Science Fiction | Alexis Glynn Latner

Photo taken by Art Dula at LoneStarCon 3

Science fiction with actual science and a sense of wonder is a way to address the Big Questions—as is theology. The intersection of the two is a compelling place for me

Here I list my published science fiction, as well as fantasy, horror and mystery.

THE STARWAYS SERIES

Starways Vol. 2 is Starmaze.

The most dangerous game is what can happen at the intersection of religion and politics….

Nia Courant is an interstellar lawyer facing the greatest challenge of her career. To right an old wrong she’s going up against an interstellar empire and a deranged god. This won’t be just waging a legal war of words. She’ll be in real danger. But she has an extraordinary ally. Gyle Night Martan is a man with a shadowed past and abilities that no one guess from looking at him. Together, they venture across the stars to face enemies known and unknown. Along the way, they’ll try to make their fraught love affair finally work out right.

Starways Vol. 1 is Witherspin.

In a spinning city full of intrigue, romance, and dangerous games, the word for everything going wrong is “witherspin.”

Nia Courant is an interstellar lawyer with a shadowed past. Gyle Martan is a University official who is not at all what he seems. Both are outsiders in the space-station city called Wendis. When everything goes wrong around them, they soon become allies in danger and adversaries in love.

More Pets in Space®!

I had science fiction romance stories in this USA-Today bestselling anthology for five years. All five stories were set in the Starways series universe, with some of the same characters and places as Witherspin and its sequel Starmaze.

Mascot appeared in Embrace the Romance – Pets in Space 2. A mysterious alien pet becomes the unlikely defender of a remote mining station while the station manager and an interstellar auditor try to work out their mutual attraction – and stay out of the casualty count.

Ten novelettes and short stories span five thousand years of future history as humanity reaches across the stars. All but one of these stories were previously published in Analog science fiction magazine. The last story in the collection is from my new novel Witherspin.

Hidden inside the Starcross Nebula is a place of interstellar shipwreck. It’s like a Bermuda Triangle half as old as time. It harbors malicious monsters and dangerous mysteries.

It’s a hell of a place to attempt a rescue mission.

Captain Zilka Devreze and her crew on the starship Guardian Angel must race against time to find shipwreck survivors in mortal danger. They’ll use Zilka’s genius grasp of the intricacies of fast starflight to get in and back out again.

Mission specialist Jack Mistry was an accident investigator in the Solar System in his previous life. Abruptly revived from stasis in the starship Aeon, he only reluctantly agrees to join the unprecedented mission. When he fled from Earth on Aeon, what he expected to find on the other side of the stars wasn’t an interstellar accident scene like this. Or a woman like Zilka.

Always as singularly alone as brilliant, Zilka discovers that this can change. But first she has to learn how to lead a very assorted crew. And Jack has to learn to follow his heart.

Soon all of them will discover how death and life, hell and hope, and danger and love intersect in the Starcross Nebula.

Modern sailplanes may be the most beautiful machines the world has ever seen. What they can do is amazing enough to be fantasy—but it’s fact. And in futures real and imagined, they could fly in stranger skies on other worlds. Five previously published tales of science fiction and science fantasy, plus a futuristic fact article, describe The Shape of Wings to Come.

The Pets in Space® anthology came out in 2016. “Spike” is set in the Aeon’s Legacy universe – between Star Crossing and Helldive. The titular pet, Spike, is a mysterious and mischievous electromagnetic being which manages to bring two lonely humans together, and goes on to appear in Helldive.

The final journey of the starship Aeon has reached yet another world—a hopeful new beginning after the disastrous events in Downfall Tide. In Star Crossing, the children of Aeon encounter wonders and terrors, aliens and friends, in a place stranger than anything they ever imagined.

It’s like a Bermuda Triangle in space . . . half as old as time.

But even here, faith and hope endure, and love is stronger than death.

It’s been twenty-four years since the events in Hurricane Moon. Much has changed, thanks to unremitting hard work by the first generation of explorers to build a new civilization on Planet Green. Unknown to them and their children, everything is about to change.

E-book edition Avendis Press 2014

On a mission to find a new world and found a new civilization without repeating Earth’s past mistakes, the starship Aeon reaches a mild green planet with an oceanic moon veiled in hurricanes. Aeon’s astronauts and scientists soon plunge into a season of crisis. They face death and love, discovery and disaster with no going back–and no certainty that humanity has a future on Planet Green with its hurricane moon.

My e-book novella A Pillar of Stars by Night consists of three novelettes originally published in Analog magazine, now combined into one story. By the late 21^st Century, Earth’s ecosystem may be damaged beyond repair. Two young life scientists struggle with the decision whether or not to join an exodus to a new world on the other side of the stars. Their skills will be critical in creating a new ecosystem on a barren colony world. But no one knows whether such an undertaking is even possible. To try and fail would mean the death of every hope and every hopeful colonist—unless something utterly unexpected changes the odds.

A Pillar of Stars by Night and my other e-book stories are available here.

My story “The Listening-Glass” appears in Diamonds in the Sky, an anthology of astronomy-based science fiction funded by the National Science Foundation and edited by astronomer and science fiction writer Mike Brotherton.

BLU 97-032D was published in Analog, June 2004. Images courtesy NASA-Johnson Space Center.

“Wilbur’s White Glider” appears on the Web site for a transcontinental sailplane race called Return to Kitty Hawkin 2003.

I have a some copies of these magazines and anthologies.
Please contact me about obtaining an autographed copy.

“Dragon’s Tooth” appears in the anthology Dragon’s Hoard, edited by Carol Hightshoe and published by Sky Warrior Books, and the central action involves a sailplane.

“The Hall of the Cavern King” appears in the anthology These Vampires Don’t Sparkle, edited by Carol Hightshoe and published by Sky Warrior Books.
My novelette “Quickfeathers” appeared in the May 2009 issue of Analog. “Quickfeathers” is a sequel to my novel Hurricane Moon.

“Stone Man” was published in Twisted Tales of Texas Landmarks, an anthology of short stories written by members of the Houston writers’ group The Final Twist, published by L&L Dreamspell, October 2010.

My ghost story “Charity” appeared in the 2010 paranormal anthology Ghostly Dreamspell published by L&L Dreamspell.

“Rumors on Rat Shack Row” was published in A Death in Texas, an anthology of short mystery stories written by members of the Houston writers’ group The Final Twist, published by L&L Dreamspell, September 2008
“Grass Lion,” a fantasy story, appeared in the February-April 2008 issue of the online magazine Sorcerous Signals. It was anthologized in Arcane Whispers Volume 2 – the Best of Sorcerous Signals 2008.