I AM (Excerpts from the book)

Jenny is a junior in college, studying physics. Beginning October 2020, Her life will never be the same.

I AM is a story of love, tragedy, fear, hope, and despair. Dark Traveler, a comet on a collision course with Earth, is too dim to see easily and isn't detected until it's moving into the inner planet orbits. After personal tragedy strikes, Jenny begins a journey of self discovery and faces her own mortality and the end of the world.

I AM is an example of Rational Speculative Fiction-A mixture of hard science and technology and out-there fiction. While there may well be supernatural elements to a Rational Speculative Fiction story, I try to establish rules for the speculative portions and to make the rest of the story comply with the laws of physics. I AM is such a book, and perhaps a bit heavy on the technical-as a research physicist for about 30 years, I did most of the things in this book at one time or another, including working at observatories. But hopefully it doesn't detract too much from the story-and from the overall theme. I am goes beyond a simple story and it leaves unanswered questions about the origin of humans and about what I might call quantized evolution, in much the same way 2001 A Space Odyssey did. But I hope the story entertains. I actually asked a former colleague to review the astronomy parts-to make sure I was accurate. He said it took him back to his graduate school days. Incidentally, I created a real orbit for the comet in the book and the coordinates o other objects and the comet provided on a chapter by chapter basis are accurate.

Where did the title come from? It was inspired by René Descartes and his assertion, "Je pense, donc je suis" (or Cogito ergo sum in latin) from his Discourse on Method, 1637. You'll see a parallel to how he arrived at the conclusion in the book.

This book is available in paperback and kindle editions.