Anthony Caplan's Blog, page 2

A Prayer is not a Promise

Life nowadays just seems to hang by a thread, but maybe it’s always been that way. They say they never promised us a rose garden, but what if it all seems to be going down the toilet? They didn’t promise us that either.

Just saw a movie, A Liitle Prayer, 2023 , that examines a life lived according to the rules that goes off the rails anyway, and how that impacts a family, especially older parents of adult children struggling with emotional roadblocks.

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It’s a movie about ordinary people that doesn’t descend to maudlin platitudes, despite its suggestion that simplicity of heart and honesty of intention may be a sufficient bulwark against the snares of chaos that seem to be descending on our civilization.

The acting is great. Especially resonant are David Strathairn and Jane Levy as a Southern small town patriarch and his daughter in law who discover they are, in her words, “kindred spirits.”

It’;s about faith without ever mentioning religion, although we hear gospel music and church bells literally ringing through the whole movie. It’s also unselfconsciously about race and class in the way Southern culture is as a whole, steeped in hierarchies that mold people’s lives. It’s definitely worth a watch, one of those quiet gems that is so finely crafted it deserves a wider audience.

Speaking of a wider audience, it’s only 24 more days unitl the launch of my book, Alias Tomorrow. It got a great review recently in Review Tales Magazine, which I will shamelessly replay for you.

Anthony Caplan’s Alias Tomorrow is a genre-blending novel that challenges narrative conventions, weaving together domestic realism and speculative science fiction to explore the fractured yet hopeful nature of human connection. With its dual structure and philosophical depth, Caplan delivers a profound meditation on the bonds of family, the burden of memory, and the unsettling tension between technology and truth.

BUY NOW

At the heart of the story is William Morrow, a once-prominent author wrestling with the quiet collapse of his personal and professional life. As the holiday season brings his adult children back under one roof, emotional rifts and unresolved traumas resurface. Beneath the festive pretense lies a yearning for reconciliation—and a struggle to redefine love, purpose, and identity within a modern world that often isolates more than it unites.

But this isn’t merely a family drama. William is writing a novel—set on Mars in the year 2148—about Antioch, a former Earth dissident turned reluctant analyst for a totalitarian OneWorld regime. Antioch is exiled from the home planet he once fought for, navigating a fragile sense of purpose while shackled by systems designed to suppress dissent and erase identity. His story is compelling in its own right, rich with sociopolitical commentary and a haunting examination of loyalty, resistance, and the human cost of assimilation.

As the narrative unfolds, the boundary between William’s reality and Antioch’s imagined world begins to dissolve. The result is not confusion, but revelation. Caplan skillfully parallels the two arcs, drawing out emotional resonance and thematic depth. We begin to see Antioch as more than fiction—he is a mirror, a projection, a warning. Through this interplay, Alias Tomorrow asks timeless questions: Who do we become when our stories fail us? How do we write new ones in the shadow of our regrets?

Caplan’s prose is both grounded and evocative, shifting smoothly between the intimate tensions of family life and the distant, cold landscape of a colonized Mars. The writing is reflective but never indulgent, offering sharp insights into the way we build walls—around nations, relationships, and our own inner worlds.

Ultimately, Alias Tomorrow is a quiet triumph. It’s not simply about the future, but about how we live today—fragmented, searching, and trying, against all odds, to connect. The novel invites readers to sit with discomfort, to reflect on the meaning of freedom and forgiveness, and to consider how the stories we tell—both real and imagined—shape our identities and our destinies.

I found the book to be a genre-busting, emotionally intelligent novel that blends family, futurism, and philosophical inquiry into a deeply resonant experience. Anthony Caplan delivers a powerful reflection on the human condition, wrapped in the gripping duality of a fractured present and an uncertain future. Alias Tomorrow is both intellectually stimulating and quietly devastating—a must-read for literary and sci-fi readers alike.

Jeyran Main, Editor-in-Chief

That’s a heck of a review and well written, too.

So be on the watch for the release of Alias Tomorrow on 11/3. Give A Little Prayer a watch. And go ahead and make yourself a paid-up subscriber on here to The Truth Now, if you like these weekly posts.

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Certainties

Life is a moment by moment thing. Early morning sun rising over a hill. The radio playing, a spoon hitting against the side of the bowl in the kitchen. Prosaic everday stuff that you just don’t notice. The colors of the foliage, the shape of the leaves.

A song I heard yesterday really impressed me. That’s what poetry does, it wakes you up to the reality of beauty that we hold in our consciousness at all times.

They bought a round for the sailor
And they heard his tale
Of a world that was so far away
And a song that we’d never heard
A song of a little bird
That fell in love with a whale

Here’s the video of the version I heard. It’s a cover of a Tom Waits song. I think Tom Waits deserves at least a Pulitzer, since Dylan got the Nobel.

When you get to a certain age, nostalgia comes as easy as wiping your nose. The past weighs heavier in your brain just because it takes up greater bandwidth. And so you notice that time passes, as we all know, but that simple fact takes up a prominence like a mountain that at first is distant but gradually grows, crowding out the sky and the fields.

