Domes now cover Earth’s big cities and soon a force field will trap Earth inside!
The jackal-headed Ischians are here! When General Jake Nanden retired from the USAC, he could never have guessed that his greatest battle was still to come.
Since then, he has joined a spiritual cult called the Blue Path, trying to establish communication with a few peaceful Ischians.
But now his world has been torn apart; his wife and youngest son have been killed, probably his eldest too and the Los Angeles and Washington citizens sweat it out under inescapable alien domes.
His son, Stone, warned him of the invasion and he joined up with Gary Enquine to form a rudimentary resistance network.
Now, they must find a way to rise up and defeat the conquerors of Earth! Nanden must escape and unite the remaining human and clone forces, scattered across the Solar System.
But time is running out! Soon, a necklace of giant starships will encircle the Earth and enclose it within a giant, inescapable force field.
This tense, all-action sci-fi thriller never lets you pause for breath and the action could be compared with Starship Troopers or Star Wars.
But it’s not just superficial action, there is the deeper thread of Jake Nanden’s own journey as a reconstructed replicant or clone and the struggle of the last humans in a world increasingly controlled by replicants.
An intensely and beautiful Science Fiction with a twist, if you love Phillip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov or Arthur C Clarke and Stephen Baxter, you will like this.
Categories: fiction, science fiction, alien, thriller, first contact, clones, starship, genes, invasion.
Character interview with Jake Nanden, star of the Iron Series.
Name (s): Jake Nanden
Age: 34
Please tell us a little about yourself.
I am 5'11', dark hair, short - Army cut, slightly curly. Green eyes.
Describe your appearance in 10 words or less.
Getting middle aged, slightly paunchy with drying skin - like paper in places - except my mech arm. That's synthetic skin on there and as smooth and supple as the day it was sprayed on. I even had mine tattooed but don't tell anyone.
Would you kill for those you love?
I kill every day - most days - to keep my culture intact. I would say that is killing for those I love. Of course there is a moral code... And as a soldier the moral code is almost everything. After a while... killing... it sometimes seems to be the only thing you have left. Family are too far away.
Do you like animals?
I love animals. Their love is unconditional. You can never quite be sure with humans, can you?
Do you have a family?
Ha! Ha! Yes. A test-tube. No seriously my mother - Mary, my sister Justine and a dog - a collie called Frisky. My adoptive dad was the famous robotics designer Robert R. Nanden but he's dead. My mother was his assistant and pretty accomplished at that!
Can you remember something from your childhood which influences your behaviour?
I am not sure about any of my childhood memories. They are probably all implanted. I am a replicant. The first memory I am sure about is playing on the grass with my adoptive mother watching me playing cricket.
She shouted out, "Jake! You are such a talented cyborg!"
Even at my tender age, I knew a replicant was not the same thing as a cyborg and I knew that she should know, as her first husband had been a famous robot designer. Her words had always stuck in my head.
But anyway, adoptive parents of replicant children are always told to create some vivid experience for their kid in the first few days so that the imprinting takes properly. So it's probably not significant.
Do you have any phobias?
Mirrors. Can't stand them. They make me sweat and... well, I'm very nervous around them. I avoid them.
Please give us an interesting and unusual fact about yourself.
I write books - well, I am writing my first; a detective thriller. It's kind of Raymond Chandler-ish. I call it Chandleresque, but I guess that's bad English. My adoptive parents are first generation J5 - that's a space station - so they kinda inherited a USAC - United States of America and Canada - accent. Anyway, I am rambling. The main character is Dusty. He's a sucker for the pretty ladies!
During Lazlo Ferran's extraordinary life, he has been an aeronautical engineering student, dispatch rider, graphic designer, full-time busker, guitarist and singer (recording two albums, one of Arabic music featuring the rhythms of Hossam Ramzy). He has traveled widely and had a long and successful career within the science industry but now left employment in the public sector to concentrate on writing. He has lived and worked in London since 1985 and grew up in the home counties of England.