Silence Descends: The End of the Information Age, 2000―2500 is not as much a novel as it is an imaginary book of non-fiction: a history of the future, written in the year 2500―a look back at where we have yet to go. Silence Descends is a cautionary tale; it is a critique of "the Microsoft mentality"―the belief in the power of technology to save us. This is the story of how the information age goes awry, and rather than enhancing our lives, actually leads to the breakdown of society.
The atomic destruction of the former Stalingrad by what will be suspected as fascist militants will become the first in a series of steps that will lead to the end of society as we will know it.
Mixing real personalities with imaginary individuals from the future, George has done his research on this one, even if most of it is made up. References include Mary Xian (Night Thoughts, 2012), Carmen Jaeger (The First Day of Spring, 2029), Arthur Hong (RageRoots, 2041), Aldous Huxley (Brave New World, 1932) and George Orwell (Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1949).
Silence Descends includes black and white photographs by Rosalee Hiebert.
Welcome to my Author Central! I'm a Canadian writer with six books to my credit, whose topics range from rock 'n' roll to personal memoir, and from speculative fiction to cultural criticism. Currently I reside in my birthplace of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario (US translation: Flint Michigan or Youngstown Ohio), after twenty years of living in larger centers like Toronto, Ottawa, and Vancouver (think New York, Washington, and San Francisco). My shorter pieces have been published in the Vancouver Sun daily newspaper, the Vancouver Review literary quarterly, the US social science journal Skeptic, and in a number of anthologies.
What will you find in my books? My literary models are George Orwell (for his clarity of thought and power of rhetoric), F. Scott Fitzgerald (for his almost musical sense of rhythm and diction), and critic Stanley Kauffmann (an impeccable judge of the unexamined ideas and contradictions underlying a given work or experience) - but I also try to make my writing accessible to readers encountering my subjects for the first time. If there's a recurring theme to my work, it may be something to do with the relevance of the past in the present, the importance of cultural literacy, and a detached or introverted take on the noisy to-and-fro of modern and postmodern discourse.
At any rate (to use a pet phrase of Orwell's), curl up in a quiet outer or inner space with one of these titles, and get to know me through them. My words and my thoughts are waiting to engage with you.
