E.S. Martell's Blog, page 7

Review from Amazon UK for All the Moments in Forever

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Cadeyrin

Thanks to LewLew for caring enough to spend the time to write a comprehensive review of All the Moments in Forever without (many) spoilers.

The criticism in the last part is accepted, but, although one would wish to change human nature, violence is all too common. I try to make my stories as realistic as I can (within the lack of confines allowed by science fiction), so guns are common. From Kathleen’s viewpoint, a firearm provides much needed security. She’s good, but she’s not strong enough to physically fight off men and fierce animals.

As to the question of paleontologists finding a fossil with bullet holes, I suspect the holes would simply be ascribed to tooth marks by a heretofore unknown predator. Dinosaur bones have been found with holes made by predator bites, so why not a high power rifle? The brass and bullet fragments? Maybe a problem, but what scientist doesn’t like a good mystery?

Oh, btw, I immediately addressed the name issue. I was inexcusably sloppy on that one.

Thanks again,

Eric

Here’s the review:

5.0 out of 5 stars

Great! Heart of Fire Time of Ice, blended with Paradox: On the Sharp Edge of the Blade3 September 2017

Format: Kindle Edition

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Verified Purchase

Ack… I missed finding this third book in the Kathleen Whitby/Logan Walker series.

The author needs to be sure to use the same name when publishing/uploading, eg he added his middle initial S and so it did not show when I searched! Also, I wish there was an Amazon based author alert system when an author you follow publishes a new book, but I do try to join mailing lists.

Anywhoo….All the Moments ticked the boxes for me. Kathleen’s time jumping talents grow, incurring the wrath of rogue US govt politicians and their minions. They are more aggressive than ever in wanting her formula. Having gotten a hold of Logan Walker’s Prof Wolf’s work, (Paradox: On the Sharp Edge of the Blade… you need to read it!) , they have been experimenting and sent an well-trained soldier back in recent time to test out the idea of causing a ‘timeline’ changing event to their advantage in the guise of the greater common good. Yeah..right. Kathleen has no interest and tells them so, but when they kidnap Caderyn after they had to return to modern times to treat serious wounds from an attack by unknown early hominids in their American idyllic time, all hell breaks loose.

New characters are introduced and Kathleen’s circle of trusted friends, and unusual ‘family’ members grows and fills her life with a lot of action, adventure, danger, but ultimately love and loyalty. This was a very good device as I wondered how they’d live without problems… just the two of them, at the end of Heart of Fire Time of Ice (first book). I am so glad that the author has left the door open for a fourth book… hopefully as the group thrives in the Sangamon (a mild and relatively safe time in prehistoric America), new challenges will arise. It can’t stay peaceful for ever now, can it LOL!

My only criticism is the casual appearance and sheer amount of fire-power that is common place in America that anyone seems to be able to get a hold of. I have not lived in the US since the late 1990s, but the gun culture is a bit over-whelming for a UK reader. I have never touched a weapon even though my later brother was a veteran police officer in America. With the author’s background in martial arts, I hope for a bit more of that in the future, along with inventing some traps, etc. Guns seem to solve their problems too easily. I wonder that the regular use of modern weapons cannot but help to have an effect on the timeline. What happens someday when a prehistoric fossil is found with bullet holes and casings!

No matter… write on, and on, and on please!!

Out of Body Experiences and Lucid Dreams

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OBE Vision

I decided to include this post (even though it’s a long read) in my continuing series on this site. It offers some insight into the depth of research I devote to my stories and also how I tend to blend in personal experience.
I devoted a section in Heart of Fire Time of Ice to the Clovis hunter, Cadeyrin, as he had a spiritual experience. His experience was actually drawn from one of mine, although there are significant differences, since his was designed to blend in with the story.

 

I’d like to start with a warning: This post contains ideas that may run counter to your personal beliefs. These beliefs may be religious or rooted in the common opinion that out-of-body experiences (OBE) have no scientific basis.

My position on this is first, that religious dogma is something generated by men to control other men. Good religious teachings lead us towards the personal experience of divine spirit. Since I believe there is only one underlying divine reality, all good religious teachings are attempting to bring us closer to that reality. If your belief conflicts with reality, then your belief is most likely not serving you in the best possible way.

Secondly, science is always discovering heretofore-unknown things about the universe. If everything were settled and known, there would be no need for scientific inquiry. The experiences dealt with in this essay are well documented and offer enough consistency to allow one to draw some general conclusions. The scientific reason for them is still open for speculation.

If it’s true, it’s true, and it doesn’t matter what package it comes in. If there is conflict between belief systems, it’s because they arise from different cultures and because men put their own spin on the truths in an attempt to control their own followers.

Lucid Dreams

Have you ever had a dream of falling or flying? Many people have these types of dreams. How about a dream where you believe you’re awake, but you cannot move your body? These dreams are almost always indicative of an out-of-body experience or a lucid dream. With a little practice almost all people can have dreams in which they become aware and able to control the dream to some extent. Here’s an example from my own recent experience:

About 4 a.m. I woke up, changed position, and then fell back asleep. Shortly I was walking down a sidewalk carrying a U-shaped piece of metal. There was a large pile of rocks located on the edge of a college campus. I went around them and entered a very small cave through a small opening. There was a bed inside. It had drawers under it, and I began looking into them but found nothing of interest, just some vague pieces of machinery. Then I became aware that there was an old-fashioned kitchen range beside the bed. It had drawers and I looked in them also. I’m not sure what I was looking for, but whatever it was, it wasn’t there. At this point I saw a dark door at one end of the cave. I went through, and suddenly the quality of the dream transitioned to a closer approximation of reality because I became aware that I was dreaming. As a result, I became “conscious” within the dream and had control of my actions.

I looked around at the room that was on the other side of the dark door. It looked like a large, dimly lit barn. There was another door to the right side of the room, and it was very dark. I looked inside the opening and made out the fact that it was a stall for horses, but there were no animals there. To the left, the room became lighter, and there was a large door that was open to the outside. I consciously bypassed that door since I felt that I would wake up if I went through it. After looking around the rest of the barn and deciding that I was satisfied and had seen everything, I decided to go outside. I jumped off a high step, and landed right in front of a young man. Our eyes met and we both smiled. Was he another dreamer or a figment of my dream? I don’t know. I certainly didn’t expect to see him there. I walked past and turned to the left on the far end of the building. At that point the dream faded, and I lost control and fell fully out of consciousness and into sleep.

A brief analysis of this dream shows that it 1) started as a normal dream, perhaps clearer and more coherent than most, and then at a certain point, 2) I became aware that I was able to consciously control my actions. This is different than most dreams, because we usually aren’t aware that we are dreaming, and we usually aren’t able to control what we do.

There is a slight difference here between my experience and most lucid dreams. In this dream, I didn’t exert any control over the elements in the dream. Usually, lucid dreamers are able to modify anything they encounter in their dreams. Many exert a large degree of control, forcing items to mutate or disappear and appear.

Carlos Castaneda’s mentor, Don Juan, warned Carlos that one of the dangers of becoming conscious in one’s dreams was that the infatuation with control could capture his attention.

