John Miller is fifty-six, an ex-army man with a safe Volvo, a tidy routine and a golf handicap of thirteen. Then a scan in a Belfast clinic gives him the news: an inoperable brain tumour, and ten years if he's lucky.
So John does what no sensible man would do. He sells the house and bets every penny on Bitcoin. He teaches himself to fly. Then he rigs a leased plane with two jerry cans and a home-made fuel switch, and heads south to test an old legend about Admiral Byrd and a secret hidden beneath the ice. The legend is true.
Behind a gap in the Antarctic wall lies a warm, hidden world of starships, gentle aliens and technology that makes Earth's best hospitals look like the Stone Age. It also holds a cure, and a friend called Rhia, who offers to show John a planet where the sun never sets. There's even golf, two galaxies from home.
But every gift has a price. A little pearl that takes all your worries away. A button that can save your life on a dark Belfast street. A bond with Rhia that John never expected. And once a man has seen the stars, can he ever settle for the rain?
Warm, witty and wildly imaginative, Terminal Life is a story about second chances, unlikely friendships and what you do with time you were never meant to have. What would you do if you were given your life back?
