I was strolling through Wikipedia and found this article about Russian physicist Anatoli Bugorski whose head was briefly exposed to a particle accelerator beam in 1978. He claims to have seen a flash "brighter than a thousand suns". He survived the experience and went on to complete his PhD, but suffered from loss of hearing and paralysis of the left side of his head.

Naturally, this reminded me of Ozzie.

Dear readers,

I have been online for over a decade, but was on dial-up until about 1 ½ years ago. Consequently, my experience with the Internet has been limited. I do not enjoy “surfing,” although I find the Net a terrific tool for research. This website has enlivened my life considerably, although it has also brought me some grief and exasperation.

Prior to now, my deepest engagement with the Internet occurred about a decade ago on two Web forums on a topic of interest to me that I would be prefer to keep to myself, for a period of two to four years, after which both sites died natural deaths. For a time, both were lively, almost invariably cordial, and even friendly as regulars came to recognize one another’s usernames. The managers encouraged healthy and informative discussion. The only time when the cordiality and civility became threatened was briefly when one of the sites permitted political discussions on one of its sub-threads. “Flaming” became intense, as posters spewed vitriol at one another in what ought to have been respectful dialogue.  I recall the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the subject that stirred up the ugliest verbal sparring. The two co-managers wisely banned politics from their site.

So I had been warned. I might comment that in my rich and varied newspaper career, I served for one year as a newspaper’s op-ed page, and was responsible for the letters to the editor. It didn’t take me long to notice how frequently some of the letters were filled with bile. I concluded that anger (righteous outrage, if you prefer) is a stronger motivator than the equally human traits of generosity and the impulses to congratulate or praise.

Quite a while ago, I commented at length, in posts titled “Riley rant, Part 1” and “Riley rant, Part 2” that I felt I was detecting gratuitous malice in some of the negative criticism. I only hoped that I was believed when I insisted, truthfully, that negative criticism is perfectly acceptable on this website, but that I demand that a healthy level of decorum and civility be maintained. I don’t think (I haven’t checked at the time of writing this) that a single review by a site visitor has been entered since my “rant.” [I’ve checked now, and there actually have been three short reviews since the rant – but none in a long time.] I wish you folks would come out of the woodwork – I know you’re out there, from the hit counter and the slow but steady flow of contest registrations – but I’m concerned that I may have intimidated people with my “rant,” though I have no other regrets about posting it. In one instance, I cited a couple of grammatical flaws in one virulent poster’s entry. I assure you that I only permitted myself this luxury because this poster had adopted the guise of some kind of expert, and I will not be in the habit of picking apart people’s writing flaws.

Returning to the topic of what I will call the Internet ethos, which perhaps I am just becoming fully acquainted with for the first time, I would like to share with you five related posts on a discussion thread on the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corp.) website Monday. Whether you are interested in the subject matter or not, I hope you will find the insights to be gained from reading these posts interesting. The first post is by me; the next three are reactions to my post; the last is my final comment. I have edited out portions that are not germane, noting this with ellipses.

+  +  +

1) Peter Riley, July 12, 2:38 p.m.:

“Am I nuts, or what? Or am I, a Canadian with a limited grasp on what the rest of the world calls "football," blind in both eyes without knowing it?

“I thought the World Cup ended in travesty. I thought the player who scored the winning goal was clearly offsides, not by inches, but by feet. Thus, the outcome of the greatest sporing event in the world was decided not by skill, or even luck, but by bad officiating and, more importantly, by a terribly flawed officiating system.

“If I am right, and Sunday's World Cup final was decided by an offiicial -- and officials are human, and humans make mistakes -- there ought to have been a huge controversy and outcry for officiating reform in the afternmath. I checked CBC to see the big story, and found-- nothing.

“I felt the good thing that might come out of this would be the introduction of video replay to FIFA. Video replay works well in North American-style football, and in tennis; there are times when it would be of crucial help in baseball, and, as I believe this event shows, in soccer. But if there's no outcry of protest, why bother to reform?

“I have no axe to grind for the Netherlands. But as an armchair sports fan, I want to see fairness in all sport. Am I a voice crying in the wilderness?”

2) FootballGuru, 2:45:

“PRiley wrote
a Canadian with a limited grasp on what the rest of the world calls "football," blind in both eyes without knowing it?
--------------------------------

“True indeed . . . . . the Spain Goal was categorically NOT offside !!

“stick to curling !!”

3) PaulMadryga, 3:02:

“Peter Riley wrote:

“ ‘I thought the player who scored the winning goal was clearly offsides, not by inches, but by feet.’

“Peter: Iniesta was not offside. The rule re. offside is that the attacking player receiving the pass in the opponent's half of the field must have at least two defenders (usually the keeper and one other player) in between him and the defenders' goal line _when the ball is played to him by a teammate_. He can receive the pass in an offside position, provided he is not in an offside position when the pass is made (The reverse is also true: he may receive the pass while onside, but still be called if he's offside when the ball is kicked to him). Watch the replay again, and take note of where the last Dutch defender is when Fabregas (Spain #10) passes to Iniesta - you'll see that the defender is closer to the Dutch goal line than Iniesta is, and in so doing plays Iniesta onside. Goal stands, Spain wins.

“Re. your point re. video replay: oh, don't we know it, brother...!”

4) eastern_cowboy, 3:05:

“Peter Riley writes:

“ ‘Am I nuts, or what? Or am I, a Canadian with a limited grasp on what the rest of the world calls "football," blind in both eyes without knowing it?"
Yes Peter, you are nuts. The play was not offside. You need to take another look at the replay….”

5) Peter Riley, 4:48:

“Well, perhaps I am not nuts, but ignorant of soccer rules (like a lot of North Americans, regrettably).

“PaullMadryga, thank you for your lucid and courteous explanation. I have not looked up the rules of soccer, but you speak as someone who knows and I will not dispute it. I have looked at the replay a couple of times, and it looked to me that Iniesta was clearly a foot for two onside, according to the rule clarification you provided. I had been under the (apparently mistaken) impression that offsides was determined by the pass receiver's position at the moment he received the pass, and did not realize that in fact, the decisive factor is his position relative to the defenders at the time the pass is made to him. Your explanation clears up my confusion.

 
“However, I stand by my main point: It is essential to bring video replay to more major sports….”

+  +  +

Do you see what I am trying to say with these illustrations? Post 1 is my sincere reaction to the ending of the World Cup final, but it betrays my ignorance about the rules of soccer. Posts 2 and 4 are gratuitously nasty, and not informative or helpful in the least way. These two posts display the maturity level of an emotionally disturbed, anger-driven, testosterone-flooded male adolescent – the type who is drawn to ultra-violent video games, ultimate fighting … perhaps even tough-guy science fiction. Post 3 comes from a mature adult who is constructive, instructive, and free of malice. Another word for this is civility: Which is what I am hoping to foster on this website.

I hope I haven’t exceeded the 10,000-character limit. No, it comes in at 7,876 characters with spaces. The word count is close to 1,400. So the true allowable word count must be close to 1,700 per comment. You could find this helpful if you write your posts on a word-processing program on your hard disc, which I personally prefer because it enables me to write, edit and proofread with comfort and in a font size larger than the minuscule type that appears in the little comment box on this page. I will shrink this to 12-point before posting it.

I am looking forward to Saturday, the conclusion of the first fortnight of the contest. Catch you later.

Barbara also commented that she doubted she would read the novel, in part because she doesn't enjoy reading texts online. Neither do I. Sittin g up in front of my computer to read would seems like anythiing but the pleasurable leisure readiing I get from reading a printed book while  ensconced on my sofa.

I suggested to her that she might consider printing it, which would entail the cost of the paper. But it's not a long book, and I just did a check and found that it comes to 166 pages in the HTML version and 194 pages in the Acrobat version. In the calibre ePub version, it was only 85 pages, even after I bumped up the font size from 12-point to 14-point. It printed in sans-serif type, I printed sample pages and you could read it.  It had no page numbers on the pages, but if you're reading it from the reader you can bookmark it, I believe you use the yellow star icon on the left. I don't know if there's a way to fix font style for printing in calibre or not..

