The Mother of All Fears

25 Saturday Mar 2017

Posted by Jay Magidson in books, death, fear, Threshold of the Mind

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Drowned, burned, buried alive, starved, death by thirst, falling off a building, airplane crash, suffocation, are just a few of the truly great fears. But there is one greater, one that is the source of all others. It is so insidious we have to bury it deep in our subconscious, push it far away; so heinous we must deny it utterly. It is in fact so awful, so unimaginable and indescribable that we can’t even conceive of it.

More Frightening Than Death

And the greatest of all horrors is that we must all face it – that we are all headed straight for this ultimate terror. It is not death, we know that one. Death is certain, natural and inevitable. Many have conquered the fear of death. It is wise to live well, with intention, because we know it will someday end, will simply go out like the final flicker of a candle.

Humanity staves off the fear of death with religion, science and rationalization. But we fail to look deeper at the sustained myths of living eternally on a cloud in the sky or being reincarnated. Even burning in Hell for all eternity is easier to deal with than facing the truth.

One Day We Will Lose Our Self

The consciousness that allows us to comprehend our individuality – our separateness from the billions of other men and women – will absolutely end. What we call self, that unique person that we spend a lifetime developing and understanding will simple cease to be. All the money, power, and accomplishments cannot change that. Worst of all, is that it is inconceivable. Even the deepest meditation involves mind. When the mind ends, we end.

What if we could experience that before we die; know what it is like to be a no-mind, a no-self? Would you try it, travel the unimaginable journey; face this fear and perhaps come back to tell others?

Zombies as a Metaphor

Zombie stories and movies fascinate our imagination. We hate these mindless creatures and revel in the men and women who try to survive the cartoonish world of a zombie apocalypse, those brave souls who would bash in the heads of the undead. But these stories are fairy-tales, unreal, denying nature and physics. Zombies are just a metaphor for the greater fear. We use these stories to crack the impossible nature of what we must all face. It is the no-mind we recoil from.

The development of advanced technology may allow us to experience nothingness, may even force it upon us. Then the ultimate fear will be realized and the choice will have to be made: eternal life without self or death and the unknown.

Threshold of the Mind faces the ultimate fear. Can you?

Available now in print and audiobook – Buy it Today!

Books are Dead – Long Live Stories

15 Wednesday Mar 2017

Posted by Jay Magidson in books, fiction, Science Fiction, Threshold of the Mind, Virtual Reality

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audiobooks, creativity, future, libraries, Sci Fi, Virtual Reality

I love books. I have hundreds in my library, have read hundreds more. I get a warm comfortable feeling when I go to a bookstore or public library. But I also know that the end is near for books. I’m not sad or nostalgic about any of it. Things change.

Tens of thousands of years ago, long before speech, man told each other stories through pantomime and play acting. They acted out their hunting adventures or mishaps, probably laughed when Grog hit his head on a rock. You can feel the truth in this, have this genetic memory as I do.

Thousands of years after that, our brains developed speech and the stories got more sophisticated, more detailed. They were passed around, embellished, exaggerated until they became myths and legends. Really exaggerated, like Atlas holding the world on his shoulders and Apollo pulling the sun across the sky.

Mankind lived on the earth for hundreds of thousands of years telling stories without books. Then some clever fellow in Mesopotamia scratched symbols in the dirt and invented writing. Someone else smeared these symbols onto parchment (no fun for the lamb by the way) and presto we have scrolls, and if they are long enough, are really just rolled up books.

Thousands of years after that, Gutenberg figured out a way to make multiple copies of the bible and by the 20^th Century, we’re neck deep in books. Millions and millions of them. Even Hitler couldn’t burn enough to make a dent in the growing pile.

But if you look at the bigger picture, the history of humankind at approximately 500,000 years, books are still pretty new. Writing is barely 5,000 years old, printed books only about 600 and the novel as we know it, less than 300. And sad, though it may appear, books are going to disappear, are already disappearing, or more accurately, evolving.

