Bøker av Christina Engela

Into Adventure! Freedom. Independence. Friendship. Adventure. You could have it all! Or, you might die trying. The only question worth answering is: How bad do you want it? Bad enough to become a threader - a drifter who makes their way across space doing anything they could to make money, just to be able to reach the next port? Mostly, threaders are just one payday away from being actual space pirates - or bums marooned in the ass-end of space, widely regarded with mistrust and suspicion. For Tang Gunar, Mycos Atellu, and others who join their crew, there is no other choice but to adopt this identity as an act of survival, rebellion, hope and defiance as they embark on a journey across space to seek adventure and fortune on the Fringe, to find out where it will lead them.

In Shakandazu Valley, a typical small rural town in the Ciskei, ruled over by the Inkosi from the grand mansion called The Residence, attention is diverted from the boredom of daily life and the pressure of the severe drought by various pursuits: movies, parties, socializing, drinking - and speculating about one of the Valley's newest and most mysterious residents - Roger Hall. The man had simply turned up one day three years before, bought the old bungalow at the end of Buku Road - paid for it in cash, and then kept to himself. The only times he seemed to venture into town was to buy copious amounts of alcohol from the liquor store every few weeks. Sometimes he briefly showed his face at happenings hosted by curious locals. He never spoke about his past. Who was he? Where did he come from? How did he come to have so much money readily on hand? Why did he never want to talk about his past - not even to the Doctor, or Mr. Gaika, his closest friends in town? Even the old Sazi, the influential seer of the Valley, called him 'the Silent One' and said he had the look of a man who had seen blood. The local tribesmen saw him as an ill omen, a bringer of misfortune, drought and misery. Unrest began to stir. Why had he come to the Valley? What did he want there? Who was Roger Hall, and what did he have to hide? Hard times were coming, the old Sazi foretold - the storm-clouds were gathering and the harsh years-long drought was about to break - but something worse was to follow, and the carcasses of beasts and men would fill the river side by side, and the fate of the town and all who lived there would be changed forever. This is the third novel by Theo Engela. Set in 1968, this story, never before published, was completed shortly before his death in 1985.

"Through Technical Spectacles - A Quantum Guide" is a collection of 86 schematics and illustrations of 26 types of various ships, craft, buildings and other things that are featured in the Quantum Series. There are also additional explanations of what they are and what they're supposed to do - and some of these are even delivered in a half-serious manner. Did you ever wonder what the Ambusulance looked like? The inside layout of the Governor's Palace? The cockpit of a Skorpiad fighter? These and more fill the pages of this book! The diagrams and schematics were all created by the author herself and represent hours and hours of hard work, late nights, finger cramps and actual headaches - but that wasn't such a chore because she also enjoyed the process of creating every one of them!

Deanna - the spotted cow of the galaxy, was in trouble. This was all beyond having a funny moon that fell down occasionally, or having jet-propelled birds that exploded if they flew too high; this was serious. An army of fascists had seized power and started rebuilding Deanna as a eugenic utopia - without all the messy inconvenience caused by diversity and dissent. They simply excised it from Deannan society, rounding up undesirables and sending them to Xanadu, a concentration camp in the Wilds between the three largest cities of Deanna: Atro City, San Fedora and Fortitude. Out of sight and out of mind. An energy field set up by the fascists now isolated Deanna from the outside universe - and prevented Terran ships from reaching them to unseat the enemy. After having their hands tied by Terran policy for so many generations, the religious right wing had both hands free - and was working on its swing. On the prairie, Xanadu was a hell-hole where prisoners were locked up and forgotten, without food, water or shelter - where they only way out was a rapid decline and death. And death suited the architects of Xanadu. But it didn't suit Danielle Grauffis. Caught up in the fascist's net by pure chance, she'd been sent there to die. She watched as people around her grew weaker from starvation and died from thirst and exposure. But she wasn't ready to give up yet, she'd do anything to hold out until rescue came. Anything. Meanwhile, a resistance movement had risen to unseat the fascists, and their challenge was to defeat them militarily - to free Deanna from their yoke, and most importantly, to free the prisoners incarcerated at Xanadu. Before it was too late.