I'd be interested to hear whether you prefer to read  online or from a printout.

Peter

Barbara,

As you know, I encountered you in my email before seeing this here, and have already replied by return email. However, I wanted to acknowledge your kind and friendly message here as well.

And I'm pleased to be known of even a little bit as far away as Brazil. I did get another email from a reader in Istanbul, Turkey. It's amazing what a "crass gimmick'" will do for  you.

Gppd luck with your writing.

Peter

Dear Mr Riley,

I'm from Brazil and came across your site while browsing through a brazilian blog.

I'm not sure you realise how far your iniciative has come (South America!) and so I wanted to let you know that I thought this was very interesting and creative.

Dont be discouraged by that small number of comments. Lots of people come by, read everything and simply don't comment.

I myself am on the process of attempting to write my first book but I don't know if I have what it takes. So far, it's just a story that I enjoy and I still have a loooong way to go.

Anyway, I didn't read your book and I'm not sure I will, to be perfectly honest. I don't enjoy reading on the computer and I was a little discouraged by some comments here. People seem to end up enjoying the book, but they say it's a difficult reading considering your style. I mostly read for pleasure and don't enjoy having to earn the satisfaction by going through a tough writing style. (I'm not sure this made a lot of sense, please take into consideration that English is not my mother tongue) But then again, I'm just a sucker for popular novels, like Twilight and even Harry Potter, although I haven't been a teenager for a long time. So take that into consideration too.

I just wanted to let you know that I hope this works for you and that you get lots of fans after the contest.

Best of luck!

Hello everybody,

My Web host has informed me that its server will go off service for maintenance tomorrow night (Thursday, July 8) beginning about 11 p.m. Eastern time and lasting for about four hours.

I'm sorry for the inconvenience.

Hello again,

It was last Thursday evening that, visiting this Reviews-page-cum-blog, I tried to post for the first time in a week and found a problem with “Image Verification,” which the website designers call the Captcha code. I tried to file the message three times, very, very carefully entering the code each time, in lower-case letters as you are supposed to, and each time my message bounced. I got pretty upset. The timing was bad.

The firm that designed this website, hosts it and handles my problems as they come up, has been excellent in dealing promptly with the start-up glitches, of which there have been several in the first two months since the site was launched. The firm is a two-woman outfit called TheNETNow, and has its office here in London, Ontario. I would recommend it highly.

So, as it was evening, I emailed the woman who is the point-person on these bugs. I got an automated reply that she was off until Tuesday of this week. Thursday was Canada Day, our national holiday, like Independence Day in the United States or Bastille Day in France. So she was taking a long weekend; and at a bad time for me.

Then on Sunday, Question 1 in the contest was supposed to appear. I looked for it everywhere but couldn’t find it. Now I was really concerned. People probably already suspected me of egoism – a charge that is probably not completely unfounded – and they may have had suspicions about the legitimacy of the contest. This could be terrible! Suppose people who had visited the website earlier, some of them downloading and reading the whole novel, and who might have marked the contest’s opening date in their calendars, would not be able now to find the question as had been promised. And if they could (MsClues did, somehow), they wouldn’t be able to see the page where the submitted answers (and later the chosen winners) were supposed to appear. They’d be mad as hops. And they’d go around the Internet to other writing sites and elsewhere, telling of their negative experiences, and generally blackballing me and my site around cyberspace. How could I blame them?

My hands were tied. My main NETNow person for these problems was off until Tuesday, two days after the contest was supposed to open, and I wasn’t sure how proficient the other NETNow  staffer would be at handling such problems, given that I understood her to concentrate mostly on graphics. And I now felt that the site needed, urgently, to add a fifth item to the little submenu that appears on the right of the various contest pages. What would I do if she wasn’t even in today, Monday? Get used to walking around with egg on my face, and my dreams in tatters on the ground?

Well, the night is always darkest before the dawn. The other NETNow lady was in when I phoned this (Monday) morning, and she was glad to deal with the problems as a priority. Image Verification works. Question 1 appears. There’s a new item on the little contest-page submenu, called “Enter Contest,” that takes you straight to the page where the questions, your answers, and ultimately my announcements of the prize winners will appear. In case you missed it – I did – MsClues’s submission opens up when you click a little link under Question 1 called “Comments (1).” If you want to post a submission, log in and fill out the form; and, if you’re not registered, go to “Register to Enter” and register, then check your email and click the indicated link and you’ll be all set to log in and post your answer. So thank you, Heather and Jaclyn. You’re a godsend.

Whew! The last week or two have been a roller-coaster for me. (I admit it, I do tend to get in a tizz.) And the next few weeks will be intense, too, as I go about making the novel revisions mentioned in the post “Novel will be revised,” below. Things are looking up. If you’ve tried posting on Reviews-cum-blog (you can reply to my bloggish posts too; and you can review 2084) and couldn’t get in, I’m sorry, I didn’t know about it (yet).

So in my life, things all of a sudden are looking a whole lot brighter. I have a novel to revise. I love the new direction I’m planning. And after that, I can get down to work my new project, the non-fiction book, about which I’m really excited.

Have a grand day, you-all (my half-brother was raised in the U.S. South). Till next time.

Hi, friends,

My mind has been in an extraordinary ferment in the past week to 10 days. The main results are two:

1.     I’ve decided to write a new book, a non-fiction work. I am very excited about it. And, in a way I’m relieved. In my retirement, I had sorely missed some sense of mission in life, which seemed so empty and pointless. Buying my electronic keyboard last fall (I haven’t touched it now in five or six days), and, to a greater degree, getting this website started into life, were my attempts to ameliorate this void. And they have done so – big-time! – as you will see shortly. I am thrilled. It is great to be a so-called “senior citizen” (I hate the term, which is not only cutely alliterative and seems to a subtly crafted attempt to banish the serious issues of getting old, such as the ever-present threat now of serious illness and the spectre of death, and which strikes me as patronizing), and still to have goals that seem important, if only to yourself. It feels as if you still have some purpose, in the scheme of things, even as nightfall awaits. Further to the non-fiction project: I’ve been advised, and I strongly believe it is sound advice, to avoid all discussion of a work in progress, except as absolutely necessary and only with a select few. Otherwise, you can talk a book to death and lose the sense of urgency to write it. For these reasons, please be advised that any future inquiries about this planned book along the lines of the perennial “What’s it about?” will be politely, but firmly, refused.

2.     For a whole range of reasons, not the least of them being some of your criticisms on this Reviews board, I have decided to revise Universes. For one thing, it will not have a subtitle (I normally don’t like book subtitles, but in this case I can’t resist.) The subtitle will be my old favourite, Carnival Night. Other changes will be relatively minor, and will not require much new reading for those of you who are planning to enter the contest and have already finished the book. I am sorry about this inconvenience to you, but I’m afraid it can’t be helped. The revisions planned at this stage and time are:

a.      A new first paragraph will appear at the beginning of Chapter 1. As planned now, not another other word, or hyphen, or comma in Chapter 1 will be changed in the slightest.

b.     Chapter 63, the novel’s closing chapter, will be completely, or almost completely, rewritten.

c.     A third chapter, Chapter 37, will be partially or extensively revised and rewritten.

d.     Lesser changes will appear in Chapter 35, the preceding chapter in Ozzie’s storyline.

e.      The epilogue will go. Yes, that’s right: Your criticisms, including some of the harsh ones, have not gone totally unheeded after all. So I owe many of you a vote of thanks. And an apology, at least to some of you. So here is it: I’m sincerely sorry. Does this apology go for everyone who knocked the epilogue and made other criticisms; including the “uncivil” posters? Well, I don’t know about that. I believe in being polite. Hey, I’m Canadian, eh? We Canucks are known throughout the world for our customary politeness and civility.

f.       Some other textual changes, all of a minor nature, and none of which any of you would need to see in order to answer contest questions, may be scattered throughout the text. Because these could be scattered throughout the book, and won’t affect the contest in any way, you needn’t worry about scouring through the book all over again to be fully up to speed.

