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To Extrapolate a Copperplate

I was grinding the grist in my brain on how to finish up the GODS OF OMAN. Calnoon Atoye Itah, one of the Omans, was still alive and was in hiding someplace because of Rohab's vow to kill him (he was the second Oman of the three). I wanted Pitus to rescue him so that they could leave Earth together at the ending. I had Pitus upload everything aboard Calnoon's ship through an interactive tutelary program that the Omans called the “Game of Fame” into the main computer, mainly to make an instructor to help Pitus repair the Oman ship. He uploaded, among other items, a video showing a youthful Atoye with his Osage friend Kawa, and to his surprise (and a little of my own) the program became self-aware due to the enormous information piled into it.   Since the computer became “alive” from using this “Game of Fame” program, I had discovered the next several moves in my story line. Pitus, upon seeing the hologram of Atoye, recognized him as a young version of someone else he met early on in the story. Where was the real Atoye? This was my next important question. Boston, New York, and Philadelphia first came to mind. After all, He promised Kinar (the third alien) he would wait for him in Boston when they separated in the Prologue. But that was 144 years before. He could now be anywhere on the globe. London, Jerusalem, Paris, Rio de Janeiro; none of these places were good because, I had no plans of any of these cities. None of my atlases had any and the internet wasn't all that good back in the early nineties. Then a couple of days later, perusing a bound copy of The Universal Magazine, I found, in the April 1750 issue, a big wide copperplate of “the South East Prospect of Colchester in the County of Essex”. The scene as you can see, is beautifully detailed. Staring at it like a crystal-gazer, I easily imagined myself down on those meadows, down by the docks, on that bridge over the Coln, under the trees and on the streets of that city. THAT is where Pitus will find Atoye, and, also, Rohab! I wandered, in my mind's eye, all over that city, and on the road to Witham from the Essex County map as a sort of scout, making scenes and scenarios to have my protagonist's showdown with Rohab and find Atoye. It showed me quite literally that a picture can truly be worth a thousand words. Read the full article

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What's In A Name

In our culture, and probably every other, a person starts out with a birth name that honors an ancestor, or some beloved other either of fame or fortune. I'll use Washington Irving, “Lincoln” Steffens, the 20th century muckraker journalist, and “Roosevelt Magee” (my father's interpretation of the gal in the Hoagy Carmichael song) as examples. In Native American tradition, a name of someone, as they go through life, changes as the result of what they did, or what happens to them. As Pitus Peston roamed the western wilderness, (see blog about the naming of Pitus, Larger than life character part 2), meeting several of the First Nation tribes, he too, picked up some colorful epithets; One-Who-Asks-Questions, White Hare, Seer-of-Dreams, and Drove-of-Buffaloes. One-Who-Asks-Questions, came from the Biloxis when he was seeking the first of two alien pillars marking the direction of the Oman's space craft, though Pitus didn't know it was a space ship at the time. White Hare came from his being so swift of foot after hiking the thousands of miles in the wilds of Louisiana Territory that he was seen by a reliable witness to run down a deer and kill it with a club. Seer-of-Dreams was earned when he correctly guessed the dream of a Navajo warrior and thus saved his skin. Then there was Sha-to-ga-oche, or Drove of Buffaloes. Here's how Pitus got that one:  “When preparations were made, all three left camp for the Osage Village. It was nearly a seven-mile walk, but to the Canadians, who were experienced backwoodsmen, and to Pitus who was used to tramping in the wilderness, it was little more than a pleasant afternoon stroll. When they arrived, Louis spoke to a young warrior who ushered them into the village. He directed the three to a lodge in the center of the village and had them stay outside while he entered. The young man shortly came back out and they all went into the lodge. Louis spoke to the Chief, who sat on a low stool at the fire in the center of the lodge. "Nom-ba Waw-po-ja… greetings!" Two Owls returned the greeting and bid all present to be seated. The pipe was called for and lit by a brave and then held for the Chief who took a few whiffs from it and handed it to Louis. After Louis and Jean each shared the pipe, it was given to Pitus. After this, some food was brought in. As pleasantries went, this was a particularly pleasant one for Pitus. When he tasted the small square of brown loaf given him, he smiled with pleasure at the delicious taste it had. What is this cake?" Pitus asked the woman who gave it. "Stan-in-ca."  "Of what is it made?" "A mixture of beaten corn and persimmon," came the answer in translation. "It is very good,” replied Pitus cordially. To this she smiled and left. Then Louis and Jean engaged in the business of procuring permission to hunt along the river and its environs for furs. What it actually consisted of was a negotiation of the price for a "rental" of the use of the hunting ground. Having displayed several items of which some were useful, and some useless for anything but their curious appearance, a portion of the goods was claimed by Two Owls and ordered to be taken away. During this discussion, Pitus felt a wind coming and raised carefully to pass it, hoping that it would not be detected and cause any embarrassment. It was not, however to be done secretively, it making a "thunderous ovation". At this, all conversation ceased and all eyes turned toward Pitus. After an instant of time, in which Pitus imagined he had insulted the Chief, and breached protocol to such an extent that it likely ruined the deal his friends were consummating, a great peal of laughter broke forth in which a few of the men put their hands to their noses in a gesture of defense. For the next few minutes, Pitus was the center of attention, the dubious honor resulting in his being christened "Sha-to-ga-oche" (Drove of Buffalos). This name was particularly amusing to Two Owls who gestured at Pitus and nodded his head in agreement. Pitus, who quickly figured out that all was well by the reaction of the group playfully reared up on his side in a mock gesture of the famous maneuver, to which several of the men held forth their hands for him to be merciful and spare them. Read the full article

