Cosmic Journeys
Subtitle: The Collected Works of Devin Barber
Publisher: PublishAmerica
Published: October 8, 2007
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 458
ISBN-13: 9781604410495
Subjects: Science Fiction; Science Fiction - General; Fiction / Science Fiction / General; Fiction; Fiction - Science Fiction
Description: ADAM
	A history professor named Adam Greyfeather awakens one day to find he has been transported back in time to a point before life appeared on the Earth. He also finds that he has become immortal. With no clue as to how or why he found himself in the improbable situation he was in. He was forced to conclude that he had to have been sent back to witness first hand, the evolutionary history of the Earth.
	To his amazement and taxing his ability to cope with living for such an unfathomable amount of time. Adam learns that life evolved on our planet not just once, but many times and in very different ways, and not always naturally. For as present day astronomers have predicted. It is not a matter of if, but more a matter of when, large celestial objects impact planets such as our Earth. And just as predictable, is that from time to time these objects are large enough to obliterate not just all the life on a given planet, but all signs that life ever existed at all.
	As the eons pass, Adam encounters many intelligent beings, some friendly, some not. But what he learns is inevitable, is that each is destined to die in their turn. That is until he is so moved by one very special species he calls “Earthlings,” that he decides to push them to develop the technology to escape and go on living.
	Adam believed he had saved a species that had become very beloved to him. But in actuality, he had put in motion a mysterious series of events that leads to his transformation into an immortal being, and his journey through time.


A WORLD DIVIDED
	On a bizarre planet where the only continent is a steep strip of land stretching along the entire equator, Transportation Director Massel Coltroy seems to be the only man who believes that somehow breeching the Great Barrier Ridge is the best hope for his people. Isolated from the southern half of their planet by an impossibly high ridge, the mystery of what lie beyond, both terrifies and bewilders these people with technology barely equal to early 19th century Earth. But for some it holds out hope for a beleaguered people pushed to the limits of their world.
	Population pressures have brought Uragan to the brink of social breakdown and chaos. With such a limited amount of land, and without the technology to breech the Great Barrier, war seems the only answer. But Massel is determined to help his people avoid such a disaster.
	Massel manages to get the government of his district of Moller to back his idea to dig a tunnel through the Great Barrier Ridge. But not without making some very powerful and obsessively dangerous enemies who seem hell bent on making their district one of military dynasty.
	After years of digging with no success in reaching the other side, Massel’s government abandons him and he is forced to leave his homeland in disgrace. After landing in the nearby district of Casindrill, Massel finds himself working next to the grandson of Hagenlo Normoff, Bewer Normoff. A generation before he had attempted to conquer the Great Ridge by using a pressure suit he invented himself to climb over the top. Unable to garner the support of the Casindrill government, Hagenlo became angry and set off alone in his pressure suit never to be seen again.
	To his surprise, Massel learns that Bewer has kept his grandfather’s journals and drawings. Armed with Hagenlo’s data, his own engineering experience, and the help of Bewer, a liaison of the Casindrill government named Calayra Hibbin, and the support of the Casindrill government. Massel seizes the opportunity to make a new attempt at breeching the Great Barrier Ridge using updated pressure suits.
	But before they can begin their trek, the army from Massel’s home district attacks Casindrill with the intent of seizing it’s land and resources for themselves, all in the name of survival. Massel knew their only chance to survive was to climb the Ridge, so the three team members set out. Despite nearly being caught by enemy soldiers, Massel and his team make it to the other side.
	They discover a world of valleys and mountains stretching to the horizon. And that people just like them live there. But more spectacular than that, they discover that the bizarre geology of their planet they call Uragan, is the result of an ancient celestial impact directly into the North Pole. What the Great Barrier Ridge was in actuality, was the rim of an impossibly huge crater that covered nearly the entire northern hemisphere of the planet. A planet the inhabitants of the southern hemisphere called Earth.


DIVERGENCE
	Two young physicists, working for a defense department contractor, find themselves trapped in a time travel paradox. Mark Porter and Arnold Bauer graduated at the top of their class and worked on cutting edge projects dealing with quantum theory.
	Arnold, whose grandparents were holocaust victims is obsessed with what could have been, had they lived. Using data gathered from the discovery of quantum fissures around back holes, Arnie builds a time machine. What to do with it was a forgone conclusion for Arnie, so he travels back and kills Adolph Hitler creating a divergence in the timeline.
	Mark who was working in a nearby lab when Arnie activates his time machine gets caught in the space time continuum wake. Although he is not transported back in time, he awakens in the new timeline with his memory of the original timeline left intact.
	Mark finds himself in a technologically stagnant world ruled from Communist Russia. Mark also learns that the world of this timeline is about to face the epidemics of HIV, Ecoli, and the like with medical technology stuck in the 1930’s.
	After learning that the man he knew as Arnie Bauer had died of old age several years earlier and that he was survived by a son named Joel. Mark set out to see if there was any chance of fixing the mess his old friend had created. Arnie had spent the rest of his life trying to build another time machine, but died before he could finish. But with Mark’s help, he and Joel finished it and traveled back to stop Arnie and set things right.
	But every attempt to fix the timeline ends in the creation of a new timeline causing the last to loop back on itself. After years of failures, Mark makes an attempt to get Arnie’s grandparents to leave Germany before Hitler seizes power. But all he does is convince them that he’s out of his mind and they report him to the police. His last memory is the sensation of bullets slamming into his head and body as Gestapo officers gun him down when he tried running from them.
	But instead of being dead, he awakens in a hospital room, but he is in the original timeline where all is well. When he returns to work he is informed that his friend Arnie was killed in the explosion that had inured him. It was an unauthorized time travel experiment. But they discovered a mistake in Dr. Bauer’s formula, one that he would have easily overlooked.
	Mark realized that it had to have been Arnie himself who somehow was able to travel to a point in time before his first trip back and sabotage himself, preventing him from making that first trip, thus repairing the divergence in time.


