The Visitor: First Contact SF
About this ebook
Specialist astronaut Evelyn Slater encounters a small, ancient, badly damaged, alien artefact (UK spelling) on the first ever space-junk elimination mission. Where was it from? Who sent it?
International governments impose a security clampdown. Evelyn leads a team of hand-picked scientists who make amazing discoveries within the alien device. Secrecy becomes impossible to maintain. When the news is finally released, she becomes embroiled in international politics, worldwide xenophobic hatred and violence.
This is book one of Tony Harmsworth’s First Contact series of novels. If you like realistic near-future stories which compel you to imagine yourself as the protagonist, The Visitor is the book for you.
The Visitor – a cracking UK science fiction bestseller for the 'thinking' reader. Buy it now and be transported into orbit.
Ratings and reviews
- Flag inappropriate
About the author
Tony Harmsworth was born in Brocket Hall in 1948 and educated in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire and Bude, Cornwall. After disastrous university entrance results, caused mainly by a severe allergy, Tony was thrown back upon his own resources taking whatever work he could find after leaving school.
With only a high-school education, but an IQ of 158, he began his career in retail. A quick learner, he rapidly progressed to store management before reaching twenty. He switched careers in 1971 to the cosmetics industry where he helped develop administration and computer systems for Wella. He was quickly promoted and was soon reporting directly to the managing director.
In 1976, he was head-hunted by British American Cosmetics where he stayed until 1978.
Aged 30, lifestyle had become more important than climbing the greasy pole, so he and his wife moved to the Highlands of Scotland.
He spent the next fifteen years staging exhibitions and creating visitor attractions which included the Loch Ness Centre, the Story of Scotland and the Macbeth Experience. After a failed excursion into manufacturing, crushed by the 1990 recession, he progressed into tour-operating, quickly establishing, according to Trip Advisor, the most highly-acclaimed private guided-tour company in Scotland.
He retired from the tourism industry in 2013 after writing, LOCH NESS, NESSIE & ME, acclaimed by many as the most comprehensive book about Loch Ness. A geography of the loch, biography of the famous monster and autobiography of his time living on the lochside. It is written from the sceptical viewpoint, tearing apart long-established evidence but also giving credence to some far less sensational possibilities.
He now writes science fiction in the old-style, descriptive, with as much real science as possible. His style has been compared to Arthur Clarke by his readers. Although his stories have been on Amazon for some time, they only began to sell rapidly in June 2019 and two of them have now become Kindle bestsellers in the UK. All of them are now available as ebooks and paperbacks. The Visitor is also available as an audio book.
His first book was MINDSLIP, which explores chaotic effects on the Earth caused when Betelgeuse turns supernova. Although there have been comedic films which have used a similar concept, as a serious book this appears to be a unique story, which is very rare. It is seldom truly new stories are discovered.
His second book, THE VISITOR, has a female protagonist and, although it is a first contact story, it delves into politics, religion and asexual love. It begins when a dynamic woman astronaut discovers something unexpected in low-Earth orbit during the first ever space-junk elimination mission.
He has also written a pretty accurate account of Scotland's history using all of the bloodiest stories he has recounted on his tours and his induction talks to university groups including St. Andrews and Aberdeen. It is appropriately called SCOTLAND'S BLOODY HISTORY and will be very useful to anyone who has had problems following the tangled pathways of Scotland's past. The author can trace his own Scottish roots back to King Robert The Bruce through, surprisingly, the English, Harmsworth, side of the family. Details here.
His latest works include the very gentle British SciFi story, The Door; an SF thriller called Moonscape; and a political science fiction trilogy. The first book in the trilogy is Federation.