I apologize to all of you, especially those planning on participating in the contest, for asking you to read new material when you may already have felt that you were prepared by having read the whole story that had been posted to this site. But as for the new and revised parts that I have specified, and will at some later time specify just a bit further as noted above, you would be well-advised to read them before answering questions that appear after the revisions have been entered on this website. I don’t think that will be too onerous. Heck, I hope you enjoy it.

There could be one somewhat pesky problem related to the contest. MsClues has already had the (perhaps dubious) honour of posting the inaugural answer to the inaugural question. This site member might be a bit taken aback to learn that the epilogue, on which he/she at least partly based his/her answer, is coming out, and may wish to reconsider his/her entry. I could email MsClues privately (and will, to make sure MsClues gets the news), but I want all of you to know I’m trying my best to be as fair and above-board with all this as possible. The way I plan to deal with this is to accept any further answers MsClues decides to post. Indeed, as far as I know, any and all of you can post as many different replies to the same question as you wish. So, MsClues, please feel free to post additional entries for this question if you wish to do so. If you have any problems posting them, please email me by using “Contact Me” on the home page. I know this solution is less than ideal, particularly because the revised novel is unlikely to appear here until after Question 1 answers are closed. Things happen. I am doing the best I can think of; and, it is only a $50 question. I might try to resolve it by transferring the $50 to a question or questions further on in the contest. Or, I might elect to award the prize to MsClues, or another entrant, based on the view that he or she gave the best available answer based on the online version of the novel at the time. I will mull this over and choose the course I find, in the end, to be best.

I hope to have all the essential revisions to the novel posted on here within the next two or three weeks, but please don’t hold my feet to the fire on that one. I will do my best. The non-fiction project will hang fire until I have taken care of all novel revisions.

While the changes I am planning affect only a relatively small amount of the text, the alterations they will effect on how the whole story reads, and more exactly, on the clarity and meaning of the novel’s thematic message, should be profound. I hope you like them. Some of you will, and I’m sure some of you won’t like them at all. (That’s okay.) You will at least be getting a rare peek inside the doings of a writer in his workshop, which you might find interesting. (It’s interesting as hell to me. I think this will improve the novel immeasurably. Even make it publishable?)

Later today, I’m not sure just when, I will post a message about problems with putting up messages on this Reviews board. Meanwhile, I have to edit and proofread this message and make sure it appears when I try to post it; and then, after a much-needed Super Mario Bros. break, I have to wash up (I’m a bit of a late starter now in my dotage), email MsClues, and prepare the message about the Reviews posting problems. As well as some other chores, including “doing the washing up,” as the Brits say (we call it “doing the dishes”), and maybe giving my keyboard back a few neglected minutes.

I apologize to all of you who have been inconvenienced, if only slightly, by my sudden and, even to me, totally unexpected change in plans. I do hope you keep coming back, posting reviews or emailing me privately if you prefer, and have fun!

Hi there,

I saw a movie about the late Canadian pianist Glenn Gould on Monday evening, and meant to post thoughts related to it Tuesday, but I have been up to my keester in crocodiles lately, mostly with book-related matters, including the YouWriteOn website in Britain that a visitor here was kind enough to put me on to. This is a place for aspiring writers to submit samples of their novels (as well as whole short stories), read and review the samples of others, and receive reviews about their own work from other aspirants. It is very time-consuming, particularly with my penchant for writing long reviews.

I was so busy last week with all these matters that I overstressed on two days, and had to take a day of relative ease to pace myself. An interesting benefit of being so busy, for me, is that I am very prone to depression, including major, or clinical, depression, and staying active is a boon for me in improving my spirits and keeping the mood disorder at bay. A downside to my cheerier state of mind, however, is that it tends to bring on insomnia. When I’m depressed, and wake up after eight hours of sleep, which is about what I need, I am so repelled at the thought of re-entering wakeful reality that I force myself back to sleep and its blind oblivion. So, I am very tired just now, and hope I’m able to write a missive to you all that makes some kind of sense, but we’ll have to see.

Gould was born in 1932, and died of a stroke in 1982. The film, Glenn Gould: Hereafter, was a documentary with a distinctive approach. It was excellent. It was shown on Bravo, an arts network that as far as I know is seen only in Canada. It least, it’s supposed to be an arts network. In the early years of its existence, not long after it was licensed to broadcast, it stayed true to its mandate, but since then it seems to me to be degenerating toward mainstream pap, and rather seldom carries films of high quality, for selective tastes, as it formerly did fairly often.

The movie related that Gould’s first major public concert occurred when he was 14 years old and performed Beethoven’s 4th Piano Concerto with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. A major Canadian newspaper – I believe it was the Toronto Globe & Mail – printed a review that concluded by saying, “Who does he think he is, [a name I couldn’t make out]?” The film said that in his first several years as a performance artist (he later switched exclusively to making recordings), he was almost universally panned. This was not a propitious beginning.

Gould had the last word, however, even in death. He is widely regarded today, I believe, as one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century, and almost surely as the greatest interpreter of the keyboard works of J.S. Bach since recorded music began.

Gould was an extraordinary, fascinating figure. He was eccentric in the extreme. I mean, way extreme. He always wore a coat, gloves and hat outdoors, even in summer, didn’t like to be touched, and was petrified of catching germs from people. He stayed up all night until about 6 a.m. Excerpts of some of his interviews were in the broadcast, and his styles of speech and thinking were so convoluted, bizarre and, as it were, from outer space (or actually his own inner space), that I often had great difficulty trying to make out what he was trying to say. There has been speculation that he was mildly autistic, and seeing the interview fragments, I could see some justification for the speculation.

Gould was obdurate. There are scenes and anecdotes in the film in which Gould was pressed to perform more conventionally, as in “for Hollywood,” and in one instance he was asked, as I recall, to put his gloves on the piano for a photograph. His answer was always the same: “No ... no ... no.” He was a man who clung, throughout life, to his vision, to his art, with the stubbornness of a pit bull.

I could see a few parallels between Gould and myself in this cinematic character study, and in an odd way this was reassuring. Like Gould in his debut years, I have been receiving a good measure of panning over my novel, both here and on YouWriteOn. Like Gould, I am obdurate. I have my own vision, and I stand by it with equal obduracy. The criticism is like ocean water dashing ineffectually against the rocks of my unshakeable belief in myself as a writer. It was a long time before people, including critics, began to grasp Gould’s artistic vision, but at last they did. My own vision is so unusual, and follows such a convoluted course in the unfolding of the novel, that people may never get it. That will have to be okay. I will not change.

And so, when people say that a part of my novel is “pathetic”; or that I need to get involved in a group of other aspiring writers to get their feedback in order to assist me in rewriting and revising my book; or that because of its opening, it would never make it out of the “slushpile”; or that at 65, I could well live another 30 years and who knows? after four or five more books I might actually write one that was good: The answer that rings resoundingly from my inner being is “No ... no ... no.”

In likening myself to Gould, I should make clear that while  Gould was a genius, I know I am not, and do not in any sense approach the stature of a literary Mozart, or a Shakespeare, or a Samuel Beckett, or a James Joyce (whose writings I can’t even understand). And while I’m eccentric, I’m not nearly as eccentric as Gould was. You may think I’m an egoist, but I really don’t think that is it. I think I am simply an artist, and believe in myself as such.

Perhaps it is interesting that when I started writing Universes, I did not feel that I or any contemporary writer was an artist – but rather a craftsman. As I got deeply into the writing, my opinion changed. There was such a mystical interplay of chemistries of the head with heart – or of the intellectual, left-brain, well-read, grammar-perfect mind, with the soft, emotional, right-brain, subconscious part (in Freudian terms), or the Muse (as it was termed in ancient days) – that it had to be art. It was as mysterious, and came from somewhere or something outside of the reach of my everyday waking life, that it just had to be cut of the same cloth as Chopin’s most extravagant, unbearably poignant elegancies, or Omar Khayyam’s profounder quatrains (as translated by Edward Fitzgerald). I don’t mean to say that I am as good as these people were, but I toil in the same shop. As I wrote, I was doing what my innermost being most needed to do – what Joseph Campbell, the late, great American scholar on comparative mythologies, termed “following your bliss.” It was extremely hard and intense work, but it was the most fully alive, at times exhilarating, at other times devastating, period in my life.