This story is about Dr. Von Gleichstein, the famed quantum physicist seen in "The Time Saving Agency" (book 2 in the Quantum Series by Christina Engela) and his little dog, Vluffy... and some mutant cockroaches, violins and a few - er... "ozzer sings". Dr. Gleichstein is a quantum physicist - and as everyone knows by now, quantum physics is a bit like ordinary physics, except that you spend a little more time looking for your eyebrows! Vluffy is a little gray dog who wears a flame-proof asbestos doggy jacket, and spends a lot of time hiding under things to avoid being vaporized by the Doktor's occasional mishaps - and in their home, even the mouse holes have blast-proof doors! But something lurks inside the house with them... something that has grown and changed and mutated from all the latent radiation and funky quantumness that has leaked into the house... nasty, vicious, aggressive two-headed mutant cockroaches... aargh! Even the mice have packed up their mousy things and left for greener pastures... They even chase poor Vluffy down the hall - whatever would the neighborhood dogs say about that if they found out? Oh, the shame! Even the Doktor is dismayed by this new development... after all, not even tinned food is safe anymore! Something has to be done about this, of course... and the Doktor is just the ornery hombre to do it... and so he clears his whiteboard for action! Vluffy hopes this can be solved without resorting to violins. Bang, Splat! is a "children's story for adults" - an endearing little illustrated tale set in the Quantum Series universe created by Christina Engela.

Action! Adventure! Gender Dysphoria! Cindy-Mei Winter had until recently been 'Agent' Winter, C.I.A. - that's Colonial Intelligence Agency - and one of their best agents... that is, until they threw her out for coming to work in a dress. After that disappointing and sudden end to what had been a promising career, Mei rewarded herself with a long relaxing vacation in the outback to celebrate her gender reassignment and her new start in life. The first stop on her journey turned out to be a little backwater planet called Deanna... As a third-rate colony in the Terran Empire, Deanna had more than its fair share of dull moments... Dull - but also definitely weird... Deanna orbited a star called Ramalama - and if you think that's funny, Deannas' two moons were called Ding and Dong, respectively. (This was a local joke.) Then the unexpected happened: A single Ruminarii Hammerhead - the first seen by Humans in over eighty years, arrived to invade the small backwater Terran colony! Mei had hoped to put her violent and somehow depressing past behind her, but now it seemed her new beginning (and her holiday) were going to have to wait! The Gimp were back, and this was no time to be a sissy! She faced seemingly insurmountable odds in the midst of panic, hysteria - falling sherry - and people hiding under furniture! What would she do? Thankfully, with the assistance of an alien walking, talking plant called Fred, a local bounty hunter called Beck the Badfeller - and the Skeggs Valley Dynamite Fishing Club, she wouldn't have to find out alone!

Die tyd stap aan vir ons almal. Kindwees. Grootword. Die liefde. Leed. Smart. Heimwee. Trou. Skei. Dood. Werk - altyd werk. Anders as die meeste mense, skryf party van ons daaroor om ons gevoelens en gedagtes te ontleed, uit te wis, of te deel. Yvonne Lorraine (van der Westhuizen) Engela is in die Ooskaap in Suid Afrika in 1934 gebore. Tussen 1953 en 1972 het sy ywerig gedigte in albei Afrikaans, haar moederstaal, en Engels geskryf. Sy het nooit gedink dat haar poeisie ooit goed genoeg sou wees om te publiseer nie. Die lewe was te woelig. Daar moes hard en aanhoudend gewerk word om 'n man en later 'n kind te onderhou. Om enkel-ma te wees was nog nooit maklik nie, en sy was 'n nederige mens. Sy het dit later weg gesit en nie meer daaroor gepraat nie. 'n Kind het haar die geluk en lewensvreugde gebring wat niemand anders kon nie. Die lewe het aangestap... Toe, eendag, op 79 jaar, is sy skielik oorlede. 'n Rukkie daarna het haar dogter die huis begin opruim en skoonmaak - en het op 'n hopie ou notaboeke vol gedigte wat sy in haar jeug geskryf het, afgekom. En toe lees sy dit - en besef wat 'n skat haar ma vir haar nagelaat het. 'n Blik binne haar ma se siel, as jongmens, as vrou, as talentvolle digter en skrywer.

