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B is for Books – but not as we know them…

humanist55

 



My goal in the 2021 A2Z Challenge is to complete a novel I started a few years ago but which has languished for lack of love (writing!). Each Post, daily in April (Sundays excepted), will consist of some aspect of the novel plus a chapter from it. I hope that the Alphabetical items will give a bit of extra background, muse on the writing process, but most of all, help me develop certain ideas to improve the novel. Some 12 chapters are already written so I have a bit of a head start…
Please comment with any opinions good or bad – you have no idea how much I need feedback at this stage…

 

Today, let alone in the future I have imagined in “Train Wreck”, the world of books is being eroded by the electronic simulacrum – the digital book. For years, the demise of “real” books has been forecast but to paraphrase Mark Twain’s alleged remark on being told that a newspaper had published his obituary in error ““The reports of [book’s] death are greatly exaggerated.”

Why do those of us who read books – and it’s true that there are many who don’t – at all -why do we still sometimes prefer the ancient, analogue form to the digital?
Certainly, when researching in a non-fiction work, I prefer to build a mental map of a book – sometimes without even reading it cover to cover but instead, skimming across it’s surfaces and making mental crosses where the treasure is buried. It is uncanny how one can somehow go back and find those nuggets, sometimes even years later, without even marking the passage in the margins or turning down the page corners – both habits which I find sacrilegious to perpetrate even though I find a book annotated by another hand to be an object of fascination – a glimpse into someone else’s mind…

Kindle, the most successful iteration of the digital-book, has reproduced the marginal annotation though my reluctance to annotate has carried over to the digital book and when I research in the pure, book-form free word-scapes of the internet, I lift quotes out and assemble them in new documents for future contemplation.

For convenience, and because they are cheaper than “real” books, I do have a Kindle library on my smartphone, also, that I may never be caught without something to read (other than the ubiquitous internet). I don’t mind reading fiction in either analogue or digital form but when I do discover a book of true worth, I enjoy – almost fetishistically – having the real thing on my bookshelves and building collections of favourite authors.

So I am of that generation who are tweenies, caught somewhere between analogue and digital books – perhaps for my grandsons, it is a different balance.

In the universe of “Train Wreck”, the last days of Earth were hastened by the very exodus of mankind – the construction of great arks in space and the shuttling of cargo and humans to build and stock those arks for their journeys to the stars. The final push to mine, assemble, and grow the necessary materials and sadly, analogue books are finally, surplus to the constraints of lifting material out of Earth’s gravity well and they are finally left behind all but a few “treasures”. Even the digital world of the internet is reduced – bloated with nonsense, porn, cat videos, personal memorabilia of long-dead citizens – the task of extracting, condensing, and compressing the relevant data from the vast server farms where information was stored (at a huge and finally fatal cost to the environment) – often duplicated many times over, proved a difficult task. The new storage media proved, like CD’s had once done, not to be so durable and faithful in their ability to preserve data and so the researchers of Hawaii 1 found there were tantalising gaps in both the knowledge of old Earth and worse still, in the indexing, and so vast was that accumulated knowledge, that only patient research by human minds, could evaluate and restore order. Hence it is, that Anna, Jack’s wife and historian of technology, has to travel from their home on Hawaii 2, to Hawaii 1 to access the fragmented database in search of proof of her big idea…

Chapter 2
A Utopian Plan

SURVEY SHIP ANDROMEDA IN ORBIT,
 HAWAII 2, A.G.947

Captain Johannson never tired of the view. A veteran surveyor of new planets, none had ever been as beautiful as Hawaii 2. It reminded him of the pictures of old Earth before The Destruction – those first images from space , taken by the early astronauts with nothing better to do than take photographs whilst proving they could survive a few orbits in space. These pictures were so popular on Earth that they had survived in the data matrix in multiple instances. It was fair to say that they were probably the reason Captain Johannson had chosen to go into space himself, some fifty years ago. He had travelled the void through hyperspace jumps to new stars and their planets many times. Wherever Astronomers had identified a solar system that looked promising, there Captain Johannson would go and check it out. He had seen extraordinary sights, the variety of possible planets never ceased to amaze but as viable homes for mankind to colonise, well the margins of viability were narrow and planets that made the grade were few. In the nine hundred and forty seven years since the first colony was set up on Hawaii 1, only another four planets had been added to the Pan Human Federation. This one, provisionally named Hawaii 2 because of its extraordinary similarity to Earth, would be the jewel in the crown – if only they could solve the problem!

They could see amazing detail of the planet’s surface from space and with a multiplicity of sensors and filters could survey weather, geological strata, vegetation types and much more. But sooner or later you needed to get down there on the surface, to check out the wildlife, take physical samples, just breath the air! Of course, first you sent probes down – unmanned drone ships that would skim close to the surface filming and taking air samples before returning to the S.S. Andromeda. Except they mostly didn’t. Return that is. Mostly they flew through the tricky entry phase where the thinness of atmosphere caused such a build-up of speed one had to expend up a lot of rocket fuel slowing the craft up so that it wouldn’t burn up as the friction with the increasing atmosphere built up. Then, when the atmosphere was thick enough, the jet engines came into play and the probe could fly down, collect its samples and vids before flying up again to a height where the rockets could finally boost the craft back into orbit. The “problem” was that the jet engines were failing after random amounts of time and the probes, which were fortunately shaped to glide, after a fashion, ended up crash landing on Hawaii 2’s surface. Whilst some of the probes were intact enough to send back vids and other data, all of which was useful, the “problem” remained, inscrutable, until now. The latest probe had made it back although it had been touch and go and had immediately revealed the “problem”. The rear section of the jet engines was coated in volcanic glass to such an extent that the turbines that drove the compressors at the front of the engine had seized up and the engine stopped.

