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The Novels and Short Stories of W.R. Hammons

Here are a few examples and descriptions of my fiction (the titles and descriptions of works which have been posted in their entirety appear as hyperlinks). No material posted on this website may be reproduced without my express written permission (click on "Contact" above to e-mail me). To learn more about me, click on the author's story page.

Amazon, BN, Borders

Alternity, my first published novel:

What if someone went back in time to murder Adolf Hitler?

The above question forms the basis of Alternity, the first installment of a trilogy. The novel’s title is derived from “alternate” and “reality,” and describes the world created by Walter Bayer, a graduate student of physics at the fictional Adams University, and Lieutenant Colonel Adam Halstead, a military history instructor at West Point, when they travel back in time to November 11, 1918.

November 11th, of course, is Armistice Day, the final day of World War I. Halstead travels to chaotic post-war Germany and, after murdering the would-be Nazi dictator, assumes his victim’s identity and begins to implement plans for world domination.

Bayer the accidental time traveler is less prepared for the world of 1918, but he finds his own route to success. He becomes first a bootlegger, then a Wall Street investor, and finally a self-described “entertainment financier.” Bayer uses his layman’s knowledge of dormant talents and untried technologies (such as Ernest Hemingway and “talkies”) to create a fortune that he then parlays into efforts to stop Halstead. Unfortunately, things seem to never quite turn out the way he expects…

Jump to a chapter:

Chapter I / Chapter II / Chapter III / Chapter IV / Chapter V / Chapter VI / Chapter VII / Chapter VIII / Chapter IX / Chapter X
Chapter XI / Chapter XII / Chapter XIII / Chapter XIV / Chapter XV / Chapter XVI / Chapter XVII / Chapter XVIII

And click here for an early version of Alternity, written when I was a freshman in college:

The Traveler, Pages 1-43

The Traveler, Pages 44-79

The Traveler, Pages 80-119

The Traveler, Page 120 to End

A FEW SHORT STORIES:

s.t.u.d.

Henry Bacon is a graduating college senior who receives a suspiciously lucrative job offer that leads him to Las Vegas. The offer is rescinded as soon as Bacon’s plane lands, and he finds himself stranded in Sin City until a complete stranger presents a new opportunity...

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Colorado Sky

Sarah Breaux, a New York-based lifestyle magazine journalist, comes across a lost connections website set up by an Ingram Morris, and journeys to Boulder, Colorado to interview the mysterious Internet entrepreneur and find Morris’s lost connection...

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1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10

The First Law of Public Relations

The Director of Public Affairs for NewsWorld Magazine lays out the Seven Laws of Public Relations for his newborn daughter, the first law being “Never admit that you’re in public relations,” for some very good reasons demonstrated in this tale...

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1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6

The Running Men

Four Arab men living in Boulder, Colorado sign up for a marathon in New York City, raising the suspicion of one of the race directors. He calls the FBI, and one of the four is arrested. But the other three are already on their way to New York...

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Death, Life, and Videotape

Laura Tomsen heads home to Boston after her scientist father's tragic death. But, thanks to a new invention revealed to her by her father's assistant, death doesn't seem so tragic anymore...

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1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14 / 15 / 16 / 17 / 18 / 19 / 20 / 21 / 22 / 23 / 24 / 25 / 26

The Crevasse

Which side of the Crevasse will Jim Garner jump to? Or has the jump already been made for him?

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1/ 2/ 3/ 4

First Star

In the year 2021, CIA agent Bradford Bettmann comes across a plot to hijack the U.S.S. John Glenn, a transport spacecraft on its maiden voyage as the first-stage vessel of the United States Space Colonization Program. The agent investigates the kidnapping of a security guard at Miami International Airport and the attempted kidnapping of a member of the SCP, and correctly deduces that the two incidents are related. Bettmann discovers that the plotters cloned several persons, including him, many years before, but he also discovers that one of his fellow “originals” is in a position to help him...

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30/ 31/ 32/ 33/ 34/ 35/ 36/ 37/ 38/ 39/ 40/ 41/ 42/ 43/ 44/ 45/ 46/ 47/ 48/ 49/ 50/ 51/ 52/ 53/ 54/ 55/ 56/ 57

SHORT STORY DESCRIPTIONS

"Twelfth of Ninth"

As one of the two characters explains, it’s a “story about a man and his date who asks more than her quota of one personal question.”

"Loco"

Henry Bacon is a freshman at Adams College who flees its upstate New York campus in the spring of ‘94 after a roommate reads his diary (or “journal,” as Bacon insists to other characters on more than one occasion). He runs after narrowly avoiding commitment to a psychiatric ward and ends up in Manhattan, where he begins a new life and recaptures a small part of his old one.

LONGER WORKS

Here's a description of Farewell, Manhattan, another full-length novel:

Farewell, Manhattan is a novel about a young and ambitious Manhattan stockbroker named Brian Michael Wharton who makes his fortune pushing Internet-related stocks in the early and mid Nineties, and who uses his newfound wealth to pursue his vision of the American dream. Wharton pushes the stocks AOL, Dell, Intel, Microsoft, and Playboy before and as they skyrocket in value (okay, so Playboy is the playboy's one misfire), and he spends his resulting hefty commission checks pursuing the "high" life in locales as varied as Manhattan nightclubs, Paris, and the Hamptons. The work covers the years from 1993 to 1997, a stretch that spans Wharton's graduation from the fictional Adams College, his brief-yet-dazzling Wall Street career at the firm of Davis & Channing, his outward rise from humble beginnings, and his inward descent to an ignoble end.

Here's a description of Evening Star, a science fiction novella:

Evening Star is the saga of Ergos, a planet inhabited by ten billion souls which is dying from pollution and a depletion of natural resources. High Speaker Lolthi, the ruler of the planet, proposes to his Council that the Ergosians colonize the nearby planet of Azura by means of a giant spaceship (the Destiny One), and puts his own son, Erthi, in command of an exploratory mission to that planet's surface. But Lolthi's plan triggers a violent reaction from the Ergosian military when it learns that the High Speaker does not intend to take his many enemies with him...

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