Deanna, a small backwater Terran colony generally known as an idyllic tourist-magnet (if watching birds blow up if they flew too high were your kind of thing) had just hit a speed-bump on the highway of Life called the Deannan Un-civil War. With someone at the Time Saving Agency helping Gary Beck and Cindy-Mei Winter pull a few of the right strings, everything according to the Anals of History (not a typo) was still unfolding more or less as it should - just a bit quicker. Either way, Deanna - the spotted cow of the galaxy, was still in a lot of trouble. A fascist army was in charge, rounding people up and sending them to a concentration camp, while a loyalist militia rapidly fomented in the Grauffis family's den. But while the numerous collective volunteers and veterans of every war fought by the Terran Empire for the last century re-trained and got back into the swing of things, that was not enough. Deanna needed a resistance movement - badly. The daunting task of starting a resistance movement from scratch fell to one Marla De Bris - who despite looking unusually youthful, healthy (and alive) for someone who had nigh on 200 years experience in being a secret vampire - didn't have terribly much experience in this sort of thing. Guerrilla warfare had never been one of her interests - but oh well, someone had to do it - someone had to buy time for the Militia to prepare to take on the formidable Deannan Republican Army, and to get as many people as possible out of harms' way before the war really got going. It might as well be her. Read more: https: //wp.me/PcoTxI-4IV

Action! Adventure! Assassins! Deanna was just another third-rate colony in the Terran Empire, and it was pretty much as boring a lump of rock as could be expected. Boring, that is, until Gary Beck - aka Beck the Badfeller, Deanna's most famous bounty hunter - ran over an obsidian crow with his jeepo on the highway to San Fedora one Saturday morning and didn't have a spare tire. Things pretty much went downhill from there. An assassin had come to Atro City, an assassin with a score to settle. She was refined and pretty - but as poets might say, beauty can be deceiving - and the same poets who described Helen of Troy as the face that launched a thousand ships, might have written about Villainessa Tittle as the bitch that sank them. As an assassin, she was the worst kind: she took pride in her work, enjoyed what she did for a living, was bloody good at it, and above all, she was absolutely terrifying. She'd come to Deanna on business, and this time, unfortunately, it was absolutely 100 percent personal.

A delightful illustrated, rhyming explanation of diversity and understanding, encouraging children to be compassionate towards others, regardless of who they are. Many kids today face bullying from their peers based on differences in race, gender, sexual orientation or gender identity - and often from their parents as well In a world where bullying and intolerance of diversity is becoming increasingly a danger to children, it's important to teach children - and adults - compassion for others. This book was written to inspire kids (and the adults who read it with kids) who are bullied for being different.

Action, Adventure, Skinheads! The third-rate Terran colony of Deanna suddenly found itself hip-deep in strange events. Well... stranger than usual. And by quite a margin. Deanna was a melting-pot of races, species and all manner of creeds and cultures, and always had been - but something very fundamental had changed. Without being noticed, hate had come to Deanna and had built a nest there. Something sinister had stirred in the shadows on the remote, usually idyllic (if slightly weird) little backwater colony - something... disturbing. And where had all these damn neo-Nazi skinheads suddenly come from? In the final weeks before the greatly anticipated royal visit of Prince Justin, Sheriff Peggy-Ann Muller, stretched thin by work pressure and the daily, frenetic meetings at the Governor's office, Peg had little time to invest in sideshows. It was unavoidable that certain finer details would slip past her... like the sudden, puzzling increase in crime. A type of crime that had not been seen in some time. Hate crime. Peg resolved to look into it personally - just as soon as her schedule would allow. But could it wait? Something terrible was about to hatch! And when it did, the quirky residents of the third-rate colony would face a challenge unlike any they had seen before.

"Sci-fi is the main thing." I was told in the original brief by Brandon Mullins, CEO and owner of Moon Books Publishing. "Compelling would be nice. Strange is only a suggestion." That set the theme (and the title) in stone, and thus it was that Christina Engela's Strangely Compelling SciFi was born! I set out to look for stories which fit these parameters - sci-fi which celebrates the weird, embraces the unusual, seeks to unscrew the inscrutable... and is also... strangely compelling! If that's what you're after, you've come to the right place! This anthology contains eight strangely compelling sci-fi stories by a group of four talented, imaginative fellow writers: H.G. Emert, Thomas M. Malafarina and Major Roxbrough - and me!

