Kirjahaku

From the wheat fields of Kansas to surfing the immense waves on the shores of Planet Nuptia, the author takes readers on a journey which may be referred to as the "future meets the past." In "Earth Boy" a child is held captive on Europa and in the "Longevity Gene" a geneticist searches for a gene complex that may hold the key to immortality while stock car drivers race around a track in Alabama and discover something totally unexpected. As the book title suggests, searching for and struggling to acquire independence is the underlying theme of the book's short stories which concludes with poems about seagulls, crows, ship wrecks, dangerous sharks and young love that makes today seem like yesterday.

During a life-long search to scientifically document paranormal phenomena, Dr. Sandra Grant discovers that dolphins offer ideal research subjects. Through her persistence and the aid of a government contractor, a pair of twin dolphins is made available to her by a paranoid general intent upon the ultimate destruction of the USSR, but facing a public relations nightmare due to his support of a recently exposed secret military program to use marine mammals as weapons. General Pratt Houston's intelligence sources indicate that Russia has an overwhelming arsenal of nuclear weapons. Driven mad by the government's past reluctance to use full military force in Viet Nam, and with the refusal of Congress to use nukes against the Iraqis, General Houston forces a computer programmer to create a virus designed to wreak havoc on the Soviet Defense Network. Designated as ANX, the virus will penetrate the defense network and disrupt their communication systems, When Russia panics and launches their missiles out of desperation, ANX will corrupt their guidance systems and cause them to misfire. The subsequent U.S. counterattack will permanently solve the arms imbalance--at least according to the General's twisted thinking. However, through a bizarre chain of events, the ultimate fate of humanity depends upon the determination and resourcefulness of Dr. Grant and her telepathic dolphins to thwart the General's sinister plan.

My Life in PhotographsThis book features my career as a marine biologist, entrepreneur and photographer and begins with stories about my days spent underwater as a 'fish counter.'As a boy born in a one room farm house lacking plumbing and electricity on a farm in Western Kansas, I was ecstatic to be one of the few out of many applicants accepted for doctoral degree studies at UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography and to have the great fortune to acquire the financial and academic support that allowed me to conduct underwater studies of the fish populations inhabiting the tropical lagoon of a remote coral reef atoll in Micronesia and the Hawaiian Islands.The highlights of several of my journeys are captured in a collection of photos that feature the plant and animal life of the Hawaiian and Marshall Islands as well as rescuing a giant whale shark beached in the Phoenix Islands and floating on a catamaran on a calm night with John Denver playing his guitar and singing the songs that he loved the most.Tributes are are also made to the Scripps' faculty who went out of their way to guide me through many challenges that I faced as a grad student and person. I especially feel gratitude to Richard Rosenblatt, John Isaacs, Carl Hubbs, and Paul Dayton who were the cornerstones to my meeting the high standards of a graduate of Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.The book also reveals highlights of the underwater research that I conducted over five decades which amounted to thousands of hours expended beneath the sea surface--and a host of close calls including surveys of the marine life inhabiting two craters that were formed by nuclear bombs that were detonated in the late 1950's. As the focus of my doctoral research, and with the help of my friends, I constructed artificial reefs in Enewetak Atoll lagoon and then monitored the recruitment rate of larval fishes to the newly available habitat.Another one of the many adventures (that I have referred to as Journeys in the book) is the world altitude record SCUBA dive I made at a lake on the summit of Mauna Kea volcano on the Island of Hawaii. But my true avocation was fish surveys, many of which I received contracts for my services from the State of Hawaii and the National Marine Fisheries Service and often conducted on the Island of Hawaii. Also known the Big Island, in the mid 70's, the reefs were rich in diversity and only beginning to experience the impact of commercial fishing-especially what was then the new business of live aquarium fish collecting.I hope you share my passion for flowers, streams and forests. I have been lucky to have been in the right place when the aspens changed color and bioluminescent fish lit up the deep sea while brilliant engineers built the first Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) plants that have opened a new path to clean energy and healing the climate crisis. I also hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I have had in sorting through several thousand images that reminded me of days gone by- but not yet forgotten.The second book in the Exploring Nature series is in development. You are welcome to send me an E-Mail at [email protected] and I will put you on the notification mailing list.You are welcome to search for "Ron S. Nolan" on Amazon to see my growing list of science fiction novels. Since I spend most of my days writing, and little time on marketing, reviews are most welcome