Footprints: Introduction
Brian William Neal's mighty sci-fi novel Denizens gave an account of the epic journey of the Hermes, a spaceship which took humans faster and further across the Universe than ever before.
The surviving crew returned to Earth, bringing scientific secrets which changed for ever the course of human life.
Now another adventure is about to begin.
But first....if you are coming to Brian's epic adventure story for the first time, click on Denizens in the menu on this page. Settle back. Enjoy hours and hours of sumptuous reading.
And for those who read the first Hermes novel, here's the treat for which you have been hoping and longing.
Footprints will be serialised week by week in Open Writing. Here is the introduction to the story.
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Book Two of the Voyages of the Hermes
“We know so little of the omniverse, even our small part of it. In this respect, the human race may be likened to a goldfish contemplating a thumbprint on the outside of its bowl.” - Professor Jonathan Edge, New Oxford University
Reality 1442
Do you believe in magic? Some time ago, while researching music from the distant past, I came across a reference from the 1960s, almost 1,000 years ago, to a popular singer by the name of John Sebastian who wrote a song with that title. A rather childish question, you might think; indeed, the song asked if you believed in magic in people’s hearts. However, as events have unfolded, something other than pure chance seems to have been at work here, to have been directing events towards an inevitable conclusion.
The song also spoke of magic to save your soul. And if magic isn’t quite the right word, then call it karma, kismet, destiny, or whatever you will. There is a definite feeling concerning recent happenings that certain things simply were meant to be. Of course, even imaginative cynics might say that whatever does happen was what was meant to happen. In other words, both past and future are already written, immutable, and cannot be altered, since any changes we are able to make were what was always meant to be, and we are but the instruments of the gods.
Bullshit! Please forgive the crudity.
As will be made apparent to all who read this, it is evident that we are, and always have been, the masters of our own destiny.
And so we find ourselves once again in each other’s company, you and I; I setting down the tale, and you, dear reader, my patient audience as we approach the third millennium, less than a hundred and fifty years from now. Providing, that is, that mankind does not make the same arithmetical error they made the last time this milestone was upon us, many of them thereby managing to miss the once-in-a-lifetime event, as it was then. Shortly after that occurrence, another Event gave us the longevity to experience the occasion again. We can only hope they get it right this time.
It has been a long time, even by our standards, since I put pen to paper, so to speak. In my original telling of the dramatic happenings leading up to The Event, I think I managed to pay equal attention to all of the major players. Not all who survived the original events have survived the intervening centuries. Of the aquanauts, Thomas and Jennifer Stoddard, my parents, were lost to us about 400 years later, in the Antarian shuttle disaster of 2507. Of the astronauts, Bill O’Rourke sacrificed his life so that the others might escape the 10th planet, while Jonathan Edge remained behind in biblical era Israel, to find his own destiny.
As you might be aware, the first work telling of the original series of adventures was published over 400 years ago, and much has happened since then. With the recent passing of Arnold Katzmeyer’s wife, Julia, none of the principals remain, at least on Earth. Arnold himself died more than 400 years ago, and Cal and Karen Ferguson….well, the story I am about to tell deals with them too, and I wouldn’t want to spoil it for you.
The history books tell only one version of the legend; what really happened will, as I have said, be revealed here, and will turn out to depend very much on from which point of view one sees the story. It is possible that this will be the last word on the saga of the Denizens, and those who shared their place in the history of mankind. But who knows? Only time will tell. Because time, at the beginning and the end of all things, is all there is.
Thomas J. Stoddard, Jnr.
New Aotearoa
Procyon System
April 28th, 2956
