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NASA Retiree Writes Livermore Murder Mystery & Sci-fi Tales
A Livermore resident and former TV cameraman who retired from NASA wrote a mystery as well as another story about global warming
Livermore, Calif., November 16, 2017: Livermore resident, former TV news cameraman and NASA retiree, John G. Bluck, has written a murder mystery, "The Knight Prowler, a Novella," set in a Livermore of the future.
"A long time ago I covered daytime crime in Washington, D.C., for the ABC-TV affiliate," said Bluck, a retired NASA public information officer. "So, I decided to write a mystery with a sci-fi twist since I also worked at NASA for 30 years."
The short book is about a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory engineer working on a Top Secret weapons program who is killed. TV cameraman Rick Knight helps his brother, a policeman, to solve this murder.
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The e-book version of "The Knight Prowler, a Novella" will be released Nov. 23 as an e-book for 99 cents. Also on Nov. 23, another of Bluck's e-books, a science fiction story about global warming, "Venus Warning, a Novelette," will be available for 99 cents. Astronauts fly to the cloudy planet, Venus, to explore it in heat-resistant spacesuits. What they discover astounds the inhabitants of Earth. Both short e-books can be obtained at many major on-line bookstores worldwide.
In addition, both "Venus Warning" and "Knight Prowler" are included in a third e-book volume, "Venus Warning & Other Tales," to be released on Nov. 24. This book includes14 other stories by Bluck in the sci-fi, military and general short story genres for $1.99. These tales include yarns about an unusual visitor to California during the Gold Rush; World War II; romance in ancient Italy; and treachery in Brasilia.
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In the near future paperbacks of all three titles will also be available at many on-line bookstores.
Bluck retired from NASA in 2008 as a public affairs officer. Previously, he had been Chief of Imaging Technology at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. Before that, he worked at NASA Lewis (now Glenn) Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, where he produced NASA documentaries.
Earlier, Bluck was a broadcast engineer at WMAL-AM/FM, Washington, D.C. At WMAL-TV (now WJLA-TV) in Washington, he was a news film cameraman who covered local and national stories including Watergate. In 1976 he was named the National Press Photographer Association runner-up cameraman of the year in the Northeast. During the Vietnam War, Bluck was an Army journalist at Ft. Lewis, Wash. He was born in Chicago and grew up in Glen Ellyn, Ill.