Once they knew what they were looking for, the Andromeda’s scientists were able to shine laser probes that could reflect off the very fine volcanic dust and map its distribution in Hawaii 2’s atmosphere. Most volcanoes threw out dust but it was usually heavy and fell to ground within a hundred miles of the source volcano and aircraft with jet engines would avoid flying near eruptions for obvious reasons. This particular dust, however, was so fine that it floated up into the atmosphere where it continued to circulate for long periods before eventually settling to the ground. Even then it could be whisked up from the extensive desert regions of Hawaii 2’s equatorial latitudes.

Captain Johannson had formulated a plan. Volunteers were being sought for a one-way ticket to the surface. The largest landing craft was being fitted with extra jet engines to be used should the originals give out and windows of opportunity when dust levels were slightly reduced were being studied. But the fact remained that this trip was only heading down. The crew would become Hawaii 2’s first settlers and volunteers were being assessed for psychological suitability apart from Captain Johannson that is. Always the surveyor and never the settler, Captain Johannson had decided he would like to settle down and nobody was going to rule him out on psychological grounds. S.S. Andromeda carried a selection of Earth plants plus some garnered from the five federation planets that had proved popular with human digestion and these were grown aboard the vessel in the hydroponics section. They would provide the agricultural start and everything else that might be useful was being catalogued and the logistics of getting it into the lander considered. All that they were waiting for was the window of opportunity – a relatively dust free day…

OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT,
 PAN HUMAN FEDERATION,
 HAWAII 1, A.G.947

“But that’s crazy I can’t believe we can cross light years of space, find a perfect planet, nearer to earth conditions than any we have previously identified – a needle in a haystack and you are telling me that we cannot fully exploit it because of volcanic dust!
“Yes sir precisely!”
“But is there no other way of getting on and off world didn’t the first Earth missions into space use rockets?!
“You are right sir they did but they soon realised it was too costly and in a way a blind alley, the wrong way to have approached space in the first place – all due to a historic accident!”
“Explain!”
Behind the desk of his office on Hawaii 1, Federation President Rosario leant back, put his finger tips together and assumed an air of concentration, as if by listening closely he might spot a loophole in the facts of the unpalatable news he was being given. Chief of Staff for the Federation of Home Worlds, James Hewlett paced the room hands clasped behind his back and began.
“There had been a war – the so-called Second World War and as I am sure you know war, is a great accelerant for technology. Some would argue there has been less technological advancement in the last thousand years of mankind’s expansion across the stars because there has been no war. Once we discovered the key to interstellar travel, to hyperspace manipulation, the universe was our oyster. Especially as it turned out that there were no little green men out there to compete with – there were plenty of planets for everyone, a void waiting to be filled even if none of them was quite so perfectly Earth like as Hawaii 2.
But in that war many developments occurred, rocketry on one side and nuclear weaponry on the other and at the end of the war, one of the victorious allies took most of the rocket engineers and all of the rockets whilst the other took just the top man, the real brains of the program – Werner von Braun.”
“How do you know all this ancient history James?” asked the President with only the slightest hint of impatience.
“Well sir, there is an ancient saying and unfortunately, the originator of it is lost to us, that ‘those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them’. I make it my duty as Chief of Staff to arm myself with all the history lessons I can.”
If the President heard even the mildest rebuke in the statement he did not reveal it but nodded sagely and said with no apparent impatience this time “Continue!”
“Well Sir, the Russians, for it was they who took the staff and stock, soon fired off all the rockets and did all the experiments with them that they could but then had to start from scratch building a new production organisation with the staff they had co-opted and without the former leader. The Russians were in a phase of collectivism called Communism which proved not to be a very efficient form of government and were doubly hampered by a totalitarian dictatorship, so it was slow progress. They did however manage to catch up with their opposite numbers the Americans in developing nuclear weapons and they knew how to deliver them around the world by rocket. The Americans believed in free market forces, in Capitalism and indeed it proved a much more efficient means of developing the atomic weapons and with the real brains of rocketry von Braun on their side they soon caught up with the Russians in the production of rockets as the means to deliver nuclear bombs to the other side of the world. And so, the Russians and Americans faced each other off with huge arsenals of nuclear weapons capable of extinguishing all life on Earth the so-called Cold War,”
“But that’s mad!” exclaimed the President,
James did a quick double take of his boss to see whether he recognised what he had said and deciding probably not said with some animation
“Precisely Sir! You’ve hit the nail on the head M. A. D. Mutually Assured Destruction, It was the theory that they work to – nobody could initiate an attack without knowing that the other side could counter attack before being destroyed and the aggressors would be equally destroyed since there was no defence against the rockets once launched.”
“Ok – but what does this have to do with space flight?”
“Well Sir, as well as rockets, both sides developed jet engines aplenty following the war, first for the military and then for passenger airliners The Americans also invented a little rocket powered plane to be carried as high as possible by a jet-turbine powered, bomber before being released to fire it’s rocket engine and be taken to the edge of space. Imagine the thrill of that first pilot to see the sky turn black and the stars come out before plummeting back to Earth in a barely controlled fashion!”
James paused for a moment to long and the president spoke tetchily.
“Yes, yes, but what has that got to do with our problem?”
“Ah well I was coming to that…

 