Do you have children? If not, have you ever seen one? They love video. In my day it was TV, “Gilligan’s island, Lost in Space.” Horrible stuff. Now it’s six second vines. Amazing really, that you can tell a story in only six seconds. YouTube, Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, Vimeo, Facebook, video is king. We love them, devour them like chocolate on Easter. They’re stories.

Oh I know the argument, video and movies do the imagining for us. Books make us create the pictures in our own head. “The movie was pretty good, but the book was great.” But someone had to create those stories, imagine them and how to present them. Grog didn’t worry about that when he acted out a good hunt in front of the fire half a million years ago. Plays are high art and movies are not? Nonsense. It’s all just human beings telling stories to each other. And that’s what matters.

Not long from now, we’ll agonize over the displacement of video and movies too. We’ll watch and interact with Virtual Reality or maybe someday images will be beamed directly into our minds. We can’t live without stories. Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase, “The medium is the message.” I think it misses the point. We are not that different from Grog in front of the fire, maybe no different at all. I think we’re all just kids begging dad to tell us a goodnight story and don’t really care how it gets into our heads.

Threshold of the Mind by Jay Magidson a novel about mankind addicted to Virtual Reality in the near future.

Available on Amazon.com in print, kindle and audiobook. Buy it today!

Government and Boiled Frogs

18 Tuesday Nov 2014

Posted by Jay Magidson in audio books, books, ebook, fiction, Science Fiction, Threshold of the Mind

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Q: How do you boil a frog?
A: By slowly raising the temperature.

We are the frog, the government is the water, and corporations are the flame. Corruption of government is nothing new, as old as government itself. What tells me that we are near the end of having any influence at all, is how bold and obvious the corruptors have become. The bribes (campaign contributions) have become focused, obvious and enormous. The manipulators are out in the open, bold, unapologetic. Because they know it doesn’t matter, nothing can or will happen to them. The officials they help elect will protect them while continuing to enrich each other.

Since we love to blame someone, who shall we pick?

I choose us, the people. Sure, we’ve been manipulated, but it has always been our choice. We could shake the wool off of our eyes at any time, but we never do. Our obsession with money is why. We want more and more stuff: bigger houses, new cars, faster cell phones, splashier entertainment, etc. We worship those who have a lot of money, not because they are virtuous, inspiring, or even that interesting, but simply because they have more. They have beautiful homes, clothes, jets, they get on TV, are interviewed in glossy magazines, and have scandalous 15 minute relationships with other empty shells.

Our love of money (and consequently, fame) has brought us to this point – a near breakdown of democracy. Our voices no longer matter. Like us, our politicians have sold out to the highest bidder. Why bother trying to please us, the teaming millions, when they can please a few dozen and keep the power and money they so crave. We showed them the way, they simply obeyed. Those who have lots of money buy our elected officials, who in turn help them get more money. The cycle spirals upwards at the expense of the many, squeezing more and more wealth upwards.

Here are the dry facts:

The median household income in the US continues to fall, lower today than 20 years ago (US Census, Sept. 2014). In the same period, the wealthiest 1% has gone from owning 15% of the nation’s wealth to over 40%.

Then Why should the government be more afraid than its people?

Automation and technology will take us to new heights of corruption and abuse. If you are really, really rich and you want something, why bother with the government at all? Because, eventually, if you do something really terrible, you will get exposed and possibly punished. The government holds the ultimate card – force.

But for how much longer?

Our government officials blinded by their insatiable desire for money and power, continue to make choices based on one criterion – money. So they will always sell out. Morality based on money is no morality at all. Here are the steps to our ruination.