And I hope that those of you who are aspiring writers like me are following your bliss as well – and getting good advice from people of genuine expertise, as I did, but at the end of the day, still marching to your own drummer.

I am near the end of my word-length limit, so I will break off, but I will close with a brief, unrelated note:

+  +  +

My latest YouWriteOn review of my sample, which typicallymisunderstood and misconstrued practically everything I had written, offered an interesting comment. She said that Ozzie had Asperger’s Syndrome. I had never heard of this, so I googled it. It’s an interesting interpretation. What do you think?

Hi,

That darn Captcha code, the little box at the bottom of your messages here and on the “Contact me” page, has been exasperating since Day 1. I tried to post here yesterday, and was unable to because the code always bounced. I emailed my web page design firm, and the lady in charge of these matters sent me the following reply (in part):

“The captcha now only uses ‘a, b, c, d, e, f.’

“I've been testing it and it appears to work fine.  If you wanted to test it
today please do.  I guess I will have to shut it off if it is any further
issue.”

I haven’t tried posting since yesterday’s problems, so you won’t know if this page is still not working unless you do not see the three messages I plan to put up today, meaning that you wouldn’t know anything one way or t’other – which has the ring of Lewis Carroll’s upside-down logic. Anyhow, I do hope this goes up okay now, and I do encourage people to try again to make any contributions they may have attempted to put up previously only to be frustrated the way I have.

I am really sorry for this. I did deal with it as soon as I learned about it, and I think the whole mess has to be put down to the growing pains of a new website.

I also asked my designer to remove Captcha completely from the “Contact me” page, which hasn’t happened yet as of this writing, and am quite willing to have it removed from this page as well. For some reason (I think because I’m designated as an “administrator,” and already “logged in,” I’m unable to check out any issues there may be with contest registration. If you’ve had any difficulties with that, please let me know, either by email at peter_riley@universes.ca, or on this board. I’ve been so frustrated about the absence of reviews and other comments on this page, only to find out now that it was only because of my own laziness about posting myself that I discovered the problem so belatedly. I do apologize to any of you who may have been inconvenienced.

Peter

Hi. I had an interesting question from a reader in the form of an email I received this morning. I thought I should share my reply, to assist others who need some clarification.

“Thanks for your your email and question. The answer is that you can pick and choose any question to answer or not answer. But once you've won one time, you're no longer eligible to win prizes for the questions that will appear later. (If you answer but do not win on an earlier question or questions, you're still eligible to win prizes on questions that will come later.) There is no requirement for a contestant to answer all of the questions.

“One point is that the questions will not appear until the scheduled date for them, after the winner on the previous question has been announced, so no one will ever be able to decide in advance which question they wish to aim for.

“Since the prize money gradually increases from $50 at first to $1,000 for the final one, people might be tempted to hold off for the last question, or for some of the other high-money ones toward the end of the contest, but there are some dilemmas for you to ponder:

“1) The questions get increasingly harder as the contest proceeds. So you might hold off for late in the contest hoping to win a bigger prize, but toward the end of the contest, you will have to contend with questions that I have attempted to make extremely hard and challenging.

“2) There's a good chance you'll face a lot of competition from others who are aiming for the bigger prizes.

“3) I deliberately wrote parts of the novel in ways to make things rather fuzzy, in order to challenge to the reader to discern through  intelligence and imagination what my actual intention was.

“4) As the contest rules state, if I get multiple answers of equal merit and accuracy, all of which are close enough to being right to be win, and all of which are equally good (in the the opinion of the contest judge, who is me), I will pick a name out of a hat, or draw playing cards or throw dice, or use some other purely chance method, by which I will get only one winner. I'll probably acknowledge the others who were equally right, but they won't get any money. This is darned arbitrary, but I'd rather do it this way than divide up prize money among two or three or four or more contestants.

“5) The last time a checked a week or so ago, about 100 people had registered for the contest, so, as noted above, the competition might be quite fierce, especially in the closing weeks of the contest. And there could be a rush of more people who register on the eve of the contest opening, or even after it begins.

“So, it's all up to you ….

“Thanks very much for your question, it was a good one and I plan to post the answer on the Reviews section.”

That’s the end of my reply. Any and all of you, please send me an email (peter_riley@universes.ca) or post here if you have any unanswered questions about the contest.

Hi folks,

[Please forgive me but I can’t take time right now to revise this post, which I wrote yesterday, to reflect problems at this website’s end, which I only learned about today, that probably account for the silence lately on Reviews. Please see my entry on the Captcha code above.]

This board has been quiet enough recently that I’ve already mentioned my frustration a couple of times. I have a couple of reasons why I’d like to see more activity: a) I understand that more active sites climb higher in Google searches; b) the book and the site itself mean a helluva lot to me and I’d like to get more feedback, even if it’s just chatter unrelated to the writing. I still don’t know if I will convert this thread into a reviews-cum-blog place, but this message is in the nature of a blog post, and there are likely to be some more, occasionally. (We’ll see.)

I’ve invested quite a lot of money in this site, and a huge amount writing the novel. The site design cost me more than $1,000, and the $3,000 in U.S. funds of prize money is for real. I, Julian Peter Riley of London, Ontario, Canada, guarantee it, so if I announce somebody’s won a certain prize and a money order is not delivered to you in due course – after you’ve contacted me to see if there’s been a mail mix-up – you can sue me, and also spread the news on the Internet. I mean this. (There may be cases where no answer is adjudged correct, and I will bump its prize money onto another question or questions.)

The amount it cost me to write the novel is astronomical, and hard to pin down, but I would estimate it at between $250,000 and $500,000. Back in ’86 when I started the book, I had been employed as an op-ed page editor and I always worked very intensely. As a result, I didn’t feel I could write my novel and work at the same time. I was too tired to write when I got home, and also I’m one of those types who take the job home with them. Some people start writing in their spare time from work, and all I can say is, “Good for them.” I’m certain I was right about myself. I did some serious thinking about it before I resigned my job, because being jobless and 41 is no joke. Fortunately I had enough money saved up to work for about two years without touching my RRSP, which is Canada’s version of IRA: a way to save money that is kept tax-free as long as it remains untapped, and is intended by government to help people put aside funds for retirement. I worked for two years and wrote a very crummy first draft, of which only a few portions of Chapter 1, and some of the plot elements and characters, survived to the final version.

I returned to work in ’88 – and there is a related incident I’d like to relate. When I walked into the corner office to talk to the big newsroom boss, with 30 or 40 journalists at work at their computer terminals, a round of applause rose up. This pleased me a lot; I knew it was partly facetious, but it was well-intended at the same time. I went back to work for 5 ½ years, then quit again to go back to writing. I finished the novel five years later, in 1999, though I achieved little during the winter months because I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD, wintertime depression). I was unemployed for two more years before finding a good part-time job here in London eight years ago.

So in total, I was without work for nine years while writing, or due to having written, this book. I took no unemployment money or other government assistance, and burned up a great deal of savings – at least $150,000, certainly, but I’m not sure exactly what it all came to. (I live somewhat abstemiously.) I had to spend the greater part of my RRSP retirement stash.

At the same time I was exhausting my savings, I otherwise would have been working, and at retirement would have received a hefty pension from my employer. I now get $100 a month in pension from the London Free Press plan. Besides the expended savings, as a single money-earner with a very decent salary, and a saver, I would have amassed a lot of money into both RRSP and non-registered savings. I could probably at this stage readily afford a house, which I would not now consider doing. My car is a 2005 Honda Civic that pleases me very much. I’m okay financially for now, both because at 65 I’m getting government old-age assistance from both Canada and the United States, and because I came into a nice but not lavish amount of inheritance money (which I had never counted on). I have to go into my private savings monthly to meet my needs, and it’s not really a joke to say that I won’t have serious money worries so long as I die soon enough.