A TREE HOUSE, GARDEN OF EDEN,
 HAWAII 2, SEPTEMBER, A.G.1243

“So the Americans and Russians prove they both could make rockets and bombs with very different systems of politics and production but now they could wave their big dicks around but not use them. I mean you know how much you boys like your phallic symbols.”
Anna smiled up at Jack whilst gesturing at his crotch with a fore-finger which she provocatively curled and uncurled. Jack put the two cups of tea down carefully on the bedside table before suddenly grabbing a pillow and swatting his wife of two years. She shrieked and rolled towards him wrapping her arms round his thighs and pulling him down onto the bed. An hour later after a thorough exploration of dick waving and more besides and lying side by side with fresh cups of tea she continued.
“So the Americans and the Russians fought a few proxy wars but in their frustration at not being able to use their big shiny weapons, they wanted a grander gesture and when the Russians became the first to put a man into space orbit then the Americans had to go one better and said they were going to send men to land on the moon!”
“Wow!” said Jack “Serious dick waving!” Grabbing Anna’s hand he wrapped it round his own member and demonstrated the said motion.
“Behave yourself Jack! You were the one who wanted to understand why it’s so important that I go away for three months and I am trying to explain! So down boy!” She gives a sharp squeeze and then lets go.
“Alright, alright! I will pay attention Teacher!”
“Okay, so because the Russians had used a rocket to send a man into space and because the payloads involved in getting a ship that could go to the moon and back were so huge, nobody thought of anything other than rockets as the way to go forward. The whole bomber/ rocket-ship idea was just forgotten about. After the moon landings the Americans did develop a shuttle landing craft that was reusable and could take cargo into space, however, it still needed a massive rocket to get it up into space even though it could fly or rather glide back down again.”
“How big were these phallic symbols then?”asked Jack
“Seriously massive – like sitting on a huge bomb twenty times the size of the payload and although the shuttles achieved a lot, eventually in cooperation with the Russians, after a couple of accidents, one on take-off and one on landing with loss of all lives, the shuttles were phased out.”
“So they stopped exploring space then?”
“No, there was an International Space Station by then and the Russians went on using their trusty rockets to maintain the program working with the Americans and other countries but then something new happened.”
“What was that?”
“Well, private industry got involved and worked on getting tourists into space in at least a sub Orbital flight. After all a generation had grown up with all the excitement of the first space flight, the moon landings and the images from the space station and rich people wanted to go there for themselves!”
“I bet they did! What’s not to want! I wish I could see Hawaii 2 from space as you will next week!” said Jack ruefully.
“Well maybe one day we can afford for you to at least go up the lift my love.”
“Yes but you are going to do that and more – again! It’s not fair!” Jack stuck his bottom lip out and pouted in such a parody of a two-year-old that Anna was reduced to helpless laughter.
“I know my darling but one day…” She squeezed his arm.
“Seriously love, I am so proud of you getting chosen to go back and do more research. I know one can do pretty much anything one wants here on Hawaii 2 but when it costs as much as this trip then you’ve got to be good to justify it and someone obviously thinks you have what it takes – apart from me that is!”
“Ahh thanks love!” She rolls over and kisses him before continuing.
“Anyway, the private companies went back to the piggy back idea, building jet powered mother-ships from really light materials and small spacecraft that could rocket up into space once the mother-ship reached its highest point and then like the shuttles they could glide down again.”
“But we can’t use a system like that on Hawaii 2 because of the dust, am I right?”
“Correctamundi! We’ll make a scientist of you yet or at least a science historian.
“Alright Anna, I may be a builder but that doesn’t mean I know nothing!” and he tickles her till she begs for mercy
“Ok, ok! You’re right it’s the dust and Hawaii 2 has a real problem with it.”
“But if Hawaii 2 is the most Earth like planet to be discovered then how come they didn’t have the problem, aren’t there volcanoes on Earth too?”
“There are and very occasionally they did produce the exact same dust that is a problem here on Hawaii 2 and occasionally they did have to ground their jet aircraft but it was never to the same extent as it is here. Hawaii 2 much more recently emerged from an ice age – only 4,000 years ago whereas on Earth, 11,500 years had elapsed by the time jet engines came along. So we have a lot more glaciers in close proximity to volcanoes and even then it has to be a particular type of volcano to produce the very particular fine dust which messes up jet engines. The volcano melts the ice above it and the water runs down hits the molten lava and boom! Very fine dust particles all over the atmosphere.”
“Ok Anna you’re starting to lose me on the technicalities love but the reason you’re going off to Hawaii 1 is because you think there may be a solution?”
“Yes! When I went there before I found a reference to something called a ramjet which doesn’t have moving parts so it might not be affected by the dust – it could change everything for Hawaii 2. I can’t believe that’s nobody else discovered it before me although the reference was truncated by the data degradation and I need to search for it again in other areas of the data.”
“Why can’t they copy all the data and send it to all the other home planets why do you have to go all the way there to research?”
Anna thought for a moment before answering.
“I don’t all together know. I can’t see why it isn’t technically possible – they don’t let us interrogate the original Matrix, it’s too fragile, so it’s already a copy we use. It is massive, I mean it’s all the data they could gather from Earth before the destruction. Maybe it’s a power thing – it gives Hawaii 1 a unique hold over everyone else controlling access to that knowledge.”
“I see, so I have to lose the love of my life for three months because she would rather study Ram Jets than be with me…!
“Well I could pay some close attention to your very own pocket rocket, Love of My Life – right now!” she twinkled.
Unbeknownst to the happy couple, a small part of the payload delivered by that rocket deep inside Anna’s body a short while later, actually reached it’s ultimate destination triggering a series of changes that would progress for the next nine months.

 

OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT,
 PAN HUMAN FEDERATION,
 HAWAII 1, A.G.947

