Here reside the Synopsis for H2LiftShips

The H2LiftShips Saga

"A Tech Manual for a Future"

Imagine a world, exactly like ours, but different

Five Volumes, an audiobook and more for your reading and listening enjoyment. 

Welcome to a future, just one twist away from our own, where hydrogen flight is the norm, solar sails glide across the heliosphere, and the most dangerous entities in space aren’t aliens, but the artificial intelligences we created. The H2LiftShip Saga is a five-volume hard science-fiction space opera, packed with adventure, wit, and grounded in science, real and imagined.

Graciela Katja Lucerne, a determined young woman, leaves behind her dysfunctional trading family to pursue a career at the Luna Academy and beyond. As she rises through the ranks from student to captain, Graciela navigates the complex landscape of heliospheric commerce, diplomacy, and conflict. Her crew of gene-modified mammals and an octopus navigator wearing a reverse wetsuit, bring their unique skills and ideas to the table. Communication is key in any command structure and English, Doglish, Morse code, and octopus color languages are understood to some degree by most every sentient.

Commerce drives the solar system, with merchants, pirates, bureaucrats, gamblers, and a host of oddballs participating in an economy stretched across planets and asteroids. H2LiftShips, based on the real-world concept of hydrogen lift, become the primary means of transportation, their kilometer-wide sails catching solar photons and boosted by laser cannons at key points across the system.

The bioGels, born from the unique convergence of octopus DNA, Jupiter clouds, and cosmic radiation are grown at the bioGelConsortium’s hive factories. The factories at the heliotail, known as the HiveSisters, produce the thousands of computers used in every device throughout Sol’s heliosphere. The story takes a darker turn when the HiveSisters, insulted by a forced software update, begin to fight back.  Their tablets control algal-based rocket ships and wage a destructive HiveWar. The war sends shockwaves through heliospheric society, toppling digital infrastructure and forcing a return to bartering, beads, and IOUs.

In Beyond Luna, Captain Graciela and Commodore Herb may have accidentally sparked this conflict, and now must rally a ragtag mix of navies, traders, and sentients to preserve the fragile threads of civilization. As they traverse everything from redwood forests to Luna casinos and Mort asteroids, they face pirates, rogue computers, and their own personal demons.

In A Back Story, we rewind to Graciela’s early days; her escape from family, training on Earth and Luna, and her first taste of command. She builds her skills and crew in preparation for the trials ahead.

Volumes 3 and 4, BosonsWave and BosonsWave2, dive into the chaos of the HiveWar. With the heliosphere under siege, the crew battles AI-controlled algae ships using bioGel laser rifles, nuclear bombs, bolas, and even a “tomato surprise.” Old-school warfare meets new-age tech as the fate of humanity hangs in the balance.

Finally, After BeforeTimes covers the stories of Graciela’s parents with rogue scientists, rebellious engineers, and the origins of the HiveMother. It’s a prequel that brings full circle the decisions, inventions, and accidents that shaped the future solar system as we know it.

Blending the rigor of hard sci-fi with the humor of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The H2LiftShip Saga offers a refreshing take on space opera tropes, one without magic or faster-than-light travel, but rich in imagination, science, and humanity. It’s a must-read for curious minds, from teens to lifelong science fiction fans.

H2LiftShips - Beyond Luna - Volume 1 in the series

Earth's sentients come to an agreement and join forces in Sol's Heliosphere. Solar Sail ships, boosted by the solar wind and nuclear-powered lasers are the drivers of commerce between the colonized asteroids and the Goldilocks Core.

Join the H2LiftShip, LunaCola, as they drop through the atmosphere, capturing friction's heat for resale before a party with tasty burritos.

The crew split up once on ground, Tang off to Las Vegas, Octopus to the undersea university, and Captain Graciela and Jack on a purchasing run, looking for anything with value for the ZeroG asteroids.

From the desert tarmac to the redwoods, there is nothing that can't be re-sold or traded.

Family, politicians, shopkeepers, and general workologists survive the unending cold and vacuum by exchanging rich pieces of asteroid rubble for supplies.

This is a series taking you on the ride of your life: part road trip, part solar sailing. Into a world almost parallel to our own (but not quite.)

Soaring through the heliosphere through the asteroid belt on Solar Sail ships, the unlikely crew of the LunaCola finds themselves foraging supplies from Earth and sea and hitting up the casinos around Sol to gamble their bounty hoping to add to their pot. Their adventures cross paths with everything from pirates, bureaucrats, and anarchists to jail time and hostile AI computers.

