Category: Blog Post

A Clear Flash from the Murky Past



My next book (the one after Saloa which is pretty much done now and in the final stages of the publishing pipeline) is going to enter the muddy waters of alternative ancient history and I’m currently very sensitized to articles like:

“A Cosmic Storm Leaves Its Mark in a Tree” high-tech technique confirms that the Vikings didn’t make up their stories about reaching the Americas.

(not sure about the Powered by Northrop Grumman link for the Viking article, but the tech described in the article is cool:
https://now.northropgrumman.com/vikings-in-north-america-pinpointed-by-cosmic-storm/ )

 

Seems to me that increasingly, stories once considered myth are turning out to be true: Troy, Sunken Countries, Viking Exploits, Great Floods…

 

…so why not Plato’s Atlantis and ancient high technology?

Taking shape in my head is a story of of the giants who came before the time when Sapiens Sapiens had obtained a monopoly on terrestrial technology… a story of great crimes and the punishments of vengeful gods.

 

(Main image: Frank Frazetta)

SALOA and the Flat Solar System Hypothesis



Most people are not interested in fundamental truth nor the nature of reality. Most people, as a friend of mine often quotes, just want to: “get born, keep their heads down, and die… if they’re lucky!” Reality is messy, and, as I point out in my upcoming book, insufficiently graceful to act as a foundation for society.

In the new book, the Kin, one of SāmeruMandala’s factions, embrace this limitation, settling on a world-view fictional enough to soothe simple minds, but with enough utility to support day-to-day interactions. Their cosmology is loosely based on the Indian Vadas, mixed through with generous dollops of flat-earthism.

Maps from my upcoming book (a Space Opera, imaginary voyage of two outer system natives to the home-world):





With this in mind, I just stumbled across this article: ‘Australia is FAKE – and if you think you’ve been there, you’re wrong

I do tend to prognosticate pretty well in my writing—mostly, simply by choosing the most cynical and incompetent action from the options available to our intrepid leaders. Here, the ‘spider senses’ of my paranoid, conspiracy-affine mind, can’t help thinking they are planting the seeds of a new flat-Earth cosmology in order to conveniently push all the wars and poverty to the North (real) while they, the Kleptocrats, and lucky not-so-natives, enjoy the South (mal-information, make-believe land). I’ve got a hunch Australia and New Zealand will gradually become fake news so they can be transformed into a WEF utopia for the ultra-elites: it’s the ultimate lock-down!

Long term, they are probably still hoping for luxury space colonies, but the Antipodes will provide a medium-term stopgap for the next century or two.

Restricted Vocabulary



I have a chapter in one of my books called restricted vocabulary. It tells the tale of a dolphin taught to speak— via a computer-brain interface—but not given the words to express the anguish of its captivity.

Why do our emoji keyboards and voice-to-text assistants (yes, I’m talking to you Siri!) make critical speech difficult?

Where is the ‘Resist’ emoji?

#missingemoji