Hello friends,

I have had no luck getting in touch with 10011, the winner of the $50 prize for the answer to Question 1 about the allusion in Ozzie’s name. I thought I had written 10011 on the day the winner was announced, but couldn’t find any record of my email. I emailed 10011 again today, and gave him until Aug. 29 to get in touch, after which I will consider his $50 prize forfeit and make other arrangements with the money. In future, all winning contestants will have to provide me with name and address within 30 days of the announcement of the winner or the prize will be forfeited and the prize money will go to another part of the contest.

(Since writing this blog post, I’m very happy to say that 10011 has replied and provided name and address, so that matter is resolved, to my great pleasure. I really ought to rewrite this entry, but it's near my quitting time so I'll just handle this parenthetically here. Congratulations, 10011. I think it's okay to reveal that 10011 lives  in California.)

I should have thought of the following earlier, but I didn’t: In order to protect myself from some dingbat who might for who knows what reason try to claim that my contest was a sham, I plan to retain a copy of the money orders I will send out, and the real names and addresses of the winners, for six months after the contest closes. After the six months are up, I will destroy this material.

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I have so many odds and sods to deal with that I haven’t started regular work on the contest revision yet. I should get started next week. There will be a two-phase revision. The first phase I hope to be able to do in about a month, and have online by September. The second phase will take longer, but ought to be done by year-end. I am eager to get going, and know exactly where I am going. The first revision concerns clarifying the book’s meaning. The second will concentrate on fleshing out characters, primarily by adding back story. (While writing the novel, I was death on back story, feeling it slowed down the pace. It does, but interesting back story is worth reading too. And at 42,000 pages, the book is just barely long enough to rate as a novel, and I wouldn’t mind adding a few thousand words to it.)

The contest won’t be affected. The questions have been written in advance, and only the answers to questions 5 and 12 might be affected by Revision 1. When this revision appears, I will explain what, if anything, contestants should reread in order to produce the best answer. Chances are Question 5 will be unaffected, but Question 12 will entail some new reading you hadn’t counted on. I’m sorry about this. I find it exciting to be revising a novel shortly after its website launch and in the midst of a contest. I hope you find it somewhat interesting.

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This site’s hit counter has gone on Prozac lately. Twice in the last week, not one hit has registered. I’ve done a lousy job of promoting the site, other than in the print media, where I met with unexpected good fortune. At least nine or ten websites carried a matching item to the printed stories. Bu time passes, and people move on. I hope to do a little site promotion in the next couple of days, but not too much at this point so as not to delay the revision much longer. The places where I plan to try to get in plugs might surprise you. They will not be science fiction sites.

I have read very little science fiction in my life. I don’t know, or care about, the conventions of the genre. I’m not a manufacturer. I’ve greatly enjoyed a few science fiction films, most notably “Blade Runner.” I’ve read one book, “Starship Troopers,” by Robert Heinlein, who I believe has iconic status as a science fiction writer. I hated the book. In contrast, I loved “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” It was top-drawer pulp fiction, a fun, easy read.

I’ve read almost all the works of Kurt Vonnegut. He was terrific. Was he a science fiction writer? Undeniably. But he used science fiction as a launching point into different terrain. Take “Slaughterhouse-5,” which was really about World War II and the controversial 1945 fire-bombing of Dresden, as well us philosophical issues including free will. It was a superb achievement, a powerful anti-war book in its own, idiosyncratic way. It is a book that transcends all labelling.

 “Universes” is a literary novel of ideas. It also happens to be science fiction. Full stop.

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I am old enough to remember Joan Baez when she was a sprat of 19 or so. As I write I’m playing a tape made off vinyl of her earliest record, and next will hear a tape of an early two-record concert recording. She wasn’t thought of as a protest singer then (not that there is anything wrong with protest – especially against that misbegotten monstrosity of evil, the Vietnam War, responsibility for which still drips from the red hands of dead Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon).

 Instead, she dredged up old, forgotten folk tunes from England, Appalachia I suppose, wherever ... at this moment, I’m hearing something fantastic in Spanish. She injected a youthful vitality into them, and a transcendent artistry, now forgotten, largely, I suspect, because the early records were monaural, and mono is dead. Check out Matty Groves, if you can find it. Marvellous stuff.

 Her voice had a timbre, when she was young, that it lost later on. I recall that some college kids my age back then criticized her for being “too pure.” How does that work?

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I lost my job as a part-time copy editor at the London (Ontario) Free Press in October, 2006. I was one of 14 axed in a round of staff-cost cuts. In the 3¾ years that followed, I mostly floundered. I had periods of depression, periods of excessive drinking, made half-hearted efforts to find work (just do have something to do). At one point I underwent electroconvulsive therapy (shock treatment) for major depression. (It worked, but only for a limited time.) At another I attended a local community college in a law clerk diploma program; this was a made-up objective. The schoolwork kept me hopping, and held the depression far at bay, but I really didn’t want to be a law clerk in my late 60s. I also tried being a hobby student at the university based here in London, but that didn’t work out either. All along, it kept nagging at me that I ought to be doing something I really wanted to do – which was trying, for the third time (three strikes and you’re out!) to get my book into print. At present I’m engaged in this process, and I find there’s not enough time in the day. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this good in my adult life. The planned revision – I’m not clear in my own head how this project took hold of me – is an unhoped-for bonus. I think it will make the book a great deal better, while either shrinking its potential readership considerably, or expanding it, I don’t know which. I’ve had a tendency to go into overdrive, and am still being troubled by resultant insomnia, but my improved mood easily compensates for this. Relearning a bit of Bach on an electronic was also part of my new life plan, and it troubles me that so many of my days recently have been so packed that I’ve either shortened my practice session or scrapped it altogether. However, it achieves nothing to find fault with myself; I have a compulsion for self-criticism that is not wholesome. I’m currently seeing a woman with a PhD in social work, and she has me reading a book called “Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life,” by Susan Forward. I would recommend it to anyone who had parents as awful as mine were, or who has doubts on this question. If you are troubled by depression, anxiety, self-hate, as I am, there’s a reason for it, and the reason is you were brought up badly.

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I’ve given up speculating about what’s happened to the Reviews section (other than that it became primarily a blog, which was not the plan). No one’s posted a review since May 30, about two months. If you’re having technical problems posting, or have other thoughts on why the reviewing is down, feel free to write to me, either using “Contact me” on the main page or by writing me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . (Same difference.)

By the way, after I’ve posted this, I’ll email my website designers asking them to set it up so you can respond to blog postings, either on the blog proper or on “Other Writings.” I had thought this had all been arranged.

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It’s been quite warm here, occasionally hot, but I’ve been enjoying the weather so far this summer. Wish I had a place in the country, that connection with nature is so vital to all of us, I feel, that it is a great loss to be distanced from the earth around us by living in cities. Huge forces have subtle and far-reaching effects on our lives, and often there isn’t much we can do about it.

“Follow your bliss” – Joseph Campbell