If you somehow learned exactly how and when you would die, what would you do? Would you continue your current path in life, or would you make changes in an effort to prevent your death from happening? What if you knew you would die doing something extremely important for all of humanity? Would you still do it? Douglas Cole has to answer these questions.

Douglas isn’t your typical guy. As a child, he causes something to happen that should be impossible. Twice. No one can explain it. After a family tragedy, Douglas finds himself haunted by a seriously scary entity, that no one else can see. Driven to the brink of insanity and the depths of drug addiction, Douglas is given a choice. Stay and die, or go with a mysterious friend of his, and fight a battle he is just beginning to understand.

This is a very deep book, that entwines concepts from Physics and Eastern religions into the story line. It is both basic and complex at the same time, which makes it hard for me to describe in detail. The second after you finish reading the last page you are going to want to flip through, and read it all over again. It’s just as good the second time around.

Author Paco Ahlgren was kind enough to do an interview with me, and answer the questions that went through my mind as I was reading Discipline.

Jen Thorpe: When I write, I find that listening to music, the right kind of music, helps me.  When I read a book, I often wonder what sounds were surrounding the author when he or she was creating the story.  What music did you listen
to while you were writing Discipline?

Paco Ahlgren: Patty Griffin got me through a lot of the tragedy, Erik Satie taught Douglas Cole how to play cello and helped with Taoism, Silversun Pickups carried me through the chess and subatomic physics, and the Bad Brains inspired a lot of the fight scenes.

JT: The cover of your book is beautiful, and when I first picked it up, I was immediately drawn to the intricate, circular, design that sits, subtly, behind the title.  Parts of this symbol also appears at the start of each chapter.  In a book where nothing is random, this makes me wonder, what does the symbol mean?  Did you create it, or is it from something else?

PA: I’m not sure where the symbol came from, and I’ve come to love the mystery surrounding it. When we began the process of creating the cover, I asked for “simplicity, born of complexity,” because that’s really what Discipline is all about. I don’t think anyone could have captured that spirit more than the designers.

JT: Your characters play chess, often for hours and hours on end, and the result is that large parts of your book are spent describing the various chess games.  In my experience, reading about people playing chess is rather dull, or done in an instructional manner.  Not so in your book!  You have made reading about some guys sitting around playing chess as exciting as watching a fast paced sporting event.  How long have you been playing chess, who taught you, and who did you spend the most time playing chess with?  Do you still play?

PA: I’ve been playing chess since I was six, when my neighbor Dianne DeBruyn taught me. Since then, I’ve played both casually and seriously. I’m sure it will come as no surprise to find out I used to spend a lot of time in Austin coffee shops, playing chess and drinking beer.
 
I don’t play as much as I used to, because now I spend all my time in bookstores, shaking hands, and signing copies of Discipline. Maybe I should set up a board… [Paco purses lips and rubs chin, staring at ceiling.]
 
I’ve tried to Google Dianne Debruyn, by the way, and I can’t find her. I think she was a “chess angel.”

JT: One of the concepts emphasized in your book is the idea that “experience is everything”. Is this idea just part of the story line, or a concept that reaches over into “real life”?  Can you elaborate a bit more about that?

PA: At one point in the story, the mentor-figure, Jefferson Stone, tells the student-figure, Douglas Cole:

“Knowledge means nothing without experience. You can read a thousand-page book about how to ride a bicycle, but until you actually get on the seat, the information is almost meaningless.”

I have a big problem not only with the emphasis we place on organized education – both public and private — in modern society, but also the methodology behind both these institutions. Mistakes aren’t tragedies to be swept under some proverbial rug; mistakes are stair steps to progress and the growth of knowledge. Yes, this concept is part of the story — inasmuch as Discipline should force us to question our perception of reality, as well as our intentions. Unfortunately, we tend not to see our mistakes as assets, and so “real life” becomes a cesspool of shame — full of secrets and skeletons — rather than an open universe of knowledge we can all share and benefit from.

JT: What can you tell my readers about “the entirety?”  I get the feeling that there is something more to it than just a piece of a science fiction story.

PA: One of the most difficult tasks I faced with Discipline was creating an adrenaline-charged thriller while subtly weaving all these different concepts into the story. Fortunately I had a great team of editors helping me – again pulling simplicity out of complexity, creating a story than anyone can read. My dad was my most vociferous editor; he called the book “a cornucopia of paragraphs pregnant with intricate hogwash and scientific rigmarole.” My dad can’t operate a remote control with any measurable degree of efficacy, but by the same token, I don’t really know what “rigmarole” is, and I respect my dad, so I took out the hard parts.
 
Yeah, there is a lot more to the entirety than mere science fiction.
 