So Mr President the long and short of it is that without jet engines to-power mother-ships most of the way up to space we can land whatever we like on Hawaii 2 but it’s a one-way trip. Well not quite, we can build a space elevator but it’s capacity would be tiny, a real bottleneck. However it could be used to export high value, small volume goods such as gemstones, rare earth metals, etc and of course a small number of significant people.”
“But no mass exodus once the next planet is identified and prepared. Is that what you are saying?”
“Exactly Mr President, but that may offer us another possibility – a unique possibility!”
“What kind of possibility can a planet have with minimal trade prospects and no chance of becoming a stepping stone for the human race?”
“Well Mr President, you remember we talked about the different historical systems on Earth ranging from Democratic Capitalism at one end of the spectrum and Totalitarian Communism at the other?” President Rosario nodded, “Well the economics of those systems needed constant growth and/or War to provide consumption and stimulation of the economy and ultimately this is what lead to The Destruction and forced mankind to reach for the stars. Whilst all the Home Worlds pledge to maintain their environments in order not to repeat the mistakes of Earth it is a balancing act and any one of them could go out of balance and a few have come close to it. There may not be nation states any more but the trans-planet corporations compete for control of resources and conduct cyber attacks which resemble war only too closely. It is only the memory of The Destruction which allows governments to keep a lid on things and a thousand years on that fear becomes less potent despite being hard-wired into our education system. Hawaii 2 offers a chance for a unique experiment, one which economists have long pondered as a possibility.”
“Go on – though when I hear words like experiment and economist in the same sentence I immediately wonder how much it’s going to cost especially given that we are talking about a Planet with no trading possibilities!”
“Restricted trading possibilities but high-value possibilities…”
“Ok, so what are these economists proposing for Hawaii 2”
James Hewlett noticed the minute shift forward of President Rosario in his chair and he knew that the president’s interest was piqued.
“Alright so what if you could have a population stabilized at whatever level is needed to maintain itself where there was no war because everybody is provided for equally so no need to fight for resources. Modern technology to do almost all the grunt work. We could build a utopian society! High levels of education as well as leisure, freedom to choose whatever work you wanted to do or not work at all!”
“Well that sounds peachy but what would be the point of this experiment? I wouldn’t mind living there myself, but we are hardly in the business of setting up planetary holiday camps…”
“Make no mistake, Hawaii 2 would pay its way or rather, aside from the initial colonist transfer and mining infrastructure, it would have to be self-sustaining with those high value exports buying in whatever was still needed from the outside. The information from Captain Johannson’s landing party or settler group, I should say – confirm all the space side survey reports! No! The value of Hawaii 2 is that it is an almost closed system – we can keep the trans planet corporations out, so imagine how good it would be to know how to manage a Society without War and find a way to have an economy based on peace and stability rather than constant but unsustainable growth, Hawaii 2 could be just the laboratory in which to perform such an experiment!”
“Interesting!” Said President Rosario.


The proposed Virgin Galactic Spaceship and Mother-ship combo

A is for Arctane… 2021 A2Z Challenge

humanist55

 

My goal in the 2021 A2Z Challenge is to complete a novel I started a few years ago but which has languished for lack of love (writing!). Each Post, daily in April (Sundays excepted), will consist of some aspect of the novel plus a chapter from it. I hope that the Alphabetical items will give a bit of extra background, muse on the writing process, but most of all, help me develop certain ideas to improve the novel. Some 12 chapters are already written so I have a bit of a head start…
Please comment with any opinions good or bad – you have no idea how much I need feedback at this stage…

 


Arctane is one of three human home-worlds mentioned in Train Wreck besides Earth, the decimated world of origin of the human race. It is the least important in the novel since none of the characters go there and its not involved in the plot, however it is a good starting point for exploring the universe of the Pan-Human Federation as these four worlds are called.

I was amazed to learn that imagining alien worlds goes back a long way – Dante in his “Paradiso” (1320) imagines his narrator ascending through sphers of the Moon and planets to eventually join with Angels. Giordano Bruno was martyred in 1600 for describing multiple, inhabited worlds orbiting other suns in his “De l’infinito universo e mondi” (“Concerning the Infinite Universe and Worlds”, 1584) – fortunately it is not so dangerous to write Science or Speculative Fiction these days…

When I was boy, scientists were coy about stating that there must be other suns with other planets bearing life since we had not even seen evidence of a planet crossing the disk of its star or causing a wobble in the stars orbit. As of 2018, 3078 exoplanets have been detected using such methods in our galaxy alone, although only 53 are “optimistically described as having the potential for life. There are of course an incalculable number of other galaxies…

The problems with travelling to other stars to explore such planets, are distance, the means of covering the distance and getting in and out of the gravity wells at either end of a planet-to-planet journey.- Most science fiction books skip lightly over these massive problems by having had someone invent the requisite drives for both interstellar journeys and getting on and off planets. So the Speculations of Science Fiction, fall into three categories – they are either about what we will find should we ever get there; considerations of what it is to be human by imagining us against some alien backdrop; or lastly, they are just a good yarn, cowboys and Indians, detective story, thriller or pirates of the asteroid belt dressed up in a futuristic setting. The realities of how and when we might ever be able to achieve such voyages lie far in the future.

My novel “Train Wreck” is really the second type of science fiction – what it is to be human – framed as the third type – a detective mystery. There is a crime at the outset and by the end of the book, we will have found out the who and the why, but along the way, is an examination of a Utopia and how people might succeed in expressing or suppressing human nature in such a society…

Arctane is a “mere” mining planet where materials valuable enough to human activities and rare enough to merit transporting between the stars have been found. The rarity of suitably inhabitable planets is such that all the planets in the Pan Human Federation orbit different stars and so you can bet that whatever interstellar drive has conveniently been discovered, its pretty d**n quick and even then, it takes an appreciable length of time to make the journey. Of course, like the canal-boats of Earth’s nineteenth century (a period of Industrial Revolution), although slow, once a flow of boats is under way, regular deliveries arrive.

Arctane is the very opposite of a Utopia, it is practically a “Company planet” since everything that happens there is by and for “The Company” and Arctinians are, as mining folk throughout human history have been, a rough and ready lot with no time for the niceties of civilisation. I have perhaps included the existence of Arctane simply to offer a contrast to the paradise that is the Utopian experiment which is Hawaii 2 and a worse alternative to the main replacement, human home-world for Earth that is Hawaii 1. Those who volunteered to go to Arctane in search of fortune, were almost diametrically opposite to those who first volunteered but were then carefully picked, to inhabit the Utopian experiment of Hawaii 2.

If you want to explore some of the many worlds science fiction writers have imagined, Wikipediadoes not disappoint and for images of imagined worlds – including the one shown at the start of this post, click here.

 

And now for the Frontispiece, Prologue and Chapter 1 of Train Wreck…

Train Wreck.

