Liza shares her sci-fi Titan books

The first two sci-fi's arriving in 2018 will be the long-awaited Destination: Titan & Arrival: Titan. While book one had been written long ago, I had insufficient information about Titan to write a story until we sent Cassini out to investigate Saturn, Jupiter, and Titan. And what incredible things we discovered!

Book one is about getting there and the creation of lots of stuff to survive. It's also about creating a cohesive group, even as others try to sabotage their success.

Brilliant people are not always easy to work with. Nor do they always work well with each other. But oddly, the one that Colonel Lancaster worried most about turned out to be the one who made them a team.

Finally, I could write the second book where humans arrive on Titan. There are twists and turns that you'll never expect, but they are all based on possibilities created from Cassini's photos that returned to earth.  Here are some of the inspiring photos that captured my fancy:

First and foremost: It appears to me, PAN is not a planet! It's a spaceship.
Can I prove that is true? No, I can't. But I don't have to. I write fiction. So be prepared. In my story, my characters are shocked to discover PAN is an 18-mile wide ship mining the outer rim of Saturn.

It's not a new spaceship, in fact, according to the captain of the ship, it's over 6 million years old, so it has battle scars.

I assume that NASA was forbidden to call it a possible spaceship and thus declared it Space Ravioli, since it is clearly NOT a planet.

Now a ship requires Alien species to live and work within. So here they are:

This is the captain of Death Star. (It used to be called Curling, however, Earth has bombarded our galaxy with movies and sitcoms. Having a great sense of humor, the alien captain renamed her ship: Death Star.  Good thing earth was destroyed before she could hear that NASA wanted to call it Space Ravioli.  That might have caused her to blow us up before our most brilliant minds could escape.

Captain Trillian is going through a rough stretch in book two. She only has two functioning miners. Rockman and Shine. The other 'miner' is highly destructive. He's Shine's brother.

And here is a secret: The captain is in
love with Rockman.

That's ten-footot suit that Rockman wears. He's actually only 3 feet tall. The captain is small as well.

But he is from common people, while the captain may someday become a God. So he never flirts with her, but he does obey her every wish.

Unfortunately, his suit was broken during a shower of meteorites.

Now it's time to introduce another alien...

Meet Old Pervert. Perv is a watcher. His job is to make certain no one steals mined rocks, shares schematics with non-registered beings, etc. etc. It's a very boring job. So in reality, he prefers to ogle the captain, only she now wears her protective gear ALL THE TIME.

He's not actually in our galaxy. He resides somewhere else. But long ago, when they set up mining here, they placed a giant, multipurpose, highly charged 'eye in the sky' nearby, and Perv watches over the whole galaxy from far away. And while the human eye cannot normally see Perv's image that is transmitted on the 'eye' part of the electric ball, NASA actually discovered a way to reveal it using false color.  They, of course, ignored the large-eyed red skinned creature, telling themselves it was just a fluke that some red lizard thing with large eyes was watching them.

 Humans are evidently easy to fool.

You do remember, I said the eye in the sky was multipurpose, right.
Converting back to normal light on Jupiter....

See the giant red dot?
It's the galaxy's largest incinerator.
It will come in handy when a dead body turns out not to be completely dead and when little spiders are taken into the ship.



So what does the section look like to us that Old Perv watches the galaxy from? The prettiest blue bubble you ever did see.

           I should also introduce you to Shine & Rust. Shine's older than Rust. Rust was born blind and deaf. He's been a drag on Shine's life since his parents demanded he take care of his brother.

However, now there are humans on Titan, and one really strange one named Scarlett has offered to 'Helen Keller' Rust for them. All that she requested in return was to be able to keep the 3D equipment she needed to safely make herself three dimensional.

Shine is on the left                                              Rust is on the Right
While Scarlett was most charming, Captain Trillian refused her the 3D set when she first asked. However, Old Perv came to bat for her.

In addition, the captain had sent Rockman down to Titan (She's not allowed to have any useless workers on board her ship.) Old Perv observed there were humans on the planet and they seemed very smart. Desperate to get Rockman's exo-skeleton fixed, she agreed to let them try.

Shine declared the humans would be dead within an hour, but that proved to be wrong. The boric acid spiders who normally killed anything that landed at their methane lake had taken a liking to the humans, who had promised to distill them some clean ethane.

Oh, and here is the methane man who is responsible for caring for all the lakes...

His eyes move individually, like a reptile. But the consensus is that he's a really nice guy.

Well, that's probably enough for now. Bk1 Destination:Titan releases on Feb 8.
Afraid you'll forget?  Book one is available for pre-order now.

Bk 2 Arrival:Titan will appear on May 7.