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The Big Guilt

What if you found yourself awakened into the deep future, say a million years from now. Seems like it would be a wonderfully fascinating thing to wake up into a world like that, wouldn't it? But, what if you retained all your memories of an eon past and one of those memories was the frightful recollection that you died a common death with millions of your kind, precipitated by a calamity you yourself caused? With a conscience that without let poured acid onto your bare soul, there could be no place either now or any other time where you could live in peace, let alone, happiness. Now you can be sympathetic with the situation of the Bromilian, Sethys Torn.   Torn died an eon in the past when the Gazutins took revenge on the Bromilians for trespassing on their fifth-dimensional world. These powerful people killed Bromila by removing its sun, plunging the whole planet into a deep freeze. Sethys Torn was the team leader of the tragic expedition that entered the fifth dimension using a device called the Urn or Chalice of Jiva. He was condemned for the deaths of the other members of the expedition by the Bromilian rulers, but before their justice could be meted out, the Gazutans applied their own version of justice. This Bromila was now a dark planet adrift in interstellar space, lost to the ages until found by Pitus. Along with Peston, among others, was a Jamboroon by the name of Lugan, whose heritage was Bromilian. He was searching for Sethys for a very special reason. Sethys was found and taken back to Jamborone for burial in the family crypt. Instead, for purposes of restoration of the frozen remains, he was taken to a rather seedy Qetteran named Hanor Pipes. An accident in the laxation process revived Torn. Then it starts to get interesting. Torn was taken to Qetterxilict to convalesce from his million-year slumber. He was left by himself much of the time, but then he was not ever really alone. That noisy conscience of his hectored him ceaselessly driving him to the brink of self-destruction; With the encouraging presence of his brother and his alien friends gone, the old specter of guilt remained. Sethys looked out the window of his private solarium at the crystalline expanse of Jood. Though primitive by Sethy's standards, compared to where he came from it didn't look all that different, but for the absence of green. It took him back to his old home of Dachoon with Plato-Rachaa in the distance with its glass spires, spheres and cones stretching far out into the distance. In his mind's eye he could see beyond the city's limit to the forests covering the land in greenery until giving way to the blues and purples of the miles, until further view was blocked by gray snow-capped mountains. Artyn, the sleeping volcano, could be seen in the east from his back porch, streams of steam rising out of its snow-capped cone. Thermal energy had been tapped from its bowels for millenia. It was beautiful in Sethys' memory. Then the cloud came over and crushed his pleasant nostalgia. What would it be now on Bromila, but darkness, coldness and death? “All those I knew who were kind, talented and accomplished, who I saw transform themselves from novice to master...what became of all these?” he asked to no one but himself. “What of my friends...and all their children? They were snuffed out in their primes because of me.” A coldness swept over his soul like the opening of the door in a blizzard. “I have no place in this world. All who see me will know what I have done and wish to kill me. Maybe I should save them the trouble.” He was now standing at a window looking out over Jood. It was afternoon there, and night at Kesst on Oman. “I have no weapon to end myself, not even a knife.” He looked about the room. Not so much as a fork remained from his morning meal. There was the window, though. The solarium looked out over a sufficient height to kill with a fall. He opened the window and peered out and down at a stone paved patio below. It looked tiny from the high window. A sparse collection of people sat about at tables and lounges far below drinking in the rays of the sun. All he would have to do is lean out. Then he thought, “What if I fall and do not die? They would repair my crippled body and cheat me of death. Then I would be hated by most and pitied by the rest.” In spite of this worst case possibility, he seemed to have made his decision. Out he leaned, shifting his balance from the floor to the void outside, his feet getting lighter and lighter. Suddenly, there was a sound from behind. Then he was given the three options, one of which promised to rid him of his guilt and strike back at his old foe. Read the full article

