TechnoMorbidTales: BOOK REVIEWS

BOOK REVIEWS

Cai
by Norman Goundry

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I enjoyed the read, a new concept for me and took me a while to wrap my head round the idea of a ghost being a major star of a book, but recommend the read to someone wanting to try something different.

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I started writing fiction seriously shortly after winding up in the Emergency Ward at St. Mary's Hospital in Sechelt on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia, where I otherwise live.

I had suffered a stroke that cooked part of my brain. When I got the chance to view the scans taken of the affected area, I noticed that the black area that had been destroyed was not something I could feel. Other than the fact that my entire body felt as if it had been struck by a train, there was no pain in my head, nothing that I could go on to tell me that I had almost died.

It was a curious thing, I remembered getting in contact with a working associate of mine, whose first name is Ken—a person I translate Chinese medical texts for, and asked him if he would visit me in the Intensive Care Ward; could he please bring me a notepad and several mechanical pencils so that I could begin writing? I am a computer programmer and technical translator as I have just said, but at this point I had absolutely no clue about what I wanted to write about. Ken did come and visit me as he had promised and left me a large spiral-bound note book along with with two expensive gel-ink pens. As I was mostly spending my time lying on my back, these instruments were quite useless for me to work with. I remember that evening forcing myself to get up, and wander out into the hall to the nearby nurse section. All I had been able to do before that was to let myself go to the nearby rest room, so the nursing staff, (on duty that evening) was surprised to see me staggering about in my gown. I had walked up to the night desk and asked the attending nurse if I could trade the expensive gel pens for two cheap mechanical pencils? The girls there said that I certainly could, after I had explained to them why I was out there like I was. That evening, as I lay in my bed, I began to write my first novel. It was a combination Science Fiction and Horror work; and I really had no idea where it was going in regards to its plot. All that I knew was that I must write—that somehow doing so was what was going to save me. That novel was finished in three months, about two months after I was allowed to get out of the hospital and go home. I literally have not stopped writing since, and am currently putting the finishing touches on my seventh full-length novel, and have besides those, several others to follow along quickly afterwards.

I have never had a desire to write in a particular style. As to genre, I have leanings as I have just said, towards Horror and Sci-Fi in the same manner as those masters, Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, and Spider Robinson. And others coming before them, are classic Horror writers such as H.P. Lovecraft, E.A. Poe, and Abraham Stoker. Besides them I admit to a great fondness for that woman who almost single-handedly invented the Goth Novel—Ann Radcliffe. Masters of the Horror genre I prefer over all others are Algernon Blackwood, along with the great works of Arthur Machen and of course, J. Sheridan Le Fanu. These authors constitute my core library, but besides these few, there are countless others who have helped colour my tales. In my opinion, a good 'Techno-Morbid Tale—as I like to define my writings—must have two main things that create its life, a protagonist and an antagonist. That, of course, is the simple minimum for almost any story. However, in my own creations there must also be added to these basics the constant struggle of Technology and Geek-ism toward survival in a most often as not, bare and uncaring world.

As for myself, I have always been a Geek who dreads the company of those not touched by its uncommon, extreme qualities. Geeks soon enough know each other when they come into first contact, and in the same manner I appreciate those writers throughout the decades who exhibit these same symptoms as have chronically afflicted me since my early youth. I must say that in secondary school I was a lousy student, barely passing most of my classes, and failing most of the rest. I would rather spend my time reading. It didn't matter what the material was, dictionaries, soup cans on a shelf, comic books, Shakespeare, Homer—all of these things were grist for my mental mill. However, there comes a time when the world requires that one grow up, yet these early readings never left me.

The peculiar thing, as is found in many cases of brain damage is that most often, other parts of the brain are strengthened to compensate for the memory loss and other complications. The Mind is a very curious contraption, and in my case, I soon knew there had been fundamental changes in what I experienced from day-to-day. For one thing, time itself had somehow become disjointed. P.K. Dick was fascinated to explore the strange world of those individuals called 'Pre-Cogs'—people for whom personal Time and Space are altered forward. Current Time for them some how becomes compressed so that events that have not yet happened came to be experienced in many strange ways. I had mentioned this same affliction to my doctor while I was still in the hospital, but by the time I was released its effects had ceased to be so constant with me. It still occurs now and then, but only in short bursts. Some people find this totally weird when it happens in their presence, others who know me well just accept it as part of the new Norm. As for myself, I often wish it would stop completely. Second-Sight, or as my mother used to call it, being 'Fey' is more often a curse than a blessing. All I can do with it most of the time is fold it into my writing as if one were kneading bread dough. It is how I perceive things around me, and I allow for at least one of the characters in each of my books to have these same psychic properties as I seem to likewise share.

Writing about these effects in others is a way of exploring such strange occurrences of my own, and working them out so that they make more sense. That is probably the main reason why I am driven to write in the first place—I need to externalize what goes on inside of me—to set it outside on the curb so that others who pass by can deal with these things in their own way if they so wish. I neutralize its raw effect so that it ends up as part of a story, and then I can control how it is shaped in the characters and plot. As I have said before, this has been in effect since I began my first book, though it is only now that I can rationalize the strangeness. My first novels all exhibit these tendencies within their plots; they are as presented, though not necessarily in the correct order from the day they were written.

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