20221122 - Fading Fire [Hector Blake Wide Release]

...

Contractions of light, // the expansion of the fog; // bringer of darkness.

HAIKUPRAJNA - Fading Fire [Hector Blake Wide Release]

https://haikuprajna.blogspot.com/2022/11/20221122-fading-fire-hector-blake-wide.html

...

Hello readers,

“Hector Blake”, a short story about fighting the hindrances to concentration, is available on more ebook stores!

. Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo and more : [ https://books2read.com/u/bP7O6l ] (Stores are rolling out at the time of writing)

. Goodreads : [ https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62828977-hector-blake ]

. Amazon : [ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09W8LYRXL ]

You can also read Hector Blake’s story online on Medium; [ https://medium.com/haikuprajna/hector-blake-second-edition-329c5c9309e7 ]

Blurb; 

“ Hector Blake longed for the excitement of his old life.

He had awoken in a dark room, the walls of which being impervious to his intense pyrokinesis, to fend off an endless one-on-one assault of enemies. He was, a day prior, living in peaceful retirement back home on Titan, once being a renowned superhero across the Sol system.

Now, adversaries flood the room he had found himself in, and his tools and abilities are all that he can use to stave off exhaustion while fighting personifications of his slothful thoughts. Hector's applied displays incinerated such hindrances while reinvigorating him--but can he keep the fire alive, let alone bright enough to face a stronger burning willpower? “

"Hector Blake" is part of the "SM-SARA: Poetry and Other Stories" collection; read more : [ https://haikuprajna.blogspot.com/p/sm-sara.html ]

Previous announcement : [ https://haikuprajna.blogspot.com/2022/03/20220323-hector-blake-second-edition.html ]

Thank you for reading, please share your thoughts.

Allen W. McLean 

PS. November marks the first anniversary of Fishing for Caribou! To coincide with Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Spearthrower's story is $0.99 on the US and UK Amazon stores! [ https://a.co/d/fOeAy5X ] 

[ https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/electricarmchair/living-ghosts ] Listen to Electric Armchair while you shop for deals this week!

[ https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/19557396.Allen_W_McLean ] Add these books to your Goodreads!

...

Need more Bite-sized Insights to relieve your stress and suffering?

Banner: The Cannon by Allen W. McLean

Readers are gifted a Kindle eBook on Fridays and Mondays--short story selection rotates every few weeks, so follow via email or visit My Author Profile : [ https://www.amazon.ca/Allen-W-McLean/e/B0867C5D24 ]

I write mindfulness meditation scifaiku and haiku poetry on my book reviews and on previews of my metaphysical stories, such as "Escape Perennial City".

Connect with HaikuPrajna and Electric Armchair : [ https://haikuprajna.blogspot.com/p/follow-on-social-media.html ] 

. Email Newsletter : [ https://www.getrevue.co/profile/haikuprajna ]

. LinkedIn Newsletter : [ https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/haikuprajna-6917324809479610368/ ]

. Medium (Email notifications) : [ https://haikuprajna.medium.com/ ]

. Goodreads : [ www.goodreads.com/author/show/19557396.Allen_W_McLean ]

. Patreon : [ https://www.patreon.com/asquaredproductions ]

. Instagram : [ https://www.instagram.com/haikuprajna/ ]

. Pinterest : [ https://www.pinterest.ca/haikuprajna/ ]

. Mastodon : [ https://mstdn.ca/@HaikuPrajna ]

. Blog : [ https://haikuprajna.blogspot.com/ ]

Thanks to you, over 700 readers have joined us on Medium! Need to stay in the Medium Partner Program? Please follow and turn on email notifications; I'll follow you back!

I have free short stories available to read, right now, on Medium:

. "Ado the Owl" : [ https://medium.com/haikuprajna/20221027-ado-the-owl-official-tell-a-story-day-flash-fiction-story-e4c8a8ec8563 ]

. "Hector Blake" : [ https://medium.com/haikuprajna/hector-blake-second-edition-329c5c9309e7 ]

April's psychedelic music videos, art and poetry is available on all streaming platforms; Electric Armchair - We Are (Official Music Video) [Feast of Fools]: [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1cTwT2uQbw ]

Electric Armchair - Living Ghosts (FULL ALBUM) : [ distrokid.com/hyperfollow/electricarmchair/living-ghosts ]

My metaphysical short story "ULTRAVIOLET" is available as an eBook on Kindle apps and devices; read right now with Kindle Unlimited. Add to Goodreads and learn more : [ https://haikuprajna.blogspot.com/p/ultraviolet.html ]

Kindle ebooks can be read on any device at www.read.amazon.com

These poems will be collected in future editions of the HaikuPrajna Collection. 