Death is something you have to imagine in order to prepare. It helps to see your parents die, because once that happens, you know you can do it too. My mother accepted it as a matter of course. Her body had been betraying her for decades, but she was a great believer in the miracles of modern medicine, always prepared to wager another round of chemo on beating the grim reaper until at last the doctor told her the thing had spread beyond their capacity or willingness to contain it. She said to me “I guess this is when the cock crows, isn’t it?” And I just held her hand and tried to steady her.

My father fought it as a point of honor, a futile exercise but of course it burnished his reputation as a tough old bastard, even when he stopped being able to get out of bed or wash himself. He called for a glass of gin the day before he died. I was on the phone, a continent away, telling him I had always appreciated his example as a father. Later he told my sister, who was at his bedside, the good daughter, that that was the nicest thing he’d ever heard me say.

Metaphorically we are led by the heart as much or more then the brain, as individuals and as collectives, science tells us so. The ways of the heart are a mystery. The passion that leads us is a thing to be honored, I believe. It gets stronger the more it is held back, stamped upon, killed, mocked, and belittled. And those that would use it, manipulate it for their evil ends, in the end suffer defeat.

That’s what I believe will happen to Trump. He’s on the run now, aparently suffering panic attacks from the shame of the eventual release of the Epstein files. His heart must be rotten, don’t you think? Mocked, abused, and belittled by his own father yet able to channel his rage for so long into building an empire, a literal empire built on corruption and lies. We must acknowledge his ability to manipulate group responses — it’s self-evident that he is successful as a politician. But eventually the spell will wear off as even his ardent supporters determine that he is a cold-hearted narcissist and lying to them.

An Unlikely Hero

When you are drowning and somebody on board tosses you a line, you don’t question their motivation. You don’t care about their personal qualifications.You grab the rope because it’s your one chance to not die.

That’s how I see Americans in their desperation to save democracy. We’re willing to trust anybody who has the temerity to stand up to the absurd fascist takeover of the country, even if that’s somebody with obvious shortcomings.

Like right now, I’m liking Marjorie Taylor Greene. Once upon a time, as recently as a few months ago, my knee jerk reaction to the mention of her name would have been visceral disgust and indigestion followed by quick anger and disbelief that this QAnon sub-literate could be a representative of any segment of our sprawling and sickly populace. But now, I want to cheer. Yay girl. Those features and that voice, what a salt of the earth teller of the way that it clearly is.

Lo And Behold: She’s become a champion on Gaza.

By calling it a genocide without question or quibbling, I want to believe in her as a champion of the “truth” writ large, ie, somebody who might give a fuck about the country as a beacon of democracy and try at the last minute, with a Hail Mary conversion, to prevent a slide into right wing, totalitarian, oligarchic state repression and a Trump regime dictatorship, even if one’s boyfriend were part of the cheering crowd of bootlickers.

Maybe it’s more nuanced. Maybe it’s the battle of the Steves. The Steve Bannon faction knifing the Steve Millerites in the back with MGT as the spearhead of this intra-MAGA battle. But then again, maybe it’s even better. Perhaps the Koolaid effect of the Trumpo magic show is losing its appeal at last.

All I know is that given the silence of leadership in the Democratic party on this issue: the suffering of Palestinians and the total American complicity not to say engagement in this horrific tragedy and the descent into madness in the Holy Land, I am desperate and so are millions of us here and around the world. And we’ll take our heroes where we can get them.

Go Marjorie Taylor Greene. Keep calling it for what it is. You can be a lifesaver.

Joy Instead of Fear

As we stare collectively into the abyss of internecine conflict, it seems to make sense to take a step back and contemplate the season and all that comes with it. Instead of the bitter harvest of hate that threatens to consume the nation, fanned by authoritarian ambitions, let us focus instead on the gains that have come from personal toil and the bounty of our domestic lives.

Because even if politics seems a grotesque distortion of the public good, a wasteland of corruption and misinformation feeding a cesspool of cultural decline, there is proof that the horrible facade of decadent fearmongering, the pull of bloodlust and revenge we are seeing play out is fated for failure.

As notes in his post today:

AMERICA IS NOT PUTIN’S RUSSIA NOR ORBAN’S HUNGARY, ITS A VIBRANT DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC WITH A MILITARY SWORN TO PROTECT IT SINCE 1775.

As opposed to Hitler’s takeover of the Weimar Republic, Trump cannot count on the support of our military, nor even of key institutions such as the independent Justice Department he is attempting to convert into his own personal prosecutorial agency, not to mention the state governments of our 50 separate states.

In the meantime, Trump’s popularity is plummeting, with confidence in his handling of the economy and immigration, his supposed strengths, hitting all time, historic lows:

TRUMP’S 2025 NET APPROVAL RATING COMPARED TO OTHER RECENT PRESIDENTS. TRUMP’S ONLY COMPETITION IS HIS OWN PREVIOUS PRESIDENCY IN 2017

The above charts demonstrate a reality that Trump does understand, if he understands nothing else. He has an overall net approval rating of -17% and a -22% net approval on the economy.

