Author’s Note
Well, that’s the end of Dispocalypse, and I sincerely hope you enjoyed it.
If this is the first book of mine you’ve read, then let me introduce myself, and how I came to this whole writing thing.
I’m one of the most unlikely novelists you’ll ever encounter. I’m a practicing engineer/researcher, first and foremost, and have been for quite a long time. My formal background is in the sciences, with a focus on both the biological sciences and physics.
I happen to be friends with some rather well-known authors and when I talked about maybe getting more serious about this writing thing, several of them gave me the same advice, “Write what you know.”
Write what I know? I began to think about Michael Crichton. He was a non-practicing MD, and started off with a medical thriller. John Grisham was an attorney for a decade before writing a series of legal thrillers. Maybe there’s something to that advice?
I began to ponder, “What do I know?” And then it hit me.
I know science. It’s what I do for a living and what I enjoy. In fact, one of my hobbies is reading formal papers spanning many scientific disciplines. My interests range from particle physics, computers, the military sciences (you know, the science behind what makes stuff go boom), and medicine. I’m admittedly a bit of a nerd in that way. I’ve also traveled extensively during my life, and am an informal student of foreign languages and cultures.
With the advice of some New York Times bestselling authors, I dove headfirst into writing novels that interested me and fit my background. With my background, it’s easy to imagine that I might focus solely on science fiction, but I’ve always been a sucker for mainstream thrillers, especially those with international settings.
And to my astonishment, I’ve had success with combining science fiction and thrillers, landing a few times on some national bestseller lists. But that’s not where my writing truly began.
In fact, I started writing fiction when my sons were old enough to appreciate bedtime stories. And for them, the stories they enjoyed were almost always epic fantasy. The more goblins, dragons, and ogres there were, the better they liked it. However, it was never anything I took too seriously at the time. I did it because it made them happy.
But something unexpected happened after a few years.
I’d caught the writing bug.
I grew up reading lots of fantasy. It was my entry into genre fiction. As to some of my favorites, my reading spanned many of the classic authors like Tolkien, Eddings, Feist and many more. Anyway, being a scientist type, I tended to shy away from writing fantasy largely because I wanted to introduce real science to the mainstream reader. I wanted more books to be entertaining as well as expose people to solid concepts from science, and therefore I wrote technothrillers. But then I had an epiphany of sorts. Fantasy could contain science, just like other genres. Fantasy could simply be the science of what's not well understood or speculative. After all, a modern-day TV would look like utter magic to someone a few hundred years ago.
What you might see in my fantasy genre novels is that I walk a fine line between science fiction and fantasy. This means that I inevitably will have elements of science in all of my books. Real science, not a hand-wavy type of science.
In fact, all of my books to date have had an addendum where I explained the science-based elements and gave insight into what was the basis for them. This book is no different. Few would expect a talk about quantum entanglement in a fantasy novel, or the concept of the multiverse being explored. It shouldn't fit, but I'm trying really hard to mainstream science into modern entertainment. I think it does fit, but ultimately the readers will decide.
If I could ask anything from you, dear reader, it would be to please share your thoughts/reviews about the story on Amazon and with your friends. It’s only through reviews and word-of-mouth that this story will find other readers, and I do hope Dispocalypse (and the rest of my books) find as wide an audience as possible.
Again, thank you for taking the chance on reading one of my novels, and I hope to keep you entertained across a wide variety of genres and subjects.
Mike Rothman
November 11th, 2019
Addendum
In this addendum, I wanted to note some things that I’ve used in this story, and give you, the reader, an insight into how some elements of hard science might relate to them or serve as inspiration. For example, would you believe that the gold ring I described in this story actually has a basis in science fact behind it? Or maybe the concept of dream walking isn’t just an artifact of a fantasy novel, but something that had been used by clandestine parts of the US government and likely others? What about the crazy concept of multiple worlds existing in parallel?
Those are all things that are mentioned in this story, but what if I told you they all have a basis in fact and academic research? Let me hopefully tantalize you with the possibilities as I point out things that might have initially seemed like works of fantasy, but have real science behind them.
As I give very brief explanations of what may be very complex concepts, my intent is to only leave you with sufficient information to give a remedial understanding of the subject. However, for those who want to know more, it is also my intent to leave you with enough keywords that would allow you to initiate your own research and gain a more complete background understanding of any of these topics.
This should also give you a peek into some of the things that have influenced my writing of this story and maybe have you start asking, “What if?”
A “Magic” Ring:
In this story, I introduced the concept of a gold ring with some very unique properties. At its simplest, two people can wear a matched set of rings, and when one person taps or squeezes their ring, the person carrying the matching ring would feel the tap or squeeze in their ring.
Although a fantastic little trick, the concept for such an item originated from within a deep dark cave in the world of particle physics called quantum entanglement.
Briefly explained, quantum entanglement is the concept that through a variety of methods a single item can be split into two parts where each of the parts end up sharing an unseen link even though they may have a relatively great distance between them.
