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The Moon and Beyond (The Lunar Free State Book 1) by [John E. Siers]

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John E. Siers

The Moon and Beyond (The Lunar Free State Book 1) Kindle Edition

by John E. Siers (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

763 ratings

Book 1 of 7: The Lunar Free State

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Ian Stevens, director of the Deep Space Research Institute, isn’t interested in conducting research just for the sake of research. While the rest of the world—including the U.S. government—thinks that’s the DSRI’s sole mission, Stevens is actually interested in more—he wants manned space travel and the colonization of the moon.

With NASA defunct, few scientific probes are being launched, and no one even talks about human spaceflight anymore. Stevens is out to change that. A billionaire in his own right, Stevens has assembled a crew of the best scientists and engineers he can find, and the DSRI is secretly building and testing gravity-powered spacecraft.

There’s just one problem—the project would be widely condemned worldwide, especially since there’s no government supervision. Everything they do has to be kept out of sight and away from the prying eyes of the NSA, Homeland Security, the IRS, OSHA, and a half-dozen other government agencies. They’ve got the world's smartest computer on their side, but will it be enough?

As the government gets ever closer to figuring out what the DSRI is doing, Stevens’ plan to establish a permanent settlement on the Moon nears fruition. The race is on—will the government find out and shut down the project, or will Stevens be able to implement…the Lunar Free State?

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517 pages
Language

English
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Publication date

June 22, 2021
File size

3886 KB
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

John E. Siers is an award-winning Science Fiction author who has been writing for over twenty years. He is an Air Force veteran of the Viet Nam era, and has worked as a computer programmer and web application designer. He currently lives in Tennessee, where he also operates his own business as a gunsmith. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B097QMN7PJ
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Theogony Books; 2nd edition (June 22, 2021)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 22, 2021
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 3886 KB
Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 517 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #69,898 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #182 in Space Exploration Science Fiction eBooks
- #535 in Space Fleet Science Fiction eBooks
- #535 in Space Marine Science Fiction

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763 ratings

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John E. Siers

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My writing inspiration started with Neil Armstrong's first footsteps on the Moon. I was serving in the U.S. Air Force in 1969 when Apollo 11 touched down, and I remember thinking that we had finally made it. I'd been reading science fiction since grade school, and now all those wonderful stories of space travel --as told by Heinlein, Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke -- were about to come true. We'd soon be on Mars and have manned missions going to the asteroid belt and the outer planets. Star travel? Well, why not -- we'd already met and conquered so many scientific and engineering challenges we'd probably figure out how to get around Einstein as well.

Of course, that didn't happen. 1972 saw the last landing on the Moon, and when another decade saw no attempt to return I felt like a dream had been lost. That's when I started writing, and the Lunar Free State series is the result -- stories about people who didn't lose the dream.

There's no limit to what we can achieve if we put our minds to it, and so far there's no limit to the stories I want to write. The original series is now five novels published to date and another one scheduled for publication in March of 2022. Meanwhile, I've been doing something I never thought I'd do -- writing stories in someone else's "universe." I've got two novels in the raw and gritty urban fantasy series known as Hit World, created by William Alan Webb and Larry Hoy. That series begins with Webb's The Trashman and my two are titled The Ferryman and The Dragons of Styx. I've promised Bill Webb another one in that series for 2022.

... and then, I've got two short stories in the anthologies Standing Fast and Standing and Standing Defiant, stories in Webb's Last Brigade series. For those who like post-apocalyptic SF, these are two great collections of stories by a bunch of great writers.

Check them out. I hope you enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed writing them.

John E. Siers, Author, Oakland, Tennessee

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5

763 global ratings

5 star		59%
4 star		27%
3 star		8%
2 star		2%
1 star		4%

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Lcashless 1.

good book, good world building.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 22, 2022

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Very good book, slow in some spots but a great cast of characters. yes the book does have a right wing attitude but if you look at real world politics today it seems like that’s the way this world is going. The story is very interesting, wish the technology was just a wee bit more advanced but I am going on to read the next book.

One person found this helpful

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michael byerle

cheers to U!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 8, 2022

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Thanks for your wr🧡ting this book and I hope u will continue and write many more. I have read many sifi’s and most are very basic outer space cowboy books.

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den44

A Good version of what will happen in near future

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 25, 2022

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I loved this book!
Cared for the characters, rooted for the same group and can see just about all of the story coming true in near future.
Looked forward to getting back to the story each time I had to break.
Pre-ordered the second book when I had gotten half way through this one.

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J Krug

Really good humans get into space book

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 11, 2022

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I enjoyed this book, even if there were too many reminders of how poorly humans treat scientists in the name of ‘stupidity’. I could sadly easily see his happening in the real world...and would hope to have the chance to go with the lunar folks. I liked the characters, the action, and the technology descriptions. I recommend this book and am glad it is part of a series.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 26, 2022

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Extremely well told story with great characters and plot. The concept fits super well with today’s political structure and I only wish someone would pull our chips out of the fire for us.

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David S

I tried to get past the politics. I couldn't. How do you write anti-science science fiction?!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 24, 2022

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Answer: by making every diatribe full of the subtext "I'm not anti-science, *you're* anti-science!"

Two quick examples the author makes *damn sure* you understand before anything actually happens in the plot (y'know, the usual point of reading science fiction stories): 1) Not only are electric cars equally hazardous to the climate as internal combustion engines, cars that only emit *water vapor* still get protest from (the author's characterization of) environmentalists. 2) Human-generated climate change was a specter created by hack 'scientists' coopted by politicians, and 'real' science has officially proven it.

