I’ve always been a fan of science fiction. My favorite writers are Herbert, Asimov, Bradbury and Orwell. I tend to like science fiction writers who explore what happens to human beings within the context of societies, like ours, which divorce us from our essential humanity. That’s why I like Farenheit 451, 1984 and the End of Eternity.
I think Herbert was quite prescient when he wrote Dune, because he imagined a planet and human beings living there who had to exist without water. In fact he was one of the first authors’ to popularize the importance of preserving our planet’s ecology. In my mind as well, all these authors in one way or another, examine the relationships between religion, politics and power, and also between bureaucracy and government.
Because of my own fascination with these themes, and because I’m also a student of social science by training, I set out to write a quartet of novels which would place a group of humans in a futuristic society that had failed to stop runaway climate change. I was fascinated by Naomi Klein’s book This Changes Everything, and both she and her book served as inspirations to me.
Before reading Naomi Klein however, I had written what is now the fourth book in the quartet, My Quantum Life. This book was based on Michael Talbot’s book The Holographic Universe. I have always been fascinated by the spiritual aspects of quantum physics, and Talbot’s book put the science of it all into perspective. It was very readable for a neophyte like myself, and it clicked.
I slowly began to understand through this book that time and material reality was malleable. This led me to start to wonder whether or not our human biological construct was one which exactly fit our universe, was one in fact which allowed us to stay here in fixed time. At first I thought it was our eyes alone, and that as we observed objects we changed waves to particles, but then I wondered if our ears were involved as well, and that our universe was a vibrational one.
My Quantum Life allowed me to explore quantum physics within the context of one woman’s journey through her life, where she experiences both reality in this dimension, but is also able with her guides to break the veil of time and space, and enter a multi-dimensional, holographic universe. Within this universe her chief guide – who of course becomes one of her romantic interests – tells her:
“If humans are to survive what is to come in their world,” Raphael said as he wondered around the dust-dry valley floor, “they will need to develop an understanding of the Universe that includes the past, present and future.
“The deeper and more emotionally charged their beliefs, the greater the changes that can be made by them to their material bodies and to their reality itself. Only shamans and mystics and perhaps physicists understand this. For instance, a number of different realities exist, and human consciousness takes a certain amount of latitude and chooses which one it wishes to manifest. The time is coming for the human race however, as part of their collective human consciousness, to choose which reality they will seriously embark on for themselves.”
Here he stopped talking for a moment, to point out to us that the monuments were in fact stratified, and he told me that his favorite was the Eye of the Sun.
Then he conjured up a vision for our amusement and my enlightenment. It was a three dimensional holograph of Navajo warriors that he plucked out of enfoldment – implicate order –to show us how explicate order can be created. What he did was to decode an invisible signal that was always there in time and space in order to create a sensible image for us. Monument Valley thus became a massive, holographic, movie screen within which we all stood as he spoke the following words to us in an unbearably exquisite, lilting voice.
“See they are still here, the Navajo warriors, riding brown and white horses across the desert floor forever, letting the red dust cloak their skin with memories of their ancestors; always listening for the sound of the rain, the sound of hope as it moves just ahead of them, across the horizon into fields of blue corn.”
With his hands he then slowly rotated the images he had formed into reverse, so that they eventually became invisible, and they became enfolded into implicate order once more, waiting to be re-visited by others who understood, like him, the substance of time.
“See, human reality is ultimately as plastic as the thought processes that engender it, as I have just demonstrated to you,” he said as he continued to lead us around the Valley.
“Objective reality is produced out of the collective memories of the human race. The Universe, as humans understand it is a construct where all things appear stable and eternal, from the laws of physics to the substance of galaxies. However, should humans be able to view just one more reality field, they would be able to understand all permanence as illusory. They need to understand that only consciousness is eternal, the consciousness of the living universe of which they are miraculously a tiny part.
Raphael appears as a character throughout all four of my books, and allows me to introduce some philosophical ideas and magical thinking.
The first book in the series, The Burning Years, explores a lot of hard science and besides Klein, my mentor for this book was Dr. Rachel Armstrong. If you go to my site for the book you’ll find out all about her. She is a remarkable woman and a brilliant scientist. Dr. Rachel Chen who is the captain of the world ship Persephone is based on how I imagine her to be. In my book Persephone is a human ark, and actually exists, and is being conceived of right now by Rachel and a team of scientists. It’s built around the idea of a renewable chemical technology called protocells. In the future protocells could replace plastics and also animal products.