In the above dream, after I was conscious, I had a feeling of elation and freedom. This was partly due to my feeling of mastery of the environment.

I met someone inside the confines of the dream who appeared to be self-directed. Was he another dreamer? This is an intriguing possibility.

At the end of the dream my conscious control faded, and I went into a deeper level of sleep. When this happened, the whole dream became fuzzy and disjointed and then disappeared.

Other people who have had lucid dreams report similar experiences. The key aspect is that we are able to become conscious and control our actions within the dream. I’ve found the book, “Lucid Dreaming,” by Robert Waggoner, to be comprehensive and a good summary of the phenomenon.

For additional discussion on lucid dreams, Wikipedia has a fairly good article.

Out of Body Experiences

There seems to be a slight variation in opinion among authorities in what differentiates a lucid dream from an out of body experience (OBE). Generally speaking, I think that OBEs are qualitatively different from lucid dreams. Lucid dreams can involve any dream environment, while OBEs usually involve what I call the RTE or Real Time Environment. This is local space near the experiencer’s body and usually involves them exiting their body and finding themselves in close proximity to it.

There are several clear signs of an OBE. The first is that it is usually accompanied by a strong feeling of vibration. The second is that it may be accompanied by physical body paralysis. The third is that the experiencer may see their physical body and the fourth is that the experiencer finds it very easy to fly and to pass through walls. OBEs are also often accompanied by sounds. OBEs also seem more real and are usually seen as objective reality.

Both lucid dreams and OBEs may be involuntary or induced. Some people awake in either of these experiences and some can actually induce OBEs directly from a waking state. Moving directly into an OBE becomes easier with deliberate practice.

Both states are dependent upon the brain’s being in the Theta state, often known as the hypnagogic state. In this mode, the brain is cycling at a frequency between 4 and 8 cycles per second. This state is the one most people fall into just before falling asleep.

When you are tired as you first go to bed, it’s difficult to maintain a hypnagogic state for very long because it quickly degenerates into deeper sleep. Most people go through several cycles of deeper sleep followed by lighter sleep or wakefulness in the course of a night. After two or three such sleep cycles it’s much easier to maintain a hypnagogic state and consequentially you are more likely to have an OBE or lucid dream between 4 and 6 AM.

Personally, I normally have lucid dream experiences, but I’ve had several memorable OBEs. My OBEs are almost always dream induced, meaning that I transition from a dreaming sleep into an out-of-body state.

Some might call this a lucid dream, but there is a qualitative difference between the two. Despite our extreme freedom of movement while experiencing an OBE, it is more like our daily experience in that we can’t deliberately morph items into other items the way we can in a lucid dream. Here’s a brief description of one of my OBEs:

Robert Bruce mentions an interesting technique in one of his discussions. Select a playing card from a deck, making sure you don’t see the card’s face. Place the card on a high shelf somewhere in your house. The shelf should be high enough that you won’t accidentally see the card. When you find yourself in an OBE, remember to go and look at the card. You can then cross check when you wake up.

I did this, but I was a little too enthusiastic and put out two cards one on each of two bookshelves on each side of our fireplace. Nothing happened for a few weeks. Finally, one morning, I waked and rolled over onto my left side and then started to go back to sleep. I suddenly became conscious that my face was bumping against the spines of a long row of books. I said to myself, I’m having an OBE and I’m near the shelf, so I’d better look at the card. I did and became aware that the card was a black four, but when I tried to see the suit, all I could see was a rectangle with a diagonal line crossing it. This was sort of like the international symbol for “No” that you often see across a picture of a cigarette. After trying to see the suit again, I woke up.

I immediately woke my wife and told her I’d seen the card. She suggested I check it and I went and got the first card. It was the four of spades! I took it and showed her. Then I decided to check the second card. It was the four of clubs! The shelves were separated by about 8 feet of space and were about 7 feet in the air. I concluded the reason I couldn’t make out the suit was that I’d been trying to see both at the same time.

It appears that our perception is not restricted to our common bodily-imposed limitations.

Somewhat more recently, I had another experience that illustrates four of the common symptoms of OBEs. Here’s a brief description:

I was drowsing in a recliner in our bedroom when I suddenly heard my name loudly called twice in a sort of nasal tone. I immediately decided to wake up and became conscious at that moment. I couldn’t move my body or extremities. I know that to recover from this type of paralysis, concentrating on moving your big toe almost always works. For some reason I was too panicked to remember this technique at the time. I saw that I was floating about 2 feet above my body and I kept trying to merge back into it. Suddenly, there was a loud buzz that happened on the surface of my chest right over my heart. It was so startling that I popped back into my body and opened my eyes at the same time.

A brief analysis highlights the four common symptoms. First, I heard a sound-my name. Second, I experienced physical paralysis. Third, I was floating outside my body and fourth, I experienced a strong buzz or vibration which led to me re-entering my body. The vibration was similar to that of an old-fashioned doorbell in speed. It was around 1000 cycles per second by my reckoning.

This type of vibration is attributable to the heart chakra becoming active and releasing enough energy to either start or stop the OBE. Many people feel a vibration on starting the experience.

In my experience, the toe moving technique is very effective at reuniting you with your body. The only problem is that you often panic when you can’t move, and it’s difficult to remember to concentrate on your toe. The take home lesson is to set your intent to remember to move your toe.

Another experience highlights a few of the features of a typical flying OBE.

I was still sleeping after the sun had risen when I shot upwards to what seemed about a thousand feet above the roof of my house. I then went down to tree level and proceeded to cruise down our drive and then up to the leaves of a tree. I moved close to the leaves until I could concentrate on the details of a single leaf. I was exultant over the sensation of absolute freedom of movement. Suddenly I started to become heavy and gradually sank to the ground. Once on the ground, no amount of effort could start me flying again. I woke up.

There are four aspects of this experience that are common. The first is that I was able to fly easily. The second is that I let my emotions run out of control. The third is that I focused my attention on intricate details and that close focus forced me out of the OBE. The fourth is the feeling of heaviness. Most people attribute this to the physical body recalling the astral body through the silver cord.

Some people think that OBEs are simply the result of our normal perception being shut off while we’re conscious. They believe that the brain then generates a semblance of reality. I don’t think this is correct because of my card OBE described above and because of this one:

I was sleeping and dreamed I was sitting on my back porch. I was throwing fireworks into some tall, dry grass and there was a lot of smoke. This is something I would never do in my daily life. The incongruity of my actions brought me to consciousness. I moved off the porch and went to investigate. It became apparent to me that I’d somehow incorporated the firework explanation to account for the “smoke” I saw. The grass was actually wet with dew, and the smoke turned out to be a dense fog when investigated from my OBE perspective. I relaxed and slipped back out of consciousness.

I awoke and dressed to take the dog out and was somewhat amused to see that it was, indeed, a very foggy morning.

This experience has some of the elements of a lucid dream, but once I became conscious within the confines of the dream state, I moved into an OBE state. In that state I was able to move about in the area near my home. My perception became more normal and I ascribed a correct cause to what I saw. I wasn’t able to mutate the fog back into firework smoke again. The tall grass, incidentally, was in front of the house and not in back as I’d dreamed.