Hawaii:- from the Polynesian word Owhyhee meaning homeland. As the Polynesian peoples spread out across the Pacific Ocean, each new island colonised was initially called Owhyhee, Once the numbers of settlers rose to a suitable capacity for the island, a new group would set out in search of the next Owhyhee.

Prologue

HAWAII 2, DECEMBER, ANNO GALACTICUS 1243

If the explosion that severed the Spacelift Express had happened any further from the capital then the fatalities, at least in that section of the train aft of the explosion, might have been total. A parched tongue extended from the vast wastes of the New Sahara Desert and pushed its way almost to the city. The tongue was lapped either side by two valleys verdant with man-made greening right up to their watersheds. This desert tongue was the scene of the atrocity and was within range of rescue vehicles, both land based and, as luck would have it, the weather permitted airborne rescue helicopters too.

 

The explosion, the result of a bomb, it was quickly but discretely established, occurred in the dining car, severing the carriage at that point as well as the maglev monorail on which the train ran. The carriages behind this point hit the break in the rail, jumped off its guiding influence and concertinaed – the train swinging alternatively left and right. The forward section of the train carried on a little further around the gentle curve of the track at this point for although the catastrophic break in the monorail had cut power to the maglev engines, the aerodynamic air intake that helped compress the air flow smoothly beneath the train when in motion, carried the sinking carriages just far enough to avoid being crushed from behind by the rear section. The sudden sinking of the carriages onto the monorail caused a sudden enough braking that some passengers, especially those on their feet sorting out their luggage ready for the imminent arrival at Grand Central were thrown to the floor in the front section. In the rear section of the train those standing formed the majority of the dead. Those still seated fared proportionally better in both sections but having said that, there were plenty of dead amongst the seated of the rear section too.

 

One young couple were particularly lucky as having been closest to the explosion yet partially protected by having both entered the toilet at one end of the dining car and just closed the door behind them when the explosion happened. They were thrown around badly and were both in an unconscious state which resolved, once all other possible care had been given to their battered bodies, into intractable comas in both their cases.

Fortunately… 

Chapter 1
Awakening.

HAWAII 2, MAY, A.G.1244

He could hear a baby.
He could hear a woman talking to the baby in the high-pitched voice that even men adopt instinctively when talking to babies, he remembered Anna telling him how that worked.
“Yes you are a beautiful boy, aren’t you!”
Gurgling from the baby.
“Just like your Dad there! The Sleeping Beauty! Who’s a beautiful boy? Coodgie, coodgie, coo!”
More gurgling followed by spluttering and a tiny sneeze.
“Bless you!” The woman’s voice. Wait! That was his mother’s voice! What was she doing here and where was here?
He tried to speak but there was something stuck in his throat but a rasping sound emerged followed by his Mother’s voice calling for a nurse and then suddenly there were lots of voices around him.

“BP please?”
“BP normal at one-two-five over eighty but pulse is up to ninety-eight.”
Okay let’s de-intubate please. Gently does it he’s had it in a long time!”
He feels like his throat is being ripped out. He liked it better when the baby was here and his mother.
“Murrghm!” He tries to sit up and call her but he feels as weak as a kitten and his throat is dry and sore.
Gently now! Lie back Jack and let me wet your lips.”
Something spongy is applied to his lips and a trickle of water slips into his mouth and down his throat, he nearly chokes. He tried to open his eyes realising that if he could hear then he should be able to see but something was stopping them opening. He tried to raise his hands to his eyes but they weighed too much and they seemed – encumbered. He panicked and started thrashing his arms and crying out for his mother and suddenly her voice was there again.
“It’s okay Jack, just relax a minute and the doctors will help you.  You’re in hospital but you are ok!”
Someone was holding his hand, holding it down but stroking his arm. It was his mother’s touch, the touch when he was in bed settling down after a story and slipping into sleep. He calmed down. Hands removed something from his face, undid tape from his eyelids. The doctor spoke again.
“Now Jack – try opening your eyes please.”
At first everything was blurry, heads bent over him in a semi darkened room then a blinding light from the doctors torch, first in one eye and then the other. Then there was more light as someone twisted the blinds open and the bright sunlight came flooding in and finally, there was his mother, tears of happiness running down her face as she bent forward to hug him as he lay there and he felt her tears run down his cheek. After a bit she stood up again and a nurse moved in to remove something from his arm the bed was tilted upwards bringing him to a near sitting position.
“There was a baby!” he said “Where’s the baby?”
His mother looked at the doctor who shrugged and nodded at the same time. His mother turned to him and with a pained look but in a bright voice, a too bright voice, said
“Jack you have a son! You are a father Jack!”

The Big Reveal…

humanist55

 Last year, I only discovered the A2Z 2020 Challenge on the first of April – the start day and had to wing it with the theme of the unfolding Covid 19 Pandemic. This year I have had time to think about it in advance and have to make it not just a 26 day blogging challenge, but a 26 day novel completing challenge…


Some years ago, laid up after a hip replacement [I am not as old as that suggest but I have just reached pension age 🙁   ] I awoke in the middle of the night from a dream which I knew was meant to be the start of a novel. I immediately dictated all I could recall into my phone and began writing the next day.

I confess, I already had a novel on the go which has languished for more of the 15 years since its inception than not. Whilst still actively thinking and reaching and very occasionally writing a bit of the first novel – darting hither and thither within its structure, the second novel – “Train Wreck” – has been a start at the beginning and work through in order affair. Still, there has been a lot of time when life got in the way of writing and so I have decided to try and complete it with the impetus of the 2021 Challenge.

To comply with the A to Z part of the Challenge, I am going to invent an aspect of my novel’s world(s) – for it is a science-fiction in a thriller format – the Train Wreck is a whodunnit! But I shall then publish a chapter a day – luckily I have a headstart of twelve which gives me more time to write the balance…

And if anything else demands musing on, I will tack that on too…

Needless to say – Feedback would be most welcome!