20221120 - The Transmigration of Timothy Archer Book Review [Analysis and Summary]

...

Emptiness growing, \\ expansion of consciousness, \\ experience death.

HAIKUPRAJNA - The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

https://haikuprajna.blogspot.com/2022/11/20221120-transmigration-of-timothy.html

...

Hello readers,

Few Philip K. Dick books take place in as real-life of a setting as “The Transmigration of Timothy Archer”.

This is a religious and metaphysical science fiction story which skews to the philosophical, told from the point of view of Angel Archer between the time it took her to enter the seminar of an Edgar Barefoot; she was married to Tim’s son Jeff before the deaths of the two along with Angel’s friend, and Tim’s wife, Kirsten Lundborg, who was the mother of Bill Lundborg.

This is another book from the VALIS series, which is really good in my opinion, and which deals with topics that are personal to the author.

The story of Timothy Archer feels real, first and foremost, because of its fictionalization of real events; it is a story about death and grief and coping with the suicides of loved ones, or rather their individual intentions to die, coping via religion or spirituality as a metaphor for how to survive, as stories we tell ourselves in order to do what will avoid death.

The day of John Lennon’s murder, after she had found out she was now all alone, Angel felt guilty over having arranged Tim and Kirsten’s meeting, which, in a roundabout way, was the catalyst that led to everyone’s deaths.

When Jeff committed suicide, his father, a Bishop, was sent on a spiritual journey to prove to himself that he had experienced his son’s return from  “the other world”, knowing he was unable to prove it to others due to the necessity of belief.

Angel had made that blatant and clear to be tragic, as Tim’s search had ended in his death in the Dead Sea; what hooked me was how the narrative of the book was framed around her restlessness, how her expositioning was a distraction from her suffering, where the line between narrator and author bled often enough that one is left unsure whether they are reading real-life fact or fiction. 

Quote: ” ...there is a crucial sort of difference between pain and the narration of pain. I am telling you what happened. If there is vicarious pain in knowing, there is actual peril in not knowing. In aversion lies a colossal risk. ”

Timothy Archer sought to locate the genuine source of Christianity, which he said was hidden from the world for twenty-two hundred years. However, the Bishop was on trial for heresy, as his views differed from that of the Church; Tim’s troubles centred on translators coming across the sayings of Jesus predating Jesus by almost two hundred years, which shook the foundations of Tim’s faith, the revelation meaning that Jesus was using means that were available to the people of his time; however, the Church had failed to charge Tim and had “left him as a result even stronger than ever.” 

Tim had become obsessed with locating the Original Source and with figuring out what it was, he had grown uncontent with faith alone and needed to experience the food and drink that turned one into God Himself, like a title or a role; Tim thought God was real while Angel thought he was “not really real” in the sense that he was intangible unlike a tangible wall or stone, thus Tim’s search for proof was futile and had in fact ended in futility according to the narrator.

Angel decided to visit Edgar Barefoot’s seminar, but she reflected on the bulk of the book’s narrative to herself before entering.

Quote: “... We are all just a moment in time in forward motion.”

The heartbreaking part was how Angel had gone along with Tim and Kirsten’s madness about Jeff because she wanted to believe that her dead husband was back, she loved him and, worse, she wanted to keep in contact with the Bishop and with her friend; however, she would still feel guilty after the fact. 

Quote: “This is the famous nature of hindsight: to it everything is inevitable, since everything has already happened.”

She lost touch with Tim after Kirsten’s death, but he got back in contact to ask Angel to join him in going to the Dead Sea, which she declined because she did not want to die in the Desert. Tim was still chasing a drug for the insight he desired; he believed the anokhi mushroom was Christ, the wisdom of God, which was the only thing that--he thought--had the power to change his own fate, failing to understand that the transcendental form was the story of the anokhi.

After her first seminar, Edgar reintroduced Bill to Angel. Barefoot believed Bill was a Bodhisattva and had turned down nirvana to help others achieve it, which symbolized how Angel, unlike Tim, had accepted that transcendence, becoming comfortable in and unhindered by the world. Regardless of what really happened, Angel and Bill had the ability to summon the people they loved through their pooled memories of Tim, Kirsten and Jeff.