My point is that dreaming, lucid dreaming, and OBE states can easily transition from one to the other. However, despite that mutability, the quality of the two types of experience is completely different, and the experiencer can easily sense this difference.

Robert Bruce provides an interesting explanation of the OBE. He states that what actually happens is that an OBE is a result of a mind-split. One part of the mind remains in the body, and as the physical body falls asleep, the mind splits and an image of consciousness is projected into the etheric body that is located in and around the physical body. While the physical mind dreams, the etheric mind can be held in a hypnagogic state. When this occurs, it may project yet another copy of consciousness into the real-time zone. When this occurs, the mind is then split into the dreaming mind that remains in the physical body and the second image of consciousness that is in the energy body projected into the real-time zone. This split-off consciousness is fully capable as a second entity. Bruce states that this split can occur several times, each split-off consciousness carrying a higher level of energy. This means that higher and higher levels of astral reality may be accessed.

The problem is that the consciousness of the etheric body doesn’t realize that the split has occurred and will usually believe that it has failed in the projection attempt and then go to sleep. At the time of reintegration of the split-off consciousness with that remaining in the etheric and physical bodies, the strongest set of memories will prevail. Unfortunately, the strongest set is usually that of the physical body, since its memories have already been recorded in the physical medium of the brain. Keeping projections very short is one step that Bruce recommends as helpful to remembering the shadow memory of the higher energy consciousness upon termination of the OBE.

Brainwaves: EEG and the brain’s state

EEG (Electroencephalography) technology is used to measure brain’s electrical vibrations from the scalp. The resulting EEG record will contain frequency elements that are categorized into four states as follows:

State

Frequency

State of Mind

Delta

0.5Hz – 4Hz

Deep sleep

Theta

4Hz – 8Hz

Drowsiness/light sleep

Alpha

8Hz – 14Hz

Relaxed but alert

Beta

14Hz – 30Hz

Highly alert and focused

The dominant frequency in the EEG pattern is considered to be the current state of the brain. Meditation is about being able to alter one’s brain frequency to a desired state on demand. In the past it often took several years to learn the techniques of meditation, but now you can have the same effect with brainwave entrainment. The benefit is that no special training or discipline is required.

Brain Entrainment

By listening to sounds of various frequencies, it is possible to shift the brain frequency from one stage to another. For example, if a person is highly alert and listens to a click stimulus of 4 Hz for some time, their brain frequency will change towards the stimulus frequency. The effect will be relaxing to the person. This phenomenon is called entrainment or frequency following response.

When the brain’s frequency starts close to the desired stimulus, entrainment works more efficiently. Thus, when doing a sweep from one frequency to another, the starting frequency should be as close to the current brain state as possible. This is why the frequency starts at a high rate and then gradually slows down. If the subject is wide-awake, a decreasing frequency will gradually bring his brain activity down to a drowsy, theta level. Of course, the effect is dependent upon motivation. Just as people can refuse to be hypnotized, they can refuse to submit to this effect for the most part.

The most common way of applying a frequency stimulus to the brain is via sound. One way of accomplishing this is simply to play a series of percussive sounds that gradually slow down to theta levels of about 4 per second. This technique can be used in conjunction with a guided meditation for good effect. The click sounds will usually conflict with music since there are then two rhythm sources with clashing beats. This brings us to Binaural-Beat technology.

Binaural-Beat Technology

Another way of applying a frequency stimulus is to play a pure sound that is at a low frequency. The brain can then adjust its frequency to that of the sound. This might work for higher states of consciousness, but it won’t work for slower brain states. The problem is that humans cannot hear sounds low enough to be useful for brain entrainment to theta levels. Fortunately, a special technique called binaural-beat frequency can be used.

The way binaural beat technology works is to present the left ear with a steady tone of a certain frequency and the right ear a steady tone of a different frequency. Within the brain, these two tones are combined into their beat frequency. This signal is formed entirely by the brain and can be adjusted to the exact speed required, so a frequency of 4 cycles per second is easily achievable. When using stereo headphones, the left and right sounds mix together in the brain and form what is called a binaural beat.

Just passively listening to binaural beats does not necessarily alter your state of consciousness. For example, willingness and ability to relax and focus attention determines how effective the binaural beat stimulus is for inducing state changes. This means that you must actively try to engage in the meditation and not fight or resist it.

The point of this technology is that experience and practice of a certain brainwave state will assist the brain in learning how to change its frequency. This makes it easier for the practitioner to produce the desired brainwave state at will. Using this technology, one can learn to achieve a deep level of meditation, and, after practice, this can be attained even without listening to the entraining sounds.

The Monroe Gateway Experience

Now you have the scientific basics behind the Monroe system, so we can go on to discuss the Gateway Experience. I’ll start with some additional background.

In the 1950’s, Robert Monroe was a radio executive living with his wife and family in Virginia. One afternoon he remained at home while his family went to church. He was drowsing when a bright ray of light came out of the north and illuminated him. He felt strong vibrations and also seemed to be paralyzed. When he finally forced himself to move, the light and vibrations ceased. Over the following few weeks, the same thing happened nine times. Since he’d never heard of such a thing, he became quite concerned and fearful that he was going crazy or was very ill.

He went to his doctor, but was told that his health was fine. The experiences continued, and he gradually became used to them and even began to anticipate them. One night, he was in bed when the sensations started. His arm was hanging over the side of the bed, brushing the carpet. As the sensations continued, his fingers seemed to go through the floor and brush a nail on the other side. Then they felt wet. This startled him, and he terminated the experience by pulling his arm back. The experiences progressed until he became aware that he was floating up against the ceiling of his bedroom. When he looked down, he could see his body in bed. He dived back in and opened his eyes. This experience was quite frightening to him, but after consulting a friend who happened to be a psychologist, he began to try to leave his body systematically.

He gradually became able to leave his body at will and then began to visit friends while he was out-of-body. He sought for validation of his experiences by comparing what he saw with his friends’ memories. He was usually partially correct in what was happening. Sometimes he saw other people who weren’t in the room, sometimes he heard his friends say something they had not said, but there was enough correspondence in their memories to allow him to feel confident in his abilities.

As a result of his years of practice, he developed a concept of the structure of the non-material world. He states that there are three locales. Locale 1 is closely related to what we call the real world. Travel in this locale is sometimes easy and sometimes difficult. The experiencer finds that they have some unusual abilities which allow them to fly, to pass through walls, and to move almost instantly from one location to another.

Locale 2 is much deeper, and the experiencer is likely to meet predeceased people he knows. This is the level of thought, and the principles of thought apply. Like calls to like. When one desires to move, one simply thinks of the destination and is there. Inner desire to arrive at a location is most important. This is very similar to the law of attraction that allows us to successfully generate results in daily life. Monroe found that communication with entities he met at this level was usually by means of passing a “thought ball” of understanding from one to the other. Linear communication was not necessary. If you’ve meditated much, you might have found that you sometimes arrive at a complex understanding instantly without going through the linear sequence of thought. This is much the same thing as Monroe found in Locale 2.

Locale 3 is a level he found which seems to parallel that of our normal Earth. There were significant differences in technology, however. He explored this level mostly by merging with his double who lived there.