Our financial system is private, even our money supply is run by a non-governmental agency – the Federal Reserve. They finance the government, not the other way around. What is to say they can’t stop funding the government?
Our prison system used to be completely run by local, state and federal governments. Now it is mostly outsourced to private companies. And our prison population has skyrocketed – 5 times more people per capita are in prison today than in 1970 and most are minorities. Coincidence?
The military is beginning to supply local and state police forces with military grade weapons, serious and overwhelming firepower. Why?
Automation and technology are advancing briskly in the military, spy satellites, unmanned drones, extremely accurate rockets and even computer guided bullets. Next up are unmanned tanks, robotic weapons and soldiers, insect sized spy drones, etc.
Much of our military operations are already being supported and supplied by private corporations (food, fuel, infrastructure, transportation, even security). Outsourcing the actual military and police departments to private corporations is not a stretch of the imagination. They’ll be cheaper and more efficient

The End Game

Your clue to the timing of the end, will be when you read about a certain experiment, where a municipal police force is outsourced to a private corporation. Cash strapped municipalities will love the idea of stretching their thin budgets. That is the day our democracy as we know it ends completely. When the government relinquishes its only trump card, why would there be any need for corporations to bother with them any longer? Corporations will do what they want with impunity, as they’ll have private and competing police forces working for them. Government will be superfluous.

How will the Constitution protect you then?

Want to read more?

Threshold of the Mind by Jay Magidson gives us a hard view of a corporate controlled world in the year 2080. A world where everything is for sale – even your mind.

Available at Amazon.com: print and Kindle
On Barnes & Noble: print and Nook
On Smashwords: epub and ebook (iTunes)

and coming soon:
Audio Book on Audible.com
and iTunes

Threshold of the Mind in Audiobook Production

16 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by Jay Magidson in audio books, books, fiction, Jeff Clarke, Science Fiction, Threshold of the Mind

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acx, audible.com, audiobooks, Jeff Clarke, Sci Fi, Science Fiction, Threshold of the Mind

Threshold of the Mind will be available as an audiobook this coming August. Actor Jeff Clarke (Madmen, Zack Files, Chicago, etc) will be doing the narration. He has a fabulous voice and a great understanding of the story. It will be fun to listen to his interpretation.

The process has taken several months and has been relatively smooth. The production is being facilitated by ACX a division of Amazon. It was decided to go this route because of their broad reach in distribution: Amazon.com, iTunes, Audible.com, and more. This growing segment of the book publishing industry is expanding dramatically, though not without its challenges. The cost is too high for most self-published authors and the royalties have changed in the last few months. It is no surprise that the listening audience for audiobooks is growing rapidly; long commutes, airline travel, exercise, the ease of listening on mobile devices and the improved production quality make it a great boon for new books.

There will be audio excerpts from the completed book in the coming weeks. Stay tuned, it is a really exciting and rewarding project. Big thanks to Jeff Clarke.

Threshold of the Mind is available at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble (stores and online), smashwords, iTunes and many other venues.

Writing Your First Book

26 Saturday Oct 2013

Posted by Jay Magidson in books, fiction, Threshold of the Mind, writing

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Critics, fiction, New Books, on Writing, Threshold of the Mind, War of Art, Writing a Book

It took me 12 years to finish my first book, 3 years for the second one, 9 months for my third, 6 months for the fourth, and 3 months for the fifth. At this rate, I’ll be writing a new book every week, right. Not quite, but it does get easier and certainly more pleasurable. My first book, Threshold of the Mind (formerly In the Image of God) is my first book, even though it was published as my third. The first version was complete in about 8 years, after 3 complete rewrites. It weighed in at a whopping 200,000 words (approx. 700 paperback pages) and included every idea I had ever had about the future, politics, human relations, and yes, the kitchen sink. It was dense and rambling, not altogether bad, but not what I had hoped for.

I set the book down for about two years and beat myself up for being a hack. In the meantime I wrote newspaper and magazine articles, short stories and poetry, things I could complete in a few days. The opposite of a book.

But in the back of my mind, my book kept whispering to me, “I’m not done, rewrite me.” No way, not after close to a million words piled in a drawer, backed up on 42 floppy disks (remember those?). It seemed indulgent, the book that would never be done, just writing and writing, until one day it would be 27 volumes completed the day before my death. My children would shrug when they saw it, then stuff me and the volumes into a casket.

