When terrorists try to poison undergraduate schools with a nerve agent, the scheme backfires. Instead of causing death, the chemical stimulates the mirror neurons in the students' brains, causing them to multiply and become hyperactive. This, in turn, leads to unusual talents. As the children grow, their teachers and other institutions become very interested in the odd perceptive ability they begin displaying. Government, industry, military, drug cartels, businesses and the underworld all want to use them for their own purposes. Some of the young men and women have different ideas. They will fight to keep their freedom.especially after a few of them begin to develop another odd talent, one that may change the world.
In the future, whites have become a minority and are treated as second-class citizens by the colored majority. Whites are discriminated against, relegated to shantytowns and allowed to do only menial labor under segregation laws that are beginning to amount to little more than slavery. As conditions grow worse, white 'volunteers' are worked to death in mine pits and the tar sands, where conditions are so brutal that serving as test subjects on alien planets begins to sound better than anything on earth, no matter what the danger.
This collection of short stories is a great way to introduce yourself to Fictionwise Author Of The Year Darrell Bain. The stories are annotated by the author and interspersed with excerpts from his popular newsletter as well as articles published elsewhere. Read about the little girl who can talk to animals, but no one believes her. About a young autistic boy who changes the world by playing with magnets. About an invasion by aliens who look like birds. Find out about the strange pets Neanderthals keep. Discover how a loser in the sex wars uses science to enhance his chances, with catastrophic results. Learn how the world ended-or did it? Laugh at the antics of authorities trying to corral a grade school supergenius who won't be stymied in her quest for knowledge. These and other stories will give you hours of reading pleasure as you delve into the fiction and non-fiction writing of Darrell Bain.
A stellar accident has thrown hundreds of small circular areas of East Texas far into the past. The displacement circles include such random spots as a roadside park, a Wal-Mart Superstore, the streets of a small town -- and the death row section of the state prison. Individuals and groups gradually find one another while coping with an unknown wilderness, and the murderous convicts who are intent on enslaving everyone they can find, especially women and blacks. Eventually, the convict-led forces will battle for control of the new world against a random assortment of people led by an erstwhile physicist, who has found a new love in a woman formerly in the military. But in order to have a chance against the ruthless former convicts, she must pretend to be captured in order to create havoc behind the lines.
Girls and young women are disappearing without a trace, without a clue. No bodies are ever found.
Police are stymied until a possible connection appears in the form of a young woman who has unaccountably inherited a newly built mansion from her estranged father. The lead detective in the case thinks something is completely out of kilter about the cases. He doesn't know what really weird territory he -- and his new girlfriend -- are going to be entering.
As the disappearances continue, they begin to take on a new tone -- some of the people connected to the investigation also begin to abruptly drop from the face of the earth. The inherited mansion increasingly seems to be the clue to the disappearances.
When the phenomena envelops the detective and heiress, they find themselves in a situation they never imagined could happen.
Darrell Bain's latest novel encompasses the spirit of the old American pioneers who risked all for a chance of a better life in a new environment. With conditions in America deteriorating, the Bentley family decides to take advantage of the recently discovered method for reaching the stars. They sign a contract with a corporation in return for partial financing of their venture to a new world. But as they travel on the space trails, they gradually discover that all is not right about the expedition they're on. When the discrepancies finally come to a head, they find the corporation has deceived all the immigrants. Regardless, there is no turning back, for the leaders of the expedition have outsmarted themselves. Out of food, lost in the labyrinth of the space trails, beset by denizens of the 'ways, with only a slim chance of survival, the Bentley family and their fellow immigrants press on, driven by the same indomitable spirit their forebears showed while conquering a new continent.
