Just wow. This book. Scary.

Fly Twice Backward by David McCracken released in October in the Alt-history/sci-fi genre.

You wake back in early adolescence, adult memories intact, including ones that could make you very wealthy now. Your birth family is here, alive again, but your later families are gone, perhaps forever. What has happened, what should you do about coming problems like violence, ignorance, pollution, and global warming? You realize one key connects most, the fundamentalist strains of all the major religions, disdaining science, equality, and social welfare. You see that there are some things you can change, some you can’t, and one you don’t dare to.

Fellow idealists help you spend your growing fortune well–such as an artistic Zoroastrian prince in the Iranian oil industry, a rising officer in the Soviet army working to find a way to destroy his corrupt government, a Bahai woman struggling against Islamic brutality, a Peruvian leader working for a liberal future, and a snake-handling Christian minister, grappling with doubts, sexuality, and destiny. They are supported by an ally who develops essential psychic powers. The group faces familiar-looking corrupt politicians, religious leaders, and corporate czars, but there is an ancient force in the background, promoting greed, violence, hate, and fear.

This exciting, emotional, thoughtful, humorous, and even romantic sci-fi novel weaves progressivism, music, movies, and literature into a struggle spanning the globe. Vivid characters propel the action back up through an alternative history toward an uncertain destination. Experience the unique story and its novel telling.

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52960668

The book is on sale for $0.99.

“Up in the mornin’ and off to school!” plays in my head as I hear the latest hits on WVLK, while we eat breakfast on this third school day. Chuck Berry actually won’t be along with those words in “School Days” for several years, but I’m enjoying what is coming over the radio. Old friends. This morning I’m surprised to hear “Jambalaya.” I didn’t realize our station played anything so country/Cajun. Listening to these songs reminds me that back then, well, now, we all listen to pretty much the same songs, except for those of us who are very country or African American. A shared culture. People are starting to watch the same TV shows, too, though not my family.

I am so eager to start band today. First thing in the day, though, is the whole school going to the cafeteria to watch the film, Duck and Cover. How chilling to see the atomic war message made realistic. Especially in our room full of largely unaware children, surprisingly quiet: “We must always be ready for an atomic explosion, no matter where we are, no matter what we’re doing.”

Unfortunately, my very first band class is mostly consumed by a bomb drill and discussion of it. Thank goodness,  I know the Cold War does end before any bombs fall: Wish I could tell everyone not to worry, now and for the next forty years. Wish I could say we can go ahead with band and our lives, worry-free!

The film that made it even more personally real, later? Oh, The Day After. I still remember vividly the horror the citizens of Lawrence, Kansas, felt when they saw the missiles based around them erupting from the ground, knowing the war was on, and hostile missiles would be coming back at them. The pathos of a survivor finding his way back to his home, trying to take possession of the rubble, from other survivors picking through it for anything that would help them survive. A woman with kindness and embarrassment, offering him an apple she’s found. What an impact on me now, remembering the innocent opening scene of it, in a band class . . . . Maybe it was the lack of having seen the later film that made the earlier Duck and Cover film pass unremembered, or perhaps I just wasn’t mature enough to be scared.

But how many of these boys around me will too soon die in the jungles, mud, and rot of Vietnam?

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

David McCracken was born in Louisville, KY, in 1940. Raised mostly in Winchester, KY, he now lives in Northern Virginia, with his third and final wife. He has three children, two stepchildren, and six grandchildren.

After three years in the U.S. Navy following a lackluster academic start, he graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1963, in Diplomacy and International Commerce. He then worked as a Latin American country desk officer in the U.S. Department of Commerce until he returned to school to earn an M.A. in Elementary Education in 1970 from Murray State University, having always been intending to teach. Eventually realizing his children qualified for reduced-price lunches based on his own teaching salary, he studied computer programming at Northern Virginia Community College and worked as a programmer until shifting back into elementary teaching.

He began working on what became Fly Twice Backward in 1983 and finally finished it in 2019! At 79, David strongly doubts he’ll be doing another novel of such scope and complexity, but is preparing to work on a children’s science fiction novel with a progressive bent, being a devout progressive in politics and religion, as well as a lover of learning.

Reading this: “What has happened, what should you do about coming problems like violence, ignorance, pollution, and global warming? You realize one key connects most, the fundamentalist strains of all the major religions, disdaining science, equality, and social welfare”, it’s hard to think your book is fiction and not a spot-on representation of today’s situation. Was that on your mind when you were writing it?

Ah, this is my science fiction autobiography, filled with the things I would still care about starting again back and as I relive the time and try to make them work out better. (Wait’ll you meet President Clubb!) I am hoping readers experience the danger of dogmatism, and experience the caring and thinking that are the way through. I’m convinced that exposition has its limits, and that it’s the feelings, stupid, to borrow Clinton’s mantra about the economy.

Website: https://flytwicebackward.blogspot.com/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Fly-Twice-Backward-102547317844345

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