A FREE AND FAIR ELECTION IN 2026 WILL RESULT IN A PULSATING, POWERFUL DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSIONAL MAJORITY.

MAGA knows their time is running out. The incompetence and ineptitude of the circus clown they have put in charge of us is having predictably chaotic results, and the American people are not fools, at least not all of the time.

So let’s not shudder as we hear the threats from the JD Vances and Stephen Millers in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s tragic assassination, of labelling as terrorists liberal and progressive organizations and the Democratic party itself as an extremist group. That’s laughable, even pitiable as an attempt to move this country.

Let’s be gracious, Charlie Kirk was not our martyr, but he was also not a villain. There was something praiseworthy about his character, despite the vile implications of some of his ideas. As Ezra Klein notes, he was practicing politics the right way, which means in the spirit of civility and brotherhood that represents the best legacy of American culture. He should not have been murdered, and we should all be saddened by his death.

Today is a good day to get outside, breathe deeply in the crisp, clean air if you can, gather the last of the bean crop, join in a picnic or neighborhood fair, listen to some music. Go for a walk with someone who needs to talk. In the midst of this epidemic of hate and fear, the best medicine is always love and compassion. Harvest time is a feel good season, after all.

It Is Always Ourselves*

This is the writer William Morrow, who is the author of Alias Tomorrow.

(Comes out in November. Pre-order here.)

"Whether we are describing a king, an assassin, a thief, an honest man, a prostitute, a nun, a young girl, or a stallholder in a market, it is always ourselves that we are describing" Guy de Maupassant

The phone buzzed on his desk. He hoped it would be Daniel, calling with an update on travel plans. He picked up the phone, thumbing the cracked screen. It was not a known contact, but a 603 area code. He took a chance. A tele-marketer would be an amusing distraction, he thought.

“Hello, is this William Morrow?”

“Yes, who is this?”

“Good morning, William. This is Shelly Patenaud with Sun River Bank in Hanover. I believe you are the executor of the Margaret O’Donnell Cox estate. Is that correct?”

“That’s right.”

Margaret O’Donnell Cox. Six months gone. Predeceased by second husband Rich Cox, from Covid. Nana’s remembrance service in St. Agnes a muddy March morning. Siblings, cousins and long lost acquaintances arrived in waves. Sarah, Mackenzy, and Ellen between, cradling them each with her arms, together in the front row of folding chairs in the community room, facing the table lined with photos and candles. He spoke, tears streaming freely on some of their faces. He couldn’t remember now what he had said. Daniel stood in the back with his cousins, dressed in rough weather gear and work boots. The month before, when the old woman had tossed and turned on her final fevered dream, Daniel had called home at midnight on WhatsApp from the depth of the PNW, fuzzy cell phone image of his face, long, black hair covering his eyes, in some darkened Portland street, swaying in the dusk.

Two weeks ago she'd appeared in two dreams. He'd noted them down, as much as he could remember.

“You are aware that the account here is off limits until the probate process has run its course.”

“Yes,” said Morrow, red flags slowly rising on the tracks of his muddied synapses. He reached for his coffee and waited. The woman cleared her throat and shuffled around in her swivel seat in the Hanover branch office.

“There was an attempted withdrawal several hours ago from that account. The server indicates it came from a computer logged in in your vicinity, William.”

“Well, that’s impossible.”

“In any case, we are obligated by federal regulations to inform you and do some verification. You’re saying it wasn’t you.”

“Yeah, no. Wasn’t me. Or anybody here.”

Ellen drifted by in her slippers behind him, padding softly on the old, worn pine boards. Mackenzy and Saroj slipped in the back door from the apples. Ellen caught them and directed them to the kitchen table with some commentary on the state of the season and early fall leaf colors.

Shelly Patenaud was going on about “the account has been restored to default status” and “avoiding significant short and long-term financial damage”, and “we are prepared to offer you credit monitoring and identity protection services.”

“Can I have your social security number, William?” she asked.

“My social security number? Sure,” said Morrow, stalling for a second until the numbers appeared in his mind. “Zero five two…”

“No,” said Ellen, appearing at his shoulder. “Don’t give them…”

“What?” asked Morrow, covering the bottom of the cell phone with his index finger.”

“Not your social,” said Ellen.

Morrow lifted his index finger and raised the phone to his chin.

“I’m sorry. I guess I prefer to come in in person.”

“That’s fine,” said the woman. “You do understand the account is frozen until then.”

“Yes,” said Morrow stiffly, putting the phone down on the table. Ellen lifted it and checked it for the details of the call, to make sure it was off. She placed it back on the table.

“Why don’t you come and chat for a bit. There’s fresh coffee.”

“I don’t need more distraction right now,” he grumbled.

