A Presidency under siege. A worldwide pandemic, followed by a global economic collapse. Is a happy ending even possible? Does real life emulate fiction? Or does fiction emulate real life? All five books of the BrainTrust examine topics ripped from today’s headlines: Pandemic, Global Economic Meltdown, Deportation. How closely will the world follow the BrainTrust script? Warning: Political satire included in this near-future hard sf techno-thriller. Please remember the Golden Question: How do you tell if a politician is lying? His lips are moving! Long ago, the President for Life expelled all foreign engineers from Silicon Valley. They moved to… The BrainTrust: A fleet of immense cruise liners jammed with teams seeking the next great breakthrough. A locus freed of bureaucracy and autocracy, a thorn in the side of every dirtside power. A home for creativity where no problem is unsolvable, but no crisis is as simple as it seems. A clean, well-lighted place for …  ferocious commando assaults, and desperate copter combat. The Heroines: Dash: the plucky mad scientist. Ping: the bouncy itty bitty ninja with the Real Big Gun. Jam: the quiet, resilient commando with the grace of a dancer. The Frightening Fact: A little too much of it is coming true. If you can’t laugh about your favorite politician, journey elsewhere. Otherwise, Come Aboard the BrainTrust. Every book a Prometheus Award nominee. ​If you like Robert Heinlein, Michael Crichton, Charles Stross, or Ayn Rand, buy your ticket and come aboard.

The World Economy Crashed and Burned. What's a BrainTrust To Do? Having barely dodged an extinction level event, humanity now faces a new disaster: the world plunges into a Great Crash deeper and more cruel than the Depression of 1929. The BrainTrust has an answer. But the old, corrupt, dirtside Powers don’t need an answer. They need a scapegoat. Soon an unholy alliance launches three mighty fleets, each individually powerful enough to destroy all the combined navies of WWII. Relentless and unstoppable, they bear down on the effectively unarmed archipelago. Now Dash and her mentor Colin must face a last question. It will be her Final Exam. Can Dash even accept the only answer? How terrible is the price she will have to pay? Welcome to the thrilling finale of the BrainTrust saga! ---- Note: For this novel, in collaboration with five economists and two cryptocurrency software engineers, I developed a new currency that should work in real life to flatten the boom/bust cycle. So if you'd like to see one way an advanced civilization could deal with economics, you could read this not only as a good yarn but as a guide.