Action, Adventure, Disorganized Crime! Returning from an evening spent in Mars City visiting relatives he didn't know he had, Timaset Skooch arrived at the local space port to find the loderunner Celeste, his new acquisition, stolen. A few minutes later, the crew of his slightly run-down (and missing) ship, returned from a nearby pub, blind drunk, puzzled, and now unemployed as well. Ever since he'd decided to quit being a P.I. and to try his hand at running cargo across the Outblack instead, things had just blown up in Skoochs' face one day at a time (Florpavian Flamebirds tended to do that occasionally). Between the labor disputes and accidental deaths among the crew (who believed in settling disputes internally) Tim had developed a headache worse than the ones he used to get from getting kicked in the head. Things had way more complicated than he'd expected, and now the he and the odd-ball crew of the slightly run-down loderunner found themselves in the middle of a kind of cat and mouse game with some cloaks and daggers thrown in for good measure. He was sure it had something to do with the 10,000 credits he'd been offered to transport two passengers to an asteroid in the rings of - um, Jupiter (as soon as possible, no questions asked) by a middle-man with no neck and a tendency to smile a lot. Trouble was, now the Martian Mob - or someone - seemed to be out to kill them all - and he was beginning to really regret winning that card game...

This guide sets out how the author set up her own home UPS system and discusses cheap, simple alternatives and ideas with helpful tips, illustrations and advice from her own personal experience. These are all tips and tricks she did - or considered herself, in order to have lights and basic appliances during those hours when 'load-shedding' struck, or for those emergency blackouts - without burning out her bank card like a spent fuse in the process!

What is it that lurks in the darkness? In the closet, under the bed... or in the dark, abandoned basement of a busy city hospital? The terror is everywhere. It follows us wherever we go - even into the dark, terrifyingly empty depths of space. Watching... waiting... lurking on the edge of sight... What is it that we fear about the darkness? Stick around - you're about to find out. "Malice!" is a collection of horror tales by Christina Engela.

...Ashes To Ashes... Stuart Flane, Captain of the starship Mercury, and lately the butt-end of innumerable jokes doing the rounds at Space Fleet H.Q., is called upon once more - kicking and screaming - to investigate all manner of preternatural fuckery. How would Flane's skeptical superiors react to his next report - and above all, how would he word it? The word "carefully" always came to mind. Sooner or later, he worried, someone was going to turn up demanding answers - and it wasn't too long before someone did. Commodore Link, a heavy-handed disciplinarian, makes it his business to get to the bottom of Flane's alleged fraud, and his investigation progressively turns the starship Captain's life into a bit of a miserable hell. Then, as if by coincidence, the Mercury is redirected to a nearby industrial colony to investigate disturbances at what - much to Flane's acute embarrassment, turns out to be one of the most haunted hotels in the outblack.

This is not your standard 'How to restore your VW Beetle' book. It's also not a workshop manual. Aside from a basic rundown on the differences between various bug models through the years, there is a section on some things you can do to preserve or improve your bug. Mostly however, what the author hase done is to review all the things she did to her bugs and put those ideas together as cheap, skillful, cheap, d.i.y, cheap means of enhancing your grocery-getter's performance and handling. Dollying the rest up is your baby. Most of the procedures described can be done by virtually anyone with the parts currently residing on their drive-to-work banger. The rest are low-budget and can be carried out with household or garage tools. All of these are things she did to one or more of the Beetles she owned.

Action! Adventure! Time Travel! The Time Saving Agency liked having fresh agents on the job, who had a clear mind and steady hand. After all, time travel wasn't for the faint of heart. The pay was good enough, but as Johnathan Scrooby decided long ago - even if he didn't get paid for it, the thrill alone was payment enough! Then again, the TSA realized they couldn't afford to have disgruntled employees with the power of God at their fingertips, so the pay was very, very good indeed! Scrooby was extremely tense. His job at the Time Saving Agency was a tough one - gazillions of lives depended on him not screwing up. Once, he'd screwed up in only a small way, and people wore those little yellow smiley faces on T-shirts for decades afterwards... And that was only a small screw up! Things happened at a certain time in a certain way, which in a sense, is what Life was all about. If they didn't, then things would be completely different - which was why, a week ago, the American War of Independence was fought in Mexico. Yesterday Napoleon managed to dig a tunnel across the English Channel, invaded London - and everybody at the Agency ended up speaking French for a while. Sorting that out had been... well, challenging... Mon dieu. Something smelled funny in the Anals of History! Things were not as they were supposed to be. Someone somewhere was tinkering with the works, and it was up to Time Agent Scrooby - with a little help - to go back and fix it, or who knew what might happen next!

