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J. Richard Jacobs Well, hello to you and welcome. I’m J. Richard Jacobs, but you can call me "J" and dispense with all the rest of it. I’ve been an avid and active amateur astronomer since my "first light" through a telescope in 1947 (is he that old?) and began writing professional level in 1956. Technical writing, copy writing and technical illustration were the income generators until 1965, when I turned my attention to naval architecture. There was a brief (28 year) hiatus in my writing while I spent my time doing the science and engineering involved in the largest moving structures on Earth, although I continued to write papers and articles on applied math, science, engineering, design, and astronomy.
These days, now that I’m "retired," I write Science Fiction in both the hard and soft varieties. But, honestly, I tend to cross genre a lot because of the way I feel about populating a story with reachable, touchable characters with all their strengths, weaknesses, successes, failures and foibles. I write Fantasy, too, but I’ve never managed to do it successfully in novel lengths--just can’t seem to hurdle that short story wall, but I have a lot of fun with the short stories I write. I’ve tried my hand at Horror, but, for some reason, I’ve had trouble with that, too. Someday, when I’m in a particularly nasty mood, I may be able to do it. In the meantime, my horror pieces tend to be very short...and funny. Oh, well...I guess I’m stuck with Humorous Horror.
The first review of this book is on its way. When it arrives it will be included here (good or bad)...
First review of XENOGENESIS is now in and I am delighted...
"Xenogenesis is one of those rare books that manages to catch even the most jaded of sci-fi readers off-guard. Somewhere between the description of cities in stratified levels of wealth and the injection of nano-machines, we realize we are somewhere between the world we inhabit and the world we only dream about, which makes the entire book something beyond a simple novel of escape. This combination of biotechnology and space travel with a hefty dose of hard-boiled detective fiction in the character of Patrick Dalworthy allows Jacobs to create a work that is both fantastic and close to home, one that tackles the subject of what it truly means to be human in a rapidly advancing world and answer it with aplomb.
Jamie A. Hughes"
What makes this review doubly important to me is that it comes from the very person who did the editing. That means she had looked at the book with a hypercritical eye before she did the review. Titles Available from Double Dragon Publishing | XENOGENESIS is a tale of change; inexorable and inevitable. Human beings are always craving change but when it comes it is frightening . . . Sometimes to the point that we would prefer death. |  | IN THIS INCREDIBLE, SWEEPING SAGA across thousands of years and hundreds of light years we come face to face with our fears and deep prejudices. It is here, in SEEDS OF MEMORY, that we get an idea of what it means to be "HUMAN" and what "HUMAN" really means. It is here, in SEEDS OF MEMORY, that we are confronted with the need to know colliding head-on with reality. Are we, HOMO SAPIENS SAPIENS, truly the only form that humans can take and is our history the only history? Might there not be others, or others created out of the very stuff of life who are, after all, our brothers and sisters? |  | Writing short stories is not easy. The reason it isn't easy is because they are short. The writer is still charged with producing living characters who have personalities: good, bad, or milksop. Add to that a dynamic narrative that gives you, the reader, an opportunity to see, hear, feel, smell, and taste what the folks who inhabit those little stories do, and the authors have a demanding job on their hands. Short stories are a great deal more than sitting on an old apple crate and hammering away at the QWERTY. |  | What happens when you have seen something you weren’t supposed to see? What happens when what you have seen will change the face of the Earth forever? What will the governments of the world do to keep things stable and quiet while everything you ever knew is about to change? Who will be saved? Who will be sacrificed? And to what lengths will they go to secure your silence?
|  | We live in an era of artificial impressions. We are being bombarded by enhanced bass response in sound systems that can be heard through brick walls five blocks away on a dark and stormy night. The dB invasion has attacked us in music, movies, and television to the point of being painful and actually damaging to our physical well-being. Our vision is exposed to impossible characters, creatures, and critters of all sorts moving before us so realistically presented that our senses are operating in a condition of overload. Our imaginations are slowly being pounded into a mass of pulpy numbness by computer-generated images and sounds. The thrill of conjuring mental pictures of monsters, things, and dark night visits from the mysterious shadows of nearby and far away places by ghouls, ghosts, vampires, werewolves, aliens and aunty Millicent has been largely replaced by geeks tinkering with ones and zeroes.
Take back the darkness and chill of the misty night! Take charge of the mystery and fantasy within you! Let your spirit rise as the Phoenix from the ashes of your shattered present! Regain the independence that only your imagination can give you! Reestablish your right to form your own visions and sounds! Read! And, by all means, read what follows. It is a great beginning for retrieving your life. |  | In this book, Twisted Tails III, we are dredging up fear and wallowing in it as if it were something to be played with, cuddled and fingers lovingly run through its fur like a cherished pet. What we’re doing here is tinkering with terror of the primal kind. You know what I mean, the sort of fright that lies coiled and ready to spring from the dark corners of the mind with no warning. It awaits all, lurking in the deeper shadows of consciousness. No one is immune and, frequently, there is no cure, you just sink into its roiling depths and are no more. If you do manage to escape, life will no longer be what it was before and you will find yourself glancing nervously over your shoulder whenever you hear something strange in the darkness or see a shadow move in the night…or day. Enjoy…. |  | "Ancient Whispers from Tomorrow" comes to a conclusion that will
challenge the most productive of imaginations. Read it and be amazed and
dumbfounded.
