Adventure---Into the Neverland
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About the Book
1970, England, a corporate experiment into focused, intense electromagnetic fields accidentally reveals the existence of an alternate, parallel world, " . . . separated from ours, like two television channels occupying the same space at the same time . . . " explains the phenomenon’s discoverer. The ultra-secret "Open Water Exploration Company" is clandestinely formed to send an exploration expedition through a machine-generated "Macro-electromagnetic Gate" into the Alternate World, using a WW II vintage, escort aircraft carrier, frigate, landing ship, and hodgepodge collection of aircraft and vehicles, all rescued from the scrappers. Though "strictly scientific," is the Open Water Exploration Company, loosely modeled on the 18th century British East India Company, intended as the beginning of history’s most ambitious land-grab? The land grab will encompass a world. Overseen by Lady Anne Tradecant, Marchioness Uffington, and led by Captain Christopher Archer, former US Navy aviator, Royal Navy surveyor, real estate salesman, and surfer; and Head of Research, Dr. Valerie Chandler. The Expedition’s ships macro electromagnetically transfer in mid-1972 into a similar yet vastly different world, "on the other side." After a perilous Transfer into the Alternate World, the Expedition encounters a reality with two moons, opposite planetary rotation, purple sky and blue plants . . . for starters. The Open Water Exploration Company explorers have to endure the unknown Alternate World using old steamships and piston-engined aircraft, and on a bake-sale budget! No starships or exotic teletransporters were handy to deliver them from their travails. Unexpected dangers await the explorers, radio and radar blindness, violent storm at sea, a mutiny in their midst, and evidence of blue-skinned humans inhabiting the Alternate World . . . as well as potential wealth almost unbelievable in its scope. Adventure--Into The Neverland is low-technology (1940’s era steamships, a 1958 Thunderbird auto, TBM Avenger and FM Wildcat aircraft and H-34 Choctaw helicopters) science fiction and good, old-fashioned adventure in the spirit of Jules Verne, and is the first of the Adventure stories.
About the Author
Life prepared James Hood well for telling the Adventure stories. Long blessed with a fertile and active imagination, a neighbor lady told him, "You think too much," at the tender age of ten. Formal and informal education, family, career, world travel, and hobbies provided decades of nourishment for the author’s brain. A lifelong historian, family and business-man, information junkie, scale modeler, and amateur musician James Hood also holds a knighthood and BA and MS degrees. He also decided to write successful modern sci-fi in the tradition of Verne and Rice-Bourroughs. "I started ‘alternate history’ stories long before it was a current section in the bookstores, and greatly enjoy working with the concept of ‘what if?’ "Space travel and futuristic technology are accepted vehicles of science fiction writers, but were not for me. "Adventure’s characters are not space-flight professionals belonging to a vast multi-planet federation. They are frightfully ordinary people thrown into extraordinary circumstances . . . without a way out." To make the story believable, James Hood uses decades of familiarity with "hardware" and at least 350 factual sources to make Adventure as realistic as possible. "My highest compliment came from a pre-reader, who said, ‘this story could have been going on for years in reality, and we would never know about it!’" "The Adventure concept and goings-on in the Alternate World is an infinitely expandable story vehicle, and at least four sequels are in the works. Other in-process stories deal with ‘twists’ in history that could have well happened. "I want to make my living as a full-time storyteller." Adventure--Into The Neverland is James Hood’s first published novel.