Hel's Bet: Volume 2

After surviving the launch of space shuttle Enterprise in a hail of Tommy gun bullets, ex-astronaut Mick Oolfson never dreamed that Tobias Ishwald, the relentless head of NASA Security—and the man who got him canned—would ride a shuttle into space to hunt him down. Geek goddess Heloise Chin reveals that the Channel Zilch reality show was a sham to get her Pop to pay for the mission. Her real motivation is to broadcast a Declaration of War on Death to rally the world’s geeks to work on open source Singularity projects. To hijack geek brains, Hel uses all her weapons: her smarts, her beauty, her guts, and her vision. A near-future, hard-science thriller with heart and purpose, HEL’S BET is a smart, funny, fast-moving adventure you won’t soon forget and the second volume in the Hel’s Bet Series. Ride along on a mad, shoe-string shuttle mission to kickstart the Singularity! Praise for the Hel’s Bet Series: "Definitely good fun — and very carefully thought out on the technology side, despite being in the general vein of comedic action-adventure ... The first book in the series, Channel Zilch, felt like a breezy, humorous near-future geek action/SF romp ... I went through it quickly and lightly, and kept wanting to see what happened next.. Then Hel's Bet felt a lot deeper to me -- with some of the character portraits and interactions exploring the line between "charmingly quirky" and "profoundly emotionally troubled and bizarrely insane" ... raising questions about what the hell is sanity and what the hell is the self anyway ... Suddenly the philosophical implications of chronic pain and dissociative identity (dis?)order in the context of posthumanism start popping up here and there -- and getting nonlinearly correlated with confusing issues regarding romance, sexuality and immortality -- amidst all the goofy jokes and well-calculated near-space mayhem..." —Ben Goertzel, Leading AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) researcher and philosopher. His latest book is AGI Revolution: An Inside View of the Rise of Artificial General Intelligence< PRAISE FOR CHANNEL ZILCH, Volume I of the Hel’s Bet Series: “A madcap romp. Filled to the brim with hilarious set pieces, this is a wickedly entertaining read.” —Aliette de Bodard, 2012 & 2013 Nebula Award winner, 2012 Locus Award winner, 2010 & 2015 British Science Fiction Assoc. Award Winner “It’s a geek’s dream combination: mix Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a Space Shuttle caper, and a beautiful-brilliant computer wiz femme fatale who just happens to be cooking up some smart AI. I laughed out loud during many sections, and was glued to the book throughout.” —William Hertling, author of The Singularity Series and Kill Process “…part John Clancy thriller, part Spider Robinson wordplay, part Robert Heinlein wonder, part homage to geek culture mixed together with clever originality... Sharp took a lot of gambles and pulled out all the stops to give us a thrilling ride (kinda like flying on a rocket...) On top of that, he gave us a cliffhanger ending to force us to beg for the next book!... It’s impossible to categorize this story because there are so many different elements that one would think would conflict, but they all end up working well and forming a synergy that proves this piece to be jaw-dropping literature. If you like the truly unique and well written, then you will love Channel Zilch.” —Jon Del Arroz, author of Star Realms: Rescue Run

Doug Sharp was a successful computer game designer and developer who created two hit games-ChipWits and The King of Chicago—in the mid-80’s before epilepsy forced him to stop programming in 1988. In 1991, when his health allowed him to, he dove back into programming and coded and managed in Microsoft Research’s Virtual Worlds Group, where his title was Demo God. A recurrence of epilepsy in 1997 disabled him. Doug attended Clarion West Writer’s Workshop in 2002, which helped launch his writing career. His health deteriorated as his seizures damaged his brain, inflicting him with Central Pain Syndrome and cognitive loss. He moved to a remote Wisconsin lakeshore cabin in 2004 and spent 8 years living in the wild before moving to wondrous Vashon Island, WA in 2012. Doug is co-founder and Board member of the Central Pain Syndrome Foundation. Doug donates 15% of profits from the Hel’s Bet Series to the CPSF.