A Light from a Distant Fire

About the Book

This story starts with the death of an old man, Alexander (Alex) Sykes, and his afterlife life. Upon his return from a trip to the astral plane, he discovers that police have been called to his apartment. He quickly finds out why: he was dead. Alex was looking at his own corpse! There was nothing that he can do now, so he left. Alex looked into the night sky and said, “I want to go there,” and he was off. He couldn’t explain it, so he just went with it. He discovered several inhabited planets, some with what are probably animal life, but as to whether they were sentient, Alex didn’t know. After a few more planets, Alex found the Q’ythe—definitely intelligent on a planet that was more urban than not. After his first contact with the Q’ythe, Alex discovers that they have an advanced mental ability that our earthly computers can’t match. Yet despite their great intellects and history, they are doomed, and unless Alex and his growing circle of friends and allies can help, the Q’ythe will die. So Alex, with his own mental ability, discovered by accident, does what it takes to convince others of the need to work together to save his new friends: Dr. Philips, physicist of JPL; Dr. Bernstein, director of Physics, JPL; Dr. Colin Andres, psychiatrist/parapsychologist, JPL; Dr. Dawn Runningdeer, quantum physics, West Coast Institute of Technology; and Rosa Seville, former NASA astronaut. These and others will be responsible for the salvation of the Q’ythe, but even with the help of advanced science from the Q’ythe, can Alex and his human friends pull it off and still deal with the threat of destruction from one of his own?

About the Author

I am in my sixties, single, and living in southern California. This is my first book, but not the first attempt to write. Long ago, I wrote a short story, “What Dreams May Come,” which was inspired by an episode of the Twilight Zone. I thought about sending it to Readers Digest but never got around to it. My private life, I keep private, but not to the point of becoming reclusive. I’m just careful as to whom I talk to and what I reveal. The genesis of my story started in late 2014. I was a security guard at an auto dealership working the graveyard shift. This gave me plenty of time to look up at the night sky, where I would see the magnificent blackness of space. For some years, it had been my desire that when I die, my personality is released to go among the stars and explore. This death and the resulting ability to “go where no man has gone before” (thank you, Gene Roddenberry) is where Alex came from. A Fire from a Distant Light is his story.