Zimbabwe coup 'predicted' ten years ago. Time with a Gift of Tears

Latest news about the 'coup' in Zimbabwe has echoes from my unpublished but previously printed science fiction novel's predictions... I even got the year right! (And of course thankfully got some events and dates wrong!)

Ten years ago, I took advantage of an offer to get one of my unsold manuscripts (Time With a Gift of Tears) printed in paperback form – for the princely sum of £60 for ten copies.  I’d tried the science fiction time travel novel MS with a number of publishers and agents, without success. I’d just had my first book published, a western, but that publisher didn’t publish SF or fantasy. As the story was time-linked and it featured a unique time-travel gimmick, I wanted to get it ‘out there’ to establish some kind of provenance.

The story took place in the UK in 2020, at the beginning of a race revolt; the time traveller goes there from 2033.

All these years later, it needs rewriting, not least because 2020 is too close now; also, since I hadn’t predicted the massive surge in smart phone usage, the ubiquitous and pernicious social media, and the switch from laptop to tablets, and of course Brexit.  Some predictions in the book for pre-2007 were: an Iraqi exodus, a Sellafield Accident, Zimbabwe escapees, legalising of cannabis in UK, Britain expelled from the Commonwealth (never saw Brexit coming!), and a terrorist attack on Sellafield… Here’s the timeline for subsequent years:

2014                                African exodus; Racial uprisings in UK; all British police armed

2015                                Solent Islamic Fundamentalist nuclear blast; legalising heroin; Lawless August

2016                                Limited War

2017                Politically Correct legislation; Typhoid epidemic; 13^th Terror Scare; 

PC Legislation revoked; Zimbabwe settlement

2019                    Puritan ethics begin to sweep through UK; Asian Flu computer virus; Sexual Rebound to Puritan ethics

2020                                Race Revolt

2022                Race Revolt ended

2023                Common Sense return to norm after Sexual Rebound

2025                Compromise Peace; Race Revolt ended

It's been a long time coming, but it looks like Mugabe is going to be ousted; too late to save the country he has destroyed.

Needless to say, it’s fiction and not likely to happen – any of it. Still, a nice little coincidence!

Puritan ethics sweeps UK - Time with a gift of tears

Ten years ago, I took advantage of an offer to get one of my unsold manuscripts (Time with a gift of tears) printed in paperback form – for the princely sum of £60 for ten copies.  I’d tried the science fiction time travel novel MS with a number of publishers and agents, without success. I’d just had my first book published, a western, but that publisher didn’t publish SF or fantasy. As the story was time-linked and it featured a unique time-travel gimmick, I wanted to get it ‘out there’ to establish some kind of provenance.

The story took place in the UK in 2020, at the beginning of a race revolt; the time traveller goes there from 2033.

All these years later, it needs rewriting, not least because 2020 is too close now; also, since I hadn’t predicted the massive surge in smart phone usage, the ubiquitous and pernicious social media, and the switch from laptop to tablets, and of course Brexit.  Some predictions in the book for pre-2007 were: an Iraqi exodus, a Sellafield Accident, Zimbabwe escapees, legalising of cannabis in UK, Britain expelled from the Commonwealth (never saw Brexit coming!), and a terrorist attack on Sellafield… Here’s the timeline for subsequent years:

2014                                African exodus; Racial uprisings in UK; all British police armed

2015                                Solent Islamic Fundamentalist nuclear blast; legalising heroin; Lawless August

2016                                Limited War

2017                Politically Correct Legislation; Typhoid epidemic; 13^th Terror Scare; 

PC Legislation revoked; Zimbabwe settlement

2019                    Puritan ethics began to sweep through UK; Asian Flu computer virus; Sexual Rebound to Puritan ethics

2020                                Race Revolt

2022                Race Revolt ended

2023                Common Sense return to norm after Sexual Rebound

2025                Compromise Peace; Race Revolt ended

What I find amusing is that all that time ago I predicted PC legislation for 2017, and for 2019 Puritan ethics would sweep the UK. Judging by the latest sexual harassment scandals, I may have been out by a year on that last one…

Needless to say, it’s fiction and not likely to happen – any of it. Still, a nice little coincidence! 

