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| Part of my cover photo, edited from a picture by Matt Donders, courtesy Unsplash. |
My next work is another fun bit of science fiction, with another reference to the luminiferous ether, as in What the Soul Still Fears! However, instead of a story set in the modern day, The Chasm of Color takes place at around the same time as the Michelson-Morley experiment, in the late 1880s.
The protagonist, an assistant professor at the fictional Lexington University, has read the Michelson-Morley paper but is not convinced. However, he is unable to figure out a good reason for his uneasiness, until one morning over a year later...
Here's a sample from nearly the beginning:
In my mind was a picture—no, not just a picture, but a schematic—of a device, its form and function as clear as if it were standing just in front of me. It could show the flaws in their arguments. Everything I needed to build it was in ready supply. It would only take a few weeks to construct, and cost a few hundred dollars. Had the inspiration been murkier, I would have considered it too extravagant. My salary was modest, at best.
However, the unnatural clarity of the vision convinced me that the expense was justified. My path forward was so clear, and the results of my experiment, if successful, would provide me with more than enough material to write a revolutionary treatise on electromagnetism. Further, the practical applications... Considering what I might learn, what I might show to be true, they could be limitless. Even if only a fraction of this vision resulted in real, measurable results, it would still be worth it. I considered the expenses to fulfill this inspiration an investment, not just in myself, but in the future of all mankind.
I crawled out of bed and went over to sit in the worn, red leather chair at my old oak desk. I pulled open one of its drawers and took out a sheaf of clean writing paper. In my haste to fill my pen, I spilled a few drops of ink on the desk pad and spent a few moments blotting out the unfortunate blue stain. As I held my pen over the first sheet of paper, horror and despair gripped my mind for a moment. I feared that the words in my dream might prove fleeting—or worse, incoherent—when I tried to record them in a concrete form. People had deluded themselves in this way before, and I could claim no immunity to such folly.
I really enjoyed writing this. The current length is about 13,000 words, and I'm still trying to figure out if I want to add more to it, or publish it as-is. It's a fun bit of historical fiction that plays with the idea of inspiration, rather than occult research, as I did in What the Soul Still Fears.
Update: The Chasm of Color is now available in e-book and in a nice little paperback.
For an email update when The Chasm of Color comes out, you can sign up for Chasm-specific updates here, or join my general newsletter with the drop-down menu, whichever you prefer.
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