My science fiction novel Temporal Cross Currents may be downloaded free at…
http://www.amazon.com/Temporal-Currents-Garrison-Clifford-Gibson/dp/1300178949
The history of writing the book is perhaps worth retelling here. Temporal Cross Currents version 2014 has origins in a science fiction college course that I took during summer semester 1989 at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. Because I had earlier written a short science fiction story called The Chamber about Mars I sent out naively without copyright registration in 1988 I decided that another try at writing something for publication would be more documented. Eventually I put together a story called Altereal Components and in 1990, I believe it was, I t registered it with the U.S. copyright office. In that story was formed the beginning of the present Temporal Cross Currents.
A little background. In 1975 I enlisted in the U.S. Army though something of a c.o. I had just arrived in San Francisco and wanted to leave. A minister suggested I might make a difference if I enlisted when I asked him about it. We had made a few calls on members of the flock. I stayed in the church basement, I shook hands with the candidate that ran against George Moscone at a church social. As soon as I got to Ft. Wood and everyone left for Christmas holiday, I made a story up in order to get discharged. I got an honorable discharge and left for many years of painting and odd jobs around the U.S.A. In 1982 with the El Salvidor civil war and the threat of communism in central America I thought my prior service was not helpful, so I choose to lie about my prior military service and enlist as a combat engineer trainee in the Oregon National Guard. Though stressful going back to Ft. Wood concealing the prior time at Ft. Wood I did very well and became a combat engineer. Returning to Portland where I had finished a computer programming course in 81, I couldn’t find work and went skydiving a little instead. I transferred to the Washington Guard and attended a drill before returning to Alaska, going to serve in Hondorus or wherever never panned out That war faded away during the Reagan administration.
In Alaska I joined the Guard and learned about 80 mm mortars, attended Air Assault School and transferred to the Army Reserve for some carpentry-masonry training in Fairbanks. Wintering in Fairbanks three years I wrote some science fiction, took college courses and fell through rotten ice head from below by discharges from a power plant, after walking home with my pants frozen I lay on the floor of my room for a couple of days in the dark feeling the cold blood move around to my heart. Eventually in January would hitchhike down the Alaska highway to Georgia where I worked briefly at a giant fish processing plant in search of a mid-semester college to take two courses at in order to take an A.A. at the Univ of Alaska-Juneau.
I believe it was after I returned to Alaska from the Georgia via Maine to Honolulu and Anchorage with a slipped disk and body surfing on that wrong beach at Oahu where the waves break too steeply into the sand that the Reserve Unit sent me to Chemical School at Fort McClelan where I reconoittered a cemetery. Having seen Return of the Living Dead Part II? before enlisting I was up for that. I got a perfect p.t. score at Ft. McClellanfor a while running quite a bit –miles and miles before going active around 6 minutes per mile. To make a long story short, in 1989 I enlisted in the regular army, attended Stinger School and hoped to be stationed in Europe where I had traveled twice in 1987 flying on that PanAM Lockerbie route to London a little before solstice time once. The day before I was to get a security clearance the Soviets withdrew a quarter million troops from East Germany and a drill Sergeant handed me a letter at Ft. Bliss from a Russian women’s magazine that I had sent a science fiction story to from U.A.F. in 1988 rejecting it as too violent. I had skyrockets being fired off from Coney Island and I didn’t think that too violent.
I realized that with the end of the cold war the media would be the big problem levering me while in the service so I decided to get out and revealed the facts about the 1975 enlistment and was given an honorable discharge for erroneous enlistment. I was happy enough with that, especially since after taking off a cast from torn ligaments and going AWOL to visit Denver from Ft. Bliss climbing over Mt. Franklin in the dark and turning myself in at Ft. Carson when there was a military alert of recall for the impending Panama problem. I fly back to Ft. Bliss and got manacles put on and missed out seeing Miss America who was also on the flight. I had a G.T. score of 145 then and was reluctant to leave the Army. Maybe I could have had a great career and fired a gun or something. I will never know if I could have excelled at rocket shooting. No MIG season was scheduled for shooting down any time in that foreseeable future. Anti-Aircraft drones might have made human anti-aircraft shooters nearly obsolete already.
