
Timothy Johnson
Speculative Fiction Author
About
Timothy Johnson is a writer and editor living outside Washington, D.C. His published writing includes the novels The Pillars of Dawn and Carrier as well as short fiction from Gamut, Haven Speculative, Crystal Lake Publishing, Inked in Gray Press, and others. He is a graduate of the MFA in creative writing program at George Mason University and a member of the Horror Writers Association.
Latest Reads

“Starlight Vigil”
A sci-fi story aboard a generation spaceship with the fate of humanity on the line

“A Winter Bloom”
A slipstream story about two brothers, the enduring connection they share, and an urn

“Touch of Ruin”
A story about good intentions, the power to give life, and law of conservation of mass
Latest Blog Posts
Novels

The Pillars of Dawn
Light up the darkness
Humanity is spreading throughout the cosmos. For an age, we have reveled in our ability to touch the stars. Now, we are breathing life into new worlds and calling them home.
On the planet Lumen, a once seemingly lifeless and frozen rock, generations have toiled at the Pillars of Dawn to make it habitable. As Lumen’s atmosphere nears stability, something dark stirs in the wild.
One night, a young couple from the colony Vale goes missing in the forest beyond the perimeter wall. The colonists embark upon a search and rescue operation, but they find the wild to be a much more alien and dangerous place than they could have ever imagined.
As Vale faces strife within its walls, the darkness outside the colony threatens the pillars. Something has come from deep within the planet, and it wants its world back.

Carrier
Risk everything, or no one goes home.
With Earth’s resources on the verge of exhaustion and worldwide civil war imminent, we looked to the stars for answers. Beneath the surface of lifeless planets, we found all the resources we could ever consume.
Stellan Lund is chief security officer aboard the Atlas, a carrier. Life on a carrier is peaceful. As long as the Atlas’ crew does its job, the New Earth Council leaves them alone. The only risk is an occasional case of black madness, a mental-break condition that is thought to be caused by extended deep space travel. It’s a small risk to take for freedom.
But then Adelynn Skinner, an agent of the New Earth Council, boards and orders the Atlas to uncharted territory where a dying planet with unidentified material waits. It could be the key to ending New Earth’s civil war—or it could end civilization as they know it. They will break protocol and mine the planet before its red giant star consumes it because some risks are worth taking.
Stellan isn’t about to let Skinner jeopardize the Atlas or its crew, but with mounting disturbances and rising concern over the black madness, Stellan struggles just to hold the ship together.
When an accident exposes some of the crew to the alien material, reports of black madness escalate. But something about these cases is different—and it seems to be spreading.
Combining character-rich storytelling, a dynamic plot, dystopian themes, and suspense that builds into an avalanche, Carrier follows Stellan Lund as he discovers he carries the fate of a world and that sacrificing whatever remains of his soul may be necessary to survive. Carrier is an action-packed, horrifying contemplation of what it means to be human and heroic, ultimately investigating how the most beautiful human traits may lead to the destruction of all that we hold dear.
Because some risks are worth taking. What would you risk to survive?
Do you come in peace?