The Variable Man
“They could predict everything. Except him.”
Sci-Fi • Time Travel • Adventure
When handyman and inventor Thomas Cole is accidentally transported from 2021 to the year 2236, he enters a civilization where computers predict nearly everything—including the outcome of an approaching interstellar war. There is only one problem: they can’t predict him. His instinctive ability to repair what the future no longer understands makes Cole the one variable capable of changing everything.
Coming Soon
About the Book
Thomas Cole is a brilliant but unconventional handyman and inventor—a man who understands machines instinctively and has never met something broken he couldn’t figure out how to fix.
Then an experiment in his garage goes spectacularly wrong.
Pulled from 2021 and thrown more than two centuries into the future, Cole awakens on Terra in the year 2236—a technologically advanced civilization where nearly every decision is governed by statistical prediction. Machines calculate probabilities, governments plan wars according to mathematical odds, and society has become so specialized that technology is replaced rather than truly understood.
But the machines cannot predict Cole. His improvisation, intuition and ability to solve problems outside established systems make him an impossible variable—and a threat to Security Commissioner Darin Reinhart, whose plans for war with Proxima Centaurus depend upon the accuracy of Terra’s predictive computers. When scientist Peter Sherikov discovers that Cole may be the only person capable of completing the control system for Icarus, a revolutionary faster-than-light weapon, the handyman from the past suddenly becomes one of the most important—and dangerous—men in the future.
Caught between scientists who need him, authorities who want him eliminated, and a war whose outcome may depend upon what he chooses to repair, Cole discovers that humanity’s greatest technological weakness may be the very thing machines can never calculate: human ingenuity.
Book Details
Title: The Variable Man
Author: James Leach
Based on: The novella The Variable Man by Philip K. Dick
Genre: Science Fiction / Time Travel / Adventure
Setting: Earth/Terra
Timeline: 2021 / 2236
Format: Novel
Status: Coming Soon
Available: Coming Soon
About the Author
James “JC” Leach, USAF (Ret.) is a U.S. Air Force military veteran, technical writer, instructional designer, and screenwriter whose work blends operational realism, geopolitical tension, and deeply human stakes.
With more than two decades of experience across military aviation, electronic warfare, technical documentation, intelligence-related training, and instructional design, JC brings a combination of field knowledge and narrative discipline to his fiction. His U.S. Air Force career included electronic warfare and airborne systems, thousands of flight hours, and extensive experience working within complex military and aerospace environments.
After years developing screenplays, James brought that same cinematic instinct to long-form fiction, combining visual storytelling, technical authenticity, and character-driven suspense.
JAMES LEACH Author • Screenwriter 