Cary Neeper

Basic themes portrayed in The Archives of Varok: exploring our human identity and portraying ideas we must pursue to secure the future. Here are the one-liners for each book in the standalone series: The View Beyond Earth: In my 21st century Oz, a woman finds herself when trusting her child's instincts. The Webs of Varok: award winning portrayal of Basic Income solutions as developed by the ideas Herman Daly. The Alien Effect: How complexity works: nothing we do may be inconsequential in the future. An Alien's Quest: The child is grown now, in despair over Earth's future. She reviews religious philosophy and finds meaning in the gifts of mindful living.

Excerpts of the books will be appearing occasionally on our Facebook page called ArchivesofVarok. Characters, excerpts and maps are found at http://archivesofvarok.com

Check out my blog "Who's Out There": https://astronaut.com/?s=Who%27s+Out+There

Animal stories are called "How the Hen House Turns" at http://www.ladailypost.com

Reviews of significant books, nonfiction must-reads: http://www.goodreads.com/Cary_Neeper

Complexity, Bio, Bibliography and Links to blogs - http://caryneeper.com

Cary Neeper grew up in Hayward, California on 40 acres of fruit trees, enjoyed ten summers at Lake Tahoe and one winter with 16 feet of snow. She studied zoology, chemistry and religion at Pomona College and medical microbiology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. After realizing how much she hated killing mice (while earning a Ph.D.), she raised her family in the US Southwest with her husband and a friendly menagerie of dogs, fish and fowl. An avid proponent of sustainability and steady state economics since the 1970s, she began writing on what seemed like a reasonable long-term plan for an equitable future. She still does. Cary played string bass most of her life (except when pregnant) and now paints landscapes in acrylics, including the cover art for The Webs of Varok.

Cary debuted her first science fiction novel A Place Beyond Man in 1975 (Charles Scribner's Sons and Dell) and re-released it in 2011. Its themes of human identity and steady state solutions for Earth developed into a five-volume series, The Archives of Varok. Its four books follow the adventures of a mixed human and alien family as they struggle to maintain the steady state, then teach Earth how it is done. Cary's other works include two musical science fiction comedies as well as newspaper and magazine articles, short stories and book reviews for The Christian Science Monitor. Read more about Cary and the book series at ArchivesofVarok.com.

In the Author’s Words

As the child Carolyn Almond, I fell in love with Moby Dick for reasons I couldn't remember when I re-read it in my twenties. I wrote tragic poetry, read the Oz books over and over, and tried to imitate the beloved dog stories I read. In the fifties I graduated from Hayward High School, then Pomona College with a major in Zoology-Chemistry and an unofficial minor in Religion. I married Don Neeper and we went off to the University of Wisconsin, where I earned a Ph.D. in Medical Microbiology and fell in love with The Hobbit. Husband Don, a Ph.D. physicist, decided he wanted to raise our girls in the mountains of New Mexico near southern Colorado, where he grew up. Our lives there were filled with music and animals: shepherd-mix dogs, chickens, rabbits, a turkey, loving rats, and a skunk named Streak. I played string bass in the local amateur symphony, in musical theater orchestras, with a beloved group of folk singers, with the local Big Band and Community Winds, and with two fine jazz musicians.

Alarmed by the environmental and overpopulation alerts in the early 1970's, I began writing. I published newspaper and magazine articles, a newspaper column, scientific papers, essays, a few short stories, and book reviews for The Christian Science Monitor. My first-contact scifi story, A Place Beyond Man was published in 1975 by Charles Scribner's Sons, Dell, and Millington, London. I re-released it in June 2011 via iUniverse as an Authors Guild Backinprint.com Edition. Its sequel, The Webs of Varok, models how a steady state economy should work and explores a concept of family as an economic support system. It is now available in several editions by Penscript Publishing House, including a classy hardback and has won two awards. In 2014 Penscript released the third book in the Archives of Varok series, in which our entertaining alien neighbors come to Earth. Under the keen guidance of editor Shawne Workman, I updated A Place Beyond Man and renamed it The View Beyond Earth. In November of 2016, after two years of careful word-smithing, we released An Alien's Quest, in which the child of the first book is now a grown woman searching for meaning and hope in the face of disillusionment with Earth. Lots of additional information about the characters and 21st century alternate solar system are continually added to the beautiful website ArchivesofVarok.com, created by my editor and publisher.

I write astrobiology for astronaut.com, animal stories for the Los Alamos Daily Post and short reviews of must-read book on my Goodreads blog. The last book in the Archives series will deal with overpopulation stress, the theme driving a history of the Archives' aliens as they first learn to communicate with each other.