In his novels and stories, F. Paul Wilson has spent over four decades chronicling a Secret History of human civilization – the events, the conspiracies, the human and non-human forces that have shaped its course. A history of the world that remains undiscovered, unexplored, and unknown to most of humanity. Some of this Secret History has been revealed in his Adversary Cycle, some in his Repairman Jack novels, and bits and pieces in other, seemingly unconnected works. Taken together, even these millions of words barely scratch the surface of what has been going on behind the scenes, hidden from the workaday world. Running nearly 100,000 words, SCENES FROM THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE WORLD acts as a sampler and organizer of the thirty plus novels and various short stories that form the huge mosaic Wilson has assembled. It includes unseen artwork and a new timeline available nowhere else.
Francis Paul Wilson is an author, born in Jersey City, New Jersey. He writes novels and short stories primarily in the science fiction and horror genres. His debut novel was Healer (1976). Wilson is also a part-time practicing family physician. He made his first sales in 1970 to Analog and continued to write science fiction throughout the seventies. In 1981 he ventured into the horror genre with the international bestseller, The Keep, and helped define the field throughout the rest of the decade. In the 1990s he became a true genre hopper, moving from science fiction to horror to medical thrillers and branching into interactive scripting for Disney Interactive and other multimedia companies. He, along with Matthew J. Costello, created and scripted FTL Newsfeed which ran daily on the Sci-Fi Channel from 1992-1996.
SCENES FROM THE SECRET HISTOR OF THE WORLD is a helpful chronological listing of all F.Paul Wilson's works over the years dealing with TSHOTW, complete with brief introductions written especially for this compendium. At $0.99 for this Kindle-only epub, it offers glimpses of all the novels and short stories that comprise TSHOTW, in chronological order (not in order of publication), and includes books and stories that are not part of either the REPAIRMAN JACK series or the ADVERSARY CYCLE. Although there is almost no new material here (except for the very brief intros to each entry), and one cannot buy this and read it like a novel or an anthology, it is interesting nonetheless for FPW fans who might well have read all of the RJ novels or the ADVERSARY CYCLE, but not the rest of the canon. It might also serve as an introduction to TSHOTW and to both of the series referred to above for a newcomer to FPW's world. Even for die-hard fans who have read (or think they have read) everything about TSOTW, there is a never before published very detailed chronology of the major characters and players in TSOTW that alone is worth the $0.99 for fans like me.
Does what it's supposed to do. On the plus side, it allowed me to pinpoint when Jack went from just being a cool character to being Wilson's faux Libertarian center right insert character (and downhill).