May Amazon Giveaway #1: "The Day the Dolphins Vanished" -- SF Short Story (Plus Free Preview)

Below is a free preview of my SF short story "The Day the Dolphins Vanished". To enter my May Amazon Giveaway #1 for a copy of the complete short story for your Kindle, please click on this link: https://giveaway.amazon.com/p/50bc7d039ed35b20

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The Day the Dolphins Vanished - SF Short Story Preview

THE DAY THE DOLPHINS VANISHED

(C) 2010,2017 Victor D. López

The following story excerpt is from my short story collection   Mindscapes: Ten Science Fiction and Speculative Fiction Short Stories

Beatrice Benson, BB to her colleagues and friends, would be at home in any exclusive beach resort anywhere in the world tanning her perfect body while her long, lustrous light-brown hair absorbed and weaved the sun’s rays into auburn and blonde highlights as legions of men tripped over one another for the chance to fetch her a cold drink, a towel, sun block or anything else her heart desired in hopes of gaining the simple reward of the flash of her brilliant smile. If she were not preoccupied by more important things, BB would have been amused by these attentions of which she was largely unaware, in part because she was not the type to frequent beachside resorts or spend much time lounging on beach chairs, and in part because her preternatural beauty and credentials—Ph.Ds. in marine biology, electrical engineering and linguistics all earned by her 30^th birthday—quickly burned off the wings of desire of mere mortal men who were attracted to her like insignificant moths hovering about the seemingly friendly blue flame of a Bunsen burner, leaving them in a similar position in trying to hold a conversation with her as the average chimpanzee trying to grasp the finer points of the Allegory of the Cave from Plato’s Republic.

Fortunately for both moths and men, not too many moths fly about the average lab, and not too many men hang around the out of the way craggy beaches and immense stretches of ocean that BB made her home while working largely on solitary projects, conducting research, writing papers, and otherwise contributing to the advancement of her fields with an I.Q. that Einstein would have envied and a work ethic that would have made John Calvin proud. Her current project had taken her to Florida’s Gulf Coast, near Navarre Beach in Santa Rosa County, but far from the crowded condo-dotted beachfront. A generous grant from the National Science Foundation allowed her to take her floating laboratory, a modest converted cabin cruiser, wherever she went, carrying its precious cargo of high-end computer and electronics equipment with which she hoped to bridge the communications gap between dolphins and humans.

Her study of the available data had long before led her to the conclusion that dolphins have a highly evolved language. Computer analysis of sounds emitted in the audible spectrum alone showed repetitions that closely mirrored speech patterns that span across all human languages. Lesser intelligent mammals emit sounds that convey meaning to their own species, but these are typically limited to communicating very basic information essential to the survival of their species, such as calls warning about danger, or the availability of food, or simply warnings for others to keep away. Even insects evidence the ability to communicate that kind of information to their own kind. But Dolphins and most whales are in a different category altogether, possessing brains that are larger than the great apes, including Homo sapiens, and evidencing the ability for complex communication.

It is one thing to recognize the fact that speech is taking place, but quite another to be able to decipher that speech, let alone translate it in a meaningful way so that it can be understood in its proper context across species. Even when dealing with human speech, it can be quite challenging to interpret from one language for another, even for native speakers of the languages being interpreted. But our shared humanity allows us to at least understand certain emotions, such as anger, fear, pain, sadness and love without the need for a universal translator. Drop a human being with money in her pocket anywhere on the planet and she will have little trouble finding food to purchase, the shelter of a hotel room, and an endless number of consumer goods that she can easily purchase at the local market. Moreover, she needs no language at all to determine the intentions of people with whom she interacts as there are an endless number of non-verbal clues that all of us emit that can allow others to, for the most part, accurately gauge our intentions and label us as either as probable friends or foes. The best machine translation available today still yields results that can range from comical to tragic depending on their context and use. Anyone who has ever tried to decipher instructions accompanying low-cost, assemble-it-yourself furniture or other similar consumer goods imported from non English-speaking countries outside of the U.S. can attest to that fact. Even when dealing with a common language, the very real possibility for misunderstanding exists due to the regional usage, slang and pronunciation variances from in different regions of the same country, and especially when dealing from a common language adapted by countries for their own use. An American from Mississippi and an Englishman from Liverpool both speak English, but will likely have some difficulty understanding one another, especially if they possess only a rudimentary education. The same is true for a Haitian and a Parisian, a Puerto Rican and a Spaniard (or, for that matter, a Spaniard from Galicia and one from Seville, Valencia, Madrid, or Barcelona, even if they are all speaking Spanish rather than their local regional languages). Indeed, the simple verb “coger” in Spanish which means—and has always meant—”to get, or to grab” to a Spaniard, means “to copulate” to an Argentine. Thus, “coge las llaves” (take the keys) means f__k the keys in the vernacular in Buenos Aires, and “cógeme de la mano” (take my hand) means something equally obscene.

