Story

Dreams of the Prophet Droid is an interweaving of science and religious fiction. It is a re-working of the Atlantis myth, inspired in part by the revelations of Edgar Cacey, the American radio mystic, clairvoyant and healer, and in part by the songs of Gary Numan. Technology has presented man with his greatest challenge, a self-created mirror in the form of androids, who come to shame their creators with their good nature and their artistic and spiritual gifts. The baser elements in society lead their persecution, but a more sinister threat is posed by the Brotherhood, whose vision of the future has room for neither the androids nor most of their human contemporaries. Noel, the android hero of the story, gradually becomes aware of the Continent's fate, and becomes inextricably linked with its crisis.

'Dreams of the Prophet Droid' is a science-fiction vehicle for a look at consciousness - humorous at times - while drawing on many other references. These include: Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra, the Bhagavad Gita, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and the Old Testament. It involves political oppression and personal freedom; virtual reality and the use of telepathy, and finally man's oldest dream: that of flying.

Origins

I started writing the book in 1982 when studying for the MSc in Software Engineering at Oxford. The course was my first serious exposure to computing systems, and it triggered an alter ego that asserted itself in my personality --- that of an android. Whether this was a past life / parallel universe bleed-through of personal past experiences, or whether I tapped into the collective unconscious of mechanical men, either past or future, or whether it was all in my imagination, there is no telling. However, this personality was coherent, delightful, and had a story to tell: here it is.

(Remember: Dreams of the Prophet Droid is copyright, like all the material in this site.)