I will aim to visit as many other blogs as I can – its going to be busy!

Reflections on A to Z 2020 Challenge

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Being a newbie to the Challenge, I had not realized that a reflection post was de rigeur but better late than never! I only discovered the Challenge on April 1st and so I had also missed the theme launch which meant I had no option but to be a “pantser” and being full of thoughts on the lockdown, that became my theme – personal and societal responses (including my resumption of blogging). 

Having such a broad canvas meant I could also adopt a wide variety of styles, op-ed, poetry, fiction, and photography. I do think that once a few people found me, this varied nature might have helped to keep readers coming back. To begin with there were hardly any pageviews until I made a couple of reviews of other blogs – after all, I had no extant readers after a gap from 2013 but numbers started to climb after Fréderiqué gave me some good advice on promotion and offered solid support throughout the Challenge!

So by the end of the month, the pageviews had reached around 1000 and a couple of posts reached the dizzying number of 45 pageviews each! However, this is not the best way to measure success as a blogger and instead, what has pleased me much more, is that a I feel I have made a couple of solid friends who will continue to visit and vice versa.

What did I enjoy writing most (since I have already spoken about the blogs I have enjoyed reading) – well I did a lot of research for M – Money and N – neo Liberalism and I enjoyed boiling down complex issues to bite-sized pieces which I hope were digestible – there are some very complex issues facing the world at present. At the other end of the scale, I wrote the L – Love poem very quickly, using song titles to start and theme each verse and I think I succeeded in making something touching, funny and thought-provoking – not necessarily in that order…

Will I do it again next year? If the fates and Covid 19 allow both in health and time, I would love to join this special club again. As to whether I would pre-prepare posts, I don’t know – it takes some of the pressure off and allows reflection and editing time but there is great stimulation in “pantsing” and the opportunity to react to current events too. Hopefully, we shall not be living in quite such dramatic times by then – but I wouldn’t count on it…

Z – Is it the End?

humanist55
This post is part of the A to Z 2020 Challenge. I have decided to theme the posts around personal and societal responses to the Covid 19 crisis, including my resumption of Blogging!



A to Z – the last letter, the last day…

We sometimes use the expression A to Z to convey the idea of “everything” – all-encompassing. But is Z the last letter in the alphabet, it comes from the Greek letter zeta,  copied from the Phoenecian zayin and given new name to sequence and rhyme with eta and theta which placed it as the 6th letter in the Greek alphabet. We came to Z via Latin where it was initially placed at the end of the alphabet before being ditched altogether and then later restored. all of which goes to show that not only are we humans very fickle about our use and abuse of letters but also that whether you want to encompass everything with first/ last alphabet references – well it depends where you are and when you are… If you want to know more then Wikipedia is here for you!

However, the thing which is occupying those of us bloggers who have made it to the last day of the A to Z 2020 Challenge with 25 posts already under our belts and about to qualify for the Survivors Badge, is that it is all over for this year. Well, yes, and no! It has been hard work, especially if, like me, you only discovered the challenge on day one and therefore had done no preparation, no pre-writing, and then too, I had no readers at that point, having picked up a dormant blog and nursed it back to life. So building readership (956 page views for the month, as I write) has been hard work too but I have had help and encouragement (see my vlog post) and I am very happy with how it has gone. Before I found those helpful friends, I started promoting by doing reviews of the sites I liked from the Master List of participants and got as far as 120 or so out of 500 and so I still have 380 left to look at and dip into their offerings over the past month – so no it ain’t over yet!!!

I am sure everybody will relax and ease off just a little on both writing and promoting although quite a few people I have encountered have multiple blogs so perhaps they will simply switch to other subjects or perhaps find other challenges. I for one will keep posting on a varied range of subjects and in varied styles and I will keep on reaching out to the friends I have made as well as seeking new ones and……..
I can’t wait to see you all here again next year!!!!!


Y is for You…

humanist55
This post is part of the A to Z 2020 Challenge. I have decided to theme the posts around personal and societal responses to the Covid 19 crisis, including my resumption of Blogging!

There are very few words in dictionaries beginning with X but here is one you can get your teeth into…

You Make The Difference!

I first got a computer of my own around 1998 and shortly afterwards, I broke my hip and had to spend a year on crutches. But like the present lockdown, being stuck at home gave the opportunity to both develop a business and to explore the internet and how it worked.

What I learned was about the biggest business which sorts out the content of the internet at one end of the scale, and about all the individuals who contribute the content itself at the other end of the scale. At that time, the dot-com bubble had just about burst and like many people, I was wondering how you could make money out of something that was so exciting and full of potential as the internet clearly was. Well, it turned out that Google was the answer to that particular conundrum – it’s incredible power to index content plus the concept of matching advertising to words in emails, searches, etc., was winning combination and one that nobody else has since matched. However, without content, there would be nothing to index (or advertise) and whilst, as the years have passed since then, commercial sites have increased in size and sophistication, so too have the mass of individuals who put up content about their hobbies, hobby horses and interests – not least us bloggers!


When I first went on the internet, I was amazed at how much material was already there as a result of individual effort and passion and what a democratic, leveling process this was. Think of the libraries and encyclopedias and textbooks of the past, produced by professional writers and publishers at great cost and not always great profit. Now Wikipedia demonstrates both the strength and pitfalls of “co-operative” authorship. Tales of editing wars over particular entries are legendary. Nonetheless, it is often our first port of call when researching, doing homework or just filling an idle moment – although, surfing the net generally goes by the maxim that the most interesting items always appear when you are researching under time pressure and not so much when you are footloose and fancy-free…

The A to Z Challenge is an example of this liberal, undirected, fascinatingly varied contribution to the evergrowing internet and those who have laboured for  several hours a day for almost 26 days!  Some 500 blogs on the Master list at 2 hours a day for 26 days, well that is 26,000 hours work! We have seen essential oils, photographs, haiku, incredible quilting, politics, self-development to name but a few and all this has been done by YOU!

