If you were offbeat enough to find my first book “oddly entertaining,” then you might enjoy Curiosity Seekers all the more. It is a gentle science fiction work about a retro couple in the near future who gets into and out of various predicaments. Now that’s a lot more fun than hospice, isn’t it? One of the main characters is Gomer Ackerman, who repairs and beautifies material books which are becoming more and more scarce. The other main character is his wife Muriel, who designs one-of-a-kind greeting cards each intended for only one recipient. Their financial planner Virginia Boyden is more conventional, but things go awry after she gets dementia and becomes one of the first people cured of the disease. The catch is, as she gets better and better, an unexpected side effect comes up. In another story Gomer becomes a widower and deals with his wife’s death by buying a robot that looks and acts like her, even in intimate matters. Ahem! He then suffers immense remorse and comes up with one ridiculous plan after another to atone. You will also meet the Ackermans’ great niece Beatriz, who finds creatures on a different solar system that have to be very sparing with their words in order to survive.
Here is an excerpt for the readers of this blog, when Virginia describes part of her recovery: “When I had dementia, it’s like all the words in the English language had flown away from me into space, all the way to another solar system in another part of the Milky Way you could say. Then I called to them to all please come back home, and they did, at first a few at a time, and then bunches of them at a time, each batch making a perfect landing in its own proper dear little spot in my brain, like birds finding the nests of their young days.”
You may wonder why a chaplain has written science fiction. One of my reviewers explains:
“Kaplan’s sci-fi will appeal to readers who like their spaceships and androids served with a side of spiritual contemplation.” — Mystery writer Mindy Quigley, author of The Burnt Island Burial Ground
You can see more about these interrelated stories on amazon: http://amzn.to/2mjXpR0
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