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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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audiobooks, death, fear, religion

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.

bosch

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.

alone

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?

zombie

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.

cropped-threshold-frontcover
Threshold of the Mind faces the ultimate fear.  Can you?

Available now in print and audiobook – Buy it Today!

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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

Long_Room_Interior,_Trinity_College_Dublin,_Ireland_-_Diliff

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.

tapestry_design_apollo_in_his_chariot_led_by_aurora

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.

parchment

Thousands of years after that, Gutenberg figured out a way to make multiple copies of the bible and by the 20th 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.

shutterstock_146935070

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.

shutterstock_30799201

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

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!

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Will Printed Books Disappear?

11 Monday May 2015

Posted by Jay Magidson in audio books, books

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audible.com, audiobooks, books, death of books, Jeff Clarke

Each year more books are published, and each year fewer books are read. We are bombarded by information. Facebook, Google, YouTube, Twitter, Netflix, Hulu, Television and a thousand other distractions draw our attention away from reading. We wake up in the middle of the night to check email or find out if our Facebook post got any likes. When we do take time to read, it might be for work, or to read long email updates from our children’s school. Sitting on the sofa in the evening curled up with a good book just doesn’t happen as often or for as long.

But people love books, don’t they?

Older people with the habit of reading, probably still do, but what about young people? When I was in school, I would see certain nerdy kids with their faces buried in a book while they slowly walked to school, on the bus, or at the lunch table. OK, I admit it, I was one of them. Sure I see kids with their faces plastered to their phones today, but not reading books, at least not very often, and not if they can help it.

It is not likely we will see books go away entirely anytime soon. But the way future society consumes information, it is unlikely books will stay the same.

How can a book not be a book?

No matter how technologically advanced we get, we are still human, still have a deep need to hear stories. It is so deep in fact, we could call it genetic. Many of us will lament the loss of books. But books are not all that old, barely a few hundred years. Before books, we told each other stories, invented plays, maybe chose some talented person to share those stories on long winter nights.

We’ll always tell stories to each other

Movies, videos, short animations captivate us because they fill that story telling/listening need in each of us. Written stories are different however, asking more of our imagination, which is more difficult to satisfy in other ways.

The Audiobook as storyteller

The audiobook is a relatively recent technological innovation whose concept is actually quite old, far older than books. The recorded voice of a performer retells a story with the energy and enthusiasm of an actor, bringing a tale to life. It is no wonder audiobooks are growing so quickly in popularity. They fit into a busy modern life, listening while driving, riding a train or even while working (if it’s mindless enough). And the lowly book gets a reprieve, while we continue to tickle our hungry imaginations.

But What About Printed Books?

Printed books made from paper, ink and glue may very well disappear one day. Technology already exists to do that. But stories will not, cannot go away, it is part of what makes us human. We may listen to stories through implanted devices in our head, watch holographic movies projected through Virtual Reality glasses, or simply absorb entire stories instantly into our augmented brains, but stories themselves will never go away.

I don’t lament the loss of books. What are they anyway, just a temporary medium, a means to get the story from writer to reader, from creator to audience. A Kindle is not a book, but reading a story on it can and is just as satisfying. An audiobook is not a storyteller sharing a tale by firelight on a winter night, but it too can be just as satisfying. Things change, ways of telling stories change, but the need to share stories never does.


Threshold of the Mind is the futuristic story of mankind whose stories come from Virtual Reality and brain augmentations, where reality is far too stark and unpleasant without them.

In print (yes, ink and paper) from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.
Now in Audiobook on Audible.com read by award winner actor, Jeff Clarke

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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.

Threshold-FrontCoverThe 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.

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