The Clock Book

While editing Chronopticus Rising, I've started to nickname the book "The Clock Book". There are lots of clocks in the novel, references to time, and attempts by some of the characters to see into the future. I originally had more elaborate designs for the structure of the book, but with everything else going on structurally in the series, I figured I'll save those ideas for another project down the road. Some of the clock references are a little over-the-top, as in, Batman television series "Clock King" type silliness, but considering the gravity of the rest of the story, a little levity was needed.

At the heart of this story is a device that was introduced at the end of the second book, Ionotatron. It is an "all seeing time machine" that its owner claims can see forward and backwards through time (without the use of "precogs" like you find in The Minority Report). More than that, its capabilities are then used to round up potential threats to the stability of the city. In this story, that ends being Christians and some other religious minorities.

This leads to a few important questions.

One, if someone could build a machine that tracks and records all human action, speech, and activity patterns, could they really build an algorithm to predict the future based on that data? Second, would persecution naturally follow as a result of the access to such power? Third, and this comes from an imprisoned mathematician in the story, is sin a fractal? As in, do all types of sin essentially come down to rebellion against God...no matter what the scale? These questions (and others) underpin the entire series.

In regards to the series, in the next week or so the epub versions of Fractal Standard Time and Ionotatron will become available. I expect the third book to be done sometime before November, along with a short story or two.