Can Oliver Beat the Click and Save His Grandson? The Click by @Steveshearbooks #NewRelease #scifi #t
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  • N. N. Light
    • Oct 24, 2018
    • 4 min read

Can Oliver Beat the Click and Save His Grandson? The Click by @Steveshearbooks #NewRelease #scifi #t


Title THE CLICK

Author STEVE SHEAR

Genre FUTURISTIC THRILLER (SCI-FI)

Publisher THE WILD ROSE PRESS

Book Blurb

In a futuristic society controlled by theocratic zealots, a retired CIA operative racing against time to save his young grandson from prematurely dying unravels a startling conspiracy and the frightening truth about himself.

The Click is a dramatic thriller set in the distant future when all humans reaching the age of seventy-five experience ‘the Click’ and peacefully die in their sleep; God’s chronological death sentence intended to prevent overpopulation according to conventional wisdom at the time.

Handsome Oliver Hitchcock, who looks to be in his late fifties, is a retired narcissistic C.I.A. operative, and lady’s man. He is also one of the lucky ones, a Beater. At seventy-eight he beat the Click and the aging process. His eleven-year-old grandson, Christopher, is not so lucky. Christopher, a Preemie, is prematurely in the throes of the Click and will die within the year if Hitchcock can't save him. To do so, Hitch must fight off the Church of Ecclesia and the Coalition United for Theocratic Oversight, the Cūtocracy, as well as Janine Rousseau, his past lover and strong-willed antagonist. But he has help including the president of the United States and a village hidden in India's heart of darkness.

Excerpt

It began slowly, according to all the articles

appearing on television and the Net, like the upward

seepage of water from a small crack in a pipe below

ground. And then without warning, like a total failure in

the pipe, an explosion of illness, then death, spread

from city to city, from village to village, across the

Earth; citizens of the world on the streets coughing,

vomiting, dying. Many of the more fortunate who

needed to venture out wore masks as they weaved

around deceased bodies yet to be picked up by the

caravan of mortuary trucks that carried with them bright

orange body bags. The citizens still living but too weak

to move from the streets, sidewalks, and even the

gutters were attended to by medics and paramedics who

also knocked door to door hoping to help those who

couldn’t help themselves.

Before the Plague, people lived longer and died of

old age, most of them in their late nineties and older.

Humanity had cured cancer, heart disease, most

infectious ailments, and many old age catastrophes like

dementia. By then the religious fanatics making up the

Coalition United for Theocratic Oversight, the

Cūtocracy, had successfully infiltrated the legislative

bodies of much of the world, including the United

States, institutionalizing many of its theocratic policies

within what were once secular democracies. They

prohibited the highly successful use of stem cell

reproduction to correct birth defects and dismantled all

the international programs scientifically regulating

weather. Indeed, any technological advancement that

placed man above God, at least according to the

Cūtocracy, was considered sacrilegious. The most

dramatic of those policies were the absolute banning of

abortions and birth control, and the insistence on large

families. The combination was synergistic, devastating,

and inevitable—severe overpopulation.

The left-wing populists had no miracles, the rightwing

Cūtocrats no cures, and the politicians no talking

points. Eventually, all the nations of the world raced for

the little bits of land and resources that remained and

began staking their claims. First the Chinese, then

India, two of the four economic superpowers, followed

by the other two, the United States and Neuropa, both

fighting polarizing internal political battles focused

mainly on border control, keeping out the riffraff, and

escalating budgets. They all had nuclear warheads

rusting away in readily accessible silos. A touch of the

button could have easily solved the problem of

overpopulation. A gigantic boom here, a mushroom

cloud there, and presto, no more problem. But alas,

world order was restored, sensitive trigger fingers

anesthetized, and overpopulation was at least

temporarily curbed by the plague’s deadly virus,

quickly dubbed the ERAM virus, Earth’s Revenge

Against Mankind, or sometimes merely ERAM-V. The

water in most places carried the deadly virus, but

sometimes it was the air. The righteous, encouraged by

the Cūtocrats, branded it the hand of Heaven avenging

all the malignant murderers of the innocent and their

renunciation of the Good Books. The Godless ones

repudiated such demagoguery, insisting that the great

lady of nature recoiled against a worldwide population

boom playing havoc with her creation. And so it

went—in churches, on street corners, barbershops,

salons, and on the Net.

With time and deliberate action on the part of all

nations, the plague relinquished its hold on humanity

but not before a startling twenty percent of the world

population fell within its grip.

Well before that devastating plague was more than

a bothersome influenza in areas around the world, a

small segment of the scientific community examined

the virus, the likes of which had never been seen before.

They recognized its virulent nature right away, that it

could and more than likely would rear its ugly head on

a large scale and continuously replicate itself if not

eradicated once and for all. A super vaccine had to be

developed.

Buy Links

Author Biography

The Trials of Adrian Wheeler was my first published novel (L&L Dreamspell, 2011). It was awarded runner-up in the San Francisco Book Festival 2015.

I am happy to say that The Trials of Adrian Wheeler has been optioned as a movie by EVW Entertainment (producer of the movie Break the Stage), and the screenplay has been written by Erik Wolter and me. EVWE is now looking for partners to produce the movie. Erik and I have collaborated on a sequel to the screenplay.

The Wild Rose Press published The Fountain of Youth, my second published novel, in May of 2017. It has received exceptional reviews, some of which appear on Amazon and Goodreads. Also, the stage play has just been completed.

My wife, Susan, and I collaborated on The State vs. Max Cooper and The Steele Deal (published by ArtAge Publications), courtroom plays in which the audience serves as the jury. Both are being produced around the country.

In addition to The Click, presently being published by The Wild Rose Press, I have three novels that have recently been completed: The First Coming, An Eye for an Eye, Black Hearts and Hungry Bears (a trilogy). I have written screenplays on these latter three and am presently collaborating with Erik Wolter on a screenplay based on The Click.

In my earlier days (for approximately forty years) I was an Intellectual Property attorney in Silicon Valley and Boulder Colorado and a painter/sculptor specializing in portraiture and the figure.

Social Media Links

TWITTER - @steveshearbooks

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