![]() When I first came up with the idea of a parallel world, an alternate reality Baker Street, I was reminded at first of my readings of the famous Andre Norton "Cross Time," series. Time agents who came and went on split off earths that varied from ours by minutes or fractions, or one event or another that caused that world's outcomes to be totally different than ours. More recently, the Harry Turtledove Crosstime Traffic series was also quite interesting, but not really as exciting to me as Andre Norton's. He does much better when he goes into great depth in his stories, and his own parallel world series was not nearly so detailed. For instance one world might have a United States of America, but another there might never have been such a place, or perhaps it was called the United States of Brittania instead, or even the Fourth Reich of Nazi America. Maybe one world has humans, the other reptile beings who are human-like. Maybe they think like humans, maybe not. A kind of Star Trek mélange of beings who make up universe of infinite diversity. One such story series I launched was "Invaders of the Cowboy Skies," which deals with cowboys living in a devastated America, split in two by war. But as I wrote my first story, "The Death of Conan," I knew that I had opened up a much larger idea than just that of the wonderful Andre Norton's. Here I was taking a well beloved character, Sherlock Holmes, created spectacularly by the late, great Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and giving him a new life where he could interact with the greatest minds of all times, as well as the actual author who created him. What a fun concept that turned out to be. Now I could have the author and his creation be friends, associates or partners, depending on the story. What a fun, fun journey I started with that idea. You see, I am not just a writer, but what I consider a spiritual person. I believe that there is design and plan to all of life. We may not understand it, or even see it at times, but it's there. My trip to India in the late Sixties made me realize even more things...that every culture had a different vision of just how vast and incomprehensible our universe is to our ordinary minds. Even the greatest of minds just barely scratch the surface of just how much potential there is in a universe as vast and varied as our own. Why there could be infinite worlds, and infinite types of beings. Recent scientific journals had admitted to the possibility of there being quite literally billions of worlds that could be inhabited like our own. And they're being conservative. I liked one concept that I learned there a lot and have treasured it ever since, even if not necessarily true...maybe it is, I can't say you see, because I haven't made that great trip into the beyond like my hero Conan does in my story. But I do believe we all have to make that mystical journey someday. I don't give an ounce of credit to the belief that it all ends when our bodies are buried. I believe our bodies are just containers for our consciousness to experience through, and once they are no longer viable, we move on to a much better life than before, having accumlated knowledge and experience to build better characters with. But fun enough, some of my characters get to explore India in a different way in my "Journey to the Center of the Earth" series, to see that all things are possible, and perhaps even planned that way by intent, not randomly. What I learned was that all of Creation, every single intent, thought, action we could ever possibly make is already constructed in t his gigantic, infinite tapestry by God and that depending on what our choices are, we move forth on one path or another of that tapestry. Call it reincarnation, or call it being born. Call it whatever you like. That doesn't matter to me. We each have the great treasure of exploring our own lives for meaning and direction, and I can't and won't try to control that. However, as a story teller, I found this to be a very, very rich concept. The idea that there could be infinite worlds out there, not just an expanded universe, or an expanding one as most current astrophysicists believe, but rather an infinite number of parallel universes, or dimensions...as many physicists believe. I have even written a series called Perihelion that deals with some of the laws of that belief system currently being debated in the halls of science. If the concept Infinite Worlds is valid...and I do use that as a basis in my Moriarity series, which I have written a book for "Moriarity: Infinite Worlds, Infinite Choices," then the whole universe of storytelling is wide open. There are no restrictions, no limitations, and anything is possible. This, also including recent discoveries in Nano particles, caused me to create my "The Nano Kid," series. Another angle of that is that it opens us up to the possibility of life even within infinitely smaller realms, and thus my story series, "Escape to Elecktron." This is why I have chosen to interconnect all of my stories in some form or another, either directly or indirectly. I call this world the Realm of the Baker Street Adventures. As you read my stories, you will see more and more connections, and over time how they are all part of one greater universe defined by the concept of all things are possible and exist right now and everywhere at all times! For instance in the Baker Street Adventures, which encompass many living as well as imagined heroes, you will find Sherlock Holmes solving a case right alongside Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, his creator. You will discover the Invisible Man helping Professor Challenger investigating a mystery as part of a team that also includes a man who can turn into a wolf, a vampire, and other curious creatures of imagination and reality. You will also discover that Jules Verne and H.G. Wells were quite close friend, and that their stories are not so much fiction as retelling of their own adventures in a manner that most can grasp and believe. We get to live through the War of the Worlds as it might have occured were that a reality of their time and not just once, but again in a second adventure as well. Not only do I get to play with time and space, but also with the finite lives of living beings, but in such a manner as to reveal further depths to their characters, raise them to hero status in adventure of their. I've even gone so far as to bring a cartoon to life in our real world and give a simple human being the chance of interacting with her. Cartoon is my homage to all the great cartoon artists out there who filled my youth with stories and visual of wonderment and suspense, laughter and joy, heroics and horror that I might not otherwise have ever experienced. In this comic book homage I take a teen who works part time, goes to school part time and deals with a crazy brother and a lecherous landlord all at the same time and then gets into further trouble when he discovers he can draw on the power of comic books when he first meets Cartoon, the woman of his dreams, and a drawing at that! For if nothing else, authors are explorers, adventurers, who would love nothing better than to be in the worlds they create. Fun, right? Yup! Enjoy --John-- |
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