Finally, I woke up ready to face it. Enough time had passed. I promised to be objective and honest about it, throw it away if it was no good. I would approach it as if someone else had written it and needed my help editing it. I sat down and read it cover to cover, without a pen, thoroughly subduing the desire to cringe and make notes. I just read it like a reader would. Hey, it wasn’t so bad, really good in spots, but there were problems.

I spent the next 3 months outlining the book, one chapter at a time. Who were the characters, the scenes, the action, the place, the plot developments? I used a spreadsheet to see the book in a logical way. It was a good exercise, one I hope never to have to do again. It was pretty tedious work.

When this was complete, I realized many things about my book. It had: too many characters; things I loved, but didn’t make any sense to the reader; action that was exciting and well presented, but didn’t advance the plot; and other stuff that didn’t help the story. I kept the core and began rewriting…again. It took about nine months this time. I went through again and cleaned stuff up (another couple of months), but essentially it was done. It was half the size now, 102,000 words, (310 pages). And best of all, I loved it, not liked it, loved it. That was my first book.

When I finished this time and showed my wife, strutting and proud of myself. She said, “good for you, now go write another one.” She had just read The War of Art too.

After that it got easier, much easier. The whole idea of a book being this enormous project that could take years and millions of words was behind me. I did it, I finished the first marathon and my feet didn’t break off, I got stronger instead. One step at a time, as they say. And that’s exactly what a book is, one word at a time. Find an idea, a story that you love and start it; don’t worry about how long it will be, or how long it will take. Don’t worry about doing it the way the experts tell you to, or agonizing if you should have a detailed plot or outline before you start, or if you should know the ending before you begin. None of that matters. It only matters that you do it.

Here’s another bit of advice, don’t tell anyone anything about it until you’re done (at least the first full draft). Maybe don’t even tell them you’re writing a book. Just pull it out one day and say, “hey you want to read my book?” Enjoy the jaw-drop effect. Because if you share it too early, your friends or family, or whomever you show it to, will have all kinds of helpful advice about your plot or characters. Or they’ll tell you it sounds like someone else they read, or the lead character reminds them of their ex-wife (whom they hate) or some other idea freezing crap. They can’t help themselves, they mean well, but everyone is a critic. And you’ll stutter or stop, and your great idea won’t seem so great anymore. Undeveloped ideas are like snowflakes, very, very fragile.

New Video and Book Updates

19 Saturday Oct 2013

Posted by Jay Magidson in books, ebook, fiction, new release, Threshold of the Mind

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distopia, future, genetic engineering, New Books, Sci Fi, Science Fiction, Strange Video

I made this brief video promo of Threshold of the Mind. I think you will enjoy it: Video of Threshold of the Mind.

New Name – Same Great Story

OK, that brings up something very important. I changed the name of my book from In the Image of God to Threshold of the Mind. It is the same in every other way, just a new title. I debated long and hard about this. It is not a small thing to change the name of your book. It is like changing your own name. Unfortunately, the old name was getting associated with religious books. Of course, it is not about religion in any way. So I changed it to Threshold of the Mind. But it is not just changing the title, the book had to be republished in every form: that means in print, kindle, ebooks, new ISBN number, everything. It took a few months, but the process is complete. So I made a video to celebrate the new title, because I think it is awesome, just right, Sci-Fi, hi-tech, genetic engineering.

So, if you have a book with the old name, hang on to it, it will be a collectors item. But you should also buy a new one, so you can be cool and up to date.

Here’s where you can get it:

On Amazon
On Smashwords (ebook/pdf/etc)
On iTunes: do a search for “Threshold of the Mind” + “Magidson”
On Barnes & Noble

Jay Magidson – Fiction

~ Books by Jay Magidson

Category Archives: Threshold of the Mind