Francis Mont Livres

After a nuclear war destroyed most of the USA, a few surviving towns in the Sacramento Valley, California, try to rebuild their lives. The six towns in our Valley form an interesting little ‘country’ - independent in their internal organizations, but trading with each other by contributing their strengths in areas in which other towns have deficiencies. It’s an all-around win-win community. Inside these towns, vibrant social experiments explore the different ways human beings can relate to each other. They have economic systems ranging from Capitalism to Communism; from agricultural cooperatives to Technocracy; from benevolent dictatorship to pure anarchy. The beauty of the system is that no one is trying to force their way on anyone else, ideology was replaced by pragmatism - each town follows its own idea of what works for them.

The final volume of the Valley Trilogy. The first volume "House Arrest - A Story of Liberation" described how survivors in the Sacramento Valley, after a nuclear war, start to rebuild their lives and defeat a tyrannical government in the town of Sacramento. The second volume "Rainbow Valley - A Story of Choices" continues the saga by describing how six towns in the valley organize their lives according to different economic principles choosing a social organization that works for them. Finally, this third volume: "Valley of Hope - A Story of Consequences" talks about how consequences of past mistakes, like ignoring climate change, catch up with the folks in the Valley, threatening their survival. They have only one hope: find another planet where they can start with a clean slate. In the meantime, they have to hide in underground cities when life above ground becomes too dangerous. The chickens have come home to roost and our abused and exploited planet Earth demands justice.

The "Time Scope", is a Sci-Fi TV Set that can be tuned to any space and time coordinate and observe events, without sound, as they took place in the past. It has control buttons and dials for 'Power', 'Time', 'Space', 'Zoom', 'Speed', 'Scan' and 'Track'. It is used, among other things, by an American Senator to find out if his party's presidential nominee, a retired general is, in fact, a power-mad maniac with dictatorial ambitions. He wants to save his country from a rogue president who could cause immense harm to both the USA and to the rest of the world. This is the smallest of their problems, The bigger one spans the entire galaxy.Based on a novella by the same author: "Time Scope" it was rated highly by one Amazon reader: "What an intriguing concept! A time scope capable of looking into the past is a new twist on the time travel idea, and one that has plenty of possibilities. Once I started reading this, only duty could stop me. Like everyone, I have a few of those to slow me down, but the story stayed with me even when I wasn't reading. The only thing that held me back from a 5 star rating was that I feel like there's more story to tell, more stories within the story, and I'd love to read an extended version. Every character in the story had elements that could be further explored." - So I did what she has asked for. The result is this novel.