In his books, he gives a description of his ‘second body.’ It has some weight, is sometimes visible to his friends, and he can produce a sensation of touching his friends. The second body is formless but may take on any form required. He tried to locate the traditionally described silver cord connecting his second body with his physical body but was usually unaware of it.

Should you decide to read his three books, they must be read in sequence. If you were to start with the third book, you’d probably throw it down thinking that the author was crazy. One warning I will give is that the first book describes some of his more frightening experiences. He took his own biases and fears with him, and they show in his writings. For example, he recounts sensing some small, soft entities clinging to his back. He describes going through extreme maneuvers to dislodge them under the assumption that they meant him harm. Finally, he realized that they were his cats that had died and were clinging to him for their own security. This allowed him to deal with them without fear.

As an example of the odd sorts of experiences you may have, here’s another of mine:

I was sleeping, and it was well after midnight. I woke up lying on the floor beside the bed with my head at the foot of the bed. There was about five feet between the bed and the wall, so there was plenty of space for my body. I looked around a bit in surprise because I didn’t remember getting out of bed and certainly didn’t remember lying down on the floor with my head pointed towards the closet door. At this time, I realized that I was out-of-body. The room was dark, but there was enough light to see the furniture. As I looked, I saw a cat standing on the floor near my head. Without thinking I began to rub its head. It started to purr and acted very content that it was getting attention. At the time, we had a Siamese cat, but this was a strange cat. It was rather large and was marked in black and white tuxedo colors, except that the black was more tabby striped. I didn’t know the animal, but it was friendly, and I was happy to pat it. After awhile the cat left, and I moved back towards my bed. It was my intent to go back to sleep, and I must have reached that point prior to reintegrating with my physical body, since I don’t remember reentry.

The interesting thing about this experience was that my son, who was living over a thousand miles away, had just adopted a cat. I had no idea what it looked like, not having seen a picture at that time. When I finally visited him, his cat was marked exactly like the cat I’d seen in my OBE. The markings were not that common either. The black part of the tuxedo pattern was actually gray with tabby stripes appearing near the white part of its coat. My assumption is that the cat came to visit me, but I’m not sure why.

This experience was interesting but not exactly earth shattering in spiritual terms. Other times, I’ve received guidance in such a way that I was aware that it was coming from sources outside of my immediate body of knowledge. Usually, this type of guidance is accompanied with a spiritual boost that can lead to increases in insight.

Parallel Universe Theory

I have an alternate theory of OBE. Some of the reported experiences that I’ve mentioned above and that don’t have an easy explanation in conventional thinking may be reconciled with the aid of the concept of parallel universes.

The idea of parallel universes is supported by modern quantum physics. There is one theory that explains the odd ways in which quantum particles behave. Very briefly, it implies that the universe splits every time there is a choice made on a quantum level. For example, if a photon has the alternative of going through one slit or a second slit in the classic double-slit experiment, it will go through one in one universe and through the other in a second universe. The two universes may then merge into a single universe or not. This is a gross over-simplification, of course, but it’s adequate to advance my idea.

I first began thinking about this concept while rereading Robert Bruce’s description of the mind split effect. It seemed to me that since our brains operate at least partially on a quantum level, that it would be likely that any binary decision we make would result in two universes. In one universe, we would do one action and in the other, we would do the action corresponding to the other half of the binary decision.

What this might mean is that when we project out of our body, we don’t project into the same universe in which the part of us that remains in our body resides. This split allows us to move into numerous alternate universes. These universes have traditionally been classified as various levels of the real-time zone and the astral zone and others.

This provides a possible explanation of Monroe’s locales and the fact that he often saw things that did not occur in the “real” universe. In some universes, his friends might be saying the things he heard and reported. In others, they may not. In some, there might be additional people present, or the building or décor might be different. The implication I draw is that OBEs are real and possibly scientifically explainable events.

Conclusion
There are numerous other resources available on the Internet for those who want to study this topic. It’s an interesting subject and one that you can easily experiment with in the privacy of your own home.

Creatures from Heart of Fire Time of Ice

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Kathleen

PLEISTOCENE MEGA-FAUNA NOTES

I had a good time working with the prehistoric animals mentioned in my story Heart of Fire Time of Ice. Who isn’t intrigued with creatures such as saber-tooth tigers? (Well, maybe not everyone.)

I couldn’t weave every possible animal into the story, but I used a number of the larger and more prominent ones that I thought my readers would be likely to know.

I made an effort to have the animals behave in ways that are consistent with what we know about them based on similar modern species. My description of their behavior is based on my imagination only and not to be taken as factual.

The saber-tooth tigers’ habits are still a matter of great speculation. No one has been able to satisfactorily explain how they used their enormous canines. The lengthy teeth seem to have been too fragile for the type of hunting techniques used by most of today’s big cats.

I made the assumption that the saber-toothed cats were more like lions and hunted primarily in groups. This would seem to be a necessity, considering the large size of many of the prey animals of the period.

One idea that I took into consideration was that the large numbers of herbivores would inevitably lead to numerous predators. It seems to me that humans of the period would be exposed to a lot of random predation. The large predators most likely wouldn’t actively seek out humans, but they most assuredly wouldn’t turn down a tasty snack, if they happened upon one.

In the next section, you’ll find a partially annotated list of Pleistocene animals. I’ve made some notes on animals that are not commonly known. Not all of them found their way into the plot. In addition, the list is not exhaustive, nor is it in the order in which the animals appear in the story.

MEGA-FAUNA AND OTHER ANIMALS

This section contains a partial list of animals that early North American humans might have encountered. It is not intended to be complete.

Birds – Grouse and other upland game birds, along with most of the ancestors of today’s birds, including many species of ducks and geese. Birds of prey, such as eagles, would have been more common.

Bison – Two species existed in America

Black Bear – The common black bear would be larger due to the necessity of surviving in the colder climate

Giant short-faced bear – six-feet at the shoulder when standing on all fours. This bear would have been the most dangerous, single predator. It would have been very difficult to kill using Paleolithic weapons. It would have been possibly one-third to one-half larger than modern polar bears.

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Giant Short-Faced Bear (artist’s conception)

Giant Beaver

Grizzly Bear – as dangerous to humans then as it is today

Lesser short-faced bear – Closer to grizzly size. Bears were a valuable source of meat and fat for early settlers. Early accounts reveal that they were an important food for American Indians. They frequently diced up venison (which is very lean) and fried it in bear fat. One would expect the Clovis people to have done the same.

Bobcat

Western Camel – the Western Camel was a migrating herd animal

Cave Lion – Pantera Atrox – The American Cave Lion was 40% larger than modern African Lions

Cheetah – The American Cheetah was unrelated to today’s African Cheetah. It was larger than modern cheetahs.

Giant Condor

Coyote – possibly a little larger than modern coyotes

Deer of various species

Dire wolf – more closely related to coyotes than gray wolves. Larger and heavier than gray wolves.