"Come To Deanna" - A guide to the quirky little Terran colony planet which is the setting of most stories in the Quantum Series, elaborating on local night life, hot spots, native species, aliens, cities, infrastructure and other aspects to the fascinating place called Deanna! Regardless of whether you plan on dropping by just to visit, or to stay, Deanna and its people (and funny animals) are ready to welcome you! It's in the Triseritis Cluster - system 6327B2B! Come on, do it! You know you want to! See you there!

The Upside Of Sadness - a poetry collection by Christina Engela. Like many poets, Christina Engela started writing poetry out of a need to express her internalized teenage angst, gothic gloom, suppressed desires, drama and emotional trauma. Unlike most of those poets, Christina is also very good at seeing - and presenting - the brighter side of sorrow, or if you will, the upside of sadness. Christina wrote her first poem at age 12. Funnily enough, it was called "Fear", and since then, she wrote a further 232 poems. This collection presents a selection of 165 of them, covering a variety of topics such as philosophy, love and heartbreak, her observations of the world around her, her torment as a teen and adult living with gender dysphoria - poetry she wrote in the face of prejudice and bigotry, culminating in her transition from the age of 26 to her final procedures in 2006 - and also some light-hearted fun.

Meradinis! The very name of this dark world grabbed the imaginations of young boys and girls, and universally mesmerized dreamers and romantics alike. That is, when they weren't terrified - because the truth was always far less romantic - and as reality so often demonstrates in real life - rather ugly and brutal. Behind the legend of the Corsairs and their sinister culture of plunder and violence lay a history fraught with a desperate, brutal struggle to survive, a vengefulness and a cruel streak - and a drive to survive by any means necessary - chiefly of which was their predation upon other worlds... And it was their predatory nature that struck fear into the hearts of neighboring Terran colonies on the fringe - and, some whispered - in the hallowed halls of the Terran Congress itself. This guide is intended to brief the reader about the Corsairs as a group, their culture, origins, general practices and of course, ships and other equipment.

Does space still suck? Find out here! Would the sun ever go out? Why would it? What would happen if it did? Find out here! When Mr. Vandalwa woke up that morning, death by vampire was probably the last thing on the list of ways he thought he would one day die. He found the fact that it would be later the same day equally as surprising. Follow the exploits of a WW1-esque fighter pilot during the war on the lost Human colony Eden in three subsequent short tales. Cindy-Mei Winter is a former CIA agent (among other things), out to celebrate her recent gender reassignment by taking a holiday through the Outblack. Trouble is, her past proves difficult to leave behind. Captain Joe Lofflin has been laid up for six months at the Colony of Tremaine, described overwhelmingly with the word "lovely" - and just can't take it anymore! He must leave as soon as possible, by any means necessary! Everyone talks about the end of the world as if it were something that might actually happen. Thing is, what if it did? Launch into space, the future and beyond! Enjoy a humorous look at life in space through the eyes of some colorful characters in this collection of ten unique sci-fi tales by Christina Engela, spanning everything from adventure to suspense to comedy and then back again!

