Joseph Rhea

There was a discussion on KindleBoards.com recently regarding how we name the characters in our stories. Some writers replied that they put a lot of effort into them, while others preferred "plain" names with no real significance. Like the former, I spent a fair amount of time coming up with names for the major characters in my scifi novel, Cyberdrome. This was especially true for the hero, Alek Grey: Alek is short for Alexander which means "Defender of Man" (appropriate for a person who is quite literally risking his life to save humanity.) Grey comes from Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray" Why? Central to my story is the possibility of experiencing many years within the space of a few hours (connected to a virtual reality environment) which ties into the theme of Dorian Gray (he sells his soul to ensure that his portrait will age rather than himself). Also, the main "love interest" is named Maya, which "in Indian religions...

When I finally went to see James Cameron's movie, "Avatar" back in Feb of 2010, I saw firsthand what many reviewers had been telling me since it opened. There were so many similarities between Cyberdrome and Avatar that realized that my chances of ever getting a film deal were nearly zero. Anyone reading my treatment would say, "been there, done that--by Cameron!" Similarities include a protagonist in a wheelchair (who uses an avatar to escape his confinement and ends up wanting to stay in his new body), an interface room that is nearly identical in both design and function from what my brother and I created 10 years ago, and Pandora's inhabitants look like a cross between my Blue Sentinels and a cat-like creature I call a CeeAut. Other similarities include a aircraft called a Dragon, and a drop ship that is functionally identical to one of our aircraft. There are numerous others, but you get the idea... Now, I'm not saying that James Cameron--or o...

Cyberdrome Deleted Scenes Part #7 - Aleks original encounter with Klaxxon Background In Chapter One, after Alek's encounter with Stacy, he meets an old ally named Klaxxon. In the original version, this meeting was much longer and takes place in virtual reality. I gave up this version because it made readers think this "primitive" version of VR was what Cyberdrome was all about, while in fact it was more of an homage to previous cyberpunk novels. I hope you enjoy this final deleted scene from Cyberdrome... Deleted Scene As the neural override ramped up to full power, sensory data from the headset computer quickly overrode the normal signals coming from his eyes and ears to his brain. As the digital signals became stronger than the biological versions, Stacy and the coffee shop receded from view, quickly shrinking to a tiny dot. Floating in the blackness that surrounded him, he felt the usual sense of vertigo, but his hand on the table back in the coffee shop steadied ...

Cyberdrome Deleted Scenes Part #6 - Alek's original encounter with Stacy Background The middle scene in Chapter One of Cyberdrome involves Alek sitting in a coffee shop and having a brief encounter with a woman named Stacy, who was pretending to be a waitress to get close to Alek. The original version of this scene was quite long and involved Stacy playing a much more challenging roll. Deleted Scene When his vision cleared, Alek saw a blonde woman standing right in front of his table. Although she was beautiful, she looked like she tried to hide that fact by wearing the funky purple glasses and putting her hair up in a ponytail. Then he saw that she was wearing a metallic blue miniskirt and a thin, almost transparent tank top with nothing on underneath, and realized that she was hiding nothing. "Can I help you?" he asked, somewhat befuddled. "I'm sorry," she said, looking suddenly embarrassed. "It's just crowded in here and I thought ma...

Cyberdrome Deleted Scenes Part #5 - Maya returning to the real world  Background In the original version of Cyberdrome, following Maya's conversation with Dr. Grey on board the Snohomish, she returns to the real world. Below is how she did it. Deleted Scene Maya was tempted to run after him and demand to know what he was planning, but didn't. That would be ridiculous. Mathew was her boss and owed her no explanations. Whatever he was up to, at least it did not involve additional interfacing, and that should be all that mattered. She stepped through the doorway, took a deep breath, and headed down the hall back towards the main elevator. As usual, within five minutes, she was lost.  She passed a group of people in one hall and considered stopping to ask directions, but didn't. The Survey Vessel was filled with more than 500 people, but the fact that none of them were real made her feel alone most of the time. She wondered around on her own for a while and eventually f...

Cyberdrome Deleted Scenes Part #4 - Maya returning to the Snohomish  Background The first scene in Chapter One of Cyberdrome ends with Maya on her way back up to the Survey Vessel "Snohomish" after having a conversation with Dr. Mathew Grey on the Planet. Originally this was a lengthy chapter and followed Maya up to the Snohomish where her conversation with Dr. Grey took place in her office. To get the readers into the heart of the story more quickly, a great deal was cut from this chapter. Below is part of what was removed. Deleted Scene As the aircraft quickly gained altitude, leaving both the child and the planet behind, Maya leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes, and whispered under her breath, “Neither are you, pal. Neither are you.”  The Dragon continued to rise until they were several thousand meters in the air. Then it began moving forward as the thrust from the twin engines transferred from the lifting vents to the rear exhaust ports. Soon, they were scr...

