Author’s name:  William Woodall

The Tyke McGrath Series.  There are five books in this series, including Nightfall, Tycho, Avenger, Freedom, and Elysium.  Readers can begin either with Tycho or with Nightfall (which is more of a prologue).  This series is a loose continuation of both the Last Werewolf Hunter series and the Unclouded Day series, but readers need not have read those other series first before enjoying this one.

This series follows the adventures of a boy named Tycho McGrath (Tyke to his friends) who is a brilliant high school genetics student in Tampa when he discovers that a man-made plague known as the Orion Strain is about to wipe out all human and animal life on earth.  He and several friends and family members escape to the partially terraformed Moon to survive, and from there the story progresses for the next five years as Tyke grows up, falls in love, fights unexpected enemies, and sometimes learns a thing or two about his purpose in life and how hard it can be to fulfill the expectations of others.  In the process he slowly moves from being an indifferent Christian who isn’t terribly interested in spiritual things to a mature believer ready to take up the work that God has assigned to him.

This series takes place in the real universe, about a hundred and fifty years in the future.  Most of the action takes place on the Moon, Venus, Mars, and Titan (a large moon of Saturn).

There are lots of things to see and do, especially on the Moon since it was purposely designed to delight tourists.  Some of Tyke’s favorite places are the emerald green beaches of the Summer Isles in the Sea of Tranquility, the skyscraper-sized cliffs where visitors can jump a thousand feet into Lake Boscovich, and Trinity Bay on the Sea of Serenity, where visitors can hunt the edible blue Hamburger Crabs among the cypress trees.  Tyke also particularly loves the beautiful golden meadows of Eleuthera above the Cytherean Sea on Venus, and the thousand-foot Angel Falls on Mars.  The most fascinating thing on Titan is the Temple of Muwamanth, which is built of solid ice in the middle of a black jungle.  There are many other things, too.  

The leftover spores of the Orion Strain are still present all over the earth, a constant danger if you’ve never been vaccinated.  Depending on where you went, you’d have to contend with deadly heat or bone-chilling cold, hostile aliens and humans, poisonous gases, lack of food/water/air, radiation poisoning, horrific storms, vicious mutant animals, and dangerously unreliable equipment.  Not to mention traitors who might stab you in the back at any time.

Is there a distinct or unusual type of food or meal that we might be served in these worlds?  On most of these worlds the food is typical American, but on Titan one might be served a salad made of chunks of tar and sprinkled with gasoline, with a sharp piece of bone to eat with.  It would be an inedible meal, of course, but the A’rum would consider it rude not to serve you.

Human weaponry generally includes both bullets and lasers, depending on the situation.  Humans also use taser-like stunners when they don’t wish to kill.  It’s common to wear silvery, reflective “mirrorsuits” as armor against lasers.  The A’rum of Titan have no metal, so their weaponry is made entirely of string and pieces of bone.  This usually involves slings, whips, and knives.

What types of vehicles, animals, technology, etc. are used to travel in or to these worlds?  

Humans have land rovers, jets, and spacecraft of various kinds.  The A’rum either walk or fly.

Most plants and animals are typical earthly ones, except on Titan.  There you would find the sentient A’rum who resemble large hairless bats and whose body chemistry is based on acetylene rather than sugar.  There are also “fish” and “eagles” on Titan with similar body chemistry.  Plants include “algae” and succulent “elephant ear trees” with large flat leaves and lots of thorns, which will pull apart like taffy and spontaneously melt and then boil if a human holds them in his hand.  To any living thing on Titan, the body of a human being feels hotter than a blowtorch.  On the Moon one would find several genetically-engineered plants and animals including freshwater versions of marlin and giant kelp, vampire roaches which travel in swarms and attack other animals for blood, highly aggressive “monsters” which resemble giant beavers with needle-sharp teeth, the blue Hamburger Crabs which were designed to taste like hamburger meat when roasted, and many species of flowers found nowhere else.

There is no magic in these worlds, but the supernatural does play a part.  Characters have true dreams of things they couldn’t have known otherwise, and there is miraculous healing sometimes.  There are sometimes supernatural objects such as the Guardian Stones and holy water.

Is there any advanced or unusual technology in the future?  If you haven’t described it already, please give some examples.  

One of the most interesting is the tachometer, a device used for observing what will take place in the future.  It can also transport individuals to the future, although it’s strictly a one-way trip with no possible return.  There are advanced methods of genetic engineering, computer design, and engine propulsion.  There are also several methods available for terraforming new worlds (that is, transforming them into places where earthly living things could survive).

There is reverse bungee-jumping on Deimos, in which people take advantage of the low gravity to jump thousands of feet into the sky and then fall back to the ground.  There’s big-game monster hunting in the Altai crater swamps on the Moon.  One could visit Ukert Springs for a skin exfoliation treatment by the Doctor Fish who live there.  The survivors are fond of having beach parties every Saturday night with music and dancing and food.  Otherwise there are all the usual human games like football, baseball, etc.  

The human calendar is the same everywhere, but on the Moon daylight and dark each last for two weeks at a time and on Venus they last for 58 days apiece (not to mention the sun rises in the west).  On Mars an extra 40-minute “hour” is inserted at midnight every day to keep up with the rotation of the planet.  On Titan a “year” is really seven earth years long, and every three and a half years on the equinoxes, the three Kings come together at the Temple of Muwamanth for a holy festival, during which time no fighting is permitted anywhere in the world.

The survivors of Earth are mostly Christians.  The A’rum on Titan believe in God and have a tradition of prophets who dream true dreams to tell the others what He wishes of them.

The A’rum live in widely scattered clans of about a hundred members each, ruled by one member with unquestioned authority.  There are three “kingdoms” on the planet, each ruled by one King who controls all the clans in his territory.  At the time of the story, the King of Dilmun was a wicked heretic who attempted to kill Tyke and his friends.  The small band of human survivors are led by Philip Carpenter, since most of them are his children or relatives anyway.  He’s a very brave and wise leader who came to this time from the past via the tachometer.  Mars is ruled by an iron-fisted military dictator known as Colonel James Burns, and Venus is controlled by his henchman Colonel Luke Bartow.  Both of them are cruel, ruthless men who will do anything to maintain power.  The rebel forces on Mars and Venus are commanded by Captain Brandon Stone, who is rather philosophical and places a high value on life.

The A’rum deeply admire honor, and love to wage bloody warfare with each other over the slightest of insults.  They are utterly ignorant of the concept of romantic love, since everything on the planet (including them) reproduces only by budding.  From time to time they will award the title of akiri to someone who has acted with exceptional bravery and honor.  They don’t comprehend money, and the only things of special value among them are “jewels” which are actually small bits of shiny meteoric iron.  Those fortunate enough to own one of these jewels often like to string them on necklaces. 

Some of the locations are ones that I’m personally familiar with, like Texas and Florida.  The geography and conditions on the other worlds are factual information which I didn’t need to make up; I simply had to fill in the blanks about what those places might be like if they were partially terraformed.  Even the conditions on Titan are as real as we have any way of knowing.  That said, the tree covered with chewing gum in Nightfall and several other minor places and things did come from my real life.

I don’t really think anything in this series is controversial, or at least not intentionally so.  The characters frequently discuss very deep and philosophical topics such as the nature of God and the soul, thorny moral dilemmas, what exactly it means to live as Christian and as a scientist, and many other things of that sort.  But these aren’t debates, they’re simply individual characters trying as best they can to understand God and to live according to what He would have them do.

Author Autobiography  

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-Annie Douglass Lima