Other Hands - Softcover

Other Hands is a science fiction psychological thriller filled with mystery, intrigue, and scientific wonder. Unlike many science-fiction stories, which often dwell on spaceships shooting at each other and hideous monsters tearing at your flesh, Other Hands is more about the human condition and our place in the cosmos. I am often asked, "What is your book about?" Here is the short answer: Jeremy Crane is an astronaut whose mission is to rescue--or recover--another group of space travelers stranded on a distant planet. But Crane's true quest is to find healing, love and meaning in a universe full of violence, deceit, and greed. It's also about the high cost of freedom and the false promise offered by a utopian society.
 
In the story of Other Hands, key government officials and their co-conspirators secretly attempt to cure the world of crime, terrorism, substance abuse, and all forms of interpersonal conflict by implementing a mind control system stolen from the planet New California. They believe this alien technology is the only hope for humankind. An important influence for this element of the plot is the following quote from Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World:
 
"There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution." Aldous Huxley, Tavistock Group, CaliforniaMedical School, 1961
 
 

Thomas James has a bachelor's degree in astronomy and a master's degree in transportation systems. He has had a career in transportation planning and lives in Southern California. He also composes music.