A haunting prophecy from 1982; quote: “It is like information theory; it is noise driving out signal. But it is noise posing as signal so you do not even recognize it as noise. The intelligence agencies call it disinformation, something the Soviet Bloc relies on heavily. If you can float enough disinformation into circulation you will totally abolish everyone's contact with reality, probably your own included.”

The ending featured a classic Philip K. Dick reality-twist, despite its otherwise real-life inspired setting, over Kirsten’s son and Tim’s transmigration, which was still grounded in doubtful reality because of Bill’s psychosis.

I saw the conflict of proof versus belief as a test for Angel Archer from God, where becoming rooted in the physical was the punishment for failure; Tim had tried to explain to Bill that it was impossible to explain Jeff’s return because belief is based on faith in one’s experience--this was proven to great effect through Bill being more pious about cars than Tim was about Christ, as Bill never needed more proof to assess any issue with his system, he had faith, the same as Angel. 

Quote: “Believing something because it’s impossible... Not ‘despite the fact that it was impossible’...”

Insanity or unintelligibility equals being out-of-touch with reality, but reality operates despite the faults of irreality; Angel viewing death as a negative was rational and sane, even if she were incorrect and Tim were right, as chasing death would get one locked up in an institution or in another cycle of rebirth. Forming an idea bound by the future would root the idea in the future, thus determining fate--but it only did so if people believed it; Timothy Archer was punished for chasing and knowing God, needing and finding proof instead of believing.

Tim’s sin was missing the mark; the phrase “God is the Book of the Universe” was used as metaphor for Tim’s futility in finding God as an object at a single place in time and space.

Thank you for reading, please share your thoughts.

Allen W. McLean 

...

Need more Bite-sized Insights to relieve your stress and suffering?

Banner: The Cannon by Allen W. McLean

All readers are gifted a Kindle eBook every week on Free Fridays and Mondays--short story selection rotates every few weeks, so follow via email or visit My Author Profile on Amazon : [ https://www.amazon.ca/Allen-W-McLean/e/B0867C5D24 ]

I write mindfulness meditation scifaiku and haiku poetry based on book reviews and on previews of my metaphysical stories, such as "Escape Perennial City" (available on Kindle Unlimited). Thanks to you, over 700 readers have joined us on Medium! Need followers to stay in the Medium Partner Program? Please follow us online and turn on email notifications; I'll follow you back! I have two short stories available to read, right now with no sign-up required, on Medium:

. "Ado the Owl" : [ https://medium.com/haikuprajna/20221027-ado-the-owl-official-tell-a-story-day-flash-fiction-story-e4c8a8ec8563 ]

. "Hector Blake" : [ https://medium.com/haikuprajna/hector-blake-second-edition-329c5c9309e7 ]

Stay in touch with HaikuPrajna and Electric Armchair : [ https://haikuprajna.blogspot.com/p/follow-on-social-media.html ] 

. Newsletter (free) : [ https://www.getrevue.co/profile/haikuprajna ]

. Goodreads [ www.goodreads.com/author/show/19557396.Allen_W_McLean ]

. Medium : [ https://haikuprajna.medium.com/ ]

. LinkedIn : [ https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/haikuprajna-6917324809479610368/ ]

. Patreon : [ https://www.patreon.com/asquaredproductions ]

. Instagram : [ https://www.instagram.com/haikuprajna/ ]

. Blog : [ https://haikuprajna.blogspot.com/ ]

. Pinterest : [ https://www.pinterest.ca/haikuprajna/ ]

April's latest psychedelic music videos, art and poetry is available on all streaming platforms; Electric Armchair - We Are (Official Music Video) [Feast of Fools]: [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1cTwT2uQbw ]

Electric Armchair - Living Ghosts (FULL ALBUM) : [ distrokid.com/hyperfollow/electricarmchair/living-ghosts ]

My metaphysical short story "ULTRAVIOLET" is available as an eBook on Kindle apps and devices; read right now with Kindle Unlimited : [ https://read.amazon.ca/kp/embed?asin=B0BKYQV5C4 ]

Kindle ebooks can be read on any device with a web browser at www.read.amazon.com

These poems will be collected in future editions of the HaikuPrajna Collection.

