scepticscribe

the future is not a closed answer; it’s an open question

We respectfully acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands where we live and work. We honour the rich cultural heritage of all First Nations peoples and pay our respects to their elders, both past and present.

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WRITING IN 2025

Numbers on Her Arm

a novel

When a young girl witnesses the brutal, cold-blooded murder of her parents by a Nazi commandant in a concentration camp, a fierce desire for vengeance consumes her. She dreams of seeing two bullet holes in the commandant’s forehead, his cruel face drenched in a cascade of crimson blood.

Her odyssey of revenge is not a tale of myth and legend. There are no stormy seas or enchanted traps—only the relentless pursuit of a monstrous Nazi who lurks in plain sight, first as a revered holy man in India and then as an unassuming teacher in Australia.

Years later, as she watches blood trickle from two precise holes in the monster’s forehead, one question lingers: who robbed her of her lifelong pursuit of justice?

PUBLISHED 2025

This book is a unique blend of popular science and practical guidance.

Each day, we breathe, walk, think, laugh, worry, sleep, daydream, learn, create, explore, reflect, empathise and connect. The way we engage in these activities encapsulates our lives. This book focuses on what science reveals about our daily experiences. Fifty short, simple and spirited stories in this book suggest a strictly scientific path to inner peace and tranquillity—they are not personal, spiritual or speculative. Reading them requires absolutely no background in science, only a curious mind.

PUBLISHED 2024

Updated 2024 edition of the most popular book on the riddle of the incredible Siberian explosion of 1908, The Mystery of the Tunguska Fireball, first published by Icon Books, UK, in 2005.

At about 7:15 a.m. on June 30, 1908, a massive fireball exploded in the skies over Siberia. With force a thousand times greater than the Hiroshima atomic bomb, it levelled over 2,000 square kilometres of the remote Tunguska forest—an area larger than metropolitan London—sending a mushroom cloud towering into the stratosphere.

What was it? A wayward black hole, a crashing comet, a rogue asteroid, an exotic rock of antimatter or mirror matter, a methane gas blast from below, an alien spacecraft, a laser beam fired by extraterrestrials, or an early experiment in nuclear physics that got out of hand?

Nearly a century and a quarter on, this grand dame of science mysteries still fascinates scientists and charlatans alike.

Whichever way you look, the Tunguska event is a captivating journey in serious science, speculative science and science fiction. This informative and engaging book invites you to explore that journey and perhaps glimpse the truth behind this enigmatic explosion.

HARDCOVER, PAPERBACK AND KINDLE EDITIONS AVAILABLE ON AMAZON

PUBLISHED 2021

First published in 2007 by Icon Books, UK, as Why Aren’t They Here: The Question of Life on Other Worlds

Is there anybody out there? Are other life forms lurking in outer space – or are they already here?

This calm, intelligent, and witty survey of humanity’s search for extraterrestrial life brilliantly outlines the historical, fictional, speculative, and emerging scientific opinions on what alien life might be like.

The fast-moving narrative examines facts, dispels myths and focuses on the possibilities lurking in space. In a popular and easy-to-read style, the author uses current research to speculate what life is like on exoplanets (or extra-solar planets), how we might communicate with it, and what Earth might seem like to visitors.