Running: The Alien in the Mirror
About this audiobook
Ishmael Bodd 'wakes up' for the first time, a billion years in the future. He is a Citizen of Supercity, on Marstoo, far away from old Earth in the Universe. In his world, crime doesn't exist and Citizens only need electricity to live, whereas clones, who eat food and drink liquids, are banished to Clonecity.
But Ishmael suddenly feels compelled to commit a minor crime and goes on the run. He can never stop running until he has escaped his culture and found the reason why everything suddenly feels so 'strange' to him in this science fiction thriller.
Running - The Alien in the Mirror can be considered the cyberpunk prequel to the military sci-fi Iron Series.
The next book in the series, Too Bright the Sun, is available on Google Play.
If you like the Terminator series, Blade Runner or Greg Bear’s Hull Zero Three, you will love Running - The Alien in the Mirror.
Includes Chapter One of Too Bright the Sun.
Categories: science fiction, thriller, far future, clones, androids, cyborgs, time travel, genes, genetic engineering, military science fiction
Character interview with Jake Nanden, star of the Iron Series.
Name (s): Jake Nanden
Age: 34
Please tell us a little about yourself.
I am 5'11', dark hair, short - Army cut, slightly curly. Green eyes.
Describe your appearance in 10 words or less.
Getting middle aged, slightly paunchy with drying skin - like paper in places - except my mech arm. That's synthetic skin on there and as smooth and supple as the day it was sprayed on. I even had mine tattooed but don't tell anyone.
Would you kill for those you love?
I kill every day - most days - to keep my culture intact. I would say that is killing for those I love. Of course there is a moral code... And as a soldier the moral code is almost everything. After a while... killing... it sometimes seems to be the only thing you have left. Family are too far away.
Do you like animals?
I love animals. Their love is unconditional. You can never quite be sure with humans, can you?
Do you have a family?
Ha! Ha! Yes. A test-tube. No seriously my mother - Mary, my sister Justine and a dog - a collie called Frisky. My adoptive dad was the famous robotics designer Robert R. Nanden but he's dead. My mother was his assistant and pretty accomplished at that!
Can you remember something from your childhood which influences your behaviour?
I am not sure about any of my childhood memories. They are probably all implanted. I am a replicant. The first memory I am sure about is playing on the grass with my adoptive mother watching me playing cricket.
She shouted out, "Jake! You are such a talented cyborg!"
Even at my tender age, I knew a replicant was not the same thing as a cyborg and I knew that she should know, as her first husband had been a famous robot designer. Her words had always stuck in my head.
But anyway, adoptive parents of replicant children are always told to create some vivid experience for their kid in the first few days so that the imprinting takes properly. So it's probably not significant.
Do you have any phobias?
Mirrors. Can't stand them. They make me sweat and... well, I'm very nervous around them. I avoid them.
Please give us an interesting and unusual fact about yourself.
I write books - well, I am writing my first; a detective thriller. It's kind of Raymond Chandler-ish. I call it Chandleresque, but I guess that's bad English. My adoptive parents are first generation J5 - that's a space station - so they kinda inherited a USAC - United States of America and Canada - accent. Anyway, I am rambling. The main character is Dusty. He's a sucker for the pretty ladies!
Does your world have different races of people?
We are more concerned with Ischians - aliens. We call them 'Dogs' because they have evolved from something like dogs. Races? I don't think anybody notices any more. Still a stigma to being a replicant though.
Keywords: Free, short story, replicants, thriller, grunts, laser pistol, rifle, cannon, aliens, dystopia, dystopia, utopia, far future, visionary, thriller, worm hole, time travel, big crunch, big bang, gene,s dna, double helix, hominid lucy, AI, artificial intelligence, neural network, telepathy, ancient egypt novels, ancient history fiction, black holes and time warps, Anubis book, wormhole bookstroop, battle, underground city, clones, A.I., cyberpunk, cyborg, cybernetic, cyber-soldier, reality, philosophy, battle, war, conflict, invasion, colony
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About the author
Lazlo Ferran: Exploring the Landscapes of Truth.
Educated near Oxford, during English author Lazlo Ferran’s extraordinary life, he has been an aeronautical engineering student, dispatch rider, graphic designer, full-time busker, guitarist and singer with two albums recorded, and purveyor of philosophical thoughts. Having grown up in the rural Chiltern Hills, Lazlo says:
“The beautiful Chiltern Hills offered the ideal playground for a child’s mind, in contrast to the ultra-strict education system of our county.”
Brought up as a Buddhist, he has travelled widely, surviving a student uprising in Athens and living for a while in Cairo, just after Sadat’s assassination. Later, he spent some time in Central Asia and was only a few blocks away from gunfire during an attempt to storm the government buildings of Bishkek in 2006. He has a keen interest in theologies and philosophies of the Far East, Middle East, Asia and Eastern Europe.
After a long and successful career within the science industry, Lazlo Ferran left to concentrate on writing, to continue exploring the landscapes of truth.
– – –
From lessons learned as a professional musician about personal privacy, I do not publish using my real name but with the pen name Lazlo Ferran. Above, you can read a brief profile that you will find anywhere on the internet, and below, you will find my interview, qualifications and industry endorsements.
Interview
I was interviewed by The Authors Show about my novel Ordo Lupus and the Temple Gate. In the interview video on YouTube, I share insights into the book’s themes, my writing journey, and what inspires my writing.
What you’ll hear in the interview:
1 How Ordo Lupus and the Temple Gate blends myth and mystery
2 Lazlo’s research into secret societies and historical settings
3 Behind-the-scenes writing insights
Qualifications
1. After a year studying a degree in Aeronautical Engineering, I chose to leave and received a BTEC Diploma in Graphics at Salisbury College of Art in 1985.
2. My IT Qualifications (which still help during editing and publishing process) are too many to recall but include being in the first intake for the first professional HTML course in the UK, learning Java in 1996, building an early CMS from scratch in Perl, and attaining certificates in Search Engine Building, JSP, ColdFusion, SQL, B2B sofware such as SalesForce, and building the Online Movie Database before IMDB, to display production showreels.
3. In 2017 I became certified (with Distinction) from the TEFL Academy, London as a Teacher of English as a Foreign Language and gained experience teaching foreign students in a local professional school, although I had already taught children with varying degrees of dyslexia to read before. You can see my certificate on my website.
4. As for my knowledge of history, I have been a keen genealogist since the 90s and have traced my family back to a 13th Century Knight in Burgundy.
5. Lazlo Ferran is cited in the 633 Squadron Wikipedia [citation 25] entry for his interview with Cliff Robertson.
Industry Endorsements
1. The Devil’s Own Dice received a five-star review from Maria Beltran for the Reader’s Favourite website.
2. The respected Beijing Review published an article on my books in China.
3. The defunct AHF Magazine, published by the Wolfian Press, now Purple Unicorn Media, said The Hole Inside the Earth had ‘Lots of cool action and drew me well in’.
4. For endorsements of my work as editor, here is Amit Bobrov on my work for his novel ‘The Journals of Raymond Brooks’: ‘Lazlo’s the best editor I’ve worked with, and I’ve worked with a few. He took an already successful novel and found every imaginable flaw, corrected dialogues, fixed my grammar and altered key scenes to make them more exiting. He’s a fountain of creativity and knowledge. When I showed my Publisher his version of my novel they were speechless and this was a novel that three previous editor worked on.’
5. I have more than 100 publications (25 as editor) to my name and more than 70 individual works.
6. With more than 100,000 of my books in the hands of readers, their popularity continues to prove that an independent, genre-busting approach can work.