“Oh, come on. It will be good for Mackenzy,” said Ellen, her hazel eyes firmly fixed on him. “They’re already bored,” she whispered.

“Well, that’s not…”

“Shh,” she admonished.

Morrow rose to his feet, stretching, putting the work aside. The low morning sunlight in the window struck him harshly. He stepped toward the kitchen. Mackenzy and Saroj sat at the table. Mackenzy laughed at something Saroj was saying. Morrow was jealous for an instant. He loved his daughter’s laugh possessively.

“Well, I guess I will have a refill,” said Morrow, pouring himself a cup of coffee again from the french press on the wood stove. The echinacea flowering outside swayed in a gust of wind, survivor of the tropical storm that had swept through overnight.

“How are you, Dad?” asked Mackenzy.

“I’m all right,” said Morrow. “How did you two sleep?”

“Saroj. Allergies,” said Mackenzy, holding up her palm, a parodic echo of television show comedians.

“I don’t know what it is. Maybe pollen,” said Saroj in a sing-song, congested voice, hints of a British colonial past.

“Maybe it’s the country,” said Mackenzy wryly, screwing up her lips in a comedian’s smile, bringing awkward possibilities to the surface in a way that Morrow identified as one of his mother’s ancient traits to put people at ease. Sometimes it backfired. It took confidence, a social confidence that Morrow himself had never possessed.

Saroj laughed.

“Could be,” he said.

“You’d think the rain would have washed away any pollen in the air. But with the changing climate, the pollen season is getting much longer,” said Morrow, leaning against the window in what he hoped was an authoritative yet friendly pose.

“And the growing season,” said Saroj. “Possibilities for cash crops, Mr. Morrow?” he added.

“Well,” said Morrow. “Maybe.”

“Farming is always going to be a hard row to hoe,” said Ellen, wiping a counter with a kitchen cloth.

“Especially in today’s environment,” added Morrow.

“We had the sheep. Remember?” said Ellen.

“I wish we still had them,” said Mackenzy wistfully.

“Well, you all decided you were vegetarians at some point in the not too distant past. Made keeping the sheep a difficult proposition to justify,” said Morrow.

“We couldn’t stand to see them disappear once we figured out we were eating our cute little things, could we,” said Mackenzy.

“We always tried to get them loaded and off to the butcher while you were asleep on the weekends,” said Ellen.

“Saroj,” coughed Morrow seriously. “We had visions of ourselves as homesteaders when we moved here over twenty years ago.”

Morrow wanted Saroj, from Punjab and studying in his first year at the college in Maine where his daughter also was matriculated, to see that once they had been appropriately filled with grand ideas about how to live lives of balance and sustainability. Now their field, once humming with an electric fence and mowed by the sheep, was overgrown with ragweed, nettles, thistle and milkweed. At least it qualified as a pollinator friendly, successional ecosystem, if Saroj or anyone were to ask.

“Youthful idealism,” said Ellen, smiling at him, tolerant of both their foibles.

“Visions,” said Saroj, looking at Mackenzy.

He wasn't smirking, as far as Morrow could tell. But he didn’t trust the utterance, and Mackenzy’s tight-lipped smile was a new expression. Morrow stored away his thoughts, consigning them in a practiced move to memory.

“We could go for a hike in the woods,” said Ellen. “Show Saroj the woods. Our woods.”

“It’s not our woods anymore, Mom. The ATVs have taken over,” said Mackenzy sourly.

“Oh, no. There’s still our woods,” said Ellen insistently.

Mother and daughter stared at each other, banking their secret accords and disagreements, the shared years that had passed as the children grew into their adult selves in flashes of time. Morrow thought he should say something, but couldn't think what. He gulped a large part of his lukewarm coffee and retreated into thoughts of his book. Where was it headed? Who was the intended audience? He needed to develop the elevator pitch for a phone call he had scheduled with Mitch Epp, his agent in Los Angeles in the coming week. He could feel his throat tighten with the thought.

The buzzing in the kitchen rose in pitch. Seated again at the table in the dining room, away from the main stream of breakfast, Morrow bent to the task, staring at the last thing he’d written before the interruption of the phone call from Sun River Bank. This is what his work had alway boiled down to, staring at a blank screen and waiting patiently for a rising impulse to lift his fingers into action. He could be hiding from something, missing something back at the breakfast table, but Morrow would not contemplate that right away. More to the point though, what was he railing against in this book? How would it all go down in the end? That was the beauty of the calling that had attracted him from the beginning, the notion of being a servant to some hidden narrative rising from the shadows. It always did.

“Come on, Dad. Get ready.”

On the other hand, there was Mackenzy, tugging at his attention. Just as he was about to get started again. There could be no mistaking it now. This was life calling. He couldn’t resist.