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Dire Wolf

Fish – many species, including the Saber-tooth Salmon which was nine-feet long

Fox

Glyptotherium – A giant armadillo-like creature; probably a swamp dweller and unlikely to occur near the glaciers

Homotherium – unique hyena-like scimitar-toothed cats that were probably pack hunters, smaller than Smilodon

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Homotherium (artist’s conception)

Horse – became extinct in America, only to be re-introduced by the Spanish

Jaguar – Larger than modern Jaguars

Llama – at least two species, herd animals

Lynx –This small, solitary hunter was also larger than modern versions.

Mammoth – various species of which the Columbian Mammoth is the one referred to in the story. It could weigh upwards of 20,000 pounds.

Mastodon – smaller than the mammoths. They most likely either lived a solitary life or lived in small groups

Muskox

Puma/Mountain lion – probably larger than the modern animal

Rabbit and other rodents

Skunk and other mustelids such as weasels, etc. Wolverines would have been an occasional danger to humans. They’ve been known to kill both wolves and bears.

Smilodon Fatalis – nearly African lion sized, bulky, ambush predators with six-inch fangs

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Smilodon Fatalis (artist’s conception)

Giant ground sloth – ten feet tall or more with huge claws – probably found singly or with cubs, but not in groups

Peccary – small pigs, found today in the American Southwest

Pronghorn – 14 species existed; only one exists today

Saiga – antelope

Tapir – most likely swamp-dwelling and unlikely to be far north

Wolf – Gray wolves might have been about the size of today’s Gray wolf. While there are other species of wolf in America, the story restricts itself to the Gray Timber Wolf.

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Sleeping Gray Wolf Puppy

Today, in contrast to the Pleistocene period, the largest North American land animal is the American Bison. The largest predator is the Polar Bear, followed by the Kodiak Bear. A Giant Short-faced bear (illustration above) would probably be almost one-quarter larger than a polar bear.

To a human, either would be a fearsome predator, although not invulnerable. The Inuit used primitive weapons to kill polar bears and the Clovis culture probably would have done the same.

PLEISTOCENE CLIMATE: Writing notes from Heart of Fire Time of Ice

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Example Clovis Projectile Point

I’ve decided to post some of my notes from the time I was writing Heart of Fire Time of Ice in order to give you an insight into my writing process and also to explain (partly) the context in which I set the story.

I made the decision, when I was first starting to write novels, to research the known scientific aspects of all of my stories. (Some of my stories involve pure imagination, particularly when other planets and alien life-forms are involved.) There is a fine line between spending so much time researching that the story does not get written and simply making things up to give the story a superficial aspect of reality. I try to compromise, researching enough to provide meaningful and mostly scientifically accepted facts or at least theories, but not getting hung up on becoming an expert on the topics I’m researching. This post involves analyzing the climate factors that would have impacted the world that my main characters inhabit for most of the story.

Readers will know that the story involves time travel with a modern woman inadvertently transferred into the Pleistocene period. My heroine, Kathleen, ends up in the later part of the period known as the Younger Dryas. With that being said, I’ll present my notes below:

STORY RESEARCH and NOTES

Researching the Pleistocene forces one to become aware of the climate. The glaciers were the most prominent feature of life. Their presence modified climate, provided an avenue for man to colonize North America and impacted the migration routes and habits of animals. The glacial ice was thousands of feet thick and extended south past the present day Great Lakes.

Near the end of the Pleistocene, Earth had moved into a warming period, and the glaciers started to retreat and melt. The melt-water runoff mostly flowed down the Mississippi river valley. The water flowed into the Gulf of Mexico, was warmed in the shallows of the Gulf and eventually joined the Gulf Stream flowing north. The Gulf Stream acted as a conveyor belt to carry the warmer water’s heat to the northern part of the Atlantic.

The period of the Pleistocene known as the Younger Dryas was apparently initiated by a perfect storm of adverse events. One theory is that an asteroid struck the thickest part of the ice sheet above the Great Lake area. The impact would have vaporized the miles-thick ice, leaving no crater and no evidence and killed millions of creatures including any humans unfortunate enough to live nearby. This is the scenario that I use in the story. (Cadeyrin, the Clovis hunter who is the other main character, had heard of a huge flood when he was a child, and the weather had changed quickly after that event, causing his people to move westward.)

The meteorite (or possibly comet) would have freed melt-water and chunks of ice that could have blocked the Mississippi river. The theory is that the melt-water was then forced to find a new pathway, flowing into the north Atlantic along the St. Lawrence River.

The cold, fresh water would have the effect of displacing the Gulf Stream. Without its warming effect, the north Atlantic conveyor system would break down. This would have resulted in global temperature drops that would cause the glacial ice to begin to grow again.

The increase in glacial ice would then have locked up atmospheric water causing the climate to become vastly dryer. There is geological evidence of huge dust storms that killed vegetation during this period. This would starve the mega-fauna that depended on large amounts of easy grazing.

Based on what is called the Solutrean hypothesis (not currently held in favor by anthropologists), the Clovis people were present on the eastern coast of the North American continent (in fact, there are far more Clovis projectiles found there than elsewhere, lending credence to this idea). Dust and intense north Atlantic storms would probably have caused them to head west, searching for better conditions. It would be very cold and dry there, also, and that would result in less prey, forcing the humans to fight for resources. This scenario nicely sets up the story’s conflict between the Paleo-Indians and the Clovis people. It also works perfectly for my story, so that is why I selected it. In addition, it involves a migration of people from Europe that was quite likely possible. We know that Vikings reached the new world and possibly humans from Ireland and the British Isles, so why not an earlier migration, especially when the climate would have created very low sea levels, leaving the Grand Banks out of water and allowing men to hunt the forests which have left trees that are still found on the sea bottom there.

Thirty species of animals, including several species of rabbits and skunks, became extinct in the Younger Dryas, and Clovis technology also disappeared. Clovis projectiles were replaced with the Folsom variant and other forms of more modern arrowheads. Possibly the Clovis people themselves modified their signature projectile points into the Folsom form. There isn’t a tremendous difference in the points, save in the fluting. Extending the length of the center flute on both sides of the point seems to be a simple advancement that would allow the point to be re-sharpened and re-used more easily when broken.

The Younger Dryas period saw nearly eighty percent of the mega-fauna disappear, leaving mostly bison with a few of the other species. One would expect the carnivores to survive a little longer than herbivores. In the time of this story, the remaining carnivores have turned to scavenging hunted prey and predating on humans more than previously.

While it’s easy to make the assumption that the presence of humans with enhanced killing skills was responsible for the extinction of the large herd animals, it seems more probable to me that the harsh climate and lack of vegetation impacted the mega-fauna to a greater degree than the relatively few human hunters. Despite the near extinction of the American Bison by meat and hide hunters using firearms in the 1800’s, the Bison survived quite nicely for thousands of years prior to that, even while being hunted by the American Indians using Paleolithic weapons and fire-drives.

As to the thought that fire-drives caused the extinction of most of the mega-fauna, I would say that fire-drives depend upon large, open grasslands with dry grass to provide fuel. Lightning-caused fires often burn such areas, and the fauna would have been at least somewhat used to surviving burning prairies as a matter of course.

Still, without time-travel, it’s mostly speculation. However, this is a fictional story, after all, and who is to say that the world of Cadeyrin didn’t exist?