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| Writing short stories is not easy. The reason it isn't easy is because they are short. The writer is still charged with producing living characters who have personalities: good, bad, or milksop. Add to that a dynamic narrative that gives you, the reader, an opportunity to see, hear, feel, smell, and taste what the folks who inhabit those little stories do, and the authors have a demanding job on their hands. Short stories are a great deal more than sitting on an old apple crate and hammering away at the QWERTY. |  | This book opens with copyright information from Lincoln D. Bandlow, an attorney specializing in intellectual property law in Century City and the out-going President of the Los Angeles Copyright Society. The remaining pages include a treasure trove of information from: a personal manager for Hollywood actors, a Hollywood teacher and movie extra, a “Fictionwise eBook Author of the Year”, an owner/co-owner of two websites listed among the “Writer’s Digest 101 Best Websites for Writers”, a retired university professor, and other successfully published authors. This book is based on articles published during the first year of “The Golden Goblet” Newsletter edited by Marilyn Peake, and features additional articles by contributing authors written expressly for this book. |  | Does time exist as a separate dimension? Does it have a unique place with definable limits in space? Does it move independently according to its own purpose? Or does it only move when other things move, completely dependent on prevailing conditions and binding dimensions in its surrounding space-a causal result bound to the whole? Perhaps it’s just a simpleminded construct humans have concocted to explain the inexplicable. Is it vaguely possible that it’s a set of branes slightly out of sync and we may pass from one to the next at will? Maybe it’s a simple kink in dimensions that can be crossed by anyone walking in precisely the right direction. It could be that it’s just a mental state altered simply by a minor amount of imagination applied correctly. Perhaps it is no more than a drug- or mantra-induced change of mental state-something hallucinated-something seen but unseeable. Or is there more to it than we can fathom? In the world of physics, all of this-and much more-is being looked into by serious, conservative scientists as well as those with their mental equipment more loosely adjusted-or even unfastened completely, their brains rolling about like marbles in an empty railroad freight car. |  | Does time exist as a separate dimension? Does it have a unique place with definable limits in space? Does it move independently according to its own purpose? Or does it only move when other things move, completely dependent on prevailing conditions and binding dimensions in its surrounding space-a causal result bound to the whole? Perhaps it’s just a simpleminded construct humans have concocted to explain the inexplicable. Is it vaguely possible that it’s a set of branes slightly out of sync and we may pass from one to the next at will? Maybe it’s a simple kink in dimensions that can be crossed by anyone walking in precisely the right direction. It could be that it’s just a mental state altered simply by a minor amount of imagination applied correctly. Perhaps it is no more than a drug- or mantra-induced change of mental state-something hallucinated-something seen but unseeable. Or is there more to it than we can fathom? In the world of physics, all of this-and much more-is being looked into by serious, conservative scientists as well as those with their mental equipment more loosely adjusted-or even unfastened completely, their brains rolling about like marbles in an empty railroad freight car. | | In this book, Twisted Tails III, we are dredging up fear and wallowing in it as if it were something to be played with, cuddled and fingers lovingly run through its fur like a cherished pet. What we’re doing here is tinkering with terror of the primal kind. You know what I mean, the sort of fright that lies coiled and ready to spring from the dark corners of the mind with no warning. It awaits all, lurking in the deeper shadows of consciousness. No one is immune and, frequently, there is no cure, you just sink into its roiling depths and are no more. If you do manage to escape, life will no longer be what it was before and you will find yourself glancing nervously over your shoulder whenever you hear something strange in the darkness or see a shadow move in the night…or day. Enjoy…. |  | TWISTED TAILS IV: Fantastic Flights of Fantasy is overflowing with some of the strangest fantasies you’re likely to find on-or off this planet. So, watch yourself...there be dragons here. And vampires. And sorcerers bearing all sorts of mischief. Beasts, goblins and ghouls aplenty. And things that poke with sharpened sticks at the unprepared mind. They crouch in the recesses, ready to spring at the slightest provocation or opportunity. The sort of things that hide in deep shadows and lurk in the darkness of night...or cavort in the full light of day, trundle, creep, crawl and dance their way across the stage of your imagination. Some of the works presented here are fearsome, level five heart-stoppers and others are downright funny. All are twisted. Twisted in the manner that only our convoluted cogitators...our warped, wonderful word-workers can provide. |  | The end of a day disastrous. The end of a cataclysmic century. The end of a fateful era. The falling apart of a fragile relationship. The fall of a fractured empire. The demise of a deal demonic. Plans gone awry. Your final fight for that last breath. "Aaaaaaaagh...." Okay, how poetic can a last gasp be? |
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