Fortunately, when it comes to human languages, we have native speakers, interpreters, dictionaries and, when all else fails, comedians and diplomats, to help bridge the potholes along the road of cross-cultural communication. No such tools are available for inter-species communications, making the process of communication infinitely harder for both species, even when our closest genetic relatives, chimpanzees, or other only slightly more distant, intelligent cousins, such as gorillas, are involved.

But what may seem like insurmountable challenges for the rest of us are only interesting, irresistible puzzles for the likes of BB who was uniquely qualified to tackle the problem because of her complementary competencies and inexhaustible patience. Using the resources of her university as a Professor of Marine Biology and her NSF grant, she had spent a one-year sabbatical working with a half dozen dolphins in an attempt to develop a dolphin/human speech interface. Aside from the dedicated software she had developed to achieve a real-time translation program, her equipment was relatively simple: a supercomputer, an all-weather outdoor, portable large-screen projection system and an extensive array of ultrasensitive microphones and speakers capable of recording and reproducing sound well below and above the normal range of frequencies audible to the human ear. With the equipment in place, the experiment methodology was simplicity itself: images—both still and video—were flashed on the screen with microphones above and below water recording the dolphin chatter while the English word or phrase accompanying the visual material broadcast in above and below water speakers. The overarching concept that BB banked on was that dolphins would be intelligent enough to make the connection of the attempt to communicate and be able to learn at least some rudimentary verbal concepts with the assistance of the usual reinforcements—treats, physical contact, and genuine care and attention being paid by a patient trainer. It was her hope that by recording and cataloguing the dolphin sounds that accompanied the flashing pictures her computer software would be able to distinguish the dolphin equivalents for at least some of these visual representations over time.

Her methods were simple, and they worked. . . .

***** END OF PREVIEW ****

NOTE: The short story collection is available on paperback, audiobook and eBook versions from Amazon, Audible and most book sellers. The short story is also available in various eBook versions, including a Kindle version from Amazon and other book sellers as well. Both are also available to libraries at very low cost. If you like the preview and think you and others may enjoy reading the whole story or short story collection, won't you consider recommending them to your local library? All are available for library purchase, including through OverDrive for libraries that use the popular Live-brary platform.  Thank you!

Science Fiction Short Story Preview -- "The Day the Dolphins Vanished"

THE DAY THE DOLPHINS VANISHED

(C) 2010, 2017 Victor D. López

The following story excerpt is from my short story collection   Mindscapes: Ten Science Fiction and Speculative Fiction Short Stories

Beatrice Benson, BB to her colleagues and friends, would be at home in any exclusive beach resort anywhere in the world tanning her perfect body while her long, lustrous light-brown hair absorbed and weaved the sun’s rays into auburn and blonde highlights as legions of men tripped over one another for the chance to fetch her a cold drink, a towel, sun block or anything else her heart desired in hopes of gaining the simple reward of the flash of her brilliant smile. If she were not preoccupied by more important things, BB would have been amused by these attentions of which she was largely unaware, in part because she was not the type to frequent beachside resorts or spend much time lounging on beach chairs, and in part because her preternatural beauty and credentials—Ph.Ds. in marine biology, electrical engineering and linguistics all earned by her 30^th birthday—quickly burned off the wings of desire of mere mortal men who were attracted to her like insignificant moths hovering about the seemingly friendly blue flame of a Bunsen burner, leaving them in a similar position in trying to hold a conversation with her as the average chimpanzee trying to grasp the finer points of the Allegory of the Cave from Plato’s Republic.

