What’s been happening with the Kirov Series?

A lot!

Readers who first discovered the book Kirov in 2012, and stayed with the series as it recounted a complete alternate history of WWII, may think the series has ended, but that is hardly the case. It’s like climbing mount Everest. You reach a base camp, rest and then move on. After reaching a resting point at  volume #64, fans who relied on the bimonthly arrival of a new series volume were then treated to an complete 9th Season when Volume #65 appeared under the appropriate  title Encore. That spawned a series of four more volumes involving the alternate Meridian where Imperial Japan was not defeated in WWII, but fought to obtain a negotiated settlement that enabled Japan to survive into modern times as an Imperial Power. The Pacific is divided into regions ruled by Japanese Daimyos and clans, which compete for territorial possessions, but always unite against any outward threat like the powerful United States Navy.  Into this mix comes Kirov, and as one might expect, not long after, the fireworks begin. One powerful Daimyo, Odo Nobunaga, becomes both a friend and foe of Vladimir Karpov and company. Encore is followed by Kirov Series #66 Clash of Empires, #67 Limbo, #68 An Hour For Vengeance, and #69 The Rage of Fujin, all set on this alternate Meridian.

In #70, however, Director Kamenski recruits Karpov and Fedorov on a most unusual mission and the series takes a startlingly different turn. Kirov Docks at Sevastopol while Karpov takes command of a small new spacecraft called Theseus. His mission: to rendezvous with a massive newly discovered Asteroid which gives this volume its title Goliath, and to divert it from its catastrophic collision course with Earth.

That mission sees the core cast of Kirov Series characters in space, where they discover the asteroid is escorted by alien ships of a race Kamenski calls the Kroth. This evil Alien race is planning to destroy Earth as it once destroyed Mars in eons past. These are the same demons Karpov and Fedorov first encountered in Series volume #61, Queen’s Gambit when Fedorov got too curious in Antarctica—the Skeletals or Ice Men. Since Theseus has strike missiles, Karpov goes to war to drive off the Kroth ships so they can enact a plan to divert this massive asteroid, and save Earth from an extinction level impact. What next?

Well, how are you going to keep them home on the farm after they’ve seen Paree? Both Karpov and Fedorov take a new interest in outer space, particularly because Kamenski tells them that Kroth will return to Earth again with a massive fleet in the year 2135. To face this grave threat, Kamenski takes our heroes to 2035, and there they manage to capture, cage, and display one of the Ice Men at the United Nations for the whole world to see on TV. Then Kamenski and Karpov make an urgent appeal to Earth, revealing their many encounters with these beings, and urging all nations to unite as one against this grave external threat. Having recently frustrated the first invasion attempt by a small Kroth fleet when they undermined their landing site with tactical Nukes, Earth believes the threat is real and unites to face it as one people.

Kamenski tells the leaders of Earth that they must now use the combined industrial power of the entire planet to design and build a fleet of starships to meet the invading Kroth fleet and be the first line of defense. The Director promises assistance from his people in the future with both technology and designs for a new navy to be called Earthforce, and who will command it? ...Vladimir Karpov, the hero of the Goliath Expedition who has already saved Earth once. For the next 100 years, Earth manages to build at least one starship each year to create a fleet of 110 ships by the year 2130. After dueling with a smaller Kroth vanguard, Kamenski warns Karpov that the Main Kroth Fleet, 300 ships, will arrive in the year 2135.

So Karpov and his officers, now in the year 2130, take command of Earthforce. With only five years until the enemy fleet arrives, Karpov decides to secure and fortify Mars as an outpost in the inner solar system, and set up bases in the outer system as well. That then launches a series of fascinating books set within the Solar System, and centered on and around the planet Mars. These are: #71 Earthforce Mars, #72 Invasion Mars, #73 Sons of Ares. Then after a surprising development involving Fedorov comes, #74 Blood of the Ancients, a book the Author says Fedorov himself had a hand in writing. It recounts the migration of the last survivors of an ancient Martian race, that was moved to Earth by the benign assistance of the Greys. This race could pass for modern Day humans in appearance, and the Martians are indeed the elder brothers of Humanity. The book presents several incidents that see the Sons of Ares intervene in ancient Human history, from as far back as the Neanderthals to the period of ancient Greece at the time of the second great Persian invasion.  Can you spell Thermopylae? We learn that the Sons of Ares are also at the root and stem of the founding of Carthage, which became an advanced maritime power in the western Med until it was eventually destroyed by Rome in the Punic wars. Having fought through most every modern day war, and then some, the author realizes that there are any number of other wars his heroes could visit with the aid of the Kamenski Device. One task on Fedorov’s mind is how to prevent the destruction of Carthage. That story line unfolds later in Volume #75, The Lost Empire. Fedorov has been searching for evidence of an ancient race on Earth that predates the rise of Greece and Rome. He knows what it is, and where it came from.