20221116 - Falgara the Giant [Official Reveal Announcement]

...

The cascading mist’s // formed by gentle flow, pressure, // a constant motion.

HAIKUPRAJNA - Falgara the Giant

https://haikuprajna.blogspot.com/2022/11/20221116-falgara-giant-official-reveal.html

...

Hello readers,

"Falgara the Giant" is the next Terraform book set in The Wisps series. This metaphysical fiction/fantasy short story, unlike "Ado the Owl", will be a digital eBook exclusive to the Kindle store.

Falgara was the project we outlined during April’s birthday trip to Niagara Falls, which served as inspiration that we personified for the Terraform; there's even an Electric Armchair song title hidden in the manuscript and blurb. The Overseer travels through their Forest with a group of Terraforms along a path to the top of a waterfall, where they fall into Falgara at the bottom of the lake below.

Here’s the blurb for the Amazon store’s page, along with the title pages; 

“ The Overseer led the Forest’s Terraforms along the edge of a chasm to visit Falgara the Giant, at the absolute bottom of a great river, on its birthday.

Arriving at the garden on top of a waterfall, the other Terraforms had to promise to avoid falling into Falgara’s stream, as the smaller Terraforms would be unable to swim free from the current’s inevitable flow. The Overseer resisted, but found themself unable to, and they fell into Falgara.

Inside the barrelling pressure of the mirrored waterfall’s mist, the Overseer had to ascend in a constant motion that was threatened to be undone in the manner of the falling lights of the Giant. Even the thought of taking a rest in the mirrored garden at the top of Falgara threatened to send them back home. “

Title page for "Falgara the Giant" by Allen W. McLean

"Falgara the Giant" is looking at an early December 2022 release.

Thank you for reading, please share your thoughts.

Allen W. McLean 

...

Need more Bite-sized Insights to relieve your stress and suffering?

Banner: The Cannon by Allen W. McLean

All readers are gifted a Kindle eBook every week on Free Fridays and Mondays--short story selection rotates every few weeks, so follow via email or visit My Author Profile on Amazon : [ https://www.amazon.ca/Allen-W-McLean/e/B0867C5D24 ]

Thanks to you, over 700 readers have joined us on Medium! Need followers to stay in the Medium Partner Program? Please follow us online and turn on email notifications; I write mindfulness meditation scifaiku and haiku poetry based on book reviews and on previews of my metaphysical stories, such as "Escape Perennial City" (available on Kindle Unlimited)--I'll follow you back! I have two short stories available to read, right now with no sign-up required, on Medium;

. "Ado the Owl" : [ https://medium.com/haikuprajna/20221027-ado-the-owl-official-tell-a-story-day-flash-fiction-story-e4c8a8ec8563 ]

. "Hector Blake" : [ https://medium.com/haikuprajna/hector-blake-second-edition-329c5c9309e7 ]

Stay in touch with HaikuPrajna and Electric Armchair : [ https://haikuprajna.blogspot.com/p/follow-on-social-media.html ] 

. Newsletter (free) : [ https://www.getrevue.co/profile/haikuprajna ]

. Goodreads [ www.goodreads.com/author/show/19557396.Allen_W_McLean ]

. Medium : [ https://haikuprajna.medium.com/ ]

. LinkedIn : [ https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/haikuprajna-6917324809479610368/ ]

. Patreon : [ https://www.patreon.com/asquaredproductions ]

. Instagram : [ https://www.instagram.com/haikuprajna/ ]

. Blog : [ https://haikuprajna.blogspot.com/ ]

. Pinterest : [ https://www.pinterest.ca/haikuprajna/ ]

April's latest psychedelic music videos, art and poetry is available on all streaming platforms; Electric Armchair - We Are (Official Music Video) [Feast of Fools]: [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1cTwT2uQbw ]

Electric Armchair - Living Ghosts (FULL ALBUM) : [ distrokid.com/hyperfollow/electricarmchair/living-ghosts ]

My metaphysical short story "ULTRAVIOLET" is available as an eBook on Kindle apps and devices; read right now with Kindle Unlimited : [ https://read.amazon.ca/kp/embed?asin=B0BKYQV5C4 ]

Kindle ebooks can be read on any device with a web browser at www.read.amazon.com

These poems will be collected in future editions of the HaikuPrajna Collection.