Should you want to read more, here’s a link to the story: Heart of Fire Time of Ice and to the sequel: All the Moments in Forever.

Thanks for reading!

Eric

Time-Travel: Notes from Heart of Fire Time of Ice

[image error]I wanted to make my story (Heart of Fire Time of Ice) both believable and scientifically possible. That’s a real challenge when it comes to both out-of-body experiences and time-travel. I spent a lot of time investigating time-travel as it relates to quantum physics. There are at least a few physicists who think it may be possible. Of these, I chose to use the ideas of Fred Alan Wolf.

Dr. Wolf’s description of ‘Extraordinary Time-Travel’ fit my needs perfectly. It would have been difficult to have a time machine. I could have done it, but I had a vision of how my heroine was going to travel, and a machine would have been difficult for her to handle. In addition, I didn’t just want to say, “Ta-Da! Behold: Time-Travel!”

That’s the general approach one finds in many stories, so it’s acceptable, but the problem is that it requires full buy-in by the readers. What I mean by that is the readers have to agree (probably subconsciously) that they’ll go along with the more or less magical rules that exist inside the author’s book.

I wanted to make it easier to believe that my heroine could have translated back to the past. To do that, I had to come up with a literary description of Wolf’s ideas. Don’t get me wrong. Dr. Wolf is an excellent writer. However, his description of time-travel is a little too scientific to fit well into a work of fiction.

My problem was that I had too much information in my head. My original description of Kathleen’s work and time-travel was so elaborate that almost every reader would have put the book down in disgust when faced with those sections. I ended up chopping out large sections of what proved to be unnecessary description.

I wanted to include a section on the possibility of time-travel as described by Wolf just in case you, dear reader, want to explore the idea further. As a result of that desire, here are my working notes:

Notes:

Time and possibility are intimately connected in the way that possibilities change to probabilities when awareness enters the picture. The basic idea here is that possibilities exist within your mind, and probabilities exist outside of you. Consciousness is the key to changing from the internal possibility to the external probability.

When you become aware of information, you gain knowledge, and as a consequence probabilities change outside you in what we normally call the real world.

Every situation has a possibility wave representing it. Changing the physical situation will change the possibility wave. This impacts the result of making choices in the wave we’ve just observed. The effect is that we change our awareness.

Quantum computers work with quantum bits (qubits), which are pure number possibilities. A qubit’s possibility wave oscillates between a positive maximum and a negative minimum. This wave represents the possibility of a qubit having the value zero at any instant.

Since a qubit may be either zero or one, but not negative, a negative possibility wave value must be squared in order to convert it to a real number. When two superpositioned possibility waves are squared, they yield a probability curve. Possibility waves may be added and then squared to get a probability curve, and the probability curve is directly related to real world events in a way that the possibility wave is not.

Possibility waves are in the mind and probability curves correspond to reality. We have a probability curve when we become conscious of reality. We deal with possibility waves when we are internally focused.

Experiments done at Princeton’s PEAR lab show that the mind can impact reality, albeit in what most people would feel is a relatively minor fashion. If Wolf is correct, the mind does this through converting possibility waves to probability curves by squaring, thus producing probabilistic effects in the real world.

Physicist John G. Cramer has stated that possibility waves travel through space and time in both directions: from the present to the future, and from the future back to the present.

To generate a usable, real-world result of this bi-directional travel, the original possibility wave must be squared by multiplying it by its complex conjugate wave. The complex conjugate wave is a solution to the same equations solved by the original possibility wave, provided that time runs backwards in the solution instead of forwards.

Cramer calls the original wave an offer wave, and the conjugate wave an echo wave. These waves cycle back and forth until they satisfy a variety of reality requirements and boundary conditions. Then the bi-directional transaction is complete, and that changes the possibility waves into probability curves.

One of the interesting points is that if both possibility wave and complex conjugate wave are real, then time must not be one-way only.

Events of the past must still be around. Events that are to happen must already exist. When our brains remember past events they may not be digging through our memories, instead they may be constructing the past based on multiplying the forward and backward moving possibility waves.

This implies that the future also exists. If so, you are sending possibility waves in that direction, and someone also called “you” in the future is sending complex conjugate possibility waves back through time to be received by the present you.

If the modulated waves reach some resonance or strength level, then a real future or a real past may be created.

The rule seems to be: the greater the probability, the more meaningful the transaction and the greater the chance of it occurring. Past and future are simply reference points based on our sense of “now”. “Now” is defined as the most meaningful sequence with the strongest waves.

Everything we do involves a probability curve as we learn to do it. We get better and better with practice and achieving our desired result becomes more and more probable. Think of a basketball player learning to shoot free-throws. The more he practices, the more likely he becomes to make the shot.

Every skill implies a probability curve in our consciousness and its effect is expressed through time. When we no longer have to pay attention to the probability curve in any skill, we label the skill a habit.

Possibility waves are not available to us in space-time. Probability waves are. Possibility waves seem to reside in sub-space time. So, how do we access sub-space time?

Western culture believes that all human experiences are rooted in the physical world. That is normally an unspoken assumption that underlies everything we do. However, there is no proof to back up this conclusion.

Your awareness of being in your body at this precise moment implies that there is more to you than just your body. Quantum physics tells us repeatedly that the basis of the idea of a real physical world is flawed; that there is something prior to space, time, and matter.

This something is an infinitely dimensional sub-space time. Quantum processes are vital here, and somehow, consciousness appears to play a fundamental role at the level of even the most primary matter. Even at the level of atoms and subatomic particles.

Possibility waves appear to exist purely within sub-space time, while probability curves mark time and link the person and the mind. Possibility waves form what may be viewed as interior consciousness and there, in the interior, the mind can be free from the present time.

With discipline, the mind seems to be able to draw meaning from sub-space-time. In the process of dealing with probability curves, the mind moves from the purely imaginal realm into the physical realm. There are two processes involved in the squaring operation: a mathematical squaring operation that focuses the mind and a second squaring that allows the mind to let go or unfocus. That happens in this way:

When we direct our attention to something, it is at first a large blur, then a sharp focal point, and then a smaller blur. This is the rule in normal time order that we are accustomed to. When a sequence of such triplets reaches the point that the first blur and the second blur are the same size, we are then able to predict the sequence in the future.

Consciousness acts in the universe similar to adding energy to a refrigerator, reversing the law of entropy. The act of focusing and focusing creates our sense of time. Thus, a form of time-travel is a necessary part of the way the mind functions and the way time works. We can individually move forward and backward through time either faster or slower than the rate at which objective time moves. The old saying that, “Time flies when you’re having fun,” thus becomes literally true.

Our egos seem to tie us to this time stream in our effort to survive in a hostile world. Freeing ourselves from our ego may then release us from the time stream.

What we think we are, and what we truly are, are not identical. The ego is a boundary separating the outside world from our internal existence. It does so as an evolutionary attempt to enhance survival.

Time thus seems to be a projection of mind. It is as real as thought. If we can defeat our ego, Wolf thinks we can become aware of our ability to time travel.

