I’ve picked up a fun series by John Varley recently. It’s about the science invented by a Cajun idiot-savant which allows apparently free energy and near light-speed travel.
In the first book, Red Thunder, a group of teenagers (nearly ready for college) befriend an alcoholic space pilot and his cousin, a super-genius with a head injury that has left him with the mind of a child — albeit a child who can somehow invent things that change the world.
I didn’t realize there were four books in the series when I picked up what looked like the next in the series: Dark Lightning. In this one, Jubal, his pilot-cousin Travis, and Jubal’s wife and teenage twin daughters are bound for a far planet, traveling via Jubal’s “squeeze” bubbles at near-lightspeed. Their spaceship is a hollowed-out asteroid and they’ve hand picked a “cargo” of explorers who should be able to colonize a new world. Until Jubal suddenly realizes they’re all in grave danger.
The second and third books are not available on Kindle, so I didn’t spot them until I happened to spot a note that Dark Lightning was Book 4. Red Lightning is the story of the son of two of the teen protagonists of Red Thunder and Rolling Thunder is the story of (I suspect) his daughter. I’ll probably order the paperbacks for those – they’re good reads.
Varley writes in a similar style to Robert Heinlein, one of my favorite sci-fi authors, focusing on quirky characters and their interactions with equally quirky problems. He tosses in enough physics and astronomy to catch the average nerd’s interest, and you have an interesting story. His protagonists are teenagers or young adults, but I’ve enjoyed reading the books, so they’re not entirely YA.
If you’re looking for something new to read and you like Heinlein and space travel stories, give Varley a shot.