Surprise, surprise...

A big thank you to author Nancy Jardine for inviting me on to her blog today for her regular feature Summer Surprise.

https://nancyjardine.blogspot.com.es/

Nancy is the author of the Celtic Fervour series of historical novels, which I heartily recommend:

https://nancyjardine.blogspot.com.es/p/nancy-jardines-books.html

She also writes romantic mysteries and time-travel adventures.

Book review - Apocalypse Soon

Second in the Continuity/Time Police series featuring Kyler Knightly and his uncle Damon Cole, Apocalypse Soon is penned by Garnett Elliott. I liked the play on words – not 'Apocalypse Now', but 'Soon' – which is explained in the text. 

The first, 30-page title story sends Kyler and Damon off to Old Vegas, circa 2035. Joining them is Melody Fischer, an aikido instructor – handy to have around in a fight, maybe. A Continuity technician, Paul Dirac, has gone rogue and hitched a ride to Pre-Apocalypse North America (hence the 'Soon' of the title). The Zygma time-travel projector transports Kyler with the aid of a ‘focus object’, something specific to the destination timeline; ergo, it can’t shunt anyone to the future.   

Unfortunately, the trio are split up on arrival and separately get involved in a zany demolition derby gladiatorial monster truck contest where the loser faces a mob baying for an excruciating death. 

Visual and visceral, it’s a fast-paced ride into Mad Max territory.

The accompanying twenty-page story 'Babylon Heist' takes Kyler to ancient Babylon, in search of another time-traveller who was after a priceless artifact for a collector in the twenty-third century. Why plunder antiquated tombs when you could pillage history itself? To help him get by undercover as Kyros the Eel, his mastoid was implanted with a linguistic chip. Inevitably, betrayal is on the menu. When the two protagonists finally confront each other, their witness observes, “What language are you two speaking? It sounds like goats farting.” 

Fast, furious fun.

A final story, unrelated, is 'Strontium Dreams', which takes place in an unspecified future, where it pays to have your tattoo GU (Genetic Undesirable) – otherwise you’re liable to be collected for organ donation to the rich in their ivory towers or, just as bad, minced  up for fast food. Sometimes, the mixture doesn’t quite work and a nervous affliction could spread: ‘… when the vendors had been mixing too much nervous tissue with the long pork.’

Two reprobates, Lev and Mac survive, barely, by scavenging. Then they find a secret place, seemingly hidden behind a wonky hologram. Unfortunately, they’re accosted by murderous seven-foot tall lean mean men of the Man-Plus type. (A nod here to Frederick Pohl’s classic novel Man Plus, perhaps). 

Some good visuals of a noir world, and good description too: ‘… the figure stirred. He raised his head and his eyes were hallways with no doors and no lights at the end.’ (p67)

Escapist sci-fi with a gory, noir edge. Try it – soon.

Book review - Carnosaur Weekend

This is a slim sci-fi volume from the prolific pen of Garnett Elliott, comprising three short stories, some 80 pages of fast-paced action.

It’s the future, about 2223 AD. Human history has taken some knocks – but was intact, though only thanks to  Continuity Inc, an organisation that snapped up the contract going begging when the government Time Corps was deregulated. Continuity Inc agents are dedicated to protecting human history. And it needs protecting since the discovery of time travel using a Zygma projector.

Continuity Inc’s headquarters had been based within the lava tunnels of the Kerguelen Plateau, a micro-continent submerged beneath the Indian Ocean. However, funding sources had slashed their budget and the entire operation had been moved to a renovated theatre in London’s West End.

Two agents of Continuity Inc are Kyler Knightly and his uncle, Damon Cole.  In ‘Carnosaur Weekend’ they’re investigating some real estate developers who had somehow obtained a Zygma projector and were offering ultra-modern homes in prehistoric earth; ‘no breathing apparatus required, golf, swimming, and tennis amenities, against a breath-taking backdrop of megaflora and fauna’ – that includes dinosaurs!

This story could have been called ‘Carnosaur Carnage’ because there’s plenty of blood and gore to satisfy the most blood-thirsty palate.  There’s also humour and satire thrown in for good measure. It goes beyond Ray Bradbury’s ‘A Sound of Thunder’.

