Bergmann's Team

The Bergmann

by George Pinneo

Bergmann's Team continues Guy andNita's effort to acquire a Human Team to assist Banderatand Striver engineers in diverting the comets threatening Earth.¿ The core of their team:¿ Guy, Nita and the Twins, demonstrate they cango EVA and perform well in space outside the Striver starship Dawn Star, surprising both Strivers and Banderat.¿ Theyrecruit NASA trained astronauts to join them; the Team moves up to 'TerraHouse' aboard the starship for the interim, training before the cometsreach Mars. Guy and the Twins rescue four young Banderatjuveniles and put down a Banderat mutiny, freeing acaptured Striver trooper, demonstrating Humans possess altruism and will fightwhen compelled.¿ They augment their teamand begin preparing Earth's governments for the oncoming comet storm.¿ They make plans for post-comet business andplan for space tourism as one way to pay for routine access to orbital life andbusiness.

372 pages, Paperback

First published March 2, 2004

About the author

George Pinneo, an army-brat, lived in 4 states and 8 different locations during WWII. He grew up in NW Ohio, graduating from Case Institute of Technology with a B.S.Ch.E. in 1959. His technical career spans 53 years of experience: front-end wafer fab microelectronics, diode laser and hybrid packaging with a focus on fully hermetic package design and manufacture. Along the way he was the fourth founder in a successful article surveillance startup in Hollywood Florida. This entrepreneur loves to the phrase: “you can’t do that!”; and then to do it, of course! One of his specialties is fluxless hard soldering, which is hermetic.

Family vacations have taken the Pinneos from through Canada to Alaska, to Hawaii, into Mexico and the Caribbean with sojourns to Western Europe and to New Zealand and parts of Australia. So far, they’ve visited 18 Caribbean islands, 7 Canadian provinces, 49 of the 50 States and 11 Mexican estados. He has no intention of visiting North Dakota. The family lives up on the Mogollon Rim of Arizona near the White Mountains.

At the age of 55, he earned a private pilot’s license and then built an all-metal 2-seat experimental homebuilt airplane, which he has spent 17 years “refining”. He has twice flown cross-country to the annual EAA fly-in in Oshkosh WI. Other hobbies include sailing, canoeing, black powder cannons and hiking.

A glimpse into his notions of what constitutes “good SF” includes solid engineering principles based on hard scientific fact, extended in a linear manner to anticipate ongoing work not yet published. First contact interaction is especially prized. Although they can be entertaining, magic and fantasy have no place in hard SF; they demonstrably don’t “work”!

Philosophically, SF should teach not only new words, but also new concepts. “Good SF” should be uplifting, positive; Bujold has shown SF can also be romantic in her “A Civil Campaign”.