The Astral Imperative, Vol. I – Review

The quest is as large as they come: To ‘penetrate the mind of God.’The Astral Imperative, Volume I: The Dream – Presented as the first volume in a philosophically focused science-fiction trilogy.

In the year 2037, when the earth has been savaged by violence, the starship Aelita is headed into the void, the first human voyage to Mars, captained by Adam Sietzer, who has notions of bringing the world back together in harmony.

Dresner’s evocative writing is the kind that summons the dream of many an old science-fiction reader eager to recreate the “sense of wonder” upon first exploring the cosmos between the pages of a book. He’s colorfully descriptive: “Dusk on the red planet was most beautiful; the sky turned vermillion, blue, yellow, with an occasional hint of green and violet, the landscape turning to pastel shades of gold and pink. Distant peaks cast long and languid shadows across the rocky terrain, and puffy clouds clung to the mountaintops.

Unlike that of all too many self-published works, Dresner’s writing is clean and well edited. His characters also defy the low expectations of self-published works, rising from the page as real, three-dimensional people.