Fortunately for both moths and men, not too many moths fly about the average lab, and not too many men hang around the out of the way craggy beaches and immense stretches of ocean that BB made her home while working largely on solitary projects, conducting research, writing papers, and otherwise contributing to the advancement of her fields with an I.Q. that Einstein would have envied and a work ethic that would have made John Calvin proud. Her current project had taken her to Florida’s Gulf Coast, near Navarre Beach in Santa Rosa County, but far from the crowded condo-dotted beachfront. A generous grant from the National Science Foundation allowed her to take her floating laboratory, a modest converted cabin cruiser, wherever she went, carrying its precious cargo of high-end computer and electronics equipment with which she hoped to bridge the communications gap between dolphins and humans.

Her study of the available data had long before led her to the conclusion that dolphins have a highly evolved language. Computer analysis of sounds emitted in the audible spectrum alone showed repetitions that closely mirrored speech patterns that span across all human languages. Lesser intelligent mammals emit sounds that convey meaning to their own species, but these are typically limited to communicating very basic information essential to the survival of their species, such as calls warning about danger, or the availability of food, or simply warnings for others to keep away. Even insects evidence the ability to communicate that kind of information to their own kind. But Dolphins and most whales are in a different category altogether, possessing brains that are larger than the great apes, including Homo sapiens, and evidencing the ability for complex communication.

It is one thing to recognize the fact that speech is taking place, but quite another to be able to decipher that speech, let alone translate it in a meaningful way so that it can be understood in its proper context across species. Even when dealing with human speech, it can be quite challenging to interpret from one language for another, even for native speakers of the languages being interpreted. But our shared humanity allows us to at least understand certain emotions, such as anger, fear, pain, sadness and love without the need for a universal translator. Drop a human being with money in her pocket anywhere on the planet and she will have little trouble finding food to purchase, the shelter of a hotel room, and an endless number of consumer goods that she can easily purchase at the local market. Moreover, she needs no language at all to determine the intentions of people with whom she interacts as there are an endless number of non-verbal clues that all of us emit that can allow others to, for the most part, accurately gauge our intentions and label us as either as probable friends or foes. The best machine translation available today still yields results that can range from comical to tragic depending on their context and use. Anyone who has ever tried to decipher instructions accompanying low-cost, assemble-it-yourself furniture or other similar consumer goods imported from non English-speaking countries outside of the U.S. can attest to that fact. Even when dealing with a common language, the very real possibility for misunderstanding exists due to the regional usage, slang and pronunciation variances from in different regions of the same country, and especially when dealing from a common language adapted by countries for their own use. An American from Mississippi and an Englishman from Liverpool both speak English, but will likely have some difficulty understanding one another, especially if they possess only a rudimentary education. The same is true for a Haitian and a Parisian, a Puerto Rican and a Spaniard (or, for that matter, a Spaniard from Galicia and one from Seville, Valencia, Madrid, or Barcelona, even if they are all speaking Spanish rather than their local regional languages). Indeed, the simple verb “coger” in Spanish which means—and has always meant—”to get, or to grab” to a Spaniard, means “to copulate” to an Argentine. Thus, “coge las llaves” (take the keys) means f__k the keys in the vernacular in Buenos Aires, and “cógeme de la mano” (take my hand) means something equally obscene.

Fortunately, when it comes to human languages, we have native speakers, interpreters, dictionaries and, when all else fails, comedians and diplomats, to help bridge the potholes along the road of cross-cultural communication. No such tools are available for inter-species communications, making the process of communication infinitely harder for both species, even when our closest genetic relatives, chimpanzees, or other only slightly more distant, intelligent cousins, such as gorillas, are involved.