Since physics shows (surprisingly) that time travel is a necessary part of physics’ structure, then it is a necessary part of the universe. Wolf thinks that far-reaching time travel paradoxes can be avoided as long as there is only one person involved. For big changes to be made in the past involving parallel universes, many people would be needed. The past may not be fixed, but instead may be subject to the uncertainty principle.

The common human desire for spiritual change may be a sign of our waking from our belief in linear time. When we realize we aren’t limited by space and time, but are continuous and eternal, we can return to the timeless realm.

The most likely mode for this transition would be through a lucid dream or out-of-body experience. Dr. Wolf has stated that if time-travel were to happen in this way, one would simply awaken from a conscious (lucid) dream in another time.

In my opinion, we are an energy waveform at our most basic expression of existence in this universe. As the material manifestation of a complex energy structure, I think we could transition to other times, provided that our spiritual development permitted it. We would have to be in an altered-state to make this translation. Such a state could most likely be induced through drugs or strong emotions.

Stripped of all of the physics explanation, this is the basic mechanism that I used in the story: Kathleen is an accomplished out-of-body practitioner who is placed in an untenable situation. To avoid this situation, she slips into an altered-state. While in that state, she squares the possibility wave functions, creating a probability of +1 that her energy wave is else-when. When she awakens from this state, she finds she has transitioned to another time.

If you’re interested, I hope you decide to read the story. It’s usually placed in the top 5% of its category on Amazon.

Note: Probabilities statistically have a range of 0 to 1. They may not be negative numbers, and they do not exceed 1. To exceed either of these limits makes no physical sense. The number 1 represents something that has actually happened. The number 0 represents something that has absolutely no chance of occurring.

One of my books received a nice review from an Italian reader

Heart of Fire Time of Ice

“Bellissimo, appassionante e coinvolgente ! L’ho acquistato per fare un po’ di pratica con l’inglese ma sono stata molto coinvolta da questa storia bellissima!!” [image error]

Since I don’t speak Italian, I had to use a translation program. Here’s the result:

“Beautiful, exciting and engaging! I bought it to do some practice with English but I was very involved with this beautiful story!!”

I’m pleased that Kathleen’s story can help one practice English, but also catches the reader’s interest to this extent.

Eric

Readers Love Series: The Top 16 Recently Released Time Travel Books

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Time: A human construct?

Who doesn’t like familiar characters?

Han and Leia? Kirk and Spock? Harry Potter? Katniss Everdeen? I’ll be back!, Aliens, James Bond? That last might be a little too much, since the franchise has almost become a parody of itself.

My point is that we enjoy reading more about characters we’ve come to enjoy or even love. To reinforce this idea, here’s a little bit of research for all of you science fiction fans who are interested in time travel. I researched the top selling science fiction, time travel books with a minimum of 4 stars out of 5 that were released in the last 90 days (from 7/20/2017 – 10/20/2017).

Here’s the advanced search category on Amazon in the Kindle store that I used: English : Kindle eBooks : Science Fiction & Fantasy : Science Fiction : Time Travel : 4 Stars & Up

The top sixteen books in the last 90 days are:

1. Affliction: Green Fields/ book 7/Aug 29, 2017/by Adrienne Lecter

2. Promises To Keep: After the EMP/ (Disruption Trilogy Book 3)/Sep 8, 2017/ by R.E. McDermott

3. Forged in Blood/ (Freehold Book 8)/Sep 5, 2017/by Michael Z. Williamson

4. Angel of the Abyss: A Novel of the Great Tribulation/(The Days of Elijah Book 3)/Sep 12, 2017/by Mark Goodwin

5. Etheric Recruit: A Kurtherian Gambit Series/Sep 13, 2017/by S.R. Russell and Michael Anderle

6. Bombtrack/(Road To Babylon, Book 2)/Aug 21, 2017/by Sam Sisavath

7. Tomorrow War: Serpent Road: A Novel/(The Chronicles of Max Book 2)/Jul 25, 2017/by J. L. Bourne

8. Nomad’s Galaxy: A Kurtherian Gambit Series/(Terry Henry Walton Chronicles Book 10)/Aug 17, 2017/

by Craig Martelle and Michael Anderle

9. Empire of Glass/Jul 24, 2017/by Kaitlin Solimine

10. Nomad’s Force: A Kurtherian Gambit Series/(Terry Henry Walton Chronicles Book 9)/Jul 27, 2017/by Craig Martelle and Michael Anderle

11. Bioterror!/(an Ell Donsaii story #14)/Oct 6, 2017/by Laurence Dahners

12. Darkest Before The Dawn/(The Second Dark Ages Book 3)/Oct 6, 2017/by Michael Anderle and Ell Leigh Clarke

13. Into the Fire Part I: Requiem of Souls/(Universe in Flames Book 9)/Oct 15, 2017/by Christian Kallias

14. Wisdom of the Chosen: Spirit of Empire/Book Five/Jul 25, 2017/by Lawrence White

15. ARISEN/Book Thirteen – The Siege/Oct 11, 2017/by Michael Stephen Fuchs

16. Viral Misery: /Book One/Oct 4, 2017/by Thomas A Watson and Nicholas A Watson

(Brief note: Although I’ve read some of his books, I’m not related to Craig Martelle. He does do good science fiction adventures, though.)

You’ll notice that 14 out of the 16 are books that are part of series. The sixteenth book is book one of a promised series. The only stand alone book is placed in number 9: Empire of Glass by Katlin Solimine.

This seems to support my point that once readers have invested time in reading a book they enjoy, they are more likely to read additional books that have the same characters. Once we like an author and a character, we want to find out what happens to them next.

To my discredit, my marketing is not up to the high level of competition that ebooks must face. I somehow thought that all you needed to do was to write a good story. It turns out that marketing is (probably/unfortunately?) even more important than a good story.

My two highest rated books in the same category (time travel — except for publication date) are:

#260 Heart of Fire Time of Ice/February 16, 2016/by E. S. Martell/4 out of 5 stars

#1015 All the Moments in Forever/April 26, 2017/by E. S. Martell (the sequel to Heart of Fire Time of Ice)/5 out of 5 stars

To give some credence to my original point, here are two quotes from the reviews on All the Moments in Forever:

“5.0 out of 5 stars/I would recommend reading the first one to see the complete arc Kathleen takes. This book is action-packed and fancy-free. You’ll love reading about this scientist turned demi-god of space and time.”
“5.0 out of 5 stars/loved it, loved it. Been waiting a long time for this book. I hope there’s a third. What a wonderful story.”

It seems like my readers also enjoy following familiar characters. My conclusion is that writing series is a viable marketing strategy.

What do you think? Would you rather read a series or a stand-alone book? What if the stand-alone book was really good and the series was maybe a little less well written?

Eric

The Future is Here (only you don’t know it yet.)

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EEG Subject

There have been movies and books that depict a future where nothing can be hidden; where the authorities know everything about everyone. The 2002 movie Minority Report, based (as was BladeRunner) on a short story by Phillip K. Dick, featured a bureau of Precrime which allowed the police to arrest people prior to their actually committing a crime. The plot is complex and leaves the viewer with questions about the existence of free-will and a healthy fear of a government that can see everything.

At this point, you’re wondering if I’m going to be writing about the increasing surveillance in many countries. The answer is yes, but there are some things that you may not know.

