Given my recent weeks of not being able to do much physical work and even more recent new lung-thing/infection, whatever, I have been working at trying to finish the third book in the Overlords of Mars trilogy.
Which, I am trying to fit into an omnibus edition too, with all three books in one volume, which may however prove impossible as the largest number of pages for that is just over 800 and I am approaching 700 very fast. Then again, the series is really a Quadrilogy, even if the third book does get things sort of to a certain “point”. But… if I can get the fourth book out too, a two-volume omnibus may be it.
At any rate, having to re-read most of the first two books and consult my autistic level notes on the matter, is making me aware that really, I did a pretty good job with this series. One passage, spoken by one of the Russian admirals in book 2, made me quite aware of the rather startling predictive power of my imagination when I let it run loose with few filters.
“They will use American culture” said Zukhov. He pronounced culture in the same way he had said Lord before. “You know what I mean? Bang, bang television,” he made pistols with his hands, “lots of pornography on the internet to keep those who don’t work busy wanking, mobile phones, low-frequency vibration mind-reprogramming over large areas, disease, war, and they will use their all-important god, the dollar, the money, to drive it all. Force people into mental and physical corners until they are beaten into doing what they want of them. Stupid slaves who think they are free.”
Consider the book was published in 2013, however, the ideas for it, including this specific plot-point, which is one of the main threads of the entire series, was originally conceived in the late 1990s. As I may have mentioned elsewhere, in fact, each of the three books originates from a dream I had way back in the early to mid 1990s.
The first book was inspired by a dream I had of some space humans coming to Earth and my initial sensation at meeting the eyes of a very beautiful and blue-eyed woman among them, and feeling sort of like a monkey compared to them, and instead, this beautiful woman telepathically letting me know that no, we could be just as advanced and kind as them. The eyes on the cover of that first book, Inception, are very much like the ones I had dreamt of. And I used them long before I eventually married their owner. The book also has an alternative and more controversial cover here. Although, Amazon redirects me to the Italian site which changes things, so I am not sure which cover you get to see.
The second book, Stasis, also was the result of a dream, that for all intents and purposes could be thought of as a scene with Giona and Lydia close to one of the Martian ruins.
The third book was inspired by a scene that I am not sure if I will be able to incorporate in the third book, but if I can, I will. If you read of a character called Atalla, and a game… then you’ll know I put in there.
Anyway, don’t get too excited, but after a 10 year hiatus, (which I think has given me the time required to make this a better story than it would have been, with a lot more “controversial” but more true to life reality, I am hoping to have this third book done by Christmas.
If my future-guessing on this one is anything close to the one I had in the early 90s, concerning our present day, some 30 years later, we’re all in for a wild ride. More fun if you’re off planet than on it though. As usual!
