Mercury Rising

Alternative history with aliens, an immortal misanthrope and SF tropes aplenty

Even in this technologically-advanced, Kennedy-Didn't-Die alternate-history, Brooklyn Lamontagne is going nowhere fast. The year is 1975, thirty years after Robert Oppenheimer invented the Oppenheimer Nuclear Engine, twenty-five years after the first human walked on the moon, eighteen years after Jet Carson and the Eagle Seven sacrificed their lives to stop the invaders from Mercury, and three years after the Mercurians dropped The Rock on Cleveland. Or maybe Richard Nixon destroyed Cleveland to ensure he'd get a second term. And maybe the invaders aren't from Mercury. You know, it's possible the whole thing is a hoax, kind of like the moon landing. Opinions differ, but the world peace and globalism that ensued after the US and Soviets allied against the common threat cannot be debated.  Brooklyn heads to the moon to serve in the Orbital Forces rather than do time for a murder he got involved in. He's soon captured by the invaders and sent to a penal colony underneath the surface of Venus. There, he learns the true identity of the invaders (the First) and discovers a plot by a second-species of aliens (the Second) to ruin the surface of the planet and destroy any chance of a peaceful transition. Brooklyn and his pals save the day, paving the way for the mostly peaceful conquest of Earth.  R.W.W. Greene is based in New Hampshire, USA. He is a frequent panellist at the Boskone Science Fiction & Fantasy Convention in Boston, and his work has seen daylight in Stupefying Stories, Daily Science Fiction, New Myths, and Jersey Devil Press. Greene keeps bees, collects typewriters, and lives with his writer/artist spouse Brenda and two cats. He is a member of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association of America.