Announcing Our Debut Novel: Alec Ott's 'Perdicion: The Other Blue Planet'
This science fiction novel offers a fun, traditional, 1980s space-opera adventure.
I am so very proud and excited to announce the first novel which God of the Desert Books will publish, Perdicion: The Other Blue Planet by
. We have completed production and submitted the book to our distributor.We will release this title through our adventure imprint, Heroes of the Desert Books. You can can sign up here to receive updates and original content:
Here are the book’s description and Alec’s bio:
About the Book:
The technologically advanced planet of Perdicion has had quite enough of the rebellious Red Colonies and has dispatched a fleet of ships with the destructive capacity to wipe them from existence. At the center of the conflict between the two warring factions orbits the primitive, untouched blue planet, Parthenos. Both sides want her for their very own—to colonize, to exploit, to rule.
Yet this “other blue planet” has an unlikely protector, Commander Solus, an attack ship captain whose mission is to protect the inhabitants of Parthenos from the vicious civil war that threatens to spill over into the primitive world. He faces an awful choice of corrupting this pristine world either from ideological enemy tyrants or from his own people’s technology, which has the ability to remove all free will and forever change this world’s destiny for the worse.
We already live in a time when we will not leave home without our little personal electronic assistants—our smart phones, our tablets, our GPS systems. This is a cautionary tale of worlds at war over technology so advanced it is integrated with the user’s DNA. This has caused a civil war, pitting those who depend on the controlling technology against those who hate the very idea of it.
About the Author:
Alec was born in Northern Kentucky, where he lived until age of eight. In the mid-1970s he moved with his family to Silver Spring, Maryland, where he lived for the next 20 years, attending high school in downtown D.C. and then college at the University of Maryland, earning a BA in English Literature. He moved back to Northern Kentucky in the mid-1990s with his wife Marygrace, where they have lived ever since. With computer operations and technical writing in his background, Alec added an MBA and a JD and currently earns his living as a proposal writer. A proud father of six children, Alec is a devout cradle Catholic devoted to practicing his faith and following the truth of God. Perdicion: The Other Blue Planet is his first novel.
Subscribe to Alec’s Substack:
So why did we choose Perdicion as our first release? Of the many reasons both big and small, two can be seen in the descriptor and bio above.
First, Perdicion represents a very traditional form of both science fiction and storytelling. When you pick up Perdicion and slip into the story of its characters fighting for freedom and supremacy in outer space, you’ll get a sense of comfortable familiarity. Immediately when I first read Perdicion - years ago when we were publishing through a different company - I could see Alec’s influences and what he was aiming to do. This was 1980s space-opera science fiction - the Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica-style that I’d grown up enjoying. And I appreciate the traditional Hero’s Journey narrative of the book, with a compelling protagonist, an intimidating villain, an emotionally-engaging love interest, and clever twists drawing on longstanding science fiction conventions.
These techniques are well-known, and they work both in storytelling broadly and in science fiction specifically. And it’s our plan to base Heroes of the Desert Books titles in that collective knowledge.
Second, having gotten to know Alec over the years as we’ve been trying to get his book published, I’ve come to understand that the traditional Good vs Evil values of Perdicion reflect Alec’s traditional, serious engagement with his Catholic faith, which has in turn led to an innate decency and kindness in his character. He’s a good person: he's precisely who we’re wanting to work with here. In assessing the books we publish, we’re not looking solely at the submitted titles.
The founders of this company only want to work with people whose moral and ethical values align with our own. And that doesn’t mean that we have to agree on everything! Rather, what it means is that we need to have a common framework of values so that when we disagree on something important, we can work through our differences by calling on this shared foundation. And for this company, that foundation should be clear enough in our name: the God of Israel, the God of the Bible, the God of Abraham, the God of the Desert.
Alec and I may approach the Bible from different lenses - his Catholic; mine Judeo-Christian mystic - but these theological differences pale in comparison to the moral and ethical values we share.
Thus, Alec and Perdicion represent exactly what we’re hoping to accomplish at God of the Desert Books: we’re bringing people together across cultures, theologies, political ideologies, and national boundaries to create art and entertainment together.
Please join us! Pre-order Alec’s book when we announce it’s available. Submit your own articles and blog posts to us for publication. Send us your books and tell us the stories you’re working on now. And please do let us know what you’re thinking in the comments below and/or in the fun discussions happening on Substack Notes.
The God of Israel is a God of the Desert, and we’re all walking through this wilderness not alone, but together.
Congratulations, Alec! I'm sure looking forward to reading your novel.