Warning Clowns

And now I've invented a religion.

No fear -- I prefer writing science fiction. Or history-adjacent adventure, at least at present.

I was this close to dumping the entire UFO cult angle from the next book, but then I got thinking about silver jumpsuits and monorails and I just couldn't resist. You only write once, I guess.

This morning I was thinking about depictions of scientific savior organizations from 70's TV, like Ark II or Genesis II and...oops, that's exactly the right idea. In a moment I had the basic philosophy, and it is continuing to unfold in my mind. At this point my cult leader could talk for a couple of pages on it. If I let him.

Basically we're talking scientific humanist. Plus aliens. It is a progressive uplift idea that weaves together UFOs, the Garden of Eden, King Arthur, and of course modern malaise. So there's plenty of hooks around for them to be talking about and collecting artifacts from the past, especially the "greatest hits" model (the secret conspiracy always backed Napoleon. Never Wellington, and certainly not Corporal Smith.)

And they don't have a volcano but they do have some fancy gigs that lean entirely too far in the Ken Adams direction.

And I'm sticking with Genpei War for the bit of history. Even if it is an era I don't know much about and aren't that interested in. It is really post-opening Japan that interests me most, from Perry's Black Ships to the bubble collapse, but particularly the post-war period. But with this and the Blitz I run the risk of making the series look like it is all about World War II and other relatively modern history.

Now my biggest problems are two. How to winnow down the material and focus it in. And how to come up with a baddie and an objective that are strong and immediate and important.

(That's the speech-to-text again. I was making a note about warring clans. In a paragraph that included "samurai" twice. But that's par. I had dictated something like "With the samurai came the samurai codes and beliefs..." and speech-to-text caught the first one fine but decided to replace the second with "Same as me." It is illuminating as to how it works. The first pass is a best-guess for words. The next is a frequency check where it replaces uncommon words with words that are more likely to have been said or meant. Then the last pass cleans up the grammar -- or tries to. So "Samurai" became "Same as I" became "Same as me.")

But I am still intrigued by the idea of a story set in the Warning Clowns period. Or maybe it is a single soothsayer. "Beware the Ides of March" doesn't have the same ring coming from under that red nose...