Cyberdrome Deleted Scenes Part #3 - Final Prologue from 2006 Background Since the previous two Prologues made many test readers think that the story was about fighting the plague in Utah (which it isn't), I decided to write a new version. I had an idea that Alek suffered from seizures caused by a previous deep-interface accident, and decided to make that my new Prologue. In the final version of Cyberdrome, published in 2008, I decided to give up on Prologues altogether and just jump right into the action of the story. If you have already read the book, I hope you will agree with my decision. Here now is my final attempt at a Prologue for Cyberdrome. Deleted Prologue "Is this where I belong?" Alek Grey asked the empty room as he stared at the white padded walls surrounding him. The sleeves of the matching white straightjacket hung carelessly down to his sides. "You tell me," the psychiatrist's disembodied voice said. Her tone was at once soft and caring,...

Cyberdrome Deleted Scenes Part #2 - Modified Prologue from 2005 Background In my mind's eye, Cyberdrome was (and still is) a movie. The following Prologue is a more "theatrical" version of the original Prologue I came up with in 2005. Ca you see the opening credits being displayed while the aircraft flies over the snow-capped mountains of Utah? Maybe if a Cyberdrome film is actually made some day, they will want to use this. I can dream, can't I? ;) Deleted Prologue The snow-capped mountains of Northern Utah passed beneath the sleek, unmanned aircraft as it flew just beneath the heavy cloud cover towards its destination; the dead city once known as Salt Lake. As it crossed over a final ridge, the darkened area of the city came into view. When the onboard computer confirmed its location and trajectory with the satellite navigation system, it released its cargo---a small pyramid-shaped container---then banked right and climbed quickly back into the cloud deck.  The...

Cyberdrome Deleted Scenes Part #1 - Original Prologue from 2004 Background This is my original Prologue for the Cyberdrome Novel, and it was titled "Dead City" for reasons you will soon discover. The scene was fully illustrated by David because we were hoping to make a digitally-illustrated ebook. Deleted Prologue Acid rain fell from a starless night sky, pooling in shallow ditches and covering the barren asphalt streets. It melted the plastic signs that once welcomed visitors to city center, and turned long-abandoned plastic-skinned commuter-cars into forgotten skeletons. It also dissolved the outer casing of the city's underground wiring, shorting out all electrical systems, and leaving the city in total darkness.  The man-made rain was the Government's latest attempt to stop the spread of a man-made plague; a bio-engineered version of the influenza-A virus. With surface proteins changing spontaneously every 42 hours, the human immune system was unable to build...

I consider Cyberdrome "hard" science fiction in that every bit of technology is based on current cutting-edge research (I'm a scientist in real life and I had access to a lot of stuff while researching the book). However, in an attempt to make the book as widely acceptable as possible (especially as a debut novel from an unknown author), I made a decision to write Cyberdrome as a classic "Mythological Hero's Journey" (See Joseph Campbell's "The Hero with a Thousand Faces"). As Carl Jung said, "The repeating characters of the hero myth, such as the young hero, the wise old man, the shape-shifting woman, and the shadowy nemesis, are identical with the archetypes of the human mind, as shown in dreams. That's why myths, and stories constructed on the mythological model, are always psychologically true." If you are familiar with this concept, you will probably recognize each of these archetypes throughout my book.  Of course, it doesn...

CYBERDROME A disturbing glimpse into a digital future, not far from now. Mathew Grey is a brilliant scientist who accidentally unleashed a man-made plague that ravaged America’s heartland, and now threatens the rest of the planet. Riddled with guilt and running out of time, he decides to use a dangerous technology to enter a computer-generated reality called Cyberdrome, hoping to unravel a mystery that could be the key to Earth’s survival. Alek Grey was an athlete whose career was cut short by a near-fatal accident. Now he is a software hacker with the unique ability to outsmart the best Artificial Intelligence programs of his day. When he is called in after one of his programs inadvertently attacks Cyberdrome, he is shocked to learn that both his father and ex-fiancée have become trapped inside the simulation, unable to be removed without risk of death.  Alek knows of only one way to rescue the people he loves, but will he risk all of humanity to save them? As you can probably...