20221111 - The Queen’s Gambit Book Review Analysis and Summary

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Little green pieces // strewn across the checkerboards // balance a cold war.

HAIKUPRAJNA - The Queen’s Gambit Book Review Analysis and Summary

https://haikuprajna.blogspot.com/2022/11/20221111-queens-gambit-book-review.html

...

[Lots of spoilers ahead] 

Hello readers,

I admit, I had little interest in The Queen’s Gambit when its Netflix series was first released, but I was curious enough about chess to read the book and see what the hype was all about, and let me say, the story lives up to it.

I really enjoyed reading The Queen’s Gambit, this book was hard to put down, and the chess in the game was really fun to follow in my head.

Chess prodigy Elizabeth Harmon was an orphan at the Methuen Home in Kentucky. She learned how to play chess from the orphanage’s janitor until she was adopted by a Mrs. Wheatley. However, the plot focused on Beth learning about different coping strategies, where her talent was affected by her growing substance dependency, which explored her anxiety from the get-go as potential worries such as never being adopted.

How Beth handled these bouts of restlessness and remorse were relatable and well written in a show-instead-of-tell manner. From a very young age, Beth struggled with tranquilizer usage, because of the orphanage’s dosing of the children, which foreshadowed Beth having to decide on committing to chess and to use it as a vehicle for exploring her anxiety over the other substances she encounters during her adolescence, described as a “troubled future” during her mother’s death. However, she could deconstruct the different affects; Beth was able to visualize both stressful scenarios and imagine every chess board she studied, which forced her to focus and become absorbed in the endless abyss of her own thoughts, but this allowed her to ignore the peripheral worries of playing rooms full of people at the same time, realizing and seeing that every move was a puzzle or like a target that she had to aim and fire at with her pieces.

Throughout the book, Beth defied all the expectations of the other characters while experimenting with different methods of dispelling the hindrances to achieving serenity, or otherwise concentrating and being absorbed in a task, methods such as getting drunk, making love, Methuen’s tranquilizers loosening the tension caused by the orphanage’s Mrs. Deardorff--even Beth’s master work at chess in her countless months studying (both alone and with others) was a method of achieving mindfulness and clarity.  

She experimented as a method of dealing with the many forms of loss that she was experiencing, but she began to learn about how dependency affects one’s passions, her punishments being manifestations of their detriment to Beth’s ability to visualize chess, while her thieving habits displayed the extent she was willing to go in order to achieve her tranquility; even chess itself was first presented through Shaibel as a solitary activity which Beth had to study alone. 

While Mrs. Wheatley enabled and condoned Beth’s behaviour, Wheatley helped Beth plan to compete internationally against the world’s best players. With the help of those around her, Beth rose to the top of the US chess scene, and each location employed great and simple use of differing colours for personal aesthetics. She had to travel to Mexico, Paris and then Russia to climb the ranks of state, national and international chess in order to defeat her idols. I enjoyed how Beth knew about Benny and Borgov among many others before meeting and literally transcending them in skill. 

Though, displaying the duality of idealism, as in how it can be a hindrance and a benefit, she lost to Borgov in Mexico, where Mrs. Wheatley died soon after in their hotel room; full spoiler, but I loved how Wheatley’s and Sheibel’s deaths were rough, and how Benny’s return was great.

Beth lost to Borgov a second time in Paris; she tried her best to study and to focus on chess, but her drinking desire took over where she got so drunk that she lost a state tournament, and her ability to visualize became hindered as she suffered a downward spiral after ignoring what was causing her to suffer, burying her feelings with the serenity of chess, love and booze.

Beth handled being alone hard, and she had spiraled at the cost of her grip on her champion title. She had to learn the hard way to cope alone, where she decided to be honest with Jolene, an old friend from Methuen, and work out with her to get back into shape; what I liked about this was that Beth’s refusal of the church’s money was less a commentary on her religious stance and was more symbolic about her deciding to handle her problems herself, even in the paradoxical way of accepting help from one’s loved ones. Despite the help of her best friend, Beth ended up having to go to Russia virtually alone.

The story-beats and its themes were solid, parts of her childhood stuck with her the whole story such as being called ugly and the memory of her biological parents, but I think I wanted the Borgov match to be the climax of the story (or at least I had anticipated it to be), however the main conflict was with her dependency, and her overcoming her anxiety had acted as the story's climax while Borgov and the chess plots were mere vehicles to drive that plot forward, which highlighted the best part of the book--the way chess was shown to be another artistic and creative medium like any other form of idea.

