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Latest news about the 'coup' in Zimbabwe has echoes from my unpublished but previously printed science fiction novel's predictions...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!

Writing – research – hypnotism & predictions – psychic-03

 More snippets gleaned from the 1970 book Psychic Discoveries from behind the Iron curtain by

Sheila Ostrander & Lynn Schroeder (1970) this copy 1976.

At the time of writing the book, Russia had serious concerns about China. Chairman Mao ordered the Chinese scientists to research parapsychology. In response, Russia established psi research bases at Vladivostok and Khabarovsk on the disputed Chinese border. (p142) At one time there were about forty cities within the USSR that contained centres where research was being done on paranormal subjects. One of these was Moscow’s Pavlov Institute where secretive research delved into parapsychology… (p152)

Two so-called pseudoscientific subjects discussed here

are acupuncture and hypnotism. The definition of pseudoscience attached to these subjects is questioned by many adherents and beneficiaries.

Hypnotism

Sergei Rachmaninoff’s First Symphony was performed in St Petersburg in 1897 and was unanimously panned, one critic having likened it to a depiction of the ten plagues of Egypt, suggesting it would be admired by the "inmates" of a music conservatory in Hell. The symphony was not performed again in his lifetime.

The composer was devastated and decided never to compose again.

For three years music seemed blocked to his mind.

Distressed by this, his friends suggested he go to a hypnotist, Nikolai Dahl, who was also an amateur musician. 

A daily course of hypnotherapy and psychotherapy brought the music and inspiration back.

Rachmaninoff composed his Second Piano Concerto in C Minor, dedicating it to Dr Dahl. It was a success and his self-worth was revived. (p166)

Superstition in old Russia was as concrete and pernicious as the lice infesting most of the populace. Magic spells, amulets, potions, powders, and counter-hexes were widely considered to be necessities of life. (p251)

Acupuncture

The Soviets had a machine that registered energy flow in the body coincidentally using as checkpoints for its electrodes the acupuncture treatment points, the meridians, where the chi force flows. This machine picked up changes in body energy caused by alterations of consciousness and varying emotional states. (p163)

For decades, China has used acupuncture in open heart surgery, with good effect. A report in 2011 confirmed this too.

Tana learned to use acupuncture needles while on a mission during her first mission (The Singapore Signal, 1965, as yet unreported). Since then she has carried these needles in a pouch on her belt when penetrating enemy territory, and used them in The Prague Papers, 1975 (Crooked Cat Publishing (2014).

Predictions

Baba Vanga (Vanga Dimitrova) was a blind Bulgarian who was actually paid for by the state. She received thousands of callers asking for predictions – and apparently some 80% of these were proved correct…

She died in 1996. Some of her predictions that have yet to happen include (Wikipedia):

1) The 44th President of the United States will be the last US president. As Barak Obama is the 44^th, this is unlikely, though perhaps Trump will somehow make the prophecy happen!

2) Europe will be transformed into an Islamic caliphate and the transformation will be complete in the year 2043. ..

3) Communism will return to Europe and the rest of the world in 2076.

4) There will be a war on Mars in 3005.

 ***

Tana Standish doesn’t go in for predictions, happily. Yet from time to time she experiences flash images that are later perceived to be slicing of future events; no dates, no specific time, just the image, sometimes featuring her, sometimes not. Each adventure tends to feature at least one ‘flash-forward’ image from a mission yet to be transcribed.

Tana Standish can be found in The Prague Papers and TheTehran Text.

Books – Crystal balls at the ready!

By 2018, a new consumer report predicts that e-books will be Britain’s favourite reading format. They’ll overtake the sale of paperbacks and hardbacks, according to PwC.

So, in the next four years the consumer e-book market is predicted to triple from £380m to more than £1bn.

Astonishingly, half the population of the UK is expected to own a tablet device of some kind by 2018. In that same period, sales of printed books are estimated to fall by a third, to £912m.

Yet it’s still positive for print book writers and buyers. Before 2013, the UK book market was in decline, but now it is predicted to be worth £1.9bn in 2018, which is a healthy balance sheet by all accounts...

Perhaps we should be looking to the east as China is predicted to become the world’s second largest book market in 2017, overtaking Japan and Germany, with the US the world’s number one book market with predicted revenue of $37bn.

[My apologies for the repetition of the word ‘predicted’ – who’d have foreseen that?]

 

Information gleaned from Writers’ News, August 2014 – www.writers-online.co.uk