I had a vision of something bad happening in Fairbanks before going AWOL though-something like a disturbance in the force, and it turned out that some girl-Kara Zastrow had been murdered and hidden in the snow while her killers left and enlisted in the Marines. I wondered if the Russian Kara Sea had any relationship symbolically to her death.
I thought an honorable discharge was better than time at Ft. Levensworth so I took a discharge. Well thousands and thousands were getting discharged soon since peace was breaking out all over Europe. That was the dream of ending the cold war peacefully and with prosperity that was so important to generations-my Dad was a four year Navy veteran of W.W. II and always thought peace was better than war. He was a little mockish of the security guard work, and sent me a replica terra cotta warrior from the Shang dynasty of Beijing.
In 1989 I was completing the undergraduate work that I needed for a Bachelor’s degree. I was taking courses at the University of Alaska Fairbanks while enrolled in Excelsior College (then Regents College) of the University of the State of New York in order to save a year of superfluous college costs. I took a year’s credits through the CLEP credit by examination process. That 30 credit clump was admitted at Excelsior. I took a Bachelor’s degree in spring 1990 as well as an Associate’s from the University of Alaska S.E. and was optimistic about being admitted to the U.A.F. M.A. in Northern Studies Program with a 3.8 undergraduate grade point average inclusive of CLEP scores.
I wasn’t admitted to U.A.F., and so with a history as a traveling house painter with a two new college degrees I looked forward to traveling around the U.S.A. hunting for a job. That plan was delayed two years as I remained in Alaska and worked on a rural lot before setting off to search for work and a graduate school. During this time I was developing writing method. My degree work was in history, philosophy and English-not just English. I had work to do in developing narrative style and writing tools-there really is quite a bit too generating good, well structured stories. A philosopher or inventor may want to just move forward, while a writer might want to carefully polish prose; the two interests present a little conflict, like clashing waves at sea moving in different directions.
In the 90s I attended the Houston Graduate School of Theology briefly before my student loans were stopped for some unknown reason and I left school. Even a urine testing lab I was going to be hired at was purchased by a company that put an immediate hiring freeze in place..no work. More than twenty years later I found another Friends theology school and resumed taking theology coursework-that’s another story. So I continued working on writing adding on to Alterreal Components when I could. I added pieces on to the story while riding a bicycle around the U.S.A. Writing in dozens of public libraries when not searching for something to paint I had an hour here, and hour there to scrawl a few lines or delete some carriage returns.
In 1996 while George Bush was Governor of Texas I was a graveyard security officer at the L.B.J. State Office building. During this time period I camped out with the fire ants and added much to Alterreal Components transforming it to Alterwall Objectives. The story thus became a small novel and I took a new copyright on it.
A novel written generally while homeless in little portions here and there is put together something like Johnny Cash’s song about building a car one piece at a time except that one’s thought is the factory where the parts come from. Writing the novel and continuing to try to get some quality editing time on it was challenging. Eventually I bought a used Toshiba notebook that weighs a ton with DOS on it and retyped the novel into that for a little editing. I got a hundreds of carriage returns placed in it that would take another 7 years to entirely remove. To get the dos edited story onto word an Apple computer was used to convert the file and that resulted in a decade of small editing problems. With all of the time consumed on working on the novel I learned that the major problem I had I writing a novel was the actual physical opportunity to find a quiet place to write with the right word processing equipment in place and with electricity and the time to work. Actually I never did put all of those elements together.
