Dark Future, my new novel from the fine folks at Neotext Publishing, is out today. What's it about?
It’s June, 1963 and Jack Specter—writer/producer of the Twilight Zone-like television series The Third Eye—is going to pieces: mourning a wife lost to cancer, a daughter lost to politically-powerful relatives, haunted by memories of war and fiery holocaust.
But a phone call from his only remaining friend soon draws him into the heart of a bizarre experiment: hurled across time into a dark and terrible future, to the bleak, hopeless world of 2023.
Is it possible for a writer to rewrite the past, a dreamer to re-dream Creation Itself? Specter will learn the answer as he searches for his now-grown daughter and comes face to face with a cosmic entity that holds the key to time, space, life, death—and a possible rebirth for all humankind.
I've poured heart and soul into this story—I think it's one of the very best things I've ever written—and I hope you'll check it out.
You can learn more and read samples chapters over at the Neotext site or just hop on over to Amazon and buy it.
99c on Kindle? Who in their right mind could pass that up??
ReplyDeleteEven someone in their WRONG mind couldn't pass it up!
Delete: )
(Hope you're doing well, Jeff.)
As well as can be expected for someone born in June '63!
DeleteHA!
Delete"99c on Kindle? Who in their right mind could pass that up??"
DeleteWell, I don't have a kindle, or any type of virtual book reading device so...me.
Though, admittedly, me being in my right mind is debatable. This website is full of that evidence.
Will have to be paperback for me.
Jack
Since this book of your takes places in 1963, and the war is presumably WWII... though I suppose Korea is possible as well... I will share with you something I realized.
ReplyDeleteThe true point of generation flip comes when a politician shows up with the right story.
I will explain...
As Babe-Booms have started to retire, people have wondered when the baton will be passed. The answer is when the manifestation of the origin story happens.
Back in the 90s, there were a lot of projects that were mythologizing the history of Baby Boomers. I don't mean this as an insult, I think this is just something that happens when a generation finds themselves ascending to power. they look back and try and figure out what common events shaped them.
while you could argue this started in the 80s, I think it was not until the 90s it started being a sort of self-excavation of the generation. An origin story, instead of a backdrop. Forrest Gump vs. IT.
This happens about the time Bill Clinton becomes president. This sin not about whether Bill Clinton was a good president or bad president, it is about how he ran for president.
He specifically pointed to that he had protested Vietnam, was the first member of his family to go to college, that he and hilary were a two-income/two-career family trying to make things work. All things that Baby Boomers, regardless of whether they liked him or not, could identify with. This is also why more Baby Boomers ran for office after 1992, even if they did not vote for Clinton. Why more Baby Boomers started ascending to the levels of powers everywhere. They could now see themselves in the levels of power, some thought they needed to get their act together now and some just thought ti was their turn, and I am not sure it was even conscious, but the chain reaction started.
And Babe-Booms were not even the first ones to do it in the era of Mass media. The Greatest Generation had this happen in the 60s with Kennedy.
Kennedy should not have fit this mold at all, by his own admission he did not even know the Great Depression was happening. Something that left a scar on the psyche of that generation. HOWEVER, he played you the military angle, something that generation knew all too well.
While most of us born after that generation think of them as the eternal adults, always leading things, truth is it took until the early 60s for that to happen. About the time Kennedy was elected, also when more started running for federal office. Those ascending to power included teh media.
It was about that time that we start getting movies looking at war as abd thing. YeS, there had been ones before, but this when the idea of looking at even a "good war" like WWII was still a horrible experience, how the enemies were just soldiers caught in global conflicts, as a common theme.
It was not even just movies, Rod Serling on the Twilight Zone went back to that regularly, often looking at was as a place where men died instead of battles won. So did Gene Roddenberry, who like Serling was a WWII vet. True Star Trek was about a society that had largely moved past was, but whenever they come to a planet engaged in war it is viewed as something horrifying. The episode with machine that randomly kills someone is viewed as especially horrifying, because it has made war no longer a thong to be feared.
For that matter, the episode "Conscience of the King," is a thinly veiled analogy for Nazi War criminals being brought to justice, and it does not focus on the crime as a matter of legality of right or wrong, but rather of the toll it takes on Kirk. Not only as someone who lived through it, but of the survivals guilt it had.
So, when will the generation hand-off really happen in earnest? When a politician shows up with that origin story that their generation can connect to, and galvanize around.
Jack.
Fascinating as always, Jack.
DeleteYou mention Serling and Roddenberry: Both of them (along with Kurt Vonnegut) were on my mind as I created the main character in DARK FUTURE. Dreamers whose lives were changed dramatically by their experiences in WW II.
Hope you enjoy the book!
It is not only U.S.. It has been theorized that the reason Tolkien did not like Dune was because of the differences the two had in their respected world wars.
DeleteTolkien fought in the trenches of World War Literal lines of combat were clearly formed. WWII on the other hand was fought on more areas, with more morally ambiguous means to defeat evil, and more devastation of civilian populations.
That being said, while I did read and enjoy Dune, I am not one of the huge Dune fans that very much exist.
Jack
I read, and loved, the first three or so DUNE books when I was a teenager. Haven't reread them since so I have no idea how I'd react to them now. And that's pretty much the same with LORD OF THE RINGS. Read it when I was 15...absolutely adored it...but I've never been tempted to revisit it.
DeleteMy oldest brother is a HUGE Dune fan. He has read all the books... even the post-Frank Herbert ones.
DeleteHe actually did not read Lord of the Rings until he was an adult, when he and a friend who was a Big Tolkien fan but never read Dune traded trilogies to read.
Like I said, I liked Dune, but I took much more to the copy pf Philip K. Dick Reader the gave me as a birthday present than the copy of Dune
Jack
The first three books of Dune hold up well in my opinion, primarily because they dare to make the protagonist and the forces that shaped him an even greater evil than the first novel's villains. So you're identifying with Paul Ateides and rooting for him and then the conventional revenge narrative flips and the "justice" he achieves brings unimaginable suffering into the universe.
Delete--David
Maybe I'll reread them one day...
DeleteGrabbed a Kindle copy as soon as I'd heard this was out; looking forward to reading this once I'm past my own deadlines!
ReplyDeleteEnjoy! (I hope!)
DeleteInsightful analysis as always, Jack! I have enjoyed and learned so much from your posts through the years. Really appreciate them.
ReplyDeleteOne of the many things I loved about Dark Future was Jack Specter's career arc overlapping in places with Serling, PKD, and Roddenberry as well as being forged by the times they inhabited while still being very much his own man. He is a wonderful character and I greatly enjoyed going along for the ride with him.
--David
Thanks, David!
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