The above image was generated with stable diffusion from the prompt 'The 321 Incident. A crowd of people holding political signs and sleeping.' The 321 Incident is the title of my latest sci fi novel, the last chapter of which was posted yesterday. If you want to read the draft, begin with chapters 1 and 2. Note that this work considers difficult subjects.
The Story
The 321 Incident begins with a big national tragedy that claims the same number of lives as 9/11 did. From there, the story follows a handful of characters as they try to navigate the post-tragedy landscape. Although they face steep challenges, synchronicities and the magic of human connections help them find their way. Politics, media, harm reduction, and non-ordinary states of consciousness are some of the themes that the work explores.
The sci fi in this story mostly involves uncanny timing and fringe spirituality of the sort that's common in New Age circles. One character channels an extradimensional entity named Tiku from the planet Tikatoo. Another sees visions of the future. These ideas aren't presented as grandiose, but they are a part of things.
Background
A few months ago, I was working on the sequel to my as-yet-unpublished novel The Brockton Exodus and was having a great time with it. Then, all of the sudden, someone new came into my life. Someone that inspired me to reevaluate everything. I realized that the Brockton Exodus sequel was the sort of thing that could be written at any time, whereas there was a new story that I felt compelled to write right now. Specifically, I wanted to try and envision events that could plausibly lead to peaceful systemic change in the US.
Constraining the story to the realm of the theoretically plausible was a fun exercise. One that I think made the final work more grounded than it otherwise would've been. The most surprising thing that came up while writing was the idea that the best case scenario for national politics might be utter gridlock preventing the government from doing more harm than it already does. The most hopeful political scenario I could imagine was both anti-political and anti-partisan.
Accomplishment
The completion of The 321 Incident marks the achievement of a goal I set at the end of 2018. I wanted to write ten good sci fi novels in five years and now I have done that. This is a major milestone for me. Reaching it involved plenty of inspired daydreaming, as well as some brutal pragmatism and relentless determination.
Each work averages 50k words, so they're short novels. Any shorter and they'd be novellas. But altogether, these recent books of mine do amount to something substantial. Half a million words is kind of a lot.
Where to go from here is an open question. I of course have to format the last couple of books and get them to my editor. There's description text and art and marketing to consider. But for now, for today at least, I'm trying to just focus on celebrating what I've achieved. Because it's a big deal.
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