This is most easily imagined as a photon of light being split (via a special type of beam splitter) such that each corresponding half can be affected in ways that ultimately affect the other. However, I’ll note that quantum entanglement has already been experimentally verified both at the subatomic level as well as macroscopic level between two small diamonds.
This is a very active area of research in academic circles today. I would greatly appreciate it if any of my readers (who happen to have the proper background and wherewithal) advances the concept and research further.
I want one of these rings.
Multiple Universes:
The story starts off with what may seem like a very strange premise. Our intrepid main character resides in one world, but ends up getting a peek into another world. Actually, not just another world – but a copy of her world, possibly on a slightly different timeline and with some changes to their common histories. It is a world that is the same, but different.
Much of this stems from the concept of having parallel worlds that are very similar, which seems quite fantastic and fodder for fairy tales, but let me introduce the concept of the multiverse.
There is a hypothesis that has engendered much debate in the physics community about whether the universe we know and see is all that there is. There is a concept known as a multiverse, which hypothesizes that there are many (or possibly infinite) copies of our universe that are all effectively existing in parallel to each other. The sum total of all the matter, energy, time and space from our universe and all of its other instances is what a multiverse is composed of.
Such concepts have long been fod
der for science fiction and fantasy novels, but there are many well-regarded people in the scientific community (e.g. Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku, etc.) who are supporters of the hypothetical multiverse.
There is also a field of theory known as counterpart theory. It hypothesizes that in multiple copies of a given world, each item or event is not necessarily identical, but a copy in which variability may exist.
Taking it one step further, there is something known as possible world semantics. This is a mechanism by which one can conceive that the actual world we live in is but one of many possible worlds. And more to the point, for each different way the world could have evolved, there is a distinct and separate world that represents that outcome.
Albeit mind-bending if thought about it to its logical conclusion, these philosophical theories play well with the physical hypothesis of a multiverse.
Dream Walking:
In this story, the main character suddenly finds herself dream walking.
The concept of being able to see things that happen in places that you are not is one that most readers are probably familiar with. What many of you might not be aware of is that “remote viewing” has long been a field of research that’s been invested in by some relatively serious organizations in various governments around the world.
In fact, the Stargate Project is just one example of a previously top secret project conducted by the U.S. government’s Defense Intelligence Agency. Its mission was to investigate psychic phenomenon such as remote viewing for military applications.
With the declassified information, we now know that remote viewing research had been conducted by the CIA since 1972 and research continued under top secret classification until 1995 when the project was “officially” cancelled and information debunking the effectiveness was declassified.
Some might question why it took twenty-three years to determine that it was ineffective. Or conspiracy theorists may posit that the there is no possible way that the government would have let a project last so long if it wasn’t yielding results. And if it was yielding results, does that mean the inevitable statements associated with the declassified declarations are a ruse to distract people?
I’ll leave those observations as fodder for the reader to contemplate. I, your humble reporter (author) am only noting things that stimulate my “what if” writing instinct.
Mutations:
In this story, the effects of the forest and its surrounding area known as the Forbidding are quite obvious when the main character finds herself exiled in that mutagenic zone. Due to the effects of a war that occurred centuries past, the land was left in such a state as to almost immediately see people sloughing off skin and getting violently ill. I did model much of these effects from cases of radiation poisoning that the medical records show occurred in radiological disasters of the past.
I’ll note that in this story, the reader never sees a person actually die from the radiation, however they get sufficiently sick to probably wish that they did die. This was intentional.
The inhabitants of the Forbidding are quite obviously different than the run-of-the-mill human that we’d normally encounter. They are a result of a mash-up of mutations and evolution that served as a convenient means for me to create a distinct set of races as offshoots from the human race.
When we think of evolution, we tend to think of things happening over millions of years. I simply want to point out to some that this isn’t always the case.
In fact, Darwin in his study of finches on the Galapagos island noted how the finches on that island differed from the finches on the mainland. This in part was the basis of how the theory of evolution came about. More recent studies have shown a very appropriate example of species evolving in less than a human lifespan.
Studies was conducted by Princeton University research scientists on a particular species of finch. They tracked the migration of this species, which had previously not existed on the Galapagos islands, and observed it over a span of two decades. In that time, the finches evolved to have a uniquely shaped beak that was significantly different from the beginning of the researcher’s observations.
This was the first observation of such an evolution in the wild.
It is akin to witnessing the evolution of Neanderthal to Modern man in the blink of an eye.
Given such possibilities, it isn’t too much of a stretch to imagine that in a possible instance in the multiverse (see multiverse section above) one could see the type of evolution and or mutation that this book has described.
About the Author
I am an Army brat, a polyglot, and the first person in my family born in the United States. This heavily influenced my youth by instilling a love of reading and a burning curiosity about the world and all of the things within it. As an adult, my love of travel and adventure has allowed me to explore many unimaginable locations, and these places sometimes creep into the stories I write.
I hope you’ve found this story entertaining.
- Mike Rothman
You can find my blog at: www.michaelarothman.com
I’m also on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/MichaelARothman
And on Twitter: @MichaelARothman
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