Morrow sighed and rose again from the table. Outside, beyond the old double-hung windows, the sun had broken through clouds and streamed a bright, rising light on the dying red leaves of the maple tree that overspread the driveway. The four of them set out up the dirt road, past the new houses that led to the Gorman farm at the top of the hill. Here, up the rutted drive, behind the ruined old farmhouse, beyond the rusting hulks of a tractor and the two moving trucks that had once served as grain storage, was the old Class VI road leading into the reserve of forest that had last been logged when Dwight Gorman had still roamed the earth. Morrow was explaining how Dwight’s life had been forever set on the downward spiral typical of late stage capitalism and the get-big-or-get-out mentality that afflicted his country. Saroj interrupted him.

“Does the town not have a health officer?” he asked. Morrow wondered whether he was being intentionally spoofed.

“Oh, not really,” said Ellen, catching up to them with Mackenzy at her side.

“A health officer,” said Saroj, repeating himself in case she hadn’t heard. “I mean look at the state of this. There could be issues, no?”

“We don’t have that sort of a town,” said Ellen, grabbing Morrow by the arm. “It’s more of a … small town with a libertarian bent. “Live free or die’ is our state motto,” she added. “Wouldn’t you say, William?”

“You’re doing fine, dear,” said Morrow. Ellen had a stronger handle on local politics. Starting out as a school nurse, Ellen had risen to the position of hospital administrator, working in the orthopedic section of the Catholic Medical Center in Manchester.

“My God,” said Saroj. “This would never do.”

Morrow liked the fact that the kid was expressing shock. But he, William Morrow, author of science fiction, creator of imaginary worlds, liked the wrack and ruin of the place. It made it attractive, in his opinion, a better spot from which to observe the entropy that ran the table in the wider sphere. Eventually, all their efforts came to this, to the beauty that lay in decrepitude. You might as well accept it. How could he communicate that thought? He would put it in the book he was writing. He made a note to himself: ruined house, rising tides.

In the woods now, they walked two abreast along the old logging track cut not too many years ago by oxen-drawn carts in the snow and mud of the Wabenaki forest, through stands of beech, birch, oak, and maple second growth, occasionally big old hemlock survivors of the first clearances, and the bare, skeletal remainders of the ash, fallen prey in the last few years to invasive, wood- boring beetles. Morrow looked up at the virgin blue sky through the trunks straining upwards, drawn by the sun in a millennial feeding frenzy. He wondered about his own life and what was pulling him along, now that he had reached the age where the clamor of existence no longer seemed as compelling.

The Truth Now, Of Course

When you start writing, who are you facing? The intended audience could be:

yourself

your grandfather

your childhood

your imagined public

your real public

your country

your enemies

the past

the future

We are advised to choose one, pick your lane, focus your message, hone your approach, etc., to be successful. But here’s my problem with all of that. I have a deep, ingrained resistance to being caged in, limited to one subject area. I’d rather go wide angle and cast the net of my inquiry wherever it feels right. Call me a contrarian in that regard. If the experts advise one thing, it’s practically guaranteed I’m going to feel better doing it differently a la Sinatra. Yes, audience growth has not been happening, but so what if your intended audience is all of the above. Notice my list does not include experts or wannabe experts on a particular subject. It does not include self-titled influencers or gurus who promise one sort of redemption or another. Hey, I’m just a guy here on my soapbox. Not just a guy, let’s be honest — an elderly white guy, over-educated, over-privileged, with acute imposter syndrome and a reflexive penchant for using bigger words than in common usage. It’s tough being me. You don’t want to know, I understand. But you don’t get to choose what words I use or what thoughts I espouse or what approach I take on these here reflections on the world. It’s called The Truth Now, after the book I wrote about a guy just released from prison after 19 years. What would that be like? That’s his truth and I told it. It’s also about the world we live in, the past, the interconnected nature of reality, the point of storytelling, healing, love between men and women and dogs, and okay, redemption. One reviewer said it was a good book about mental illness, and my immediate reaction was no. It was about reintegration into society and how “mental illness” is just a social construct and how we filter out the voices of the past as a survival mechanism but at the peril of our souls.

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An interesting thing happened to me recently and it involves a fact you didn’t know: I’m a film school dropout. I attended Columbia Film School’s MFA program for a couple of years back in the day, long enough to learn that I couldn’t write screenplays to save my life. Follow a formula? Me? Not happening, sorry. It’s just not in my mental DNA. But long enough also, despite it not being the focus of the program, to learn the rudiments of the actual craft of making a film. So in desperation one day, I took out a student loan for $10K from the Citibank on the corner of Amsterdam and 110th and shot a film based on a script I wrote called Stone Age Lament. It was a g

reat little project, a lot of fun, worked with a whole bunch of good, talented people, and shot and put together a great student film in 16mm black and white, which showed at the NY Downtown Film Festival to some acclaim in 1986, I believe. But I couldn’t get funding from Columbia to finish final editing, and although I had the sponsorship and support of Voytech Jasny, a visiting professor and exiled Czech film maker, I couldn’t get the program to accept it as a thesis film. So I dropped out, put the film on a video tape, stuck the tape away, thought to myself — they can’t stop me from writing, all I need is a word processor (this was before laptops), and got a job back in journalism as a local hire for AP in Venezuela and moved out of New York after a small time in hospital recovering from what they termed a schizoid break.