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Black Hole Time Machine

In the GOLDEN AGE OF ROOLANDOO, Pitus managed to escape from the galaxy, but he then had to witness the terrifying spectacle of seeing both Roolandoo (Milky Way) and Angandoo (Andromeda) crushed and obliterated into a massive black hole by the hands of Nemotis. Every thing he loved and everyone he loved was gone. Now he alone lived of the trillions of sentient beings that had lived among those stars, thrown into the pitiless pit of Oogothot. The stars... even they were gone! How would you feel at such a moment? Pitus escaped from the doomed galaxies, and the enormous black hole their demise created, but then an even greater blackness confronted him. Nemotis looked down on the terrible fruit of his labor, with a hideous smile of murderous satisfaction. He then looked outward, straight toward Pitus and his ship. “No,” Pitus wailed, “pray do not see me, I beseech Almighty God!” He stared back at the gigantic form of Nemotis, like a prey paralyzed by its hunter, waiting for his strike any moment, and then the fearsome creature faded away and was gone. “He didn't see me!” Pitus said almost in a chant of elation. This feeling spent its joy quickly as the weight of understanding struck him. Pitus listened to the silence. He then heard the cadence of his heart, but nothing else. “My God! They are all gone! Billions upon billions of souls snuffed out. I am all that is left. I am utterly alone!” He had stood to watch the terrible deed come to pass. Now he fell back into his seat behind the nav-com. Aloof from all, even the sweet memory of the sound of Orinesse, rained misery upon his heart. “This is more than mortal man can bear! Guide me Lord God in this desperate time! Beside him on the console lay Atoye's brisler. Pitus reached out and clutched it. “All those I ever knew and all those teeming multitudes are gone, swallowed by the horrible Oogothot. He looked down at the weapon in his hand. Then as if by foredoomed senseless action, he cranked the barrel to maximum. The muzzle flared red with destructive power. He raised it to his temple. It would be over in an instant. Fortunately for all those lost souls and for Pitus himself, he did not press the trigger on that proton gun. He had to turn this horrid calamity around somehow. He would have to stop Arcturus Junes from committing that wanton act of murder. But How? He was not able to retrieve the Chalice of Jiva from Habine. Now even it no longer existed. There was only one other way to climb out of the the tapestry of the time, and it loomed right before his eyes; Oogothot! The idea is that since a black hole's interior is separated from the rest of this universe, it is separated also from the procession of time. The Omans knew that the conditions at the singularity in the heart of a black hole are like what existed when the Universe began; infinitely dense and stupendously hot, in the trillions of degrees. Photons emanated from this core at cosmic ray wavelengths and frequencies. As they shot forth from this core, the tremendous pull of gravity opposed them, stretching out their wavelengths through the spectrum until, as they approached the event horizon, they “tired” to an utter stop as long radio waves falling back into the depths picking up speed and energy till they returned to their master, only to begin a new doomed cycle of escape. The Omans also knew that warping space from inside the horizon displaced not only space but also time. Pitus had to go back one million years. To do this he had to enter the event horizon and sink to a certain depth (corresponding to green light), and then warp back out of it. The ship was dark energy propelled. He had to descend to the right depth and dump a large fraction of his dark fuel to create the anti gravitic thrust. He could do it but once. You know he made it. See how he did it. Read the full article

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The Living Building

In ROOLANDOO an integral part of the story was the location of Bromila, a planet whose sun was removed by the xenophobic Gezutans as a retaliation for encroaching on their realm in fifth dimensional space. Anyone who could reach them with an expedition, they thought, could also reach them with an army. Though a short sighted and rash response, given the comparative power of the Gezutans, this was the reason the Kan-Oxx-Voo ceased to be.   Of the three planets within the KOV, Bromila was the only one with a chance of remaining intact from the assault of the Gazutans. Lon Vidia, located on our side of Milky Way, was collided with its moon. Grom Salome was baked alive by adding the mass of the Bromilian sun to the star of the Grom Salome system, doubling the surface temperature, shortening the year, and boiling all the oceans away. Bromila was the place to find the advanced technology in frozen stasis.   One of the marvels of Bromila was in the housing. In the city of Dachoon the explorers found a series of five enormous buildings greater than a mile in each dimension. Altoz, the Qetteran architect and Pitus explored one of the buildings. This is what Altoz has to say about it;   “What are you looking for, Altoz?” asked Pitus.   “This structure's heart,” said Altoz. Pitus looked at Altoz curiously. “You wax allegorical,” he said.   “This great structure,” Altoz said, “this behemoth of concrete, steel, titanium, and a hundred other things, to me is a miracle. It is like a living being.”   “How so?” asked Pitus.   Altoz pointed upward to the ceiling. “Those pipes carry everything from water, to fuel, to air, just like the arteries and veins of our bodies nourish and sustain ourselves.” He pointed along the walls. In a technology like this, one would not expect wiring, but here it is. It is the robust nervous system of this place taking energy, light, and heat to every corner of its frame. These massive columns,” he said pointing to one nearby, “make up the enormous frame like our bones gives form to our bodies. The many processors, computers, and 'smart' sensors, make up the brain of this place. To a philosopher this may never have been alive, but any engineer with a heart would tell you otherwise.”   “I see your point,” said Pitus, “and to it, the people within its walls are like the beneficial microbes that sustain it and fend off disease.”   “You do see my point,” said Altoz. “I want to see the heating units, the center of electrical power, and the machines that get water to the faucets on the five-hundredth floor. I also want to see if this building has some sort of gravity-inertial assist, or if it is stand-alone construction.”   I can't claim this as an original idea. I heard it at work one day from an engineer “with heart”. Read the full article

