I hope this will ignite a spark in the minds of the young at heart, as they discover the story that made a fascinating journey into near-Earth space, and as it takes its readers on an equally fascinating journey deep into the cosmos. 

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While you may not have experienced the high accelerations during launch, felt zero G’s in outer space, qualified to receive ‘Astronaut Wings for Books’, or had an extraordinary view of Earth from space, perhaps your mind will carry with it a space-based spirit, as you travel with a young protagonist on her journey into the cosmos.

 

Like Anastasia, the young character of this story who finds herself changed and challenged by an alien artifact, we experience the ever-changing landscape of life on Earth, struggling to discover our destiny—why we are here and where ‘here’ is exactly. My hope is that one day readers of this novel will become captive to their own dreams of space and develop a passion for engaging in the adventure of near-Earth space travel or in the study of distant reaches of far-away galaxies. In either case, space awaits you.

 

Since the dawn of man, one-hundred and eight billion humans have lived on the surface of our planet; almost seven billion live here today. But, only some five-hundred and fifty humans have ever left Earth and flown into space, and only some sixty women were among them. Some seven astronauts have flown as commercial adventurers and only one set of unpublished manuscripts have ever been flown into space and returned to Earth for their readers, including the original manuscripts of the story I hope you are about to read.

 

This is the story about an impressionable young adult, communicating with an ancient alien society, falling in love, engaging in a quest to save humanity, and pursuing an unknown entanglement on a distant world in a far-away galaxy. What better place to start than for her to first make a trip into outer space. 

 

Flying into space is challenging. Going there is flying by rocket ~100 kilometers or more above the Earth’s surface. NASA and the Air Force issue Astronaut Wings to those who travel ≥80-100 kilometers above the Earth’s surface. Most of the readers of this science fiction adventure story won’t physically travel into space or go into orbit, fly to the moon or to the inner or outer planets of our solar system, or travel elsewhere in our galaxy or beyond. My hope, however, is that you will feel the excitement of holding a story in your hands that has begun such a journey; a story that will let your mind travel to the wonders of these places as you read and dream, becoming absorbed in the adventure and realizing it’s not just space that’s important, it’s about who’s out there waiting for us.

 

Space is one of the few remaining extraordinary curiosities for humanity to touch and explore. It is a very special place to venture into and sense its wonder, and to be amazed by some parts of it that surround our world and still remain a mystery—the vast expanse that some have called the final frontier, but what I think of as Earth's ultimate destiny.

 

And, much like a few of the great explorers before us - Christopher Columbus, Galileo, Sir Edmund Hillary, Lewis & Clark, Robert Goddard, Carl Sagan and Allen Shepard - keep dreaming, keep seeking and discovering and you’ll be amazed with what you find. And, hopefully like me, you will become inspired by the likes of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and Ray Bradbury.

 

So, I hope, launching this book into space and returning it to Earth stimulates your imagination, and that of millions of our young-adults and the young at heart who will dream and soar like the characters within the pages that you begin to turn; for we all know why we read and why we write—to find out what’s going to happen next. Enjoy your journey. I did.

 

D.M. Rosewood