Life happens, and years later my daughter is back from college and we get talking about her friend at Emerson in the film program and I mention my student film on a videotape in the attic. She convinces me to dig it out and convert the tape to digital so we can watch it together. Weeks later I pick up the thumb drive at Walmart and drive home. That evening I gather my daughter and wife on the sofa, open up the laptop, and we watch my student film.

The experience was uncanny. More than a blast from the past, it was like proof that there is a certain obsessive quality to what I do. The story was about a guy who hears voices and works in a junkyard and chronicles his attempts at striking up a relationship with a woman in order to save himself from drowning in his own self-made prison of an apartment and ruminating introspections. In other words, it was a prequel to the book I wrote almost 40 years later, The Truth Now. My daughter loved it, my wife wanted to know what was going through my head, which I couldn’t explain very well. I was confused: proud of myself for sticking to my guns and at the same time sad for not sticking a lot harder. When I got some pushback, I just folded and ran — with the intention of doing an end run on the bastards. The problem with an end run is it takes so damn long that sometimes the whistle blows before the run is done.

The other day, just a few days ago, my daughter told me how much she liked the film. “Better than all the student films I’ve seen,” she said. “You should make another one.”

So guess what. That’s what we’re going to do. Anybody know a good producer, script consultant, production team, film guru? Get in touch.

What’s it going to be called? The Truth Now, of course.

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Alpha

Antioch could no longer say with confidence that his conversations with Reid had been kept confidential. Yes, they had taken place in the Zocalo during the recreations of the ancient fire festival. But hidden among the costumed participants there could have been OneWorld plants.

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“Look, man. Can you tell me whether Reid will even be here in fifteen minutes?” asked Garcia.

“Wait, give him a chance to show up,” said Antioch.

“No time,” said Garcia.

“So, you’re suggesting that we ditch him. He shows up here and the beach is empty.”

Garcia ignored him, shoulders twitching with some memory of insolence or trauma.

“Look at them. They ain’t no fishermen,” said Garcia.

“Those boys? They’re here every day fishing. Snapper, parrot fish. Seen it with my own eyes,” said Antioch.

“Parrot fish? They extinct now, like fifty years, brother. You've been set up with some cheap ass special effects.”

There was a glitch, a glint of light reflecting off the nets cast by the fishermen from off of the rock. Antioch suddenly thought that Garcia might be right, had probably been right all along. That meant that all the months of stalking and cultivating Reid as an informer, all the notes he carried in his head from their conversations, all the coded entries on the transponder were now worthless. What’s more, they were dangerous and would need to be wiped.

“Okay. Say it’s all shit, the Reid notes, all his so-called info. We go up to Tijuana. And then what? What’s Shoeman going to say? That’s gonna be one hell of a conversation,” said Antioch.

“Shoeman ain’t even real, man. Getcha game on, Antioch,” said Garcia.

“How do I know you're real?”

“How do you know anything? Shithead.”

Garcia, annoying as he seemed, had a point. Antioch had a hard time knowing anything was real. He’d been raised by Mancie Littell in Tennessee with the perhaps imagined words of his long absent father Don forever in his ears, ringing the alarm of fight. As a runaway teen landing in the streets of Knoxville, he’d come under the influence of a Chomskyite cell that espoused action against the machine as a path to cleansing and personal salvation. Disillusioned with the personal politics of utopia, he’d joined the Democravian military, volunteering to salvage his abused sense of personal honor in what remained of his youth. Years later, battle scarred, part of that defeated army under General Steiner that had surrendered to OneWorld, still searching for redemption, he’d drifted out west. He’d married Winona, and they’d had a daughter, Uvlin, who was the key to their happiness.

He took on freelance work, investigative gigs during those years, and ended up working full-time undercover for Shoeman’s foundation, the Anthrog Nosti. He liked reporting to Shoeman because the occasional existential threat gave him direction and a backstop to his own still meandering consciousness.

“Let’s go,” said Antioch.

“See?” said Garcia.

The two men walked silently, plodding across the waste ground of a parking lot in Cabo San Lucas. In their wake the wind picked up, scattering spouts of dust across the pockmarked asphalt. The Pacific shimmered beyond the break, a silver pool of mystery. In the distance, shrouds of unresolved matter blanketed an army of giant blades. They rotated at a pace dictated by a fragmented logic that was the object of their quest.

Zipping up Carretera Uno, the coast road to La Paz, they stopped at a charging station in the center of a dusty, overheated crossroad. Teenaged girls ate soft synthetic chocolate cones in the shade, sitting cross-legged at the curb. Local boys, rodeo stars, wearing shades and braided rainbow mullets, charged their amphibious vehicles, customized Chinese puddle hoppers, while Garcia and Antioch waited on their bikes. Only their channel blockers, downloaded on the black market, rendered them immune from the wireless, dopamine enhancing blasts from the OneWorld puppet regime in the radius of the station. Once the bikes were fully charged, they looked around, ignoring the local youth, and gunned the electric motors for the road again.

