Gregory Ness's Blog, page 6
February 22, 2015
February 18, 2015
Dreamfish per Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucin... For readers...
February 15, 2015
January 19, 2015
Review from Publisher's Weekly
Great feedback and great exposure. Thank you Publisher's Weekly!
http://www.publishersweekly.com/ASINB...
http://www.publishersweekly.com/ASINB...
January 11, 2015
Movies and Manuscripts Review of Antioch
http://moviesandmanuscripts.blogspot....
"I can easily see this being at least a four or five book series - and one that, when finished, could be truly noteworthy." - See more at: http://moviesandmanuscripts.blogspot....
"I can easily see this being at least a four or five book series - and one that, when finished, could be truly noteworthy." - See more at: http://moviesandmanuscripts.blogspot....
Swiftboating Scientists
This is an excellent point about how scientists can be attacked for their viewpoints. I agree completely... however it can happen to anybody, including people on the other side of various issues.
http://bos.sagepub.com/content/71/1/3...
Filed under: certaintism or turning specialized interests into belief systems...
http://bos.sagepub.com/content/71/1/3...
Filed under: certaintism or turning specialized interests into belief systems...
January 10, 2015
Some Key Characters in The Sword of Agrippa: Antioch
Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa
A young teenage engineer serving in the Roman army under Julius Caesar is transformed by a trip to the Great Library of Alexandria. What he learns from a slave priestess will help transform Rome from a war-torn republic into a vast empire.
Roy Swenson
A controversial biologist banned from the USA because of his controversial experiments is in Prague on his search for dark energy.
Jude Obah
Born in the failed state of Biafra, Jude is a disfigured shaman reincarnated from Prague in the Dark Ages, where he was tortured to death for his religious convictions.
Samia
A bastard child of Ptolemy 12, Samia was educated by priests in Memphis before being admitted with Cleopatra to a rigorous curriculum at the Great Library of Alexandria. She becomes Agrippa's teacher and lover as they struggle to reconcile their passions with the interests of their two respective empires.
Dr. Mike Hammer
A Harvard-educated ethno-botanist, Hammer's experiences with ayahuasca and other plants gives him perspectives on mankind's original spiritual impulses. As a member of the research team, he thinks that the pineal gland could be an ideal dark energy sensor.
A young teenage engineer serving in the Roman army under Julius Caesar is transformed by a trip to the Great Library of Alexandria. What he learns from a slave priestess will help transform Rome from a war-torn republic into a vast empire.
Roy Swenson
A controversial biologist banned from the USA because of his controversial experiments is in Prague on his search for dark energy.
Jude Obah
Born in the failed state of Biafra, Jude is a disfigured shaman reincarnated from Prague in the Dark Ages, where he was tortured to death for his religious convictions.
Samia
A bastard child of Ptolemy 12, Samia was educated by priests in Memphis before being admitted with Cleopatra to a rigorous curriculum at the Great Library of Alexandria. She becomes Agrippa's teacher and lover as they struggle to reconcile their passions with the interests of their two respective empires.
Dr. Mike Hammer
A Harvard-educated ethno-botanist, Hammer's experiences with ayahuasca and other plants gives him perspectives on mankind's original spiritual impulses. As a member of the research team, he thinks that the pineal gland could be an ideal dark energy sensor.
January 9, 2015
First Review of Completed Novel is In! Smashwords
Review by: yetanothermovie on Dec. 03, 2014 : FOUR STARS
Great read! Gregory (whose writing I encountered last year, and enjoyed) spins a fascinating dual-poled tale, part in the distant Roman-Egyptian past and part in the near-future.
What he's so good at doing is pulling together different strands - future tech, cognition and the brain, 'spirituality', cosmology, and more, and pulling them together into a feeling of excitement and anticipation.
The characters are interesting too - at times they feel a little out of sync with my own life, but their flavour is very distinct, like biting into a really good blue cheese, or macadamia nuts. It would be interesting to live in a world with them..
This is a first book in an arc/series, so it does feel a little cut short (and it isnt very clear which direction the plot is moving toward). Thats why it only gets 4 stars - I'd have liked it to have been longer, and to have spent more time bringing out the richness of characters own lives.
Above all, worth reading for anybody in today's world who faces the 'certaintists' - the true believers who hide behind rationality and mass-agreement to convince the world that finally, we know, that we are certain of what we know, and that those before us who made the mistake of being certain of what they knew were an aberration we've thrown off.
(reviewed within a week of purchase)
LINK: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...
Great read! Gregory (whose writing I encountered last year, and enjoyed) spins a fascinating dual-poled tale, part in the distant Roman-Egyptian past and part in the near-future.
What he's so good at doing is pulling together different strands - future tech, cognition and the brain, 'spirituality', cosmology, and more, and pulling them together into a feeling of excitement and anticipation.
The characters are interesting too - at times they feel a little out of sync with my own life, but their flavour is very distinct, like biting into a really good blue cheese, or macadamia nuts. It would be interesting to live in a world with them..
This is a first book in an arc/series, so it does feel a little cut short (and it isnt very clear which direction the plot is moving toward). Thats why it only gets 4 stars - I'd have liked it to have been longer, and to have spent more time bringing out the richness of characters own lives.
Above all, worth reading for anybody in today's world who faces the 'certaintists' - the true believers who hide behind rationality and mass-agreement to convince the world that finally, we know, that we are certain of what we know, and that those before us who made the mistake of being certain of what they knew were an aberration we've thrown off.
(reviewed within a week of purchase)
LINK: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...
Settings and Locations in The Sword of Agrippa
Alexandria Egypt: Alexandria in 48BCE was a city of innovation and wonders, many of which have been lost to posterity. There is a Life Tree room in a restricted area of the Great Library, filled with scrolls and stone tablets.
Prague: 2020 Prague, including the Alchemy Museum and Charles University Medical School was one of the last bastions of wonder in a world filled with certaintists, people who already knew everything.
Antioch: in 48-47 BCE was one of the ancient world's great cities, on par with Alexandria and Rome.
Prague: 2020 Prague, including the Alchemy Museum and Charles University Medical School was one of the last bastions of wonder in a world filled with certaintists, people who already knew everything.
Antioch: in 48-47 BCE was one of the ancient world's great cities, on par with Alexandria and Rome.