Beth traveled to Russia to face Borgov and was able to find serenity and concentration amid her final match. She had learned to love the game that brought her the same peace that so many substances had struggled to achieve without hindrance. It came as little surprise that she managed to beat Borgov, playing the Queen’s Gambit against him, but she was able to build up the nerve to do so without aid and had overcome her anxieties to focus on the game, without distractions--including the unbeatable players that she was winning against.

Thank you for reading, please share your thoughts.

Allen W. McLean 

...

Need more Bite-sized Insights to relieve your stress and suffering?

Banner: The Cannon by Allen W. McLean

Readers can follow HaikuPrajna and Electric Armchair via our emailing lists (on Medium, Patreon, LinkedIn and more) for mindfulness meditation scifaiku and haiku poetry based on book reviews and on previews of metaphysical stories such as "Escape Perennial City" (available on Kindle Unlimited); https://haikuprajna.blogspot.com/p/follow-on-social-media.html 

As a free gift, all readers get an Amazon Kindle ebook short story every week on Free Fridays and Mondays--selection rotates every few weeks, so follow via email to collect them all! https://www.amazon.ca/Allen-W-McLean/e/B0867C5D24

Thanks to you, over 700 followers have joined us on Medium! If anyone reading this needs followers to stay in the Medium Partner Program, I am asking you to please follow me (and sign up for emails!) and I'll follow you back! My short stories "Ado the Owl" and "Hector Blake" are available to read for FREE on Medium!

Leave a comment with books you would like to see reviewed and I will add them to my Goodreads!!

Follow me here : www.goodreads.com/author/show/19557396.Allen_W_McLean

April's latest psychedelic music videos, art and poetry available on all streaming platforms; Electric Armchair - Living Ghosts (FULL ALBUM) : distrokid.com/hyperfollow/electricarmchair/living-ghosts

"ULTRAVIOLET" is available as an eBook through Amazon Kindle apps and devices; read right now with Kindle Unlimited : https://haikuprajna.blogspot.com/p/ultraviolet.html

Kindle ebooks can be read on any device with a web browser at www.read.amazon.com

These poems will be collected in future editions of the HaikuPrajna Collection.

20221107 - Living Universe [ULTRAVIOLET - Official Trailer and Book Cover Reveal]

...

The brightest of lights, \\ manifesting transcendence, \\ absorbs the cosmos. 

#HAIKUPRAJNA - Living Universe [ULTRAVIOLET - Official Trailer and Book Cover Reveal]

https://haikuprajna.blogspot.com/2022/11/20221107-living-universe-ultraviolet.html

...

Hello readers,

Preview : https://read.amazon.ca/kp/embed?asin=B0BKYQV5C4

Goodreads : https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/63247932-ultraviolet 

Trailer : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOzE_Hl6YQs

ULTRAVIOLET is available as a digital exclusive ebook on Amazon Kindle! Kindle Unlimited subscribers can read right now!

(Images: Excerpts from ULTRAVIOLET by Allen W. McLean)

ULTRAVIOLET is the first in a series of metaphysical science fiction short stories about a superpowered cast living at the end of the 30th century. This story follows Elsa Todd, the Imprint, who can visualize ideas and deconstruct their holographic forms. 

Using her abilities to outline objects, Imprint contacts the cosmic Source, the first person narrator of the book’s third person narrative. 

I was inspired by literature as a medium for the ideas you will read about in ULTRAVIOLET, where I based Imprint’s abilities on how we interact with ideas when we consume, read, write and create.

(Image: Banner for ULTRAVIOLET by Allen W. McLean)

Here is the ebook blurb from the Amazon Kindle store;

" The Imprint tuned to the light of a clear blue sky.

Speaking through the ultraviolet end of the visible spectrum, Imprint told the Source she had hit a roadblock in her project, that the microcosm’s dimension of time was frozen past a specific point.

The Source revealed that her problem was a non-issue, transcending Imprint’s macrocosm, which was a microcosm to the godform.

But Imprint realized that meant the Ultraviolet had claimed her abilities and endeavours as its own.