But what may seem like insurmountable challenges for the rest of us are only interesting, irresistible puzzles for the likes of BB who was uniquely qualified to tackle the problem because of her complementary competencies and inexhaustible patience. Using the resources of her university as a Professor of Marine Biology and her NSF grant, she had spent a one-year sabbatical working with a half dozen dolphins in an attempt to develop a dolphin/human speech interface. Aside from the dedicated software she had developed to achieve a real-time translation program, her equipment was relatively simple: a supercomputer, an all-weather outdoor, portable large-screen projection system and an extensive array of ultrasensitive microphones and speakers capable of recording and reproducing sound well below and above the normal range of frequencies audible to the human ear. With the equipment in place, the experiment methodology was simplicity itself: images—both still and video—were flashed on the screen with microphones above and below water recording the dolphin chatter while the English word or phrase accompanying the visual material broadcast in above and below water speakers. The overarching concept that BB banked on was that dolphins would be intelligent enough to make the connection of the attempt to communicate and be able to learn at least some rudimentary verbal concepts with the assistance of the usual reinforcements—treats, physical contact, and genuine care and attention being paid by a patient trainer. It was her hope that by recording and cataloguing the dolphin sounds that accompanied the flashing pictures her computer software would be able to distinguish the dolphin equivalents for at least some of these visual representations over time.

Her methods were simple, and they worked. . . .

***** END OF PREVIEW ****

NOTE: The short story collection is available on paperback, audiobook and eBook versions from Amazon, Audible and most book sellers. The short story is also available in various eBook versions, including a Kindle version from Amazon and other book sellers as well. Both are also available to libraries at very low cost. If you like the preview and think you and others may enjoy reading the whole story or short story collection, won't you consider recommending them to your local library? All are available for library purchase, including through OverDrive for libraries that use the popular Live-brary platform.  Thank you!

A Memorial Day Message

My wife and I visited a half-size replica of the Vietnam War Memorial yesterday (The Wall that Heals) in our home town as part of our Memorial Day observance. Even in its reduced size, the memorial is a painful, poignant reminder of the sacrifice made by too many soldiers once reviled and forgotten by America's most divisive war where returning vets were denied even the dignity of their country's collective gratitude for their service and sacrifice. I was but a child during that war which ended before I graduated from High School. But even then I could not understand the outright disdain and outright hatred shown our returning heroes for their service, their sacrifice and the countless examples of heroism during an unpopular war and a country divided as in no other time in our history, save perhaps for the present.

For Vietnam vets, acknowledgement and gratitude has come much too late and given much too grudgingly. That does not diminish their service, their heroism or their sacrifice. It diminishes only us--those who benefit from their sacrifice and returned only scorn for the freedom attempted to be purchased with their blood. Vietnam was a foolish, poorly executed war. It caused us to hemorrhage blood and treasure for a decades-long battle with no defined endgame and forced our men in women in uniform to fight a war with hands tied behind their backs by politicians for whom maintaining the status quo was more important than winning and for whom nearly 60,000 American lives were acceptable loses.

Vietnam is on my mind not only because of the traveling memorial, but because it is the best example of the worst treatment of returning heroes to date. Notwithstanding, the debt we owe to every soldier who laid down his/her life in service of country is the same; its value is neither diminished not enhanced based on the popular opinion of the value or wisdom of the wars in which they fought. The values for which they fought are always the same: country, honor, freedom. Every soldier who puts on the uniform and goes off to war in answer to the nation's call deserves our thanks, our support, and our admiration. Every soldier who has laid down his or her life for our country has paid for the freedom we enjoy with the most precious of coins. Only dishonorable ingrates blinded by political ideology can fail to see that. To honor the fallen and their families is not the same as honoring war. Hate war but love the warrior. Criticize foolish politicians who get us into unwise wars--that is fair and honorable, and both our right and duty as citizens of a free country. But honor, cherish and support the hardships endured and sacrifices made by all of our warriors--the ones who come back healthy and strong, the ones who comeback scarred and the ones who come back physically or psychologically broken. With time, support and the assistance they deserve and have painfully earned,  they too can be helped to heal and adapt to the limitations their sacrifice has forced upon them. Limbs, mobility, cognitive ability, speech and other attributes may be missing or impaired, but not their spirit or resourcefulness, not their heroism, and never their value to the country they love and which owes them a debt it can never fully repay. For those who have made the ultimate sacrifice, and for the Gold Star families they left behind, let us express our gratitude, offer our prayers and provide what support we can within our individual circumstances. We can never forget their sacrifice or repay the debt of honor we owe them. May God bless them all.