Not until he had almost finished the piece did it suddenly strike Louis that Beethoven could not have written Liszt's Second Hungarian Rhapsody! What the hell was happening to him? Was he losing his mind? Damn Liszt, damn Beethoven... Damn everybody! He broke off abruptly and slammed a discord with all his strength, a very bizarre ending to the Hungarian Rhapsody. Then he picked up the bottle and drank with greedy abandon. Louis van Pletten was a successful young writer once. With two novels to his name in his early twenties and more talent than you could shake a stick at - he excelled in music, writing, art, philosophy - anything it seemed he set his mind to. But then, cruel Fate took his infant son and his beloved Sandra from him... and that's really when Louis' life first began to fall apart. Then he met Boris Lessing, an older man with a taste for adventure and a hunger for the Truth. Louis toured the whole of Southern Africa with Boris in their search for meaning. One day, somewhere in the open spaces of South Africa - under a giant bluegum tree, they had a shared epiphany that was supposed to change their lives for the better. Boris went home to paint again, and almost overnight became a popular and wealthy artist. Louis went home to write his third book. What lay behind this longing, this loneliness, this restlessness, what had been the secret of the Conference Tree - the secret that had saved Boris just as it had eluded him? Now Louis van Pletten is 45 years old and still struggling to complete his third book, his Great Masterpiece, his magnum opus. Trouble is, at over 300 pages, it's morbid, dark as hell and as full of utter misery and self-loathing as he is. He can barely stand to read it himself. He should burn it, but it's taken him three years to write the damn thing... and he has no spark left to start over - and just enough money left to last him three more months. He lies to himself all the time; he can stop drinking any time he wants to, it's his business anyway... friendship doesn't matter, even love and life don't matter - oh, why can't people leave him be? Especially Bernice? The truth is, he really can't live without alcohol... he's tried. He lives from one sip to the next, and it's become a way of life. And it's killing him. Alcoholism is a creeping, crippling tragedy that affects the lives of millions. It's irrevocably affected the lives of Louis van Pletten, Boris Lessing and Bernice Collet. Theo Engela's first novel focuses on alcoholism and the struggle of the main character with it. The story is brilliantly written, and describes this way of life with dramatic and upsetting realism, for the alcoholic and those nearest them.

Don't you just hate it when you find a bigot in your soup? Eeeeuw! Gross! This is exactly what happens to John Q. Public one day as he sits down to enjoy a fresh bowl of soup at his favorite restaurant! He puts his hand up to complain, but unfortunately the waiter doesn't believe him - and as his protests increase, so does the intensity of the waiter's denials! What will happen to John? Will he get fresh soup - fresh soup without a bigot in it? A quaint illustrated book with rhyming verse.

The I.S.S. Mordrake is in serious trouble - after a skirmish with a Corsair marauder, she is stranded in deep space far from regular shipping routes - and death appears certain. ...but in space, not all things are certain, not even death. Adrift and stranded in deep space with no hope of rescue, the I.S.S. Mordrake has six month's worth of food left, but just less than two weeks of air - and things are looking pretty grim. And, as if there's not enough on their plate already, something dark and mysterious drifts into their path - an ancient derelict ship littered with the dusty remains of its long-dead crew! The derelict presents an all-too convenient and timely solution to their problem, offering the desperate castaways the spare parts they badly need to repair their ship... but nothing's ever really that easy, is it? There's no such thing as a free lunch out there, in the cold empty wastes of deep space. Resentment, bitterness and malaise having taken hold of the survivors, the sudden possible reprieve brings new challenges - in order for the crew of the Mordrake to survive, they have to work together - even though the faceless, cold-blooded killer who brutally murdered the Mordrake's Captain still walks freely among them! And, in spite of a further run of mysterious accidents, they must find a way to retrieve the parts they need to repair their own vessel - no matter what lay in wait for them on the derelict ship - something that seemed to want to keep them all to itself! "Demonspawn" is the second Galaxii novel by Christina Engela.

Space exploration is no piece of cake, and neither is the paranormal. The Outblack: that treacherous swathe of under-explored space at the fringes of the Terran Empire, the very cutting edge of civilization - also known as the ass-end of space... a place where good fortune is almost as common as death, and the dead don't always stay that way. These are the stomping grounds of Captain Stuart Flane and the crew of the starship Mercury - a shipload of jaded cynics who know from experience that there's more to life than meets the third eye. Braver than the harshest skeptic, Flane, his EXO, Vic Chapman, and Dr. Fred Killian, must face all sorts of terrors, from paranormal possession, to shadow figures from the lost starship Jacoby, to mysterious alien life-forms that ate the scientists at the research station on Tangerine-178, and a mysterious force that lobotomized the colonists on Ramus-12. Will they succeed? Or will they succumb to the terror of the Outblack?