The sun was sinking out on the horizon, torching, eternal fire in and out of sight. At the crest of the hills, buzzards rode the thermals in silent predatory spirals, drifting up and out of the violet dusk. It hadn’t rained in 16 months. The desalination plants, running on modular fission, worked overtime to provide the remnant population, descendants of the indigenous Guaycura mixed with a century’s refugees from around the globe. The OneWorld north of the border was a sprawling, amnesiac haven amid the wreckage of civilizational collapse. South of the border the lands were running out of water.

(Sharing the setup to the story in Alias Tomorrow, about a writer, William Morrow, and his creation. Available now on preorder in the Kindle library and launching in November in both Kindle and paperback.)

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Comeback Trail 2026

Transcript of my introduction of Karishma Manzur:

Good evening Manchester NH!

Can you hear me?

Well, this is a historic night here in New Hampshire, here in the great city of Manchester, because we are kicking off the comeback, the return to power of the people of this great state. Because it’s the truth, isn’t it? We’ve been kicked out of power in this country. As Americans, we used to think we were the greatest: number one, first to the moon, the strongest country, best, most healthy people, best education system, greatest universities, highways, cars, you name it. We had it better than anywhere else in the world. No longer folks, no longer. We are falling behind on so many metrics.

The truth is we are the most colonized, brain washed, ripped off, and fucked over people in the Western world, because we still, too many of us still think that what’s good for Exxon Mobil is good for America. That somehow that gas station up the road is us. I’m here to tell you they are not us, we don’t own them, and they don’t care about us. They don't have our interests in mind at all as they operate around the world. The key phrase here is around the world. They have no allegiance to our country or our people.

But it’s that mistaken belief, that misaligned sense of identity, or lack of an identity, that allows people to think that the oil companies, or the pharmaceuticals, or the hedge funds are somehow us, that their welfare is linked to our benefit, that is crucial to understanding the moment we are in and how we got here, when oligarchs and criminals are in control of our government, when for many years now corporations and billionaires have rigged the laws and the political process in their favor.

We have been usurped. We have been robbed of what is rightfully ours. Power of the people, by the people and for the people is a myth, an illusion. We need to be honest and clear minded when we start out on this road of change, societal transformation, political change, led by a brave woman we are going to launch tonight as our standard bearer, our next great US Senator. I'm going to say her name now, we all know her as Karishma, the medical researcher, grassroots warrior for peace, big-hearted mom, and now fearless candidate for change, just the change we need, the reboot we need. I'm not gonna say revolution because that word has been so overused and appropriated by now. Let’s just call it change and recognize how massive it is, the change we are about to set out on the road to achieve.

You know I’ve been going around the state a little this summer attending these listening sessions. Well I should introduce myself, state rep Tony Caplan to my constituents in the towns of Henniker, Bradford and Warner. So I’ve been attending listening sessions across the state put on by my fellow state reps, and everywhere there’s a hunger. People are demanding change, a reboot, a reset in how we govern ourselves, because the status quo ain't working, folks, It's obviously not working.

I've been a state rep for five years and in that time I've seen Republican government in this state and in our country consistently govern in the name of the interests and the finances of the rich and the powerful, never mind all the baloney, the culture wars they put out as a distraction. Governance in the interests of the rich and powerful is the throughline. And too often Democrats go along to get along, scared to offend the sensibilities of those same powerful elites that run things in this country, in both parties, let’s be honest. And we’re tired of it.

We don't want to live in ever increasing austerity and hardship, under immense and ever increasing pressure just to pay our bills and survive with a roof over our heads at least for the next month, and Karishma’s going to fight to change that, to fix our housing crisis and have an economy that works for working people instead of working and middle class families sacrificed to an ever widening affordability crisis, ever growing corporate profits, and ever increasing and obscene inequality, which is what we have in this country.

We don't want a government that insists on keeping us ignorant of the facts and the science so our corporate masters can continue to pump us full of poisons and pollute the atmosphere, endangering our very planet to line their pockets. And Karishma's going to fight to change that, so our leaders follow the science and pass laws so that we can grow sustainably and equitably and our children inherit a planet of abundance and healthy lands and seas.

And we don’t want to live in a country that stands by as women and children get bombed and thousands of innocent human beings are brutally sniped and massacred in our name and with our tax dollars and munitions, so that defense contractors continue to do business as usual. And Karishma's going to fight to change that, for a foreign policy based on American values and American laws.

And lets be clear, any so-called leaders who have stood by and voted to continue a genocide in Gaza no longer deserve to be in office anywhere in this country. They have failed the moral test of our time.

Change starts with us, with recognizing that our hopes and dreams are achievable, that our fight is justified and that reason and history are on our side.