DEAD MAN’S CANYON
	The 18 year old son of a southern Idaho rancher named Sam Bartow is more than he seems. Even at such a young age he had the reputation as the most accomplished hunter and outdoorsman in the territory. What no one knew except for a Native American medicine man Named Abraham Lookstwice, was that more than one spirit dwelled in this remarkable young man.
	The spirit of Erokahn dwelled in him, for it was this spirits last phase of it’s Earthly existence. Before he could ascend to heaven, Erokahn had to live one life time as a mortal. But Erokahn had an enemy from the spirit world called Kaynor. A demon spirit of cruelty and malice. Through out the eons every encounter between these two spirit beings ended in defeat and humiliation for Kaynor.
	In this level of existence, if Kaynor can kill Sam or cause him to die a dishonorable death, it will destroy Erokahn and alter the balance of the spirit world plunging it into darkness. This story follows Sam’s journey of realization about who he really is and what he must do for Erokahn to survive.

METEOR
	A very unusual meteor is on a collision course with the Earth. And to the astonishment of scientists, slows down and settles into a valley in Africa, hovering just a few feet above the ground. Scientists find that the meteor is made of a gravitationally neutral element they call Gravitium.
	By attaching the tiniest amount of Gravitium to any abject, the object is rendered gravitationally neutral, revolutionizing the future of technology and transportation for the inhabitants of the Earth.
	But human greed dooms our whole species. In an exuberance to make fast money, Gravitium is distributed around the world despite warnings that more study was needed. A strange type of radiation was being emitted by Gravitium. Although it was too late to save themselves, the people of planet Earth learned that this radiation was 100% fatal to humans. What they never learned was that the deadly meteor was actually a delivery system, a gift from some not so friendly aliens whose habit it was to “sterilize” planets they planned to colonize.


FADE
Scientist Daniel Wyman discovers that by exposing objects to a specific cocktail of various radiation, it causes a minute expansion of the spaces between atoms. Although the expansion is minute, the effect is astronomical. The object becomes ghost like. Other objects can be passed through the affected object without resistance. Another effect is that the object becomes gravitationally neutral.
	The discovery is so astounding that a decision is made to exclude Dr. Wyman from the project. Undeterred by this unexpected turn of events, Daniel Wyman uses his discovery to transform himself for the purpose of finding out who was responsible for ousting him from his own discovery.
	What he is not aware of, is that every time he passes through solid objects, he leaves a residue of himself behind and it’s killing him.


HARVEST
	Two teenage girls living in a staunchly Christian community are swept away into an improbable adventure when the adults of their town and all the nearby towns are harvested by aliens and taken away for processing.
	Candi and Kate Avery are at first elated by the absence of their too strict parents. But when a child is injured, 17 year old Candi finds that she is a lot more mature than anyone had given her credit for. A natural leader, she organizes the children and sets out with her 15 year old sister Kate to find their parents.
	They discover a hidden outpost belonging to the Meodons, the alien race who had taken their parents. They find they both have an uncanny ability to master the alien’s technology easily. Able to access the information needed, they set out with several of the aliens space ships and easily rescue all the adults taken from their planet. The reason for this easy success was that in this imagining, the intensity of electro-magnetic fields surrounding planets is the engine driving the biological pace of life on that planet. And among all of the planets of this story, the earth has the fastest pace. Therefore, Candi and Kate seemed like super beings to the Meodons. In fact, the Meodons are so impressed, they recruit Candi and Kate to use their ships to defend them against another predator race.



THE SHIP
	Jack Williams' life is turned on its ear when he is selected by benevolent aliens to be the commander of a ship to defend the Earth against a predator species called the 'Gahkee'. With his adopted brother Tree Allen, his wife Jenny and the ship's hologram interface they call Lon, they prepare for the arrival of their new enemy.
	During their training they discover that life seems to be everywhere, they explore the unimaginable world of Jupiter's interior. And they uncover the mystery of Jupiter's icy moon, Europa. And Jack makes some unlikely friends on the Planet Tangrona by supplying them with intelligence that allows them to drive off their own attackers.
	After Maia Kazmi, a fellow astrophysicist of Tree's, joins the crew, Jack discovers that their exploits had not gone un-noticed. An obsessed psychopath, General Baston, of the United States Space Defense Fleet, has other plans for the ship.
	After an incident involving the crew while they were hiding out in the Himalayas, Jack decides to reveal the ship to the government. A trusted friend of Jack's late father, retired General Tannon, puts Jack in contact with the most likely military representative, Space Command Director General Baston. The meeting ends in tragedy for Jack’s adopted brother Tree, allowing Baston to get his hands on the ship. But Lon stops the general from carrying out his plan of wiping out the inhabitants of the Middle East the only way he can. After witnessing Tree give his life for his brother Jack, and being unable to overcome his programming preventing him from using the ships weapons. Lon de-activates part of the containment field surrounding the quantum bubble, destroying himself, the ship, and General Baston. Unfortunately, this bizarre turn of events has left the earth defenseless.
	It is when the Tangroni’ come to the rescue of their new friends from the planet earth but fail, that the Echremians are motivated to personally intervene, saving the people of earth from genocide and beginning a new era of peace and cooperation throughout the galaxy.