Shifting Reality: Military Science Fiction

Patty Jansen

Jun 2018 · Patty Jansen

About this ebook

They came from the poorest cities on Earth. They were promised free food and housing.They didn't know that they, or their children, would never see Earth again.

A few years ago, a military doctor walking the corridors of New Jakarta Station saved Melati's life. She signed up for the International Space Force to pay back her moral debt to him.

But her family thinks she has betrayed her people. It was ISF who forcefully removed their grandmothers and grandfathers from the crowded slums of Jakarta to work in interstellar space stations.

It is Melati's job to teach six-year old construct soldiers, artificial humans grown in labs and activated with programmed minds. Her latest cohort has one student who claims that he is not a little boy, but a mindbase traveller whose swap partner took off with his body. It soon becomes clear that a lot of people are scouring the station for this fugitive, a scientist with dangerous knowledge.

The best place to hide in the station is amongst the many cultures and subcultures of the expat Indonesian B-sector. Looking for him brings Melati into direct conflict with her people. She does not want to be seen as one of the enemy, but if the scientist's knowledge falls in the wrong hands, war will come to the station.

Will appeal to readers of C.J. Cherryh's science fiction, Elizabeth Moon and Sean Williams.

Science fiction, hard SF, hard science fiction, AIs, clones, space station, war, space, artificial minds, scifi, sci fi, military

Ratings and reviews

Believable, likable characters with lots of human quirks. Enough mystery to enthrall, and suspense to keep you reading. All in all, a very good sci-fi novel.

Awesome story glad I read it!!!!

Good

About the author

Patty Jansen lives in Sydney, Australia, where she spends most of her time writing Science Fiction and Fantasy. Her story This Peaceful State of War placed first in the second quarter of the Writers of the Future contest and was published in their 27th anthology. She has also sold fiction to genre magazines such as Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Redstone SF and Aurealis.

Her novels (available at ebook venues) include Watcher’s Web (soft SF), The Far Horizon (middle grade SF), Charlotte’s Army (military SF) and Fire & Ice, Dust & Rain and Blood & Tears (Icefire Trilogy) (dark fantasy). Her novel Ambassador was published by Ticonderoga Publication in 2013.