LOSS & PORPHYRY the novels
LOSS
Although I have made a number of other false starts, I have completed just this one novel. Even then, this remains unpublished. I worked on it over a number of years. However, each new version was instantly rejected by my agent Sonia Land on the basis that I should stick to my business books. She did, though, set high standards. Her best known other personal client was Catherine Cookson; then the best selling author of all!
As you will see, from the synopsis below, although set at the beginning of the bronze age it is a novel of ideas based on some of my rather more jaundiced views of the present world - where it was started, and the initial version completed, at the time of the collapse of my Computerland franchise. As such its cathartic effects were uniquely valuable, by themselves, in the context of helping me come to terms with that catastrophic event.
9992 A LOSS OF INNOCENCE - SYNOPSIS
9024 LOSS Chapter 1 - MIDSUMMER
IDYLL
9078 - LOSS Chapter 2 - A STRANGE
MADNESS
9080 - LOSS Chapter 3 - EQUINOX
9021 - LOSS Chapter 4 - THE HUNT
9032 - LOSS Chapter 5 - MIDWINTER
9077 - LOSS Chapter 6 - BEYOND
EQUINOX
9025 - LOSS Chapter 7 - A NEW
WORLD
9027 - LOSS footnotes
PORPHYRY
In his book, On the Cave of the Nymphs, Porphyry the Neoplatonist (233-305 A.D.) interprets the cave as an image of the cosmos where mortals descend into it through the gate of desire, and the other opening alludes to the path of liberation, whereby the immortal part of the soul is once again set free.
In this context, this section of the compendium comprises the initial chapters of another book, this time unfinished. It was to have been a novel about the middle-classes and, especially, those in the selling profession; to fill a gap when novels were either the province of male working class angst or the romantic fantasies of middle-class women. The problem, as you will see if you delve into it, is that the result that whilst it is unusual in a number of respects end up as a fundamentally boring story, which is why eventually even I became so bored with it that I abandoned it!
But you will also see that it is very autobiographical, though it was heavily fictionalized to without success make it more entertaining! In the context of this compilation, however, it is the (boring) autobiographical detail which gives it value. The fictional elements, which describe events which did not take place and people who did not exist, do however accurately record how I felt at the time; which is something which is missing in my more factual descriptions recorded elsewhere.
One important role, however, was to document the life of the young middle-classes in the period at the end of the 1970s just before the Personal Computer revolutionized our lives.
0003 Part 1 The Trip back from Paris Bio Conference 1977 this is
largely an accurate description of what happened to me at that time in IBM
0061 - Part 2 Family on theTrip back from Paris Bio Conference again a
description of real events
9059 Part 3 - SF/The Sentinel Out Beyond Saturn 1977 on the other hand
this is clearly a totally (science) fictional introduction to the aliens who
were to feature in the later (uncompleted) part of the book
0060 - Part 5 Work in Paris and the trip back again a factual account of
my IBM work
Perhaps its most important role, though, is to document the paranormal experiences in particular our insights into telepathy which we encountered. These are definitely not fictional. They really happened, exactly as described, and were to be very influential in my later approach to life in general.
0011 Part 6 Telepathy on the Way back from Paris 1977 - this may be
read as some sort of fiction but is actually true, where the exercises in
telepathy did work exactly as described
0007 - Part 7 Calais 1977 further work on telepathy, which is also
described exactly as it happened.
0071 Part 8 - Hospitals again based on my IBM experiences, this time in
its Biomedical Group, this description and those that follow - which were an
amalgam of a number of hospitals albeit under one fictional name- was typical of
leading teaching hospitals in the 1970s
0045 Part 9 Blood Separation treating a patient on a cell separator
and the frustrations of watching the attractive operator
0023 Part 10 - Hospital Lab and what goes on in it
0069 Part 11 Meeting the Hospital Consultant a lecture on haematology
0090 Part 12 - Sunday at Home then it once more gets personal,
describing ordinary life, specifically of waking in the morning. This is where
it started to get boring!
0022 Part 13 - Marital Sex the obligatory titillation, but mild by
modern standards
0008 Part 14 - Sunday Lunch silence and lamb.
0036 Part 15 - Sales in the Office then back to a genuine description of
my experiences in IBM Biomedical sales
0086 Part 16 - Cold Calls & Bone Marrow the dubious pleasures of
selling.
0064 Part 17 Socializing and yet again to private life, with friends
who were neighbours, but also putting the paranormal into perspective
0085 Part 18 Telepathy Party Tricks this time to entertain the
neighbours rather than to investigate the phenomenon
0029 Part 19 -US Day Trip a strange trip to the US for just 24 hours.
0058 Part 20 -US Day Trip Clairvoyance an experiment with the SRI tests
for clairvoyance
0081 Part 21 -US Clairvoyance 2 though the hotel fails to live up to my
clairvoyant drawing!
0099 Part 22 -US Clairvoyance 3 but there ultimately is once more in
fact - success, as the view from my window matches my drawing
0034 Part 23 -US Day Trip Meeting the IBM Biomedical convention for the
shop-floor workers
0053 Part 24 - US Clairvoyance 4 where I realized that I had also
experienced prescience
0042 Part 25 - US Jetlag the joys of long distance travel!
Although I went on for another few thousand words, I was conscious that this was not a novel more of a travelogue, and one which was so boring as to a disservice to the travel industry. I tried to spice up the next few pages with some sex scenes, but these were even more of a turn-off. So, here ended the novel!
hits