Unified Terran Community

Well.  Here we go again.  Another year kicks off.  As it’s the 16th of January, the traditional end of Hogmany in Scotland, I thought I would bring you all up to speed on whats been going on and the plans for the year ahead.

Despite the ominous online silence, there has been progress on the UTC storyline.  Much of the material is hand written, so there will be a further pause while I type it up here.  I have a couple of revisions for you and the next installment in the story arc.  As well as continuing work on the UTC setting, I have also begun work on another series of unrelated stories.  In a complete change in direction, these are more contemporary in that they are set in the nineties and focus on a fictional town in the highlands of Scotland and the strange and disturbing events that occur there.  Well, I hope it will be strange and disturbing…

The good people at Train or Maintain are putting together the site for these new stories at the moment, so when its up and running I’ll post an announcement and supply the direct link.

Anyway, I need to go and capture a wild haggis in preparation for the ancient pagan rite of Burns Night, where hagisses (haggi ?) are ritually slaughtered and eaten, accompanied by the dreary verse of our national bard and mildly poisonous whisky.  Yes, I said dreary.  As I mentioned here, I’m not a great fan of poetry.  Be seeing you.

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Which was of course George Orwells’ name for the UK in his novel Nineteen Eighty Four.  As I watched the Iraq War Inquiry on the rolling news last night I began to ponder the first crime that the protagonist of Orwells’ novel, Winston, commited.  Not withstanding the multitude of ‘Thoughtcrimes’, his first real act of rebellion was to buy a diary and writing implements.  This allowed Winston to keep a record of the announcements made by the Party.  Almost immediately this allowed Winston to perceive the deception and misinformation that the Party fed the ‘proles.  Arguably this really just pushed Winston out of denial, since his job was to delete any reference in the archives to ‘nonpersons’, those who had angered the Party and subsequently disappeared.

With the level of deceit that has become customary for our leaders to employ, I started to wonder if maybe this is something that needs to be done now.  Sounds a little paranoid, right?  Consider the example of Peter Mandelson.  If I recall correctly, Comrade Mandelson was the MP for Hartlepool to begin with.  He was removed to avoid a corruption scandal, quietly fading into the background for a while.  Then he re appeared and not long afterwards was sent off to the EU parliament to avoid another scandal.  Everyone sort of forgot about him until the Supreme Leader, Comrade Brown summoned him back from Europe to try and save his failing Premiership.  Interestingly, Mandelson didn’t just come back.  There were always rumours about the Blairite/Brown split in New Labour and Mandelson was definitely one of Blairs.  And thus, we the taxpayer paid a ‘moving allowance’ of over £250,000 to smooth the transition between the EU parliament and the UK one.  That would seem to be somewhat in the nature of a bribe, but we’re not that cynical.  Are we?

Anyway, back he came.  But not as an MP.  There was nowhere for him to go as an MP and he has a … dubious, success rate as an MP.  Clearly then, the way forward was to award him a Peerage.  With this crude bit of political flim flammery, the Supreme Leader got his fixer and Comrade Lord Mandelson of the Sith was born.  This was the beginning of the Supreme Leaders unusual policy of having a Cabinet that was over 50% unelected officials.  Certainly members of the Upper House had appeared in the Cabinet before, but never in such numbers.  I think many people have an instinctive distrust of Dark Lord Mandelson and that is a Very Good Thing.  But few people seem to remember that even Tony Blair had to get rid of Mandelson because he was so corrupt.  Even fewer people remember the actual reason Mandelson was cast out in the first place.  I suspect that if more people remembered the truth about Comrade Lord Mandelson, Brown could never have brought him back.

They say we live in the Age of Information.  This is almost correct, we live in the Age of Disinformation.  Our government continually contradicts itself and is caught in blatant lies on an almost daily basis.  Yet nothing ever comes of it.  The Iraq War Inquiry is a perfect example.  It is widely accepted (I hope!) that Blairs government lied through their rotten teeth to involve us in the War for Oil.  Now we have an Inquiry into what went on.  On the surface, this is great - only last night I watched one of our top military officers gleefully lay the blame for our high casualty rate at the door of Whitehall.  But this was an illegal war.  The focus should not be on who mismanaged the occupation but on who caused it to occur.  Tony Blair is a war criminal.  He should be treated as such.  The comedian Frankie Boyle remarked that latterly Blairs focus was on his ‘legacy’ and that said legacy was assured.  He would be remembered as a mass murdering bastard.  I certainly hope so.

