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Pseudo-shrubs (detail)
Su Ying
Book Cover for 'The Leftover Girl'
Priya
Pseudo-crustacean
Alphane life (detail) , dome in distance
Senhora Daguia
Nurse G
Rai
Planet Surface (Detail)
Book Cover for 'A Children's Crusade'
Han
Marta
The Dome (detail)
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Jorja

Recent Posts

Month: March 2019

Island: analogy and its uses

Island: analogy and its uses

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Island: analogy and its uses
I came up with a neat and (I think) apposite analogy recently while writing chapter fifteen of Maya, imagining the Edgbaston campus of the University of Birmingham (a future version features as a setting) as an island in a sea of ordinary concerns.
I thought further and applied the analogy (on a larger scale) to an England, ‘…separated geographically, politically and culturally from its European neighbours and the wider world,’ post-Brexit. It then occurred to me that the same analogy applied to my writing (and this blog), given that I am largely talking to myself here.
The analogy continues to gather force and gobble up more territory as I’m currently suffering from a painful and debilitating ailment which makes the ordinary tasks of daily life challenging, makes it harder for me to leave the house, and has the effect of isolating me from the rest of the world (on my own island).
If this is beginning to sound like an extract from one of Kafka’s famous Blue Notebooks (recently brought back to my attention by the music of Hans Richter), then this is apt as I claim him as an influence.
On that cheery note
The Author March 2019

Conspiracy theory

Conspiracy theory

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Blog entry supplemental twenty four: Conspiracy theory
The final part of Lights in the sky ( and hence of the whole series) centres around a conspiracy theory; the biggest conspiracy theory of all, in fact, that the world, and by extension the whole Universe may not be as we imagine it. That the whole world is actually much younger than we imagine it (in direct opposition to Rupert Giles’ theory that it is, in fact, much older!). That it was actually created by unknown beings for unknown purposes and that consequently we are all property and experimental subjects. If you are thinking so far, so Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, it’s important to realise that Douglas Adams was drawing on an older tradition within SF. This is also a serious book rather than a lighthearted satirical comedy, and my intention is to explore the nature of faith (obviously I’m riffing on Creationism here!), and the psychology of believers.
To the vanishingly small number of people who have read the original Lights in the sky trilogy, this development comes as no surprise as it was already revealed to the Children on Alpha 5.
I started to think (dangerous, I know, in these times!) what if the old stories were actually in some sense true? Not literally, as they have been subject to imperfect transmission, distortion and reinterpretation over the centuries. But that they contain essential truths about the nature of existence that science has been missing.
Now I’m aware that there’s a danger that putative readers will also take what I have written literally, employing the same mindset that takes the Bible (essentially a series of creation myths, parables, and folk tales) literally.
If you think that’s unlikely you’re right, mainly because it’s unlikely that my stories will ever reach a wide enough audience. However the history of the twentieth century teaches us that the most bizarre and far-fetched of notions can become the subject and focus of fanatical belief.
So readers should remember that this is a work of fiction, set in an imaginary world, for the purposes of entertainment and to provoke philosophical debate.
The Author 5th March 2019