Fly the flag today. Remember the ones who died that she may never touch the ground. See their faces draped in glory and hear their voices in the fluttering of our flag. Remember them. Remember them. Remember them.

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My brother in law is a (retired) quiet soldier. He never talks about missions or experiences.  But a few years ago he mentioned in passing one mission in which a special forces brother-in-arms was killed. Shortly thereafter I wrote a sonnet about the experience that I think is appropriate as a tribute to one of too many unknown soldiers and unsung heroes.

Death of a Quiet Soldier

Behind enemy lines you gave your life,

The risks you knew and embraced willingly,

Red, black and green berets fought by your side,

And brought your body back to family.

Later in a ritual of their own,

They would name a field airport in your name,

And honor you, your brothers, far from home,

Their memory now your eternal flame.

I do not know your rank, your name, your face,

I only know that I am in your debt,

Who for your family can take your place?

Our debt to them we must never forget.

The freedom I enjoy comes thanks to you,

And all who serve with honor, proud and true.

(From Of Pain and Ecstasy: Collected Poems  -- Victor D. Lopez)

A reading of six sonnets with full text from my Of Pain and Ecstasy Collected Poems C 2011 Victor D López ipod

Remedios -- Book trailer and poetry reading

Mindscapes: Ten Science Fiction and Speculative Fiction Short Stories Book Trailer

Still ongoing -- Amazon SF short story giveaway - End of Days

End of Days -- New SF short story giveaway for May

Please click on the following link to enter my second May science fiction short story giveaway for one of ten short stories from my Mindscapes short story collection:

https://giveaway.amazon.com/p/a30ed374fb80f001.

I am reprinting an excerpt from this short story below where you will also find links to the Amazon version of the book and also the Mindscapes collection. You can click on the Mindscapes cover for a link to the Amazon book's page where a preview of "Eternal Quest" is also available by clicking on the "Look Inside" feature. Thank you for your interest in my fiction! (Information about my current publications is also available below following the short story excerpt.)

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End of Days (Preview)

Victor D. López

Copyright Victor D. López 2014

God spoke to me last night. No, I am not schizophrenic or a Jesus freak. Nor am I a conspiracy theorist (well, except for JFK’s assassination, of course--unless the principles of quantum mechanics somehow apply to bullets fired from book depositories with inhuman rapidity to perform a dance macabre through the bodies of governors before striking their intended target), but I know precisely the series of events that will result in the end of the world and will eventually give birth to a new universe. It came to me in a dream. No, really, it did.

It all started pretty much like a bad Hollywood disaster flick (sorry, I know that’s redundant) with well funded mad scientists doing what comes natural in fiction as well as in fact. “Build us a big Hadron Supercollider, and we’ll find the elusive Higgs boson God particle. Maybe we’ll even come up with a unified theory that incorporates the pesky behavior of subatomic particles and allows us to demystify quantum mechanics once and for all.” It turns out, not surprising to anyone, other than scientists of course, that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and that allowing children to play unsupervised in a chemistry lab or with a super-duper, neat-o particle accelerator is not such a good thing after all. Who’d have thunk it?

The first hint that something was just a bit off-kilter came in the form of assurances by project scientists delivered with the smug expressions and thinly veiled contempt with which they usually approach any communication with the unwashed masses, that yes, miniature black holes could probably be created by subatomic particles accelerated at nearly light speed through a 17-mile circular particle accelerator and forced to collide in a massive release of energy, but such black holes would quickly dissipate. “No,” they smiled complacently, “there is absolutely no danger in these experiments.”

