Seventeen short stories are featured in Thomas Wm. Hamilton’s latest book Weird Thoughts. Spanning the years 1912 to fifty million years in the future, the book’s genres cover science fiction, fantasy, and satire. The stories are followed by seven essays in the field of astronomy, including issues that can be easily misunderstood by the general public. The author was previously an astronomy professor who worked three years on the Apollo Project, determining orbital characteristics, fuel usage, and radar accuracy requirements for space travel. This experience is described in one of the astronomy essays in the book. Three stories set in the far future describe wars taking place among highly evolved animals, including intelligent monkeys, raccoons, dogs, cats, and dolphins. One tale describes an alternate world in which a murder victim gains justice in a time travel adventure. The U.S. presidency is at stake! In other stories, teenagers discover the importance of Spell Check while doing magic, and then there’s the tale about Halley’s Comet.
What if? Altered Times is a stunning collection of short stories that examine the consequences of a single change in history. The stories look at how a number of events may have gone in a different direction, from the decidedly pre-historical collision of Earth with the astronomically theoretical proto-planet Theia, to three alternative consequences for the 2020 presidential election. In between, Caesar pays attention to the soothsayer, Aaron Burr’s gun misfires, and other events change the world as we know it. The earliest story tells when Theia and Earth fail to collide 4.2 billion years ago, resulting in our moon never existing. Imagine if Caesar does beware the Ides of March, if Alexander Hamilton never dies in a duel, if James Marshall quietly collects gold instead of riding his horse into town screaming, “Gold! Gold on the American River,” setting off the California Gold Rush. What if the January 1912 murder of a California assemblyman is averted, resulting in his election as president in 1940? And what could have possibly changed the 2020 election? What if?
As a 15-year-old, Parvin escaped her home planet of Gods Victorious Warriors, when its repressive government executed the rest of her family. Now living on the planet Universityworld, the former runaway teaches mathematics and is known as Professor Parvin Priddlikachorn. Her husband, Professor Siddithamon Priddikachorn, nicknamed Pretty, teaches planetary geology and hails from the planet Pradang. The couple have a 17-year-old son and 14-year-old daughter. Parvin thinks the time is right to run for office, so she seeks a seat in the third house of a four-house planetary legislature. Her son and his girlfriend help with her campaign, but Pretty tries to discourage his wifes political ambitions. It happens that Parvins home world has a long-standing order of execution out on her. Universityworld is harboring a covert cell of its assassins, The Righteous Fists of God, which is headed by an officer in their planets secret police. One of its crew, Neto, is enrolled as a student, but unknown to everyone is that his professor is the subject of their search. Meanwhile, a controversial figure hopes to win control of the fourth house.
Time for Patriots is a delightful adventure with marvelously crafted characters so realistic I could swear I knew them." Guillermo Alfonso Calvo Mahé, Professor of English and Political Science, International Relations Directorate, Universidad Autònoma de Manizales. "Time for Patriots is a fascinating look into a world changed by knowledge from the future." Christopher Nuttall, Producer and Managing Editor of Changing the Times, the online Alternate History magazine. (www.changingthetimes.net) "Time for Patriots is a splendid fi rst novel by an author -- already a serious scientist -- who has the potential to be a most formidable sci-fi author. It is a highly imaginative story which reveals both a grasp of science and of history. Bernard J. Sussman, lawyer & librarian
Craters have been found on planets and moons throughout the solar system, caused when asteroids or meteors have collided with them. Our Earth has not escaped these impacts, and nearly 200 craters are known on Earth today. Some are easily visited, others are in locations few would ever want to get near. This book details all the known terrestrial impact craters, telling their age, size, and other details, as well as highlighting those easily visited. One has an annual “Craterfest” to attract tourists, while it is possible to swim in lakes that have filled others.
Scam Artists of the Galaxy features a pair of creative scammers who travel from planet to planet 450 years from now. Their misadventures cover a wide variety of scams in nineteen widespread locales. On some planets the male cousins make money, while on others they leave one step ahead of the local equivalent to a sheriff. One of them, a ladies’ man, even tries to pick up girls at every space port. Their tricks include fake artifacts, insurance fraud, complex currency tricks, a missing heiress, gambling, fraudulent psychological aids, and even a supercilious cat. Several stories strongly reflect the author's astronomical background, who was motivated to write the book after considering all the boring phone and email scams he receives. Wouldn’t scammers be more intelligent in the future, he thought. “I think mine are more creative than the ones I get. Felt sorry I didn’t add a couple more scams.”
Thomas Wm. Hamilton’s latest book Astronomical Numbers provides most of the commonly referenced and used numbers in astronomy. This includes the diameters of the sun, all the planets, and major moons, distances of orbits, magnitude scales, frequency of eclipses, the five different kinds of lunar month, and more. To maximize usefulness, all values are in both English units (e.g. miles) and metric (e.g. kilometers), and provide conversions for units commonly used in astronomy, such as the astronomical unit, lightyear, and parsec. Says the author, “There is a real need for a convenient and quick reference for all this astronomical data, which is scattered and time consuming to find.”
The sky's the limit in the fascinating book Our Neighbor Stars: Including Brown Dwarfs. The book presents all known information on the 100 stars nearest Earth, as well as the brown dwarfs within the range covered by these stars. Learn where (and whether) the stars are visible in the sky, who discovered them and how they were discovered. Read all about the stars' sizes, colors, presence of any planets, and the constellations where the stars are located. All the information is indexed, so particular types of stars can be easily found. About the Author: Thomas Wm. Hamilton has wanted to work in astronomy since he was five years old. Now retired, he taught astronomy for 32 years, and has worked for the Apollo program and in the planetarium field. His last book was Useful Star Names and his next is an anthology featuring his science fiction stories. The author grew up in San Francisco and now resides on Staten Island, New York. Publisher's Website: http: //sbpra.com/ThomasWmHamilton
This stunning astronomy book explores Dwarf Planets and Asteroids: Minor Bodies of the Solar System. Written by a retired astronomer, the book provides a survey of the dwarf planets and asteroids, giving details of the discovery, naming, orbits, and physical characteristics of hundreds of examples of the known asteroids found by astronomers in the past two centuries. It also includes the different groups and classes of asteroids. Those bodies that have been visited by spacecraft are singled out for extra attention, including close-up photos where available. About two hundred asteroids have been found to have moons of their own, and the story of their discovery and examples of these moons are also included.
Retired astronomer Thomas Wm. Hamilton has written six books on astronomy. But science always changes. His most recent book, Moons of the Solar System, has just been revised to incorporate the newest research and information on these amazing bodies in the sky. The new title is Moons of the Solar System, Revised Second Edition: Incorporating the Latest Discoveries in Our Solar System as well as Suspected Exomoons. Having once worked on the Apollo Project, the author has long been fascinated in studying moons. From Galileo’s discoveries in 1610, to the latest returns from the Cassini spacecraft in orbit around Saturn, four centuries of discoveries in the solar system are summarized, complete with the names of those responsible for finding them. The 185 known moons of the planets and dwarf planets in the solar system are described in great detail, from how they were discovered, and by whom, to information about their sizes and orbits. The strange and exotic origins of the moons’ names make for astonishing stories. Moons of the Solar System also includes the possible dangers faced by human travel in space.
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