Hack Rescue - Space Adventure with an Unlikely Heroine

Tom is a Philadelphia native whose 40-year journalism career includes radio, television, print and online work. He holds a bachelor’s degree in communications from Temple University. Tom has written eight books. His latest work, Hack Rescue: Chasing a Cyber Killer, is the third in Tom's Earth-Moon series featuring recurring hero Rick Stein. Tom resides in New Jersey where he hosts a podcast on creativity and does freelance communications work.  As our Author of the Day, he tells us about his book, Hack Rescue.Please give us a short introduction to what Hack Rescue is about.Hack Rescue takes place in the year 2090. Thousands of Earthers, escaping declining conditions, now live on the Moon under a massive, climate controlled dome. A mysterious hacker breaks into their life support system, threatening all 6,000 residents with suffocation. The hacker has also sabotaged the server that controls the many androids now in use and engineered the explosion of a transport killing more than 1,000 innocent people. The hero of the book is a 10-year old android named Peach adopted by global hero Rick Stein. Rick, Peach and the Moon’s top cop set out to find the cyber killer.Hack Rescue throws us into a high-stakes cyberattack inside a lunar colony.What inspired you to explore this kind of crisis—an AI-led revenge mission—in such a futuristic but plausible setting? I like the idea of lunar habitats, though I doubt it’ll ever happen in real life given the immense costs and logistical challenges in building such a dome. I think by 2090, AI will be so advanced, it’ll create both positive partnerships with humans and the most deadly bad guys ever.The Daedalus Dome is a complex habitat with life-critical systems.How much research or imagination went into crafting the infrastructure of this Moon colony? I first explored this habitat in my previous novel, Moon Rescue. My sources for science were the internet and a class of advanced high school seniors in Philadelphia taught by my brother in law who has a master’s degree in mechanical engineering and whose students had diverse interests in science.Environmental collapse on Earth is a recurring backdrop in the Earth-Moon Rescue series. What warnings or parallels were you hoping readers would pick up on?Just that climate change is real and environmental apathy isn’t helping. Experts give us only a couple of decades before temperatures rise enough to really screw up our environment.The book explores revenge driven by AI and hacker warfare. In a world increasingly reliant on tech, were you making a statement about cybersecurity vulnerability in our real-world infrastructure?The message is that no matter how smart our cyber experts are, there will always be a bad guy close behind.The rescue mission spans 3,000 miles. Can you talk about how you used physical distance and isolation to increase tension in the story?Travels that take hours or days increase anticipation and anxiety in most or us. This is a good tool in writing to build tension and a sense of the unknown.You’ve had a long, accomplished career in journalism and EMS. How do your experiences in high-stress, real-world emergencies influence your writing of crises in sci-fi settings?Writing fiction allows me to play out worst-case scenarios on the page instead of actually living them. I’ve had plenty of stress in my life, but there is such a thing as good stress. Writing is an escape and a safety valve.As someone who has covered disasters and worked in rescue squads, do you approach writing rescue fiction with a different lens than someone without that experience?No, I just make stuff up. I don’t think my background specifically informs the sci fi work.What’s next for the Earth-Moon Rescue series?Will we see more of Peach, Rick, or perhaps a return to Earth-based drama? I think I’m done with sci fi for now. I am writing a book of short stories, fiction drawn from some real events and emotions.How do you envision the future of human space colonization? Are we headed toward a Daedalus Dome reality—or are we still decades off?I think there will eventually be some limited colonization of the Moon launched from an orbiting space station. NASA’s Artemis program envisions this but given the costs and the current administration’s attitude towards spending money on anything but immigration enforcement, I don’t see Artemis taking shape in the near future. The idea of traveling to Mars is crazy, expensive, dangerous and probably deadly for such a crew.What do you hope readers take away from Hack Rescue, besides the thrills and action?That science fiction should be mainly about people, not gadgets and flying cars.If you could send Hack Rescue back in time to your younger self just starting in journalism, what do you think he’d make of it?I think he’d like it. My younger self adored science fiction from the days of Lost In Space through the original Star Trek series and beyond.