Harvesting Earthlings for Fun and Profit is the sequel to the best seller It Gives You Strength, which followed alien anthropologist Tashan Zho as he traveled to New York in 1926 at the height of Prohibition. In NY, Zho was caught in a gang war between rival bootleggers fighting for control of the New York-to-Canada smuggling markets.

In Harvesting Earthlings for Fun and Profit, it is 1934 and Dr. Zho’s once idyllic planet Dagan is ruled by a brutal dictator. Zho is now a refugee hiding on the primitive planet Earth to escape Dagan. Of course, in 1934 the United States was in the throes of the Great Depression, and Dr. Zho experiences a very different America. The book examines those differences while also building the world of Zho’s home planet Dagan, where the Dictator Arixn is using a modified version of the Roman Coliseum to divert the attention of Dagan’s citizens from the fact that their civil rights have been severely eroded. Running low on gladiators for its New Coliseum, the dictator Arixn decides to send a force to “harvest Earthlings” to fight to the death on Dagan. Zho elicits the help of old friend Major Mike Kelly to stop the Harvesters. 

Like Strength, Harvesting Earthlings is a mashup of historical fiction, science fiction, and fantasy. The story is told through the fictional characters interacting with actual historical figures like J. Edgar Hoover, Jack Dempsey, Clark Gable, Edith Cavell, and mobsters John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Baby Face Nelson.

This is the second book in a series that will follow the alien Dr. Zho and war hero/bootlegger Mike Kelly through three of the most tumultuous decades in American history. The unnamed third volume of the Strength series is set during WW2 and will be released by or before 2023.