing spree, but guess what? They’re taken down by earth diseases to which they have no immunity.

Let’s jump ahead to the year 1909 when E.M. Forster’s novel The Machine Stops was published. In it, he describes “a device that carried both voice and image, letting the two parties see each other.”  Doesn’t this remind you of a smart phone (although Forster’s device didn’t let you stream Netflix videos)?

A few years later, Hugh Gernsback predicted the development of solar power, calling it “helio-dynamophores” where photo-electric elements transformed solar energy into electricity. If only scientists back then read sci-fi, our world might be a very different place today.

In September 2022, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission was a great success. Crashing a spacecraft into Dimorphos, an asteroid moonlet and changing its orbit. Back in 1928, Edmond Hamilton wrote Crashing Suns, a novel that described how to basically steer a star. While Dimorphos is far from being a star, the idea of shifting a celestial body was really way out there almost a century ago.

Did Dick Tracy have an Apple watch on his wrist? Back in 1931, when Dick Tracy first appeared on a long-running comic strip he wore a wristwatch that worked as a video/telephone communicator. Perhaps the police detective’s creator, Chester Gould, was able to look into the future?

A colony on Mars? That’s not just Edgar Rice Burroughs anymore, but it may become a reality in our life time. And just a few days ago, scientists announced that fusion power, a thing of sci-fi, may be on the horizon.

Science fiction authors seem to have the ability to peer into the future and describe inventions or discoveries that are just waiting to become reality. I’m just hoping that when and if humans and extraterrestrial life meet, the events portrayed in my novels do not become science fact!

About the Books

The Chronicles of Deneb is a science-fiction/ space opera series set in the near future. The year is 2080 CE. The world is dying. Get ready to travel into the future to a time when nothing is certain.   Where the science behind climate change was ignored, leading to drought and famine plaguing an already overpopulated globe. Massive waves of refugees stream across the planet, seeking sanctuary. Where terrorist groups have joined forces with biohackers to develop a deadly bio-engineered disease that marches across the continents like a conquering army, leaving millions dead in its murderous swathe.

Meanwhile, some of the best and brightest minds on the planet are feverishly at work – constructing gigantic Space Arks to shuttle hundreds of thousands of people to a colony on Mars.  And it seems like there’s more good news: world leaders announce that a vaccine is ready. It’s all good; it’s all returning to normal.

But the truth is very different. In THE FLIGHT OF THE MAYFLOWER, the first novel in The Chronicles of Deneb, Dr. Daniel Radu – project manager for NASA’s Space Ark Mayflower – uncovers a global conspiracy of immense proportions. But Daniel cooks up a scheme of  his own.  Joined by a team of global experts, he and his colleagues brace themselves for a journey of a lifetime as they trek across the galaxy in a quest for survival.

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Mayhem follows the Mayflower in the second book of The Chronicles of Deneb series, DESCENT INTO DARKNESS. Journey along with the crew of the Space Ark Mayflower as they adapt to their new home on the planet Deneb. But along with their struggle to integrate into an alien culture, a new battle sweeps across the planet with the arrival of the human-transmitted Chimera bactovirus, bringing war and fanning the flames of racial intolerance. With a bloody conflict now raging across the planet, the crew of the Mayflower is split between the two factions and embroiled in the chaos and destruction.

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FIRES OF FURY is the third installment in The Chronicles of Deneb. Will the survivors of the Space Ark Mayflower find their way when cultures clash and the fires of fury threaten to consume their lives? Now masquerading as citizens of the Collective, the Mayflower crew has a new reason to fear. With the end of the Second Denebian War, Wesselan’s General Pallav Kóbor and his astrophysicist wife, Dr. Tara Kóbor, have high hopes that life will return to normal on Deneb7. Yet nothing can be further from the truth.In a diabolical plot to erase the scars left by the Second Denebian War, warlord turned Wessel Head of State Gomalan unleashes a fiendish scheme to heal his nation’s wounds, while his top soldier, General Ravenna, falls under the spell of a seductive Fyjer agent intent on crushing their ambitions. Dragged into a brutal reality of terror and intrigue, can the Kóbors and warbird ace Fynn Vogel remain unscathed, or will the flames consume them and all that is evil on Deneb-7?

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Excerpt

Colonel Pallav Kóbor, newly promoted Inspector of the Wessel Defence Force, coughed. The stench of the smouldering remains of the Great Plains Wesselan Army Base lingered in his nostrils, its taste still acrid, rising like bile in his throat. Blinking, he tried to banish the horror from his mind’s eye – the tendrils of thick black smoke snaking from twisted funeral pyres upon which vehicles and equipment had burned with such fierce intensity that they were rendered unrecognizable. And on top of it all – the tell-tale aroma of roasting humanoid flesh, so reminiscent of the grilled steaks that he used to throw on the barbecue for his wife Tara and their two teens in the time he thought of as “the Before”.

That was when days lasted twenty-four hours, and he could sit out on the back deck with a cold beer listening to old country tunes while the sun sank behind the moss-covered oaks. Five years ago and how his life had changed. In the Before, he was NASA’s Chief of Security in the United States of North America. That was until his wife decided to partner up with Dr. Daniel Radu and kidnap him and his colleagues from the Space Ark Project and before they were unwillingly transported thousands of light years from Earth to arrive three years later on alien shores. Except there were very few shores on the desert planet of Deneb7 and most of them were located in his new homeland, the powerful and war-like nation of Wesselan.

About the Author

Since the days of the Napoleonic War, there has always been a member of Zanne’s family in uniform.  Choosing to follow in the footsteps of her ancestors, Zanne joined the Canadian Armed Forces in 1980, and was selected to attend the Royal Military College of Canada – the first year that women were accepted into that prestigious academy of learning.  After graduation, she studied to become a Transportation and Movements Officer in the Royal Canadian Air Force.

During a career spanning 38 years, some of the most memorable experiences involved command of 8 Mission Support Squadron as part of Joint Task Force Afghanistan, leading a study on support to the Canadian Arctic involving several trips to Northern Canada, including Canadian Forces Station Alert (the most northern settlement in the world), a three-year tour with NATO at Joint Force Command Brunssum, a deployment as the NATO Liaison Officer to United States Central Command, and finally a nomination as the Deputy Commander for the Canadian Forces Recruiting Group.

After hanging up the uniform and putting away the combat boots, Zanne bought a small acreage in Central Ontario and designed her own house.  With a cozy office overlooking the shores of Georgian Bay, she decided to pursue her life-long ambition:  to become an author.  Enough of the reports and returns that littered her desk over her career, now she could turn her attention to unleashing the creativity that had taken a back seat.  The time had come to shake the dust off begin a new career.  The winds of change had called.

Zanne is currently crafting The Chronicles of Deneb, a sci-fi space opera series that will take the reader from a dystopian earth on a voyage across the universe in search of a safe haven.  But trouble is in store for them when the planet they land on is anything but the sanctuary they sought.

When not behind the keyboard, Zanne enjoys travel, photography, hiking, and gardening.  And always, a good story to pass the time.

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Giveaway Alert!

Zanne Raby will be awarding a $25 Amazon or B&N gift card to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

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