Welcome
Science fiction, Sun, stars, and planets
with links to fiction, popular science books, and professional publications
About Karel Schrijver
As an astrophysicist, he studies the Sun and stars like it, and their impacts on planets, using mainly space-based telescopes such as NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. He has published popular science books about stars and exoplanets as well as science fiction in which he explores reality, consciousness, and identity. Whether in his professional or in fiction, science is an important part of his life, but so are traveling around the world and hiking wherever nature offers striking views and abundant wildlife. He lives near Portland, OR, with his wife, Iris, and their dog Mioko.
Science fiction
IMMERSION - available in print, e-book, and audio form
While investigating disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle, the submarine of a 21st-century investigating team led by Dr. Jack Briggs becomes stuck in a swamp, four centuries into their past. It appears they have ended up near Amford, a northern-European city under siege, where they find themselves entangled in a web of war and political intrigue. The challenge to understand what is happening to them is magnified when they run into a 23rd-century AI programmer working on virtual tourism.
As the worlds of sorcerers, scientists, and virtual travelers collide, the intertwined reality of past, present, and future is but one challenge. Views of reality, consciousness, and existence are upended while an evil mercenary sets out on a path to catastrophic war that could destroy them all. Nobody is safe. Can they find a way to join forces and save the world?
Science fiction
THE WHITE PRISON - available in paperback and e-book form
As an interplanetary probe melts its way through miles of ice on Saturn's moon Enceladus, the crew discovers a life form. While investigating the aliens' labyrinthine clusters of structures, they soon find themselves outsmarted and subjected to psychological experiments. Their efforts of building a precarious trust are soon thwarted as Earth's industrial interests in the chemicals of this life form clash with the crew's desire to protect the apparently fragile habitats from being harvested. But the Enceladeans quickly learn how to protect themselves, deciding that a preemptive strike on Earth makes for the best defense.
In this standalone sequel to the author's IMMERSION, astronauts inhabit a comfortable AI-generated world while they explore the hostile real-world setting of the distant moon. Once they learn to communicate with the alien life form, they find striking parallels between the Enceladeans and themselves. When the probe's crew discovers the foundation of Enceladus' ecosystem, they have to decide how to protect Earth and Enceladus from greed, destruction, and all-out war.
Popular science
ONE OF TEN BILLION EARTHS - Available in hardcover, e-book, and audio form. Coming in paperback in October 2021.
A look at the fascinating world of exoplanets and their discovery, and what we learn about our own home in space from the thousands of planetary systems discovered in the past few decades.
Popular science
LIVING WITH THE STARS - Available as hardcover, paperback, and e-book.
Written with his wife, Iris, a physician, this book explores how the human body is connected to the life cycles of the Earth, the planets, and the stars.
Textbook
PRINCIPLES OF HELIOPHYSICS - Available as free pdf on arXiv.
Heliophysics is the science of everything that connects the life-giving Sun to the comfortable climate of Earth, but also the many processes that link stars in general to their planetary systems. This is a free on-line textbook for advanced undergraduates, written by 61 experts in a wide variety of fields. It accompanies a series of books with much more detail published by Cambridge University Press.
In the professional literature
If you want to find his work in the professional astrophysical literature, follow the link below: