Front/back covers by Jade

New 2008 jacket, new typeset throughout

HELLGATE: The Rabelais Alliance
by Mel Keegan


ISBN: 0-9750884-1-6

372pp
cover by Jade


Price:
US$23.00
US$9.95(eBook)

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Read the first 10% of this novel online!
READER ALERT / CAVEAT: the sample readings offered here encompass about the first 10% of these works, and they're uncensored, unabridged. If you will be disturbed by candid descriptions of same-gender romance, or by realistic violence, please don't download! These samples are not intended for younger readers. By clicking to open these documents, you agree that you are of age in your local jurisdiction; you know what you are about to read; and the material will not disturb you ... 'nuff said.

Any "content warning" to readers?
Realistic violence, frank description of same-gender relationships.




PUBLISHING HISTORY:

Two editions produced.
First printing: 2001
Lulu.com edition: 2008.

IN PRINT?
Yes.

HELLGATE: The Rabelais Alliance

In a place where space and time collide, the future of mankind will be decided ... the new masterwork of science fiction from the accalimed author of DEATH'S HEAD, EQUINOX and FORTUNES OF WAR.

No further jacket "blurb" or notes were given: these were deemed unnecessary, since thousands of words and scores of illustrations for HELLGATE are carried on this website, and the novel can be ordered only through the site. So — HELLGATE ... what's it about? Read on!

On the edge of a region of space so terrible it has long been known as 'Hellgate,' the super-carriers of Earth's DeepSky Fleet play an endless cat-and- mouse game with the starship wreckers, the privateers who, alone, can navigate the wilds of the Rabelais Drift.

The super-carriers are the most magnificent ships in space, but under the iron control of a corrupt officer corps, unanswerable to any authority, parsecs from the nearest center of civilian or military justice, these leviathans have become hellships where conscripts are used up and discarded. And in an era where enforced conscription is a way of life, anyone — everyone — will serve the DeepSky Fleet. Many will be assigned to carriers.

It is thirty years since the Confederacy instituted its 'strong Fleet policy,' first taxing the far-flung colonies to build the ships, then conscripting their young people to crew them. Decades ago, Earth's military scientists first became aware of a shadowy nemesis, a faceless enemy so powerful, humankind's closest companion in this region of space was obliterated.

The same fate awaits Mankind, with only the DeepSky Fleet holding defiance against the dimly perceived foe known simply as the Zunshu. But as the day grows ever-nearer for the DeepSky Fleet to fight this ultimate battle, its infrastructure is rotting at the core.

The super-carriers can barely keep pace with the wreckers — mere human foes — and their abused crews have no concept of the mission they were recruited and trained to fight.

Into this arena of misery step two unlikely players. Travers and Marin are from worlds so vastly different, they have only their conscripted military service in common — that, and the desire to survive, to see justice done, and to uncover the truths still hidden by Earth's distant government. Travers is still in the service, but his connections to the privateer fleet would be more than enough to execute him. His current assignment is the super-carrier Intrepid, his field of conflict, the Rabelais Drift ... Hellgate.

In an age of rampant injustice, often justice must be pursued on a personal level. This mission brings Curtis Marin aboard the carrier as the executor of a sanction purchased by a citizen whose son was murdered by a travesty of justice. Marin has come aboard as an assassin ... if he can stay alive long enough to complete his mission ... and if the carrier herself can survive the corruption of her officer corps, the endless battle with the privateers, and the insuperable forces of nature that churn across the ripped face of the void known as Hellgate.

The HELLGATE page
Reader reviews of this title
Read the first segment online!

REVIEWS:

Reader reviews for this novel are online on the site here (visit our Reader Reviews page. (You can post your own comments to this site via the Readers Review page. Please note that this is a "moderated forum," where comments will be monitored, and may be edited prior to posting to prevent burned fingers and trodden toes!)



SEE ALSO

Mel Keegan comments on HELLGATE

The version of HELLGATE which has just been rejacketed for its 2008 Lulu edition is something like the sixth draft of a story which has its origins in the late 1980s! It was first written as a mass market (straight, or "gen" or "het") novel, but the fact is, it was wasted utterly in this form, and I have no doubt that my agent and various publishers saw this. That draft of the book encountered no luck when it was "doing the rounds," and in retrospect the apparent failure was a good thing, because rather than HELLGATE being virtually thrown away as a one-off which was in fact way under-developed, I had the chance to come back to it twelve years later and fully develop the concept. Other factors had to work out just right, too: GMP could not have handled this work, because HELLGATE is a series, and when three or four years go by between novels from a publisher, a series is out of the question. I was also contractually bound to GMP through the "right of next refusal" clause which is standard in anyone's "boiler plate" contract ... HELLGATE just languished in the drawer for more than a decade and did not see light of day till various copyrights (EQUINOX among them) returned to my hands, and I struck up a working relationship with DreamCraft. The magic is, they can handle modest printruns, printing as necessary to fill internet-driven orders. Contrastingly, a publisher like Millivres Publishing Group must print in four-figure runs, to support bookstore distribution, or the project doesn't happen at all. This opens the door to a world of possibility, and even now (weeks after THE RABELAIS ALLIANCE came out), we're still pondering how far we can with the physical aspect of reaching readers and shipping copies. As for the story, and where it is headed —? I don't want to say too much about this, because almost anything I could write here would be a plot spoiler! With HELLGATE: PROBE due in September I don't want to "leak" secrets. But it's fair to say, the second book is a magnification of the first. You'll get backstories on the characters in due course, we get to see the alien technology; there's new worlds and vastly new situations, though the second book begins exactly where the first one stopped. I'm working on it at the time of this writing (early 2003), and it's big fun as always. Cheers to DreamCraft for the tremendous opportunities which came my way. I was delighted with the production qualities, and it was great to be asked for my input as per what went on the cover. This was a first, and a cross between a treat and a relief!

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