In the mid-twentieth century, Hugh Everett proposed something called Multiverse Theory, in which certain scientific anomalies might be explained if our universe wasn’t alone, but rather was part of a collective of infinite universes – in all of which all possible outcomes of any event in space and time would occur. His work was advanced by David Deutsch, whose book The Fabric of Reality influenced me tremendously. Maybe the best way of looking at the entirety is to take the calculable aspects of the Multiverse (I know, I know… how do you calculate infinity? Just suspend disbelief and pretend I know what I’m talking about for a second), and to combine them with the sheer nothingness that seems to be the cornerstone of Taoism. If you can wrap your mind around that – or rather let your mind go – you’ll be closer to understanding what I was going for when I described the entirety in Discipline.

JT: Part of your book describes acts of terrorism, and how the general public responds to those acts.  Are those parts of your book written as a reaction to the acts of terrorism that really did happen in the United States on September 11th 2001?

PA: I actually finished those sections of the book in the spring and early summer of 2001 – months before the September 11th attacks. I also wrote about the failing dollar, and it’s potential link to economic terrorism in 2001. And I hope it doesn’t look like I’m proud of myself; I don’t want to be known as some sort of reincarnation of Edgar Casey or Nostradamus, and I definitely don’t relish the idea of the tragic things I write about becoming reality.

JT: Can you elaborate a little bit more about some of the physics concepts that you touched on in this story?  It seems to me that some of these concepts are a large part of the story, and, since I know only a teeny bit about Physics, I think I might be missing something.

PA: I think the place to start is distinguishing between traditional, Newtonian physics (which describes the world around us – everything at the atomic level and larger), and subatomic physics (which describes the way forces act on each other at levels smaller than the atom).
 
Newtonian physics, with some minor exceptions, is fairly straight-forward and mathematically explicable. Subatomic science, on the other hand, is exceedingly mathematically uncooperative, and often causes nuclear physicists to abuse controlled substances, throw furniture, and/or fight fat people.
 
I could go on about all this for hours, but suffice it to say that it all boils down to a philosophical conundrum no one has been able to resolve adequately: no one can figure out why certain things don’t act the way they’re supposed to at the subatomic level.
 
At the subatomic level, a thing can act like a particle. Or a thing can act like a wave. Do you care? No. Do you care about neutrons, protons, electrons, quarks, or photons? No. Do you care that they don’t act the way they’re supposed to? No.
 
Okay, well, what if your dog suddenly started acting like your cousin? If it happened long enough, (like all the time), the philosophical conundrum would undoubtedly cause you to abuse controlled substances, throw furniture, and/or fight fat people. And it may be that your cousin and your dog do act a lot alike, and you might very well abuse controlled substances, throw furniture, and/or fight with fat people. But that’s not normal. Which is precisely the problem.
 
You don’t have to a physicist to see that this has epistemological and social ramifications. Enough said.

JT: What’s next?  Will there be a sequel to Discipline?  Do you have another book in the works?

PA: I am definitely working on the sequel, but I’m not forcing any deadlines on myself. Unlike too many sequels, this one is going to be right.

JT: Where can my readers go to learn more about Discipline, and keep up with you and your future book signings and readings?

PA: www.pacoahlgren.com

www.disciplinenovel.com

www.myspace.com/pacoahlgren

Any of these sites will get you to sample chapters, the Discipline trailer, all the reviews, and a lot more.

JT: On your web site, and also at the back of your book, you list several “suggested reads”.  Which of these should someone start with, and why?

PA: This is a fairly common question, and my answer is always the same: Tao Te Ching. I consider Taoism to be the connecting factor between all the schools of thought in the book.

JT: Thank you so much for doing this interview with me!

PA: Thank you, Jennifer! I’ve never done anything quite like this before! I hope we can do it again soon…

Are we defined by our bodies? Or is who we are something more intangible than that? Morgan brings up some very interesting concepts in this science fiction novel, which is the first in his series. This book will make you think.

Set in the twenty-fifth century, we follow Takeshi Kovacs, who once was a U. N. Envoy. He is about to be involved in a conspiracy, that is more tangled than the batch of wires coming out of a server room, and darker than a murderer’s soul. He has no choice in the matter. Kovacs knows almost nothing about the situation he finds himself in, and he pieces it together, slowly, as the story moves.

Here is a world where all people have a little data saving device stuck into their spines, (in the base of their heads), shortly after they are born. All their experiences, their thoughts, their fears, their hopes and their dreams are recorded in this handy little gadget. People don’t die anymore, (with a few exceptions), because if the body your consciousness is currently housed in dies, you can be downloaded into another body. You can go on from there, as if nothing ever happened. Just another day.