Well, ramble over.  Have a pleasant day and remember to check your TVs for hidden cameras.  Remember, Lord Mandelson of the Sith knows where you live…

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Friday the 27th of November has thus far proved to be the darkest day of the year.  On this bleak day we gathered to pay our final respects to a close friend and loved one, Colin McNicholl or simply ‘Col’ (06/01/76 - 19/11/09).  I’m not sure if the phrase ‘good turnout’ is particularly apt for a funeral; so let us simply say that Col’s family and friends were there in abundance.  I can only imagine what his partner and family are going through, for myself I am utterly devastated.  The nature of Col’s death was such that it leaves doubts and questions, in a way that dying of a physical illness does not.  This adds to the tragedy, because there is nothing that could have been done to save him, only false impressions that a solution may have existed.

But enough of this kind of talk!  The ceremony on Friday was to celebrate Col’s life, not mourn his death and so this post will follow in that theme.  Col was a professional guitarist (among other things), one of my earliest memories of Col from school is his almost obsessive interest in music.  As you grow up, you generally meet several gifted musicians in your travels.  Col was the only one I ever met who had the genuine drive to make it as a pro.  Indeed, a couple of years ago, his band signed with an indie label in Glasgow and managed to pull off the impressive coup of supporting the Dead Kennedys at their only Scottish date.

Col was charming, funny and knew his own mind.  He was incredibly tolerant and non judgemental.  The varied group at his funeral was a testament to Col’s ability to form close friendships at great speed.  I am unaware of anyone who met Col and didn’t like him.  The concept of the social clique was completely foreign to Col and his friendships crossed all social boundaries.  Never was there a more genuine or loyal friend to be found.  Col’s interests were rich and varied.  As well as music (obviously) he was an enthusiastic fan of the non mainstream sci fi, such as the novels of Michael Marshall Smith and of course the timeless classic theat is Red Dwarf.  Politically, Col was very ‘Punk’ in his attitude.  It was Col who introduced me to the ‘Net film Loose Change, the first of several ‘conspiracy films’ we enjoyed; Zeitgeist 1 and 2 following swiftly afterwards.

The other interest that Col and I shared was a predeliction for rare herbs and proscribed chemicals.  The reason I mention this is to pass on a message from someone who was most likely Col’s oldest friend.  This friend is severely ill and could only attend the initial ceremony at the crematorium.  He was unable to attend the later gathering which was more celebratory.  Simply the message is this:

“I just wanted Colin to know that I still have that pipe he gave me over ten years ago and I still use it every day.”

I’m mentioning this here, because there was a ‘memories’ book at the after gathering and i forgot to put this in there.  I think it’s important and didn’t want it left unsaid.  Both the originator of the message and myself have known Col since primary school.  He has always been an important part of our lives and he will be well missed.

And never forgotten.  We love you man, rest in peace.

To finish up, here is a picture of Col, some links to his bands’ site (band are called Littlejohnrocket) and to a charity he approved of.  Please take the time to follow the links, there are free samples of Cols’ music (he was the lead guitarist).  The music really is very good…

LINKS

‘Youth Music’ Charity Site

LittleJohnRocket MySpace Site

LittlejohnRocket main Website

Note: It is certainly possible that the music sites will not be up forever, I don’t know what the band have planned, if anything - so have a listen while you still can  

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Evening folks, just a quick one tonight.  The first part of ‘The High Watchtower’ is now available to view if you’re a Newsletter subscriber.  For everyone else, it’ll be available to view around this time tomorrow (20th July).  If you want to subscribe to the newsletter you can find the form here.  For any latecomers I’ll send out a second batch tomorrow morning (UK time).  For those determined not to subscribe, there will be another background article published tomorrow, to keep you busy in the meantime.  Take Care!