The second hint of a problem (and by hint I mean claxons going off, red lights flashing, and Robby the Robot’s accordion arms waving wildly while proclaiming “danger, Will Robinson!”) came when the Hadron Supercollider suffered some unspecified problems that caused it to be shut down for months on end after its first full-scale test. When the 17-mile supercollider was once again brought back on line, headlines proclaimed the countdown would begin again for the end of the world. Smile, snicker, hah-hah. What was not reported was the actual reason for the shutdown, since no one, including the geniuses running the experiments, knew the real cause: a miniature black hole that did not quickly dissipate in the lab as expected and caused a nearly catastrophic shutdown as it drilled an invisible hole a few molecules wide, eagerly sucking up anything that crossed its tiny event horizon, as it accelerated slowly but inexorably downward, worming its way through the containment chamber, rapidly vacuuming vital bits of the temperamental equipment on its way to the center of the earth.

Not to worry, though, it is still relatively small despite its voracious, unquenchable appetite, though it is exponentially increasing its mass as it swings like a pendulum through the earth’s core and beyond it in decreasing arcs that will eventually settle it at the earth’s core. It will be many months and perhaps years before we begin to feel the cataclysmic seismic effects of its inexorable violation of the earth’s core, and longer still before the entire planet and every living thing in it is sucked into its vortex, followed thereafter by the moon, and then the outer planets as the growing black hole continues its feeding frenzy, eventually consuming the entire solar system and Sol itself.

But that would be many years, perhaps millennia, in the future given the diminutive size of the black hole at present. And scientists still believe that the equipment failure was unrelated to its actual cause since the unreported black hole the initial full-scale test produced dissipated soon after its formation according to their classified reports. Therefore, the supercollider was repaired, and billions or Euros later, the scientists have their plaything once more and science is free to continue its happy march towards oblivion. If it ended here, we’d have little to worry about in the short term, other than perhaps ever-increasing seismic activity. Even the hungriest little black hole needs a great deal of time to ingest a planet from the inside out, and if later laboratory-created black holes don’t ingest other vital pieces of sensitive equipment on their way to joining their older brother down the rabbit hole in their inexorable journey to swallow our blue planet, we’d probably kill off our species through war, pestilence, famine or other forms of humanity’s endless capacity for galloping stupidity long before daddy’s and mommy’s little darlings consumed the world.

If my prescient dream had ended there, I’d shake it off with a smile and go about my day without another thought, compartmentalizing the certain knowledge of future doom in the nether regions of my mind, right next to the knowledge of the unsustainability of our ballooning federal and state deficits and the possibility of an asteroid hit that would once again eradicate most plant and animal life on this planet.

Unfortunately, scientists are not the only ones who like to play God. They are just more tragic and contemptible in their efforts at doing so because they should know better. They are like amoebas attempting to extrapolate the secrets of the universe by examining in minutest detail the drop of fetid swamp water atop a floating leaf that they inhabit. In a very real sense, scientists are among the smartest amoebas, all hail their boundless wisdom! But others like to play in the hedonistic God sandbox, too. And here is where my prescient dream grows infinitely darker.

It so happens that terrorists pay attention to science. Science, after all, brought us TNT, the A-bomb, the H-bomb, weaponized anthrax and lots of other cool goodies that are wonderful additions to the terrorists’ toolkits. As it happens, one particularly well funded, well connected group in the Middle East thinks it a grand idea to blow Israel off the face of the earth before that even better funded, and better connected state has the chance to do the same to them or to their proxy states. They have acquired a gaggle of disaffected, under-employed Russian physicists and funded them generously to come up with “outside-the-box” ideas for a doomsday device on the cheap. They did not have 17-mile supercolliders to play with, and Jihadist physicists are a rare breed. But not to worry, they had something better: money, lots of it, and the ability to entice scientists who view themselves above pedantic, bourgeois notions of ethics and for whom science is the only religion.

Undaunted by any notions of right and wrong and guided by the simple principle that “if it can be done, it must be done,” these brilliant men and women soon developed a working experiment that presented an elegant solution that their benefactors immediately approved.