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The Big Bounce

I've read more than one scenario for the fate of the Universe. One states that inflation will continue to progress, moving planets, stars, and galaxies further and further from each other until sometime in the way distant future everything will be so far apart that Earth will be all alone in a vast dark void. Another suggests that everything is on a course of decreasing energy until all is frozen and dead. Lately I saw that some cosmologists think the Big Bang was actually the result of the rebound of a previous Big Crunch, freshly termed the Big Bounce. Whatever process our universe follows, one thing is certain; all things living, including all sentient creatures will be toast. That bothers me in an existential way. In a practical sense, it won't matter, because I will be long gone if and when it comes to pass. What bothers me is that in this realm of disorder, something as ordered as the human mind could come into it and not be a permanent part going on toward further growth and perfection. If, after all our striving and conflict against chaos and the law of entropy, we are snuffed out with no record remaining that we were once here to fight the big fight, what's the point of it all? More's the pity if another cycle occurs with the re-development of life and sentience and these new strivers and fighters do not realize it happened before (which is the current condition). Well, worry not over these things. I solved the problem. In THE EYES OF HARNUK, episode two of the Peston adventures, I show that a record was kept and could be accessed if one had the right key, or rather, keys. “For millennia, scientists and philosophers have pondered the vast accomplishments of sentience and mourned its inevitable loss. Some even questioned the value at all of sentience without permanence. There are two camps of thought on what the cycle is. One side believes that the Universe starts anew and is subject to the whims of chance, so that one age is never like any other. The other feels that it is a causation loop playing the general, or as some of them feel the identical sequence of events over and over again. To them, the Cube would be a means of seeing our future with possibilities of refining history. Either way, if we could gain knowledge of enough sophistication, we could direct our destiny adjusting for optimal efficiency." Harnuk p. 47 and, "Imagine being able to leave our bubble and enter another before it collapses," mused Pitus. "One might thus carry on to an adjacent bubble all we knew to plant it there afresh." (p 48) "However Hibber referred to a sisterhood and equated it with the stellar objects of the local galactic cluster. His interpretation led to the theory of the seventy ages. It is not known with certainty, but hypothesized, that there are scales of time vaster than the ages of the universes alluded to. Time periods so grand that they challenge the imagination. Cycles of eternities that repeat within still greater cycles.”   “Like the wheels of a clockworks,” said Pitus softly. Orban heard this and looked puzzled. Atoye explained to Orban what Pitus was referring to. Orban nodded. “A good analogy,” he said. (p.50) So, there it is. If you want to find out more... Read the full article

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Crisis of Faith

Having only my own experience, that is, the experience of mankind, I tried to imagine what a belief in the supernatural would be for the many societies of aliens Pitus Peston encountered in his peregrinations. I established this concept right from the beginning in GODS OF OMAN, after Pitus managed to get into the Oman ship and begin to understand the computers and data contained therein. As Pitus was taking in the information of the data files, he ran across the Book of Aldit-Hor. This was the Oman version of Genesis. It seemed logical to me that any sentient race would have someone, just like us, who asked the big questions, and may have a cultural belief in a first cause, aka god. In VENDETTA, I came up with a creation story for the Omans, and in the GOLDEN AGE OF ROOLANDOO I took it to the next level. Orban, the “CEO” of Oman society, was an accomplished scholar in philosophy and history. He was well versed in the Oman creation legend. When he was delving into the private correspondence of one Brubek Talos with Hibber, the Shakespeare of Oman literature, Talos revealed that Aldit-Hor was a Gezutan! Here's the moment that Orban discovered this in his perusal of the Talos letters; “Some of this is in the Quomadrin,” thought Orban. “but not the method they used. Where in Aldit's nose did he learn about this?” The screen's brightness began to weary his eyes. Orban tapped a spot on the keypad a couple of times and softened the background. Two taps on another spot sharpened the contrast. “Keep.” he said. The computer retained the settings. He scrolled to the next page. “Though the investigators had no notion that solid matter could exist with just three spacial dimensions, its sudden appearance was undeniable. Three members of the scientific team, Dartu-Zee, Aldit-Hor, and Kinnan-Linn entered this new realm to investigate.” “Kinnan-Linn and Aldit-Hor...,” breathed Orban. “Not gods, but sentient, and powerful creatures...no wonder this was hidden.” Orban stopped and sat back in his chair. As youths, he and all other Omans were taught the Creation Story. In it, Aldit-Hor was named the Lord of all Creation. How many times through his long life did he call reverently and otherwise upon the name of this 'God'? Now he would have to spell God with a small g. Orban remained motionless for a long moment. He loved gaining knowledge. It was the serum of his soul. This however, sent tremors through his utter foundation. “My piety just went to perdition!” He stared off into the room that now seemed to close in on him along with the rest of the universe. A quote from Hibber came to mind. “Learning is not always pleasant. To learn, one must take risks.” This bothered him so much that he desperately attempted to ascribe divine nature to his fast retreating deities by applying the known holy attributes: He took a pause, and a swig of forte. Instantly a disturbing thought came back. His new crisis of faith was dogging him. If Aldit-Hor was a person, even from a greater dimension, he was still a person with a beginning and maybe an end. How then, could he continue to believe in this person who every other Oman believed to be an eternal deity? He suddenly realized that he was an oman cast adrift in a sea without even a flotsam of faith to grab onto in times of spiritual peril. A wave of loneliness and cold fragility swept over him. Somehow he had to think around this spiritual catastrophe. Orban reviewed the Oman list of attributes for God; “Omnipotence,” he thought, “Power and might without limit. If they could destroy the Universe, that would qualify. Eternal: What we know about higher dimensions excludes time as a controlling factor. Infinitude: If their universe includes ours, it suggests something greater. It might not be eternal by our understanding, but it could be for practical purposes. I will give them that as well. Sovereignty: I believe they showed that. The remaining attributes of wisdom, holiness, omniscience, faithfulness, omnipresence, self existence, I do not know. As to Love, mercy, justice, and goodness, I do not see it, with the possible exception of Dartu-Zee. She showed all these qualities. If I must have a god to believe in to settle my spirit, then it shall be Her.” He at last, found that flotsam of faith in the waves to grab on to. Almost instantly, a calming sense of stability washed over him. He smiled and reached once again for a hit off the bottle of forte, sort of as a celebration.” I relate this because, almost anyone who reads the Pitus Peston stories from HARNUK on will like Orban. He seems always like the “adult in the room”, yet he has his vulnerabilities like everyone else. By the way, if I am starting to lose some of the more devout Christians with my “alternative liturgy”, if you persevere to the end of ROOLANDOO, you will see that I have vindicated myself. Read the full article