Desperate to reclaim her work, Imprint attempted to capture and transcend the godform, but only revealed the underlying structure of every cosmos in her effort. "

(Images: ebook cover, title page, logo) 

Original announcement : https://haikuprajna.blogspot.com/2022/10/20221022-ultraviolet-official.html

Invisible lights / reveal the cosmos beyond. / Transcend the structure.

HAIKUPRAJNA - Ultraviolet

Thank you for reading, please share your thoughts.

Allen W. McLean 

...

Need more Bite-sized Insights to relieve your stress and suffering?

Banner: The Cannon by Allen W. McLean

Readers can follow HaikuPrajna and Electric Armchair via our emailing lists (on Medium, Patreon, LinkedIn and more) for mindfulness meditation scifaiku and haiku poetry based on book reviews and on previews of metaphysical stories such as "Escape Perennial City" (available on Kindle Unlimited); https://haikuprajna.blogspot.com/p/follow-on-social-media.html 

As a free gift, all readers get an Amazon Kindle ebook short story every week on Free Fridays and Mondays--selection rotates every few weeks, so follow via email to collect them all! https://www.amazon.ca/Allen-W-McLean/e/B0867C5D24

Thanks to you, over 500 followers have joined us on Medium! If anyone reading this needs followers to stay in the Medium Partner Program, I am asking you to please follow me (and sign up for emails!) and I'll follow you back! My short stories "Ado the Owl" and "Hector Blake" are available to read for FREE on Medium!

Leave a comment with books you would like to see reviewed and I will add them to my Goodreads!!

Always open to reading book recommendations. Looking forward to adding new friends on Goodreads and sharing what we read with each other : www.goodreads.com/author/show/19557396.Allen_W_McLean

April's latest psychedelic music videos, art and poetry available on all streaming platforms; Electric Armchair - Living Ghosts (FULL ALBUM) : distrokid.com/hyperfollow/electricarmchair/living-ghosts

"Tomothy and the Overseer of the Forest" is available as an eBook through Amazon Kindle apps and devices; read right now with Kindle Unlimited! www.haikuprajna.blogspot.com/p/tomothy-and-overseer-of-forest.html

Kindle ebooks can be read on any device through one's web browser at www.read.amazon.com

These poems will be collected in future editions of the HaikuPrajna Collection.

20221105 - The Divine Invasion Book Review Analysis and Summary

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Being asked to die // smuggling unborn saviours, // holy reunions.

#HAIKUPRAJNA - The Divine Invasion Book Review Analysis and Summary

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Hello readers,

The Divine Invasion is a Philip K. Dick book that I have wanted to write a review on for a long time now, and it will discuss spoilers including the identities of characters like Emmanuel and Zina.

The story takes place on Earth and beyond the Solar system, following Emmanuel, an impaired boy who can talk to animals, who meets a girl named Zina, who can possess animals and cease the flow of time.

I really enjoyed how the philosophy of the book was presented; The Divine Invasion is part of the VALIS series which is already heavy with deep theological philosophy, but this book managed to approach the topics closer than ever. Key characters include Elias, the present manifestation of biblical Elijah, who is taking care of Emmanuel, who was spontaneously conceived by his mother Rybys, while the boy’s assumed step-father Herb sleeps after surviving their immigration to Earth.

Also, The Divine Invasion is just brimming with the usual psychedelic themes and reality warping tropes that Philip K Dick’s diverse casts of characters tend to encounter. Conflicts revolved around Emmanuel’s wager over a game that decided the fate of the universe with an interesting spin on the idea of good versus evil, where the literary conflict of man versus nature or god was skewed into being against one’s very concept of self.

The science fiction began to bend into philosophical literature with Emmanuel’s angst over having needed to reach out to Herb in the past to assist in Emmanuel’s own birth, establishing in a satisfying way that Herb was experiencing the events leading to his cryogenesis while Emmanuel’s plot continued to move forward in the present. The political scenes of the book were kept to a minimum plot wise, at least in relation to the author’s other work, and were mixed with the book’s core spiritual themes where both the political church’s Big Noodle AI Bible hologram and the protagonist’s group believe the other’s side was the material manifestation of the Devil.