Does Space Really Suck? Find Out Here! A diplomatic mission to retrieve the bodies of a ship's crew who'd landed on the planet Flort by accident goes hilariously and spectacularly awry. One of the guest speakers on a midnight talk radio show about "those mysterious crop circles" turns out to be an actual alien wearing a disguise (complete with zipper). What are the authorities really hiding at Area 51? Jake Smeggs and two of his friends takes advantage of a convenient distraction at the "Let's See Them Aliens" event to find out! Whatever will they do, now that they know? Earth is suddenly attacked by an alien race that doesn't communicate or negotiate. The biggest obstacle is peace: Earth has survived the Third World War and beaten its swords into ploughshares - and must now do the reverse in time to face the onslaught. Can it be done? The trouble with immortality is - well, time. Two very old friends meet up to reminisce after a century apart. Professor Nimitz invents the world's first working teleportation device. Trouble is, it works - only, not quite the way he thought it would... with a particularly terrifying outcome. Launch into space, the future and beyond! Enjoy a humorous look at life in space through the eyes of some colorful characters in this collection of six unique sci-fi tales by Christina Engela, spanning everything from adventure to suspense to comedy and then back again!

Opsaal. It's an Afrikaans word that means 'saddle up', but it was also a place: a farm, to be exact - a lonesome speck of nothing on the edge of a dirt track nowhere near a main road in the South African wilderness, somewhere in the Adelaide district. It was 1939 and the Great Depression made a harsh life for many. Peter van der Westhuizen, a husband and father of seven who spent most of his days on the road as a truck driver, struggled to make ends meet. He did his best to provide for them, but after taking the new job, he and his family found themselves in need of a new home. Even if it meant relocating to the middle of nowhere. The farm was isolated and the nearest living people were miles away, but it was close to his route - and it was a place to start over. The move went smoothly, painlessly, but as Peter left for work that next Monday morning, leaving his family completely alone, he had no idea he was leaving Helena and his children at the mercy of something dark and sinister. Something unseen and violent lurked in the shadows at Opsaal, strange shadow-figures roamed the old corrugated iron structure, something that wasn't shy or recalcitrant about striking her in front of her children! It also wasn't restricted to the house itself. A darkness infected the entire property and struck terror into the hearts of them all! With the passing of each day, Helena became increasingly tense and afraid, but she had to hold out - she had to put on a façade, keep a brave face for the sake of her children! They had to hold out until Peter returned. Then they would plan an escape. Because she knew if they stayed there, someone was going to die. Opsaal is a tale based on a family legend from the van der Westhuizen side of the author's family lore, and hence, is based on a true story.

"Season's Change" is a collection of poetry by Wendy Keran Engela (neé Gloss), who has all the right qualifications, skills and experience to be regarded as a Gothic artist and poet, including being an incorrigible grammar-Nazi, having the prerequisite dark existential outlook, depression, a twisted sense of humor - and having survived at least one (official) suicide attempt. Wendy - who prefers to be called 'Kay' - began experimenting with poetry at 15, beginning with her first effort "Darkness Falls", quickly followed by her second, "Tombstone", which resulted in some pretty worried looks from her mother. Since that time, Kay went on to write over 100 more poems (which her parents have never read). Kay was born in Springs (the town, not actually wearing them) and later grew somewhat taller in a tiny flyspeck on the map called "Kriel". Being the elder (and more homicidal) of two siblings born to the usual two parents, Wendy - who prefers to be called 'Kay' - arrived on this planet approximately six months after her parents tied an untieable knot in front of a small family gathering, and began her love affair with books and reading them, at the tender age of six years. Despite a youth in which she failed to commit fratricide, one of her most impressive achievements, she says, was to exhaust all the worthwhile reading material in her junior school library, then the high school library (which she helped re-establish) - and ultimately, the public library of her small town's adult section - before the ripe old age of 19! She's traveled through all nine provinces of South Africa in her lifetime - not entirely by choice - and has lived in Cape Town (Western Cape), Hazyview (Mpumalanga) and presently lurks in a cozy Victorian townhouse in Port Elizabeth (Eastern Cape). You can find out more about Kay and her activities on wendykgloss.wordpress.com