This was all quite a lot of sacrifice to make just to write a book that no publisher or agent would wipe his backside on, not to mention the writing process itself, which not infrequently was an ordeal.

So why did I do it? The nasty truth is that I felt pretty lousy about my life, and worse about myself as a human being, and felt the only way I could keep from looking back on my life from my deathbed was if I wrote the novel that I believed was in me. I have done so. But to me, a book nobody reads doesn’t mean any more than a gold retirement ring. I know a lot of people dislike the book. That’s fine. I think the negative criticism arises because: a) this book definitely is not for everyone; and b) it’s a tough read. My belief in my novel is even stronger than my disbelief in myself.  In the now rather unlikely event that I ever do catch the interest of a legitimate publishing house, I will be prepared to fight tooth and nail, with the editor assigned to it, over virtually every goddamned comma.

A couple of other things:

Because I’m already designated as “logged in,” I’m unable to see if the contest registration routine requires people to give their real name, and with my lousy memory I can’t remember what it’s like. I do need the correct email address, because that’s the only way I’ll have to contact contest prize winners securely. But I really don’t care if you use your real name or a username to register, you’ll provide your real name quickly enough if I need it to make out a money order for you.

Some of you may be under the misapprehension that you can’t post in this reviews section except under your real name. Not so. You can make up any username, and all you have to do is put in a name, a message title and your message, and fill out the Captcha code box at the bottom. Naturally, if someone starts pitching child porn, or goes over the top in other ways, I’ll delete the post at once. You’d want me to.

I’ve been a “lurker” on websites at times – someone who reads the messages but doesn’t post anything, even if he or she has something worthwhile to say. It’s funny, you can be too timid to do so even when you’re using a fake name. [But please go ahead, now that you can; I’d be grateful.]

Site activity has slowed down recently, since the earlier days when it was getting some nice free publicity in print media and on the Internet. But there have been only about two dozen hits to this site in the last six days. They’ll be back for the contest, I hope.

Cheers.

Peter

Hi folks,

Deafening silence from you lately. I hope you’re not put off by my “rant,” I was pretty emotional when I wrote it and had doubts whether I should post it or not, but just had to, I was so upset. For Pete’s sake, criticize away, just keep it civil and not malicious in tone, that’s all I ask.

Some while ago, a contributor here who gave the name Jarmara Falconer suggested I check out a U.K. writing site called YouWriteOn. They really seem to be mainly in the business of trying to get writers to self-publish, but the site is well-designed and interesting. You can post a short story of 3,000 to 5,000 words, or a sample of a novel from 5,000 to 7,000 words. I gave them near the max, to midway through Chapter 8.

Next, you have to read and review eight samples from other site users, getting a credit for each submitted review. For each credit, another user reviews your sample, and you get to read the written portion of the review. There is as well a rating system with which the reviewers rank your writing in eight different categories on a scale from 1 to 5, with 1 being lousy and 5 being excellent. You don’t get to see the numbers, though, and I suspect they are used to draw up a monthly top 10 list, which is then supposedly read and assessed by some professional British book editors, and I guess they pick a winner or something.

Anyway, I’m into this process pretty deeply and am enjoying it, without much expectation. I thought I’d place here the only two reviews I’ve received, unedited, in the order I received them. The first review has some minor spoilers for the early part of the novel, nothing crucial.

Review 1 follows:

I can't quite make my mind up on this. It's all perfectly good scifi/alt reality, but two things slightly nag at me.

Firstly is the tone. It's flat, one paced. Whether you are describing their sexual neuroses or the Big Bang, your sentences are abrupt and syncopated - examples below. Such a clipped rhythm might suit noir style, but here where you are offering alternate realities and high physics, I think the rhythm needs to be more expansive. If you really wanted to take a chance, you could be quantum, intermixing sentences that are particles (short, clipped, maybe cut short even) and waves, (meandering, layered, textured).

here are examples of what I mean by clipped syncopation:

"Death unreal, impossible" - I don't care that there's no verb in this sentence, but like a lot of them, it reads like reportage not literature. A voiceover to a news item on TV.

“Yes ma’am,” pimply boy fifteen, very tall"

“I’m sorry,” Lucy said, voice weak in her ears, babyish, unreal; then the gusher"

"Skin smooth like mushrooms — white, no pink in it. Rubbed thumb and fingers, good smooth texture. Fingernails that didn’t shine, blunt, dried putty. Knuckles bent but were unlined. No creases on the palm, no veins on the back. The fingers slimmer, the hand too. Like a new-made thing." Read it back aloud and see what you think. There's almost no invitation to the reader to be involved in this. It's reported as matter of fact. Like a death notice in a newspaper.

You can write good metaphors and images - "penis and scrotum dark like woodland fungus" I just think with alternate realities, when you are looking to both keep the reader off balance and yet establish the strange new reality, metaphor is absolutely key for guiding us in.

I do hope the Lucy stuff isn't going to end up as a version of that awful Swayze film "Ghost" where he comes back and haunts her.

Are there further stops on different realities for Ozzie or does it all take place in cannibal land? If the latter, that seems rather random and again I hope it doesn't descend into "I am Legend" or "The Road" territory. You see my problem here, I just can't tell where this is all heading. If the book mainly takes place among the cannibals, then all this opening as a set up seems as i say random and not really embedded with the cannibal stuff. But since I don't have the rest, I just can't judge. i suppose I'm outlining my concerns about the direction which may be completely unfounded as the book goes in a wholly different direction,

I also want to know if the physics stuff at the beginning is going to be revisited elsewhere in the novel, as your treatment of big and complex ideas here is a bit perfunctory. Again, it could do with metaphoricalising up - what is string theory itself other than a rather beautiful metaphor for some abstruse maths to allow the layman the slenderest of chances to even grasp its ineffable complexity?

So there's a lot to ponder here, which is why i found it hard to come down one side or the other with a definite verdict. I erred on all 3's and 4's, because I can see the potential.

Now review 2:

A very enjoyable read, very individual, delightfully eccentric with a sense of humour that brings to mind Pratchett or something pythonesque, but still retaining it's own unique style.
The description of Ozzie towards the begining is inspired and reminds me of a person I once houseshared with. It conjours up the image of the computer nerd - turned albino from long hours spent closeted in the dark with 'the machine' and denied access to the warming rays of the sun.
The characters are so beautifully believable and must surely cause a moment (or two) of thoughtful introspection to anyone.
Environment and settings are captured beautiful and without over worked verbousity; the description that stuck with me was of the 'grotesqueries of the wild west'...
More please.[Review ends.]

This site got off to a nice start with something of a surge due to free publicity including a piece in the Manchester Guardian and some Internet buzz, I have no idea how much, but I do know of one site that had an item on it. The contest is what made it newsworthy. In six weeks it’s had 700 hits, which is good, I think. About 100 people are registered. But the hit counter and new registrations have been slowing down, and I’m trying to spend some time every day promoting the website on other sites. It’s painstaking and slow work, but maybe will pay off. If anyone has any good tips on how to do such a project, please pass them on. My email address is peter_riley@universes.ca.

Do please let me know somebody’s out there. I think the Captcha code problems have been solved by my  website designer:

1. If you type in the code wrong, your message no longer disappears.

2. The code will now always be ozzie1.

This ought to help.

Hello. This section has been quiet for a while so I thought I would put a few thoughts of my own on here.

I’m quite pleased in general with how the site is going. It’s been up five weeks and has more than 600 hits, which I suppose is pretty good, especially for an unknown writer. I’d like it to be busier, and I had planned to try to promote it further by posting mention of it on existing websites, but I have shrunk from the task. I’m a pretty shy guy, unhealthily isolated in personal life, and these are not good attributes if you’re trying to sell yourself or your creation. It pleases me that some people are reading it, and I hope more of you are enjoying it than I hear from. But my real Grail has always been, and remains, getting it published legitimately in print.

It’s an unusual book, and while outwardly I think it’s pretty easy reading, a number of matters remain hazy (life’s like that), so the reader has to do a lot of thinking to keep up with things – and might misread things anyhow, I’m learning. With the contest looming less than a month from now, I can’t clarify things that I’d probably be happy, otherwise, to go into at some length.

