Joey Madia, New Mystics Reviews

 (Precocity Press, 2024). ISBN: 979-8-9898304-6-6 A few months ago, I reviewed Richard M. Anderson’s nonfiction book, The Evolution of Life: Big Bang to Space Colonies (a 2023 Nautilus Silver Award Winner), which is an ambitious and ultimately successful text that encapsulates the evolution of life from the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago to the present. I encourage you to read that review for details on the far-ranging and fascinating subjects Anderson tackles through his exploration of Earth’s present, past, and future. The final portion of Evolution of Life is devoted to the possibilities and pitfalls of space exploration and colonization. It looks at political, social, environmental, and many other aspects of the endeavor, which tech billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, along with NASA, see as an inevitable and even preferable part of our future. At least for some of us. Outbound is Anderson’s fictional imagining of what this all might look like. He offers an In...

 (Precocity Press, 2022). ISBN: 979-8-9851494-6-3 A 2023 Nautilus Silver Award Winner, this ambitious text (apt that it is published by a press called Precocity) encapsulates the evolution of life from the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago to the present, before postulating at length about the possibilities and pitfalls of colonizing space, the Moon, and, far less likely, Mars. With Space X sending up another rocket as I write this review and Disclosure in the news cycle at an unprecedented, eye-opening level, coinciding with a UAP/drone mystery that held America enrapt through the holidays, the subject of colonizing space is certainly topical and worthy of our attention and consideration. After earning an MA in microbiology, Richard M. Anderson went on to a distinguished career as a clinical laboratory bioanalyst, and he brings considerable knowledge to bear over the course of 326 pages. Armed with Anderson’s table of extinction and evolution events (which has a companion tabl...

 (Waterside Productions, 2024). ISBN: 978-1-234567-89-0 Ask anyone from Atlanta about Wayne Williams and the “Atlanta child murders” that claimed 28 lives (children, adolescents, and adults; July 1979 to May 1981) and you’re certain to receive strong responses of fear and uncertainty comparable to those from New Yorkers when asked about the yearlong Son(s) of Sam killings in New York City (July 1976 to July 1977). On the opposite coast, the Night Stalker/Richard Ramirez murders in Los Angeles and San Francisco (April 1984 to August 1985) evoke a similar response. In the latter two cases, it is clear that law enforcement apprehended the “right man” (although Maury Terry’s The Ultimate Evil makes a semi-compelling case that David Berkowitz was one of several Sons of Sam). The same is not the case regarding Wayne Williams. When it comes to the “Atlanta child murders,” there seems to be much we do not know. Enter Mike Cobb, a writer of historical fiction that I have publicly compa...