A Little Something for Your Ark, Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt

In these increasingly dire times we have plenty of warners, but what we desperately need right now are more arks.

As Michael Ventura wrote: “[A]ll of this passing things on, in all its forms, may not cure the world now—curing the world now may not be a human possibility—but it keeps the great things alive. And we have to do this because, as Laing said, who are we to decide that it is hopeless? And I said to my son, if you wanted to volunteer for fascinating, dangerous, necessary work, this would be a great job to volunteer for—trying to be a wide-awake human during a Dark Age and keeping alive what you think is beautiful and important.”

~ James Hillman and Michael Ventura, We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World's Getting Worse.

So, with that in mind, here's a little something to stow away safely in your ark, as we make preparations for the dark times ahead of us.

“Some want to turn the clock back, harkening back to some golden age of nostalgia, when women, children, the lower class, parishioners, and people of other races and creeds knew their place; not back to the 1950s, but further back: to Dickensian times and to (corporate) feudal fiefdom. They want to wind the clock back to a time before the hard-won battles for civil rights, social reforms, and worker representation. A time long, long before the ‘woke virus’, ‘illegal immigrants’, and gender identity, when life was more conservative and white lives mattered; though with a new, fundamentalist, Christian nationalist (or Islamist, or ultra-Zionist, or even atheist) and isolationist twist. And some will go to any lengths – and I do mean any desperate, violent, draconian lengths – to bring this vile and unholy vision about.”

~ Preface to Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt, a story of resistance.

The Arms Race to End Democracy

Right now, though most of us have not yet been informed or cottoned-on, we are in an arms race: a battle to save or destroy democracy itself (depending on which side you are on). The opposition (currently fronted by Musk and his minions) see democracy as no longer fit for purpose, and obsolete, and see techno-feudalism as the way forward. Think about that.

We who are pro-democracy are at a distinct disadvantage: we're playing by the rules, while the opposition (Trump, MAGA, Musk, Christian Nationalists, alt-right, techno-feudalist elite) have torn up the rule book. And while it takes an age to formulate a case to take to court against executive orders that ride roughshod over the Constitution and the rule of law, they have their plan worked out using AI in a jiffy, and they're already two or three plans ahead.

And no matter how many thousand followers you have in the social media, you can't post your way out of fascism.

Image from Mike Brock's article, “The Plot Against America”.

Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt, by H. M. Forester

The second corrected draft of Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt: “A crash course in psi-fi, Romantic idealism, depth psychology, the daemonic, and Resistance”, by H.M. Forester is now available for free download. It is alternatively titled “Making a Lasting Impression”.

Note that this edition contains a fictional psi-fi story of resistance only, without additional study materials.

You can preview or download it at The Internet Archive

or download it at the Sher Point Publications, UK web site (just scroll down the page).

There’s also an entry at Goodreads.

Second (corrected) draft edition, 21 August 2024, 315 pages.

Now available also at:

• Amazon UK

and

• Amazon US

Enjoy!

Ray Bradbury's "great blizzard of rejection slips"

In Snoopy's Guide to the Writing Life by Barnaby Conrad and Monte Schulz (son of Charles M. Schulz, the creator of the Peanuts cartoon series), a number of authors and celebrities were invited to write a five hundred word essay on how a favourite cartoon strip from Peanuts related to some aspect of their writing life.

This is what the sci-fi author Ray Bradbury had to say, on the subject of the rejection of his work by publishers:

“The amazing Blackstone came to town when I was seven, and I saw how he came alive onstage and thought, God, I want to grow up to be like that! And I ran up to help him vanish an elephant. To this day I don't know where the elephant went. One moment it was there, the next -- abracadabra -- with a wave of the wand it was gone!

“In 1929 Buck Rogers came into the world, and on that day in October a single panel of Buck Rogers comic strip hurled me into the future. I never came back.

George Orwell's last message

Here's a dramatization of George Orwell's last message before his death. Orwell famously wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four, a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party:

If you like Orwell, you may like The Dissidents by H.M. Forester.

• By Etienne de L'Amour ~ Google+

Trailer for The Dissidents by H.M. Forester

Here's a very quick trailer we knocked up for The Dissidents: A novella, by H.M. Forester:

• By Etienne de L'Amour ~ Google+

The Dissidents: A novella, H.M. Forester

Enforcement Officer Kingsley is pretty sure of himself and the Greater Good that the Hive stands for, and he shows no compunction when rooting out the dissidents and having them banged to rights.

But all that changes when he meets Holly Potter, a dissident informant, and he is assigned to work undercover with her, in order to penetrate to the very heart of the dissident movement. What they experience and learn comes at a terrible personal price.

The Dissidents is a dystopian, soft sci-fi novella of approximately 46,000 words, written by H.M. Forester. There are no bug-eyed monsters, and the story more about people than technology, so you don't need a degree in quantum physics to read it.

If you like George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four or the NSA's Prism surveillance story grabs you, you might like The Dissidents. Ever fearful of being discovered or "outed" for dissident tendencies, these people work secretly to preserve simple human pleasures and traditions in a dystopian world.

☆☆☆☆☆ "Excellent work describing a truly frightening dystopia."

Reviews

Dystopia revealed
Amazon.com, 23 January 2013
By Zenizen
☆☆☆☆☆

"The Dissidents by H.M. Forester is an excellent work describing a truly frightening dystopia. The details that fill the harrowing story are of immense value to every person who is a free thinker. Indeed, knowing some of these details could save your life if ever you find yourself in a similar situation. Now that is something to think about."

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The Dissidents is now available for free download as an epub or mobi ebook from our web site.

The Dissidents is now here at Goodreads. If you've read the book, please add it to your bookshelf and rate it.

If you want to try before you buy, you can read chapter 1 of The Dissidents here. Alternatively, you can download a preview in mobi/kindle format here. The preview contains the first 10% of the book.

• By Etienne de L'Amour ~ Google+