"Bad Baby" is the first book of a thrilling new series by author Stephen Martin. It opens when the brothers John and Merlin Cooper were in their teens living in a farm in Florida when they receive the news about their father’s death. This happened in the year 2001, specifically, that other day that will leave in infamy for Americans. However, the Cooper brothers and their mother have little time to grieve as Mr. Cooper’s death has set in motion a plan for his sons to take over the reins of The Janus Group, a leading company in the fields of research and development of cutting-edge technology, and within seven years, they are ready to complete their father’s dying wish.

An old writer’s adage warns against having aliens arrive in the final act of a story, and so Mr. Martin takes the advice to heart and does warn the reader about the other-worldly visitors in the book description, even when they don’t show up until a bit later into the book. Of course, when Jason, from the planet Astralis-9, materializes out of thin air, and discusses the plans that the interplanetary group called The Collective has for Earth, he and the Cooper brothers work together to advance the Human Race with quantum leaps. (Apparently, cell phones have dumbed-down the population and slowed the said advancement.)

Together they face the two biggest roadblocks to achieve their goals. The first one is a powerful group of business magnates. You could say the three of them run the world, but they have even higher expectations and are working together to achieve wealth beyond imagination. They are Terry Schumer, the owner of the business company Xsource; Stuart Sanders, CEO of PandorX which lead the development of AI; and Jerry Warry, the CEO of a genetic engineering firm named RegenX. Of course, any such evil organization must have a fancy name like Ian Fleming’s Spectre, Humberto Eco’s Tres, Marvel’s Hydra, Dan Brown’s Illuminati, and in the case of this book series, the name is Sanctum.

The other enemy of the future world is China, or rather, the dirty corrupted politicians running the country in this book. China is on the verge of declaring their superiority, in particular, their dominance of the seas with the firepower of their fully-armed and operational battle stations. Such action would tip the scale against the benefit of the people.

Jason, John and Merlin make plans to deal with both threats, and the climax of the book is spent in the breath-taking execution of the plan, culminating in a cliff-hanger that sets the stage for the next book in the series, "The Janus Gate."

With the combination of Earth and alien technology, as well as the participation of aliens themselves, "Bad Baby" is an electric mix of a classical techno-thriller with a sci-fi vein. The pace is fast, alternating the point of views between the good guys and the antagonists. The high-stakes high-scale action sequences intertwined with technical lingo descriptions should appeal to any fans of Tom Clancy.