The novel is undeniably science fiction, and I used “science fiction” among the search terms when the site went up. But my heart isn’t in science fiction, and this novel most likely does not conform to the norms of the genre, with which I have limited familiarity. I’d like to flatter myself that it is a bit more literary. I like Kurt Vonnegut’s books, almost all of which I’ve read. Vonnegut’s novels also are undeniably science fiction (I think he was a fan), but he uses the form as a jumping-off point to get to other issues. I think I do this also, but my issues differ from Vonnegut’s.

I’d like to say a little about the cover picture for Universes. You’ve probably seen that it’s taken from “A Carnival Evening” by the great French primitive artist Henri Rousseau. (The cover on this site was cut to fit the allotted space, but not too savagely. I think all that’s missing is a large portion of sky at the top, including the top branches of the trees and a good deal of sky, with the full moon at the upper right. It’s a wonderful picture, you might want to google it and see what it’s supposed to look like. It wasn’t squeezed or tampered with for this site, apart from the cutting.)

It was probably around 1997 that I happened to look through a book of Rousseau’s paintings and was captivated by this one. I looked at the picture’s title, “A Carnival Evening,” and it occurred to me that if you modified it to “Carnival Night,” it would make a great title for a book. Then I thought, Whoa, I know someone who’s writing a book – but I had misgiving as to whether my book was worthy of such a great title. Then I thought, “Well, make it worthy of the title.” So to me, the title of this story will always be Carnival Night. (I even inserted a passage at this stage of writing to justify the title.) But I changed the title to Universes last year because I had tried peddling it under Carnival Night and had failed. (This universal rejection is unbelievably frustrating.) I think Universes is a suitable title, and I hope it’s a more marketable one, but I like Carnival Night better.

The painting evokes in me a sense of mystery, wonder, awe. It is also dark. It surprised me, as I was writing the novel, when I noticed how many of the scenes in it occur at night, in darkness. That probably reflects the darkness within me (I like noir crime fiction, for instance). Some of you probably share some of that darkness – it’s not a sin – and will find it easier to relate to the story and its scenes. I have no doubt there are many who could never relate to this book in any way, and that’s all right too.

I asked earler if users would  like to have the contest format changed, and invited people to let me know their opinions by Monday. Since I haven't received any feedback, I'l stay with the original format.

Bob Spencer, thank you for your reply.

Rebelhell, I’m tremendously gratified that you seem to have enjoyed the story in spite of some reservations. Above anything else, I wanted the novel to be an entertaining read. As for your observations on my unusual, if not downright quirky writing style, I think you are right on the money.

And please don’t excuse yourself for not being a writer. I think this may have helped enable you to meet the book on its own terms. I sometimes wonder if some of the negative criticism appearing here comes from writers who are bothered, or even angered, because the story isn’t written the way they would have written it. But I ought to acknowledge that I have long felt this was the kind of book people would either like or hate.

Two or three people have commented on the epilogue. Is it the entire epilogue that is bothering you, or just the last half of it which goes beyond the scope of the story and its characters?

I finished rereading Berlin Diary some time ago, and am now reading “This is Berlin”,  a compilation of William L. Shirer’s radio broadcasts from Germany 1938-40. At the same time (often I read two books at the same time, skipping back and forth between them), I’ve almost reached the end of Helpless by Barbara Gowdy. I’m not well-versed in Canadian literature, but of those Canadian novelists I’ve read, Gowdy is my favourite. The book is disturbing and powerful.

While I don't think the epilogue was worthless, I think much of it could have been left out.  Let the reader come to there own conclusions.

I read the whole thing, though I think it was a tough read because of your style. 

I still don't understand your addition of the epilogue. It was not that is was a downer so much as it was pointless.  

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I have just finished the story and to be honest I am not sure what to think.The writing style was unique and while difficult to follow at times was well done. I say difficult to follow because of the way the author puts you inside the mind of the characters during traumatic experiences. It seemed at first to be just written badly but is now obvious that the author wanted us to feel the same mixed up thoughts of the characters as they jump from one emotion to another. I think it turned out well. As far as the story goes it definitely keeps you on the edge of your seat. I was constantly wondering what was going to happen next. I have to agree with the previous post about Ozzie. I would have like to have had more insight into who he was before he died and maybe a more objective look at his “afterlife”, however seeing it from his point of view was surreal. I do have to say it was fun to read and it did a great job at making me think. I am sure you can tell by my laundry list of grammatical errors in this post that I am NOT an author so take my review with a grain of salt. All in all I would have no trouble recommending this to a friend who wanted to read something completely different.

Bob Spencer: I will delete your message on Monday if you have not by that time revealed how much of the book you have read, as required in the guidelines above.

Hereafter I will not give a warning in advance but will delete messages that violate those guidelines immediately.

Before you start writing about string theory and extra dimesions you readers probably would appreciate you actually understanding it and using it. Take a look at this awesome video http://www.tenthdimension.com/medialinks.php

Its not about shadow worlds its about infinity. Infinite realities with infinite possibilities. Which is really neat idea (I'm still skeptic)

This seems to be a book that tries to make the reader question, but at this point in its revision it makes the reader confused.

I liked the whale the most, but I wish I understood Ozzy more and not just observed his suffering.

Continue writing because it is an art that takes alot of practice. If you want to see a crappy book gone good you should look at Orson Scott Cards first version of Ender's Game and see what a beautiful piece of literature it turned into.

Good luck with your book, but also try www.youwriteon.com for feedback from other writers. I found it to be very helpful

A reader in Istanbul, Turkey, kindly tells me that an item on this website appeared in one of his country’s newspapers. He sent me a link, but I couldn’t read the language. He also mentioned that it had been in the Manchester Guardian. I found that item and append it here in case anyone’s interested. This story appears to be a “scalp,” newspaperese for a slightly rewritten version of a story published elsewhere. This story, published in the Guardian March 21, is mostly a scalp of an item that was in the London (Canada) Free Press on March 15, though it does include some new material picked up from this site. The Guardian story follows:

Desperate science fiction author offers cash for readers

By Alison Flood

The cut-throat world of publishing has forced a science fiction writer to take the drastic step of offering people a cash incentive to read his novel.

Peter Riley, a former journalist on Canadian newspapers, finished his novel Universes in 1999 but failed to land a publishing contract for the book, which tells the story of a string theory physicist who, when he dies, ends up in an alternate universe populated by cannibals. His wife, Lucy, thinks he has been murdered.

Riley decided to post the novel online for free earlier this month, giving those who read it the chance to win a chunk of a $3,000 prize money pot if they answer questions about the book correctly.

"I'm hoping that publishing the book online and pretty well paying people to read it will get it noticed on the internet, and ultimately discovered by a legit publisher," said Riley on his website. "Crass gimmick? You bet. But if it works, I won't look back.

"I'm 65 god-damned years old, this novel means more to me than anything in the world, and I'm desperate to get it published while I'm still alive. I know this may sound odd, but I feel western society needs this book. It's a contribution I feel I must make."

The competition begins in July

By May 31, could those of you interested in participating in the contest let your feelings be known on the contest format?

It has been suggested that with the currrent design, people wouldn't submit answers until the last question,  because it's worth the most money.

I think it would be okay to change the format, but would prefer not to do it without learning what people think. So, if  you're interested, could you let me know by putting a message on here, or by using the "Contact me" link on the home page, or by emailing me at peter_riley@universes.ca? Thanks. (So far, no one has done this.)

One possibility would be to cut it to three questions, each with a $1,000 prize.

Thanks for your interesting observations, Redjak. I think one of the problems with the book's readability is that Ozzie is not much of a sympathetic character, as you note.

Along with some other readers, you are reading quite a lot of things into the story that are not intended. I suppose I can blame myself for that, because I tried to write in such a way as to challenge the reader to figure out what was actually going on.

I'm glad you read the whole novel, and I'm sorry you didn't enjoy it. It certainly is not for everyone's taste.