My ark Persephone explores Mars and Europa and then sets sail for Alpha Centauri. The Australian scientists Wallace Thornhill was very helpful to me as I wrote these sections. He introduced me to an electrical universe and warm nuclear fusion technology, and I learned more than I ever thought I was capable from him. He would send me wonderful emails that took me several days to decode. His final words to me were ‘don’t worry about the science leave that to scientists, use your writing as a springboard for your imagination.”
Besides hard science however, the Burning Years explores lots of ways we could live on a burnt out planet in the future, and it has two re-engineered transhuman beings who do just that. Introducing them as characters allowed me to explore the whole field of Artificial Intelligence and how two super humans, a male and female, might think and act. Again the social scientist at play. How would their biology, psychology and past influence them. How would their male and female genetics and gender-biases, play a part?
The arc of the plot is set against an underground US government of plutocrats who have saved themselves and a few others, the brightest and the best, who work solely to advance the goals and ambitions of their leaders. Of course there are insurgents, but they are all top-level scientists, and one of them is a female scientist who is heavily involved in geo-engineering the weather. The book takes place about sixty years in the future, just about the time when we may experience dramatic effects from climate change.
I deliberately did not want to write a dystopian book, but one that was full of hope based on our finer instincts as a species, our desire to return to smaller communities, and our current and future knowledge of technology. I am not good with violence unlike George Martin, who is able very skillfully to explore all those dark sides of humanity, and create fabulous villains. My villains tend to be more grey and struggle internally with a lot of philosophical and moral dilemmas. My women are very strong, just like Martin’s, and my main female character Inanna would definitely be friends with Daeneyrs Targaryen.
The second book, the Sound of Gaia, was based on Zecharia Sitchen and Michael Tellinger’s brilliant musings on our potential ancestors the Anunnaki. The Old Testament had never made sense to me until I read their books. Suddenly it clicked and became much more interesting. What if a race of advanced giant space travelers had been here and brought with them a highly advanced technology?
This thinking lead me to engineer Christopher Dunn and his book, The Giza Power Plant, about the Pyramid of Giza being a giant power station fed on hydrogen. He goes into great and believable detail in this book about how it worked. He proposes that before the Egyptians there were people in the Pyramids who used SASER and LASER technology. After Dunn, I read Sitchen’s translation of the Sumerian Tablets and it seemed the authors of these tablets were talking about the same people and their space ships and advanced technologies including the Pyramid of Giza. Then the extraordinary Michael Tellinger lead me to Adams Calendar, sacred geometry, Ubuntu and SASER technology as well. His book Slave Species of the Gods is a great read for anyone who likes out of the box thinking on our origins.
After all this research, I was now on my way to creating a story with the ancestors of the characters in the Burning Years. A group of young multi-racial scientists who go on a quest to find the source of Anunnaki technology. They also stumble on the fact that the Anunnaki’s used ORME – the philosopher’s stone and the bread of life – to heal themselves, live for thousands of years, and travel through space and time.
Sophia, the main scientist reconstitutes an Anunnaki whose bones she finds on Mars through gene splicing, and he leads them on a Raiders of the Lost Ark journey to South Africa, the Sinai, Egypt and Peru. Lots of action in this book including the Galgalians who are a highly advanced, ancient group of survivors of climate change, who live in the Caves of Galgala in what was once Jordan.
This book allowed me to explore CRISPER technology and the potential of human DNA. It also let me understand how micro-waves are made and how electricity is generated. This was very hard and I had to re-read Dunn’s book about five times to grasp the principles.
I haven’t written the third book yet but I know that it will be a great human drama involving the Anunnaki, Nikola Tesla/Annunnaki technology and the re-emergence of a different inter-planetary culture here on earth. One that relies on natural intelligence and is more in sink with the creative mind of the universe. No more cities, but lots of technology, and of course multi-dimensional universes. Those folks who understand how to get in touch with these, will be coming from Alpha Centauri, and will be the descendants of the crew of Persephone. The book will be called Tesla’s Dream.
Now I just have to figure out how to get people to take climate change seriously and use my books as a tool to get them involved. The Burning Years will be published by Double Dragon Publishing in April 2017. I chose them because they loved the book on the first read, and I just couldn’t take a chance and wait for Tor or Del Ray to give me an answer.
Please check out my site the and see how you can get involved with 350.org or any others who work to stop elements of man-made climate change, so as to keep our planet safe and livable in the future. If you’re interested in political change check out Michael Tellinger’s site Ubuntu Planet. You’ll see it’s not too late to save us from the burning years!
