Unreliable Narrators

The annual sales conference of a large publisher sees upwards of 30 editors presenting their projects to the sales force. It's competitive. As an editor you want your books to be the first out of the bag, the lead titles.

The sales people have to listen to the editors for 2-3 days, which is very, very, very boring for them. I imagine that at the end of it they can scarcely remember the names of any of the titles presented to them. So I've always tried to make it a little less boring by being unpredictable, sometimes, for example, driving onto the stage on a motorbike to present Valentino Rossi's book, but mostly just by being unpredictable, a bit subversive, gently sending the whole thing up.

I once had to present a book about UFOs, a book unlike anything the reps had had to sell before. It had an introduction by a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - so someone who had recently been the UK's senior military man and probably in a position to make an informed judgment on matters 'above top secret'.

I told the audience - of 2-300 - I was going to read from this intro, and started to do so in a slightly bufferish voice. But gradually i introduced into his text elements of parody, at first very mild, so the audience couldn't be quite sure, then more and more extreme - the best way to deal with Johnny Alien in my experience etc - until it became a psychopathic rant.  Some parts of the audience got it before others. The Japanese reps were apparently looking at each other in puzzlement.

The author would probably have been horrified, but it did mean that the reps remembered it and sold huge numbers into the shops. It was no 2 in the Sunday Times bestsellers in its first week of publication.

I love that device, and used it with The Secret History of the World. I hope readers will be unsure of what they're reading but at the end understand what it is.

Comments

[Al]

It would be permanently memorable at the next UFO event you get to speak at if you ride up on a motorbike, and run over a couple of greys who are in the process of abducting someone in the audience. ;D

[Jeff]

To confirm your book's thesis: In 1981 I was practicing self-hypnosis to help me sleep. At that time there was an occult book shop in Laguna Beach (CA) called Red Lion Books. In this shop I purchased a book titled “Practical Time Travel,” by Colin Bennett. I performed some of the exercises in the book. As I continued the exercises, an unexpected thing happened. After several months I was able to see the entire future while in a semi-conscious state.

The experience always began in the same way. I would be sound asleep and begin to awake at the sound of shouting. My first shock was to realize that the shouting was from my own throat. I was not only shouting, I was also sitting up. The reason for the shouting was understandable. I was "seeing" the entire future at one take. As I became aware of this, I also became aware of a sharp tingling at the top of my head. It was almost like electricity. I knew in that moment that (1) the mortal mind was not meant to possess this knowledge; (2) my possession of this knowledge was temporary; (3) I could take a small fragment of this knowledge with me; (4) I had only seconds to choose which fragments to keep. Inevitably, the tingling sensation would travel down my spine and exit my body along with omniscience itself. This experience happened three times in the course of a week.

As a result of these experiences I consulted a Jungian psychologist with the initials WVK. It was during this phase that a teacher began to appear in my dreams, on a regular basis. In one dream I was shown “the future presidents of the United States.” I saw Reagan, Bush, Clinton and the younger Bush. “Where are the others?” I asked. The teacher replied: “There are no others. After these, the Republic ends.”

There was another dream related to the same subject, involving the age of “mass man” (in which I met First Consul Bonaparte, who told me that the mass men would rise in his time and succumb during my own.) I also had an encounter with a commanding goddess figure engaged in bringing about the transformation of the ages.

Eventually, WVK began to share his encounters with supernatural beings. These were part of a group charged with “directing history.” He wasn’t sure if these entities were objectively real or projections of the “collective unconscious.” He’d been wrestling with this for many years. One of the beings had the appearance of a man, with blue eyes and dark skin and reddish brown hair. He called this being “Michael.” There was also the spirit of a disincarnate priest from ancient Egypt. I cannot remember the other details he gave, except that he related three facts about the future (which I did not credit at the time).

According to WVK, Germany would be reunited in 1990. He also said that World War III would begin shortly after the turn of the century with a terrorist attack on New York. (He said the war would eventual involve the use of nuclear weapons.) Last, but not least, he said that around the year 2011 a political movement would begin, under the leadership of twins. This political movement would eventually change the world. He also said the twins were born in late August 1971. They would emerge in the vicinity of Shasta, California. All this information was imparted to me in 1981.

I must confess, I did not believe Germany would collapse in 1990 as WVK predicted. I also did not believe World War III would start with a terrorist attack in New York. I do not know what to make of the prediction concerning the "twins."

Perhaps you have an insight into this.