Good January I hope to you,
This month, I have something special. The first self-published novel I ever read. The first novel that was self-published that I had ever seen, which made me think about that idea to begin with. And it came from the recommendation of one of my best friends. His brother-in-law had written a novel and he sent me the link to it. I wanted to support as someone who knew a guy who knew a guy who did something. I read The Long Home of the Soul and let me tell you. I was blown away. The sheer size, the momentum, the action, the ideas, this wasn’t just a book, this was a great book. A superb book of quality, of science fiction, of literature, of the future we face, an allegory of the times. I have been extremely fortunate enough to read two of Jim’s novels (his second one he’s holding on to for a bit longer) and his storytelling and writing are top notch. He used to be a journalist, and when they wanted to dumb down his writing and work to face America in the papers, he quit. He is now a teacher, and I am sure one bitchin’ English teacher, showing his kids what reading and writing can really do. And you know what that is my fellow human? Reading and writing can change the world. IT DOES CHANGE THE WORLD.
This link has a variety of self-published and perhaps not self-published books for free. Grab one or two, see what the author has to say. BOOKS!
If you spend a single dollar today, I would recommend and maybe even ask that you choose to spend that dollar on one of the best novels I have ever read. Seriously. I have told the author, Jim, this before. I only emailed him, then befriended him, after I read his book and fell in love with it. It was too good to not tell the author personally, especially through a friend. Another cool part of this, is that this was during the time I was still writing Brian, Created Intelligence. Jim gave me that push, that power to show me, I can do this. I am going to do this. And here we are, you, some person perhaps thousands of miles away is reading this post because of this guy and his book.
And to let Jim speak about his book in his own words…
When an extremely ill and fevered twentieth century twitched its final death rattle and rolled over like a string of derailed boxcars, disgorging broken crates of AOL.com CDs, Beanie Babies, and Zima, a very strange thing happened. Actually, many very strange things happened as we all hunkered down and waited for the Y2K anomaly to usher in a new Golden Age of complete and total barbarism, not the least of which was the uploading into my brain of nearly the entire first draft of what would eventually become The Long Home of the Soul.
Sound though it may like romantic balderdash, this is what really happened. Following the debacle that was the presidential election of 2000, the terrorist attacks of September 11 the following year, and the subsequent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, I began sleeping less and less, while obsessing more and more with extrapolating a logical future from what I saw as an illogical present. During one of these insomnia-benders, I found myself drawn in by a late-night AM radio broadcast by Science Fiction author and paranormal investigator (if I may, without his permission, use that label) Whitley Strieber, in which Strieber discussed the sightings of mysterious, floating, luminescent orbs.
Although the details of this broadcast are lost to me now, buried beneath the haze of time and turmoil, the general idea was that these orbs were autonomous, intelligent, and otherworldly.
What, then, could they be up to, and what did they want?
Who the hell knows? But for an underemployed, overstimulated brain still struggling to draw a conspiratorial line between the dots of the election fallout of 2000 and a grim, globalized dystopian future, the answer was clear.
Or was it?
Again: Who the hell knows? But I now had the beginning, the middle, and the ending for Long Home of the Soul fully uploaded into my brain. I would spend the next decade and a half changing jobs more than a half a dozen times, relocating to progressively shabbier apartments, while also connecting those three segments of the novel together.
And the more time went by, the more my concern grew that less and less of this novel could be classified as fiction. Thus, the joys of self-publication.
So, what is it all about?
It is, on its face, a Science Fiction/Murder Mystery, a merging of genres inspired by a suggestion from my old friend, singer/songwriter Danielle Howle (who, all these years later, probably doesn’t even remember saying so).
But that is not what it is about.
As the author, I will not here rob from the reader the mystery of meaning and the joy of discovery by telling you the answer. I will, however, say this and nothing more (as I have said already far too much): My goals at the outset were to download that manuscript that had, uninvited, uploaded itself into my brain shortly after 2001; to craft a tale of Science Fiction that was entertaining while at the same time containing some depth; and to create Science Fiction that was also Literature (with a capital “L”).
I feel pretty good about the first two things on that list. As for the “Literature” part, I suppose that is for higher powers to determine. I tried, damnit.
—J. Carl Denton
Columbia, S.C.
14 January 2024
SCIENCE NEWS
Two things have happened this week of excitement and relevancy to the world at large.
Of course after reading Fahrenheit 451, one would definitely think developing killer robotics is a fantastic idea... Boston Dynamics has been creating incredibly diverse and scarier-than-shit robots for decades and are starting to be weaponized. The LAPD and NYPD have onboarded their use, and naturally, they probably have more rights as a cop than you do as a human, they do that with police dogs, what’s the difference in their eyes? Support cops? Killing people ‘accidentally’. Lying. Hiding or creating evidence. At war with the poor and people of color. Okay, leave. This newsletter is not for you. Go rip your big truck with your thin blue line bullshit somewhere else.
MIT in their infinite wisdom has created a pair of smart-glasses that can read brain waves, to the point that the robotic dog can be controlled by thought alone. We have seen what drone strikes can do, people so far away it’s basically not reality to them blowing up towns and apartment complexes as they sit in a seat in safety. We know about the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment that reduces empathy to the point of ONLY TAKING FIVE DAYS TO CANCEL THE STUDY due to the appointed ‘guards’ psychologically abusing the ‘prisoners’ (all were people not within the prison industrial complex at the time of the study).
ON A BETTER NOTE TO FINISH THIS NEWSLETTER…
NASA has unveiled, with Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works, a new experimental craft dubbed X-59 Quesst Supersonic Plane. X-59 (you’re going to want to skip to ~22 minutes in to see the thing)
This plane is special as it breaks the sound barrier QUIETLY. Supposedly like a car door thumping outside as you sit on the couch reading The Long Home of the Soul. This is the first plane created to successfully breach the sound barrier without the sonic blast so known to us all.
I think that’s a wrap! This has been a fun month to write on, and I look forward to providing more of my favorite books this year. Thank you so much for reading and supporting me, and Jim!
Cheers,
AJ