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The Hamish McAllister Chronicles #1
Second Death
Hamish McAllister is playing god: but the church want to crucify him.
Elizabeth died: but now that she’s alive, who is she?
Geraldine is dying for revenge: but she has to be dead to get it.
Death, life and virtual immortality - at the end of a 13 amp plug
Elizabeth died: but now that she’s alive, who is she?
Geraldine is dying for revenge: but she has to be dead to get it.
Death, life and virtual immortality - at the end of a 13 amp plug
225 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2011
2 people want to read
About the author
Nigel Holloway
9 books1 followerMusician, singer, actor, sound engineer and video editor, ex-computer consultant, ex-maths lecturer and ex-radio presenter, Nigel lives and writes in Cardiff in Wales.
Until recently, he concentrated mainly on writing for the theatre, and to date, thirteen of his plays have been published, with performances taking place as far afield as Australia - and Hull. A number of his shorter plays have also been made into audio recordings, and are available to download from his website at:
www.off-the-wall-plays.co.uk
More recently, he has spent his time writing novels: his first, a historic fiction called The damning of Henry Morgan, is a story of intrigue, adventure, politics and betrayal, set in the late seventeenth century.
The second novel, also a historic fiction, is called Scartato, and tells the story of a flawed violin and the various lives it touches over the centuries.
His third novel, Second Death, tells the story of a possible future in which death can be treated as a disease, and the moral dilemmas facing Hamish McAllister, the man who made this greatest of all breakthroughs in medical science.
The fourth novel is a socio/political satire based on a future where a corrupt Druid movement takes over the government of Wales. Bard Boy is the story of Edward, a naive young boy from the Welsh Valleys who claims to be the reincarnated founder of the Welsh bardic tradition.
He has also written the second instalment in the Hamish McAllister Chronicles, entitled Hamish Redux.
The third novel in the Hamish McAllister Chronicles, entitled Such Heights Of Evil, was published in April 2015.
All Nigel’s novels are available from Amazon Kindle.
He is currently editing the fourth Hamish McAllister novel, currently entitled Murdering the Messiah - as well as composing the music for a retelling of John Gay’s seminal work, The Beggar’s Opera – this time as a rock opera.
Until recently, he concentrated mainly on writing for the theatre, and to date, thirteen of his plays have been published, with performances taking place as far afield as Australia - and Hull. A number of his shorter plays have also been made into audio recordings, and are available to download from his website at:
www.off-the-wall-plays.co.uk
More recently, he has spent his time writing novels: his first, a historic fiction called The damning of Henry Morgan, is a story of intrigue, adventure, politics and betrayal, set in the late seventeenth century.
The second novel, also a historic fiction, is called Scartato, and tells the story of a flawed violin and the various lives it touches over the centuries.
His third novel, Second Death, tells the story of a possible future in which death can be treated as a disease, and the moral dilemmas facing Hamish McAllister, the man who made this greatest of all breakthroughs in medical science.
The fourth novel is a socio/political satire based on a future where a corrupt Druid movement takes over the government of Wales. Bard Boy is the story of Edward, a naive young boy from the Welsh Valleys who claims to be the reincarnated founder of the Welsh bardic tradition.
He has also written the second instalment in the Hamish McAllister Chronicles, entitled Hamish Redux.
The third novel in the Hamish McAllister Chronicles, entitled Such Heights Of Evil, was published in April 2015.
All Nigel’s novels are available from Amazon Kindle.
He is currently editing the fourth Hamish McAllister novel, currently entitled Murdering the Messiah - as well as composing the music for a retelling of John Gay’s seminal work, The Beggar’s Opera – this time as a rock opera.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 29, 2014
Author's note:
Despite his A-list status, surgeon Hamish McAllister is finding that there are drawbacks to playing god. The established church, for one. They’d like to crucify him.
Elizabeth died. But now that she’s alive again, who is she? And why can’t she catch?
Geraldine is dying for revenge. But she has to be dead to get it. She never wanted to be brought back to life – especially to spend it in a wheelchair.
Richard wants his dead wife back. Can he forget what she and Hamish did to him, and live happily ever after?
Three murders, two suicides and a judicial execution.
Death, life and virtual immortality - at the end of a 13 amp plug.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That's one of the versions of the blurb for Second Death, my fourth novel, which evolved from an original 30-minute television script, through a full-length stage play, into a 90-minute television drama, and finally its present form. That leaves only three more possible incarnations (I think?): a screenplay, a radio drama and a computer game!
The idea was originally sparked by Gordon Bell’s research project into life-logging (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MyLifeBits) which was sponsored by IBM and Microsoft, where the life-logger device automatically records in images and sounds everything that happens to the wearer. As I understand it, the original idea was to allow the development of a new kind of database access which would allow instant retrieval of images and conversations, very much in the same way as the human brain is able to recall memories. Please note: since the book was originally written, apps have become available for smartphones that purport to be 'life-loggers' - try not to confuse the reality with the fiction!