Then in volume #75, Kamenski asks Karpov to return to the battlecruiser Kirov and venture back to 1972. On this Meridian, the ancient Empire of Carthage has survived into modern times as a highly advanced society. Kamenski explains that its technological prowess is essential to the building of Earthforce that is to begin in 2030.  An old nemesis, Ivan Volkov, is also alive on this meridian, and behind a plan to instigate war. This is a timeline where WWII never happened in the 1940s, because Hitler was killed in WWI, and Mussolini died of Pneumonia as a 15 year old boy. But that war finally begins late in 1972 when a new strongman in Italy takes on the title of Il Duce, “The Leader,”  and Regia Marina attacks and sinks a British ship in the Med. At the same time, Italy invades a lightly garrisoned British colony in Egypt. So old Mercantile squabbles and embargoes in the Med now graduate quickly to all out war when Italia unleashes its powerful battleships Roma and Impero to back down Royal Navy assets based at Malta.

You guessed it, time to let the Big Dog out! Karpov’s mission is to rejoin Kirov at Sevastopol, move out of the Black Sea and through the Aegean to the Eastern Med. There he sets his mind on sinking Italy’s super battleships and kicking Regia Marina’s ironclad ass. His aim is to neuter Italia’s sea power, assuring a victory by Carthage in North Africa, and preventing the Prussian Kaiser from sending the 1972 version of Erwin Rommel there to reinforce Italy.

These things accomplished when the Zircons fly, Karpov and his officers then return to 2135, in time to meet the first wave of the arriving Kroth main fleet. Here the Admiral’s flagship, the hot new Earthforce Battlecruiser Apollo, stands in as an analogue for Kirov, and  Karpov and Fedorov lead the fight against the Kroth in #76 Call of the Wolf, released just last month in July 2024. Then comes another clever development.

At the end of volume #76, the Kroth prove unable to best Earthforce, and withdraw to Alpha Centauri with what remains of their fleet. When an Astrogation program error sees the fleet flagship Apollo move wildly into deep space, Fedorov exhorts Karpov to take advantage of the incident to visit two nearby star systems with exoplanets, Ross 128 and Wolf 359.

The series has already been all over the Solar System, from Mars, the Asteroid belt, out to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and in one mission, Karpov finds the elusive planet nine, Nemesis. Soon Apollo  is, quite literally, out of this world. At Ross and Wolf, they make some interesting and dangerous discoveries, and their appetite for further exploration sees them advocate for a major Outreach Program to stars and exoplanets within 15 light years of Earth. EARTHCOM  supports this idea, and it gets funded.

So here comes the next volume, #77 in the Kirov series, Outreach (August 2024). Fedorov plans to visit 5 to 7 stars, most in a newly named spur off the Orion Spiral arm where Earth resides. The coming Volume #77 will then see a large expeditionary force of 26 Earthforce ships to be selected by Karpov, and this expedition gets underway in Chapter 1 of volume #77. That story line continues through Chapter 18, seeing the expedition visit, Sirenus, Wolf 1081c, Regia-7, Draconis, and finally a Red Giant star named Dharma, where the 6th planet has been selected for colonization.

When Worlds Collide

Readers of the Dharman series trilogy know all about that planet in the Dharman system. These developments now see the three book Dharman series characters meet and join forces with the core Characters on the Kirov Series in an alliance against the dangerous alien threat discovered in book #3 of the Dharman Series, an intelligent species made of Dark Matter, which is emerging into the realm of normal Baryonic matter. Voila! We’ve got ourselves another war, this time set in and around the Dharman system, where Kandemir Troyak, with Sergeant Jekko, eventually leads a recon into the Wild Zone with an ELMO in tow, and Karpov joins the small fleet that Commodore Tico took to Sauron’s Eye (Fomalhaut) in the trilogy’s third volume, Nightwatch. There they discover more evidence of this new alien species, and its intentions. The first encounters with these “Shadows” as they are called in the story, begins in the second half of Outreach, starting with Part VII, Chapter 19. Now Fedorov, Karpov and all the characters of both the Dharman and Kirov Series unite to face this grave threat, and the story gets wild.

So having sailed every sea on Earth, and fought in every war in modern history except the Korean War, Karpov now gets one more fight against the Shadows. Not only will it decide the fate of five colony sites established in his Outreach Program, the fate of Earth itself and all Humanity is again on the line. What a way to freshen and enliven a story now spanning an incredible 77 books! Billed as Military Science Fiction, both of these series have great characters and exciting and often mysterious plot lines. The alien creatures the author creates on these exoplanets, and the suspense that gets jinned up in those encounters is riveting. As for the author, this man’s imagination knows no bounds. You can join the Outreach Expedition yourself soon, as Volume #77 Outreach should be on sale at Amazon by 10 AUG 2024.