Etchings in the Ether

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.

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.