SPOILERS FOLLOW!

I won't try to sound like anything more than an avid reader. I do dally with writing and so of course the open publishing concept of Universes appealed to me. Unfortunately this book just wasn't for me. I know reality is seldom cathartic, but this is why I enjoy indulging myself in fiction as an escape.

To me Universes felt like a treatise on the afterlife. Not being a physicist in even the loosest sense of the term I found myself wondering how the accident ties with string theory and Ozzie's experience afterwards. I would have liked to see Ozzie's scientific rationale for his experience. It's all well and good that there is some indescribable bond bwtween him and Lucy, but I would have enjoyed it more if it all tied together more. Maybe it's an unfair, but with the finale of Lost so recent, I can't help but draw comparisons between the alternate realities coexisitng along the same timeline.

The story evoked in me the feeling of watching The Fountain. I don't know that it was the style of wriing or the experience Ozzie undergoes as he travels through space. Either way I couldn't help recalling Hugh Jackmans Character floating though space eating tree bark and meditating in the Lotus position. Perhaps a little of both since the switching back and forth between perspectives made me feel a little disjointed.

I didn't feel I got to know Ozzie that well and had a difficult time identifying with his character. It wasn't that I didn't care what happened to him but by the time I get to know him I hadn't really invested any emotion into the charater. I would have enjoyed more exploration of the barren world and the interactions there. The ending makes me wonder if it's the same place that Lucy and Ozzie return to and if so why do they return in this new state? To me it almost seemed like the ultimate message is that Ozzie was forced to roam until he was completed by joining with Lucy and it was this that allowed them to transcend. The epilogue also leads me to conjecture if the barren planet is just the earth after these nuclear wars and the strange regenerative tissue the beings have on the barren world is a mutation. A stretch I know but for me the epilogue feels unecessary without that connection I'm looking for.

I will enjoy reading the questions that are to come, and perhaps they will help expand the story for me.

Dear readers:

Please note that this is the second part of a long post. To read it in correct sequence, please read "Riley rant, Part 1," before returning to this.

Give “Allen Tipper” credit for at least reading the book (although I’m baffled why anyone would read a whole book he detested so much), and his arguments were more or less well-reasoned, if less than incisive, even if I disagreed with them, as I did. His grammatical error in his first sentence and split infinitive in his second do not speak terribly highly of his own writing skills. His use of the word “pathetic” to describe the epilogue is a giveaway of the malice that percolated beneath the surface of his entire entry. He appears to have written under a goad of anger.

As well, I would be interested to know if expressions such as “In my opinion,” and “I think,” have been expunged from the English language. For instance, EL writes: “From an editor's and agents point of view, the opening paragraph would not have made it past the slush pile-it would've been better to start straight away with your protagonist inside the Superstring Conductor.” Okay, that’s EL’s opinion, but who is he or she to speak with such lofty omniscience? We are told EL is “in truth . . . a published writer.” So is Danielle Steel. Add a little qualification, and the remarks would be acceptable.

Just tone it down, folks. Write with an air of civility. Don’t give unsolicited advice, which is worth the money I didn’t pay for it. Try to be clearer in making your points, please.

A footnote: Please feel free to review 2084, the novelette, on this section.

Well, that feels better. I will now take a half hour to cool off playing a computer game. Then I’ll return to this and edit it, but I hope I don’t pull its teeth. Now I’ll plunk it in the pond and see what results.

And please share your thoughts on the format of the contest.

 Save me from myself. I am about to write one of those wrathful screeds that people write and on reflection do not mail. Knowing me, though, I will probably post this.

First some housekeeping. I think it was yesterday that I got an email about the contest from a user who wrote: “Just out of curiosity, what is the motivation for people to answer anything BUT the $1000 question when they can only win once? If I read your book, I won't want to attempt to answer anything but, out of fear I'll win some lesser prize and be disqualified from winning again.”

I replied that he had a good point, and answered somewhat lamely that I had designed it to get the most bang for my limited bucks. I said I couldn’t change it now, though, having announced the contest rules. Now I’m having second thoughts.

There are at present 20 or 30 registered users – numbers vary, probably due to some lingering software problem. It’s not a large number, and if you favour it, I will change the rules before the contest begins. How about $3,000 spread over three or four questions? Please give me your thoughts, here or by emailing me. Please do so before the end of the month of May. My email address is peter_riley@universes.ca.

I have had problems, and some of you have had problems, filing here. I’ve emailed my website designer asking her to simplify matters if possible, preferably by getting rid of the “image verification,” sometimes called “Capcha,” that appears at the bottom of the form on this page and with “Contact me” on the main page, and probably on the contest registry form. However, if eliminating the exasperating thing would lead to a lot of spam, or endanger site security, we’ll have to live with it, unless she can install an easier image verification system, but it probably wouldn’t be compatible with the existing software. One thing to remember is that image verification is case-sensitive.

I find it particularly irksome that if you make a mistake in this procedure, your message disappears and you must either write it over again or forget about it. I take the precaution of writing my message on my word-processing program, after which I copy and paste it into the text window. If you don’t know how to copy and paste this way, what you do is define what you want to post in your word-processing program, type ctrl+c, place the cursor in the box where you want to post it, and type ctrl+v. I think this is universal.

The size of the text window does not invite contributors to write at length. Please don’t be prolix (I’ll edit you down if you do), but the length limitation is now 10,000 characters, or about 1,200 words, or about five double-spaced pages. Stretch your review over two posts if necessary, but take the space you need to express yourself properly.

I will tell you a little about the process through which this novel came into being. It took seven years. In the first two, I wrote a bad first draft, and took it to a writer-in-residence at the Windsor Public Library, who told me as much (I knew it, just hadn’t admitted it to myself), but encouraged me to keep writing. I took a five-year-and-a-half-year working sabbatical to replenish my savings and my writing energies, and then devoted five wickedly intense years to writing the finished version. (Admittedly, I generally took the winters off from writing due to SAD.) It’s difficult to say how many drafts it went through, because typically I would write a chapter, then rewrite it, and keep rewriting till I was satisfied. The record was 12 versions of the same chapter. It would probably be fair to say that what you see on this site is the fourth or fifth draft.

While doing this, I regularly submitted chunks of my work to the manuscript evaluation service of the Writers’ Union of Canada. I don’t know if this still exists, but I found it extremely helpful. As the service operated at the time, the critique(s) would be done by a published author whose identity was not disclosed to the submitter. I got expert advice from a pro, and I paid handsomely for it. It was worth the money.

And no, thanks all the same, but I did not, and would not, ask for the evaluations of a group of other strivers. What are their qualifications? I didn’t ask my Aunt Harriet either. I didn’t discuss the work with friends, wanting no ill-informed, unqualified advice that might skew my labours.

The final word from my critic at the Writers’ Union couldn’t have been more positive, the only caveat being that it was anyone’s guess whether publishers would buy it. As you know, they didn’t.

Now to the main point of this post:

I had hoped this Reviews section would evolve as a meaningful, civil, articulate discussion forum with a free expression of views. It has not. A gang-like culture of bully-the-author appears to be taking shape on this board. It’s very easy to be nasty cloaked under the anonymity of the Internet, but I am fed up, and will put a stop to this, one way or another. A few people are making the Reviews section a hostile environment for anyone who might wish to say something favourable. And you are copying each other.

I am a serious, dedicated writer. I am widely and eclectically read, with little acquaintance with or interest in science fiction, incidentally. I have been an editor of other people’s newspaper copy for 25 years. As a fiction writer, I have measureless artistic integrity. I have very high standards, and Universes meets them. I believe it is an excellent book, and this opinion, my own, in the end is the one that matters to me, as should be the case with every serious writer. I do not write for trends or fashions. I loathe formulaic writing, and an unimpressed with paint-by-numbers systems of fiction writing. I believe in this book. I know many will not like it. That is fine. But please express yourself in a civil, intelligent manner, free of vituperation or condescension.

