A. Umaz's Blog

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I want to thank everyone who entered the recent Giveaway of Amagon: The Book of Man. It was very gratifying to see so many Goodreads members consider my work. Unfortunately neither luck nor my pocketbook could see each and everyone of you receive a copy. I do hope you will continue to follow my work. Once again, thank you one and all!

A. Umaz

A man I know quite well graduated from high school in May of 1969, with a scholarship and plans to study physics and mathematics at university in the fall. On July 20 of that year Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on another world. As a result the young man had no doubt about his future - he too would visit other worlds; perhaps he would live and work in space; surely the rising technology would bring an end to most of mankind's problems on Earth.

Fast forward to the present day. The man has never visited another world. Though a few men now live and work for short periods of time in space, his nation is no longer able to put those men into orbit. And as for mankind's problems on Earth - well, you be the judge.

The man never imagined that his future would be the dystopian future prophesied in science fiction!

I am sometimes amazed at how prevalent the notion of planet hopping is in science fiction. Particularly since there are no Earth-like approximates within reasonable range. Even Mars, our most likely candidate in the neighborhood, is a far cry from being hospitable. So we imagine traveling at warp speeds and through wormholes to get to places inaccessible by any other means. Of course, at this point such travel is the stuff of dreams.

So I look at it from a slightly different perspective. Consider this: if instead of using the available carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen to produce energy to fight against the force of gravity, what if we used those same resources to serve the biological needs of living things? Of course, that means escaping the bondage of gravity, which is done easily enough - we simply migrate into the surrounding space and spend our time in delightful free fall around the Sun! With the abundance of the necessary elements all with easy reach, we won't have to go any further than our own back yard.

It has been my experience that really good science fiction is a thoughtful projection of present fact into future possibilities. A particular example would be Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Captain Nemo's submarine the Nautilus was powered by the the same energy as the Sun. Verne hints at nuclear power nearly twenty years before Curie discovered radioactivity! And forty years before Rutherford discovered the atomic nucleus and helped establish the structure of the atom! Even Simon Lake, preeminent naval architect attributed his inspiration for submarine design to having read Verne's book as boy.

My intention in writing science fiction is to follow a similar course. In fact, I would prefer the eipthet "futurist" and "futurism" as the genre for my works, though unfortunately those tags have already been spent by architecturalists and artists. In lieu of "galaxies far away" and "alien life forms" or just plain monsters, I try to imagine a realistic future for our Species, based on valid scientific principles, and expressing a truly possible extrapolation of human progress.

Please take a look at the preview of my book Amagon: The Book of Man, and tell me what you think. Have I set a worthwhile objective? More than just entertainment, do you find yourself imagining how things might really be one day? I don't provide any answers, but I hope the questions I raise invite your consideration as much as they excite my imagination! A. Umaz