Rusted Sky

This is exactly why I no longer write satire:

http://www.euronet.nl/users/keesree/conspir.htm

Oh, man - I really WAS joking about conspiracy theories about the Titanic...

J.

I know how you feel. Back in 1993, I had a silly idea and turned it into a cover for MYRIAD: An ad for The Bud Hopskip Future Lives Progression Clinic. (It’s the opposite of ‘past-lives regression,’ see? Instead of going back, you go – oh, never mind.)

Ten years later, in a Barnes and Noble, I was browsing and found this:

http://www.amazon.com/Same-Soul-Many-Bodies-Progression/dp/0743264339/ref=sip_rec_dp_3/104-0447411-1270330?ie=UTF8&qid=1173747063&sr=8-1

In case the link doesn’t work, that’s “Same Soul, Many Bodies: Discover the Healing Power of Future Lives through Progression Therapy,” by Brian Weiss, MD.

I feel like I should at least have gotten an acknowledgement in the Foreword. :)

F451 - That was, in part, done by H. Beam Piper as part of his future history and was the turning point: a man's memories moved down time due to various medications during combat and a nuclear explosion going off. His younger self awakened at age 10, but it was his older personality in control with memories intact. He was bound and determined not to let that future come to pass...

The story: "Time and Time again" by H. Beam Piper, first printed in Astounding Science Fiction 1947, collected in the anthology The Worlds of H. Beam Piper, ed. by John F. Carr, Ace Science Fiction, 1983.

Piper, himself, had been noted by other authors as talking about the ability of one's mind to travel up and down one's lifespan, and to relive portions or all of it from any point in that lifespan. One of the brilliant minds of SF cut short because he was too much of a gentleman to ask anyone he knew for a loan... and didn't know that the check for his first major sale was in the mail.

Yeah, I know -- I re-read that story recently. Not quite the same thing, but interesting.

My shtick was just a simple inversion of 'past lives regression.' (And other ARTCians have reminded me that I also used the concept -- just a little, I swear! -- in a script called 'Unresolved Mysteries Solved While U Wait! -- Past Lives Regression.')

Thnx.

F451 - My pleasure!

The Paratime series of stories deal with the migration of 'souls', although it is the personality involved with memories attached, after death. There were some interesting paradoxes that showed up, but it was an interesting concept... the book Old Souls examines one man spending his life going to far off places and gathering evidence of this and some of the strange things found in that. These are not the glorious things of being someone famous, but the mundane of remembering that you were an auto mechanic in Phoenix and didn't make a curve... which came from the memories of a child in Lebanon that worried if his family was ok back in Phoenix (if memory serves). That is not only *not* the norm of past-life regression, but points to something different going on. This is a global phenomena, with cases scattered here and there that have been winnowed through, people interviewed ad nauseum and trying to find out if this stuff is made up. But when you get cases that have no connection between previous lives and current and clear memories and even spoken language moving onwards, then you do have to scratch your head a bit.

You don't need conspiracies for strange things to happen. Nor do you need them when there is enough incompetence in the world to explain so much. Actually, incompetence explains most of human history with the rare exception of someone knowing what they are doing as being stand-outs. That is frightening in and of itself, come to think of it...

Sometimes I think most of human history can be explained by the simple phrase "It seemed like a good idea at the time..." spoken in a tone of regret.

J.

J - I don't think that someone has used that as a title... but... "Someone Had Blundered - A Historical Survey of Military Incompetence" by Geoffrey Regan is an excellent book to look at just how super-duper spiffy the military actually *is*. Well, *was*, but I am sure we have found brand new ways to blunder that no one has ever tried before...

Another is "The Natural History of Stupidity" by Paul Tabori. Have to love the back dustjacket quote: 'There is a Turkish proverb that says: *If Allah gives you authority, He will give you the brains to go with it.* Like many proverbs, this one is both dangerous and false. As far as bureaucracy is concerned, the acquisition of authority more often than not leads to a loss of brains, to an atrophying of the mind, to a chronic state of stupidity.' - Paul Tabori

Another good one that I can only dredge the title up, dealing with problems in technology is, "Set your phasers on stun".

Basically, I am amazed that we ever got past the stone knives concept...a monument to our inadequacy at self-annihilation, I suppose.

*If Allah gives you authority, He will give you the brains to go with it.* - Hate to say it, but that one's actually accurate for the ME... if you are looking at 'brains' in a negative sense.

And after 23 years in the military, I'm not at all surprised by any self-induced problems that might crop up! The amazing thing is, like Microsoft Windows, it works well enough even WITH all the bugs and flaws.

J.