When you post here in future, please say how much you have read, and it should be fairly substantial. If you’ve read just smattering and didn’t read on because you didn’t like it, say so and clear out. I often read a few pages of a book and drop it after finding that it doesn’t appeal to me, but I wouldn’t presume to bad-mouth the book for others on the basis of such a small sampling.

For those who do contribute reviews, please say how much of the book you have read and express your opinions clearly, referring to parts of the book when necessary to make your comments meaningful and to communicate your thoughts effectively. Don’t give away too many story details, so as not to spoil the book for people who haven’t read it and might wish to. Please do not favour me with a lecture on what I ought to be doing without so much as mentioning whether you have read one word. This is exactly what “Reader” did, and it was the last straw. The entry appeared to be well-meant, as well as patronizing, but if Reader didn’t like the novel, all he or she needed to do was to say so, with something at least approaching a cogent explication. Further, I don’t need or appreciate the advice that after my fourth or fifth book, I might actually write something good. That is a little presumptuous, is it not? (My health is fine, by the way, though I’ve reached the age at which one knocks on wood.)

Hi Peter - As a fledgling author I feel for you, but I think you should have joined an online critique group and rewritten this a couple times before trying to put it out there. Congrats on a successful publicity stunt, but my advice is to pull the plug, join a critique group, spend the next two years rewriting it with the help of the group, and then try a couple literary agents. I don't know how your health is, but 65 isn't so old - you could EASILY have thirty years to go. That's enough time to write and rewrite at LEAST ten books. And who knows, by the time you write the fourth or fifth, you could be very good, and just starting a sucessful career. Best of luck.

Hi Peter,

I read a lot, and unfortunately, as much as I wanted to, I couldn't persist with your story. So I can't possibly comment on the virtues of the story itself. However, I will say this, if you are desperate to get published, try and find a really good editor who will work with you. You are obviously very creative, considering your unique approach in trying to get your book noticed - have you ever considered looking for recommended contacts through LinkedIn? There are some great writing groups on there that will advise you....

I wish you all the best in your endeavours to be published.

Dear Mr. Riley

From an editor's and agents point of view, the opening paragraph would not have made it past the slush pile- it would've been better to start straight away with your protagonist inside the Superstring Conductor,which serves as an introduction and plunges the reader straight into the central conflict of the story, rather than the sentence "Ozzie is a physicist" which fails to provide an opening hook.

However, in truth  I am a published writer and I wish you all the best. Your manuscript needs to be assessed and reworked in order to reach its fullest potential

good luck :)

Arghh, I’ve just tried to post this and it didn’t work, so I’m writing in Word again and will copy and paste.

I've had the website changed so that posts will appear immediately after they're posted without being checked by me first, except that I'll still be able to edit and delete items that are offensive. I did make a slight alteration to one of these posts because it gave away too much information about the story, and I don't want spoilers in here.

Thanks for your candour, Allen. I can’t say much except that the intended audience actually is not physics geeks, in spite of the physics issues that crop up. There are no physics jokes in the novel.

Very much enjoyed reading your review, Pipplo, and hope you’ll post again when you’ve finished the book. I was glad you were interested in “what happens next” – that’s the kind of basic storytelling that I enjoy reading myself. Your comments on my writing style are interesting, and I hope others will give me feedback on this.

I liked some of your ideas, but the writing and the story just wasn't very good. The plot doesn't seem to really go anywhere, and the preachy epilogue is just pathetic. It seems a bitter, useless commentary on the pointlessness of it all, and I'm just not buying it.

There are lots of good physics jokes, which go right over the head of your average reader. The whole concept of your cannibalistic second world isn't too horrible, but you just don't go very fun places with it. Most of what I get out of that whole sequence is that the man got there and decided he must have the morals of a vegetarian, and it ruined him. Might have worked somewhat better if he was a vegetarian before his first death, but YMMV. Maybe you just needed him to die to get to the third world.

As for the whole story of Lucy, mostly I wonder why we would care. You don't really seem to go anywhere with it, other than "horrible things happen. The end." At least following the story of Ozzie was somewhat entertaining, if depressing.

There are some great ideas here, but if I were an editor at a book company, I would never publish this. It has zero popular appeal, and is hard to read even for your real intended audience of physics geeks. I give it a 2 out of 10 stars, mostly due to some interesting concepts that save it from a 1. I really wanted to like this book, being an aspiring writer myself, but in my opinion, it's just not there yet, and I can't recommend it to my friends.

So I wrote a little review once, and I apparently got the image verification wrong.  Unfortunately I lost what I wrote, so now I have to write it all over!

Anyway, I got Universes from io9.com's post about the contest.  I am enjoying the book so far from a plot standpoint.  I'm pretty captivated and interested to know whats going to happen here.  I'm only about 80 pages in so far so I don't even know what to expect.

My only complaint so far is that the writing style is a little difficult to deal with.  I'm not sure actually if some of the language oddities, or the short choppy sentences are intended or not.  Maybe it has something to do with our main characters condition at the moment?  Either way, at times I have trouble following the train of though of the characters, and some things just come out of nowhere so I have to go back and re-read some paragraphs to grasp it.  It isn't impossible to deal with, and I had a similar issue with 'The Road' so maybe it's just me.

I'm interested to see where this story goes though! WTF is the straw?

I’ll try resending this now that the glitch has been fixed.

Hello friends,

This site has been up for 15 days now, and I check it daily, in large part hoping someone will post something here. Since no one has (actually someone had, I just hadn’t enabled it), I’ll take the plunge and scribble something.

The site opened May 3, and the “visitors” message then showed 29 site visitors, all of them actually bogus because the number was generated during the process of website design. I checked a minute ago and it showed 184, a big jump from yesterday when I think there were only about 80. This could be the result of the website designer doing a little jiggling this morning.

But please feel free to write something here. It looks like a dead site. It doesn’t have to be a review, any relevant comment would be welcome. Maybe this will become a blog, maybe not, I don’t know.

I feel quite daunted by the task of trying to promote this site around the Web, and have done nothing so far other than phone The London Free Press, which ran a nice item Saturday. Tomorrow I will make a thorough search of the various suggestions I’ve asked for and received on the subject, and get to work.

If you’ve tried to post but haven’t been able to, please email me (using Contact Me on the main page). The code with the numbers and letters at the bottom of registration is case-sensitive, so you might be having a problem with that.

My life is pretty dull other than this project. I need a sense of mission, and I guess this is it for now, but if it proves to be a dud I’ll have to content myself with reading and listening to music. At the moment I’m alternating between Berlin Diary by William L. Shirer and The Vanished by Bill Pronzini, who writes top-grade pulp detective stories. Perhaps surprisingly, I have little interest in science fiction books, other than those of Kurt Vonnegut. I just used the genre as a vehicle to get on my soapbox, which is related to metaphysics and physics. And I’m listening to a combination of Corelli, Bach, Handel, Jacques Loussier and Diana Krall on my CD player.

The best suggestions for site promotion that I’ve received, I think, are Facebook and Twitter. I’m both a technophobe and a private person, so the ideas are not appealing, but I guess I’ll do them anyway. If you have any suggestions, they’d be highly welcome.

Please let me hear from you.

Peter Riley

I wrote the top message on here on Word, and copied and pasted it, and see it's been cut off. I think the problem is a 1,000-character limit on postings, which I have asked, again, to be changed to 10,000.

Peter Riley

Hello friends,

This site has been up for 15 days now, and I check it daily, in large part hoping someone will post something here. Since no one has, I’ll take the plunge and scribble something.

The site opened May 3, and the “visitors” message then showed 29 site visitors, all of them actually bogus because the number was generated during the process of website design. I checked a minute ago and it showed 184, a big jump from yesterday when I think there were only about 80. This could be the result of the website designer doing a little jiggling this morning.

But please feel free to write something here. It looks like a dead site. It doesn’t have to be a review, any relevant comment would be fine. Maybe this will become a blog, maybe not, I don’t know.

I feel quite daunted by the task of trying to promote this site around the Web, and ha

I like chapter 1...very funny. I was so not expecting him to come back in to the room if he was going to wind up on the otherside of the field, but then the uncertainty principal fails.