So instead of a secure, quiet writing environment I continued reading philosophy, science, history and religious topics and developed new ideas to throw into the novel since I had no where else to stick ‘em. Rather than composing a smoothly flowing novel I tossed in a myriad of separate ideas and post hoc ironed out the intermarginal faultlines. Because I added in entire new pieces to the novel that were short stories before I had to adapt the point of view of the author. Retroactively I changed what began as an omniscient narrative to a first person narrative. I learned only later that William Falkner’s book ‘As I Lay Dying’ that he wrote while working a job as a security guard at a power plant, tells a story from the first person narrative point of view of several characters in the book alternating from one chapter to the next; a brilliant construction method I don’t use here but that I appreciate since it’s a good way to write if one doesn’t have a smoothly supported writing environment. Faulker had to go to work, make rounds and maybe write and perhaps write a self-standing chapter and was able to resume writing another day without needing to smoothly get back into the writing persona of his character narrating the story the day before. Going to work would have interrupted that thought line.
I learned much while working on this book. One thing I learned was to never start writing a novel if you won’t have the opportunity to finish it in one or maybe two places-that is a direct, continuous well-enough supported writing situation. I have since written two small novels in an unelectrified yet moderately secured environment though U had to finish them elsewhere. St. Novilistricka Factors’ first draft was written in about five weeks though it took more than two years to get enough time to complete it-and the completion was done in a fairly adverse environment with one winter spent camping on the ground in Anchorage where I broke the computer screen rolling over on it in my sleeping bag with a hip trying to keep the battery from freezing. A Universal Widget was written in a similar, unsupported environment. Maybe in retirement I will get an opportunity to write with an electrical outlet at home.
An excerpt from Temporal Cross Currents…
“Don’t every write a popular song starting with the words Well I “. The cadres howled and cheered so wildly that the Praetorian Guard dispersed tranquil mist onto the ultra-marine trainees who hushed a bit.
A new rhythmic drumbeat like syncopated chant of “Big Dog, Big Dog wang dang bop du rop rup” rose from the thousands of ultra-Warsops. Prissy gazed benevolently down upon them, giving them a full turning profile and raised hand wave of acknowledgment.
Prissy continued his speech, lasting several minutes until fog was allowed to approach through the field molecule screen to enshroud the trainees as shades in an orphic underworld of sunless mist. They were marched by D.I.’s of the Jaws of Death with staccato cadences extolling salad nearly off the bay cover and back to gel boot camps All-pine and Borscht.
Brigadier Thortez and Colonel Bold talked head to head behind the sound and projectile screen that Prissy disdained during his discourses to the masses. Prissy approached, his baldhead shining in orange winter sunlight on the hammerhead balcony above the fog and said;
”Hyrim develop it quicker. I’m ready to knock out Corporate know. My bones ache to leap into control of the Solar System. We’re losing too many warriors to Corporate mining camps and my sedition can’t happen if they’re all out in the asteroids, the Jovan System, Nep-tunes or beyond when the rotting door of Corporate Monopoly is ripe to be kicked in. We’ll obliterate Bigg Comm simultaneously for unchallengeable control.
We’ll lose the element of surprise if we withhold fulfilling orders for miners. I suspect the great basins and backbones store of recruits isn’t unlimited so we can’t just get more either. Higher numbers of Asian Big-Comm allegiants brainwashed to loyalty to Imperial Anarchy would lead to an unreliable cadre. I want the reserve shelves of ultra-Warsops filled and complete with loyal, malleable, gullible captives programmed to serve me before it too is drained off to the outback of the system” the Emperor slammed down a fist on a molecular projection field battle plan for his general staff to regard.
Brigadier Hyrim Thortez said, “Emperor Warp, the decoy planets can only be pre-fabricated as fast as we can pre-judge them. If the Jaws of Death go too far in the sculpt works at Almedia Springs there could be pre-designed disasters equivalent to crashing Phoebus into Mars. Instant planet reconfigurations, shells, Dyson Spheres, and illusory field decoys even with ultrue-computers require a lot of testing.”
Colonel Bold contributed “Tawooth will rule the Solar System myne Emperor Warp. It is the inertial will of the Pluralverse! Maoist, nihilist oligarchs of Corporate Interplanetary tyranny can’t be allowed to succeed in depopulating Earth, turning it into an arboreal vacation area and deprive us of the ultra-Warsops we must have to save the twelve planets!
”Thank you Sancho, you’re perceptive as usual” Prissy replied enjoying the Colonel’s eager and whole-hearted support of his ideas. “We will succeed in terra-forming the twelve planets and all Corporate outposts eventually be assured.
