Title: Earth Gets Even – Fourth Book of the Shonak Series
Author: Dennis Patrick Treece
Publisher: Elk Press
ISBN: 978-1989942130
Genre: Science Fiction
Pages: 234
Synopsis
In order to fully appreciate the story this book contains, you really need to read the previous books in the Shonak Series. There you will learn about this very different race of people on an alternate Earth and their complex relationship with the people of Earth. The Shonakians are a simple, placid people but so different from us that a great deal of background is provided in the first book, The Crown of Happenstance. That book introduces Bon of Shonak, who you will read more of in the following two books. There is also Itself, the over spirit of the “Six Earths”, and Atsa, a proto-Hopi and tribal chief. This is where you learn the details about Shonak, and its people, about their phase altering technology, about their thirst for intellectual and technical conquest, and about their love for Earthwatching. The next book, It’s About Time, discovers a new relationship between Earth and Shonak. Itself causes an otherwise inexplicable time shift that propels Earth 3210 years into its future while there is no time-change on Shonak. Because Earth is now an advanced, technological world, Shonak openly introduce themselves. They do not reveal their extensive surveillance operation and its invasion of privacy on Earth, which has turned the planet into a virtual zoo for Shonak’s voyeuristic pleasure. They do, however, think they owe Earth something for it. They offer their assistance in areas of crime control, better agriculture, using ocean water for crops and drinking, cleaning the oceans, etc. All the while Shonak continues to expand its surveillance of everyone and everything, everywhere, using their massive fleet of surveillance bots, some of which look like rocks or trees, while others look like beetles, birds, dogs and cats, and people, among other things. The human-looking bots, the humbots, are perfect in every detail. There is eventually a scandal over the humbots, once Earth discovers them, and this causes Earth to sever all ties with Shonak for one hundred years. Book Three contains a series of bot-collected vignettes, or short stories of Earther behavior prepared for young Shonakian students in the final quarter of their formal, forty-year education. These people live beyond 1600 years so forty years of schooling is not a significant sacrifice and there is so much to learn before they can join the adult society on their own. These vignettes are designed to prepare the young, pre-adult Shonakians for their long life of Earther vid-watching. Every Shonakian enjoys watching the very different people of Earth go about their complex, difficult, conflicted lives and join VidWatch clubs that specialize in different aspects of life on Earth they find particularly interesting.
Book Four shows how Earth catches up to Shonak in terms of their most impactful technologies: compact battery packs of enormous power, phase-change, and anti-gravity flight. Earth also develops a way to detect every kind of Shonakian surveillance device, from the rock to the human, and they are amazed and unhappy to find the true extent of the integration of humbots in Earth society with millions of them in operation. They also have many more billions of static collection devices and countless animals and insects all designed to watch and record and entertain the multitude of Shonak’s Vid-Watch clubs. While Earth has known that they collect video and audio of life on Earth they had no idea how large an effort this had become. This latest book discovers how Earth responds to this latest bot scandal. It’s payback time!
About the Author
Dennis retired from the Army in 2000, after thirty years, and five wars, if you count The Cold War and the Global War on Terror, to Vietnam, Desert Shield and Desert Storm, and the Peacekeeping mission in the Balkans. He is a retired Army Colonel, a combat wounded veteran, and not at all religious. The first part of his life was entirely conventional. He grew up in a non-religious Navy family, living around the country and around the world, and his father retired in Phoenix, Arizona when he was in the seventh grade. After graduation from Arizona State University Dennis went into the Army via the ROTC program and his first tour was in Vietnam where he was wounded by enemy mortar fire. He served for thirty years, half of which was overseas, and participated in the Gulf War and the peacekeeping operation in the Balkans. He was the US Army’s first “Cyber Cop” and when he retired as a full colonel in 2000 he went to work in the cyber security business. After the tragedy of 9/11 he was hired by a major city Port Authority to run the security program for three airports and the city’s seaports. As he got older things in his life changed. He married an artist with a PsyD and ordination as a minister in the Church of Spiritualism. He became a Reiki Master and studied spiritual things while being “coached” through the contents of what would become the book A Million Monkeys.
He found the whole thing difficult to accept, but finally translated the thoughts from these Spirits and published the book. Dennis accepted his role as Narrator of the story, not the originator, and wrote the book in the second person, since it is essentially a lecture to Humanity by a Spirit describing itself as a “Super Soul of great magnitude”. It should not be seen as religious although it covers religious subjects. And it should not be seen as the enemy of established religion. They are what they are and as creations of Mankind, are understandably flawed however well intentioned. Essentially they get it about 60% right. If you are looking for the answers, that is the actual answers to Genesis and the Meaning of Life, this is the book you need to read. The next book, The Crown of Happenstance, uses elements from the Million Monkeys story and creates the sister planet Shonak, and the character Bon. The third book, soon to be published, is called It’s About Time, and fully examines Bon’s relationship with Earth and also the matter of TIme. What is it, exactly? It has no weight, color, size, sound, feel – but it is real enough, or is it? Read the book to find out.
