Enjoy this peak inside the Preface of The Golden Ellipse, Book One in The Powers That Be trilogy
I have a confession to make. The roots of my science fiction series begin at the pen-and-ink-blotched nascency of my original aspiration: creating the next Calvin and Hobbes. Before scoffing with righteous indignation, understand that I hail from a family of artists. The pie-in-the-sky idea of joining the hallowed ranks of Watterson and Schultz, et al., wasn’t far-fetched to a modestly-talented art school student back before the internet turned the world on its head.
Inspired by my favorite book and author, Michael Crichton’s seminal novel, Jurassic Park, I hunched over a drawing board and developed a lab-grown dinosaur and bee comic strip duo. However, real-life distractions relegated my hammy, gag-filled strips to a dog-eared folder tucked inside a flat-file. Fast-forward a couple decades to an older, not wiser, version of myself stumbling upon this same folder. While sifting through reams of inked vellum strips, xeroxes, and pencil-sketched character studies unseen for years, the spark to create a comic strip rekindled with gusto. Or, I lost my mind. It depends on who you ask.
Following a year of honing my original strip using online resources and digital tech—nonexistent during my initial foray—Lost Cactus came alive in 3-panel comics. Lost Cactus is the eponymous code name of a top-secret base tucked behind a barbed-wire perimeter in the southwestern hinterlands. Sound familiar? It should. In addition to the original bee and dinosaur, I added mutants, zombies, and aliens co-mingling on the ultra-secret base managed by white-coated scientists clashing with quasi-military and bureaucratic foils. Envision M*A*S*H meets the X-Files, and you get the idea.
Cognizant of the remote chance of success, I mailed submissions to syndicates hither and yon. After too many rejection letters—and an interested party’s suggestion to lose the alien—I realized wedging my creation into a shrinking comics section of a vanishing newspaper industry was a nonstarter. Instead, I coalesced my strips into self-published anthologies. This is the point where I broadened the creative scope of the Lost Cactus shared universe via short stories and humorous essays. While my early fiction writing is indeed cringe-worthy, it is those strange tales that introduced a host of memorable characters and sci-fi plots foundational to The Powers That Be trilogy and beyond.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing
Researching the sometimes controversial topics and principles underlying my sci-fi novels has expanded my armchair knowledge to a deeper, albeit limited, grasp of a host of subjects—Omega Point, artificial intelligence, transhumanism, the Fermi Paradox, and the Fibonacci Rule, to name-drop just a few. Furthermore, the artful inclusion of historical people, places, and events inside this book and its sequels lends invaluable credence to the out-of-this-world storylines.
A final thought
Humanity’s place in the universe is an astonishing mystery to behold. Embrace your inner skeptic by rejecting settled science and daring to imagine: What if …
See you in the funny papers.