Yahweh/God as an actual un-metaphorical character in the story intervened in Herb’s life to introduce freedom via the Holy Spirit’s ability to go with one when seized, but not without Emmanuel’s child-like rage over his new believer's previous worshipped form of matter, rather than their spacetime medium or cosmic Source. Invigorated by their theophany, Herb, Rybys and Elias plot against the political church in order to smuggle the unborn saviour to Earth in Philip K. Dick’s take on the messiah’s interplanetary second coming; again, this is one of Phil’s most blatantly thick gnostic and neoplatonic tales based on his real-life exegesis. Characters’ faiths get questioned with problems such as God causing them to become sick, to suffer and to die for the greater good. Deities were displayed as personifications of the different accretional layers which Emmanuel meets as he climbed the hermetic ladder of the cosmos, from lower realm into the upper realm of Intellect with its outline of all the Forms under the ‘Lower Realm’, to undergo “the Hermetic transform” and unify with the gnostic, neoplatonic One or Hermetic Source; quoting the book,

“That which was below, his own brain, the microcosm, had become the macrocosm... I now occupy the entire universe, Emmanuel realized.”

The Divine Invasion presented “the one who brings benefit” as anyone who could overcome and transcend Forms, “when you hear the distant bells...”

Zina helping Emmanuel realize his part in the Trinity revealed far more than was stated by the narrative; Zina was Sophia, the Holy Ghost, the living Torah, Plotinus’s Intellect or Plato’s Idea or Form, which was symbolized as that which guides One back to itself, appearing as a hindrance but in practice was what transcended (or was transcended and thus transcended the One back to itself). Zina was thus the Buddhist’s Mara, who was different than Satan, as Mara was transcended during Satan’s descent; was Emmanuel the Son? Or, better said, was the Son really the messiah? Emmanuel said he was Yahweh, or the Father, but perhaps Emmanuel was the godhead reformed, unknowable and mute? More a neoplatonic sequence, rather than a trinitarian godhead, of Emmanuel, Zina, Belial; which would leave Belial or Satan as the Son. Emmanuel had created Zina who desired to be peaceful with the world rather than wrathful, to bring it flowers instead of destroying Belial and the material world (where all individuals resided, between the Intellectual and the Material) which acted as an example of the godhead working through them all.

The idea was that both real and unreal things were intoxicating, but that the real and sufferable were more important due to their necessity; Emmanuel admitted that the real was objectively worse, as in more evil than the idealistic-and-unreal, but that solidified how the idealistic-and-real was even better. When Emmanuel and Zina agreed to free all from suffering, it all led to releasing Belial, meaning that the material world had to be transcended anyway, meaning the living had to experience death in order to be free at last, stating that even Belial could be transcended. Herb’s entire plot hinged on that point, from him hearing interference from a local mountain deity named Yahweh while in cryogen sleep all the way to Emmanuel and Belial’s reality-altering wager over Herb meeting Linda Fox, his Beside-Helper. Herb agreed that Emmanuel’s vision of the Fox was the superior one, that necessity was the underpinning of reality, that suffering was because it had to be in order for there to be salvation at all.

The Divine Invasion employs good use of references to James Joyce and Finnegans Wake, C.S. Lewis’s religious sci-fi, Zoroastrianism on the guilty being saved by their Beside-helper if they admit that they are guilty, and Hayyim Nahman Bialik on the Torah translated as Law being inadequate compared to the totality of God’s reality or his “highest idea”, “the living soul of the world”, which reformed itself over the ages in the form of dharma and Hermetic philosophers’ stones. The reunion of Emmanuel and Zina, him remembering that they are the same entity, himself as the transcended En Sof and Zina as the female half of the godhead that stayed on Earth was a very intriguing and gripping method of symbolizing the sephiroth of the Tree of Life, with Zina as one half of Emmanuel’s whole, as the lowest of the ten where Emmanuel was the first and highest. 

In the end, Herb’s story was about having to choose between one’s Beside-Helper (the Fox, Zina, beauty, salvation) and one’s “yetzer ha-ru” (Belial, darkness, suffering), between a real gift from God versus the illusive material world. Though, Emmanuel was a blind or impaired god, where the conflict arose solely from forgetting who was the original source, and it was dubious if Emmanuel was even the original source as he himself admitted there was a godhead that he fell from. All life, by this admission, was capable and worthy of transcendent godhood.

Thank you for reading.

Allen W. McLean

PS. Hope everyone had a Happy Halloween! I updated my recent Frankenstein review with some related links, which can be found here; https://haikuprajna.blogspot.com/2022/10/20221020-frankenstein-book-review.html

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