Their plan was exquisitely simple and required very little by way of resources beyond two suitcase nukes that could be easily obtained either from Russia (cheap, old-world loose nukes listed simply as “missing” from the former Soviet inventory), or spanking new, state-of-the-art but untried ones from the secret Pakistani stash. They opted for the Russian suitcase nukes, in part because they did not want a trusted ally compromised in the event that their experiment failed to attain the desired end.

***** END OF PREVIEW ****

NOTE: The short story collection is available on paperback, audiobook and eBook versions from Amazon, Audible and most book sellers. The short story is also available in various eBook versions, including a Kindle version from Amazon and other book sellers as well. Both are also available to libraries at very low cost. If you like the preview and think you and others may enjoy reading the whole story or short story collection, won't you consider recommending them to your local library? All are available for library purchase, including through OverDrive for libraries that use the popular Live-brary platform.  Thank you!

View my current individual short stories and and Mindscapes collection along with most of my current books at my Amazon Author's Page by clicking here.

Available at Amazon, iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, and other retailers

No portion of this copyrighted book may be copied, posted, transmitted or otherwise used in any form without the express written consent of the author.

About Me

I am a tenured Professor of Legal Studies in Business at Hofstra University’s Frank G. Zarb School of Business. I've earned a Juris Doctor degree from St. John’s University School of Law and a B.A. from Queens College, C.U.N.Y. (English Honors Program – Writing) and am a member of the New York State Bar, New York State Bar Association, the Academy of Legal Studies in Business (ALSB) and the North East Academy of Legal Studies in Business (NEALSB). I've been an academic for more than 25 years and, prior to joining the Hofstra University faculty, served as a tenured Professor of Business, as Dean of Business and Business Information Technologies, and as Academic Dean in urban, suburban and rural public and private academic institutions.

My published books include several textbooks and trade books and I've written poetry and fiction throughout most of my life, some of which has been published in anthologies and literary magazines in addition to self-published collections.

Other Books by the Author

Business Law and the Legal Environment of Business Third Edition (Textbook Media 2017)

Book of Dreams 2ndEdition: Science Fiction and Speculative Fiction Short Stories (Printed through CreateSpace and Kindle Direct, 2012)

Of Pain and Ecstasy: Collected Poems (Printed through Kindle Book Publishing and CreateSpace, Summer 2011)

Intellectual Property Law: A Practical Guide to Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks and TradeSecrets (Printed through Kindle Book Publishing and CreateSpace, Summer 2011)

Business Law: An Introduction 2e, Textbook Media, 2011. (text, test bank, and instructor’s manual) Available at http://www.textbookmedia.com

Business Law and the Legal Environment of Business 2e, Textbook Media 2010. (text, test bank, and instructor’s manual) Available at http://www.textbookmedia.com

Free and Low Cost Software for the PC, McFarland & Company 2000. [out of print]

Legal Environment of Business, Prentice Hall 1997. (text, test bank and instructor’s resource manual) [out of print]

 Case and Resource Material for the Legal Environment of Business, Prentice Hall 1997.
Business Law: An Introduction, Richard D. Irwin/Mirror Press 1993. (text, test bank and instructor’s resource manual) [out of print]

Free and User Supported Software for the IBM PC: A Resource Guide for Libraries and Individualshttp://www.amazon.com/Victor-D.-L%C3%B3pez/e/B001KMII74, McFarland & Company 1990. (coauthored with Kenneth J. Ansley) [out of print]

Author's Amazon page: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001KMII74 

Author's Web Page: http://www.victordlopez.comhttp://www.victordlopez.com

SF Short Story Preview -- Mars: Genesis 2.0

This is not the only end of days scenario from my Mindscape short story collection, but unlike the far darker “End of Days” short story where more than merely our world hang in the balance, my “Mars: Genesis 2.0” short story offers a more optimistic view if there can be such a thing when facing Armageddon. A previously undiscovered 200-mile-wide asteroid is heading for Earth and will hit in 666 days. That is the unanimous, somber prediction of astronomers the world over. As civil society descends rapidly into chaos born of despair, the world's nations scramble to find a way to preserve the seeds of humanity from extinction. In the waning days of homo sapiens, the indomitability of the human spirit shows once again that we are at our best at the very worst of times. What follows is a preview taken from the middle of the short story. I hope you enjoy it.