X is for Xenophobia…

humanist55
This post is part of the A to Z 2020 Challenge. I have decided to theme the posts around personal and societal responses to the Covid 19 crisis, including my resumption of Blogging!

There are very few words in dictionaries beginning with X but here is one you can get your teeth into…

Xenophobia – is it an instinct?

A little scout on the internet quickly reveals how debatable the subject of Xenophobia and its mechanisms are, almost as intractable as Nature v. Nurture and this is because we are in the same area of research v. belief. It is very hard to devise experiments that conclusively deal with instinct partly because you cannot create or find control subjects who have not been “taught”, however unconsciously, certain biases.
What we do know, is that babies have no undue reactions to babies of other races or colour, and, experimental psychologists claim, adult subjects shown photographs of all sorts of people, react more to different age groups than to different colour or ethnicity.
The philosopher Karl Popper said that it didn’t matter how you came up with a scientific theory, it was how you tested it that counted – and that since you can never establish something to be true everywhere, you were better to try and disprove a theory rather than prove it and thus find yourself in possession of something true for the time being… So he disagreed with the ideas of Freud and indeed all psychoanalytical theory because it was impossible to falsify. Einstein’s theories on the other hand, accounted for some of the flaws in the reigning Newtonian physics and so could be accepted for a time (they too have now got holes in and physicists are looking for theories to replace them…).
So perhaps it is not possible to get a definitive answer as to whether xenophobia is an instinct and focus instead on how it plays out in humans.

Is Xenophobia a choice?

If it’s difficult to screen out the teaching of xenophobia to infants then we must examine how that teaching takes place and for sure, it ranges from very subtle and unconscious biases that even good liberals may not be aware of as they raise their children, to raging bigoted indoctrination by other less liberal parents. Then again, it is not just parents who can consciously foster xenophobia – you only have to look at the exploitation of baseless, even non-sensical prejudice against immigrants in the ongoing Brexit debacle where just last week, vegetable pickers were being flown into the UK which has apparently voted against freedom of movement. What were the first actions of Trump upon election – the banning of Muslims traveling from certain countries, playing to the xenophobia he had stoked up in his election campaign? Of course, immigrants are always a handy distraction from politicians’ own failings be they management or putting their hand in the cookie jar.

Who are the ones that choose to teach their children hatred? They can be the wronged and downtrodden or the perpetrators of oppression. In Northern Ireland, partition took place to create six counties where the majority were Protestant and the minority, Catholic. The Protestants abused their power, “Catholics need not Apply” notices in job adverts, Catholic areas allowed to become slums, etc. So Catholics taught their children to hate the “Prods” whilst Protestants had to demonize the Catholics who remained a threat to them – if for no other reason than that their birth rate is higher and they will one day be in a position to vote for the reunification of Ireland.

Who chooses to oppose xenophobia? Liberals for sure, and they are usually prosperous enough not to be threatened by the alleged or actual consequences of high levels of immigration – their children not so likely to attend schools where multi-ethnic classes might reduce the academic standards. But also those who have learned better in life to trust and choose better.

Popper opposed Communism for the same reason as he opposed psychoanalysts – because he saw their beliefs as untestable, as matters of belief and thus choice. I believe that we should hold firm to this understanding that xenophobia is a choice, disproving the theories which its proponents push forward, for whatever spurious reasons and choosing instead to work together as human beings. If the present Covid 19 crisis has taught us nothing else – it is surely that together is strong, sharing is best in a common enterprise to beat the virus…

W is for Work…

humanist55
This post is part of the A to Z 2020 Challenge. I have decided to theme the posts around personal and societal responses to the Covid 19 crisis, including my resumption of Blogging!

Work in the time of Covid 19

If I was still working at my normal job (General Manager in a Gelato and pudding factory) – I wouldn’t be sitting here blogging! It’s not just the time factor, I struggle to fit in the two-and-a-half hours it mostly takes me to write and promote each piece – no, its the lifestyle. After eleven hours out of the house, I don’t have the energy to sit and blog. Also, my partner is already retired and so, in “normal” times, we need to spend the three days I am not working doing more “together” things.
Covid 19 has changed a lot of things for a lot of people and made them, and certainly me, reassess work, priorities, life.
It has been hard not to be useful when, away from the calm, bird-song filled streets and parks, you know that some people are still working frantically, whether on the “front-line” of the health service or in companies than can do mail-order and delivery -which includes my own place of work. My particular work can’t easily be done from home and because of mine and my partner’s age, I have been furloughed anyway.

 

“Cedar Waxwing, March 25, 2020, Allen Station Park, Allen, Texas” by gurdonark is licensed under CC BY 2.0

I watch the news of apparent government incompetencies in the supply lines, and the management of testing and I itch to get in there and help sort things out. I have had such varied jobs over the years that I think I have the ability to think outside the box and to translate thought into action, whereas it seems to me, most politicians have no experience outside politics and are lacking in any other skills. At 65, I would until recently, have been entitled to my state pension this year, but being part of the post-war baby-boom, it has been necessary for the government to extend working lives…

New Values

Like many people then, I have had the time and opportunity to think about the future, post-crisis, the so-called “New Normal” and personally, I am not sure I want to go back to work as I used to. My job in the factory was hardly a vocation and the things it was promised that I would be able to apply my skills to improve, have mostly not happened. On the other hand, blogging and knocking an allotment into shape, have felt worthwhile. The allotment, we hope, will make a contribution to our and our daughter’s family larder whilst blogging, has I hope, provided food for thought or maybe entertainment. Coming back to a comatose blog with no followers and slowly making friends and readers suggests some small success. Indeed, it makes me think that I would have enjoyed journalism and even, that it is not too late to contribute in some way. 