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THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY

I had to round out the worlds I was making. The tone of the PEREGRINATIONS OF PITUS PESTON is generally upbeat. I wanted to have fun making this series of adventures. Who wants to day after day jump into a maelstrom of conflict and decadent landscapes vicariously living a hand to mouth struggle to survive? I quickly get tired of reading this sort of thing. It exsanguinates my soul. But also tiring is the cloying saccharine sweet endless garden of delights with the banishment of all that may chafe the happiness of a good and wonderful day; at least if its a book I'm reading. I might even get tired of living it, though it almost certainly take a while. So, to write a plausible yarn that would appeal to everyone from the masochists to the Platonists out there I had to compose a hybrid of the “good, the bad, and the ugly”. Not all was nice. Not all was bad. I wanted to show signs of dystopia on Oman and on Haldan particularly, because they recently blew each other up. I hated doing it. I wanted to tax my imagination with all the magical wonders uber technology could spawn and lay them out for everyone to see. I got my chance in the fourth episode, VENDETTA and especially in the fifth episode, GOLDEN AGE OF ROOLANDOO. You should take a look how I did. I use no chemicals- I am naturally high when I get into writing a story. So, I dreamed up this island continent on Oman, called Cavin-Gorse. It's a hot steamy cluttered jungle filled with all sorts of nasty things constantly recycling each other's protein. Cavin grass spiders the size of washtubs, reptilian-like monocks that would frighten a T-Rex, and loresst vipers with venom that kills in minutes and makes the carcass toxic to most all other creatures that would otherwise make a meal of the victim. Also, there is the krait, a little cute squirrelesque fellow that defends itself with a spume that is corrosive and would make a skunk's spray seem like the inside of a bakery. The Omans at one time dropped off capital murderers there as their sentence. One who is in Cavin Gorse unarmed could measure his future in seconds. I also filled my path across the Milky Way ( or Roolandoo if you use the Haldish name) with some helpful but also dangerous things. These useful but dangerous things are called bargs by nearly all in the Local Group (of planets). They are shortcuts through flat space; worm holes, space pleats, and voids. They afford instantaneous travel across vast distances, but some of the worm hole termini are unpredictable. They may be fine to enter, but terminate inside a star or an eighty thousand kelvin gas cloud, if the dynamics of the galaxy so ordain. And those voids... it is utterly dark inside them with no features to navigate by. The Local Group Council has made it unlawful to enter them and no one will venture in to rescue any fool who goes in and gets lost. So far I mentioned only the bad and the ugly. Among the good are the great cities of Jood on Qetterxilict, Laguna Mi on Calbresan, the archaeological site of Mount Joo Temple Complex on Grom Salome; (the murals in that place are breathtaking). In that temple one level below ground is an orrery or celestial map made from a quartz disc twenty feet in diameter in perfect balance on an alloy (unknown) pin. Pitus and his team used this to locate the sunless frozen world of Bromila. I won't give that one away. It's in the GOLDEN AGE. Read the full article

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My Story Building Method

Some writers can take a piece of paper and draw a plot line on it and fit in every detail of their prospective story on this line. If only I had this degree of organization! I have to get some idea of what I want to write about, of course- maybe cluster a few ideas together for me to launch into the thing. That is the extent of my story conception. I have to get into it and then see where it goes. In truth, if I knew every detail of the story I was about to write, I probably wouldn't bother writing it. This writing thing for me has to be fun, and fun is finding new things, uncovering hidden treasures of ideas, and being surprised by what comes “down the chute”. After all, I mentioned in one of my first blogs that I started doing this for a relief from boredom. Knowing everything that is happening or is going to happen might be good for feelings of security, but, let's face it; it would be boring as hell. I used to dig in old dumps for bottles when I was a kid. It was fun because I was grubbing around in the dirt for something of value, when there was no guarantee that I would find anything. It was a form of prospecting. The real fun starts when a scrape in the wall of the pit you dug reveals the base of a bottle you recognize as potentially valuable. Maybe it is a first glimpse of a cobalt blue bottle. Cobalt blue is often used for poison bottles and nearly all of them are worth big bucks. Maybe the base has that scar of glass in the center. This means that it is a hand made bottle at least as old as the Civil War era. Again, big bucks. Admittedly, most often the prize turns out to be something less hot, or you tug on the bottle to find out it is only half a bottle. It's the same with thoughts. A lot of them turn out to be emotionally flat, or something that seems good in the moment, but turn out to block a better idea formed later. Then you are faced with canning a few thousand previously inspired words in order to follow the new direction the story is heading. I don't lament this overmuch. I use cut to remove the stuff that's not working, but then I paste it into a catchall folder, just in case it turns out to be useful some place else. My neighbor used to save the plastic bags from inside the cereal boxes. I do the same thing with swatches of paragraphs and phrases. My patchwork method may not be efficient, but if I sew together enough swatches of the right material in the right shape in the right place, I end up with a full-size garment. I have five of them in my closet. Why not try one of them on?   Read the full article

