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Etchings in the Ether

by Christopher John Mumford

406 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #00-0087; ISBN 1-55212-422-3; US$31.00, C$35.50, EUR25.50, £18.00

Etchings in the Ether is a science fiction cum philosophical work entailing concepts of creation, evolution and human interrelationships. An exploration of how both Disneyland and holocaust can exist on the same planet.

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about the book      about the author      Chapter One      catalogue info

About the Book Etchings in the Ether unfolds during a rain-lashed October evening on Vancouver Island's peninsula. Nearly three-hundred people gather at a rural Catholic school to hear charismatic author/physicist David Shaftesbury expound his gloriously anthropic principle of the universe. Even the local bishop is in attendance. Most have come simply to reinforce religious convictions. Some, like plumber Arthur Boorman, his family destroyed by an act of mindless violence, have come in search of solace and hope. Only one man, cynical sociology professor Charles Meade, sits in open judgement. A Stealth-like aircraft descends through the downpour. It settles onto the playing field behind the school. Robed figures disembark, beings who, though dying from the ravages of a relentless virus, have made a desperate journey across the galaxy to relay a fantastic message to the people of Earth. The physicist/evangelist and the entire audience are held captive, forced to listen while an alien intelligence outlines a terrifying reality behind life, evolution, form and behavior. The sadly repetitive human propensity for self-induced misery is all too explicitly explained. Even seemingly inexplicable phenomena such as school shootings are reduced to an immutable logic. A logic leaving no apparent room in the universe for God. A message is passed. The third and final act begins.

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About the Author Born in England in 1944, Christopher John Mumford has spent most of his life as a Canadian citizen, living, learning, and working in southern Ontario. He is now retired and lives on Vancouver Island. He has long been intrigued by the deep mystery of the universe, the intricate cascade of evolution and, as a child of war, fascinated by the extraordinary paradoxes inherent in human behavior. Mr. Mumford considers his novel, Etchings in the Ether to be fiction only in part.

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Chapter One

British Columbia, Canada, presents a land of stark contradictions. Here, tectonic giants tremble the quiet green earth. Massive slabs of rock heaved up into mountains confront the wind and the sea. Hummingbirds dart beneath the ominous shadows of soaring raptors. Native culture struggles against an Asian tide. Urban development rudely encroaches lush rain forests. Breathtaking evergreen vistas contrast vast tracts of land savaged to stubble under the onslaught of chainsaws.

Even the weather contradicts. On southern Vancouver Island, given one has the cost of real estate, it is often possible to tend to one's garden while blizzards rage across much of North America. A southeastern peninsula of the island juts impudently into the gaping coastal jaws of Washington State. Victoria, the City of Gardens, sprawls along the coastline of what might be loosely defined as the southernmost end of this peninsula area.

This is Lotusland, or at least a chunk of it, albeit a somewhat schizophrenic version of the ideal. A place of blatant wealth and subsistence welfare, a bureaucratically orchestrated theater of opulence and homelessness. Aggressive panhandlers, miserable street dogs and knots of sullen youths share Victoria's sidewalks with hoards of wary tourists. Always, a city of knapsacks.

While the day belongs to the rich and those who toil for them, night is owned by a subculture of dealers and addicts, prostitutes, runaways, lonely misfits, the mentally ill. Much of this underworld is malevolent, much of it costumed and contrived. The flesh of children is bartered here and murder is no stranger amidst the flowers. Over all, a place of ostentation, cults and karma, cultivated eccentricity, burned-out trendiness, mounting envy and downright despair. For many, a dropout paradise equaled perhaps only by southern California. Hemp heaven, especially for the growers. The weed of choice comprises BC's largest cash crop. A city of beauty, of promise, yet a crusher of naïve dreams.

From this fertile social soil grew the legend of the Workshoppers. The timing of the initial event, a rain-lashed evening two nights before Halloween, held no real significance. The date merely enhanced the mystery and added momentum to the hysteria following the primary tragedy. Nearly three hundred people, most of them quite ordinary, the majority of them well beyond middle age, took part in the central drama. None were ever the same again. Those who survived that night came away harboring a dark and miserable secret.

The Workshoppers drove both the media and the authorities to distraction. If they talked at all, they talked cryptically, in riddles. They babbled, often broke down completely, even in the face of gentle questioning. Despite repeated intervention by trauma counselors, debriefing interviews with individual Workshoppers deteriorated into shouted interrogations. Bitter confrontations with representative lawyers became the rule rather than the exception.

From the outset the situation fueled serious questions concerning terrorism and national security. The Americans demanded answers. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service, or CSIS, moved quickly to contain the investigation. A three-ring media circus lumbered into town. Rumor-mongering over the affair swelled into an international pastime. The rampant speculation gained weight due in part to the fact that the majority of the Workshoppers were upscale, respected people. They were known as reasonable, intelligent solid citizens. Many were business owners. Many were or had been professionals in one field or another.

One rumor refused to be squelched; in fact it seemed boundless. It swirled and expanded from coffee shops and workplaces around the globe. The Workshoppers, went the stories, had experienced a Close Encounter of the Third Kind, an actual terrifying exposure to an extraterrestrial being, an alien intelligence. Numerous versions hinted at a message from beyond the solarsystem, a message transcending the bounds of present philosophy.

The Workshoppers, many insisted, had been instructed regarding the very secret of life, and in tandem with the secret a final understanding of the repetitive wretchedness etched indelibly upon human history.

Official media releases countered all such nonsense. Nonetheless, television talk shows gleefully swapped UFO "experts" and "abductees." The CSIS, CIA and the military were slammed for continuing to cover up evidence of alien visitation.

To be sure, many Workshoppers blurted out disjointed pieces of the puzzle to family and friends, but their words were so incredible in scope and implication, most simply took pity. To believe was to entertain madness.

Then the Workshopper suicides began. The media went ballistic.

Officials, of course, held much back from the media and the public. The fact that a thread of consistency wove its way through Workshopper interviews. The fact that most Workshoppers exhibited classic symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, paleness, sweating, trembling, dullness, even an underlying furtiveness. The fact that during one CSIS session an elderly couple produced their granddaughter's Ken and Barbie dolls. While astounded agents watched, the Workshopper pair danced, jerked and otherwise manipulated the toys atop a desk. "Like this," they told the investigators. "Like this. See? Don't you see? Can you not understand? Like this, like this. Ken and Barbie are showing you why we have war and hunger and crime. Can you not see?"

The perspiring husband and wife became so upset, the display so pathetic in its earnestness, an agent at last ushered the pair into the care of a standby psychologist.

On and on it went. A mix of the bizarre and the undeniably tragic. Hysteria, conjecture and political pressure aside, the fundamental functioning of the world at large moved through time and space with its usual callous indifference. The stock markets rose and fell. Political ambition paraded through the media. The sad games of war and revolution played out across the planet. The shadow of social injustice fell no less darkly upon the peoples of all nations.

However, as soon became apparent, the priorities of how best to dominate and kill one another gave way to more critical global concerns.

The legacy of a message began.

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Catalogue Information

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