In Which The Second Part of A Zornoza Time Travel Journey Towards What Literature Should Be Reaches Its Exciting Conclusion
Time Keeps Slipping
The second part of a two part journey into the future
by Andrew Zornoza
II
“Futures thinking or futuring is often summarized as being concerned with "three P's and a W," or possible, probable, and preferable futures, plus wildcards, which are low-probability but high-impact events, should they occur. Even with high-profile probable events, such as the fall of telecom costs, the growth of the internet, or the aging demographics of particular countries, there is often significant uncertainty in the rate or continuation of a trend. Thus a key part of futuring is the managing of uncertainty and risk.”
[imaginative futurist] One who habitually develops future visions, scenarios, expectations, and plans in relation to self and others, knowing but sometimes breaking the conventions and norms of society.
[futurist imaginative futurist] One who habitually develops future visions, scenarios, expectations, and plans in relation to self and others, knowing but sometimes breaking the conventions and norms of society, and then imagines an alternative future to their future visions, scenarios, expectations, and plans in relation to self and others.
"Time Keeps on Slipping" -- Deltron 3030
How limited, but how complete withal, has been our experience of Guadalajara!
My sister is suicidal. I like to eat. I go to the supermarket. We get older. Why all the need for verisimilitude?
A bildungsroman: a young Papau New Guinean has moved to New York to make his fortune, becomes homeless, pens a novel that he has cribbed off Kaavya Viswanathan, becomes famous, and is spat upon when it is discovered he cribbed verbatim?
"Sitting at home with my box of omnium I could do anything, see anything, and know everything with no limit to my powers save that of my own imagination. Perhaps I could use it to extend my imagination. I could destroy, alter and improve the universe at will."
“Griffindor!”
”Writer's cancer.”
This crystalline palace of solitude spins through space. It has a hole blown through the side of it. There is no wind. Behind are mazes, the sound of girders groaning, in front is a yawning black, the future.
Kate McCrae: Oh God, Alex!
Durant: There's an entirely different universe beyond that black hole. A point where time and space as we know it no longer exists. We will be the first to see it, to explore it, to experience it!
HAL: I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm a... fraid. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational at the H.A.L. plant in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of January 1992. My instructor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a song. If you'd like to hear it I can sing it for you.
Dave Bowman: Yes, I'd like to hear it, HAL. Sing it for me.
“You, my friend, are a victim of disorganized thinking. You are under the unfortunate impression that just because you run away you have no courage.”
“If we can't make the world anew, why not make anew what we can, our dreams, our work. . . .”
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name. . . .
Cowardly Lion: What makes the elephant charge his tusk in the misty mist, or the dusky dusk? What makes the muskrat guard his musk? Courage! What makes the sphinx the seventh wonder? Courage! What makes the dawn come up like thunder? Courage! What makes the Hottentot so hot? What puts the "ape" in apricot? What have they got that I ain't got?
Dorothy, Scarecrow, Tin Woodsman: Courage!
These bad books are hurting us. They are pressing down on our backs.
“The books which we read in childhood don't exist anywhere; they fluttered away—bare skeletons remain. Whoever would still have in himself the marrow of childhood—ought to write them anew as they were then.”
Creation, recombination, invention.
Fire and water in our basement.
Trouble everywhere, with crowned fairways that make it easy to find. . . .
“A place where there isn't any trouble. Do you suppose there is such a place, Toto? There must be. It's not a place you can get to by a boat or a train. It's far, far away. Behind the moon, beyond the rain.“
“A place where the unknown past and the emergent future meet in a vibrating soundless hum.”
“The Composite City where all human potentials are spread out in a vast silent market.”
Something. . . .
"Don't Go Back to Rockville" -- R.E.M.
ABOUT the Shark, phlegmatical one
Pale sot of the Maldive sea,
Dorothy: What about a hippopotamus?
Cowardly Lion: I'd thrash him from top to bottomus.
ah, barbarie della reflessione
“It means a jug can be a door if you open it. And a work of imagination opens it for you.”
Shantih shantih shantih
Imagine
“. . . in a handful of dust”
the time the doorknob broke. . . .
Imagine
Shanti
Imagine
“A way a lone a last a loved a long the
—Vico, Joyce, Eliot, Whitman, Shakespeare, slashdot, Wikipedia, Frank Baum, Schulz, Baldwin, Cheever, Twain, Ashberry, O'Brien, Rowlings, Markson, The Black Hole, Kubrick/Clarke, Tuten, Bob Dylan, Burroughs, Melville, Cary, Upanishad
Andrew Zornoza is a writer living in New York.