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J'AIME LES LIVRES

I just love books. I like collecting them, reading them, writing them, and even repairing them. I started some years ago assembling my legacy library, full of ancient and medieval history, early technology, philosophy, religion, 19th, 18th, and 17th century literature. I am trying to get a hold on learning to read Latin and spent no small amount of money on very old books in that language so as to have some “skin” in the endeavor. “O or m, s, t, mus tis unt....” you Latin language students all know that chant! I learned the rudiments of book binding from a master craftsman by the name of George Baer who lived retired in Bolton Landing (think Lake George). This was back in 1972. Then there came college, marriage, raising the kids, and working almost every day. Not much time for book binding. Then...59 ½ came and I could get into my retirement savings. I had a 30 by 32 steel building built with a polished cement floor, gas fireplace (wood smoke is bad for books), wall space for paintings and copperplate engravings, Persian rugs, AND, plenty of room for 300 feet of book shelves. They are nearly filled to capacity already. Most books past 200 years of age come to me in rather bad shape. The leather covers, if still present, almost always are broken off the text block, due to the dried out old leather giving out at the hinges. There are sometimes stains, from being partly immersed in floods, spines scorched by fires, and some are in such a state that, to make them readable, I would have to totally dismantle them, re-join the pages, sew them back into a book, and put a new leather or book cloth cover on them. I'm sure I would cringe if I could hear the story of what some of the books I have reconstructed went through during their two or three century lives. On the other hand, the quality of the linen based paper of the really old books is often so good, well, I have a 1652 copy of Thomas Fuller's The Holy State, the pages of which are as porcelain white as what you may have just put into the tray of your copier. As I was typing this blog into my computer, I took a second to glance at a 2011 newspaper clipping of me when I finished my third book, PITUS PESTON AND THE LOOSE END. It sets in the frame on my wall the color of weak tea. The difference in quality between old and new screams at me sometimes. Restoring books has to be something that you love to do. The work is often tedious. What keeps the fire in my belly from going out? If I do a good job of it, there is a very good chance that the three or four hundred-year-old tome I rescue from perdition may get to be read by someone in the 23rd or 24th century. Maybe even some Jean-Luc Piccard will take it for a ride into space! Read the full article

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THE NEXT ADVENTURE

After getting Pitus capable of leaving the Earth, it became necessary to give him a new mission, or let's just say, something that he could be sucked into that would likely suck in the reader as well. In THE EYES OF HARNUK, I gave him plenty to deal with. He began with crossing the Milky Way, or Roolandoo, as Peston's arch enemy knew it, first contact with said archenemy, Habine, the Skinner, learning about and seeking the eyes of Harnuk, keys to its heart, an enormous data base of the last cosmic age, racing to the center of the galaxy against Habine for the fruits of knowledge contained in this oracle, and discovery of Earth's and Oman's tragic futures. In this episode, Pitus also discovers his one great love, the beautiful Orinesse. Of the planet Calbresan, who guides him in later adventures. Also in this second adventure is a little speculative science. I explored the notion that the Universe is a cyclical phenomenon, where we live within the interval between a big bang and a big crunch. This theory has, of course, its supporters and detractors. When I wrote this book, more than a decade ago, few gave credence to gravity ultimately overcoming the state of inflation that took off immediately before the so-called Big Bang. Alan Guth's inflation is now thought by some to be the impetus of the birth of our universe. Since then, cosmologists have postulated that there may have been a big bounce, where the expansion of the Universe was initiated as a rebound to a former contraction. I had the Oman character of Doss Orban Bettan expound on this to Pitus in chapter six of HARNUK. This idea that we were here before, and a legend that it was all recorded someplace, saved from destruction, and replanted in the current age led to the chase of protagonist and antagonist for this prize. Read the full article

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LOVE'S COLLATERAL DAMAGE

Through the five book series of the Peregrinations of Pitus Peston, I traced the two-fold evolution of Pitus from a cock sure, but uninformed Earth-bound adolescent to an adult experienced in advanced alien technology and the ardors of war and of love. The alien technology transformed him into one no more suited to live in nineteenth century Earth than the exiled travelers who found our planet two centuries before. His experiences with physical love nearly ended his peregrinations. Ellen Lattimore fell in love with Pitus the first time she saw him at the fresh new schoolhouse built in 1780 a mile out of town on the Argyle Road. (This is now St. Rt. 197). Peston was a contemplative quiet person, the kind who are said to have been given an “old soul”. The first time she saw him she caught him stooping to admire a Jack-in-the-Pulpit that rose between two rocks on a warm south embankment in late March. On asking him what he was doing, his almost shamanistic answer seized her heart. They talked incessantly all the way to the schoolhouse; she, probing at his character, he, totally oblivious to it all. She listened to Peston go on about his ideas of other worlds and other peoples, which was anathema to her Baptist faith, though this didn't stop her from avidly listening. Ellen poured on the “wily woman charm” as time went on, but she already had a daunting competitor; Pitus' soul was already captured by the Spirit of Adventure. He, most likely due to his elder brother Lloyd's badgering about Pitus' lack of involvement in the farm, developed a keen desire to get far far away from it's drudgery the moment he became of age. How was one to compete with an ideal? How can thoughts of pleasure break the bands of pain? Many tried to capsize his vessel of adventure. Besides Lloyd, there was his mother Caroline, who, though listening to his speculations about alien life and other worlds with unfeigned interest, really thought as he grew older he would leave off this childish dream and “take to becoming a preacher”. Seeming to fail in this, she connived with the local druggist, Lucius Ordway, to steer him into the apothecary's arts. Those who have read the first two adventures of Pitus Peston's peregrinations, know why Peston's odd-ball ideas were not discouraged by Lucius. All through his wandering to Saint Louis, and down the Mississippi, and back up into what would later be the Dakotas, Pitus met, just like any other mortal man with an immortal siege of his soul, temptations to turn around and re-enter a stable life of complacency. After all, he did promise to return home after Ponchatrain and marry Ellen. However, just as the voice of his conscience hounded him to pay his tithes to mediocrity, the sirens of the unknown whispered him on to 'round the next bend. When he discovered the first proof of his convictions in the bayous of Louisiana, all thoughts of returning home vanished. Think of finding absolute proof of life on a far away world. Could you just walk away from it?   Read the full article