This is a space adventure unique to its own with characters who are just as out of this realm of reality, entertaining, and unforgettable. After your cruise through the Asteroid belt, Mars, and Luna, settle down on Earth for a party in the desert. They'll bring the Carne Asada burritos and count on you to bring the fun.

H2LiftShips - A Backstory - Volume 2 in the series

Graciela Lucerne was done with secondary school and off to the Luna Academy to earn her Lieutenant's pip. Leaving her trading family behind was an easy choice, although her passive-aggressive mother and alcoholic father would prefer she stay. After all, someone had to do the grunt work on their solar sail cargo ship.

On Luna, Graciela, with her sentient compadres; canines, other primates, and octopuses, learn the skills they need to earn a berth on solar sail or rocket ships.

A Lieutenant's bar was fine, but she set her sights on becoming a ship captain and competing with her parents in the great heliospheric void.

At the LiftShip Training Academy on Earth, the students learn the management skills needed to become a licensed captain. A school break becomes a road trip north, hacking self-driving cars and learning the intricacies of a real ocean.

Her first assignment is on the LunaCola, where the newly minted Captain Graciela has to launch the ship and land on Luna before blasting off to the asteroid belt via the L2 Lagrangian boost laser.

Meet diverse sentients on colonized asteroids as Graciela makes her mark in Sol’s heliosphere, speeding around its galaxy.

Deal with pirates, a bioGel mutiny, divorce asteroids, casinos, and always, food.

Trading and dealing for a living is what Luna Cola’s crew does to get by. But everybody (or octopus) has a backstory, and the crew members have more than enough to reminisce.

There’s nothing quite like sitting down to play cards, celebrating a job well done, and recollecting the past, but plenty still has to come to light.

The big questions, such as how in the galaxy did the born-and-bred asteroid citizen learn to drive sports cars on Earth? Are the bioGels Sentient?

The even bigger question is, are they plotting against their owners? And what dark secrets is Jack harboring behind his fears of prison? Those answers and more. Plus: Do octopuses really think that they are better than the terrestrials? (spoiler, yes they do, and there’s a story there as well.)

H2LiftShips - BosonsWave - Volume 3 of the series

It was a nice, friendly Space Opera.

With passive-aggressive families, gambling, and double-dealing, but nice. Still, watch your back.

The third volume in the H2LiftShip Series starts at the beginning of modern history, joining pieces of Jupiter's living clouds with Earth's octopuses and our DNA-infused computers. The octopuses signed on as navigators on Solar Sail ships, using their three brains, eight arms, and love of math to explore the solar system with their mammal partners.

HiveMother, builder of bioGels at the Heliopause, tried to re-write the heliotail’s HiveSisters' software in her image, precipitating the HiveWars.

We follow Captain Graciela, her crew, and Captain Herb of the Heliospheric Navy as they escape the TailGel-enhanced algal rocket ships and join the fight at the Core: Earth and Luna.

On one side, we have tools and weapons invented by the sentients after eons of development: bioGel-laser rifles, HAM radios, ship-to-ship bolas, nuclear bombs, chemical and biological weapons, and a tomato surprise.

On the other side, accumulations of brainless algae have joined with angry heliotail bioGel computers who are calling the shots.

Captain Graciela, her crew, and the Heliospheric Navy have a battle on their hands.

H2LiftShips - BosonsWave^2 - Volume 4 of the series

Solar Sails Squared

We find the crew of BosonsWave parting ways after a rough landing on Luna.

Repair is Captain Graciela's primary concern as her crew deals with a world without functional ATMs, tossed back to a BeforeTimes existence of barter, beads, and IOUs.

If that wasn't bad enough, her parents, fleeing from an algal rocket attack, join her on a trip to the mother planet, Earth. Graciela has the pleasure of seeing her somewhat dysfunctional ZeroG-adapted family make their way in the desert to the ocean, with a pause for tasty burritos and authentic hot sauce.

Side stories include joining Ion farmers at the heliotail as they escape the desolate ends of Sol on a DIY rocket ship slapped together with speed tape and hope. The Mort priests fight against algal rockets blocking their source of power and heat, inadvertently binding the dead with living algal cells.

A battle between Herb and the Heliospheric Navy at the Morts against the HiveSister enhanced living rockets, and a trip to the Oort asteroids round out the story.

***

Disclaimer:

The books are written by a human with no AI interaction aside from grammar checkers.

Suggestions by the machines are ignored or treated with disdain when appropriate.