Ron Collins

Collins, Ron. Starflight. Skyfox, 2016. Stealing the Sun 1.
Starflight’s hero, Lt. Cmdr. Torrance Black, is an officer on a ship that will establish humanity’s first efficient FTL system. But saboteurs onboard object to corporate control of the technology, and some of his fellow officers have motives less than honorable. Then, there are signals from interstellar space that may be from an alien civilization, but his bosses want to cover them up. All this intrigue puts his career in jeopardy, threatens his love life, and sets a bad example for his young engineering protégé. Author Ron Collins is a journeyman author who developed this novel from a story originally published in Analog. Before his writing career took off, Collins worked as an aeronautical engineer. Sadly, believable engineering is largely absent here. One would like to know more than one does about how this mission plans to extract large amounts of material from Alpha Centauri A to build its star drive. 3.5 stars.… (more)

The first story of the book, The White Game, was so terribly good, that I could not go on reading. I had to digest it first. I am not from America, I am from Europe. So I did know the stories about Rosa Parks etcetera. But this story really brought it home to me..
After that, I took the stories one by one. They did not have such an impact on me like the first one, but they certainly did have an impact.
Of course there are stories which I liked the most.
The first one, as I think I have made clear. The Ten Days of Newtonmas, about sexual harassment and what you could do against it. Hero #8, so heartbreakingly sad.… (more)