I wrote this novel to create a setting for my lone character. I wove in Sagan, aliens, AI, global politics and interstellar travel into an intriguing tale. It started at the end and worked towards a new beginning.
God’s Bolt: Amazon.co.uk: Forsythe, Ron: 9781092713597: Books
Here’s an extract:
Chapter 2
Carl Sagan – 1934 – 1996
I don’t know why I became a scientist. It could have been down to my parents. Yes, I think I’ll blame them.
I was born in Brooklyn in 1934. We were a poor Jewish family hustling a living like everybody else. My father had come in as an immigrant from what is now Ukraine and he was full of all that immigrant energy. He was a good man who worked hard and had a joy of life. He ran a garment factory. He wasn’t a religious man but he saw the wonder in everything and was bursting with benevolence. He did not know what science was but he encouraged me to be inquisitive and question everything. I think that was his greatest gift to me.
My mother was born in Brooklyn and was religious. Her life seemed to centre on the synagogue. She came from a very poor family and I think she’d seen too much of hard times. Life had dealt her hard blows and she was frustrated by it all. She had a mind on her but never had the chance to make anything of herself. She was held back by poverty, a lack of education, her gender and her faith. Back then Jewish girls were not expected to do anything other than bring up kids and look after the home and husband. But she doted on me. I think she put all her ambitions onto me. She was very analytical and taught me how to investigate and delve into the detail. That was her gift.
I suppose I married those two gifts together. It made me inquisitive and hungry to discover more. It made me look up in wonder and try to work out what it all meant.
From an early age I was always asking questions.
Brooklyn was a great place to grow up. It was a bustling hub of life. It wasn’t ideal for developing a career in science though. I guess I didn’t think about that too much when I was a child.
I’d play out in the streets with my friends but my Mum did rather cosset me. She spent hours encouraging me to think and do my school work. I was an extension of her dreams.
Sam, my Dad, would take me out with him to the garment factory and show me off to his friends. He was proud of me. My inquisitiveness bemused him but he loved it. He’d laugh at me and there was love in his eyes.
The streets back then were bustling with people. There were shops and street stalls selling everything you could think of and I like that bustle, weaving in and out of the crowds gripping on to Dad’s great paw of a hand. I’d look up and there, between the tall buildings, I could see the sky.
I was only five years old when I had my first epiphany. My parents took me to the World’s Fair. It nearly blew my eyes out of my head and sent my mind into overdrive. It was like I had woken up in a different world.
I was never quite the same.
The first thing that sent my mind whirling was an exhibition of the future. It was crazy – all super clean and modern with huge highways and families driving along in futuristic cars towards cities with gleaming skyscrapers. It looked a million miles from the bustling streets of Brooklyn with its dirty bricks, and all those street vendors with their wooden carts and litter. I wanted to see that world of the future. I wanted to be part of it.
I could imagine it. I could look into the future and see that incredible world that science was going to construct.
Then, with my head still reeling I was taken to the science exhibitions. They shone a light on this cell and it made noises. They made a noise with a tuning fork and it became a wavy line on this screen. I couldn’t believe it. I wanted to understand how light could become noise and how sound became light. I was thrilling with the excitement of it. My five year old brain was trying to make sense of all these wonders.
The most exciting thing of all was the Time Capsule. We went out to Flushing Meadows to see it being buried. It was a big container and they’d filled it with all these things from our age, everything that told a story about us, and buried it deep in the ground. It was like a snapshot of our world and it would sit there buried in the ground for hundreds of years. In my head I could imagine spacemen from some future world thousands of years in the future digging it up and finding out all about us.