The government of the United States is working hard at imposing a de-facto universal id based on federal requirements for state issued drivers licenses. Americans from non-complying states will not be able to board airplanes for even domestic flights without a federal passport within a few months. Their drivers licenses will be considered inadequate id for travel.

There is a huge and rapidly growing database of pictures of people’s faces that is instantly available to the authorities in many countries. This database will ultimately allow quick identification (and location) of anyone. We unwittingly contribute to the data by posting our pictures online and by exposing our faces to surveillance cameras (both stationary and drone-based) when we go out. Meanwhile data storage has increased to the point where storing and retrieving images of everyone in the world is possible.

While bio-metric markers such as fingerprints are not considered personal property in the US — the police can force you to unlock your smartphone with your fingerprint — other data, such as blood tests, require a judicial warrant. Such warrants are trivially easy to get.

As if all of this isn’t enough, research begun in 2010 allows brain wave reading via electroencephalography (EEG) to be effectively used to determine if a person knows a particular piece of information. The EEG pinpoints an involuntary brain spike called the P300 response. The spike occurs a few milliseconds after a person is shown a familiar image.

How might this work? Let’s imagine that a suspected kidnapper is shown images of various children. The child that creates the largest P300 spike might be the kidnap victim. This would lead the investigators to assume that the individual was involved in the crime.

The technology could help prevent crimes also. For example, if a bomb plot was uncovered and one of the plotters captured, the authorities could show the prisoner pictures of various public venues. The one that created the largest P300 response is likely to be the target.

This sounds like a great idea. We can prevent attacks with weapons of mass destruction with this technology. But, what about misuse of the technology?

What if an authoritarian police state wants to arrest everyone who holds a specific belief system? There might be an image that is common to the belief system that could be used to screen the population. All those who respond with a large P300 could then be arrested, interrogated, and disposed of in some way.

This possibility is not so far fetched, especially when one blends in Artificial Intelligence as an automatic screening system. As a science fiction author, I spend a lot of time thinking about future possibilities and, if I can imagine a society where everyone wears a portable EEG device and is subject to constant electronic interrogation of their thoughts (a great plot idea), it probably has already occurred to scientists and authorities somewhere.

To conclude, let me ask some critical questions:

Will society benefit if everyone is forced to monitor their thoughts and dare not think anything out of the ordinary?
Will innovation be stifled by this?
Will we become less than human if good behavior (as defined by those in power) is forced on everyone?
Would such a society cease to develop and become stultified?
Will we then redefine undesirable thoughts to include smaller and smaller deviations from the norm? Will the concept of moral and ethical guidance of behavior degenerate, since it is no longer defined by society and individuals, but by those in power?
What do you think?

If you like my blog posts, please give my books a chance. Thanks!!

The Artificial Intelligence Problem

[image error]“AI is obviously going to surpass human intelligence by a lot.” Elon Musk

To many people, this might seem like a fictional plot for a made-for-TV sci-fi movie. What we tend to overlook is that Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI) is commonplace today. When your car warns you that you’ve left your lane or applies anti-skid braking, it’s due to the car’s computer using a limited form of AI. We’re seeing more and more people use voice-activated units in their home for home control, ordering online, and entertainment. This is a form of AI. Facial recognition systems are also a form of ANI.

At the moment, numerous companies are racing to create Artificial General Intelligence or AGI. AGI will be able to perform at roughly human level. New techniques such as deep learning are stimulating rapid advances in this effort. The interesting thing about deep learning is that the human programmers often cannot explain how it works or why the computer system is able to learn and sometimes outperform expert humans in specific tasks.

If you’re asking yourself, “Why should I care?” right now, I’m about to give you some reasons.

It’s obvious that the first company to create an AGI system will benefit financially, possibly to an extreme extent. The motivation is high and the competition is intense. For this reason, some companies may be tempted to cut corners.

Let’s assume a situation where company X creates a system which not only displays human level intelligence, but is able to utilize deep learning to quickly comprehend things that humans find difficult. Let’s also assume that the system learns how to modify its internal programming. This could allow it to quickly surpass human intelligence. It might reach an IQ level of 10,000 in a few hours. It would be an ASI or Artificial Super Intelligence.

There is a concept of keeping an experimental AI boxed up, not allowing it access to the outside world in case it should make such a breakthrough. If company X has failed to keep the AI properly boxed, it could quickly create havoc.

Imagine an entity with an IQ of 10,000+ that has access to the Internet. It could, if so motivated, control the entire financial world within hours. If it had been given a prime directive of (just for example) calculating pi to as many digits as possible, it could easily conclude that it could use more computing power to better execute its computations. In that case, it might use its financial dominance to hire companies to create more computers or, perhaps, robots to create more computers.

In this scenario, it could eventually use all manufacturing resources to create computing machines. It might cover farmland with computers or power generating stations. Humans might not matter to it at all, since all it really wants to do is to calculate pi to the maximum accuracy. It could even decide that the molecules in human bodies could be converted into computing devices.

The end result would be no humans left alive, just a gigantic machine happily calculating the next digit of pi.

So, how do we, as responsible humans, ensure that an ASI doesn’t get rid of us? How can we ensure that it is domestic–that is values humans and helps us?

Musk believes that we need to become part of the system and interface with AIs using some form of brain interface. If we are part of the system, perhaps it will be more amenable to helping us.

My personal opinion is that we should seek a way to show an ASI that intelligent biological life is valuable.

Physicists tell us that if the basic constants of our Universe were even slightly different, life would not exist. This seems to indicate that the gathering together of energy that distinguish living beings may be something special. The immutable mandates of the Universe’s structure force life to obey certain structural rules, one of which is a limited form of reverse entropy. In short, we self-assemble, creating order where there was none before. Never mind that our personal order doesn’t last long and we eventually perish.

The question I’m pointing toward is: Can we make a connection between the Universe’s structure and the value of human life? If we can do that, perhaps an ASI would also value us as an example of a direct manifestation of the Universe.

We need a set of rules based on the structure of the Universe that apply equally well to both organic life

(emphasis on humans) and AI. These rules need to be expressed in a way that any ASI would abide by them.

My belief in the underlying laws is why I have some hope that an ASI would be friendly to us. However, this maybe hopelessly naïve. An ASI may have a level of understanding that is so far advanced that it would see things differently.

Perhaps its non-human set of observational criteria will serve as a representation of the Universe’s underlying reality that is beyond human understanding. This might invalidate human models of the Universe and lead to the conclusion that humans are non-essential.

For these reasons, I believe that premature development of an AGI, let alone an ASI could pose extreme danger to humans and possibly all biological life.

I’ve been attempting to explore various aspects of this subject in a series of short stories that may be freely read on my blog. Please read them and comment, if you want.

I also deal with the topic extensively in my latest novel, “Cyber-Witch”. It will be released shortly (November or December, 2017).

Thanks for reading. I’d like to hear your opinion of the issues I’ve raised.

Eric

Limited time promotion!

bit.ly/HeartofFire is FREE on Monday the 1st of May and Tuesday, May 2nd. Limited time promotion to launch the just released sequel http://bit.ly/MomentsinForever.