Preview – Mars: Genesis 2.0 © 2014, 2017 Victor D. López All rights reserved.

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But Earth had not put all its eggs in a single basket. Russia, China, Japan, India and the U.S. opted to implement their own fast-track space programs, and the European Space Agency opted to partner with a cadre of technologically advanced countries without the capacity to develop their individual space programs to exponentially expand the International Space Station providing the capacity to house upwards of 1,200 people chosen by a complicated system from each of the partner nations. China, India, and Japan chose to implement variations on a theme of Moon colonies consisting primarily of inflatable habitats that could be created and sent aloft quickly and, once on the Moon, could be easily inflated and attacked via networks of tubes. The largest of these resembled the familiar domed design of indoor tennis courts on college campuses. All three colonies were planned in close proximity to the limited water on the Polar Regions that would be mined and used to extract both water and oxygen for the colonies’ use. Eventually, they would have to find new sources of water or they would perish, but the readily available water above ground would serve the needs of a modest colony of several dozen people for many years, along with the normal water reclamation processes in place that in a closed environment would make close to 100 percent of the available water reusable. Three different colonies, albeit small ones, competing for a finite resource would certainly create some conflicts that the colonists would have to resolve. But there was simply no alternative. The available resources of each country were put to use with abandon towards launching as many payloads as possible into space in the available time.  It would have to be enough.

The U.S. took a different tack, in part to avoid the inevitable conflict it could foresee with a too many colonists fighting for a very limited resource—frozen water. In addition, The U.S. felt that the only type of habitats that could be used and were to be used on the Moon were not sustainable on a long-term basis. They would offer no protection from solar radiation; nor, or course, would the Moon’s nearly non-existent atmosphere. And they would be very vulnerable to even to micro meteorite strikes in the veritable shooting gallery for such objects that was the Moon in comparison to Earth, where these are for the most part either deflected by or burned up in the atmosphere. For these reasons, in part, and perhaps also in part as a final effort to showcase its technical superiority, the U.S. chose to send a crew of twelve-- (six men and six women) to Mars instead. While this choice offered many challenges, it would also provide some practical advantages. As Mars has a significant atmosphere by Moon if not so much by Earth standards, made up primarily of Carbon Dioxide that could be easily reclaimed with existing technology to provide all the oxygen, hydrogen, water and methane needed to fuel all of the energy needs of the colony indefinitely. The reclamation systems could be housed in cylindrical containers about the same size as an ordinary water heater that obtained all of its power from solar cells and a small nuclear-powered generator. One of these could provide enough oxygen, water and methane to meet the daily minimum needs of colonists. They would have three of these as well as the best water and air reclamation systems that money could buy, assuming, of course, that they survived the trip and could be brought down in one piece from Mars orbit. Cost was not an issue. Maximizing the thin chance of survival for the tiny colony was.

If necessity is indeed the mother of invention, then no other time in history had ever provided a greater impetus to inventiveness since the dawn of civilization. With less than two years to come up with a plan, a laughably small window to launch even a routine unmanned planetary mission, the options open to the best minds that NASA could muster were limited. Once the decision was made to go to Mars rather than the closer space station or lunar colony options, a plan of action was quickly developed to press into service three of the mothballed space shuttles for one final mission. Herculean efforts were made to get all three to Cape Kennedy and readied with the necessary modifications that would allow all three shuttles to be linked in orbit into a serviceable, long-term makeshift station in geostatic orbit around Mars’s equator at a site where an extensive cave system was detected by ground penetrating radar surveys several years earlier, thought to be the remnants of old lava tubes from ancient volcanic activity, or perhaps long-dry underground rivers that had millennia ago fed a massive lake. These tubes were destined to become the colonists’ new home, sealed from the surface and divided by a series of ingenious airlocks that would allow sections of any desired length to serve as a serviceable, expandable habitat that would offer perfect protection from most solar radiation, smaller meteor strikes and the Martian dust storms that could make life on the surface difficult, even if they had the ability to create livable habitats from Martian materials over time. [ ***** End of preview ***** ]