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Well, here we are again.  I’m taking a small break from writing ‘The High Watchtower’ and noticed I hadn’t done a Blog entry for a while, so I thought it might make a nice change of pace.  In addition to the forthcoming story, there are a couple of other things on the boil at the Community that I thought you might be interested in hearing about.  Firstly, the UTC website will soon feature its very own Mnemosyne Device.  Thats right folks, soon you will be able to discover your first incarnation and also how that particular incarnation came to an end.  As with the stories, Newsletter subscibers will have a 24 hour preview period to make use of before the Device is displayed for general use.  There’s another couple of book reviews, ‘Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang’ by Kate Wilhelm and ‘Concrete Island’ by J.G. Ballard, the first one has cloning as one of its themes (and incest, but more of that later..), while the second, well, if ‘Robinson Crusoe’ was a grim urban nightmare, this would be it.  I hope that made sense.  There will also be another background article to preceed ‘The High Watchtower’.  It will be in a similar vein to the one before it, and will contain further hints of things to come.  Anyway, stuff to do and so on, so after gently reminding you about the newsletter again I will bid you farewell!  Hope to see you soon!

unifiedterrancommunity@gmail.com

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Some further musings on the subject of reincarnation. As has been mentioned elsewhere, the process of reincarnation is one of the most important underlying concepts of the Unified Terran Community setting. When I was researching the subject, to help me decide how I wanted it to work in the alternate reality of the stories. I was surprised at the prevalence of the idea in real world religions, both contemporary and ancient. It’s important to point out that my research was not exhaustive, I wasn’t particularly keen to imitate a specific religions interpretation of reincarnation, I was more interested to see a few different examples. From what I was able to gather there are, broadly speaking, two versions of the concept. In one paradigm, it is the rebirth of a human soul into another human body. In the second paradigm, the process of reincarnation is not restricted to incarnation into human form, souls can be reborn in animal bodies. Within these two very broad categories, there are numerous subtle variations which combine to ensure that there is no consensus view on exactly how the process works. The lack of consensus wasn’t surprising but was quite handy from the point of view of seeing different takes on the subject. I also didn’t want to endorse any one religions interpretation of the subject. You can’t please everyone, with such disparate views on the concept, so I opted not to please anyone. Generally speaking, though, I followed the idea of reincarnation being restricted to human to human transfer.

The Mystery Religions of Ancient Greece were the inspiration for the terminology that the members of the Community use to describe their incarnation technology. Areas such as India and the Orient are of course famous for the incorporation of reincarnation into their beliefs, but it was, and is, present in some form in every culture. The ancient religion of the Egyptians, which seems to be the ancestor of many other belief systems, had a strong emphasis on reincarnation. J.J. Dewey postulates that the belief was part of early Christian teachings, but was removed as church leaders felt it was incompatible with their doctrines.The Church of Scientology also features reincarnation as a central belief, although their take on it has human kind as being extra terrestrial in origin (or at least that’s my understanding of it…)

A process related to the concept of reincarnation is past life regression, by means of hypnosis. One of the most recurring features associated with this, is the considerable historical inaccuracy associated with the memories. This has led many to the conclusion that the memories recovered through the hypnotic technique are not true memories, but creations of the subconscious after receiving a suggestion to recall memories from before the subjects birth. This got me thinking as well, what if it were possible to prove such memories were real? This would be a fundamental change to our reality and how we perceive each other. Then I began to consider the possibilities of the complete restoration of the memories from any past incarnation. The vast increase of collective wisdom, would have a staggering impact on our society, techniques and theories from the ancient world which we have never been able to duplicate or fully grasp would become accessible once more. Marry this with our modern day technological advances and vast cultural leaps could be made.

Which leads me conveniently to a small advance notice, the third part of the main UTC story arc, with a working title of ‘The High Watchtower’ is underway and will be posted in due course. I’m also working on another Travellers Tales instalment, which should be finished around the same time or possibly a bit earlier. For those who simply can’t wait, there will be a background article very soon which will have a few clues as to the next story. I’ll bid you farewell, for now, and hope to see you again soon!

