The Dark

by Forrest Carr

Overview

It's said that God is infinite, and everywhere. But what if He isn't? What if it were possible to fly so far out into space that you arrive at a place where God does not exist? How would you know it? What would happen?

These questions arise when nearly three dozen astronauts and observers embark on the most daring voyage of exploration in all of human history, a space flight designed to probe the very limits of our universe. Among those on board is a scientist who also wears a priest's collar-Father Cameron Teal, director of the Vatican Observatory, recruited for the mission by an iconic industrialist who secretly hopes to find God. After the N.A.U.S. Santa Maria crosses an unimaginable distance, bizarre, unexplainable, and profoundly frightening events start to unfold. As the chaos increases and terror grips the crew, Father Teal begins to wonder whether, in the quest to find God, he's actually lost Him.

"This novel delivers. Carr's writing pulls the reader into the story, willingly or not. The images form as the suspense builds. Be careful of the dark."
-Dr. Steve B. Howell
Project Scientist, NASA's Kepler mission and author of A Kepler's Dozen

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780692436028
Publisher:	Premonition Media
Publication date:	05/30/2015
Pages:	300
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.63(d)

About the Author

Forrest Carr is a blogger and former radio talk show host who spent 33 years in the television news industry, serving as a news director in the Tampa, Fort Myers, Albuquerque, and Tucson television markets. Carr has received or shared credit in more than 90 professional awards, including a Suncoast Regional Emmy and two regional Edward R. Murrow awards for investigative reporting, and is a co-author of Broadcast News Handbook, a college textbook published by McGraw-Hill, now in its fifth edition. Carr has written two other works of fiction-Messages, a "buddy journalist" crime novel that shows how TV news evolved into its current state, and A Journal of the Crazy Year, a prophetic zombie-genre post-apocalyptic tale inspired by an actual disease, and which explores where the world could end up if current news trends continue. Carr is a long-time fan of old school science fiction, particularly the works of Robert Heinlein. He resides with his wife Deborah and their two cats Ellis and Mina, a.k.a. Butthead 1 and Butthead Also, in Tucson, Arizona. He invites readers to reach him through his author page on Facebook or by way of his website, www.forrestcarr.com.

Editorial Reviews

09/14/2015
In this yarn blending horror and SF, Carr (A Journal of the Crazy Year) sends a spaceship into absolute, unimaginable darkness and watches as terrifying things press in from outside and emerge from inside the crew. A new space drive lets the vessel Santa Maria jump not only beyond our galaxy but past the edge of the whole universe. There, as Catholic priest Cameron Teal observes, God has no presence, since it’s a place beyond divine creation. That leaves humans with no savior to appeal to as chief astrogator Lydia Nguyen-Jones’s persistent nightmares about a rotting bogeyman take physical form, while Capt. Sirius Cermeno’s resentment against his father is translated into increasingly murderous rage against his subordinates. In short order, everyone’s personal vulnerabilities are magnified into deadly form, and multiple mechanical failures threaten to strand them all in the dark forever. The story doesn’t stand up to serious examination, but that’s beside the point. Carr mainly just wants to make readers twitch and cringe, and he succeeds. (BookLife)

Publishers Weekly

2015-07-24
When a dimension-hopping spacecraft ventures beyond the boundaries of the universe, literally ending up nowhere, strange and disturbing events play havoc with it. Carr (Messages, 2013, etc.) has a real talent for constructing living, breathing characters: Cermeno, a Queeg-like captain with a questionable past who, through nepotism, has bumped De Vegas, a more competent officer, to second-in-command; Jervis, a womanizing reporter; Teal, a drunken priest; and Nunn, a disfigured loner. Add to this a pedophile and a crew with a surfeit of jealousies, gripes, and motives; toss them all aboard untested space-faring technology heading off into the unknown and….What could go wrong? After a tantalizing, action-filled prologue, Carr takes time to establish these volatile characters. He cleverly uses a mission press conference to quickly introduce the cast before sending them on their way. The craft, aptly named the Santa Maria, makes use of a new technology harnessing the science behind supernatural phenomenon such as a poltergeist, which are caused by dimensional glitches. It works flawlessly on the way. Once the ship leaves the universe for a perfect vacuum, however, all hell breaks loose. In a quantum nothingness where anything can happen, everything does, from personal demons come to life to interdimensional kidnappings. As systems fail, the crew dwindles, and survivors must overcome one impossibility after another. Part sci-fi, part psychological drama, part zombie apocalypse, the thrillfest starts early and continues till the end. The author slowly showcases his cast, lighting them from different angles. Nunn is first given her own extended scene interacting with her cat and Wilson, the computer she designed. But Carr can also sum up a character like Cermeno in a few brush strokes: "his slightly self-deprecating humor—a tactic with which he was not totally comfortable but that his consultants assured him would be good for his image." This is a rollicking adventure with religious, philosophical, and technological overtones; for science fiction die-hards.

Kirkus Reviews