Excerpt of Outbound by Richard M. Anderson

Outbound: Islands in the Void by Richard Anderson has been named the 2025 Winner for Science Fiction by the National Indie Excellence Awards!

This novel is a love letter to Earth.

The planet Earth, our precious “big blue marble,” has experienced six major extinctions in its lifetime and is presently experiencing the seventh (the Anthropocene). But when compared to the extremely life-hostile environments in space, on our moon, or on Mars, our planet is an ideal place for life to have begun, persisted, and evolved. As I wrote my book The Evolution of Life: Big Bang to Space Colonies, immersed in the science of it all, my imagination would often take flights of fancy, teasing me with the idea of space settlements being fashioned as both a way to perpetuate human existence and a potential solution to the problem of restoring the vibrancy of Earth.

Thus was the idea of writing a novel born. In a story peopled with . . . well, with people . . . I could explore the ins and outs of life in space. Through the eyes and actions of various characters, I could imagine, and present, a conversation about what happened, what would happen, what could happen, both on the planet and within the “space island” settlements.

The story is set in the mid-twenty-third century. Earth is recovering from an apocalyptic environmental and societal collapse. Climate disruption, with its resultant droughts and floods, has triggered regional wars and mass starvation; billions of people have died as a result. However, the story in this book is about recovery. The Space Settlement Program, which is at the heart of my envisioned future, has been initiated and controlled by a world central government that anticipates employing space resources to help rebuild Earth ecosystems.

Included in this book is a list of characters who populate the inter- woven storylines. Also included is a listing of places both real and imagined, and of the technologies supporting the actions of the storylines, technologies that are also both real and imagined. Illustrations and a map are on hand as well, to accompany you as you read.

I hope you enjoy your journey through the future, as I certainly have enjoyed conceiving and writing it.

Richard M. Anderson

Earth, 2024