Because let’s face it, the world was in a sorry state before Covid 19 – the looming environmental crisis, the rise of right-wing governments, the wanton break up that was Brexit, the failure of capitalism, based as it was on constant growth and spurious war mongering. I remember going to a debate whilst a student, and being frustrated at not being able to formulate the questions I wanted to ask the speakers in time. Over the years, the themes and issues that keep me awake at night, have become clearer to me, the links between things, more obvious. I do know the key questions and have some ideas about the desirable direction of travel – if not the full answers.

It might be some time before my age-group are deemed safe to return to work and my partner and I, when we finally examine this month’s spending, may find we can manage without me going back to work, or maybe I can find a new way to bring in a little extra money to keep us ticking over – for me, just as for many people, there are uncertainties and opportunities in the wake of the coronavirus…

V is for Vlogging – is it the Future or the Devil?

humanist55
This post is part of the A to Z 2020 Challenge. I have decided to theme the posts around personal and societal responses to the Covid 19 crisis, including my resumption of Blogging!

Spoiler Alert!

If you are a Blogger who thinks that Vloggers are the spawn of the Devil then I must warn you that this post contains a Vlog post – by yours truly – but fear not, I am not going to become a regular Vlogger, this guest appearance is only in the interests of exploring the difference between the two phenomena – Blogging and Vlogging…

Appearances

Have you ever wondered how your favourite Bloggers look? In some cases, (including myself) they do provide a thumbnail or even a proper picture of themselves such as the writers Sharon Cathcart or Sarah Zama. I have a confession to make – my thumbnail is at least a decade old but I feel it strikes the right note – so it stays – if you want to see me now you will have to watch the Vlog… But there are others – and I am not criticising – such as my most faithful visitor, commenter and my mentor for promoting this blog – Frédérique at Applique Patchwork Quilting who remain a mystery. Frédérique has become a voice without appearance in my head and it is strange that we should apply that term to written words and that is one of the things that I want to explore by comparing blogs and vlogs.

Crossover

My first post in this A to Z 2020 Challenge was about Alistair Cooke and I suggested, that because he first wrote down and then read out  his iconic “Letter from America”, Cooke should be considered the prototypical Blogger and in recording his blog he made crossover to broadcasting – first Radio and later TV with his series “America”. Vlogging is the screen crossover child of blogging for the generation who hardly watch TV but get a lot of their screen leads from YouTube.

What is a Vlog?

Just like its progenitor, the Blog, the Vlog is, at its simplest, a dated video post. Like blogs, vlogs have many uses, diary, business tool, marketing, educational, documentary, political message but they differ from blogs because they each have different strengths and weaknesses.
Vlogs are visual and their authors (if blogs can have a voice, then videos can be authored) have to be seen – so not for the shy and self-conscious. in fact vlogs have been analyzed for “personality traits such as Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience.” (Wikipedia) Since we humans learn in so many ways, then for some, video is a far more effective way to learn (or just be entertained) whereas others learn (or enjoy) the written word better. Surely the vlog conveys much more than the words that are spoken – the non-verbal cues are equally important and anyone who hs watched a nerd with a personality void give a video post about something technical will know what I mean. Text is notorious for being unreliable at conveying tone – short texts between people in particular but at least with a blog, we have longer pieces in which to develop our message and over the course of following a particular blogger, we get to recognize more accurately their “voice” and their stance through the choice of words, content and style.
This post has already included several links to other parts of the internet and this is more difficult to do on a vlog or indeed TV broadcasting – how many times following a TV programme – even drama, have we heard over the credits – “If any viewers have been affected by the issues raised in the programme – please go to our website for links to support you…” On the other hand a blog is limited to still photos or embedded videos to show the reader things with a flow – but then again – you can always go back to that link in a blog.

The Best of Both Worlds…

Perhaps the most effective way of managing content, if neither blogging nor blogging conveys everything you need to say, is a combination – a blog with a vlog embedded – that way you can put all the links, the carefully polished words into the blog whilst including the more emotional, personal, non-verbal communication into the vlog element.
To test this, I am going to take a leap into the dark, or considering that I will reveal myself, warts and all, a leap into the light by posting a vlog right here…

And Frédérique, there is something especially for you…


So there it is – Hit or a Miss? You decide…


You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter



U is for UB40

humanist55
This post is part of the A to Z 2020 Challenge. I have decided to theme the posts around personal and societal responses to the Covid 19 crisis, including my resumption of Blogging!


Two days ago I said how important music was to me (and it’s still not too late to join the game ) – not only listening to the music itself, but the musicology – the story of where the music came from, the influences, the writers, composers, and even the producers and my relationship to the music of UB40 typifies how music has changed for me and I suspect lots of others.

When I met my partner back in the mid 80’s, I did not like spending money on myself, so she made up for that on birthdays and Christmas by buying me lots of music! UB40’s “Labour of Love” was one such (vinyl) album and featured the chart-topping “Red, Red Wine” – a cover of the 1967 Neil Diamond song but in the 1968 reggae styled version by Tony Tribe. This album gave rise to the idea that all UB40’s songs were covers but this is not the case yet the band with a very mixed ethnicity make-up, was very influenced by Ska, early Reggae and Lovers Rock. By the time they hit the big time and went to Jamaica, they were looking forward to meeting their musical roots who in turn were looking forward to the band which had given their careers a much-needed boost!


Named for the form issued to unemployed people applying for the dole, the members of UB40 hailed from Birmingham and were all unemployed when they formed up and indeed – their first album was called “Signing Off” to signify that they no longer needed to claim unemployment benefit. But all of these details had to wait for the internet to develop before I could become aware of them.

Meanwhile, CD’s came and went and now we have Spotify as my default way to listen to music. Now I have more musicology on the internet than I know what to do with, concerts on TV, access to many groups whole back catalogues yet I still have that first UB40 vinyl album given to me by my beloved – and hey! Guess what? Vinyl records are back and we can again dream of affording a bigger and better hi-fi system,  maybe with exposed valve amplifier – nah! Just play me UB40 on any tinny device and you will find me singing along.