In this future, people seem attracted by others’ wealth – 2.2 billion SMU (Standard Monetary Units). Physical attraction has relevance, too, though those who can afford it can buy their muscles and good looks. ‘… somewhere beneath that dress, Kyler felt certain, there were scars from multiple organ transplants, and injection sites for anagathics.’

Kyler is also a Dreamer, someone gifted or cursed with dreaming of events that might happen. It can be useful – or frustrating. When things go pear-shaped, he couldn’t have thought in his wildest dreams what would happen…

In ‘The Zygma Gambit’ Kyler dreams that his uncle is at risk of sabotage on his next time jaunt.  As Damon disagrees, Kyler takes matters into his own hands and becomes his uncle’s substitute and projects to the fourth moon of Caliban, 2750 AD. This jaunt is essential to the continuity of the Zygma project. But there’s a conspiracy and it threatens not only Kyler, his uncle, but the entire project. A slick twist ending.

The third story is a bonus, a non-Zygma tale, ‘The Worms of Terpsichore’, the kind of horror sci-fi that inspired countless B-movies. The space ship crew of Astarte is investigating the loss of the Sallust on the blue planet Terpsichore Five. What they encounter is gruesome and insidious, and the worms of the title are truly nasty pieces of work.

Overall, an imaginative, inventive, amusing and fast-paced volume.

I’ve posted a shorter version of this review on Amazon.

Writing - history doesn't stand still

One of my unpublished manuscripts (98,000 words) is a dark sci-fi novel set in the near future, Time With A Gift of Tears.

It's 2033 AD. Tim Farman (aged 39), a successful historical novelist, uses a secret time-traveling laptop (TTM -- Type Temporal Machine) to transport him to past ages for research purposes. At the opening of the book, he’s visiting Roman Vindolanda (360AD) to discover psychological warfare training, and then goes on to King Arthur's Dark Ages Cadbury (519AD) where he saves Guinevere's life. During these time-excursions, he barely escapes with his life, so he decides on one more time, the near past, to Britain in 2020, at the outbreak of the Race Revolt...

As can be guessed, when this was first written, 2020 was a lot further in the future than it is now! 

The danger of writing near-future sci-fi is that time will catch up. Here, for amusement, is the timeline, showing the novels that Tim has written, plus other events:

TIMELINE

BC

20,005             Day of the Mammoth Time-jump

2053                            Gilgamesh of Uruk’s Amulet Time-jump

510                               Night of the Druids Time-jump

327                  Murderous Macedonian Time-jump

AD

33                                  Golgotha Witness Time-jump

360                               Vindolanda – The Border Spy Time-jump

519                  Cadbury  – A Geordie in Guinevere’s Bed Time-jump

1495                Vengeance from Vilcabamba Time-jump

1561                            Elizabethan Charade Time-jump – first ‘horse riding’

1752                The Lost Eleven Days Time-jump

1888                            The Victorian Cad Time-jump

1994                            Timothy Farman born

2000                Tim’s first test Time-jump – no book resulted

2009                12^th Terror Scare;

2011                UK nationwide riots

2014                Northwest Explosion (Sellafield terrorist attack)

2014                           African exodus; Iraqi exodus; racial uprisings in UK; all British police armed

2015                          Solent Islamic Fundamentalist nuclear blast; legalising heroin; Lawless August; Zimbabwe escapees

2016               Limited War; Britain expelled from Commonwealth

2017               Politically Correct Legislation; Typhoid epidemic; 13^th Terror Scare; 

PC Legislation revoked; Zimbabwe settlement

2018                Sellafield Accident

2019                           Puritan ethics sweep through UK; Asian Flu computer virus; Sexual Rebound to Puritan ethics

2020                           Race Revolt

Diary of a Time-traveller in the Race Revolt Time-jump

2023                Common Sense return to norm after Sexual Rebound

2025                Compromise Peace; Race Revolt ended

2030                First test Time-jump to 2000

2033                           Time-jump to 2020 (Age 39).

 

I'd been planning to rewrite the book anyway, but I suspect now I may need to take account of the two referendum campaigns that have riven the British Isles recently!  Proof, if it were needed, that history doesn't stand still!