Upended, a hard scifi novel and the first book of a new series, is now available for preorder. Release is anticipated in January, 2026.

“What is Upended about?”

Upended is the first book in a series that follows Dr. Kyle Kessler, one of many victims in a catastrophic lab accident which renders everything and everyone in a mile radius completely weightless. No longer shackled to Earth by gravity, thousands die as they float off into the sky. Kyle and the other survivors are given the choice to regain their former weight with time or go to an isolated training facility. There, they will be exposed to similarly weightless air, water, and food, and trained to be astronauts in the newest space program. NASA intends to build a spacecraft from weightless materials made during the lab accident. Once complete, it will be able to go anywhere without gravity to hold it back.

While they navigate their new weightless environment and wait for their future spacecraft to be constructed from weightless materials, Kyle and his colleagues are the targets of several other trainees who blame them for the accident. But this is just one of many obstacles they face during training. There is sabotage, betrayal, and even a little romance. I liken some parts of the book to Die Hard if John McClane was a weightless scientist and the LA skyscraper was an isolated astronaut training facility. Upended will certainly not be for everyone as it is science heavy, but as always, I try to make that science digestible and integral to the plot.

For comp titles, I am leaning towards Delta V by Daniel Suarez and Stasis Stories by Laurence E. Dahners.

Upended cover reveal.

I created a cover design contest on 99designs for Upended back in the fall of 2024, so I’ve been waiting to reveal the cover for nearly a year now. So here it is:

And the full paperback spread:

I had dozens of submissions, but ultimately : Elementi.studio was the winning artist. Her design had the aesthetic I was after and she was very easy to work with. However, I did buy some of the other designs submitted to be used as promotional material and concept art.

The large sphere of water on the cover is the portion of a lake that was made weightless by the failed experiment. It would go on to rise up into the upper atmosphere, freeze, and become a “static moonlet.” You get a picture of how it formed in the prologue of the book:

A cool wind swept in then, whipping leaves, dirt, and rocks the size of pebbles into a maelstrom. Grains of sand stung Dylan’s skin and eyes as the breeze tugged him even higher, out above the trees.

As he neared the edge of Lake Sammamish, hope welled in his chest. If he could only get above the water, it might break his fall.

Then, with a sinking feeling, he watched the entire northern side of Lake Sammamish balloon out like a sail caught in the wind. The bulge of water rose up and circularized, turning what once had been a flat surface into a massive liquid sphere. Docks and boats tore free of their moorage and joined it. One sailboat managed to stay afloat on the surface of the sphere for just a few moments, its crew clinging to the mast and lines as it was slowly dragged under.

“That doesn’t sound very Hard Scifi.”

The nice thing about gravity is we don’t really know what it is. We know it is one of the ways mass interacts with other mass and we can quantify and predict it to an amazing degree, but as far as the mediator itself, we only have educated guesses. Check out my previous post on the science of gravity if you want to hear more.

All that aside, no, I don’t believe the gravitational science in Upended is at all realistic. But even hard scifi writers are allowed a bit of creative liberty. Personally, I love when an author writes about an astounding— if scientifically unlikely— breakthrough or change to the laws of physics and then uses the rest of the story to show how it would affect society in a realistic and scientifically-minded way. It’s a great scientific what-if, much like the XKCD webcomic (by the author of What-if) who tackles questions like what would happen if a baseball was thrown at 90% the speed of light. Bad stuff happens, really bad stuff. Another author that does this really well is Laurence E. Dahners, a retired orthopedic surgeon. You should check out his Vaz series and Stasis Stories, which explore the effect of cold fusion and time-freezing stasis technologies on the world and the characters who invent them.

For upended, I wanted to explore how the world would react to an event that completely and irreversibly made all matter in a mile radius weightless. What would happen to the people inside the Radius? Would all weightless rock and dirt float away? What about the air? How high would buoyancy lift the weightless people and debris? How would the world respond? How could weightless matter be used? And would people fight over the limited supply? Approaching all of these other things with authentic science in mind is where I think hard scifi really shines.

“Hold on, didn’t you just release a book?”

I did! Motus, my debut scifi dystopian novel is now available in ebook, print, and audiobook.

After soliciting the advice of a couple authors, I decided to put Upended up for preorder just after the release of Motus. Some readers, me included, are more inclined to read a book if they see the author has others in the pipeline. Otherwise, it could be a long wait for another one. So instead of a distraction from the release of Motus, it would serve as another promotional tool.

And there will be more books to follow. I have been writing books since I was 18 years old. That’s 20 years. Two of those books were my “learning books” and I am unlikely to release them into the world. Upended was written back in 2018-2019 and I spent another couple years editing it on and off while sending it to agents and editors. I am now about halfway finished with the second book in the series, Untethered.

And should there be enough interest in a second book for Motus, I already have it outlined and a couple thousand words written. Based on some early reviews, there is indeed interest in a sequel. I am tentatively titling the second book Jezero.

I still have high hopes for another book, IDLE Man, though it is nearly 9 years old at this point and could use some reworking. It also leans more toward the post-apocalyptic genre, so I might decide it isn’t right for whatever audience I cultivate in the next year or two.

I also have another book titled Cored, which is another hard scifi dystopian, similar to Motus, that’s about 25% complete. And I would love to get back to writing it.

In the meantime, I hope you all enjoy Motus and anticipate the release of Upended early next year. Be sure to subscribe to keep up with other publishing announcements. I will be requesting Advance Reviewer Copy (ARC) readers in the next few months. You can also follow me on Instagram and Threads @ p.a.kramer for even more content and updates.

Until next time, write well and science hard.