Press Release

The Ship Finder Portrays Conflict, but Has Anti-war and Anti-discrimination Themes

Livermore, Calif., March 17, 2014 :  How will future generations deal with greatly extended lives, human cloning and war fought with much more devastating weapons than we have today? The recently published sci-fi novel, The Ship Finder, addresses those questions. It also provokes readers to think about how advanced medicine and machines could affect society.

“I wrote the book simply to tell an exciting story, but I later realized that the themes it conveys are anti-war and anti-discrimination,” said the author, John G. Bluck, a retired NASA public information officer. “The main character is Dr. William Wilson, a physician who finds a wounded extraterrestrial man along a park pathway. After treating alien Richard Raven, Wilson’s adventure begins.”

According to the book’s back cover, a “ship finder,” which looks like a silver pocket watch, leads Wilson to Raven’s ship. The world Wilson enters is chock-full of advanced technology, machines and weapons. He meets beautiful extraterrestrial women and learns about medicine that has enabled the people of planet Sunev to live greatly extended lives. As he learns more about Sunevian society, he begins to question its values and government. Interplanetary war erupts. Wilson must decide if he should become involved, and if so, which side to join.

Bluck retired from NASA in 2008 as a public information officer. Previously, he was Chief of Imaging Technology at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. Before that, he worked at NASA Lewis (now Glenn) Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio, where he produced NASA documentaries.

Earlier, Bluck was a broadcast engineer at WMAL-AM/FM, Washington, D.C. At WMAL-TV (now WJLA-TV) in Washington, he was a news film cameraman who covered local and national stories including Watergate. In 1976 he was named the National Press Photographer Association runner-up cameraman of the year in the Northeast. During the Vietnam War he was an Army journalist at Ft. Lewis, Wash. He was born in Chicago and grew up in Glen Ellyn, Ill. Today, he resides in Livermore, Calif.

Paperback and e-book versions of The Ship Finder are available on-line at many popular Web stores. The paperback was published at CreateSpace in February 2014.

A publication-size image of the book’s cover is available by clicking here.