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ANGELS UNAWARES

In the New Testament Letter to the Hebrews is the passage: “be not forgetful to entertain strangers; for thereby some have entertained angels unawares”. When the three Oman exiles fled their planet of the same name, and luckily found the livable planet Earth, they found it necessary to eventually disperse among humanity. They were fortunate to be close enough in appearance to humans do this in secret. Two of them ran away from the third who vowed to kill these two, making their way from the western wilderness to the civilized Eastern coastal cities. Pitus Peston, by a set of (literary) coincidences, met all three; one inadvertently gave a clue to his being an alien, another taught him the apothecary arts for nearly a year, and the third tried to kill him. The irony of it all just seemed delicious. I took great pains to make these scenarios logical so that when Peston again encountered two of the three at the climax of the GODS OF OMAN, there would be a knitting together of the whole “yarn”. (The third member of the Omans Pitus met again in the EYES OF HARNUK).   One would have to wonder if this “ literary coincidence” isn't happening in the real world. How would you handle it? To some, it would be a boon beyond the wildest imagination. Think of the old folks who met the aliens in Cocoon or Jilian, the Cetacean scientist in Star Trek, The Voyage Home. For others it wouldn't be so great an experience. Think of V or. Independence Day. I guess it would depend upon the motives of the aliens, wouldn't it? I count myself in the first group, though, and the experiences of Pitus Peston is, in a way, my imagined what-if-it-happened-to-me thing. The series of episodes in THE PEREGRINATIONS OF PITUS PESTON reveals the growth of a back-woods country boy beyond manhood and into alien-hood, because of the futuristic knowledge he accrued in his encounter. I invite you to tell me your thoughts about any of this on this site or on Facebook. Read the full article

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Making A Larger-Than-Life Character - Part 2

The next task once I got my conflicted protagonist, was to give him a name. I needed something with a story behind it that was oddball enough to be remembered, but not so flashy as to be bathetic.  Indiana Jones was already taken.  Damn! That would have been a good one. I even tried a knock-off or two; Oklahoma Hank, Rhode Island Jake... remember what I said about avoiding bathos. I started the story without naming my hero, knowing that I would progress by progressing. Then I saw a humorous anecdote in a nineteenth century almanac that was mocking a Welshman's accent.  The joke maintained that a Welshman had trouble pronouncing the letter B. When he tried to say “dearly beloved brethren”, it came out “dearly pelovet prethren”. At first, I had no idea what I could do with this, but the thing stayed in my head, rattling around in my subconscious no doubt. I was trying to put together a bio of my protagonist.  He was almost 18 when I started the story set in the year 1805 in Fort Edward, NY, making him born in 1785. I also read about how it was in that year. One source mentioned a drought and the wild animals, especially wolves desperate for food, gave way their fear of man and closed in.  I mentioned in the last blog that my hero had an older brother. This older brother that I named Lloyd, a fine Welsh name, was just beyond toddler when all this was going on, The mother in the family, Caroline, was about to have her baby.  A local doctor in attendance, a rarity back then, was fresh from Cardiff with the above mentioned speech challenges. When Lloyd, frightened by all the howling wolves kept wailing, the annoyed doctor asked the boy why he carried on so.  Lloyd answered that he was scared the wolves would get in the house and “bite us”. The doctor, assured the child that “de voolves dwould not ket in and pite us.” The father, Rufus, overheard this exchange and the poor little cuss got the name of PITUS. All that was needed was a family name.  After running a bunch of names aloud in the air, the name Preston came out of the blue. This was not quite unique enough, so I dropped the R and then I had, PITUS PESTON. Read the full article

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Making A Larger-Than-Life Character - Part 1

I was goaded by boredom to conceive the character of Pitus Peston. I was in my early forties, worked for two decades in an admittedly satisfying career, well on to raising a family; just living the American Dream. This was not enough at the time, however; I needed something more. I'm not smart enough to work for NASA, not brave enough to be an international spy, not clever enough to play tournament poker, and lacked the dough to day trade stocks. What was a man in my place to do? I had recently read a bio of Ethan Allen; you know, the leader of the Green Mountain Boys. This guy had clappers of solid brass- not me by any means. I thought, “I wish I had this man's crust.” I thought of what I would be if I could fashion my life with the dash and recklessness of an adventurer. What would I want to do first and foremost if I had unlimited power to shape my existence? Explore the cosmos, of course! If I couldn't be this man myself, I would jinn up such a one from my ambitions and fantasy. I wanted to make this man's world fantastic and yet still make it logical and believable. I wanted to put him in a time that seemed inimical to the technology required for interstellar travel. I made him a linguistic genius who could speak and write several languages. I made this young man a poor farmer in eighteenth century America with virtually no chance to gain a formal education, or landed property. I also wanted to immerse him in the onus of jealousy by an older brother who constantly reminded him that the law of primogeniture kept ownership of the family farm forever out of his hands and his “self taught book-learnin'” would gain him nothing in the end. I created, in short, a down and out pissed off teenager with only his dream of leaving his life of drudgery to get him through each day. More on this process later. What do you think? Read the full article

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Are Aliens Allies or Foes?