In addition, the novel 'The man who owned the world' by Charles Eric Maine (1963) introduced me to the concept of ‘post-mortic surgery’, where medical science had advanced to such an extent that tissue regrowth, organ replacement and stem cell treatments had all evolved so that death was merely a disease to be treated as any other.
The title of the book refers to Second Life, a virtual world developed by Linden Labs, where players live out an artificial existence through their avatars - accessible from any connected device.
In one way, the Hamish McAllister Chronicles started as a satire on modern life, especially celebrity culture (the original idea for Hamish was that of a celebrity surgeon who had actually achieved something worth celebrating) and the increasing use of social media and other virtual existences by which people seek to validate themselves and (who knows?) achieve immortality.
I seem to be not the only one concerned with the change in our outlook.
Hugh Laurie, the actor, made this acute observation on the way in which our society may be changing:
‘People photograph everything and nothing - no interaction is deemed to have actually happened unless somebody has a picture of it,’ he said. ‘Nobody is satisfied with having met a person without having a picture to prove it.’
He added: ‘I think that is odd. And I think it's so odd, I think it might actually be starting to alter the way we think about each other, and the way we think about general day-to-day social interaction.’
And here’s what John Gray, political philosopher and author of False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism wrote on the BBC website:
‘It's become fashionable to ridicule religious people for their belief ...it's quite common these days to find people scoffing at religious ideas of the resurrection of the body while imagining they can become immortal by having a virtual version of themselves uploaded into cyberspace - to my mind a far more absurd idea.’
Absurd or not, I hope you have as much enjoyment reading the book, as I had writing it.
Nigel
Despite his A-list status, surgeon Hamish McAllister is finding that there are drawbacks to playing god. The established church, for one. They’d like to crucify him.
Elizabeth died. But now that she’s alive again, who is she? And why can’t she catch?
Geraldine is dying for revenge. But she has to be dead to get it. She never wanted to be brought back to life – especially to spend it in a wheelchair.
Richard wants his dead wife back. Can he forget what she and Hamish did to him, and live happily ever after?
Three murders, two suicides and a judicial execution.
Death, life and virtual immortality - at the end of a 13 amp plug.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That's one of the versions of the blurb for Second Death, my fourth novel, which evolved from an original 30-minute television script, through a full-length stage play, into a 90-minute television drama, and finally its present form. That leaves only three more possible incarnations (I think?): a screenplay, a radio drama and a computer game!
The idea was originally sparked by Gordon Bell’s research project into life-logging (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MyLifeBits) which was sponsored by IBM and Microsoft, where the life-logger device automatically records in images and sounds everything that happens to the wearer. As I understand it, the original idea was to allow the development of a new kind of database access which would allow instant retrieval of images and conversations, very much in the same way as the human brain is able to recall memories. Please note: since the book was originally written, apps have become available for smartphones that purport to be 'life-loggers' - try not to confuse the reality with the fiction!
In addition, the novel 'The man who owned the world' by Charles Eric Maine (1963) introduced me to the concept of ‘post-mortic surgery’, where medical science had advanced to such an extent that tissue regrowth, organ replacement and stem cell treatments had all evolved so that death was merely a disease to be treated as any other.
The title of the book refers to Second Life, a virtual world developed by Linden Labs, where players live out an artificial existence through their avatars - accessible from any connected device.
In one way, the Hamish McAllister Chronicles started as a satire on modern life, especially celebrity culture (the original idea for Hamish was that of a celebrity surgeon who had actually achieved something worth celebrating) and the increasing use of social media and other virtual existences by which people seek to validate themselves and (who knows?) achieve immortality.
I seem to be not the only one concerned with the change in our outlook.
Hugh Laurie, the actor, made this acute observation on the way in which our society may be changing:
‘People photograph everything and nothing - no interaction is deemed to have actually happened unless somebody has a picture of it,’ he said. ‘Nobody is satisfied with having met a person without having a picture to prove it.’
He added: ‘I think that is odd. And I think it's so odd, I think it might actually be starting to alter the way we think about each other, and the way we think about general day-to-day social interaction.’
And here’s what John Gray, political philosopher and author of False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism wrote on the BBC website:
‘It's become fashionable to ridicule religious people for their belief ...it's quite common these days to find people scoffing at religious ideas of the resurrection of the body while imagining they can become immortal by having a virtual version of themselves uploaded into cyberspace - to my mind a far more absurd idea.’
Absurd or not, I hope you have as much enjoyment reading the book, as I had writing it.
Nigel
Displaying 1 of 1 review