Ned Kelly - Time Pilot

Ned Kelly - Time Pilot is a new science fiction novel told in an expansive story-telling style reminiscent of Patrick Rothfuss with luminescent descriptive passages that bring to mind Joseph Conrad. Ned Kelly, the famous Australian bushranger, has an unknown past, that is also his future.

Author Andrew P Partington wrote this book during six months of extreme lockdowns in 2021 in Western Australia, and his experiences inform the story and fire the passion that animates the character of Ned Kelly in this novel, destined to become an Australian science fiction classic.

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From the back cover: Ned Kelly peered out through the rectangular eye-slit of his metal helmet. Shrouded in the moon-glow of the early morning mist ascending from the damp scrub, sequestered in a ghostly veil, the police were everywhere and nowhere. The mist moved and Ned glimpsed a sergeant and four or five constables hidden behind mist-entwined shrubs, closer to the tavern, and what was that? A railway guard? Why was he here?

Ned looked into his little brother's eyes. "You coming?" he said.

Dan held his gaze for a moment then shook his head. "Not this time, brother," he said. "Me battery's dead. So is Steve's. You don't have to do it, Ned."

Ned said to himself it wasn't as if, if he didn't go, his brother wouldn't take his last breath thinking Ned didn't care about him.

He'd deplete his own battery if he went any further than a short jump, so Ned dialled in five minutes in the past, expelled all the air in his lungs and pushed the red button. Everything disappeared and he saw all around the indescribable beauty of the purple void, Imaginary Space, so-called not because this place was actually imaginary but because its coordinates were mathematically speaking imaginary numbers, multiples of the square root of negative one. Sure, Ned knew what it all meant; just ask him, any time.

The wormhole rushed past and suddenly he was standing with one foot on a log and the other in a rabbit hole. Ned stumbled and almost fell, for his inertia was carrying him through, but his heel was touching a stone and he managed to push off.

The railway guard was right in front of him, with eyes big as moons, wisps of cloud spiralling around him. The effin coward stumbled backwards and cried out, "My God, what is that?"