We are the change and we are bringing it here tonight. This is the road we are starting out to build and we pledge ourselves to a new crop of leaders to turn this country around. So I want us to celebrate ourselves as we celebrate the launch of this historic campaign. Finally, give it up now and let’s rock the world for our rock solid candidate for U.S. Senate from the great Granite State, Karishma Manzur!

(To donate to Karishma Manzur’s campaign for U.S. Senate, click here.)

A New Face in a Dangerous Time

Just wanted to invite you to the launch of a historic run for office here in the Granite State on Wednesday in Manchester. (See details above.)

I am proud to announce my support for Karishma Manzur as she kicks off her campaign for the U.S. Senate, representing ALL the people of New Hampshire, not just the well-connected and powerful.

I'm sure you'd agree with me that we are living through a dangerous transition for our country and the world. We need a new crop of leaders committed to defending democracy, human rights, equity, free speech, and science against the onslaught of misinformation and hate washing over the world. As our country stands on the threshold of autocracy, with one party committed to destroying our way of life and the other helplessly watching, it is clear that the status quo no longer serves.

Karishma is a proud scientist, mom, Bangladeshi-American, peace activist from the Seacoast of the Granite State who is all of the above and more. She represents a fresh, progressive wave of change that is beginning to emerge as an antidote to the politics of nationalism, genocide, oligarchy and dystopia.

Here are some of the policy points she is committed to defending. Put it all together and you will see a genuine vision for a reboot of America, exactly what we need:

Ban Big Money in politics

Fix the housing crisis:

Lower the cost of living

Guarantee quality healthcare for everyone

Invest in livable wages, strong unions, and fair labor practices

Defend the Constitution and strengthen our democracy

Protect America with sensible foreign policy

Uphold human rights

Enforce U.S. law and end U.S. complicity in Gaza’s humanitarian crisis

Defend science and innovation

Keep New Hampshire wild and beautiful

Karishma is a scientist with a background in research. She does not undertake this campaign ignorant of the odds against her. We are up against an establishment that is deep pocketed and determined to hold onto power. It is also incapable of leading us out of the storm that threatens to sink our country.

Honoring the brave legacy of Jeanne Shaheen who is retiring after years of service in defense of Granite State values, let's have a new Senator who promises more of what Senator Shaheen constantly delivered instead of a mealy-mouthed willingness to go along to get along. I’m looking at a guy named after a tuber in Greek.

I hope to see many of you in Manchester on Wednesday evening. Come out and meet Karishma and help us launch this historic and exciting run for national office.

Antidote to Dog Days

I would think most Americans with a couple of brain cells to rub together would have to concede by now that we are being led by a madman whose ideas and vision for the country and the world are based on whimsy. It’s just tragic that our future is being endangered by the failure of democracy that his election represents. There is plenty of writing and thinking going into how to repair the process so that it doesn’t happen again. Think education, information, collective muscle. You can’t have a democracy when the information wars plus an educational system based on the tyranny of lowered expectations, to use the phrase coined by Junior Bush, leave a wide swath of people with a less than solid grasp of reality.

But this week, in honor of the dog days of summer we are in, I am throwing down the gauntlet in favor of triage and resistance rather than contemplation. It’s our only hope if we want to survive. Because we still have some levers in our favor to stem the losses to an authoritarian and a party that have become the political wing of the fossil fuel industry and the voice of demographic panic on the part of a white majority. Collective action focused on key points of policy weakness is the best remaining alternative that I can see, so let’s seize the initiative together and damn the naysayers who claim the oligarchy has already won and us peasantry better get used to it.

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You gotta fight smart and to me, looking at it, the evilest thing in the works right now is the Trump administration’s attack on the EPA’s endangerment finding of 2009, the ruling that has provided the rationale for everything related to regulations around carbon dioxide levels rising in the atmosphere, put out in the air by burning oil, gasoline, coal, or natural gas, and causing the global warming that is threatening our civilization with wildfires, floods, killer heat waves, rising sea levels, ocean acidification, massive extinctions, famines, resource wars, etc. The consensus of science and reasoned opinion is such that global warming and climate change, unabated, are THE biggest threat to mankind since the saber-toothed tiger roamed the plains. But the Trump administration and its EPA administrator Lee Zeldin are siding with contrarians who believe that we global rich guys can ride out the storm and don’t want to stem the use of fossil fuels because, well, it’s inconvenient. And Trump himself, who, not understanding the science, has concluded wrongly deep in his pea brain that environmentalists just don’t like capitalism and gold-plated toilets and such that he is so fond of as a would be king. The truth is that we long ago in the West, at least for the last ten years, have decoupled economic growth from rising CO2 pollution. The clean energy transition kicked off by the Biden administration represented our best program for economic growth and the return of manufacturing to our shores, and Trump’s stake in the heart to this project is his attack on the endangerment finding.

So this week I am sharing a program of organized reistance we can all do. It comes from a group called, appropriately, Climate Action Now, and they have put together a list of actions to take for the next several weeks, with a step by step guide on how to get onboard.

I hope to see you out there on the fields of glory. Click away, you hounds of the resistance.

You are so welcome.

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