unifiedterrancommunity@gmail.com

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An end to an extremely lazy day. After overcoming an episode of clinical lethargy late in the afternoon, I managed to make a decent start into the first draft of the first Travellers Tale. It will be up on the site within the next day or two, all going according to plan. I’m going to experiment with different storytelling methods, when writing these since I haven’t done much of that, thus far. So bear with me, everything will be allright… I’ve enjoyed the creation of the first story of Maeldune and Eris, I can see quite a few tales into the future for them. That can’t be bad can it? The thing now is to keep up the momentum, made slightly trickier by being away on holiday and having to negotiate with AOL to access the internet…damn you AOL. Anyway, you’ll have the first Maeldune story in a day or two and the second one will be close on its heels. I’ll also be working on ‘Panic, Frenzy and Madness’ which I’m hoping to get into a first draft reasonably soon. Work is underway, but it’s a bit early at the moment to say when it will be ready. As they say, stay tuned.

unifiedterrancommunity@gmail.com

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I’ve been thinking a bit more about the Traveller’s Tales idea I mentioned in the last Blog entry. After consideration, I’m going to do a few of those as well. The Unified Terran Community setting has grown considerably beyond my initial conception and, I suppose, I hate to see anything go to waste. After all, I am Scottish… That aside, there are parts of the UTC that the background articles won’t really do justice to. I also think it’s a more accessible way to discover the Community, it’s not to everyone’s taste to read through the background articles. This new development doesn’t mean that the initial story arc is being abandoned, quite the opposite! I believe the travellers tales will be an effective supplement to the original stories and will allow the reader to explore parts of the Community that are not directly related to the main plot, but are in themselves still worthy of attention. Part of the necessity of this, is that the Community is being explored through the medium of short stories and by definition details that are superfluous to the plot are omitted. Our two main protagonists are the wanderer Maeldune and his travelling companion Eris. Fans of Greek myth or indeed Discordianism will be aware of the consequences of having Eris as a travelling companion. She will certainly keep life interesting for Maeldune, and who could ask for anything more? A couple of other things; the stories are arranged alphabetically at the moment and are written out of sequence. For those who are interested, the chronological sequence of events is: “The Maiden, The Mother and The Crone”; “Prelude to Penny Dreadful”; “Sinainn”; “Raoul’s Adventures in Wonderland” and then “Penny Dreadful”. As more stories are added, I will construct a time line, to help clarify the order of events. This time line will also include significant historical moments, as they are revealed. The second bit of work will be to consolidate the background articles and organise them a bit more clearly. This is, after all, a working notebook. Anyway, plenty to be getting on with, so I’ll leave it at that for now. Enjoy exploring the site and the Unified Terran Community!

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Today was quite busy, I’ve put up another short story, this one called ‘Sinainn’. It explains a bit of why Cailte is the way he is. Really it’s just the bare bones and its a bit clunky, but the seed is there. The next background article, which is nearing completion, covers the day to day life of a few typical members in the Community. As there has been a focus on the out of the ordinary, as depicted by the Mechanics activities, I thought it might be useful to have something to compare it to. I’m also going to use the next couple of background articles to introduce a couple of new characters; Maeldune and his travelling companion Eris. I’m considering a sub section of stories, dealing with their wanderings around the Community, but we’ll see how the characters behave when they’re let out of the box. I will be continuing to produce material for the Unified Terran Community, as time permits. Hopefully I can establish somewhat more of a routine! Anyway, enjoy the story, roam the site and don’t worry, the Mechanics can fix any little problems…

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I have a few bits and pieces to be getting on with today.  I need to finalise a few details of the background for the next part in the UTC story arc.  Basically, I need to make sure the various supplementary bits of writing are all consistent with the latest developments.  The working title for the next part is still nominally ‘Panic, Frenzy and Madness’.  As to whether I keep that remains to be seen.  There are at least another three background articles to lay the ground for the next story, one of them concerns the early history of the Community and it’s trials, the second is a bit of detail on the founding members of the Community and their current positions and activities.  The third proposed article, fills in the blanks on the day to day existences of the members of the Community.  As always, contained within the background articles are clues which foreshadow key events.  Since this story will be longer, it will, inevitably, take longer to write.  As such I will also work on a couple of shorter pieces for more immediate consumption.  As a little extra news, I have almost persuaded an Artist to help with some concept sketches of characters and places.  Hopefully, this will happen soon and you will be able to see the Community in all it’s glory.  Announcements will be made as material becomes available to view, so keep popping back!

unifiedterrancommunity@gmail.com

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