I found the social implications of this to be staggering. In this world, there is no “death penalty”. Instead, people are sentenced to years “in storage”, sometimes hundreds of years, if the crime was bad enough. Kovacs is just coming out of storage as the story begins, and he’s not the only one doing so at that moment.

You can “store” your great, great, great, great, grandfather, and return him into a body for special occasions, such as a wedding, so he can interact with all the other generations of relatives. When the event is over, he can return to “storage”, and an entire virtual existence. You no longer need a body to “live”.

People who come out of storage often are “sleeved” (Morgan has come up with a wonderful term for the process), into a body that was not the same body the were in before. Maybe you are poor, and can’t afford to be returned to that body. Perhaps someone else, who could afford to pay the price, is using your old body right now. The richest people can afford to make clones of their bodies, and switch over to a “new” one whenever they want to, but, the general population ends up using what is available. Some people end up in a robotic body, instead of a human one, for a variety of reasons. This future society has a bunch of rules governing just who can be “sleeved” into what, for how long, and under what circumstances. Kovacs is being sleeved to do a specific job for the rich man who bought him out of storage. If he refuses, he loses the body he was downloaded in and goes right back in, but if he succeeds, he can keep the body, (or negotiate for his old one).

What makes an individual is not his age, his ethnic background, or even his face or fingerprints anymore. Gender isn’t even a defining factor, because although most people are downloaded into bodies the same sex as the one they started in, you can choose to be “cross sleeved”. You can exist inside a robot that has no gender. What is it that makes “you” who you are? What’s left? How do you identify your friends, or loved ones, if they no longer look anything like they used to? If you fall in love with someone, and later, someone else’s consciousness is downloaded into that same body, what happens now? Are you in love with the physical aspects, or the personality? How do you separate the two, when the “new” personality uses the same voice, has the same facial expressions and nervous ticks, and some of the previous occupant’s memories as well? It all makes for some really sticky philosophical situations, especially when you throw religions, and their ideas about life and afterlife, into the whole puzzle.

Morgan gives readers a mix of hard science fiction and a thriller. Lots of fast paced, extremely violent scenes, with a whole lot of rapid gunfire, one scene after another. It’s not an easy read, due to the complicated levels of meaning involved in everything in this world of shifting bodies, but it’s worth the initial struggle. I am looking forward to the next book in the series someday, but plan on waiting for a while. Reading about all these lonely, lost, bodiless souls, searching for meaning, makes me too sad to jump immediately into the sequel.

Dive in. Swim around for a while in Fitch’s smooth, clear, style of writing. I found myself submerged in this book for hours at a time, without the desire to come up for air. It flows like water. Few other books even come close to how well this book moves.

You may have seen the movie that was based on this book that came out several years ago. Read the book anyway. There are stories within the pages that the movie never even hinted at. Books are generally better than the movies based upon them, anyway, and this rule holds true for White Oleander.

The book gets it’s title from the choice of flower that Ingrid, (a famous poet and powerful woman), uses in an attempt to poison her ex-lover. She fails, but does, eventually, kill him, which leads her to prison, and her daughter, Astrid, to become a ward of the state. Astrid is about twelve years old when this occurs. The book follows Astrid as she moves from place to place, growing, learning, and changing.

Astrid is trying to find herself. After a lifetime of identifying herself mostly as “Ingrid’s daughter”, she now has no choice but to become someone else. She finds herself changing based upon the lifestyles and ideologies of the series of women who take her in and care for her, and she is also influenced by the earth itself, and the different landscapes and surrounding nature each foster home is located in. Each woman has her own reason for deciding to take in Astrid, most of which boil down to simple selfishness. Astrid becomes a different Astrid in each new place.

Sometimes she is doing things she thinks will please her mother, but often, she does the very thing that she suspects her mother will most disapprove of. Astrid’s choices and circumstances tend to lead towards disaster, but are still valuable experiences in their own right.

No matter where Astrid ends up, no matter how influential the other women in her life are, she finds she cannot break the strong ties that she and her mother have. Despite Ingrid being someone Astrid hardly ever sees, despite Ingrid’s insanity, and despite her vitriolic and sporadic letters, Astrid can’t let go enough to move on with her own life.

Astrid is facing what we all go through, eventually, which is the drama of growing up, leaving home, and become your own person. It’s never easy. Astrid faces a greater challenge, because she has no safety net of familiarity to catch her when she falls while exploring this new terrain. Each new foster home tells it’s own little mini drama within the confines of the larger story.

Astrid survives, despite her challenges, or perhaps because of them. By the end, she is her mother’s daughter, for good or for evil. This book is heartbreakingly beautiful, and one I will read again. I am looking forward to reading Paint It Black, Fitch’s only other novel, which just recently came out in paperback.