Let’s pull on the strengths of some of our human qualities. People are competitive, and this can work for a better future. Engaging people on a local level is often more effective than overwhelming them with the global situation. Let’s have some local, healthy competition to make cities greener. If one city is benefitting from more renewable energy than another, that second city, not wanting to be outdone, could implement its own sustainable energy plan.
This friendly competitiveness would also work for a greener future not just between cities, but neighbors, office departments, sports teams, and more. Who recycled the most? Who biked into work the most? We could make it fun. We could make it the social norm, something we enjoy doing.
Though the topic of anthropogenic climate change has been greatly politicized in recent years, it’s an issue that affects us all, and if we combat it, everyone benefits. We need to come together not as fighting factions, but as members of a society that are affected by climate change. Perhaps you are worried at the rapidity at which species are disappearing. Maybe you are an insurance policy holder whose property is subject to flooding, or a taxpayer dealing with expensive storm cleanup. Perhaps you are interested in keeping our economy healthy by creating new jobs in renewable energy fields, or you’re worried about national defense.
Instead of thinking of this issue as us versus them, let’s consider: Is energy efficiency a bad thing for anyone? Would cutting back on food waste or water waste negatively affect us? Would everyone benefit from cleaner air and water? Is drought a good thing for anyone? For the economy?
Many people, when looking to change their lifestyles to aid in mitigating climate change, see it as a sacrifice. But it is actually an opportunity—an opportunity to drive cleaner cars and have cleaner air that makes us healthier, an opportunity to have more energy-efficient homes and office buildings that save us money, an opportunity to enjoy a healthier, more plant-based diet, an opportunity to enjoy cleaner water and visits to pristine natural areas.
Talk to your friends, your neighbors. Encourage your politicians to support renewable energy. Show them the advantages, both financial and environmental, of shifting to more sustainable buildings and renewable energy. Talk to them about how we’d have cleaner air and water, describe the money we’d save with net-positive buildings and more energy-efficient cars and factories.
Let’s imagine this bright future and make it happen.
Acknowledgments
Writing a novel is tough. Writing a series is even more so, and encouragement and support from people in my corner was invaluable. Thanks to James Abbate, who saw my vision in this series and was amazing to work with. I could not have asked for a better editor. Thanks to Martin Biro for including The Skyfire Saga in the new Rebel Base imprint.
Many thanks to James Akinaka, marketing whiz extraordinaire and to Alexandra Nicolajsen and Lauren Jernigan for getting the word out.
Hearing from readers is so important to me, so thank you to Sarah, Dawn, Jon, and Mary for your enthusiastic support and encouragement. You guys are the best! When writing gets tough, I forge ahead with you in mind, and it inspires me.
My father, also a novelist, and my mother, an avid reader, share my love of the written word and the natural world. Thank you for such an amazing upbringing.
Many thanks to Becky for her stalwart friendship over the years. And as always, thanks to Jason for his incredible support, encouragement, and helpful feedback. With you in my corner, my writing has truly flourished.
I am grateful to illustrator Bruce Emmett and artistic director Lou Malcangi for the stunning covers for all three books in the Skyfire saga.
Meet the Author
Alice Henderson is a writer of fiction, comics, and video game material. She was selected to attend Launchpad, a NASA-funded writing workshop aimed at bringing accurate science to fiction. Her love of wild places inspired her novel Voracious, which pits a lone hiker against a shapeshifting creature in the wilderness of Glacier National Park. Her novel Fresh Meat is set in the world of the hit TV series Supernatural. She also wrote the Buffy the Vampire Slayer novels Night Terrors and Portal Through Time. She has written short stories for numerous anthologies including Body Horror, Werewolves & Shapeshifters, and Mystery Date. While working at LucasArts, she wrote material for several Star Wars video games, including Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds and Star Wars: Battle for Naboo. She holds an interdisciplinary master’s degree in folklore and geography, and is a wildlife researcher and rehabilitator. Her novel Portal Through Time won the Scribe Award for Best Novel.
Visit her online at www.AliceHenderson.com.
Shattered Roads
In a future laid waste by environmental catastrophe, one woman in a shielded megacity discovers a secret hidden within—and the nightmare of what lies beyond.
Her designation is H124—a menial worker in a city safeguarded against the devastating storms of the outer world. In a community where consumerism has dulled the senses, where apathy is the norm and education is a thing of the past, H124 has one job: remove the bodies of citizens when they pass away in their living pods.
Then one night, H124’s routine leads her into the underground ruins of an ancient university. Buried within it is a prescient alarm set up generations ago: an extinction-level asteroid is hurtling toward Earth.
When her warning is seen as an attempt to topple the government with her knowledge of science, H124 is hunted—and sent fleeing for her life beyond the shield of her walled metropolis. In a weather-ravaged unknown, her only hope lies with the Rovers, the most dangerous faction on Earth. For they have continued to learn. And they have survived to help avert a terrifying threat: the end of the world is near.
Shattered Lands
Environmental devastation has left Earth a wasteland, but an even more nightmarish fate looms if the woman known as H124 can’t stop an extinction-level asteroid from destroying the planet.
On the run from a dangerous media empire, H124 places her hope in learning more about the Rovers, the last bastion of humans to embrace science as a solution to Earth’s ongoing environmental catastrophe. But with the planet under imminent threat from plummeting asteroid fragments, H124 must take on a perilous new mission: find and assemble the pieces of an ancient spacecraft capable of pushing the deadly projectiles off course.
Her journey will lead her to the hurricane-ravaged remains of the east coast, and onto the brutal streets of Murder City, where she learns a startling secret about her own past. Death Riders and night stalkers prowl the badlands, but an even greater danger lurks above as H124 fights to build the craft that is humanity’s only hope for survival.
Table of Contents
The Skyfire Saga by Alice Henderson
SHATTERED SKIES
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
A Note to the Reader
Acknowledgments
Meet the Author
Shattered Roads
Shattered Lands
riends
Shattered Skies Page 28