Considering whether a society of sentient and technologically advanced beings would be friend or foe to us, the answer might come down to two things: Would we be a convenient source of something they desperately needed, or would we be a danger to them? If it is water they want, it could probably be found in any of the numerous asteroids and comets in any Oort cloud around any star, or sufficiently large moon orbiting any planet out past the Goldilocks region of a planetary system. If it is oxygen or simple organics like methane, ethane, or tholins, the same applies. Even if the cosmic nomads see these things on our planet, they would have to deal with us to get them. It wouldn't necessarily be that easy for them to make it worth the trouble. The distances between our and any alien occupied planet are enormous, so any interactions between us would still be challenging. I think the distances are too far to make an interstellar war worth the time and effort, but not too far to engage in commerce. We are sufficiently advanced to cause any aliens trouble in conflict. They might have the ability to travel interstellar distances, but that does not make them omnipotent. What I see in the visitation of aliens is curiosity first and foremost, the opportunity to carry on the trade of material things and technology, and even social interaction, should we find each other compatible. Alien life would necessarily come in many forms, but I think alien life forms capable of developing a technology would need to be anthropomorphic. There needs to be grasping appendages to manipulate objects. There also needs to be appendages for movement with efficiency. All we need to make Star Trek happen for us is to get just a few devices; something to make gravity blind to mass for superluminal velocity, a device to conquer inertia, a means of negating momentum around a space vessel to constitute a protective shield against collision with space objects. The logical place to look for things like these is from somebody who crossed the void to visit us. Having said all of this, what is most likely to happen when we have a visitation by aliens, whether or not they profess to be friendly or hostile, is our hostility to them. If they come to us, they are by definition, technologically superior and a potential threat. In the preface of Pitus Peston and the Golden Age of Roolandoo, I make this statement: “... please take note; Those citizens of the Local Group whose curiosity in the Tellurians of the planet Earth may be kindled by my tales and may wish to journey there, be warned that they are xenophobic, even more so than the Algothians, especially the people of my native country, the United States of America. When they discover that you are aliens in their midst, they will consider you a threat and either incarcerate or kill you. Trust me on this, or just read the other episodes of THE PEREGRINATIONS OF PITUS PESTON, now available on the newly established Om-plex, the Calbres Digital Catalog, or the Qetteran Official List. Those who are still determined to hazard the lengthy journey to the planet Earth, please please please be obedient to this one thing; Go there only after being thoroughly briefed by Professor Shannon Kessler of the Oman Travel Agency at Kesst, because it just might save your hide. (Professor Kessler, another escapee from Earth, also teaches Tellurian Studies at the Hibber Institute. You can reach her through the Chancellor's office.). Omans or Calbres may mingle with Tellurians undetected. Qetterans, Jamborini, Haldi, and the rest of Local Group citizens must consider alteration before coming in contact with Earth-dwellers. This will constitute my total caveat on the matter. Fools go where angels fear to tread, as the saying goes. Good Luck. Read the full article

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Is There Life Beyond Our World?

Maybe a better question would be; “Would it please you to discover that there is life beyond our world.” Unless one is a religious fundamentalist who regards otherworldly life as blasphemy to the Bible or any other sacred writing, I am confident that the majority would answer with a “yes”. Another question could be why do many people desire it to be so. The ones who desire it look, to exchange of ideas, trade, and mutual benefits as there reasons for advocacy. Those who do not desire it cite conquest by aliens with higher technology, theft of resources, and annihilation as either inadvertent carriers of infections or willful destruction of humanity as the likely outcome of a meeting with extraterrestrials. Con opinion states human history with the examples of European decimation of the Native North Americans, Spanish Conquistadors of the Meso-Americans, and similar scenarios with the indigenous peoples of South America and Australia by races of higher technological development. Consider the themes of modern movies such as V, Alien, or War of the Worlds, and the opinion of Hawking. It makes a convincing case for the concept that a celestial Darwinism would prevail, if not immediately, at least some time along. It follows the logic that anyone who could come to us would have the upper hand. The Pro opinion, based on the mutual beneficence of sentient beings, relies on the existence of a conscience in the stronger faction, or at least an ability to see an advantage in leaving the weaker faction intact, for commerce and mutual instruction. Star Trek seems to be the best example of non-dystopic future mingling with aliens, which, I admit relies heavily on us humans being mightily advanced technologically. This gets me to the theme behind the Pitus Peston adventures. I wanted to give a gifted human in an unlikely period in history the chance to see the wonders that are most certainly out there in the cosmos. This young man followed the beliefs of others as far back in time as the ancient Greeks Anaximander and Democritus, as well as the more recent, Copernicus, Giordano Bruno, Newton, and Kepler. In Peston's case, the aliens came here and he eventually went to them. A trip across the galaxy comes with conflict. How can you have an interesting story otherwise? There is a fair quantity of speculative science in tang his science fiction. If I got it right, it will probably be discovered long after I am gone, sorry to say. If you had the means to travel anywhere in this galaxy, where would you go and what would you want to see? Read the full article