John T. Cullen has authored over 20 books, including The Generals of October (Simon & Schuster, 2004)—pulse-pounding political-military suspense fiction set in a near-future U.S. Constitutional crisis.
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John T. Cullen also writes screenplays, including one for Nebula Express (adapted from his SF novel) and the violent, darkly glistening, utterly strange tale of a serial killer in Scorpion.
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If you like what you read here, please send at least two other avid readers here so a growing readership can enjoy these books. That would be a great, painless, easy way to provide a huge assist. If you'd like to do more...click.
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Mars the Divine
a novel
by John T. Cullen
BOOK III: WORLDS LONG AGO & FAR TOMORROW
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20: London Transfer
What a different scene we found about 600 years later as we parted company with Wells and Tatnall!
If the Faraos were aware of us as we stood on the concrete deck of London Transfer, they didn't let on. But that was typical from what we were told. The Faraos arrived one day in a small fleet of ships and informed the world they were now in charge in the name of some distant ruler. Nothing new there—humans had been doing this to each other for zeons—so the world fell into line. It was not immediately clear what the Faraos wanted, or even what they looked like. They stayed in their orbiting stations, or in dark, saucer-like additions they placed atop the highest sky scrapers in Earth's largest cities. Sure they knew about the Temporale, the Membrane, the whole bit. They may have known about our time travel stunt in the green machine and just hung back to see what we were up to. Or they may not have cared. Occasionally some macho fighterplane jockey would take his F-300 up on afterburners, planning to unload his rockets on one of the hovering saucers above New York or Beijing—he'd vanish in a puff of smoke as a ray of pinkish light zapped down out of the saucer. The Faraos were on top of everything. They missed very little. So there had to be a reason why they let us get in and out.
Wells and Tatnall were still experimenting with their new toy. We, on the other hand, were eagerly following the development of Mars exploration. The first flights started in the 2010s. The first permanent domes were in place by the 2050s. Some of the motivation was commercial. Mostly it was competitive. The world had been taken over by global corporations that employed millions, spied on each other, and even had their own private armies. National governments had become all but meaningless, reduced to cultural museums and labor unions for their citizens in the face of powerful global Korps. I understood much suddenly when I learned that the main driver behind the colonization of Mars had been religious. It was not an arms race or a show of national pride. It was minerals and money for the corporations, and souls for the Temple. Terraforming began after 2200 in the Common Calendar (from which it turns out our Martian dating system is derived, via the nuns' menses which had stayed remarkably on track because it was based on the most regular sisters).
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If you like what you're reading, please send at least two other avid readers to this website.
—Thank you! …Your grateful author, John T. Cullen.
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Other gripping books by the author:
Copyright © 2005 by John T. Cullen. All Rights Reserved.
John T. Cullen has been a pioneer in digital publishing since 1996. He is listed by digital publishing historian Karen Wiesner as the sixth digital publisher in history, and the second person to publish serialized chapters on line (starting 1996). His web magazine Deep Outside SFFH was the first to be listed along with the professional pulps in Writer's Market (1999) and was at one time the oldest professional SFFH magazine in the world. John T. Cullen continues to explore new ways to adapt the primordial power of storytelling to emerging new digital opportunities as the Third Millennium springs to light.
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A Walk in Ancient Rome John T. Cullen (Simon&Schuster May 2005) innovative, acclaimed walking & teaching tour—explore every corner of the Imperial capital at its zenith almost 2000 years ago; learn its history—smell and taste the very air of Classical Rome.
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= Summer 2008 =
A Walk in Ancient Rome, Second Edition John T. Cullen (Clocktower Books 2008)—New! Many new maps; images from the unique scale model of AndréCaron of Quebec. Read this innovative book, with its acclaimed walking & teaching tour. Explore every corner of the Imperial capital at its zenith almost 2000 years ago; learn its history. Smell and taste the very air of Classical Rome. The new edition is bigger, like an atlas. Some people have carried the 1st edition with them to Rome, and found it greatly enhanced their experience.
Dead Move: Kate Morgan and the Haunting Mystery of Coronado, 2nd Ed. John T. Cullen (Clocktower Books, San Diego, Summer 2008). John T. Cullen has tackled the mystery of the ghost at the Hotel del Coronado. He has assembled a dramatic new theory about how and why she violently died on the back steps of the hotel in 1892. A first-class ghost story and whodunit wrapped in one.
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