Look, a lot of the sci-fi I enjoy does get complaint from conservatives for being too "woke" or "leftist". I understand and respect those critiques. I try to imagine myself enjoying a book that includes LGBTQ characters, the specter of progressive politics, or just a lot of inclusiveness and equity if I weren't into those things.

I don't have to imagine anymore. I have now tried to read the conservative version and I just couldn't get much past the description of the "Naturalists" - "anti-science" people who reject the "conclusive evidence" that human-generated climate change was an empty and disproven scare tactic.

Look, I don't mind some conservative politics in sci-fi. You want an AI that believes in God? Fine! But make it interesting, believable, and answer some tough questions. Don't hand me a gross oversimplification of Occam's Razor and move on.

If you want conservative politics to be ascendant in your near-future America, fine! But creating straw men out of every progressive agenda item (oddly, sort of except for LGBTQ persons in the military?) then hammering us over the head with the *narrator's* perspective on those over-the-top caricatures isn't the way to weave it in.

For an example of a series where the main characters occasionally have perspectives I don't share but I still really enjoy, try The Kurtherian Gambit series. You can't even tell what the *author* believes, but damn sure those *characters* are mostly hawkish folks who think the US has done too much hand-holding of an oversized do-nothing-but-expect-handout-anyway portion of its population. (And then the story *moves on* past that to create the civilization that the characters consider to be an answer to that perspective, *without* using the phrases "libtard," "nanny state," etc.)

Part of the problem here is that American science-fiction is traditionally progressive by nature. It involves societies that have moved beyond scarcity and competition and are therefore 1) less likely to feature fully deregulated capitalism and 2) more likely to be equitable for all, irrespective of identity/belief/insert-division-here. After the devastations of the mid-20th, these stories are likely to be at least somewhat anti-war - even when they feature war, there is a strong commentary on peace and the risks of militaristic societies, particularly those that are at all fascistic in nature.

And of course, they're by definition pro-science. Very, very, pro-*actual*-science. Pro- the scientific method of inquiry and discovery.

So science-fiction that's so heavily grounded in modern American right-wing politics is a study in counter-intuitiveness.

I enjoy a lot of science fiction; I'm particularly fond of the found-starship, early-space-colonization, and first-contact genres. I love seeing civilizations move from something recognizably today-like or near-future-ish to something wild and out there - love seeing how authors chart the course from "no more tech than we have available to us now or will believably have in the next 25 years" to "anti-grav, inertial compensation, lightspeed/warp drive, galactic spacefaring civilization".

I wanted to enjoy this series, in other words. I just couldn't.

Final word: there is a review here that applauds nearly everything I have critiqued. You need to worry about your work, and your soul, if someone who's *complimenting* you says his only problem with your novel is that it includes a "pervert" - by which he means your lesbian character.

Sometimes, the quality of the fan is a commentary on the nature of the artist.

(I think this author, by the way, has only read the half of Heinlein's writing that aligns with his politics.)

32 people found this helpful

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Bill

Good first story.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 17, 2022

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The character development was good the way the main characters were fleshed out was good. The story line was pretty straight forward. The action was also very well done. All in all a good read.

One person found this helpful

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Jerry833

Good story!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 27, 2022

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The author builds a very believable and interesting story line. The characters also believable. The heroes are likable and worth rooting for and the villains smarmy.

2 people found this helpful

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John

Not for me

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 19, 2021

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Well written and described but not my type of reading.
The writing is good a describing the characters is well done. I found that I did not enjoy a story that seemed a earth bound story as I normally enjoy a far of galaxy based story with beyond our galaxy as a base and the characters that are in mech suits of one sort or other.
Try it as you may enjoy it did yes it was not for me but at the moment I am at around enjoying 80% of all the books I try so give it a go you could enjoy it

minus32

Good read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 26, 2022

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Good concept and story. Mostly well written and flows well enough . Got a bit stuck in the mud discussing form of Gov for the Moon base. Interesting rather than compelling.

Bob

Excellent sci fi

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 6, 2021

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Great concept, good characters and plenty of action. This is what science fiction is supposed to be. Possibilities for the future.

One person found this helpful

Christian

Interessante Hintergrundgeschichte

Reviewed in Germany 🇩🇪 on August 28, 2022

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Die Story ist spannend und liest sich gut weg - kleine Warnung: Die deutsche Übersetzung ist wirklich schlecht.

Sehr interessant und kenntnisreich ist die Hintergrundgeschichte. Insbesondere mal nicht der bei deutschen SciFi-Romanen so unvermeidliche Klimakatastrophen-Hintergrund. Stattdessen ein Ausblick, welche Folgen die heutigen gesellschaftlichen Strömungen haben können: Identitätspolitik, Fortschrittsfeindlichkeit, Überwachung, Einschränkungen der persönlichen Freiheit aus Gründen des Umweltschutzes. Zudem auch sehr interessante Überlegungen zur Organisation von Gesellschaften.

Hoffe sehr, dass die Grundidee auch über die weiteren Bücher der Reihe trägt.

2 people found this helpful

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Frank Heller

Gripping

Reviewed in Australia 🇦🇺 on October 21, 2022

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Very well written. Exciting. Interesting characters. Entertaining dialogue.
My only criticism would be that some important meetings were glossed over. The book could easily have been 50% longer without losing any tension.
Looking forward to reading the rest of the series.

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