COME TO MY LAUNCH PARTY
FRIDAY, APRIL 10
ON FACEBOOK!
COPIES OF FATHERS AND DEMONS
WILL BE GIVEN AWAY AND
ALL MY BOOKS WILL BE 99 CENTS!
My next publication (due to be released sometime in the next
six weeks) is entitled Fathers and Demons; Glimpses of the Future,
and it doesn't have any giant termites!
In fact, it’s a serious work of speculative fiction about future human
beings. For the first time the general
reading public will get to meet Capt. Robbin Nikalishin, the protagonist of my
still unfinished opus, The Man Who Found
Birds among the Stars. The best way
to introduce my new book to you is to present excerpts from the book’s
introductory matter.
A Note from the Author
When I set out to write the life
story of Capt. Robbin Nikalishin (the first starship commander to make contact
with extraterrestrials), I intended it to be one longish novel entitled The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars. Among other goals, I wanted to depict the
history and state of Earth’s future civilization in greater depth than I had
been able to do in my novel The Termite
Queen. This included recounting what
had become of certain remnant elements of society – specifically, defined
religious populations. The Jews
constituted one of these populations.
So I introduced a Jewish character
who was about to get married. I began to
research Jewish weddings and ended spending a good three months immersed in all
aspects of Jewish religion and culture.
I even studied a bit of Hebrew.
This new fascination caused the Jewish wedding section to expand into a
lengthy tome that encompassed not only an exposition of Judaism but also a
probe into the nature of gods and their relationship with human beings.
Obviously, a chunk this weighty
could not remain part of the basic novel.
However, the piece contains many striking and provocative elements, so I
have extracted it, shortened it by some 10,000 words, and turned it into a
separate “novel.” In fact, it is not
exactly a novel, since it starts and stops in
medias res, with only enough explanation of what has gone before to make it
comprehensible. It consists of several
sections, some that elaborate on the future history of Earth; some that illuminate
Jewish faith, philosophy, and culture and the future history of religion in
general; and some that detail the stories of certain individuals, both Jewish
and secular. The theme of fatherhood and
the connections between fathers and gods form the mesh that binds the book
together.
The
most appropriate designation to accord this piece is speculative literary
fiction; it is science fiction in that it takes place in a future time, at the
very inception of interstellar travel, but it also deals with demons and gods
that may or may not be real, introducing an element of the supernatural. The style varies; within a framework of
omnipotent narration, certain history and tales are told through conversation
or related by one of the characters, and there is even a venture into epistolary
form. It is a bit like a musical work,
with each segment having its own tempo, theme, and mood. …
Lorinda J. Taylor
Colorado Springs
April, 2015
By Way of Introduction: Earth and Space, 28th Century
All human beings must
live with demons, but those demons are unusually powerful when they are
summoned by the sort of catastrophe that happened aboard the Darter in 2761. Robbin Nikalishin, the Captain of that
interstellar ship, had succeeded, by dint of much help and a determined will,
in subduing his own demons, but no member of his crew had completely escaped
being affected. That was especially true
of Cmdr. Ian Glencrosse, the Darter’s
2nd Assistant Engineer. Nevertheless,
when the rehabilitated Captain received command of the first real interstellar
mission under the new Phenix Project, he selected Ian Glencrosse to serve as
his Chief Engineer. The choice was
limited, because few officers expert in temporal quantum drive were still
alive; furthermore Nikalishin and Glencrosse had become close friends. And in spite of (or perhaps because of) his
own demons, Glencrosse had accepted the appointment. After all, he had saved his Captain’s life
during the catastrophe. A proverb says,
when you save someone’s life, you become responsible for that person forever.
As the launch date for
the “Big Mission” approached – the day when the IS Ariana would depart for Epsilon Eridani – the crew took leave
time. The excuse was the wedding of the
Communications Officer, Lt. Avi Oman, and Capt. Mercedes Tulu, Administrative Aide
to Adm. Sergey Malakoff, the Phenix Project’s Mission Director. Lt. Oman hailed from the Istrian Judish
Enclave, a place of origin mysterious to most 28th-century Earthers. Mercedes was Midammeriken, born in the
citrus-growing regions of Teyhas, but her father had immigrated from Ethopa in
East Afrik. Since she had Flasha
ancestors, Avi’s family had blessed the marriage.
Cmdr. Glencrosse did
not accompany his fellow crewmembers on this happy excursion to the Adriantic
Sea’s northern coast. He had something
other than recreation on his mind. He
had long been haunted by visions of a malevolent entity that inhabited the
depths of space – the very entity that was responsible for destroying the Darter as the ship emerged from a
temporal quantum pod. Both his Captain and the team psychologist,
Dr. Gill Winehandle, knew about this aberration; in fact, the doctor had at one
time improvised an unfortunate nickname for the entity – “the god in the
pod.” While the Engineer’s peers thought
his delusions were under control, Ian still secretly believed in the reality of
this demon space-god – that it disapproved of humans’ invasion of its territory
and therefore had doomed the upcoming mission to destruction. Ian was convinced he would not survive the
voyage and so he was heading home to Mitchican Prefecture, where after a long
separation he would confront his parents and make his peace.
I will post updates on the release date on
Facebook (my page: https://www.facebook.com/Termitewriter
-
like me while you’re there!)
Twitter
(@TermiteWriter)
Google+ (my community: Books by TermiteWriter).
And visit my Amazon
and Smashwords
pages
to check out my published books.
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