The human race is doomed for extermination…

But not for another ten thousand years. When the first aliens to visit Earth meet an untimely demise, humanity finds itself marked for eradication by the technologically-advanced beings. In an effort to aid our future defense, Earth’s greatest warriors are groomed throughout the millennia and sent into space at relativistic speeds, exploiting the principles of time dilation to reconvene together for the pending invasion.

Combining elements of hard science fiction with action and suspense, Dilation is a smart, gripping sci-fi thriller that tells its unique story from both ends of the timeline. When biology professor Denise Walker has her expertise cryptically requested by the U.S. Department of Defense, her career takes a drastic shift towards the unraveling of extraterrestrial secrets. In the 126th century, renowned fighter pilot Nadia Raynor arrives only to discover her skills have been rendered useless by fleets of automated crafts. Searching for her place in the era’s military, she crosses paths with historic figures like Isaac Fowler: the DIA agent notorious for causing the impending genocide.

See the events unfold across the ages for all three characters as humankind struggles to survive long enough to face its potential annihilation. From first contact to invasion, Dilation’s captivating saga will keep you turning pages until the very last!

Warning: contains strong language and depictions of gore.

For those who love their sci-fi as hard as a rock, Dilation: A 10,000 Year Sci-Fi Epic delivers.

Like The Forever War (by Joe Haldeman), Dilation is focused on the concept of time dilation in space travel. Aliens arrive on Earth, but due to an unfortunate accident, humanity kills them. As such, these aliens have marked us for eradication. To prevent this, Earth sends out soldiers and tacticians into space at relativistic speeds, in order to amass a force to fight off the alien threat.

Dilation leans hard into realism. Scientific concepts are a focus of the story, and the accuracy was impressive. In fact, there’s quite the biography at the end listing off the sources the author used. If you’re someone who likes their sci-fi rooted in plausible concepts and scenarios, this is definitely the book for you. It’s clear the author has considered many aspects of future human life, not just weapons or military aspects. The world of the year 12,000 was compelling and fascinating.

Yet, because there is so much realism, the characters fall a little flat. While they do have motives that made sense, there wasn’t space in this novel for any of them to get a lot of backstory or to develop highly complex personalities. Oftentimes their emotions towards a situation or another person are told in a very passive way rather than crafting the scene via dialogue or description of facial expressions and body language. That being said, I did love the diversity and my favourite character was Shino.

Similarly, the action scenes, while few and far between, were exciting, though I found more active phrases would have made them a bit tighter. While the novel has a touch of military sci-fi, don’t go into it expecting David Drake.

I’m more of a space opera fan myself, but if you are a reader who enjoys your science fiction rooted more in science than fiction, you will likely love Dilation.

Travis Stecher, is a writer and musician in Los Angeles, California. After earning his degree in mathematics from UCLA, he worked in a variety of industries before leaving to pursue creative efforts.

He’s a classically-trained vocalist, a multi-disciplined martial artist, and an award-winning mascot. Travis has written both screenplays and short stories; Dilation is his first novel.

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