With the release of the brand new INTO INFINITY: PLANETFALL novel, Robert E. Wood provides a little bit of info about author Gregory Norris, and teases a few hints of what might be coming next!
Author Gregory Norris grew up on a healthy diet of creature double features and classic SF TV, and includes Gerry Anderson’s U.F.O. among his earliest loves. But on the night SPACE:1999 premiered, Norris’s young life was forever influenced and changed. “I fell madly in love with Moonbase Alpha, its citizens, and their adventures (and have been creating new ones for them since). I had the honour of meeting Mr. Johnny Byrne twice (at the American conventions in 1999 and 2000 and appeared on a writing panel with him and other 1999 writers in New York City). When I was approached to novelize THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW—INTO INFINITY, I was both honoured and intimidated. I wanted to do his script justice.”
The newly-released second novel in the INTO INFINITY series, PLANETFALL, is an original story devised by Norris. “I love these characters—they haunt me and, apparently, my dreams. The entire plot line for PLANETFALL came to me in a dream. It picked up directly after the Altares assumed orbit around the alien planet on the other side of the black hole. I woke gasping from the dream and instantly scrambled to pull out the notebook and pen I keep in the bedside table drawer.”
The original television pilot for THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW—INTO INFINITY has a decidedly mid-70s vibe, yet the novels feel fresh and contemporary, successfully updated by Norris for a modern audience. “I think it was easy to do given the timeless heart of the original. Those characters and their world are as relevant now as they were when I first met them at the age of eleven when I was seated cross-legged on the living room floor of my boyhood home.”
The author already knows where he wants to take the Altares crew for their next adventure, titled FIVE, which Norris will pen in early 2020. “I had another epic dream starring the Altares crew, in which there’s a dark, desolate planet in a sector of space theycall the Big Empty. On this planet are the remains of an ancient civilization. Something this civilization left behind latches onto Altares and its photon drive. And then the five members of the crew are forced to consider decisions already made, like continuing into deep space after reaching their first mission objective in Alpha Centauri. A story told in five parts, from the point of view of one crew member to the others, it ponders cause and effect, family, and the future.”
You’ve heard it here first: as the initial INTO INFINITY book is re-issued and the second novel launches, the adventures of the Altares will continue!
Into Infinity: Planetfall
The light ship Altares and her crew plummet through the maw of a powerful black hole and emerge in a strange new universe. Running low on fuel and in need of repairs, Captain Harry Masters pilots the spaceship into orbit around an Earth-like planet. But before the crew can make planetfall, they must first attempt a dangerous maneuver to reach the towering gas clouds at the limit of the star system in order to refuel. In the plumes, the crew encounters the first of many mysteries – a silent alien colossus with clues that point back to the blue world. On the planet’s surface, navigator Tom Bowen, Jane Masters, and David Bowen discover the remains of a city and proof of visitations by more than one advanced race, while aboard the light ship Doctor Anna Bowen experiences a ghostly reunion with a face from the past. Soon, the crew of Altares find themselves trapped between the malevolent alien force roused from slumber beneath the city and preparing for war in orbit, and a dangerous enemy from the Earth itself bent on seizing control of the light ship so far away from home.
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