The Emperor Warp of Tawooth has made preparations for an Armada of Stealth Space Ultra-Marine transports to be launched from magnetic rail guns in the backbone. They will rendezvous clandestinely at a blackbody sphere beyond Venus and attack en masse the totality of Corporate H.Q.’s and militfacts from one edge of the gravity sink to the other.”
”Glorious Leader, we must have patience and wait for the perfection of the inflatable decoy Earths before the assault on Corporate H.Q.s and militfacts proceeds or Corporate forces will have us dead to rights sitting as ducks in the Nation Of Tawooth on Earth should elements of the Corporate live-fire fleet survive to counter-attack” General Thortez exhorted.
”Of course Brigadier, of course; I always trust my special councilors. Yet we shall take the live fire fleet en passant mon amis” Prissy Bar-Warp dismissed munificently.
”Our timing will be flawless, and as simple as was Alexander’s unraveling of the Gordian knot which was said to be the key to conquering Asia. So shall I wait and begin no victory before its time?”
Did the Pluralverse recur eternally? That is does a metaphysical time-space field bigger than the one of this Universe exist that contains our Universe to replay it again forever like a recorded hologram opera from end to end? Is the Pluralverse alternately like a self-winding yo-yo that explodes from a singularity of gravitationally compacted space time with anti-gravity expanding it the other direction in turn compacting gravity bordering the space-time pluralverse until compacting to an opposite-space-time singularity to explode with gravitational expansion unit anti-gravity is again compacted with all mass-time to a singularity and so on ad nauseum?
Does it unwind through dozens of billions or trillions of years on each circuit side and restart? Did life, perception, sense data and what is knowable as experience recur as a pre-determined fact with just the self-deluding seemingness of real, free intelligence? If it does recur forever is it all determined by some original, undetermined first cause that set and resets the seemingly infinite loop of the pluralverse in substance and motion to recur infinitely?
Would movements, transports, perception and data be determined in advance as is the redetermination that the evolutionary Universe would recur eternally? How was that determined and so on in the infinite regress of nonsapient determinations? Is it just that the appearance of choices or the need for the determinations is illusory if the pluralverse does recur forever as it were in a possible dumb design?
The Tawoothian brethren estimated the chances to find wiggle room in the redeterminism of the Pluralverse though they were aware of the possibility that the perception of time and being is infinite in all directions, and the apparent infinite deja vous recurrence syndrome such as Frederick Nietzche had kicking a boulder on an evening walk at Lake Lucerne was a compound of the infinite nature of time examined as an instant clump singly by a perceiver trying to be, and naturally somewhat different than the infinite motion of mass in an infinite combination of potential perceivable or describable relativistic abstract relations as a reflective intellect is able to be cognizant of things-for-themselves per se.
The mind of the perceiver in other words may have a recursive psychological imaging of the complete complex of compresent percepts and mistake that seemingness for an insight into the fundamental nature of the physical pluralverse.
It was at least clear to the Brethren that the probability of the recurrence of an experience is the content and basis for scientific judgment. And that which can be applied from the lessons of humanity’s history is predicated on recurrence in abstract situational form.
The masses of free anarchists undragooned into the service of Emperor Warp but living in the Reamerigo Nation of Tawooth lived the Neitchzian error as a patriotic call to survival of the most fit usually unaware of the finer points of the consideration of the deployment of the matter of space-time in their brutish, desperate and short post-Chaos existence. The Ministers of Terror taught that eternal recurrence called for domination of the law abiding by anarchist supermen. The ignorant savages were easily converted to anarchy and terror if they were not naturally indoctrinated.
Yet the Order did what it could to provide ultra-marine trainees with unreflective inhumanism and greed in the cult of Prissy. Warp’s espousa – an Empress named Liprule, coached the cadres to focus on business, war and herself instead of the distracting doctrine of Terror.
Emperor Prissy would strive to lead Tawooth in a reconquista of the twelve-planet system until one commensurate with his grandeur could be found.