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Tag Archives: Sci Fi

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.

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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.

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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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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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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

Threshold-FrontCoverOK, 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

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